FlexPod XCS vs Vblock [EOL] comparison

NetApp and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the Converged Infrastructure category. Additionally, 96% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 84% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

FlexPod XCS

Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews

3,863 Views
1,932 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Vblock [EOL]

Read 24 Vblock [EOL] reviews

84% willing to recommend

FlexPod XCS

Vblock [EOL]

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between FlexPod XCS and Vblock [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in Converged Infrastructure.

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Converged Infrastructure

January 2026

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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

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

295

Ranking in other categories

Converged Infrastructure (2nd)

Vblock [EOL]

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

John Kevin

Deputy IT Manager at MBBank

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.

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Tahir Shahid

Chief Consultant and Architect at Tahir Professional Services

Centrally-managed and stable, but the initial setup could be made simpler and technical support can be improved

There is a different platform and there are different interfaces for different parts of the product. Although there are some centralized components, you still manage each component using its own set of tools. There is definitely room for improvement in this regard. I would like to have a catalogue like menu where you simply define your end computing needs and the rest would be taken care of internally. The initial setup could be unified to make it simpler.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have significantly less latency now with our imagery."

"The ability to converge a lot of different data and platforms into a single common platform, then scale horizontally and vertically."

"The ability to create vDisks on NFS exports is an added advantage. This is very helpful when we reach RDM limit."

"Validate designs are a good. They work in the background to combine all the infrastructure and storage. They create automation which can create volumes and attach VMs directly to massive CIFS."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to integrate different products into one validated design. That allows customers to understand and get the value out of the hardware, as it was designed."

"It took a server room where we had 280 servers and another with 180 and condensed them from 15 racks down to three racks. It's helping us in the data center with all our environmentals... In addition, we're getting the ability of VMware, which is virtualization, so now we have redundancy on all of our boxes, instead of them being physical."

"Integration is most valuable. This is a reference architecture. So, we don't have to design something from scratch and figure out how it is going to work."

"The nice thing about NetApp is the ease of administration. We have a new storage admin who did not do storage at all, and he has fallen right in with it. There are no real issues."

More FlexPod XCS pros

"Systems run solidly."

"The high redundancy of components has minimized frequent service degradation/failure."

"We have seen measurable increases in our system performance. Those increases have been directly measurable in application performance and the delivery of critical business information to our users."

"Finding a fully bundled, deployed, and configured solution with a short delivery time and unique support is really attractive."

"The component integration means I don't have to worry about technology mismatches."

"VMware NSX: Provides the ability for our organisation to deliver true DR."

"It has improved system performance, batch times for off-hours processing, and reliability with production applications."

"It's an integrated box Mac solution, so it's a plug and play. The deployment and build is pre-made and ready to deploy. It makes it easy to apply."

More Vblock [EOL] pros

Cons

"It would be very helpful if the upgrades for Cisco, VMware, and NetApp could be bundled together and performed at the same time."

"The upgrades should be improved. We would like to have the ability to do unified upgrades of the whole infrastructure from beginning to end."

"If there were going to be any improvements, they should probably be UI improvements, overall. It can get a little kludgy sometimes when trying to figure out what to do."

"I'd like to see better integrations with some of the third-party tools, like Terraform. That would be good. We use Ansible to deploy and that's good, but it's slower than it needs to be."

"Perhaps the automation interface could be improved."

"There are certain things that are just hard to do on a physical infrastructure, like for instance you need to make petabytes of data available at high speed."

"If they could reduce some of the complexity at the system manager level for ONTAP. I find it gives a lot of flexibility. You can do as much or as little as you want. But to be able to do as little as you want, you do have to do a lot. So, if they could bring that down to a more manageable effort level, that would be nice and simplify it a bit."

"FlexPod XCS' pricing could be cheaper. You need to find the right person for support."

More FlexPod XCS cons

"OEM services requires too much planning and low availability of certified engineers."

"With respect to the technical support, there is room for improvement."

"In the next release, I would like to see a smaller footprint in the data center and have improvements to disk performance."

"The integration with other vendors' products needs to be looked at. It's not as flexible as we would like it to be."

"The implementation and support could be better."

"Troublesome relationships with VCE at the beginning of our use came undone quickly after we went live."

"The user control could be more advanced. They should work to improve this in future releases."

"RCM upgrades were not scripted, and you needed to roll on your own. We were led to believe this would be otherwise."

More Vblock [EOL] cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is a little high."

"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."

"We have seen our data center rack space collapse about 90 percent. We have a data center which only has two racks now out of the 20 that were there previously."

"As a startup, for the amount of budget we have and the amount we spend, we are getting what we expected."

"The main return on investment would be that instead of having to refresh all of our desktop hardware we have been able to go reimage existing machines and use those as thin clients, then also purchase new thin clients rather than buying actual hardware. It also reduces the overhead of having our technicians deploy those systems and maintain them."

"We fear high availability so we can't buy from different providers."

"We have saved money using FlexPod. We have saved time and money for new service deployments."

"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."

More FlexPod XCS pricing and cost advice

"Vblock is priced at a premium because people don't want the headache of managing and deploying different products."

"The paid support for Vblock is expensive."

"It is not cheap."

"Related to tech support: I believe it is too expensive."

"Strive for a consolidated ELA."

"I would not say the pricing is not good value. It is still on the expensive side, near the top-end of cost compared to what's available now. Also, the licensing has to be improved. There has to be a clear definition of the licensing from the initial set-up so the customer knows what they are paying for, without being hit later on with extra licensing. The licensing definitions should be clearer and, perhaps, have one set of licenses rather than multiple licenses."

"I think the pricing is on the higher end of the spectrum. There could be some adjustments that could be made there. Regarding licensing, watch compatibility with external products that you run on Vblock. It has got to be properly architected, otherwise, you will run into licensing issues."

"Vblock appears from the first while to be very expensive. There are more items you cannot see in the BOQ: customer service, support, delivery short time, and highly experienced VCE engineers."

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Comparison Review

it_user244362

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Marketing Services Firm

31%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Performing Arts

Educational Organization

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	34
Midsize Enterprise	66
Large Enterprise	182

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	17

Comparisons

Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 15% of the time

HPE ConvergedSystem vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 8% of the time

Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 8% of the time

More FlexPod XCS Competitors

Dell VxBlock System vs Vblock [EOL]

Compared 47% of the time

More Vblock [EOL] Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

February 2026

Download FlexPod XCS product report

Buyer's Guide

Vblock [EOL]

January 2026

Download Vblock [EOL] product report

Also Known As

No data available

VCE Vblock

Overview

FlexPod XCS is the secure platform your applications need from edge to cloud. Easily manage your suite of cloud-native, edge, and enterprise apps. Integrate advanced cloud services without compromising performance, security, reliability, or scale.

NetApp

VCE Vblock Systems is an all-in-one virtualization platform that integrates the leading storage, network, and compute technologies from the likes of EMC, VMware and Cisco. VCE Vblock allows organizations to easily and securely deploy cloud computing and virtualization in their environments, supporting these multiple technologies and providing flexibility and agility for changing business needs.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group

Xerox, ACS, and Columbia Sportswear.

Buyer's Guide

Converged Infrastructure

January 2026

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