We performed a comparison between Cisco Hyperflex HX series and VxRail based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: In our comparison, VxRail is the preferred solution. VxRail is easy to use and performs well without causing undue stress to operating systems. The competitive price and overall cost-effectiveness make it an easy choice for many organizations.
"It has reduced our overall maintenance and overhead by having to only maintain physical boxes for one cluster instead of having to manage physical boxes for two clusters."
"The primary purpose of this software is to create a virtual SAN between local storage on Hyper-V hosts. I find this feature most valuable since it accomplishes this quite well."
"The fact that the solution is vendor-agnostic allows it to be used with any virtualization vendor while remaining a powerful abstraction over storage."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the support. They are excellent and you can learn a lot from the support team."
"The management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly."
"When we need additional storage but want to keep the size of the SANs manageable, the StarWind Virtual SAN has allowed me to do everything needed."
"It allows you to use ANY consumer or enterprise HDDs and SSDs, and that's a really great thing!"
"Their support goes above and beyond with the integration of their software."
"It is very scalable. It is also easy to scan."
"Performance-wise, everything is good. So far, we haven't had any issues. There has been no downtime at all."
"The most valuable feature was the backup - it was easy to back up. It was also very easy to administrate and manage the system; much easier and faster. Finally, it was easy to extend the disk capacities."
"It is a hyper-converged solution which integrates with the network instead of the product."
"You can administer things easily. E.g., if you need more power, you can add a system."
"The solution can scale up and out."
"It is scalable and easy to use."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is simple to use, user-friendly and has been best for our purposes."
"With VxRail, we can manage the life cycle of a virtual machine."
"You don't need to think about compatibility of components."
"It gives us tons of flexibility. We can create new machines, then destroy them if they don't work out. We test a lot of use cases that may or may not play out. We can build all types of scenarios into virtual machines that we may or may not use. If we don't use them, we just turn them off, no using up resources."
"Its ease of administration is extremely valuable. It allows me to make better use of my time for other tasks instead of maintaining systems through multiple administration consoles."
"The solution is really stable."
"Being able to perform upgrades and check the system through the VxRail Manager has been very helpful."
"The initial setup is simple."
"You don't have to worry too much about the hardware and you don't have to work on integrating a storage device. We instead have this as an all-in-one solution and everything is available as a box."
"The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex."
"I would like them to invest time in reducing the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure."
"While we had no problems setting the system up, and service technicians from StarWind could assist us very well, they could provide some form of in-depth documentation."
"Initially, when we first started, the sync was horrible."
"This product could be improved with the inclusion of new health check procedures."
"Sometimes documentation on their site can be out of date."
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"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."
"It is quite new solution, so it is not very stable."
"I would like for them to develop integration with other technologies, like SD Access. It's still lacking an enhancement management player."
"One aspect that really needs to be looked at, is to fix the bugs issue."
"Some of our customers do not want to adopt the Cisco ACI solution. They want to manage Cisco HyperFlex by integrating it with their own management solution."
"Cisco's technical support originally was outstanding, but it has declined over the last 12 months. I've heard they're trying to do better, but I haven't been overly impressed with their support recently for HyperFlex."
"When it comes to customer needs, the licensing price could be better."
"The primary improvements should be made in the cluster storage controller VMs so that they don't break the upgrade process."
"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."
"We would like to see integrating with Nutanix. Currently, we are working on integrating the two to see if there is any value in doing so."
"I would like it to tier to the cloud effectively, making sure that cold data can be pushed out to some sort of Bitbucket."
"When it comes to maintenance, it takes 16 hours to upgrade a 12 node VxRail plus. This could be improved in the system."
"I would like to see VxRail add duplication features to its hybrid solution."
"Its price needs to be improved. It is very expensive. NSX should be licensed together. It will make the network virtualization layer more usable. It would be better if they come together in a bundle, not separately."
"We do not use the storage part of VxRail, we use Pure Storage to map out the VxRail because the disk performance from Pure Storage was far better than the performance of the disk on the inside of VxRail."
"The way that the VxRail is licensed could be improved."
"The upgrade packages require a lot of bandwidth. This could be reduced for an improved experience."
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 VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 120 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is rated 8.0, while VxRail is rated 8.6. 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 VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is most compared with VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and HPE Hyper Converged.
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