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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
6.9
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (6th)
VxRail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
131
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 9.4%, down 9.6% compared to last year.
VxRail, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 19.0% mindshare, down 21.2% since last year.
Converged Infrastructure
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Chris Haight - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates everything so you are using fewer tools
The traditional UCS Blades do not take much storage internally. You would be challenged to create an HCI (Hype converged Infrastructure) solution on FlexPod / UCS or any other solution that pools internal storage. Now, with UCS X-Series, you can carve off an HCI solution, software defined pooled solution if you want. This was one area of improvement that I wanted to see and can now realize with the refresh of the Cisco UCS infrastructure. With modern modular infrastructure, RESTful API has been added, there are more integrations, ServiceNow and vCenter along with tighter plug-ins. There is cross-user interface launching, for example with Windows Admin Center. The solutions are using Ansible and Terraform for deploying infrastructure as code. All the improvements that I wanted from the last gen are here or coming. With modern workloads and GPU use on the rise, adding GPUs to modern modular infrastructure will have some pros and cons. Typically, you can add one or two GPU's to a blade with no or little trade off. With the UCS X-Series, if you are doing a GPU farm, then you may have to sacrifice compute blades in the front slots to put in a GPU tray / module. A chassis holds eight compute blades, but if you are adding a ton of GPUs, a single GPU tray or more will reduce your blade count by as many GPU trays you add. This is not just a Cisco UCS X-Series problem. It is an industry problem with modular infrastructure and one that I would like to see get solved! I am looking into one such solution, VMware BITFUSION where you can send CUDA requests over the network to a BITFUSION server with the results sent back to the requestor, early stages here and only scratched the surface thus far. With Cisco UCS X-Series, I would like to see the fabric interconnects built into the chassis instead of being external. With the fabric interconnects, the real footprint of UCS X-Series is 9U, where some of the competing solutions are 7U and have collapsed the network fabric into the chassis. This is another thing that I would like to see from Cisco, though, not really on the NetApp side of the fence, NetApp is solid storage.
Rami Jadallah - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline management and integration with seamless upgrades
The primary reasons customers choose VxRail include ease of management, ease of upgrades, and integration with VMware. The hyper-converged infrastructure simplifies software and hardware upgrades. Customers prefer the single pane of glass management and integration with VMware, which makes it easier for them to proceed with decisions involving VMware products.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is innovative. It handles virtual networking. Also, it can upgrade blades and continue working seamlessly, which is excellent."
"Going from the old monolithic server and silo storage that they used to use is an improvement. With the FlexPod solution, just being able to manage and monitor the overall environment helps."
"We enjoy the standardization and having things consistent across the whole data center sphere."
"It provides ease of automation."
"The ease at which it scales and its redundancy factors. It's extremely redundant and easy-to-scale."
"The solution makes our staff more efficient, enabling them to spend time on tasks that drive our business forward. The environment is more homogeneous, so there are not as many technologies to study and learn. People can focus on improving their knowledge in existing technologies."
"We found FlexPod to be innovative when it comes to compute, storage, and networking. We've taken advantage of their storage optimizations to obtain better use out of the space. We upgraded to All Flash FAS (AFF), which has provided a huge performance increase that we haven't barely scratched the surface of. We have plenty of overhead, so that's always nice when taking on tasks which might have otherwise taxed a smaller system."
"FlexPod is the primary solution we recommend for clients with high-availability server requirements. Our clients find FlexPod's management helpful. You can manage everything via plugins."
"I like the managed updates. They are really nice in VxRail. Everything comes packaged and the updates are much easier than with other solutions that I've had to work with."
"There is a single vendor with the hardware, software, and maintenance. Thus, there is a single vendor with whom we can contact."
"VxRail has high performance and has great efficiency. There is a single place for us to manage all of our virtual machines. The ability to right-size instead of overcommit VMs is a large benefit."
"The tool's price is competitive and it is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the automation and integration points with other automation tools."
"VxRail alleviates the operational constraints within an organization."
"We enjoy the ease of management since all of the resources are located on one box — one single point of support."
"Homogeneity is most valuable. The truth is that having everything in a single cluster helps a lot."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see a little bit simpler management pane. Using UCS Director to front everything is good but for a lot of that upper mid-market, it's probably a little bit of overkill for what they need. They just want a nice, simply portal to go through and see what's going on. So if there was something that was middle of the road, it would be well received."
"I think it is sufficient for now, but in the next generation, I'd just like to see bigger, faster, and better."
"Because when you try to do automation, there are many bits and pieces tied together. Sometimes, automation gets a little tricky for provisioning."
"The FAS in it, with all its flexibility and scalability, it is much more complex and could be simplified."
"I would like to see better operations, a single pane of glass to manage and monitor the entire design across VMware, Cisco, etc. I would also like the upgrade process to be a little smoother."
"There is a history of issues with hardware availability. For example, we'll buy an array or a filer with a particular configuration and particular size of drive, sizing it appropriately. Then, as we grow, they're like, "Oh, you can always get more." Then when you go to get more, that model or type of disk is no longer available. It becomes this big process to try to figure out what we need to get, how it'll work, and how that'll integrate into the system. That could be simpler. They could do a bit more to guarantee the availability of parts. Obviously, not being the largest storage vendor, I know they can't sometimes control what the hardware vendors do. However, a bit more transparency and communication about this would be helpful."
"The procedure for contacting technical support could be simplified."
"FlexPod should focus more on automation. Integrating an automation tool with FlexPod would enable customers to leverage automation capabilities."
"The fact that is based on vSAN is the main issue of this solution."
"The product could support and have more compliance with other vendors."
"The solution could improve by having more storage performance because in some other solutions you can have a file system that can be mounted at several places at one time."
"The SCL database sends out a warning and you have to download the adjacent file from the Dell website. You have to upload it and retest it. We cannot always connect our systems to the internet which means we sometimes miss these important updates."
"The price could be better. The backup mechanism could also be better. Some of our clients prefer to work with backup software from a different vendor. They don't do a built-in backup solution. It would be better if they had guidelines on proper sizing and the whole life cycle from the requirement collection. If there aren't any proper guidelines, how do I go to the customer and evaluate their existing infrastructure? How can you do appropriate sizing to migrate to a hyper-converged environment? I think this is a requirement because most of our clients are migrating to a hyper-converged environment. In the next release, they can improve absolutely anything you can think of to improve the product in general—for example, the clusters and backup software."
"The version upgrade process should be simplified."
"I would like it to tier to the cloud effectively, making sure that cold data can be pushed out to some sort of Bitbucket."
"Supply chain capabilities are certainly hurting us. We're in the process of placing a large order for more VxRail nodes right now."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing and licensing are quite expensive. However, compared to other solutions, it is okay."
"The footprint in the data center is quite large, especially when you scale out. Maybe find some hardware in the future, where if a new blade comes out, then Cisco can say, "Look, we'll buy those blades back off you, and we'll give you this blade for X amount of money." A buyback scheme would be good for hardware, and even NetApp as well. Something like a buyback scheme for blades and stuff moving forward would be good, because I know that they're going to put more power into them. E.g., replacing four blades might equal one blade, which would be awesome, but we are still going to have those four blades around. Maybe having something where it will give you this much money for these blades so we can upgrade. That would be perfect."
"We can just swap in new equipment or hardware as we need, which has probably saved us several weeks."
"You get better management and orchestration, but it still costs you money."
"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."
"We pay approximately $1,400 USD in total for between five-thousand and ten-thousand ports."
"We purchased FlexPod though Datalink."
"As a startup, for the amount of budget we have and the amount we spend, we are getting what we expected."
"Be mindful of your storage needs now and for the future."
"VxRail is still more expensive than its competitor solutions."
"At about $200,000, this solution is a little bit pricey but it is more economical than others such as Nutanix or Cisco Hyperflex."
"VxRail has a subscription model usually tagged with the appliance box only."
"The solution is priced well for businesses."
"The price could be lower."
"The solution is competitively priced but it is expensive. However, this is expected as we are a corporate enterprise and we need this environment."
"The licensing of vSAN and VMware for different editions of VxRail is not easy."
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Manufacturing Company
20%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
10%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about FlexPod?
The system is designed for easy scaling. Because we define everything clearly. So when we plug the system in, we apply the profile, and it scales easily.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FlexPod?
The pricing is not cheaper, but stability is more important for us now. We focus on business gains, not static numbers. Following XCS rules ensures a stable environment, which is crucial. For me, C...
What needs improvement with FlexPod?
FlexPod should focus more on automation. Integrating an automation tool with FlexPod would enable customers to leverage automation capabilities. More automation would be helpful. Currently, we cont...
How does HPE Nimble Storage compare to VxRail?
HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one, zero rule. That means I need three copies of my data on two different types of me...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...
What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?
VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company to invest in. Even if the user is working with a l...
 

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
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