Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series Reviews

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is storage that is integrated with the stack as a standalone mobile unit. There is less infrastructure required. 

We have better computing power, better uptime, and easier management of the infrastructure due to it being a single unit.

I would like to see more flexibility in the storage.

If you have experience with Cisco, or you have experience with the HyperFlex HX itself, then it's a lot easier. If you do deployment on your own, there's a pretty steep learning curve.

Cisco technical support is very skilled. From what I've had to access, there were quick responses and the necessary escalation.

We were approached by Cisco originally to try out the HyperFlex HX. They installed a very small deployment of it and we grew from that.

The age of our equipment dictated that we have to upgrade. It was becoming end-of-life. That's what precipitated the move originally.

The setup was neutral since I was just learning. It was a little complex, but once I understood the purpose of the profiles and the templates, it became a lot clearer and easier. I would suggest getting contract services involved to help with the initial setup of the product. The setup time to figure it out yourself, especially if you are brand new to it, is extensive.

We used a professional integrator.

I can't quantify, but it seems to have a very good return on investment. We kept the equipment for a long time and it's worked flawlessly for us.

Our licensing is hybrid. We have all of our applications for billing and outage management through this.

Something else that we used before was the IBM BladeCenter. It was fine, but it was not as flexible. We couldn't deploy it and expand as easily as the Cisco HyperFlex HX.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Cisco HyperFlex HX with an eight out of ten at this point. Only because I'm not as versed to it as I could be.

The initial setup of profiles and templates could be improved. Maybe some end profiles that you can use based on your type of deployment would be good, i.e. instead of having to go through and configure every portion of the template.

We use this solution for many banks in Egypt. 

This solution has improved my organization because workers are more efficient and the time it takes to complete daily activities has been significantly reduced. It has also enhanced KPIs for the workers and the remote sites don't have any delay reaching the required data. 

The most valuable features are that it's an all in one solution, requires low power, it's easy for management, and easy to implement and train.

I would like for them to develop integration with other technologies, like SD Access. It's still lacking an enhancement management player.

Stability is very good. 

Their technicians are very qualified and supportive. 

Our customers knew they needed to switch to this solution because we have had good experiences with Cisco. It has a strong presence in Egypt and a good technical support and sales team.  

Our customers have seen ROI in terms of the time they save troubleshooting.

We also considered Dell EMC. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten, not a ten because nothing is perfect. 

A client typically uses the solution for the VDI critical application and for the containerization as well. It's a critical application and he X location and the hybrid or multi cloud.

The solution is easy to deploy as they're based on ECS. We buy an ECS Manager so that we can scale out easily. We can also integrate with external storage. We can also scale for computing or storage only.

The product is quite stable.

It's very easy to use and quite a mature product.

As a fairly mature product, I can't think of any features that are lacking per se. 

The pricing is pretty expensive.

Right now they are coming into the public cloud, we want to be seeing HyperFlex integration with public clouds such as AWS, Azure or Google. 

I need to see the feature more use cases for the backup and restore functionalities or how  we can expand the cluster to the public cloud.

I've been using the solution since about 2018. It's been about two years or so. It hasn't been too long.

The solution is very stable. It doesn't have bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's very good.

We do plan to continue using the product and expanding it as needed. 

Cisco is better for enterprise-level organizations.

Cisco has great technical support. We're quite satisfied with their level of service. Cisco does offer full support for the product, which is quite helpful. They have a good amount of knowledge on their product and they are very good at sharing the information and insights they have. 

However, in comparison, Nutanix technical support is better in that they are not only knowledgeable but responsive as well.

As partners, we use a variety of solutions such as Nutanix, Cisco HyperFlex, and NetApp HCI. We don't for example, have partnerships with HPE or SimpliVity.

If you were comparing Cisco, to, for example, Nutanix, Cisco is more expensive.

The initial setup is not too complex. The installation is pretty easy as the HyperFlex has a deployment engine. We can just follow the wizard and go over everything step-by-step. Cisco has guidelines about the installation in the portal which makes it very convenient to get the insights you need.

The deployment is very fast and takes typically under one hour.

The solution can be pretty expensive. It's not the cheapest option on the market.

My role in the company is pre-sales. We offer this solution to our clients. As a partner, we don't use Cisco HyperFlex, but we propose HyperFlex for the customer.

For the deployment, we can deploy for the DC and DRC side, for the synchronous replication, and also for the stress cluster, we can also deploy for the X location as the HyperFlex has a HyperFex extraction for the X location.

I'm in Indonesia, and in this particular country/region, this solution isn't really used very widely. Nutanix is more famous in Indonesia, as it can be used by the SMB customer or small customers up to enterprises. Most hyper-converged solutions that are used in Indonesia are Nutanix.

I would recommend the solution to other organizations, however, only if it made sense and fit their company's needs.

Overall, I would rate the product eight out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is for data storage for the network.

Integration to third-parties is the most valuable feature. 

Scalability and performance are good. 

Technical support is very good. Not excellent, but good. There's still not enough data available on the web. For example, for the integration to VMware, I had a case recently and I searched for more information but didn't find any. 

We knew we needed to switch solutions because we needed a solution with good performance, scanning, and an overall new and innovative solution. 

We had some hardware problems at the beginning of the initial setup but after that was resolved the setup was straightforward. 

We implemented through an integrator and had a great experience with them. 

The ROI we have seen from the high performance that has saved us time and money.

We also looked at Nutanix. We ended up going with Cisco because our whole network is based on Cisco. 

I would give this solution a seven out of ten because it's still new and I still haven't practiced a lot with it but I have had a good experience until now. 

I would advise someone considering this solution to sit with your integrator, discuss the different products, comply with the competitors, and you will get your desired results.

Our primary use case of this solution is for data center virtualization.

There's high commodity stuff but nothing is very useful inside. The automation is a valuable feature, it's interesting. 

Mostly documentation needs to be improved, we need strong documentation. We also want to not need to open a tech case every time we need to troubleshoot. Stability and storage need to be improved. 

Stability is really poor, especially the storage stability. We lost data. There were disruptions of clusters and that's one big pain point of the solution. It's not stable enough, the documentation is not good, there's not much documentation available. We need a tech engineer for every call. 

Scalability was cool on the marketing site but the two node clusters crashed. I'm not willing to build large scale infrastructure with this product because it's not stable enough.

Technical support is good but we need it for every piece we do. For every change, we need technical support. They are quick to respond and help us solve the issue. 

We switched solutions because the market drives us, mostly Cisco drives us. They have high goals. Normally, we build up a classic converged infrastructure but now Cisco wanted us to deploy hyperconverged.

The initial setup is very complex. 

We are partners so we integrate it ourselves. 

We did not look at other solutions. We only focus on Cisco. We love Cisco and hopefully,  HyperFlex will become a better product. 

I would rate it a four out of ten. I would advise someone considering this solution to be careful. 

The primary use case is for our customer who was moving from classical storage and computing to the new HyperFlex system.

It saves space for data centers, which is good.

Everything is in one device: computing, storage, and networking.

It is quite new solution, so it is not very stable. However, that is okay.

It is very scalable. It is also easy to scan.

I had some issues that I had to solve myself because of the technical support.

The initial setup is very complex because there were some issues. It is not clear to how set up this solution.

I did the implementation myself.

Involve Cisco in the beginning, as they will give you good advice about setting up the product.

While it has a lot of things to improve, it is a good solution.

It is an acceptable storage solution.

It simplifies management. I am sure we have not scratched its limit, but it helps us simplify everything well.

The most valuable feature is to simplify management. We can lower the need for people to work on the storage itself. 

I would like to see the capacity to choose the replications, RFS sectors to all machines, not only on the cluster. Additionally, the solution should provide more detailed documentation.

There are no problems with the stability of the solution.

It is a good, scalable solution.

We had to use technical support once. They were great. 

It is really straightforward. It was not complex. 

I think we are always looking for a vendor that is credible and solves our needs within the solution. This product answers those criteria. The vendor was credible and helpful.

We looked at VMware. 

When considering this product, evaluate it carefully. Note whether the environment is best for the solution.  

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

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

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

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

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

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