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FlexPod XCS vs VxRail comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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)
VxRail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
135
Ranking in other categories
HCI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. FlexPod XCS is designed for Converged Infrastructure and holds a mindshare of 12.5%, up 9.4% compared to last year.
VxRail, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 10.4% mindshare, down 17.8% since last year.
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.5%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.1%
Dell VxBlock System8.6%
Other67.8%
Converged Infrastructure
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VxRail10.4%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.1%
VMware vSAN8.5%
Other72.0%
HCI
 

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.
Saleh Khalid - PeerSpot reviewer
computer scientist at Imam University
Experience improved integration and cost-efficiency while facing support challenges
The best features of VxRail are its compatibility with VMware, its hyper-converged solution capabilities, and its single line of support. These are the most beneficial aspects of VxRail. I switched from the previous HP solution to Dell solution because it was a good decision. With HP servers, we dealt with a vendor for the compute servers, another vendor for the storage servers, and another vendor for the networking, which required us to manage multiple vendors. Now, we have a single team who can handle VxRail and a single line of support. We don't need anything other than that, and these are the differences we noticed after we switched.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is ease of deployment. Once I deploy the chassis and I have the back-end storage, configuring more UCS servers is very quick. I can deploy a new UCS server within minutes."
"FlexPod allows you to build what you need when you need it."
"The integration part of things is the most valuable feature; you are getting a whole set of things under one roof and rack, there is support for everything, the designs are pretty good, and Cisco, NetApp, or the OS vendor keep on updating them, which is one of the good points."
"For us at that time, and today, it is the best solution on the market when it comes to converged infrastructure."
"The return on investment is very high for FlexPod implementations."
"Go for it as a solution."
"I live by the Validated Designs. I do exactly what those designs say and I haven't had a problem as a result. For example, they used to do the FCoE. They figured out there was a problem and they went over to the NFS. I moved over and I agreed with them. It worked better."
"Literally, it's been in our situation pretty flawless."
"With VxRail, everything comes in one box, including licensing, Dell EMC and VMware — it's nice and simple."
"VxRail alleviates the operational constraints within an organization."
"RecoverPoint give us peace of mind knowing any corruption or server issue can be rectified very quickly, making sure the business impact is minimal."
"I recommend this solution, it's a good product."
"The main advantage is that VxRail is integrated with vSAN."
"Management of the hardware and software in one console is the most valuable feature. It's also compatible with vSAN."
"Offers zero-day deployment"
"The major advantage is the blueprint. You do not need to separately manage the sand or network part because it all gets virtualized."
 

Cons

"The price is something that we are still working on. At some point, it's a bit more expensive than the solution that we had before, as far as I know."
"FlexPod is not cheap and the way things are going, you could probably get the same thing at half the price from another vendor."
"With the UCS X-Series, I would like to see the fabric interconnects built into the chassis instead of being external."
"The UCS firmware code upgrade can totally stall- it’s a brick. Cisco support has been able to help us, but this can be better."
"A single place to initiate support to get them all at once – being able to call one place would be great instead of having to initiate with each vendor first and then ultimately finding out you need everyone on the phone."
"As a point solution, it does absolutely what it should. I'm not sure it needs any more. Make it cheaper."
"We would like more integration with some other HCI solutions so we can take advantage of other opportunities."
"FlexPod has not decreased the unplanned downtime incidents in our company. There was a problem with the back-end configuration and we had a downtime of three hours."
"I would like it to tier to the cloud effectively, making sure that cold data can be pushed out to some sort of Bitbucket."
"If they can improve the HTML client that would be great because the HTML client is a lot more responsive."
"We are experiencing some issues with Dell's live-chat support as the support is different based on the support included with the hardware."
"There are multiple things that have space for improvement. The most important are the features related to VMware, vSphere, vCenter, etc."
"The fact that is based on vSAN is the main issue of this solution."
"They should add automation and activation going forward."
"The licensing aspect is the most painful for some of our customers."
"It would be nice if its installation can be simplified, but it is currently not too bad. They can provide deduplication and compression in hybrid configurations. To the best of my knowledge, these features are not there, and it would be nice if these are added. Some of its competitors already have these features, so it will help VxRail to have a better feature set and compete more effectively."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You get better management and orchestration, but it still costs you money."
"The solution has saved our customers' organization in terms of CapEx. E.g., with the cloud availability, it's turned into sort of a hybrid CapEx/OpEx model."
"We have a lease for approximately $10,000 USD per month."
"We can just swap in new equipment or hardware as we need, which has probably saved us several weeks."
"Buy storage based on the solutions you need, the technologies you need, and what will make your life a lot easier down the road."
"We have reduced our manpower with the solution."
"We purchased the solution through CDW. They are a partner and knowledgeable."
"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."
"The cost was cheaper compared to other virtualization solutions."
"There is a permanent vSAN license included since it is required, but vCenter\ESXi host licensing should be validated in the purchase process."
"The pricing for this solution is on the high end but we do get good value for money based on performance."
"The licensing costs can vary depending on the number of processors and specific requirements, which may result in considerable expenses."
"Compare the VxRail product to Nutanix. Nutanix has more features, but its pricing is higher."
"VxRail is expensive because it's based on VMware and V-SAN. The price is not the cheapest. The technical support is expensive, but it is a good service."
"I live in Brazil, and my customers are from Brazil. It is quite an expensive solution. It is more expensive than the traditional environment."
"Most of hyper-converged solutions require additional licenses for the virtualization layer (like VMware)."
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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%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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 Business42
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in Converged Infrastructure. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.