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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 12.8%, up 9.3% compared to last year.
VxRail, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 10.6% mindshare, down 18.4% since last year.
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.8%
HPE ConvergedSystem10.9%
Oracle Private Cloud Appliance8.3%
Other68.0%
Converged Infrastructure
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VxRail10.6%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.2%
VMware vSAN8.9%
Other71.30000000000001%
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

"It's been a very stable environment for us, absolutely."
"It's greatly reduced the complexity of network storage and compute."
"The ease of set up is probably the most valuable feature for us."
"When our clients choose to call NetApp or Cisco directly, the cooperative support model means they can get passed back and forth between the two organizations freely. It works really well."
"The scalability is really good because it's not a silo."
"FlexPod's unified support for the entire stack is very important. Before, the customers would log a ticket by Cisco and a ticket by NetApp. It's better when vendors can parter and look for a solution together."
"There are very many features, but from experience, the single point of contact for support has been valuable to our customers."
"It provides ease of automation."
"VxRail's technical support is very good."
"It's somewhat hard to speak about specific features, but I like VxRail's simplicity and ease of use. It's a decent solution for customers with a small footprint. If you're operating a big data center, it's not easy to position VxRail or HCI solutions, but when you have a small customer managing many different components, it's easier to work only with one solution."
"Overall, this is a good product and I recommend it."
"Compared to other HCI products, VxRail has advantages in stability and support from the vendors."
"VxRail's feature that we found most valuable was its really good performance. That was one of VxRail's advantages."
"The stability of the solution is rock solid."
"The technical support is very helpful and answers questions whenever we have issues with the product."
"With VxRail, we can manage the life cycle of a virtual machine."
 

Cons

"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"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."
"Not a ten because it could always be cheaper, it could always be faster."
"Maybe the migration tools for all of the environments could be improved."
"I think that allowing faster certification times on newer codes on both Cisco and NetApp sides could be good as this is a pain point."
"We would like them to improve the validate designs. It is hard to stay in a supported config with the software and firmware versions of the platform. It's always a concern to ensure things not only work well, but they work at all. If we run into incompatibility inside of the NetApp, Cisco, or VMware versions, it can cause real issues."
"We are wondering how all this data will be synchronized and if we can get a common solution and common input."
"This is where I have seen it get a bit distorted."
"Sometimes during implementation, you can some scripting errors. And there are some issues when we update the version. There are some issues like the version will not get updated or stable at some time. Dell needs to resolve these problems, we don't waste time fixing them."
"Having a native replication would be an improvement."
"The technical support team must improve the quality of responses."
"The pricing of the solution could be improved."
"While VxRail offers compatibility with AMD processors, its capabilities in this area could benefit from further development."
"Dell wants to implement the disaster recovery site in the new year, but they haven't decided yet."
"What I did not like so much was the amount of VMware that you have to put in your system related to the VxRail."
"The product could support and have more compliance with other vendors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive, but when you pay for enterprise support and enterprise products, you have to pay the big bucks."
"Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year."
"Everything is purchased, so we do not do any leasing with this product."
"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."
"Sometimes you may end up spending a little more to get it in the first place, but you gain it back in terms of infrastructure upgrade costs and troubleshooting costs. The solution also lasts a surprisingly long time."
"The cost is a little high."
"We pay approximately $1,400 USD in total for between five-thousand and ten-thousand ports."
"You get better management and orchestration, but it still costs you money."
"Most of hyper-converged solutions require additional licenses for the virtualization layer (like VMware)."
"The solution is competitively priced but it is expensive. However, this is expected as we are a corporate enterprise and we need this environment."
"VxRail is not cheap, but it's not expensive either."
"The solution can be pricey depending on the project."
"VxRail is very cost-effective and affordable in the long term. It is more recommended when it comes to financial life, but it may depend upon the license. VxRail comes with VMware licensing, which may not be that cost-effective as compared to others. With VMware, it's an auto check competition. VMware is an expensive solution, especially for Nutanix. Nutanix have their own hypervisor called Acronis, which is very cost-effective against the VMware. Nutanix is cheaper for the hardware but not for the software. If you ask the Nutanix partners to deploy Nutanix over Cisco servers or Dell EMC servers, the cost will be higher. Nutanix wants to compete financially. Therefore, they propose their software over the Supermicro server, which is a very cheap Chinese server. In fact, I don't like their terms of service. HyperFlex has the highest price, and it is very expensive. I don't know why. It may be because this is a UCS system, which comes from Cisco and is already expensive. When it comes to HyperFlex, they need the labor to deploy Hyper-V, Citrix, or any other hypervisor."
"The price of VxRail highly depends on your design and your configuration. For example, if I connect Pure Storage directly to ESXi hosts and bypass Fiber Channel switches and I will save on money. However, it reduces my redundancy and makes it not as robust of deployment and easy to manage. An HCI environment, it's more cost-effective than utilizing a traditional SAN. With storage and computing altogether, you don't necessarily have to involve the networking team as much. I don't necessarily need somebody that understands Brocade's or Cisco Fiber Channel Switches, because I have it all right there."
"Pricing is competitive."
"It is expensive as compared to other products in the same category."
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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
20%
Marketing Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
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: May 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.