Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series Reviews

The hyperconverged infrastructure is one of the most valuable aspects of the solution. Within the additional platform and then having the HyperFlex, the new solution of Cisco, it's actually quite advanced already. They are fast with the idea of not using storage and using HCI or hyperconverged infrastructure. Technically, I've been checking everybody's products and they are all very similar. The advantage of Cisco is it can install different platforms of virtualization software. It can install Hyper-V or it can also install VMware, for example - things we are using already and then it can work the IOPS that we provide. That's another thing.

The stability has been great. It's a quality product.

The solution scales extremely well. 

Technical support is fast.

They need to provide lower prices. It is pricey in comparison with other vendors - including Nutanix, or VxRail of EMC. They are quite expensive due to the fabric interconnect, the FI, that they have. The other vendors don't have those fabric interconnects while Cisco requires the fabric interconnect. 

The initial setup can be complex. 

We'd like to see a backup solution included in the product in the future. 

I've been using the solution for two years already.

I have a really high opinion of Cisco since I've been selling Cisco for quite some time and I have deployed it a lot. So far, the stability and the quality are really, really good. I have no issues with the stability and quality of Cisco. 

It's actually one of the HCIs that I consider to have a greater potential for expansion. The scalability of Cisco is better than the others.

Technical support is great They are very fast and responsive. 

In comparison with other solutions, it's quite complex to set up due to the fabric interconnects with it. That said, I'm used to it. However, if you're going to compare it with other setups, and other vendors don't have those things. I understand that Cisco's servers need those for server profiles, and the others don't have those advantages. Still, if we do a direct comparison with other vendors, that would be the disadvantage as it's an additional cost in comparison with the pure network that you would connect with the hyperconverged infrastructure such as Nutanix, PowerFlex, VxRail, or SimpliVity of HP. That's the disadvantage of Cisco.

Only one person is required to handle any maintenance responsibilities.

The solution is quite expensive when compared to other options, although their technology is better. 

You do need to pay a yearly licensing fee. How much depends upon how many are using it. I'm not sure how much in dollars, however, in pesos, it's around, if I'm 3 million to 5 million. Everything is included under on licensing fee. there are no extra costs. 

We use a variety of different versions of the solution. It depends. 

I'd advise new users to study the product. It needs, really, a knowledge of the product. I really highly recommend Cisco due to its stability and scalability, and also the performance of the equipment. It's got great quality. 

I'd rate the solution nine 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.

It is very scalable. It is also very secure. Cisco's security portfolio is integrated with it, which makes it secure.

It is a platform-based device. Its performance is also fairly good in comparison to any other solution.

If we compare it with VMware, the VMware product is basically very open, and it can be easily integrated with any platform. VMware product is also available on the cloud and is not an appliance-based product, whereas Cisco HyperFlex is an appliance-based product. Companies that want to use HCI as a platform or as a service would prefer something without an appliance. A SaaS-based product is better for a customer who is using the cloud and has multiple resources, workflows, and devices on the cloud and wants to go for a hyper-converged solution. This is where improvement is needed. In addition to an appliance-based product, Cisco should provide a SaaS-based product.

Its price should be lower. Cisco needs to work on the pricing model for this product. Its price is a big road blocker when competing against Nutanix and VMware, which are its main competitors.

I have been using this solution for the last two years. 

It is stable.

It is scalable.

I don't set it up, but based on the information that I have from my customers, it is not difficult to set it up. It is easy to set up, but it is not easier than a SaaS-based product. Our customers buy only its latest version.

Its price is high. Cisco needs to work on the pricing model for this product. Nutanix or VMware are cheaper products, and they provide almost the same functionality. Its price is a big road blocker when we are working with an end customer, and Nutanix and VMware are in competition. If they can reduce its price, it is actually a better choice for customers.

The OEMs from Nutanix, VMware, and Cisco have more or less the same features and functionality. The only thing that is missing in this solution is that it doesn't have a SaaS-based version. I would definitely recommend this solution for customers who are looking for an appliance-based product. Cisco HyperFlex is the best appliance-based product. It is better than Nutanix, even though Nutanix is more cost-effective than Cisco.

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

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.

Our primary goal is to have a solution that enables us to have 100% uptime between two sites. That's why we're using HyperFlex. It has a very critical application. We are a government organization with around 15,000 users although that can go up to 25,000 in peak times. I'm an infrastructure integration analyst.

I like the stretch cluster, it's a feature that allows us to warranty a service for the customer that has to be 100% uptime. That aside, the solution also has flexibility, scalability, performance and availability. The main objective for us is DRA, Disaster Recovery Avoidance. We don't want to go into disaster recovery so our aim is for 100% avoidance. The hardware might not be perfect but Cisco is very proactive with their support. 

There are sometimes issues with memory failure. I'd also like to be notified when new documentation comes out, it would make things easier. I think the cost is an issue given that it's so much cheaper to use cloud based solutions these days. I don't know whether HyperFlex can compete with that. There can sometimes be issues if you change your mind on something and want to move things around. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

It's a stable solution. 

This is a scalable product. 

Every time I have a problem I contact the HyperFlex team and they solve it. 

Implementation requires having a roadmap and steps in place. If you have that, it's pretty straightforward because you know exactly where you need to input your specific information from your own environment. Maintenance is not very demanding, we have five people who can deal with that, but it wouldn't take up more than 10% of their time on any one day. Once it's up and running, it's stable. 

We are evaluating VMware Hybrid Solution and HPE SV signatures. HPE has very good hardware, but they don't have a good software defined solution. There are so many screens and sometimes it's a burden for us on the tech side. 

I think any business could use HyperFlex, it's a good solution for big or small business.

I rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We are partners and integrators of HyperFlex and I am a company deputy director of IT.

HyperFlex has benefited us because there are no storage requirements and it requires less 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. 

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.

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 base, and when that goes down it all goes down. It has only happened once. That aside, it's a stellar solution.

The solution is scalable. 

The customer support is very good. 

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 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. 

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 use the solution as a host environment for applications and also for VDI.

The solution is easy to use and to learn. It is well integrated with VMware. 

Additionally, the solution is flexible, we have projects in a few sectors such as the environmental and oil industries. It has been working well overall.

This solution is lacking in replication and backup abilities that I would like to see in a future release similar to HPE SimpliVity.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The solution is stable, it has been able to perform all the tasks we have used it for. It is very reliable.

The solution is scalable and it is easy to expand in storage and other areas, such as if you want to increase the nodes it is very simple. We currently have approximately 3000 users using the solution.

We have never had an issue that would need their support.

I have used HPE SimpliVity previously and it had some other features that this solution does not have that are useful.

The initial setup was straightforward, the solution does a lot of the configuration by itself. The installation should take approximately a few hours if you have all the prerequisites in place.

We did the implementation ourselves and we have two network engineers doing the deployments and maintenance of the solution.

We have plans to keep using the solution in the future. We have one standard traditional environment and also hyper-converged with Cisco. We are planning to add more hardware to increase capacity because we are almost at full capacity now. We are going to increase the infrastructure due to the ramping up of operations.

If you want a reliable solution then I would advise choosing this one.

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