Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Reviews

We are a state-affiliated financial company that performs credit recovery from bad banking and we bought four Cisco HyperFlex HX hosts five years ago which came as all-in-one solutions with processor, memory, and disk. These hosts are all situated on-premises.

Within the next ten years, when all credits have been recovered, our mission will end. Unfortunately, our current edition of HyperFlex will end sooner than that, because it will be end-of-life in 2024.

With our four HyperFlex HX hosts (consisting of processor, memory, and disk), the performance is very fast and we have no problems at all. In all of the five years that we have been using HyperFlex, we haven't needed to increase our budget to buy additional hosts. In my opinion, it's a pity that we will have to change it out for something else in 2024 due to it being end-of-life.

In our case as a credit recovery company working with the state, our infrastructure is fixed and stable as we don't have the same need for growth as other types of companies.

That said, one of the biggest problems with HyperFlex HX is that if you want to adjust your solution in terms of processing power, memory, or disk capacity, you have to buy completely new hosts. From a financial perspective, it can be very expensive to do so, and from a legal perspective, there are all kinds of compliance issues we would have to sort out before buying any new solution or application.

Since we as a company will only be operating for perhaps the next ten years, when our HyperFlex solution comes to its end-of-life in 2024 our next step will likely not be with HyperFlex or any other solution from Cisco. Instead, from a financial point of view, we will likely turn toward a cloud solution because, that way, we won't have to spend so much money on physical infrastructure. We are, after all, only a small company and HyperFlex can be very expensive for other companies of our size, whether in Portugal or elsewhere like the United States. 

One other area for improvement is in regard to HyperFlex's integration with VMware. HyperFlex integrates with a specific version of VMware in such a way that HyperFlex doesn't always resolve security issues with VMware at the same pace as what you see in native implementations of VMware. This has happened in one or two situations in the past. On the other hand, the integration is otherwise adequate, especially in terms of availability and virtualization features (such as being able to split up each of our four hosts within VMware).

I have been using Cisco HyperFlex HX for five years.

We have servicing contracts with all parts of our infrastructure, but with HyperFlex you typically only need one person to manage aspects such as implementation and configuration. It does not need much in the way of maintenance, which makes working with it very easy.

The one problem we have, though, is that when you have 20-50 VMs and you want to do updates for either HyperFlex or VMware, there's usually a bit of extra work to do in this process, not knowing whether your interventions or updates will cause problems. But overall, it's easy, and I would rate HyperFlex's stability a ten out of ten.

Cisco HyperFlex HX may be expensive, but this is offset by the fact that it is a highly scalable solution, even though we're only a small team at the moment. Our admin team is only four people, but there are about 200 employees who make use of its resources throughout our company. I would give it a ten out of ten for scalability in this regard.

On the other hand, the scalability is somewhat reduced when you consider that our physical HyperFlex infrastructure will be end-of-life in 2024. Because of this, we are considering changing to a cloud solution, or perhaps another kind of physical solution, once our term with HyperFlex is complete.

Cisco's technical support is knowledgeable and they understand the criticality of the solution. We have used their support about three times and each time they were quick enough to solve the problems we've had until now. This is a plus because we have to do frequent maintenance when it comes to applying security updates for all of our hardware and software.

In the last five years, the only major incident that I can recall was when we struggled to integrate HyperFlex HX with our fiber optic switch redundancy system.

Positive

Before Cisco HyperFlex HX, we used a physical server provided by HP. The reason we switched to Cisco's solution is because it was one of the first implementations in Portugal and Cisco made us a good offer to switch over.

The offer they gave us was, more or less, the same cost as any other standard infrastructure of its kind, and at the time we decided that it was a very good investment. In the first proposal we chose to purchase three hosts, but at the end of the negotiation we added a fourth host because we knew that if we needed the fourth host later, we would have to pay more than in the initial offer. I don't know what the cost of a new Cisco solution would be nowadays, but back then it was a great investment, especially as compared to the standard infrastructure we had with HP.

The initial setup was difficult mainly because the product was entirely new to us. I believe we were the first, or possibly the second, company in Portugal to implement Cisco HyperFlex HX, so naturally it was tough in the beginning. Fortunately, we had help from Cisco and the deployment, which took place over the span of a few weeks, was a success.

After the setup, we thought everything would be easy, but still it was somewhat difficult for the reason that it was all new to everyone at my organization. After a bit more hands-on experience with it, however, it wasn't too difficult.

The biggest challenge of our deployment was the integration of HyperFlex with our fiber optic switch as well as with our backup switch (for redundancy). When we shut down the primary switch, the HyperFlex infrastructure would sometimes go offline, causing about 30 of our VMs to enter into an unworkable state.

We eventually resolved this situation by re-configuring the redundancy method for our switches, because they were originally acting as if we only had one switch and not two. This solution entailed splitting the switches into two types, one active and one passive, and after we implemented this change, the HyperFlex solution began working properly and we haven't had a similar problem since then.

In total, putting this implementation into production from our previous VMware infrastructure took about two to three weeks, and if I were to give a rating for the ease of setup, I would give it a five out of ten.

The standard physical hardware was, admittedly, very expensive in the beginning, but everything has been good in terms of ROI. We have seen perhaps a 20% return on our initial investment and if we were to go back in time we would do the same again.

When we negotiated with Cisco for the HyperFlex solution, they gave us a good price because they wanted to break into the market in Portugal for the first time. However, in general, I think it's a very expensive solution. It's a huge amount of money to acquire this kind of infrastructure.

I would give the pricing a rating of eight out of ten.

My main recommendation to others is to do the proper calculations in terms of processor, memory, and disk requirements. This will ensure that you have the correct number of hosts from the beginning, because adding a new host at a later stage may be expensive.

Overall, HyperFlex HX is an excellent solution and we like it a lot, not only because it's easy to apply its resources whenever you need to add extra VMs to your infrastructure, but also because it allows you to manage all these resources in an efficient manner.

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

The primary use case is for non-production purposes like development, testing, etc.

The database and deduplication features are what I like the most. On a storage level, the Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is managed well. These features can be used for specific applications, such as the Oracle database, or general purposes.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could be improved by reducing the number of nodes. Currently, the architecture separates data, computing, memory, and storage into different parts. For example, if I need around 200 servers with a requirement of TB of storage, I would need 200 clusters, which can be quite cumbersome.

Other solutions like Dell and Nutanix have a single combined unit that includes computing, memory, and storage, which can reduce the number of nodes required and also reduce licensing and power consumption.

Therefore, I suggest improving the architecture of the Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series by combining computing, memory, and storage into a single unit, making it more efficient and easier to manage. It will also reduce the number of nodes required and licensing costs and help to reduce power consumption.

I would like to see improved internal integration capabilities in the next release. Currently, it is constrained only to VMware only. So, there is no integration part of the RAC or IEL or anything, and it isn't easy to manage it. If I want to hold another partner, then that part will not be possible. So, you have to manage that particular integration.

Another feature could be in terms of memory usage.

I have been using this solution for the last five years. We are using the latest version.

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten.

I would rate scalability a six out of ten. It has some issues with scalability.

The customer service guy supported me well.

Positive

We had a physical environment with Cisco, and virtualization began in that environment. We were using a Dell environment where all the personal data was standalone with the servers.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The deployment was straightforward and took around a month due to the 58 nodes. Once the drive was implemented, the deployment was completed. While they are not direct users of the solution, the infrastructure supports over 1000 users in our IT department. However, maintenance requires a team because hardware issues might need to be addressed. There are four to five people responsible for maintenance.

I have a yearly subscription.

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten. It may require a significant initial investment to set up the infrastructure.

We needed a complete solution with a software-defined data center. We use Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, VMware, and Application Centric Infrastructure(ACI) with micro-segmentation and application latency.

The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is the integration with everything in a much smoother, such as in physical and virtual environments. VMware NSX is a simpler solution but, Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is more robust compared to VMware NSX. 

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

I have been using Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series for approximately one year.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is stable. However, this solution has a lot of dependencies, and if there is a single point of failure the solution will be impacted.

The scalability of HyperFlex HX-Series is good. Once you implement the solution, the integration is smooth.

We have approximately 1,000 users using this solution in my organization.

I have contacted the support for Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and whenever we log a call they were resolved. However, the time it took was long, it could be faster.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is difficult to implement. It took us approximately 60 days to complete the setup.

We documented what we were going to require for the setup and we had a partner do it for us. Internally we do not have the implementation skills required to complete the process for Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series. However, we do have the skill set for managing all the applications.

The maintenance of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is minimal.

The return on investment has been good.

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.

We have a process to pick the five-year standard license which we do not have any additional costs.

My advice to others is if you have VMware, then you should choose Cisco or HP rather than going with Dell.

I choose Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series because of the seamless integration which I was interested in. It is a complete solution for proper software-defined data centers with hardware, software, and everything else.

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

We are partners and integrators of HyperFlex and I am a company Deputy Operative Director of IT.

HyperFlex has benefited us because there are no additional storage requirements and it requires less effort from the server and services in general. 

This solution offers very good data protection and also provides system uptime availability more effectively than the majority of other servers. It can calculate the multiple failures that give better uptime on the nodes. It provides good performance. HyperFlex has great scalability opportunity. 

Every node has a storage controller VM that checks identity and I think that should be eliminated in order to optimize the resource utilized. I'd like to see the ability to integrate with HPE because SimpliVity has some backup-live features which are useful for us. Finally, some improvement to the documentation would be helpful. Expecting some improvements in restore point and failover mechanism. 

I've been using this solution for two years. 

Cisco HyperFlex is stable. We faced some issues because it has single dependency on the caching disk, and when that goes down it all goes down. It has only happened once. That aside, it's a stellar solution.

The solution is robustly scalable

The customer support is very good. 

Positive

The implementation isn't too complex but there are some requirements, including pre-deployment which requires a lot of documentation and security such as security management, secured data, VM and the like. We used a local partner to assist with deployment. We have a team of six that were involved in the implementation and with data center maintenance.

We partnered with a SI team and our in-house team also worked equally.  

Organization can achieve a good value of ROI. It depends on organization to organization and also based on purposes. 

We have a three-year license with Cisco and it's a reasonable price. 

We had previously used converged networks and when we decided to move to a hyper-converged infrastructure we evaluated several solutions including Dell EMC and HPE SimpliVity. We checked several criteria including financial, features, technical issues, and availability. We found that the HyperFlex performance gave us added benefits so we went with that.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

It’s a part of a public sector bid we're preparing. The HyperFlex platform has been discontinued. It's mainly used for enterprise-grade applications like databases, CRP systems, and typical enterprise workloads.

It is a one-stop solution. It's easy to get the tool started.

The product doesn’t exist anymore. It would have been nice if the product provided some cloud integrations. That is why the vendor discontinued the tool.

I have been using the solution for three to four years.

The tool is stable.

The tool is scalable. Five or six customers use the on-premise solution.

The technical support is quite nice. We are Cisco Gold Partners. It’s easy for us to find our way with Cisco.

The tool is easy to set up in general.

We don’t need developers to deploy the product, but we need professional services, including a team of five engineers. We also have an internal team of another six engineers.

It's always a pain to work with Cisco on licensing. I rate the pricing a six out of ten. The product could be cheaper.

I’m an integrator. My organization sells the solution. There’s no point recommending something that has gone out of sale. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Our workload is very heavy. We always acquire support from the tech engineer from Cisco, and they are always there for assistance and provide us the necessary health and guidance. In our environment, we manage to patch our infrastructure regularly, and we don't want to miss any patches. This sometimes it requires a lot of effort, and sometimes the updates are not recommended, and we have to wait for the recommended version. The patch management can impact us in our scope. This helps us centralize everything to make things easier. 

One of the major features of HX is that you have the replication factor, and you have the option to copy your data - and not just once. You also have the option to copy it twice or even get a third copy. It depends on the RF while deploying the checks. This is one of the great benefits. That way, if there is a major outage and you lose one of the nodes, you still have your data, and the data store is up and running, and your service won't be impacted. This is very beneficial for our company as we own a service that should be up and running 24/7. It's related to one of the government sectors, and it's very critical to have it always up and to avoid any downtime.

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

It's stable.

We can easily scale the solution. 

The port could be improved. They have a robo port and can build a cluster with two nodes. This one needs a bit more focus. They need to provide us with more advice or maybe some documentation or some instructions for best practices, so we can leverage it effectively. 

They should give us a little more information about how to use the CLI and offer more commands. Right now, if we can't find what we need, we need to raise a ticket or send an email. Sometimes we don't have that time to wait for the ticket or the case to be assigned. We should just have access to information about the CLI and various commands.

I've been using the HX for almost three years.

It's a stable solution. Sometimes we face an issue regarding the hard disk. We might find that it's unhealthy and must be replaced by Cisco. This can be easily monitored. 

It's a scalable solution. 

You can upgrade or add many hard disks so the business can keep continuity and scalability. It's also based on your business scope. We have ten branches. The ten branches are variants between the HX nodes. Some of them have ten hard disks, and some of them do not. Some of them have more. In any case, we find it very simple to scale where needed. 

We have six system administrators working directly with the solution.

I'm not sure if there is a plan to increase usage just yet.  

We did not previously use a different solution. 

The solution is easy to set up. Once you choose the cluster mode that you want to go through, you can put in all the IPs, and HX will start to build the clusters across the nodes. While it's a little bit complex at the beginning, when you get used to it, it's simple.

We have two people available to maintain the solution once it is deployed. 

We have a partner for support, and they do most of the work. We do a bit ourselves in-house as well. Some of us on the interior team have an HX certification and have strong knowledge of the solution. I'm working to be certified myself right now. 

We have seen an ROI while using this product. 

I'm not aware of the exact costs of the solution. 

We looked at VxRail from Dell and Nutanix. We chose Cisco as we use Cisco a lot in our company.

I would suggest new users read the documentation very well and prepare an action plan based on their design. They have to address all the possibilities and have a rollback plan in case something goes wrong. These points must be addressed. For beginners or some people who don't have this knowledge, they must consult a third party who has this knowledge to ensure they have done it correctly to avoid lengthy troubleshooting or any other issues.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We are using this product for our on-premises terminal operating system.

The initial setup could be faster, due to the prerequisites.

Having a small infrastructure that includes Nexus and fabric interconnects is costly, which is something that should be improved.

I have been working with Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series for between two and three years.

This is a stable product.

This solution is scalable, although only the IT staff uses it. Normal users don't rely on this product. We are deploying it for all of the terminals but it is not clear whether we will expand our usage because we are using different products, as well.

The Cisco technical support is fine. We haven't had any problems.

I would rate the technical support a three or four out of five.

Neutral

I have also used Cisco UCS. This product is okay; it is not much different but provides some automation functionality. For example, automatic deployment.

I have not used any other hyperconverged solutions.

The initial setup is easy. It takes a long time to install and configure the prerequisites but testing it is quick enough. That takes one or two hours.

I would rate this initial setup a three or four out of five.

We deployed this product in-house.

We have a centralized team for technical support and the deployment of products, such as this one. The team is not dedicated to HyperFlex.

There is a recurring cost for the VMware license and the HyperFlex licenses.

As we are still evaluating this product, I am not at the stage where I can recommend it to others. We are evaluating and considering the impact of the recurring cost.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

We deployed HyperFlex for our website services, as well as we put our F5 on it. Basically, we use it for some applications, some better features.

The main value is it brings the total solution, so you don't need to worry about storage and also networking. It brings to you an all-in-one option. The good side is you don't need to worry about it. 

Support is very responsive.

If you need to expand, scalability is an issue. Overall, you can just call Cisco and then they will help you to fix everything.

The storage could be better. If you want to expand the storage, sometimes you need to expand the memory at the same time. This could be cumbersome or pricey.

The initial setup can be complex. 

I've used the solution since 2019.

In terms of stability, during the setup, there are a lot of issues, however, it's not really related to HyperFlex. It might be hardware issues. However, once fixed, you don't need to do any maintenance except upgrades. Once it's fixed, it is very smooth.

The scalability could be better. It doesn't have a big impact.

We have our customers using the solution. We have about one million customers. 

Support has been good. 

Every time we raise a case to Cisco, whenever there's an upgrade, if there are some tricks or some stuff that we do not understand, then they will probably come and help us fix the issue.

Neutral

It's a little bit difficult to set up the solution. It's not exactly straightforward. 

We've maintained it by ourselves. That said, for sure, if we need a support, then we would ask Cisco to help. In terms of maintenance, we have an external backup solution, so the backup is not quite related. For upgrades and updates, it's not quite frequent and it's not very complicated.

I do not handle any aspects of licensing. 

I don't have a solid figure. For the production part, I pass it to our operation team to continue the license purchase. However, for the lab, I maintain it. For the lab, I spent around $70,000 to $100,000 CAD per year for licensing and maintaining it.

I'm a customer. 

If the system is going to be a scalable product or scalable application, I would not recommend it to others. However, if it's more scalable deployment, then HyperFlex is a good solution. If it's a large-scale deployment, it is better to go for another option that can separate the storage, et cetera.

For our environment, I'd rate it an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case of HyperFlex is for storage. We are customers of Cisco. 

The integration to the network is a great thing. It's very easy to integrate with the ACI network which is Cisco's new network topology. It improves the accessibility of the data on HyperFlex, on their storage. It's similar to V-Storage on VMware and it integrates very well with the network.

I'd like to see easier integration with other vendors. For example, it wasn't that easy to integrate with VMware initially but eventually it worked. Ideally, I'd like to see the option of integrating with those devices on cloud, to use storage from our on-prem in a bucket in the cloud. We haven't yet seen any documentation regarding that. We need to find a way to share resources between on-prem and cloud.

We've had this solution implemented for five years. 

Initially, HyperFlex wasn't so stable but from the last update, it's been very stable.

The solution is very scalable. 

The initial setup is not so straightforward, but as soon as it's set up, it's easy to integrate with other things. We generally deploy in-house with some assistance from Cisco. When we initially implemented, the deployment took a while because it was new to us, and new to the market. In particular, the integration to VMware wasn't easy, but since then, it has been very smooth. The entire company uses this solution.

I would recommend this product, I think it's a good device to use. It's not for medium-sized businesses, more for enterprise-level. The integration with VMware is fairly easy and smooth nowadays; it's fairly stable and scalable. It's a good product to try out. 

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

We don't use the solution for security. It's for converged infrastructure. 

We're a reseller and implement it for our clients. 

The solution is very reliable. It can manage activities very well. Its operation management is quite useful. The product makes monitoring easy.

It's secure.

Cisco offers many features.

Cisco offers very good quality.

We'd like the product to offer better integration with other products. 

We've used the solution for just the last year. 

The solution is stable. It's reliable, and the performance is good. We haven't had issues with bugs or glitches. 

We have various customers using the solution. I'm not sure how many end users they have that use the solution. 

We have not had issues with scaling. 

Technical support is very responsive. 

We have previously used a variety of different products. 

The deployment was very easy. It might take a few hours and then it is ready to go.

You only need one person to handle deployment and maintenance. 

We are resellers. 

We're dealing with the latest version of the solution. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.