Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Reviews

We are using this solution for our VDI. This is used to deliver our EMR and other medical and clinical applications to our residents and providers throughout the medical center.

One of the big benefits of using this solution is security. It allows us to authorize our residents to come in using their own personal devices to access any of our clinical applications and ensure that the PHI is secure and protected.

PHI is a major concern for us. Patient safety, patient security, and our data protection are the number one priorities for a lot of our solutions.

The most valuable feature for us was the time to delivery. We had a short window of about three months to implement because we had in incoming residence group of about a thousand users that they wanted us to have VDI up and running for. We were told about it in March by our CIO, and by June 1st it was up and running.

One of the challenges we have with Cisco, in general, is the multiple management platforms for the UCS, and I would like to see it all under one umbrella. If we could have just a single pane of glass, where everything can be managed through that one app, rather than have multiple apps, it would be great. There are three apps that we currently have to integrate with.

I would like to see them broaden their processor options. We've had some challenges with Intel, and I'd like to see them look at other potential CPU providers.

Stability has been excellent for us. We've been up and running on it for about eighteen months now, and we're in the process of expanding. We have a goal to have about six thousand users up and running by the end of this year.

The scalability of this solution has been excellent. We've been able to add additional HyperFlex units on the fly, and it's been pretty seamless.

So far, technical support has been very good. We've had a couple of challenges with some of the firmware updates we've had to do, and SMARTnet has been excellent at helping us to get through those.

Prior to this, we were using Cisco B200 Blade Servers for our normal VMR infrastructure, and we when we wanted to implement VDI we wanted to go hyper-convergence. 

The simplicity of the initial setup is one of the reasons why we picked this product. It is almost plug-and-play. It allowed us to install our first cluster of ten HyperFlex units, in each of our data centers, and within a couple of days, it was up and running. It was pretty straightforward.

We worked with Cisco and our reseller for evaluating the product, but when it came to the implementation, my team was able to do it on their own.

I do not have a good handle on the ROI, except to give an example from our implementation. Had we been required to buy laptops for all of the incoming residents, at say $2,000 per student, then we're talking $200,000. This is something that we didn't have to spend because we could deliver a VDI solution that lets them use their own personal device.

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.

We looked at everybody including Dell, HP, Cisco, and Nutanix. As we ferried through them we were much more comfortable with the Cisco product line, and that's why we ended up choosing it. Their technical support is very good, they had a great implementation for their HyperFlex, and we already had knowledge and experience working with the Cisco Server Blades. Cisco also had a competitive price point.

My advice to anybody who is researching this solution is to have an understanding of the ROI. It is easy to jump in and see great technology, but you need to know what the long term cost is. One thing that we learned when we went into hyper-converged technology is the licensing costs that come with it. This is a yearly thing that you have to account for.

Overall, this solution was very easy for us to implement. Some of the challenges we're having are related to the management platform and the fact that we have to deal with multiple platforms at the moment. Once this is all consolidated, I would be happy to give a rating of ten.

Today, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for our customers.

The implementation process is okay.

HyperFlex, compared to other competitors like VxRail or Nutanix, has stability issues.

The utilization needs to be better. It needs more options.  

For HX, we need to install a specific virtual machine on each node as a controller. For VxRail, we don't have to do this since it's a built-in feature on VMware. 

For the solution to work, we need to buy specific switches from Cisco. It's not flexible, actually. I wouldn't recommend using it.

The cost is pretty high.

I've used the product for three or four years. 

I'm also familiar with VxRail and Nutanix. They are working with other platforms, and other techniques. Therefore they are more stable. They also have more storage options. 

It is pretty easy to set up. It's not overly complex. The implementation is simple. 

We can implement the cluster within one hour.

The solution is more expensive since switches are one of the things that add cost to the solution. The service is a little bit more costly as well. They cost more than other vendors. 

We are partners and resellers.

I wouldn't recommend HyperFlex.

If a company has options, I would say they should look at VxRail or Nutanix as the first option.

I'd rate the solution six out of ten.

I use HyperFlex for high-performance infrastructure.

The most valuable feature is full integration with Cisco API and UCS, which means you can have complete networking and storage from Cisco.

HyperFlex could be improved by reducing the minimum number of nodes supported from three to two. In the next release, Cisco should include full integration with other virtualization vendors like Nutanix, the same way they do with VMware.

I've been using HyperFlex for a year.

HyperFlex is very stable because it has complete solutions for networking and computing from Cisco.

HyperFlex is very scalable because you can scale up by increasing the number of nodes and scale out by increasing the number of discs in the storage.

Most of Cisco's products come with warrants and SmartNet, so if you have an issue, the customer interface allows you to rate it, and the technical team will respond based on the critical level.

Positive

The setup is very easy, I'd rate it five out of five.

HyperFlex is relatively expensive, but you get good value for money.

I would give HyperFlex a rating of nine out of ten.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is essential to our vSAN solution; it's integrated.

I find the usability very valuable.

You have to get the same servers with the same storage; they need to be identical. However, in vSAN or in VMware we don't have to do that. We can just add storage and manage it in the same server.

In the next release, I would like to see more integration with VMware. I would also like to see more automation with other Cisco products so that we could have one dashboard for all Cisco products.

We've been using Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series this year.

The scalability of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is good.

We currently have 1,000 to, maybe, 10,000 users.

I have found the technical support to be very good.

The initial setup is straightforward. I think it took two to three hours maximum to set up.

We have two engineers and one manager for deployment and maintenance.

We used a system integrator consultant for the implementation.

There is no additional licensing cost other than the cost for each part.

I recommend Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and would rate it at nine on a scale from one to ten.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is simple to use, user-friendly and has been best for our purposes.

The solution could improve by having more customization.

I have used Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series within the past 12 months.

I have found Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series to be reliable and stable.

The scalability of the Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is good.

The support of the solution is good, we have not had a problem.

The implementation and configuration of the Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series were easy.

The full deployment took approximately three months.

We did the implementation with the help of a partner.

The price of the solution could be reduced, it is a little expensive.

My advice to others is you must have the project very well defined, or you will get in trouble.

I rate Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series a ten out of ten.

Our primary use case is for stretched cluster uses when the customer has multiple data centers and he won't achieve the highest level of availability. He can stretch the workload between different data centers giving him more availability when one of these data centers fails and the workload can be migrated and replicated to the other data centers. From an infrastructure level you achieve the highest availability. I am talking about 100% availability from a storage perspective.

We are providing this solution for the customer or converting the customer from a traditional environment to a hyper-converged environment which consolidates all management and support on a single port. This is the main benefit of using the hyper-converged versus the traditional.

The stretching cluster features have the highest delivery of availability from a  storage perspective. You gain all the features related to or coming from virtualization because it is based on a virtualized environment. We already implemented VMware over hyper-convergence. We took all the features coming from the virtualized or VMware environment, such as high availability, DRS and sanity rules and we can segregate the workload between two data centers using rules to maintain the workload even if one of data centers fails.

In terms of what could be improved, Cisco HyperFlex should decrease the amount of memory needed from the Controller VM that controls the physical discs. They control the discs by using the virtual VM over every ESXi host and the VM consumes memory and consumes more hardware resources. They have to improve that by decreasing the amount of required memory and CPUs to control this disc on the server. 

From a technology perspective there is no problem. The main issue is cost-wise. Cisco costs more than its competitors.

As for what I would like to see in the next release, Cisco already has a solution, but in a different profile called the CWOM, Cisco Workload Optimization Manager, and Cisco Intersight. This solution manages and optimizes workloads on the infrastructure and integrates them with the monitoring solution and gives insights and recommendations for the customers. I think it is included on solutions such as the VxRail which has the vROps, vRealize Operations Manager. Cisco did not include this on this solution, but in a separate solution. They have to have a logs server to collect all logs and give insights from all hardware. This is included in the Cisco Intersight but it is not included in the hyper-converged infrastructure solution.

I have been using Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series for six years.

I am running it now on an implementation project for hyper-converged with a HyperFlex stretched cluster. A solution from hyper-converged, but not such a standard implementation - it is stretched between different sites.

No problem with stability. I have a customer and I have not spoken to him since the last upgrade one year ago. He didn't face any problem.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is scalable.

I think you need one or two people maximum to operate it. They must have different technology experience from different perspectives because they deal with the virtual storage and the servers, but its concept is coming from computing and virtualization. Someone should have the knowledge of all the verticals.

Cisco support is great. But when we ask about something, they reply with the standard schema, which makes me confused. Let's say I have a problem with a customer who has a problem in their Dell or Cisco servers and I open a ticket for it. Support replies please check, check, check, check. I know! I checked all this already. I know I have to check this before calling you. This takes time. We have to go directly to our customer and try to solve the problem. Maybe sometimes our customer is solving the problem. I don't like to give them advice that is only go and check one, two, three.

The initial setup was straightforward. The advanced solution was straightforward from an implementation perspective.

There was no problem with implementation. It has improved since past versions which had many errors and many bugs.

If our pre-requisites are ready, deployment and implementation take two days maximum.

My advice to anyone considering Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is that they have to study what the hyper-converged solution is and why they are going into hyper-convergence. Why not use the traditional way? This is the first thing. If they understand the concept, they can very easily go through the implementation because the hyper-converged solution is based on automatic implementation. We have a virtual machine capable of implementing the solution, but in the background there are many automated tasks running. If you don't know what is running in the background you didn't understand anything.

You have to understand and then go through the automated implementation related to hyper-converged. Any new solution allows you to implement everything automatically, you don't need to implement different components and then integrate them with each other. You have to configure single machine. You can implement everything from that single machine.

You have to understand why you are going to hyper-converge before you go to the implementation.

You can dig into it, but you will not understand anything. If you're facing any issue, you can't solve the problem. So when you're implementing for other companies, Cisco or Dell or whatever, they are asking about the pre-requisites. You have to have these pre-requisites before going into the implementation because when you have more information relative to the customer side or the requirements and the pre-requisites, the implementation is straightforward. But if you lack all the pre-requisites you will face many problems and you will not be able to define where they are coming from.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series a nine.

We have hosted a few use cases. Windows developed an application that we hosted in the production environment and all SQL database servers. After that, we used HyperFlex HCI to host DNS and DCP servers as well as various IT-related production servers. 

HyperFlex's formatting features are easy to use.  It's a one-click operation. From an administrative perspective, the whole interface is seamless.

In the next release, Cisco should add more integration and management capabilities as well as some tweaks to the dashboard that make it more user-friendly. They could also add support for multiple hypervisors.

Performance-wise, everything is good. So far, we haven't had any issues. There has been no downtime at all.

For scalability, I would rate HyperFlex nine out of 10.

We've received good support throughout the implementation and afterward.

HyperFlex setup is very easy.

We used help from vendor support during the setup.

HyperFlex is a little pricey. 

Overall, I rate HyperFlex eight out of 10. I would recommend it to others. It's a good product.

There should be the opportunity to create more than one div group. The solution has only a gigabyte boot device, boot drive of only 240 gigabytes, but 480 would be better. 

It is possible to create two or more div groups, for example: having two test drives and five capacity drives for each div group. 

I am not in a position to discuss the solution's stability, as I do not work too closely with Hyperflex.

I am not in a position to discuss technical support, as I do not work too closely with Hyperflex.

The price of the solution is good, especially when it comes to complex network solutions, such as UCS and Connect.

I rate Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series as an eight out of ten.