We performed a comparison between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and VMware vSAN based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: VMware vSAN wins out in this comparison. The main difference between the two solutions is that Cisco Hyperflex HX Series users find deployment to be difficult, and also say the solution uses a lot of memory and hardware resources. In addition, they do not mention an ROI.
"The installation of StarWind Virtual SAN was pretty easy, and the configuration was done in no time."
"One of the most valuable features is the way it sets up the virtual SAN, because we don't have to buy a separate appliance for storage. It uses the existing storage on the servers, which is definitely a cost savings for us."
"The management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly."
"It allows you to use ANY consumer or enterprise HDDs and SSDs, and that's a really great thing!"
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the support. They are excellent and you can learn a lot from the support team."
"It's quite easy to install."
"In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems."
"The fact that I can now count on a true failover solution is what is most appealing."
"The flexibility is its most valuable feature; the ability to quickly deploy a number of help machines. It is not constrained by what we want to do."
"It's very easy to use and quite a mature product."
"The technical support has been very good for this solution."
"The workload can handle anything and has an extended capacity."
"The automation is a valuable feature, it's interesting."
"The solution is stable."
"Most of our users are Cisco customers, so it fits in within the suites we use. Primarily for me, as a solution architect, it's the technology and architecture that is the most valuable. I know from my technical colleagues that it's easy to use and for the customer, the up-time is the most valuable asset. It's running, has low failure, and so on which is why we use it."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The most valuable thing about vSAN is that all of its features have been working well for us for the past two years. We haven't had an issue with them."
"Very good VCG notification feature."
"IOPS is comparatively best to run VDI solution."
"I think vSAN's stability is good. It's an underlying solution for both on-prem and in the cloud, especially the VMC on AWS stuff too. VMware has been around for a long time, so it's pretty stable."
"It is easy to use. It is easy to implement for us, and it is also easy to maintain for the customers. It is not necessary to buy some extra devices and talk with other vendors."
"I have found the solution to be scalable."
"It scales well. We have plenty of room to grow."
"The solution has high performance."
"I would like to see options for automated notifications of any changes, including, for example, synchronization issues."
"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."
"This solution should be more self-sufficient, running without creating domains or failover clusters."
"A great feature would be a wizard and to include a new disk in the SAN. At the moment, including a new disk requires several steps - some that must be done at the OS level and others in each node."
"It would be helpful to have a little more insight into what kind of performance the VSAN cluster is utilizing; something that would be more proactive on our side, versus their ProActive Support."
"Initially, when we first started, the sync was horrible."
"It would be nice if we could designate pools, or tiers, for storage of different speeds, and then assign rules to new VMs that would automatically place them into the proper pool."
"It should reclaim white spaces after big files are deleted."
"It needs more detailed documentation."
"The solution's price could be affordable."
"The initial setup can be a bit complex."
"I would rate the installation of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series an eight out of ten. It can be complex."
"Lacks some integration and documentation could be improved."
"Maybe a better version is required to gather all of the information to allow HyperFlex to bring everything online more rapidly."
"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."
"We would like to have the ability to not have to reboot while doing updates. Being able to work through updates with as minimal amount of impact to users."
"I am looking for more of a software-defined storage platform that uses different protocols, such as iSCSI, NFS, and CIS, and maybe also has an object as part of that. They should 100% make it more of a storage-based product where it is not linked just to VMware, and it also has NFS and iSCSI built-in at a scalable level. They should turn it more into a dedicated storage-as-a-service platform instead of just being built into the VMware kernel. Their level one and level two support is not at all good, and it should be improved."
"The pricing could be better when it comes to renewing the licenses."
"Some intelligence can be added to the newest version to provide more flexibility between storage tiers."
"We plan to switch products since the hardware nowadays is a little bit outdated and we need to scale up a bit."
"I would have liked it to have been more scalable. It's scalable but not as much as, for example, the ScaleIO systems were or the Kaminario"
"Pricing is something of a concern."
"I would like to see it be more hardware-agnostic. Other than that, the only other complication is - and it has gotten better with the newer versions - that lately, once you're running an all-flash, if you need to grow or scale down your infrastructure, it's a long process. You need to evacuate all data and make sure you have enough space on the host, then add more hosts or take out hosts. That process is a little bit complex. You cannot scale as needed or shrink as needed."
"The interface is a little complicated, it could be simplified with more graphical gadgets. We have many servers, and the built-in functions, such as rate configuration, are a bit complex."
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 VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is rated 8.0, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. 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 VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is most compared with VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray.
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