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Cisco Compute Hyperconverged vs VMware vSAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

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

Cisco Compute Hyperconverged
Ranking in HCI
21st
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.7
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSAN
Ranking in HCI
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
234
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Dwivedi - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Manager Network Operation & Deployment Working with Airtel India at Airtel
Improved telecom control functions and security have exposed user plane performance gaps
I see that the hardware side and performance concerns are prevalent, even in Cisco hardware used in the card platform. We have observed the same issues with Cisco Compute Hyperconverged platforms as well, indicating a performance issue. Regarding the stability rating, it should be around seven because the support from Cisco is nice, but the performance of the product does not meet our preferences. For additional features to enhance competitiveness, Cisco needs to improve their hardware utilization performance specifically. There is a significant gap between the throughput they recommend and what commercial enterprises experience, which is around a thirty percent gap. If we talk about Red Hat or other external platforms, in that scenario, it is better for enterprises that want a complete support package to go with Cisco. However, if the enterprise has the capability to maintain in-house, it may be better to consider different hyperscalers. Another concern with Cisco is that they are trying to bind customers to specific hardware.
ShyamikaThamel - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium
Managing mixed RAID workloads has improved data protection and delivers strong performance
VMware vSAN can be improved in certain areas. In cases involving our large data stores with large VMs, we experience some latency, not during normal operation, but during database backup operations. We observed latency due to buffer issues from the top-of-the-rack switches. These issues are mostly network-related because all storage data traffic travels through the network. I have recently used Nutanix, and I observed that Nutanix provides better performance than VMware vSAN due to its data locality features. VMware vSAN is now providing data locality, but we did not use that option. If VMware vSAN provides additional features in the next release, such as the VM balancing feature called DRS on the cluster that VMware previously had, it would be beneficial. With DRS, VMs can move easily from one node to another within the same cluster. Nutanix does not provide that flexibility. When placing a VM on a cluster in Nutanix, the placement uses a balancing component. After that, the VM remains on the same host. If any contention occurs on the CPU or memory side, the VM stays in place until contention happens. If issues occur, the VM migrates to another host while transferring all objects to the same host. This is how their data locality is maintained. When a VM moves to any host, it moves with all VM objects. VMware vSAN does not currently offer this option. If a VM moves to another host, it accesses the disk object through the network, which increases latency. VMware vSAN now offers an option to select data locality, but it does not function like Nutanix. This is why some latency remains. If VMware vSAN can improve this feature, it would be very helpful and VMware would regain its top position.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Regarding Cisco Compute Hyperconverged's data protection capabilities in terms of business continuity and protection, I would rate them as a nine, as there are no concerns concerning protection."
"One of the valuable features of vSAN is it has a universal type of technology that allows you to deploy it on any server or hardware. Competitors, such as Nutanix, provides the AOS and can be deployed only on certified hardware. For vSAN, it does not require any kind of certified hardware."
"The technical support is good. We are always thankful for the technical support from VMware. They are very supportive when we have a technical problem."
"Technical support has been very good. They respond pretty fast, especially if we have a critical issue. Their responses have been great."
"By eliminating dependency on that back-end storage, we now depend on everything that's in the VMkernel with vSAN. We eliminate the middleman."
"it's easy to scale, it's easy to predict IOP needs, and you can design for low latency using all-flash... Also, for setting up new clusters for VDI quickly, it's nice. You don't have to wait on an order for a storage vendor to ship you a system and help you configure it, you do it all yourself. And the sizing guides are pretty straightforward."
"The valuable features of vSAN are that you can get it up and running quickly, you get redundancy built-in, and it's pretty much the perfect solution for a cluster."
"The flexibility is most valuable. Being able to manage things quickly if something goes wrong is also valuable. Very recently, we had one node that went down due to a power problem, but there was really no major impact on the systems running on top of it."
"The most valuable feature is that it is software-defined storage. Also, being able to do maintenance on the fly is a real benefit: migrating off, updating, and then moving the guest back on to the nodes."
 

Cons

"Regarding the stability rating, it should be around seven because the support from Cisco is nice, but the performance of the product does not meet our preferences."
"I see room for improvement for vSAN just around general hardware compatibility and expanding that sort of matrix."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered some intelligent monitoring."
"We would like to see additional backup and recovery options added. In particular, integration with popular applications like databases."
"Disaster recovery needs to be improved, when there is a crisis, there is a problem with what is the quickest way to get out of it."
"Perhaps they could provide encryption without having to use an encryption manager."
"The price for the hard drive, for vSAN, is very expensive."
"vSAN itself is a great storage platform, but one of the issues with it is that you have to be fully locked into the VMware package to use it. We're going to be deploying 72 Kubernetes nodes, and we're not going to buy VMware licenses for 72 of them, just so they can access vSAN. That's what we're using the Pure for. Opening it up so you could have vSAN as a data store, use it as a data lake, hit it with an NFS, S3 from outside the VMware ecosystem, would be great."
"Hardware load balancing is available on the enterprise version of the solution, however, it's extremely expensive and therefore out of our budget."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"​I would like to see this technology be made available to smaller businesses, who might benefit from high availability but struggle with the entry fee.​"
"Its reasonable, compare with other storage vendors"
"The price is expensive."
"The price of vSAN could be lower."
"Enterprise customers can customize their licenses according to their own needs and budget."
"I have been told that if I used VxRail it would be cheaper than the system we are using now with buying the products separately. The solution is expensive overall."
"We pay for a license to use the solution through our company CapEx and then we continue to pay annually."
"The cost of the solution is high and if it could be reduced the customers would be very happy."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business100
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise129
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Compute Hyperconverged?
Their pricing is acceptable because they are trying to match the market.
What needs improvement with Cisco Compute Hyperconverged?
I see that the hardware side and performance concerns are prevalent, even in Cisco hardware used in the card platform. We have observed the same issues with Cisco Compute Hyperconverged platforms a...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Compute Hyperconverged?
I have only used Cisco Compute Hyperconverged for telecom equipment, specifically telecom network functions. I cannot comment on other applications, but when using the hyperscaler for telecom, part...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...
How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is best suited for small- to medium-sized organizations. It is easy to create load bal...
 

Also Known As

No data available
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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