Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series Reviews

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.

Typically we use this Cisco HyperFlex cluster as our local server virtualization platform. We have all our services running in this cluster. In other words, we could say this is our local data center for all our business systems as well the core components of our IT infrastructure.

At this moment, we haven't upgraded to the latest version although Cisco has been encouraging us to upgrade, since they recently published a new version. We will schedule this change maybe next month.

I think its most valuable feature is its flexibility.

There are a lot of features that could be improved. We sorted out one critical issue left by the initial deployment team, our external partners. They made a mistake, a wrong configuration regarding the network settings. That left us a very, very painful troubleshooting process. Eventually, after four years, we sorted it out. After fixing that the system was stable. We even thought that maybe this is the root cause of those hardware failures.

In the next release, I would like to see them able to connect to the public cloud.

The first time that I started using the Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series platform was in 2016 and I'm still using it today.

Before I got the second group of this system, I would have said it was quite stable. However, with the second cluster that I received, I experienced lots of hardware issues, and almost all with the RAM stick. The memory stick had been replaced by Cisco due to some hardware failure. It was really painful, and we couldn't sort out the reason. Also we experienced some hard drive failures for which Cisco provided a replacement. So I would say it's not quite stable.

It has very high rate of hardware failure.

We have nine people using it in my department, IT. We are the key users. They rely on us for running the system. So far, it is the only system I have to run. And in recent years, it is running more stably.

Their customer service is very efficient. Usually if we experience some technical issue, we open a case and Cisco Global Support will be on within one hour. So that's very efficient.

We have our external partners to help us with the installation and configuration, and generally speaking, it's quite straightforward.

At the beginning of our project, I remember that it took about one week to set up.

There were three people involved in the system configuration and set up. One guy was in my team and another two from the external partners. They were responsible for the hands on configuration and my guy was responsible for the acceptance test and the communication between the university and the supplier.

In terms of their license, they don't actually call it a license, it's called technical support. We have to renew that after certain periods. And it's not cheap.

I would recommend Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series only in a certain situation.

Right now, considering many other external constraints, it is very hard to recommend it to people, especially if they are based in mainland China.

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

We use this solution as Active-Active and to host some of our applications. Compared to Nutanix, it is not as good. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is not a matured HCI solution. If something goes wrong with Nutanix, we use Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, so we at least have half of our systems running. It is helpful as a backup solution.

A lot needs to be improved. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series does not support the stretch cluster, and the interface is not good. Features are missing, and it does not support VMware Seven.

We have been using this solution for about three years, and I believe we are using version 4.5. It is deployed on-premises.

It is not a stable solution.

We have about 10,000 users. Maintenance is okay, but the hardware failure is too much, and sometimes memory is lost.

The support is okay but unprofessional.

The initial setup was complicated, and we had to struggle a lot. The switches, such as WAN switches, LAN switches, Nexus, and all those areas, are perfect. But when it comes to HCI, it is not a good solution. So we completed deployment with Cisco support.

I rate this solution a four out of ten.

HyperFlex is a hyper-converged infrastructure system that is a cluster of servers that provide compute and storage at the same time. Most other networking systems provide either computation separately from storage and networking. However, HyperFlex is a combined system that provides compute, networking, and storage in the same solution. That is, it gives you a single point of management for everything instead of separately for different components.

We've adopted Hyperflex as the new Virtualization solution for our network. all new workloads will be created on Hyperflex, and all existing workloads will be migrated to Hyperflex over the next few years.

The product makes management much easier since there's a single pane of glass to use to monitor, manage and upgrade the system. 

You can achieve similar performance for your system by buying separate components, however, HyperFlex allows you to achieve the same performance using one system. It's basically one integrated system. That's the most powerful aspect of it. 

The solution is quite stable.

The scalability of the product is quite good overall - as long as you plan correctly from the outset.

A disadvantage is the higher costs involved in using this product. If it were more affordable, it would be easier to recommend and HCI adoption rate would increase. 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.

The initial setup could be easier. Right now, it's a bit difficult. 

We've used the solution over the last 12 months.

It's been stable since we set it up. It's been very stable and providing good service. 

We are considering expansion at the moment. The solution is easily scalable if it is planned correctly from the beginning. 

Our previous generation is going to end support in two years. We're planning to migrate our whole virtualization infrastructure from the old generation solution to the Cisco solution. Basically, within one or two years, we'll be moving all our instrumentation and all our workloads will be moving to this solution.

A minimum of three servers is needed. If these servers have good specifications from the beginning, it's as easy as adding another node. You can expand the solution with more and more nodes. That said, if the node isn't configured properly in the amount of CPU, RAM, and storage, then when you try to expand, you must either expand with more than one node to add more and more scalability, or you must upgrade the existing nodes.

HyperFlex is hosting our financial systems. In terms of users, for management, it's just the ITT and we're managing the solution. However, if you consider people who are using the servers as infrastructure, then you can say more than 50 people technically are on the solution. Basically, the whole company uses the PBX system as an exchange for phone calls, for example.

We haven't reached out to Cisco in terms of needing technical support. We've reached out for other reasons, however,  and they were very quick to respond. For this solution, in particular, we've been working with Cisco's partners  - and since our partner provides good support, then we haven't needed to reach out to Cisco directly.

We used to have a non-converged solution before Hyperflex that had separate components, however, when we chose to go with a hyper-converged solution for our network, we chose HyperFlex.

The initial setup is not exactly straightforward or simple. It's a bit difficult, a bit complex. 

Luckily, we had the support of the Cisco partner to install and integrate the solution. However, it would have been much easier if we could do it in a shorter time. 

It is a complicated process for integration and it takes time. It can take several hours to install and configure the solution. If the setup process was faster, it could have been done in a shorter time. Basically, it took about two or three days to finish the whole setup. From unpacking to going online, it took us a few days. While the installation is a part of the process, the most time-consuming point was the initial setup.

We had a Cisco partner that assisted us in the initial implementation. 

The solution comes at a higher cost than if you had separate integrations grouped together.

There are licenses included with the hardware, and then there are annual subscriptions that you need to pay. You need to pay an annual subscription service to Cisco for operating the solution. There are other solutions that are purely hardware and whatever licenses you pay, you pay one time along with the purchase, or if you need to expand. This solution has an annual subscription payment.

We are customers and end-users.

The HyperFlex is on-premise the hardware infrastructure. You can set it up with VMware ESXi or with Microsoft Hyper-V. We chose to go with VMware ESXi. It was a requirement of the other systems that we depended on. We could have gone with Hyper-V, however, VMware turned out to be the right solution. The system is hardware and it's compatible with both software solutions or hypervisor solutions. We chose VMware ESXi and turned out to be a better solution than Hyper-V.

I would recommend the product to other users, as long as it's affordable for the company. The cost is high. It is about 150% more costly than a comparable older generation solution. However, if you can afford it, then by all means go for it. 

I'd also advise new users to choose a higher-end specification for the servers. This is also important. That would make extending it easier. For example, the fiber interconnected component the solution sells is like a switch. It's sold per port. If you buy exactly what you need now, you have to replace the hardware when you want to expand. Therefore, plan for the needs of the future, not the present.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

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. 

The primary use case is for people who are tired of messing around with old school solutions, like SANs and NASs, and want to improve the storage side of things in the data center.

The storage system is its most valuable feature. It has eliminated our entire need for having to worry about storage. We were storing a lot of syslog data and using a lot of templates in our data center. With the storage system, we are now saving an enormous amount of space.

I would like to see more analytics. The storage data is just IP packets. It could use better infographs in the HyperFlex Connect on how traffic is running in the network. If you were reaching any capacity issues on the Fabric Interconnects, it should be able to cool all of the servers and Fabric Interconnects, then possibly integrate it with, e.g., Nexus Series switches. This should all be available in a single pane of glass.

I would also like a fast on-premise service. While there is Intersight, which does a lot, there is not the same clarity of information from Intersight, as with an on-premise service.

The stability is great. I can pull the power cord from one of my servers, and everything will keep on running. Then, the VMs will be automatically transferred to another server and the user won't notice anything. If we had two sites, we can down an entire data center without issue.

The scalability is good, though it used to be lacking a bit. Now, the HyperFlex system probably has the scalability to be able to cover every single customer in Norway and their needs. With how much it can scale, Norway doesn't have that customers with this many servers, at least in the same use cases or workloads using HyperFlex.

The technical support is good. We use 24/7 contracts and they have never been late. I would rate the tech support as a nine out of ten.

I did have one time where I had an engineer who was just running scripts. He was reading off a tablet (or something). However, that was a next-business day contract, and we were not working with a high-level engineer. We needed a high-level engineer, so we just escalated the case to receive a better engineer, then everything was resolved.

It would be nice to have more qualified support agents get assigned to HyperFlex cases, at least the initial case, not just someone reading off a script.

We had an old Cisco System, which was an internal company system. We also had an old UCS server, which was spec'd out, along with a bunch of other servers. When we were starting to lack in CPU, memory, and storage, we knew that we needed faster storage and networking. In addition, we needed more CPU and RAM with the possibility to scale.

Now, if we need a new node, we can just order a new node. Then, when we get the node, it takes an hour to put it up and we have a new node in the system.

We needed that scalability. We also needed to upgrade the data center. However, the reason that we chose HyperFlex instead of trying to build a system and making it work with open source software, was with HyperFlex, we receive Cisco tech support and services.

We chose HyperFlex because of everything that binds up into it: the scalability, reliability, and services. 

The first time I did set it up, I deployed it with an existing UCS Cluster on the same Fabric Interconnect. This was not yet validated by Cisco. We had no information from Cisco how to do this. While it was coming, but we had a customer who didn't have spare FIs, so we had some problems. However, this was due to a configuration error from the team who had put up the SAN which was connected on the same FIs. So, the HyperFlex was okay. It was just configuration errors on the other one.

In the other deployments that I've done. It has been mostly just racking and stacking the servers, putting in some IP addresses on the Fabric Interconnects, going down to the office, sitting remotely on the good couch, and typing in everything, then pressing "Deploy". Afterwards, everything just runs smoothly.

I deployed it myself. I am the HyperFlex engineer.

The main purpose of our data center is to run our monitoring system, which uses huge databases. When we transferred the monitoring system, all of our logging servers, and everything to the HyperFlex system, we saved an enormous amount of data. We obtained a huge performance gain out of the monitoring system because it could cache the data more quickly. Everything went faster and obtained more space. So, we have definitely seen a large return of investment.

I would like a clearer licensing model. It should explain a bit more what you receive if you buy the more expensive license rather than the standard one. This would probably help in a lot of cases.

We were looking into a lot of open source and white box solutions before we chose HyperFlex. This was mainly due to cost because Cisco isn't the cheapest solution. However, we completely trust the system because we have all this knowledge about HyperFlex along with knowledge about all the other competitors. The way that HyperFlex does storage down to the bits and bytes is something that we feel that we can trust a lot more than its competitors.

The Virtual Interface Cards (VICs) which the servers use are only available through Cisco. There are no competitors in this area.

Look for what your business needs are, what your data center is using, and keep in mind that all of the big vendors are doing hyperconverged. However, Cisco is the only one who is doing it with the network integrated. With all of the other vendors, you can have whatever type of network you want, but with Cisco, they include the network in the whole hyperconverged scene instead of pawning it off to another vendor. They are sort of forcing you to chose Cisco on the network. Yet, when you choose Cisco on the network, you get validated designs along with tried, tested solutions. The whole data center will come together in one single package.

Cisco was a little late to the hyperconverged scene.

The Fabric Interconnects integrates with UCS. The UCS servers are some of the best on the market. The UCS servers can manage all of the servers from the Fabric Interconnects, which is just phenomenal.

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.

We are a solution provider and Cisco HyperFlex is one of the products that we propose to our customers. This product is used for hyper-convergence in IT transformation and can be used for very heavy workloads such as VDIs or HAP HANA.

The most valuable feature is that you can manage the whole cluster from the fabric interconnect.

The physical switches are more reliable than the virtual machines.

using a virtual machine to manage the cluster, needs lots of pre-configuration & validation steps, as well may lead to cluster fail in case of the fail / corruption of the VM (unless you manage to have a valid backup to restore, with a valid cluster restoration plan), 

despite the managing of the Cisco Hyperflex, it comes almost preloaded & stand ready for deploying, as well in redundant architecture, which reflect a solid base for managing & reliability deployment. 

They need to make many improvements to this solution but the most important area is the compression. Most customers are concerned with the compression for a specific workload, and then maintaining it. The performance and compression vary depending on the type of workload; for example with SAS HANA, Cisco forces compression and that affects performance very badly. At the least, the customer should have the option to choose what types of workload should be affected by the data reduction functionality.

The second point is that they need to work on the erasure code. Cisco doesn't support erasure code, even over flash. If they fix this then they will only waste 25%. With replication and mirroring, it uses 100% of the allocated capacity. This means that Cisco needs to work on the architecture. I have conducted many PoCs and it is a problem that they need to work on.

Cisco offers a single cache drive cluster, whereas VxRail offers up to four cache disks per drive. When the cache disk fails in Cisco, the whole node fails, and the workload goes down. But when it comes to VxRail, if a cache disk files then only the node fails and the workload remains up and running. This is an area that Cisco needs to work on. Essentially, they have to raise the number of cache disks that can be included in a single node.

We have been working with Cisco HyperFlex for the past four years.

This is a reliable solution

This product is quite scalable.

Our usage of this product may increase but it is up to the customer. For example, when a customer is loyal to Cisco, they will implement HyperFlex. On the other hand, if it's a customer with a hyper-converged infrastructure then they will definitely implement VxRail.

Technical support from Cisco is responsive and depending on the problem, a hardware replacement is offered 24/7, which is good.

I have experience with similar products from other vendors.

HyperFlex is a very good solution, although not compared to Dell EMC VxRail. Both of them have many good features, although VxRail is better and yet, Cisco is more expensive.

If you consider my customers to be a community, 70% of them have VxRail and 30% of them have HyperFlex.

The initial setup is straightforward. The length of deployment depends on the number of channels but for between four and five nodes, it takes approximately two weeks.

This is an expensive solution, although Cisco will offer it free of charge when there is a large networking opportunity that arises. The licensing is perpetual and the only thing that you may need to pay for on a monthly basis is if you're going to use their cloud-based management features. This requires a subscription.

Cisco offers the on-cloud management system for HyperFlex but most of our customers that are using a hyper-converged infrastructure prefer to build their own, private cloud. In most cases, they have this solution installed on-premises.

Cisco HyperFlex is a product that I can recommend, although VxRail is my first choice. Depending on the customer, their environment, and history with Cisco, I will recommend one of these products over the other.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.