Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series Reviews

The primary use we have for this product is to act as a server and for storage.

The most valuable feature is that it is easy to manage.

Another valuable feature is the fact that you can individually upgrade the specific parts of the product. Compared to other products like SimpliVity, or Nutanix you have to upgrade the whole node if you want to expand memory or storage. In HyperFlex, you can actually upgrade at will. If you want to upgrade your memory cloud, you upgrade it. So that is a big advantage I've seen from any hyper-convergence product. VxRail or Nutanix and products like that are not as flexible and that is the biggest reason we chose this solution.

I think the product can improve dramatically in the area of deduplication. With deduplication as it is, you have 30 or 40% of the storage that can't be used because the deduplication is not efficient enough. I hope they fix that problem.

The stability of the solution has never been a problem. I would say it is excellent.

I think the scalability of the solution is excellent. Because you can upgrade individual pieces without upgrading a whole node. The problem for other solutions is that if you want a hard drive or you want additional storage or you want memory, you have to make a bigger investment in hardware and time. So, scalability's excellent.

Our experience with Cisco support and products is always very good.

Through conferences and other research, we became aware that there were products which would serve our needs better. Previously, we needed a dedicated storage person to do storage, a dedicated BMR (Bare Metal Restore) person to do BMR. Now, one person can do both because you spend a lot less time with either. So that is the reason we looked at hyper-convergence and this product.

The initial setup was very straightforward compared to categorical peers. If you compare it with other products, it's straightforward. But when you consider hyper-convergence itself, it is not straightforward. I am technical and I have technical team, otherwise it might have been hard. But for our cumulative experience and looking at implementing products like Nutanix — or some other similar products — it's straightforward.

We used Cisco themselves as the vendor. They were very good at implementing the solution.

Return on investment is really immediate and substantial. In a traditional EMC storage environment, we needed to assign a full-time person to maintain storage. With this solution, our ROI is allowing one full-time person to maintain more because it is easier. You can say, basically, that you're gaining a full-time person to do something else for the same cost.

My advice about the product is simply that it's not cheap. If you have budget limitations it is best to look elsewhere.

We did consider other products like Dell EMC VxRail, Nutanix, and another company.

We had EMC VNX storage, BMR and such. Hyper-convergence made more sense. The big thing for us was being able to easily manage the product.

I can safely rate this product as an eight out of ten. This is because it's scalable and you can upgrade it as if you are upgrading a server. In any other solution with hyper-convergence, you can't do that, so you've got to buy a node part to upgrade memory. 

Anyone considering this solution should define their requirements. It's not a solution for everybody. If you're using a lot of storage, hyper-convergence might not be good for you. We don't have a lot of storage, so it is a functional and desirable solution for us. If you have much greater storage needs, it may not be a good solution.

The primary use case is to deploy all our production and documents. We have deployed Hyper-V on top of HyperFlex and the majority of our operation is on Hyper-V. Major workloads are our e-commerce website and applications that are hosted on it. We have deployed database servers and document management systems and a couple of app and web servers.

There is no specific storage person required for this solution. There are some slight cost advantages when you need fewer resources to manage it.

The fact that it's hyperconverged is what is most valuable about this solution. There is no specific feature which I can name because we have only been using it for a very short time. We just started using it.

It needs improvements in terms of I/O. Sometimes I have felt it is slightly slow while we are trying to provision VMs or access VMs. They should concentrate on that issue. At the same, time L2 switches are bundled in HyperFlex. If they make that the L3 switch, that would enhance the performance slightly better.

We deployed a couple of MySQL database servers and some portals which are connected and hosted outside on the internet and the deployment is still going well. So far it is stable and working fine. The deployment is still going on, the migration of further applications is happening.

Scaling, currently, is four nodes. Our plan is to add a couple of nodes next year.

So far, the technical support has been good, although we haven't faced many issues. While installing there were a couple of issues, otherwise everything has been fine and working normally.

This is the first hyperconverged solution we have used. We changed to HyperFlex because new requirements came in. Instead of moving towards a conventional infrastructure, we felt it was the time for us to look at, and to be involved with, the current trend in the market. These are the factors which made us look at this type of option.

The initial setup was very straightforward. After deploying the hardware, the engineer configured the HyperFlex software. On top of that, they gave us dashboard access where I could start deploying Hyper-V on those hosts and start provisioning VMs.

The deployment took a week. One person came from our Cisco partner. He understood our setup and planned what kind of support was required from our side. After providing the required information to him he started deploying the HyperFlex boxes.

It takes one person to maintain it after deployment. In our case he is a Windows administrator.

It was implemented by a Cisco partner from whom we got HyperFlex. Our experience with them has been good so far.

We negotiated with Cisco and we got some price benefit from that.

We looked at ScaleIO from Dell EMC and we also looked at Nutanix. We looked at those two options seriously. Finally, we settled on HyperFlex and we went with it. 

The one thing we clearly saw was that this was that this was what we need. ScaleIO was more a type of software-defined storage, but the hardware which is underlying it is not really tested or already satisfactory for optimized performance. HyperFlex is something that is designed to be hyperconverged and tested thoroughly, and was satisfactory for these operations. This was the decision-making point for us to go with the HyperFlex.

Go ahead and do it. It's a good product. Somebody with a similar environment and a similar experience should go ahead. But check thoroughly that fits your organization.

Our administration strategy is that one guy will be managing the complete dashboard. We are planning to see if there is automation where I can provide this through a DevOps tool. That's something I am looking at.

There is one main entity using it in our company. Our plan is to deploy this software to all other existing infrastructure as well. Within six months we should be fully implemented and deployed.

I rate the solution at eight out of ten because of the brand reliability in the market. They are the most trusted brand in the IT industry.

We deploy these for our customers, we're in the reseller space.

Use cases are typically around data center revolutions, consolidations in virtualization density, and being able to scale both up and out.

On the architectural side of it, there's the single pane of glass. In the hyper-converged, there is that validated design approach of having all of the components which should work together.

The solution is stable.

Technical support is better than most.

The pricing can always be better on everything. 

The interdependencies of each of these functions and the configuration side are something that needs to be carefully architected so that if something isn't working in my memory stick, it doesn't have a cascading waterfall effect through the rest of my operation. The interdependency could be improved so that everything will not be so interrelated.

The initial setup can be a bit complex. 

We've been a partner with Cisco for over 20 years, and, as it pertains to HyperFlex, we probably deployed the first HyperFlex in the Northeast region - and that was probably four years ago. We did it when it first came out.

In terms of stability, it's way more stable than when it first came out. The earlier evolutions of this were like building the plane as we were flying it.

Cisco tech support, as bad as it can be, is better than most.

There's additional complexity around the solution.

In a hyper-converged scenario, the financial outcome is that you need to further align your refresh cycles of your storage, of your compute stack, and of your networking. From the client-side, that can also lead to a little bit of solution lock-in, a slight vendor lock-in.

Before, if I wanted to see maybe if my storage is up, and I'm looking at the time to adopt all-flash SSD or putting NVME in my environment, and updating my either blade centers, or pizza box servers, et cetera, it would all fit together. Even though that there's modularity built into the hyper-converged, there's still a little bit of a tax where you have to overbuy on other resources to provision that you want.

You don't need a huge team to deploy the solution. A deployment team is lightweight. It's two different individuals or maybe three with project management included.

We're a gold partner, one of their leading partners in our area.

Historically, I'm not very much pro-hyper-converge as there's a lot to the market still. What happens is, if it's poorly architected, that if something's screwed up, everything is screwed up. That's the part of the issue with the hyper-converged. You've got it very tightly knit. However, there are still advantages to the separation of failure domains, whether that be your compute, your storage, your memory.

I would take a Cisco Flex approach over a Cisco hyper-converged approach, all day, every day. It's the most widely adopted platform in the world for converged architecture and has a knowledge base that is way larger and has way more experience running. Also, just because you have to update one piece of it doesn't mean you have to update all pieces of it. My honest opinion is to still see what else is in the market to validate your approach to go with an all Cisco solution in the hyper-converged space. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

The management feature is the solution's most valuable aspect.

Overall, the solution is pretty good.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. 

We've found the stability to be very good.

The pricing of the solution could be improved. It's a bit too high. We find that most customers can not make it work with their budgets.

When it comes to the virtualization layer, we have issues. We can scale up, and yet we can't add storage.

We need to be able to scale out and not just up. When you want to scale up or scale out, you are quite limited.

It would be ideal to have the flexibility to scale out whereby you are able to do a single type of commodity upgrade. For example, if we could upgrade the memory only, or upgrade the process only or storage only,.

There is a general over-reliance on VMware, the form of the software layer which now includes things like Nutanix. Some customers - especially around Oracle - have a preference to not work around VMware. That's why we need more flexibility to be able to do any event on the top layer.

It would be ideal if we had local support here in Kenya.

I can't recall for how long I've been dealing with the product. It's been a while. 

The stability is quite good on the solution. It's not buggy or glitchy. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is reliable. 

We primarily deal with small and medium-sized companies.

While the solution can scale up, it can't scale out, and this is a problem for us.

Technical support is okay on the computer side. However, when it comes to the virtualization layer, that's where the problem is. I've been having issues. We can only scale up. We cannot scale out. I can't add an additional storage. We're trying to work this through with configurations and we're running into a lot of trouble.

Also, we'd like to have local support in our country. Right now, we are lacking that.

I also work with other vendors, such as Dell.

For small companies and environments full of Cisco I recommend that a company uses Cisco, as the transition is easy as the UCS manager connects well to Hyperflex.  

However, for an organization that doesn't have a clear growth plan, and grows randomly, PowerFlex is better, as it affords more flexibility and it's easier to upgrade.

The initial setup is really easy if you are using Hyperflex money.

I wouldn't describe the initial setup as difficult or complex.

The pricing is high for the solution. The costs need to be adjusted. 

The licensing is okay, however, the harder infrastructure needs to be adjusted.

We are a reseller.

My advice to other organizations considering the solution is to make sure you plan before deployment and put into place a proper plan. The initial pre-project timeline puts into place a proper plan and based on your focus. It will make sure that whatever you put into place meets your requirements both right away and into the future. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for the Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is the hosting of VMs.

We were just using standard ESX clusters on UCS flights. Instead, they chose HyperFlex to see if it could replace that solution. 

This is just your standard ESX on blade server type of deployment.

Cisco HyperFlex HX has improved the way our organization functions on the storage side by having one big storage space for hosting VMs. We do not have to provision other ones. That's a positive aspect of it.

I haven't been too impressed with the Cisco HyperFlex HX, honestly. It's a hard concept.

I don't work day-to-day enough with Cisco HyperFlex to be able to say what would necessarily make it better. Initial integration was tough. 

Our group was just looking for another approach to hosting their various VMs. 

So far, it's been fairly stable.

It seems like the Cisco HyperFlex is very scalable. Our deployment is small. We haven't tested out that aspect of it.

Technical support is good. I don't do day-to-day operations of it, another group does.

The initial setup of the Cisco HyperFlex HX was complex, i.e. trying to integrate it into an existing environment. It was more tailored for a brand new deployment, where you're just building it from the ground up. 

We already had an existing system and we're trying to integrate it into it.

On a scale from one to ten, I rate this product a seven. It seems like it would be easy to utilize for a new deployment.

I would prefer that Cisco not try to sell it as something that can integrate into an existing environment. They are beating down on that, but be aware. 

The limitations, whether you're doing a new deployment or trying to integrate it into an existing system, might be tough.

We use it on our customer-facing network management and customer portals. It is run between two resilient data centers and runs very well.

We used to have a single customer-facing data center, which was vulnerable to failure. This product has allowed us to create high availability between two private data centers.

• High availability
• Replication

The stability has been really good. We haven't had any issues since it's been in production for the last six to nine months.

Scalability was one of the big selling points. Because we are using HyperFlex, we can add additional compute or storage resources without breaking the model that we have built.

I don't think we have had any issues, but the technical support that we have had has been good

We were using HPE SimpliVity. We knew we needed a high availability, resilient data center architecture. SimpliVity simply did not meet these requirements. This forced us to look around. Cisco had improved massively around HyperFlex. As a Cisco partner, it was a natural choice for us. 

It was fairly straightforward to bring online. We had a bit of complexity to think about how to migrate our legacy infrastructure into Cisco HyperFlex, but this was more of a risk management process for us as a business, as opposed to anything relating to the technology.

We are a Cisco partner. We used ourselves and our professional services for our deployment. I have to say, "They worked great."

We would not have invested if we didn't feel the return was there for our customers.

We were mostly looking between Cisco and HPE.

We are a Cisco partner, so Cisco is a more natural choice for us. Feature-wise, Cisco was a superior product, so it was a simple choice.

Work with Cisco and the Cisco partner. It is all about understanding your requirements. The product works well and supports your business. We recommend it.

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.

We have a remote site. We are developing this site so that we can locally access the VMware environment with the least network bandwidth. We have deployed the ESXi host virtual edition.

It is a complete package. For any kind of on-premises hyper-converged solution, we usually have to separate networks, but Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is a complete solution. It has its own network and storage. The storage part is the most valuable feature.

Its price could be better.

I have been using Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series for the last one and a half years.

It is stable. There are no issues.

We have not contacted them regarding Cisco HyperFlex because the setup was straightforward. We have a team in the USA, and they were mostly dealing with any kind of sales-related queries, but for technical support, we have not encountered any problem to engage them.

The initial setup was straightforward. The deployment took around two hours.

Its price is rather fair when compared with other solutions like VxRail, vSAN, and HPE SimpliVity. We got a fair amount of discount from Cisco for Cisco HyperFlex.

It is cost-effective. We have renewed storage till next year, and we have already paid the vendor. When we talk about HyperFlex or any HCI solution, storage is the part where we can reduce a lot of costs. At the current moment, we are already using NetApp storage, which did not allow us to go for a full Cisco HyperFlex setup. We are planning to go to a larger scale next year. Then we will be able to see how cost-effective it really is for us.

I would encourage people to go with this solution. I would rate Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series a seven out of ten because we have not tested all the features so far.