No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

FlexPod XCS vs HPE ConvergedSystem comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

FlexPod XCS
Ranking in Converged Infrastructure
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE ConvergedSystem
Ranking in Converged Infrastructure
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure for SAP HANA (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of FlexPod XCS is 12.5%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE ConvergedSystem is 11.1%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.5%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.1%
Other76.4%
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Manager at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Enforces standardized setup procedures following Certified Validated Design (CVD) guidelines and offers greater flexibility and control over the system compared to traditional systems
The GUI setup follows the right setup, meaning we have to follow the CVDi.e. Certified Validated Design. Everything is clear, because you can build CI yourself, but without rules, it can be messy. With FlexPod, there are rules to follow, making it more standardized. This helps with troubleshooting and compatibility assessments, simplifying troubleshooting significantly. We also use FlexPod pre-validated architectures to validate the design. It is very, very important to us because we had a bad case in 2015 where separate items integrated poorly due to no version or firmware compatibility certification. Troubleshooting became a nightmare. So, standards are crucial for us, and everything entering production should be verified or at least documented for certification.
PF
Project Engineer at Astellas Pharma US
With good integration and expansion capabilities, the tool also offers good technical support
It is a solution that we could expand in our company. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. Our company has 400 users, all of whom have used it at one point or the other. All of the departments are involved in the usage of the tool.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Traditionally, when you have multiple vendors, before FlexPod, everyone does a lot of finger pointing, and the fact that all these companies work together is invaluable."
"Provisioning servers used to take hours, and now it takes up to five minutes."
"The most valuable feature is the fact that it’s a complete package, that’s the biggest advantage, and it can be rolled out pretty quickly."
"I like the combination of the brands that they decided to include, in terms of its compatibility, e.g., they integrated UCS into this solution."
"FlexPod has affected the workload of our network admin team awesomely. We have fewer employees. It's good."
"I like the consolidation in one rack, you have everything coming together, you just assemble it and you're ready to go, without having to purchase different pieces of hardware to have one solution."
"With cDOT, it's very easy to scale out, and that's the reason we went with it in the first place."
"NetApp just blows them out of the water with manageability and the price point."
"The most valuable features of HPE ConvergedSystem are scalability and resilience."
"The user interface, reporting, and management are good, and we are quite happy with the performance."
"This is a scalable solution; our customers begin with an initial configuration and later add more servers, memory, and other options to meet the demands of increased processing."
"It's a great solution that is very secure, and very easy to configure."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to restore lost machines. Essentially its high availability capabilities are extremely valuable to us."
"One of the biggest things is, the fact that it can be a turn-key solution."
"One of the valuable components in this solution is HPE Synergy, which is a useful tool for deployments and updates."
"As far as what we are doing now, there is no problem with stability; it's pretty flexible, it's efficient, and it is centralized management, cost-effective."
 

Cons

"However, for a lot of the upper/mid-level market, it is probably a little bit of overkill in terms of the day-to-day administration, and even the initial configuration to get it up and running."
"If you have expertise setting up such environments, then you are good, but for customers or novices, it becomes a nightmare and stuff may actually be left out."
"When we do call in for support, the Cisco side of it is fairly poor until you get past tier 1."
"We have not seen ROI yet."
"In the SolidFire interface, if you use the GUI, you have to create one run at a time, or one device at a time, which is something that needs to be fixed."
"I would like to see the FlexPod infrastructure get updated more often."
"As we do much of the Tier-I support ourselves, and thus don't normally need it, there is time wasted in moving up to the next level."
"It is not as easy as a hyperconverged solution, but you are going to have a hard time finding that anywhere, where you can just plugin and run a deployment app."
"Pricing is an area of concern in the solution where improvements are required."
"The interface is not fully integrated with the ESXi, which is something that could be improved."
"Technical support hasn't seemed to be that simple or that easy."
"HPE ConvergedSystem needs to improve its price."
"The tool has shortcomings in its performance monitoring part."
"There is some scope for improvement in support. The response time could be better."
"This is an expensive system and not every customer has the kind of budget to support it."
"It was a very rough ride. The people they sent, I don't think they had experience in doing these kinds of implementations before."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I have saved time on new service deployments. I've done deployments in under a week, and if it's a cloud-based deployment, it's even faster."
"We have saved time and money for new service deployments."
"The cost is a little high."
"It is not going to save you money, but that is not the point. The opportunity to stay competitive in the marketplace is not a cost."
"We have reduced our manpower with the solution."
"We definitely saw a lot of operational cost savings using FlexPod. As far as capital outlay goes, that was a little bit too much for us to swallow and we weren't able to recognize enough savings in that area to afford it."
"It created lower total cost of ownership. Previously, we had disparate storage and servers, and there were bits of kits everywhere. Now, we have two data centers with almost identical setups in both."
"I find the licensing and pricing structure to be favorable."
"This is an expensive solution."
"I rate the product price an eight and a half on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"This is an expensive system and not every customer has the kind of budget to support it."
"The pricing is sensitive."
"My company has a five year contract for HPE ConvergedSystem. The contracts depend on companies and sometimes it can be three years. The solution is worth its price."
"The pricing is competitive. Not a major problem. We have a subscription model."
"Pricing is good. We have not calculated what hyper-converged infrastructure has brought us but I think there has to be some lower cost for us, compared to the public cloud. Obviously, there would be a lower cost, probably by more than half."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Converged Infrastructure solutions are best for your needs.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees
Aug 30, 2015
Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod
Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
13%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise13
 

Also Known As

No data available
HPE ConvergedSystem 700, HPE ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA, CS500, HPE ConvergedSystem 900, HPE ConvergedSystem 500, HPE ConvergedSystem 300
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
FAW-Volkswagen, NICS, NBrIX, Pinpoint, HPE Technology Services, SWS, Ko Sistem, HPE
Find out what your peers are saying about FlexPod XCS vs. HPE ConvergedSystem and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.