Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series comparison

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] and Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Buyer's Guide

HCI

June 2024

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Categories and Ranking

StarWind Virtual SAN

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the HCI category, the mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.3%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is 3.0%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series is 0.4%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI

Unique Categories:

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

11.2%

No other categories found

Featured Reviews

reviewer1881249

Director Of Information Technology at Cass County Government

Jan 17, 2024

Highly available setup and synchronous replication with the ability for companies to choose hardware

We needed a solution that provided highly available storage via ISCSI, replicating to multiple physical sites synchronously. We needed it to be easy to use, easy to manage, and cost-effective. Ideally, there would be no vendor lock-in or special hardware needing to be purchased. We found StarWind…

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Lennis Garrido

Engineering Manager at OCP TECH

Apr 13, 2023

Works faster and is flexible to use

We use the solution to combine and migrate regular servers to a hyper-converged infrastructure The solution works faster and is easy to use than any regular system. Also, its fabric interconnect provides flexibility for the system to scale up. The solution's most valuable feature is the high…

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Austin Ajaegbu

Enterprise Information systems/Wintel Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 24, 2021

Allows for centralized management with great interconnectivity

My main use is server management and virtualization This solution allowed us to move from using standalone systems to having all our data center management in one place. The most valuable feature is the interconnectivity, which allows me to use the system across my data centers and makes it easy…

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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

"With an uptime of 384 days, StarWind has improved overall server reliability."

"I like StarWind's high availability. The failover is almost immediate, so the end users have no idea the guest VM moved at all. We can failover all guest VMs onto a single hypervisor, place it into maintenance mode, install updates, and reboot a hypervisor all during the daytime and remotely, with confidence the process will be successful."

"The best part is the easy way it operates with a very clear GUI without any unnecessary items."

"Virtual SAN runs on iSCSI, which is free and easy to configure. It's easy to manage from StarWind's GUI console, and it only required a few extra switch ports."

"StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN) offers a significant breadth of features."

"Using our own choice of HW allowed us to price our service to answer our customers' needs."

"It has allowed us to save a lot of time and money by letting us create a vSAN within a Windows VM on the environment it controls."

"I save both physical and virtual space."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

"The software defines networking, storage, and processing."

"On the VDI side, because the storage is local to the HyperFlex, it was very easy and convenient. The performance is exceptional."

"Overall, the solution is extremely easy, flexible and secure."

"The product is stable. No one complains about the stability, which is fabulous."

"The most important benefits that we've seen from this solution is that it reduces the cost of management and it has easy monitoring systems."

"You can administer things easily. E.g., if you need more power, you can add a system."

"The technical support has been very good for this solution."

"Its most valuable feature is its flexibility."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"This solution allowed us to move from using standalone systems to having all our data center management in one place."

"The replication technology can move data faster than EMC MirrorView and requires less bandwidth. The Storage Virtualization technology is the most mature in the market, outside of IBM’s Storwize (which has a lot of compatibility issues, and EMC’s very expensive VPLEX solution); and it works."

"In our implementations, HDS Storage Virtualization has helped in migrating data with the least amount of downtime, compared to other storage technologies."

Cons

"An update caused a syncing issue and it took over a month to resolve it"

"I see no need for major improvements but there could be some improvements in the form of notifications and the simplifying of maintenance mode."

"We would like to see the documentation more fully developed."

"This product could be improved with the inclusion of new health check procedures."

"Proper training sessions should be included with the licensing."

"Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment."

"It should be improved in the way it detects the right filesystem image after a complete shutdown of the system or in the case of disaster recovery."

"It could have a dashboard so that you can check all servers' SAN health and performance."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could improve by having the documents be more readily available and the support could be more flexible."

"We would like to move off the GUI."

"The solution could improve by having more customization."

"The deployment could be made a little bit easier, as we still seem to struggle with it a little bit for a day or so to get it running."

"I would like to see them expand onto the cloud."

"The initial setup of the Cisco HyperFlex HX platform was medium-level difficult. It's a little bit different from traditional servers. It takes getting used to the learning curve."

"Their technical support is very bad. We had an issue where instead of an engineer we got a PDF "doctor" that didn't know anything about our problem which was very frustrating."

"This solution is lacking in replication and backup abilities that I would like to see in a future release similar to HPE SimpliVity."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"An area for improvement would be technical support. In the next release, I would like to see more features added to make this a more complete solution."

"HDS reaches a ceiling depending on model. The G200 cannot transition to G400, the G400 can transition to G600 but cannot transition to G800, which is the top-end model."

"An update to its technology would be good. The G Series has been around for more than five years and HDS seriously needs to ramp up, since the competition has better performance at a lower cost with better features and functionalities. For example, it needs redirect on write Snapshot, preconfigured storage tiering with better IOPS, built-in deduplication technology on hybrid disk, etc."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would suggest that you download the free version, deploy in your lab, and play with it."

"We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."

"This solution has competitive prices and the implementation is very easy."

"Once you buy the license, you are free to build your own hardware solution based on your needs."

"The licensing is straightforward, with free and trial versions available."

"The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."

"This is the best priced solution for an SMB."

"If you are looking at a traditional SAN for a small cluster, give StarWind vSAN because you will save thousands without any compromise."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

"The licensing is perpetual and the only thing that you may need to pay for on a monthly basis is if you're going to use their cloud-based management features."

"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is a bit pricier compared to other brands in the market...There is a need to make additional payments towards the maintenance and support of the solution."

"One of the challenges we have with HyperFlex is that they have a subscription fee for the operating system that runs on it, and if I remember correctly, it costs approximately $15,000 USD per month."

"They are not the cheapest on the market. But there's an old saying I like to quote: "If you know that you are getting what you pay for, it's fine if it's expensive.""

"There is a 30 percent additional premium that all the companies are charging for Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series because of the lack of chips and bottlenecks in the market. The cost of the solution is high right now."

"Comparable solutions with switches, storage, and services are cheaper than HyperFlex. It should be cheaper."

"Initially HyperFlex was a little costly, it was higher, but Cisco wanted to get into our company, so they gave us a fair discount."

"Our licensing is Hybrid. We have all of our applications for billing and outage management through this."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

25%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

10%

Media Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?

It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combin...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

Make the most of your 30-day trial license, and if needed, you should contact the sales department of StarWind to ext...

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What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

The StarWind vSAN solution is versatile and offers broad support for different hypervisors and deployment formats. Du...

See all answers

How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?

Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from ...

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How does VxRail compare with Cisco HyperFlex HX Series?

VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company ...

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What do you like most about Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series?

It's easy to get the tool started.

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Comparisons

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 34% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 16% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 14% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 5% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

VMware vSAN vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 29% of the time

VxRail vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 27% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 9% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series

Compared 43% of the time

VxRail vs Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series

Compared 34% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series

Compared 15% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series

Compared 9% of the time

More Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

May 2024

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

June 2024

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

HCI

June 2024

Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series report

Download Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series product report

Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS

No data available

HDS Unified Compute Platform, Hitachi UCP, Hitachi UCP Select

Learn More

StarWind

Cisco

Hitachi Vantara

Overview

StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

The Cisco HyperFlex HX Data Platform is a purpose-built, high-performance, scale-out file system with a wide array of enterprise-class data management services. The data platform’s innovations redefine distributed storage technology, giving you complete hyper-convergence with enterprise storage features:

Enterprise-class data management
Continuous data optimization
Securely encrypted storage
Dynamic data placement
Clusterwide parallel data distribution
Linear and incremental scaling
API-based data platform architecture
A simplified approach

Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) is the company's product for converged infrastructure (CI), combining resources server, storage, networking, virtualization, and software management.

Sample Customers

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

BluePearl Veterinary Partners, Ready Pac Foods, Bryant University, Bellevue Group, KPIT Technologies, City Harvest

Asia Capital Reinsurance, RMZ, Cigniti Technologies, SPAR, Infosys

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: June 2024.

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