Azure Local vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure comparison

Microsoft and Red Hat are both solutions in the HCI category. Microsoft is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.6, while Red Hat is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.0. Microsoft holds a 3.2% mindshare in HCI, compared to Red Hat’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Azure Local

Read 8 Azure Local reviews

1,633 Views
1,633 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infr...

Read 7 Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure reviews

794 Views
786 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Azure Local

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infr...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 21, 2026

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure and Azure Local both offer enterprise-level hyperconvergence solutions. Red Hat excels in pricing and support satisfaction, while Azure Local stands out with its feature-rich offerings.

Features: Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure integrates well with Red Hat ecosystem solutions, supports containerization, and uses software-defined storage for data consistency. Azure Local offers robust cloud integration, enables Azure Kubernetes Service in local data centers, and provides seamless Azure Arc management for hybrid cloud capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat could enhance the cloud integration capabilities and improve scalability options. Azure Local might refine its virtual machine migration tools for smoother transitions and simplify complex configurations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat offers streamlined deployment within its open-source ecosystem with proficient and personalized support. Azure Local emphasizes cloud connectivity, providing automated deployment processes and a cloud-oriented support system with comprehensive resources.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat generally provides competitive pricing attractive to enterprises using open-source solutions, leading to cost-efficient operations and lower expenses. Azure Local, with its broader feature set and advanced cloud integrations, has higher pricing but may offer greater long-term ROI through superior scalability.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Local vs. Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Local vs. Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

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

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infr...

Ranking in HCI

19th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

2.6

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 Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is 1.3%, up from 0.6% 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%
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure	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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Maheshc Chathuranga

Senior Enterprise System Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Has provided mature containerization support and responsive assistance while meeting diverse customer needs

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure can be improved primarily because the biggest problem in Sri Lanka is its high price compared to other solutions. Feature-wise, it's very mature for the containerization side, but the price point is an issue. I would like to see more features related to disaster recovery and continuity in Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure, specifically disaster recovery, disaster recovery sites, and business continuity.

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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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"The scalability is extremely good."

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

"Azure Stack HCI has been very beneficial for disaster recovery operations, though the main data center still has a mix of infrastructure between other products."

"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."

More Azure Local pros

"Utilizing Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure's software-defined storage helps increase data consistency for specific use cases, aligning with customer requirements, depending on which type of data we are storing."

"The size of the hardware is what we need because it is very good for small configurations."

"The consolidation of the management in one control point is the most valuable. The whole infrastructure management is consolidated in just one console point. The documentation is also pretty good."

"It is stable and scalable."

"The most useful feature is the solution's automation in terms of how we are able to spin up a certain workload in real-time when we are doing R&D."

"Both the scalability and stability of this solution are excellent."

"I like that you can add other types of services."

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."

"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."

"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."

"It should be more user-friendly, in my opinion."

"It is not user-friendly, and it is very difficult to operate. You have to have a deep understanding of the technical details of the infrastructure to implement it. When you compare it with VMware, it is totally different because the graphical user interface is not that easy to understand. It is not intuitive. To use it, you have to read a lot of documentation and even understand what is going on behind the solution. It is not for someone who has a little bit of knowledge. Currently, it is too complex. I need something that is easy to implement. It should have a basic configuration as well as a complex configuration."

"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure can be improved primarily because the biggest problem in Sri Lanka is its high price compared to other solutions."

"This product is not so stable. Maybe it is just not mature enough in its development."

"The licensing policy needs to be improved. They have a licensing policy based on the number of CPU sockets. Nowadays what has happened is that the license they are trying to move is based on the number of CPU cores. With the advancement in technology there are now more cores in a single CPU. It's been very challenging in terms of managing the license around everything. Today we have a processor with 24 and 32 cores on the same physical CPU."

"The main issue is the initial investment. It is an expensive product, and it should be cheaper. It should also be easier to use and manage. The professional service for this solution is quite complex and expensive."

"The cloud deployment could be improved."

"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure can be improved primarily because the biggest problem in Sri Lanka is its high price compared to other solutions."

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."

"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is an open-sourced, low-cost solution with full features."

"It is quite pricey."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

Outsourcing Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	1
Large Enterprise	7

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure?

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is mainly used for customers' companies.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure?

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is not used for edge computing. Most people are referring to centralized data centers for requirements, and in Sri Lanka, there are not many edge computing sol...

See all answers

Comparisons

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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

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VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Compared 36% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Compared 12% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Compared 11% of the time

VxRail vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Compared 10% of the time

Scale Computing Platform vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Compared 4% of the time

More Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Local

January 2026

Download Azure Local product report

Buyer's Guide

HCI

December 2025

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure report

Download Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure product report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat HCI, Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Virtualization

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

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure - based on our leading OpenStack and virtualization platforms - provides co-located, scalable, software-defined compute and storage, driven by Red Hat Ansible Automation on economical, industry-standard hardware.

Red Hat

Buyer's Guide

Azure Local vs. Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

December 2025

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