Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs FlexPod XCS comparison

"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is its performance."

"The solution is stable, it has been able to perform all the tasks we have used it for, and it is very reliable."

"Cisco HyperFlex HX has improved the way our organization functions in the way that the time to deliver a VM takes me five minutes."

"The initial setup is very straightforward."

"Technical support is good but we need it for every piece we do."

"It is helpful as a backup solution."

"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is the integration with everything in a much smoother, such as in physical and virtual environments. VMware NSX is a simpler solution but, Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is more robust compared to VMware NSX."

"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX is that it is self-contained."

"Technical support has been very helpful, and also very polite."

"Honestly, it's making sure that you only have one upgrade path when various patches are released."

"FlexPods allow us to go through and roll out compute, having a converged infrastructure with the same level of simplicity that you would expect of a hyper-converged."

"Manual deployments of SAP workloads can take months, but with this automation that we have now, we can deploy within weeks or even hours in some cases."

"The vendor delivers a fully-configured prebuilt system with a certain baseline on it."

"As long as it's within your budget, it's a great one-shot deal that allows you to really have an integrated platform that you can just build off of."

"Performance-wise, it is actually doing quite well. The end users are very happy with it."

"This sounds dumb, but it just works."

"The scalability could use improvement."

"You have to get the same servers with the same storage; they need to be identical. However, in vSAN or in VMware we don't have to do that."

"I think the documentation is a big con for Hyperflex. More substantial, straightforward documentation would help end users make more of their investment."

"I would like to see them expand onto the cloud."

"The product does not have a cloud version...The product should be made more flexible in terms of integration capabilities."

"If we compare it with VMware, the VMware product is basically very open, and it can be easily integrated with any platform. VMware product is also available on the cloud and is not an appliance-based product, whereas Cisco HyperFlex is an appliance-based product. Companies that want to use HCI as a platform or as a service would prefer something without an appliance. A SaaS-based product is better for a customer who is using the cloud and has multiple resources, workflows, and devices on the cloud and wants to go for a hyper-converged solution. This is where improvement is needed. In addition to an appliance-based product, Cisco should provide a SaaS-based product. Its price should be lower. Cisco needs to work on the pricing model for this product. Its price is a big road blocker when competing against Nutanix and VMware, which are its main competitors."

"The initial setup is very complex because there were some issues. It is not clear to how set up this solution."

"In the next release, I would like to see them able to connect to the public cloud."

"I would like to see more storage-related features."

"Unified management would be really nice, having one a single pane of glass to manage everything do with the solution."

"The initial setup is complex because it has to be done in a certain way."

"The service catalogue and gallery. I find it difficult to go through documentation, and I would like to see user cases we can refer to."

"We dislike going online with the robot stuff. Many times, it has delayed our reaching out to a real support engineer."

"In the digital future, I would like to see included more code compatibility. The storage should be more mobile."

"The downside is that the administration is a little bit complex."

"There is room for improvement in the GUI for the NetApp side."

"Cisco is quite expensive, but not in the initial first buy."

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

"There is a recurring cost for the VMware license and the HyperFlex licenses."

"We negotiated with Cisco and we got some price benefit from that."

"The licensing is perpetual and the only thing that you may need to pay for on a monthly basis is if you're going to use their cloud-based management features."

"HyperFlex is a little pricey."

"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."

"HyperFlex is relatively expensive, but you get good value for money."

"The footprint in the data center is quite large, especially when you scale out. Maybe find some hardware in the future, where if a new blade comes out, then Cisco can say, "Look, we'll buy those blades back off you, and we'll give you this blade for X amount of money." A buyback scheme would be good for hardware, and even NetApp as well. Something like a buyback scheme for blades and stuff moving forward would be good, because I know that they're going to put more power into them. E.g., replacing four blades might equal one blade, which would be awesome, but we are still going to have those four blades around. Maybe having something where it will give you this much money for these blades so we can upgrade. That would be perfect."

"We purchased from CDW•G. They are great partners on the government side."

"We have absolutely seen ROI. We have saved between two to four million dollars on travel alone over the past 24 months."

"Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year."

"It is cost-effective."

"We have saved time and money for new service deployments. Without FlexPod, it probably takes about ten hours. With FlexPod, within two hours, we are up and running. So, we have seen about an 80 percent time decrease."

"We have seen an 80 percent improvement in application performance."

"We have reduced our manpower with the solution."