Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs Dell PowerFlex vs HPE SimpliVity comparison

Cisco and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Read 90 Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] reviews

89% willing to recommend

Dell PowerFlex

Read 29 Dell PowerFlex reviews

8,158 Views
7,342 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

HPE SimpliVity

Read 155 HPE SimpliVity reviews

10,046 Views
9,745 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Dell PowerFlex

HPE SimpliVity

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL], Dell PowerFlex, and HPE SimpliVity based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: May 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

May 2026

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Helped 896,298 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Featured Reviews

Nuno Mendes

IT Manager - Resp.Department at Parvalorem

High performance solution that makes it easy to efficiently manage VM resources

In our case as a credit recovery company working with the state, our infrastructure is fixed and stable as we don't have the same need for growth as other types of companies. That said, one of the biggest problems with HyperFlex HX is that if you want to adjust your solution in terms of processing power, memory, or disk capacity, you have to buy completely new hosts. From a financial perspective, it can be very expensive to do so, and from a legal perspective, there are all kinds of compliance issues we would have to sort out before buying any new solution or application. Since we as a company will only be operating for perhaps the next ten years, when our HyperFlex solution comes to its end-of-life in 2024 our next step will likely not be with HyperFlex or any other solution from Cisco. Instead, from a financial point of view, we will likely turn toward a cloud solution because, that way, we won't have to spend so much money on physical infrastructure. We are, after all, only a small company and HyperFlex can be very expensive for other companies of our size, whether in Portugal or elsewhere like the United States. One other area for improvement is in regard to HyperFlex's integration with VMware. HyperFlex integrates with a specific version of VMware in such a way that HyperFlex doesn't always resolve security issues with VMware at the same pace as what you see in native implementations of VMware. This has happened in one or two situations in the past. On the other hand, the integration is otherwise adequate, especially in terms of availability and virtualization features (such as being able to split up each of our four hosts within VMware).

Read full review

Aqib Butt

Enterprise Solution Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Dell PowerFlex is a high-performance, software-defined infrastructure platform designed for mission-critical workloads. It combines compute and software-defined storage in a flexible, scalable arch.

Independent Scaling of Compute and Storage PowerFlex allows us to scale compute and storage resources independently. This disaggregated architecture is extremely valuable for optimizing costs and right-sizing infrastructure based on workload demands particularly in environments with variable AI and database workloads. High Performance with Low Latency With support for NVMe, RDMA and a fully distributed architecture, PowerFlex delivers consistent low-latency performance. This is critical for applications like AI model training, real-time analytics and Tier-1 transactional databases. Flexible Deployment Options The ability to deploy PowerFlex in hyper-converged (HCI), two-layer or mixed architectures provides design flexibility for different customer needs. Whether they're building a private cloud, extending hybrid cloud capabilities or deploying in a DR configuration. Automation via PowerFlex Manager PowerFlex Manager simplifies complex operations such as provisioning, lifecycle management and policy enforcement. This helps reduce operational overhead and improves IT agility. Resiliency and Self-Healing Architecture The platform offers zero-impact rebuilds and built-in fault tolerance across nodes and disks, making it extremely reliable for business-critical workloads. Integration with AI and Kubernetes Ecosystems With support for CSI drivers and GPU-enabled infrastructure, PowerFlex fits seamlessly into modern DevOps and AI/ML pipelines allowing us to serve next-gen workloads without needing separate infrastructure stacks.

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Mohammed Lokman Hossen

Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Has integrated solutions and rapid recovery made management smoother and more reliable

There is the latest update from HPE regarding HPE SimpliVity. For virtualization, HPE has to depend on other manufacturers, OEMs such as VMware or Hyper-V. Recently, HPE declared the VM essential virtualization solution. In the future, if HPE integrates HPE SimpliVity with VM essential, that will be a great combination. Functionality-wise, I am totally satisfied with HPE SimpliVity, but for improvement, if HPE integrates its own virtualization solution, this combination and integration will be beneficial because this integration can be configured with the cloud-based system. A VM can be uploaded to the cloud from this, which will be advantageous for backup to other sites.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"The management feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."

"It increases efficiency, decreases the cost, and manages the network in one single way. That's the most important thing."

"Go ahead and do it."

"The automation is a valuable feature, it's interesting."

"We used to have a single customer-facing data center, which was vulnerable to failure. This product has allowed us to create high availability between two private data centers."

"It is a complete package; for any kind of on-premises hyper-converged solution, we usually have to separate networks, but Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is a complete solution with its own network and storage, and the storage part is the most valuable feature."

"Easy to spin up and operate virtual machines without the overhead of managing a storage network."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"The setup was very straightforward."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."

"Our primary use case of this solution is for storage nodes and compute nodes and I like that it is all in one box."

"My opinion is that HP Hyperconvergence is a technology that perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."

"The solution is scalable."

"The solution saves a lot of space in the data center and that is a key advantage for us."

"The resiliency and data protection are the most valuable features."

"Dell PowerFlex is a highly scalable solution."

More Dell PowerFlex pros

"The pricing of the solution is very good."

"The setup is very easy."

"I like HPE SimpliVity's hard disk compression capabilities. The data is compressed into very little space or volume. I think that the principal value of HP SimpliVity is its capacity to compress the data, and I'm saving a lot of disk space using SimpliVity."

"The integration possibilities regarding the administration console are one of the best configurations and one of the best features that differentiates this product from others in the market."

"The backup and restore features are the most valuable."

"The performance is good. It's stable and easy to operate."

"Our customers get a lot more horsepower for a lot less management."

"We had a standard HPE blade server, our reseller put forward SimpliVity to us, we tried it out and tested it, and I was like, "Wow," it blew us away."

More HPE SimpliVity pros

Cons

"One aspect that really needs to be looked at, is to fix the bugs issue."

"It is not a stable solution."

"There could be an increase in performance to improve the solution."

"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could improve by having the documents be more readily available and the support could be more flexible."

"There should be the opportunity to create more than one div group."

"I wouldn't recommend HyperFlex."

"We would like to move off the GUI."

"A disadvantage is the higher costs involved in using this product."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"I think that stability is good for small and mid-level environments, but I don't think that it is suitable for high-end."

"It would be great to get earlier access to beta builds because we have to develop providers on our own. The APIs and enablers for custom automation could also be improved."

"The solution is not as scalable as it should be."

"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."

"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."

"I recommend adding some more monitoring tools."

"Exporting data from the dashboard is not very user-friendly. It's just designed in a way that it's going to cover let's say 90%, 80%, of the end-users needs."

"Exporting data from the dashboard is not very user-friendly. It's just designed in a way that it's going to cover let's say 90%, 80%, of the end-users needs. If you need more sophisticated reporting it's not easy to have."

More Dell PowerFlex cons

"HPE SimpliVity could be more flexible and scalable. I don't feel SimpliVity is flexible or easily scalable because I still need to buy another server to add to my clusters. I can't just run or harvest and add to my solution. I need to buy another server. There are a lot of components that are not giving a lot of value to me right now. I also had a few problems with the built-in hard disk drives. I've had many issues with the harvest stripes that the servers use. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's unusual to have a physical failure on the HPE platform. I don't see any value at the software level, especially in the software that manages that solution. I was waiting for something, especially in the application layer that I would use, but that is all over VMware, and it doesn't have an integrated module that I can use to manage the server and all the instances."

"We should have something called micro segmentation inside the SimpliVity box, which can be easily implemented."

"The graphical interface and reports need to be improved compared to other brands."

"The fact that it is tied to a certain hardware platform would probably be the bigger negative versus just being able to buy something off the shelf."

"It crashes often. When one particular VM has random, large IOPS requests, it will bog down the node, and there isn't enough time for the replica to be brought up. So all the VMs on that one particular node will essentially become offline."

"Needs to improve the cloud integration, such as Azure and AWS."

"There are some problems with support from HPE."

"I would like them to add more connection capability, a hub and spoke model, to improve the number of connections that it can handle."

More HPE SimpliVity cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's roughly $30,000 per Hyperflex license, so that would be about $60,000 a year."

"The product could be cheaper."

"Its price is rather fair when compared with other solutions like VxRail, vSAN, and HPE SimpliVity. We got a fair amount of discount from Cisco for Cisco HyperFlex. It is cost-effective. We have renewed storage till next year, and we have already paid the vendor. When we talk about HyperFlex or any HCI solution, storage is the part where we can reduce a lot of costs. At the current moment, we are already using NetApp storage, which did not allow us to go for a full Cisco HyperFlex setup. We are planning to go to a larger scale next year. Then we will be able to see how cost-effective it really is for us."

"We are on an annual subscription and the price is fair."

"Its price is high. Cisco needs to work on the pricing model for this product. Nutanix or VMware are cheaper products, and they provide almost the same functionality. Its price is a big road blocker when we are working with an end customer, and Nutanix and VMware are in competition. If they can reduce its price, it is actually a better choice for customers."

"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is a bit pricier compared to other brands in the market...There is a need to make additional payments towards the maintenance and support of the solution."

"There is a 30 percent additional premium that all the companies are charging for Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series because of the lack of chips and bottlenecks in the market. The cost of the solution is high right now."

"There is a license required to use this solution."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pricing and cost advice

"The product is expensive."

"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

"The price could be improved."

"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."

"The cost of this solution is fair."

"From my perspective, pricing is expensive. If they can reduce the pricing or offer more customer incentives, it would attract more users."

"The solution's price is medium."

"We have a good contact in Dell and he prepared all the information and provided everything to us."

More Dell PowerFlex pricing and cost advice

"HPE SimpliVity is much more affordable than Nutanix or VMware vSAN...The first pair of servers was about 90,000 EUR, including three years of warranty. It is 30,000 EUR per year."

"The solution is affordable and quite reasonably priced in terms of the product one gets."

"All-in license, simple and fair."

"Other vendors fall short on price compared to HPE on this product."

"The licensing cost could be lower."

"One big advantage with SimpliVity is that you don't need the higher license cost or VMware to put together a simple SimpliVity solution."

"Scaling isn't cheap"

"In terms of the licenses, customers do not actually get any benefit."

More HPE SimpliVity pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Marketing Services Firm

13%

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	24
Midsize Enterprise	17
Large Enterprise	57

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	67
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	80

Questions from the Community

How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?

Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from ...

See all answers

How does VxRail compare with Cisco HyperFlex HX Series?

VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company ...

See all answers

What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?

VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not bein...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerFlex?

Dell PowerFlex is a premium software-defined infrastructure solution and while the initial investment may seem higher...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerFlex?

Area of Improvement: While PowerFlex Manager is powerful, the UI could be more intuitive, especially for first-time u...

See all answers

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 resea...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE SimpliVity?

Standalone HPE SimpliVity is more expensive than other OEMs and solutions. Regarding the software side, VMware is cos...

See all answers

What needs improvement with HPE SimpliVity?

I haven't noticed anything that should be better in HPE SimpliVity, as I haven't done extensive work on this platform...

See all answers

Comparisons

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 19% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 10% of the time

VxRail vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 10% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

VxRail vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 41% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 6% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 6% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 5% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 3% of the time

More Dell PowerFlex Competitors

VxRail vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 26% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 14% of the time

VMware vSAN vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 6% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 4% of the time

More HPE SimpliVity Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

May 2026

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerFlex

May 2026

Download Dell PowerFlex product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE SimpliVity

May 2026

Download HPE SimpliVity product report

Also Known As

No data available

VxFlex, VxRack FLEX, PowerFlex

SimpliVity, HPE HCI

Overview

The Cisco HyperFlex HX Data Platform is a purpose-built, high-performance, scale-out file system with a wide array of enterprise-class data management services. The data platform’s innovations redefine distributed storage technology, giving you complete hyper-convergence with enterprise storage features:

Enterprise-class data management
Continuous data optimization
Securely encrypted storage
Dynamic data placement
Clusterwide parallel data distribution
Linear and incremental scaling
API-based data platform architecture
A simplified approach

Cisco

Dell PowerFlex is a software-defined storage infrastructure delivering modern architecture and versatile deployment for on-premises or cloud. It achieves high performance, scalable storage, and workload consolidation through advanced automation.

PowerFlex's VMware compatibility ensures seamless integration, offering flexibility in compute and storage scaling. With its hyper-converged infrastructure, it caters to AI, cloud, and database environments, providing robust automation, resilience, and security. Flexible deployment options are complemented by a single-window management system, prioritizing cost optimization. However, enhancements are needed in monitoring tools, user interface, and AI functionality. Migration from Hyper-V and licensing flexibility also require attention, while improved documentation could simplify usage. Integration with services and streamlined upgrade processes are essential.

What are the key features of Dell PowerFlex?

VMware Compatibility: Ensures smooth integration and flexibility in deployment.
Scalability: Independently scales compute and storage resources as needed.
High Availability: Maintains continuous availability across deployed systems.
Low Latency Performance: Optimizes storage and compute operations for minimal delays.
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure: Combines compute, storage, and networking for streamlined operations.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Ease of Management: Simplifies administration with a unified management interface.
Cost Optimization: Provides opportunities for reduced operational costs.
Flexibility: Offers diverse deployment options tailored to specific needs.
Automation Tools: Enhances efficiency through robust automation capabilities.
Robust Storage Capacity: Supports growing data requirements with substantial storage options.

PowerFlex is essential in industries requiring support for mission-critical workloads and large-scale applications. It is instrumental for deploying storage, compute nodes, hyper-converged infrastructure, and private clouds. The platform integrates compute, storage, and networking, optimizing performance for modern applications like AI video analytics and disaster recovery.

Dell Technologies

HPE SimpliVity provides businesses with advanced features such as inline deduplication, compression, and instant recovery, enabling efficient backup and scalability. Its integration with VMware and centralized management fosters ease of use, establishing a streamlined IT infrastructure.

HPE SimpliVity stands as a comprehensive solution for organizations seeking a robust infrastructure capable of handling diverse workloads. Its features like integrated backup and disaster recovery ensure quick restores and high availability. Known for its efficient use of storage and data processing capabilities, it helps reduce operational costs. This system offers a reliable framework for virtualized environments, enhancing disaster recovery processes, IT operations, and application hosting while supporting workloads such as Oracle, SAP, and SQL.

What are HPE SimpliVity's key features?

Inline Deduplication: Minimizes data redundancy, enhancing storage efficiency.
Compression: Optimizes storage, reducing space requirements.
Instant Recovery: Facilitates rapid restoration of data and applications.
Centralized Management: Simplifies IT operations with unified management.
Scalable Architecture: Adapts to business growth seamlessly.

What benefits should users seek in HPE SimpliVity reviews?

Cost Reduction: Achieves savings through efficient data processing and storage utilization.
High Availability: Ensures consistent service and data accessibility.
VMware Integration: Provides compatibility and smooth operations in VMware environments.
Quick Disaster Recovery: Enables swift restoration processes for continued business operations.

Organizations deploy HPE SimpliVity mainly for virtualized environments, focusing on disaster recovery, IT operations, and application hosting. Extensively used in sectors for VDI, backups, and data center tasks, it supports major workloads like Oracle and SAP, simplifying infrastructure management while ensuring high availability.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

BluePearl Veterinary Partners, Ready Pac Foods, Bryant University, Bellevue Group, KPIT Technologies, City Harvest

Canopy, 8x8Inc., Atos, Canadian Pacific, City of Denton, CenturyLink, BNP Paribas, Asyaport, EDF, CSC, Fox Sports, Insight, Hunter, KPIT, Paetec, Rosetta Stone, Sonda, Xerox

Red Bull Racing, Mandarin Oriental, Brigham Young University, UCLA, Merlin Entertainments, Sasa Cosmetics, Travelport, St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Princess House

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: May 2026.

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