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Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs Dell vSAN Ready Nodes comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 HyperFlex HX-Series [...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
HCI (10th)
 

Featured Reviews

Nuno Mendes - PeerSpot reviewer
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).
KuldeepSingh4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Experience improved efficiency and customer satisfaction with enhanced integration and management capabilities
Scalability involves two types of environments: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and non-VCF environment where we use VMware Validated Foundation. With VCF we have significant automation built-in within the VCF console within SDDC manager as the primary management console. For non-VCF environments, it depends on customer choice. For small environments, we do manual scalability and sometimes use Terraform scripts to keep the host ready and add in the cluster automatically. For large environments with frequent scalability actions, we propose the Terraform solution that builds ESXi, does necessary configuration, and automatically starts up for associating with the existing environment. If scaling is infrequent, with one or two hosts per month, it is a manual job. From a challenge perspective, it seems easier, with just a few pre-checks regarding make and model compatibility, disks, and server health on the hardware level.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This product has improved the way our organization functions in the way that we have less work, we have simple communication through the VPN, and we have better confidentiality and security."
"Its most valuable feature is its flexibility."
"My advice is go for it; I had never had experience with hyperconverged, and it was a very nice experience."
"Great integration with backup software."
"Scalability is easy and simple."
"It's easy to get the tool started."
"The solution is stable."
"It allows us to authorize our residents to come in using their own personal devices to access any of our clinical applications and ensure that the PHI is secure and protected."
"The tool's most valuable feature is high availability."
"The solution immediately expands storage area when you add nodes."
"They are heading in the right direction and moving to integrate everything with a hybrid cloud, and moving workloads back and forth."
"Dell's technical support is generally very good."
"The benefit of using vSAN is that it's easy to manage on vCenter, you can see if there are issues, get recommendations, and overall, it's highly fault-free which is beneficial because we want to minimize downtime."
"The most valuable feature is the set of user tools that are available."
"The tool's most valuable features are compression and its usage in Kubernetes."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is scalable"
 

Cons

"Some of our customers do not want to adopt the Cisco ACI solution. They want to manage Cisco HyperFlex by integrating it with their own management solution."
"Comparable solutions with switches, storage, and services are cheaper than HyperFlex. It should be cheaper."
"The product needs work in the area of deduplication which currently is inefficient."
"In the next release, Cisco should add more integration and management capabilities as well as some tweaks to the dashboard that make it more user-friendly. They could also add support for multiple hypervisors."
"The initial setup is very complex because there were some issues. It is not clear to how set up this solution."
"There are sometimes issues with memory failure."
"What happens is, if it's poorly architected, that if something's screwed up, everything is screwed up."
"Cisco technical support often makes things too complicated."
"When customers want to expand capacity but all the drive slots are full, they are forced to buy new servers or nodes which adds more costs with licenses and hardware, rendering it less scalable than other storage setups."
"Dell vSAN Ready Nodes' deployment is complex."
"I think the upgrades could be improved. If you compare it to other HCI solutions, like VxRail, the upgrade process is fully automated whereas on vSAN ReadyNodes it's a bit complicated and we have to do it manually."
"Scalability is an area that could be improved. We are looking at a maximum of 32 nodes now in a cluster, but going to 64 or 128 would be a major advantage."
"We have experienced some issues with performance."
"The deployment is done by doing it one by one and could be simplified."
"The power switch on the hardware is located in a poor location where it can accidentally be pushed. In an update, they should solve this issue so people do not push it accidentally to have their service go down. A possible solution is the switch should be inside."
"The solution doesn't scale."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"One of the challenges we have with HyperFlex is that they have a subscription fee for the operating system that runs on it, and if I remember correctly, it costs approximately $15,000 USD per month."
"Comparable solutions with switches, storage, and services are cheaper than HyperFlex. It should be cheaper."
"The price is a bit too high."
"We currently have a perpetual license, which is kind of unlimited, so we don't have the normal licensing cost, yet."
"They are not the cheapest on the market. But there's an old saying I like to quote: "If you know that you are getting what you pay for, it's fine if it's expensive.""
"For customers in the private sector, this product can have a very high return on investment."
"The product is expensive. Other solutions are cheaper."
"Our licensing is Hybrid. We have all of our applications for billing and outage management through this."
"The solution is more expensive than a traditional array. The prices are skyrocketing."
"Comparing the price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes to other solutions it is not expensive."
"There is a problem, which is the lack of an integrated price structure."
"The tool's pricing is competitive compared to others. The tool's licensing is based on annual subscriptions."
"We have a four-year contract to use Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes."
"The price of the solution was reasonable."
"My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the solution. The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise57
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

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 core to edge and multi-cloud environments. It helps IT and OT teams deploy hyper...
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 to invest in. Even if you are working with a limited budget, this platform offer...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
There is no specific licensing model for vSAN ReadyNodes as it is linked with Broadcom VMware's solutions rather than Dell's. As a group under Comcast, we receive very good pricing from Dell due to...
What needs improvement with Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
I would want VMware to ensure that when there's a hardware failure on a host, it should gracefully migrate the VMs to another host available in the cluster without restarting, which would be a grea...
What is your primary use case for Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
I am familiar with VMware Workstation, but we don't actually use a workstation. We only use ESXi because we're running a big organization. We have people that are responsible for a Citrix farm that...
 

Also Known As

No data available
vSAN Ready Nodes
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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