Azure Local vs Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series comparison

Microsoft and Lenovo are both solutions in the HCI category. Microsoft is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.6, while Lenovo is ranked #24. Microsoft holds a 3.2% mindshare in HCI, compared to Lenovo’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Lenovo users who would recommend it.

Azure Local

Read 8 Azure Local reviews

1,633 Views
1,633 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Read 3 Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series reviews

737 Views
737 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Azure Local

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 21, 2026

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series and Azure Local compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure market. Azure Local appears advantageous in features with robust offerings, while Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series excels in support and pricing.

Features: Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series provides powerful integration capabilities, strong hardware flexibility, and robust security features. Azure Local offers extensive cloud service options, seamless scalability, and advanced analytics tools. The key differentiation is Azure Local's superior cloud integration compared to Lenovo's physical infrastructure adaptability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series offers a straightforward deployment model and strong customer support, simplifying setup for organizations with existing Lenovo hardware. Azure Local provides flexible deployment and strong multi-cloud management capabilities but may involve a more complex initial setup. Lenovo offers ease of integration for existing environments, while Azure Local provides robust cloud-centric and multi-cloud deployment options.

Pricing and ROI: Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series presents competitive pricing with a low initial setup cost, appealing to budget-conscious buyers. Azure Local, with a higher initial expense due to feature-rich offerings, is viewed as a worthwhile investment for long-term scalability and enhanced service options. Lenovo is more cost-effective, while Azure Local's comprehensive feature set justifies its higher price.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Local vs. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Local vs. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

December 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Azure Local

Ranking in HCI

13th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Ranking in HCI

24th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Azure Local is 3.2%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Azure Stack HCI	3.2%
Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series	1.3%
Other	95.5%

HCI

Featured Reviews

Martin Coloumbe

IT Solution Architect at a educational organization with 11-50 employees

Experience with seamless cost-saving capacity, though integration and support need refinement

An area that could be possibly improved with Azure Stack HCI is the stretched cluster functionality, which was included in version 23H2 for disaster recovery purposes. However, this functionality has been put on hold for the next release, and Microsoft has decided to discontinue stretched cluster technology completely, which is disappointing. They promise to bring back a significant or similar solution in a future release, but currently, there is no such functionality for stretched clusters between two sites in the latest versions of Azure Stack HCI, which poses a problem as we were looking forward to utilizing it. The integration with Azure Arc provides a unified management experience, but I find it to be fairly clunky. The integration exists, but it is not smooth or very easy to use. While they've started to integrate the two, the integration lacks maturity and makes it difficult to manage effectively. There are discrepancies between managing VMs through Azure Arc versus managing them directly, as changes made not using the Azure Arc integration are not easily reflected in Azure Arc. For instance, if I have an Arc-enabled VM and make changes to it outside the Arc interface, those changes may not be registered directly in Azure Arc, leading to issues in fully viewing the status and configuration of VMs depending on the management tool used. You either manage VMs fully through Arc or not at all because mixing the two methods results in incomplete visibility and inconsistencies.

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Adeel Hashmi

IT Technical Advisor at a construction company with 501-1,000 employees

With an easy deployment phase, the tool offers good scalability and stability

Suppose you don't compare Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series with the newest features available in the other variants of the product, then everything is pretty standard, so I cannot pinpoint any areas of issue in particular. With Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series, the firmware from VMware or Nutanix takes time to be made available compared to other products that we use in our company's IT environment. If you want to go to a certain version of VMware and check what Nutanix offers, you see that both the offerings don't go hand in hand, and you have to wait for a quarter or two quarters until you see the same versions of both being made available for the other products, like Dell or HPE. There is a delay in the availability of similar versions of firmware from both the products, which are VMware and Nutanix for Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series, due to the delayed releases from both products, maybe by a quarter or so. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in a solution. In future releases of the product, I may want some improvements to be made in the products from Nutanix and VMware.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The scalability is extremely good."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to manage VMs."

"Azure Local, formerly known as Azure Stack HCI, is gaining attention due to its offering of a cloud experience on-premises."

"The features of Azure Stack HCI that have proven to be the most beneficial for optimizing our company's data center operations revolve around its performance."

"Some of the best features of Azure Stack HCI are that, as we are primarily a Microsoft Windows Server organization using Microsoft Windows Server on most of our servers, we already own data center licenses for Microsoft operating systems, and the hypervisor, Azure Stack HCI, actually comes with that license, which allows us to switch from VMware to Azure Stack HCI without any additional cost, significantly reducing our operational costs, especially now that Broadcom has purchased VMware, to $0."

"In my hybrid cloud setup, there are three features I've found very efficient. The first is software-defined networking. Similar to Azure where you create virtual networks and software load balancing, Azure Stack HCI lets you configure them with a drag-and-drop experience on the on-premises cluster. That's one of the good feature."

"The integration with Azure using Azure Arc is excellent."

"The solution has the latest processor."

More Azure Local pros

"The initial setup is simple. We were able to deliver the hyper-convergence solution in a very good time."

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that the product's deployment phase is pretty easy."

"The most valuable features of the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series are the ease of use and simple configuration."

Cons

"The biggest challenge with the tool is not being able to manage everything from Microsoft Azure Portal."

"The product's initial setup phase can be a bit complex, making it an area where improvements are required."

"A little bit of the storage architecture could be improved."

"Hyper V seems to lag behind compared to VMware."

"We faced multiple problems with the product’s stability."

"There are a lot of areas for improvement. Since I've been working very closely with this product, there are many areas, especially in software-defined networking. We had to improve multiple areas because we depended on the service fabric cluster to manage the software-defined network. That means we're already running a hypervisor inside a VM, and we're managing the control plane of the software-defined network. That's another cluster. So, multiple layers make the complexity more. So, from an operational perspective, it's very difficult to manage."

"The implementation was very difficult for the operation team at that time, as the necessary skills to implement and integrate this product were not available."

"Here in Nigeria, the only challenge that we have, which I think is also experienced globally is the delay in bringing in the spare parts. This is a challenge facing our country, such as the Forex market. However, this is beyond the control of Lenovo themselves."

"Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series could improve by having better integration with the solutions from VMware and vCenter"

"There is a delay in the availability of similar versions of firmware from both the products, which are VMware and Nutanix for Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series, due to the delayed releases from both products, maybe by a quarter or so."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is high compared to other tools."

"The main licenses are the OS licenses, the OEM licenses, and so on. They are very much aligned with the cost of expectations. We never had any challenges with the licensing at all."

"Price-wise, it is a pretty good product. The product's price was one of the main criteria that made my company choose it over the other products in the market."

"When comparing this solution to other OEM solutions it is relatively inexpensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

10%

Construction Company

Retailer

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	3

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Stack HCI?

The solution has the latest processor.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Stack HCI?

This solution costs €10 per core per month. The whole stack is free if you are renting Windows Server Datacenter.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Stack HCI?

There could be improvements with Azure Stack HCI regarding the license and price, as they have significantly higher prices compared to other competitors. The end-to-end encryption provided by Azure...

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Comparisons

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Azure Local

Compared 25% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Azure Local

Compared 24% of the time

VxRail vs Azure Local

Compared 7% of the time

Scale Computing Platform vs Azure Local

Compared 5% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Azure Local

Compared 3% of the time

More Azure Local Competitors

Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series vs Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Compared 22% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Compared 14% of the time

VxRail vs Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Compared 10% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Compared 9% of the time

Dell XC Appliance vs Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

Compared 8% of the time

More Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Local

January 2026

Download Azure Local product report

Buyer's Guide

HCI

December 2025

Download Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series product report

Also Known As

No data available

Lenovo HX Series, ThinkAgile HX Series

Overview

Azure Local integrates on-premises infrastructure with cloud services, offering tools for software-defined networking, Kubernetes deployment, and VM management. It ensures cost efficiency through existing Microsoft licenses and robust disaster recovery, despite some complexities in deployment.

Azure Local is designed for businesses needing a blend of local and cloud services while remaining compliant with data privacy regulations. It excels in environments demanding high computing power, software-defined networking, and seamless scaling through Azure Kubernetes Service and Azure DevOps. Although it offers excellent VM management and analytics capabilities with Microsoft Fabric, deployment complexity and operational challenges remain. Businesses looking for a robust edge computing solution find significant benefits, especially with efficient local Azure storage and advanced hardware such as the latest processors and SSDs. There are areas needing improvements like multi-cluster management, stability, and Initial setup, which can be cumbersome. Pricing can be a concern against competitors, and enhanced support and training are needed for smoother user experience.

What are the key features of Azure Local?

Software-Defined Networking: Facilitates management with drag-and-drop setup.
Kubernetes Deployment: Provides Azure Kubernetes Service for managing microservices.
VM Management: Reduces server count and enhances efficiency.
Integration with Azure Arc: Seamless collaboration with Azure Arc for hybrid deployments.
Infrastructure as Code: Utilizes Azure DevOps for deployment.
Analytics Capabilities: Microsoft Fabric enhances insights and decision-making.

What benefits should businesses expect from Azure Local?

Cost Efficiency: Leverages existing Microsoft licenses for financial savings.
Improved Disaster Recovery: Advanced edge computing features bolster resiliency.
High Performance: Enhanced by the latest processors and SSDs for demanding applications.
Seamless Cloud Integration: Smooth transition capabilities between local and cloud environments.

Azure Local finds application in sectors like manufacturing and maritime operations where robust edge computing helps in seamless data management and analytics. Factories benefit from compliance with data privacy rules while blended local and cloud services improve efficiency on ships, providing an alternative to VMware with support for virtual desktops and SQL Managed Instances.

Microsoft

Designed for easy deployment and manageability in scale-out clusters, the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series combines Nutanix software with Lenovo’s highly reliable and scalable servers. These appliances ship fully integrated, tested, and configured so that you can dramatically accelerate your time to value and reduce your infrastructure maintenance.

Lenovo

Buyer's Guide

Azure Local vs. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

December 2025

Free Report: Azure Local vs. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

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