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.
"It's very easy to resize disks and they show up in VMware almost instantly."
"The best part is the easy way it operates with a very clear GUI without any unnecessary items."
"It has given the company an almost zero possibility of downtime."
"In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems."
"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 ProActive support gives me peace of mind because I am a one man shop, but with the technical support behind me, I feel like more than just one person. We spent two to three hours, depending on what we have to do, always on the phone, and they do not push to end the call."
"Speed and high availability have been the most valuable for us."
"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."
"The most valuable feature for our company is that it works internally. We have a lot of internal projects for optimization."
"Great integration with backup software."
"Offers very good data protection and provides system uptime availability effectively."
"The UCS, which is by far the best management tool there is on the market, regardless of vendor. It's the only tool I see that gives you the opportunity to size and scale all the assets and capacity you have in your data center, from a unified view."
"The solution is stable."
"It increases efficiency, decreases the cost, and manages the network in one single way. That's the most important thing."
"Easily facilitates remote work opportunities with storage and compute resources."
"It consumes a smaller footprint when I compare it with other competitors."
"It is simple to manage, very easy to implement and troubleshoot in case of any failures."
"It is easy to find information out there, not only from searching the web, but even the times I have engaged VMware support."
"The product’s most valuable features are performance and expandability."
"All the features are working great."
"The most valuable feature is that it is software-defined storage. Also, being able to do maintenance on the fly is a real benefit: migrating off, updating, and then moving the guest back on to the nodes."
"Allows us to implement more quickly, and to ease the maintenance."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"VMware vSAN is easy to implement in a VMware environment and it is not expensive."
"The gathering of monthly consumption and performance reports for future dissemination to concerned parties is very important. Unfortunately, StarWinds vSAN doesn't offer this functionality."
"Android app for monitoring and receiving push notifications as alarms or monitoring I/O from any mobile device could be a good feature and nice to have as we are not always on our desk."
"You have to do a "full" sync on write-back cache disks instead of a quick sync if there is an issue."
"The logs can also become very noisy when there is an issue, which is very infrequent."
"Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so."
"I see no need for major improvements but there could be some improvements in the form of notifications and the simplifying of maintenance mode."
"I wish there was online support because email return takes a long time and a faster solution should be found."
"Sometimes documentation on their site can be out of date."
"There is a VMware plugin for HyperFlex, which sometimes it hangs up in our environment, and doesn't function well."
"The scalability could use improvement."
"Unlike other options, you need to pay a subscription to Cisco yearly instead of paying for the hardware outright, which makes it more expensive in the long run."
"Cisco has to continue improve the management tools to provide a better command line interface with more functions. That would be better for administration."
"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 it to be easier to manage the server, create VMs, and manage the VMs on the client."
"The infrastructure team thinks that there are a lot of issues."
"Maybe a better version is required to gather all of the information to allow HyperFlex to bring everything online more rapidly."
"While I like the replication and compression features, there is a problem with them running too slowly."
"I would like more integration with the hardware when it comes to disc types and supporting the newer types of storage."
"I would like to see more comprehensive lifecycle management. The current path and process for upgrading or updating the firmware, as well as the storage controller software to interact with that firmware, is fairly manual and not very well documented. A little more time and effort spent on the documentation of the lifecycle management for vSan would be really great."
"The pricing could be better when it comes to renewing the licenses."
"Better options would be clustered nodes, or even cloud configuration. There is room for improvement in cloud configuration, we typically do web browsing for management."
"The platform's cost affects the business. This particular area needs improvement."
"It is a memory intensive app."
"The only thing that can be improved is the cost."
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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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.
