We performed a comparison between Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] and Dell PowerFlex based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI."The vSAN provides full redundancy for storage while reclaiming some rack space."
"It also provides a high degree of mobility, as the virtual SAN can be moved relatively painlessly between on-site devices and the cloud."
"The customer support provided by StarWind is excellent."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is essentially hardware agnostic, allowing us to build out a specific hardware layer based upon the customer's unique requirements."
"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."
"Besides being 80% cheaper than the other alternatives, the simplicity makes reconfiguration and support much easier."
"Immediately we noticed huge performance gains, even on older hardware and once we implemented a 10GB link between both servers, the sync was near-instant after the initial sync was complete."
"High Availability is the best feature of product."
"It is a complete package. For any kind of on-premises hyper-converged solution, we usually have to separate networks, but Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is a complete solution. It has its own network and storage. The storage part is the most valuable feature."
"Great integration with backup software."
"The product is easy to manage and flexible for upgrading without major changes."
"It's very easy to integrate with the ACI network."
"Cisco provides the ability to configure BIOS, something that no one else can do, on a remote basis. That's really helpful sometimes. The bus-snooping alteration tool for BIOS is fantastic. That's one of the game-changing features that Cisco alone has at this point."
"It increases efficiency, decreases the cost, and manages the network in one single way. That's the most important thing."
"It is very scalable. It is also very secure. Cisco's security portfolio is integrated with it, which makes it secure. It is a platform-based device. Its performance is also fairly good in comparison to any other solution."
"The ease of use and the graphical user interface (GUI) are two of the most valuable features of this solution."
"The solution is scalable."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"The most valuable feature is the overall integration and just seeing the three different layers which make up the machine software. Altogether, it's something that I would say is much better than any other solution that I have experienced before."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The support is highly responsive."
"It has reduced downtime. Before, on our previous solution, we used to have downtime on some of the servers because of the sort of convention. But currently I've not experienced any downtime on any of the servers, and there is no more resource congestion."
"Dell PowerFlex is a one-stop-shop solution. Storage, compute, network, application monitoring, and support cases are all combined into one solution. It's very easy to administer compared to when you have a reference architecture where you need to design and build everything yourself. You would also then have to work with multiple vendors."
"We're doing a lot of VMware for IT so this solution is really valuable from a VMH point of view. We're trying to assist our customers mainly with management, because that's what they want. The most important aspects are ease of management, as well as ease of configuration, allowing them to attach additional nodes and resources for the applications."
"Maybe in the future, the replication will be supported in more cloud providers."
"For the StarWind VSA vSphere solution, I would like to see a simpler and automated virtual machine installation process in terms of network settings."
"It would be great if the Linux version of the management console offered the same features as Windows."
"While we had little to no issues in setting up StarWind and received excellent support from the StarWind technicians, we would have appreciated a clearer guideline for a setup with the free version of StarWind Management Console or, in other words - for the setup with the PowerShell."
"I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves."
"The product can include a more simple way of synchronization after a forced shutdown as the current process has a few more steps to check that hosts have synchronized and this can be automated."
"The Command Center, a free guest VM for management and monitoring, leaves something to be desired. It could have more accurate real-time information and better reporting visuals, which seem to be an afterthought."
"StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc. It would be useful if StarWind could incorporate the actual physical drive management inside of the solution, similar to Storage Spaces Direct."
"They should have more blade options and more configuration flexibility. Also, the price is expensive. It should be cheaper but it is worth the price."
"The initial setup of profiles and templates could be improved. Maybe some end profiles that you can use based on your type of deployment would be good."
"Cisco is a bit more challenging in terms of deployment. The admin must be knowledgeable in order to complete the task. Without that knowledge, it will be difficult to complete."
"The infrastructure team thinks that there are a lot of issues."
"The initial setup can be a bit complex."
"They can't get a POC to work because there are big latencies between the two sites we have. Even though we have a private fiber connection and everything else works well, they can't get the two products to talk to each other. They are not able to build it up. It looks like it's a firmware issue. They said it isn't but now it's looking like it is. I hope we can sort it out."
"The initial setup can be complex."
"I would like to see more analytics. It could use better infographs in the HyperFlex Connect on how traffic is running in the network. If you were reaching any capacity issues on the Fabric Interconnects, it should be able to cool all of the servers and Fabric Interconnects, then possibly integrate it with, e.g., Nexus Series switches. This should all be available in a single pane of glass."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"It would be great to get earlier access to beta builds because we have to develop providers on our own. The APIs and enablers for custom automation could also be improved."
"I think there might be some room for improvement when it comes to pricing, because although I know how to convert customers, at the end of day, it's quite expensive. Sometimes your feature architecture is still coming out much cheaper than hardware costs for your infrastructure."
"The support of containers needs to be improved. At present, it is limited to VMware. There needs to be direct communication with the hardware rather than through a hypervisor."
"Needs some more monitoring tools."
"The storage capability must be improved."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in HCI with 90 reviews while Dell PowerFlex is ranked 8th in HCI with 19 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is rated 8.0, while Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] writes "A fast and easy deployment that allows secure access to our medical applications ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Dell PowerFlex writes "Infrastructure management solution that offers rapid provisioning of computer storage but the APIs and enablers for custom automation could be improved". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and HPE Alletra dHCI.
See our list of best HCI vendors.
We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
