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Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs HPE SimpliVity 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
HPE SimpliVity
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
153
Ranking in other categories
HCI (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Nuno Mendes - PeerSpot reviewer
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).
Shaijith KB - PeerSpot reviewer
Hardware acceleration and enhanced performance but has support challenges
There are some problems with support from HPE. Tickets often go to Tunisian engineers who do not attend promptly. Updates are required when we have an update on vCenter or host level, and we must procure support from HPE SimpliVity team, which is complicated. Some IPs are not reachable due to subnet issues. Installation by the HPE support team can be messy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a hyper-converged solution which integrates with the network instead of the product."
"This is not the only product we use, so we have other solutions to compare it with. We can compare different products and different vendors and tell our customers which products have which advantages and disadvantages so that they can leverage these products in their own environment. This product helps us to understand the customer's needs and what issues they can run into."
"It is a stable and scalable solution."
"With our four HyperFlex HX hosts (consisting of processor, memory, and disk), the performance is very fast and we have no problems at all. In all of the five years that we have been using HyperFlex, we haven't needed to increase our budget to buy additional hosts."
"Cisco offers very good quality."
"Easy to spin up and operate virtual machines without the overhead of managing a storage network."
"Deduplication is a valuable feature available in Cisco HyperFlex."
"The solution can scale up and out."
"The most valuable feature for us is its integration, as it provides an entire solution in a single box."
"The solution's simplicity is its most valuable feature. The usability is also good."
"HPE SimpliVity is simple, it's very friendly."
"The compression and deduplication ratio."
"Technical support is perfect. They explain to us the solution in a very clear and simple way. When we call them, they know the right answer and get the right person automatically."
"No SAN switches and having a native backup is pretty cool."
"SimpliVity has hardware acceleration, which frees up CPU utilization."
"The most valuable aspect of the HPE SimpliVity is the DL380 G10. We have mostly been using VMware and Hyper-V. On one side we have Hyper-V and the other side we have the VMware."
 

Cons

"They should give us a little more information about how to use the CLI and offer more commands."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could improve by having the documents be more readily available and the support could be more flexible."
"A stretch function is really needed. Germans think that because of the high availability and the security that two data centers are better but we want edge all in one cluster. This is a needed feature, the cluster feature, and we'd also like to see a possibility for ROBO offices."
"If we could have just a single pane of glass, where everything can be managed through that one app, rather than have multiple apps, it would be great."
"There should be the opportunity to create more than one div group"
"Cisco's technical support originally was outstanding, but it has declined over the last 12 months. I've heard they're trying to do better, but I haven't been overly impressed with their support recently for HyperFlex."
"The additional feature I would like to see included in the next release of this solution is more security. We want to add more data servers to all the hosts all over the world. We have 140 hosts that connect to one data center in Manila."
"The deployment could be made a little bit easier, as we still seem to struggle with it a little bit for a day or so to get it running."
"​I do not see the product really working in productivity at the moment with real loads.​"
"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."
"The installation is quite easy but it could still be improved."
"The upgrades need improvement."
"The ease of new deployments could be improved."
"Needs decoupling of distributed data fabric to run in a hyperscale deployment outside the hypervisor on dedicated nodes."
"Integration with external solutions outside the HPE posed challenges."
"Let us populate the entire node; right now, there are 24 slots in a server and you're only allowed to populate 14."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive. Other solutions are cheaper."
"We currently have a perpetual license, which is kind of unlimited, so we don't have the normal licensing cost, yet."
"Our licensing costs are large, but it is combined between all of the Cisco products that we have."
"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."
"We are on an annual subscription and the price is fair."
"The pricing is a bit expensive."
"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."
"It's much more expensive than rack servers. It was an issue, but when you compare it to the number of people who were administrative assistants before, it's on the positive ROI side. It's much cheaper."
"There is a one-time purchase needed for the license for HPE SimpliVity. The solution is expensive, but it is worth the money."
"There are additional costs for storage."
"The hardware is expensive. For the same price, Cisco can provide more hardware specifications for us."
"We're paying $3,000-$4,000 a month."
"The price of the solution is reasonable. We have purchased a five-year license with all the support and upgrades."
"It's a costly solution and is more expensive than VxRail."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis. The licensing cost also includes vCenter at a cost in the cloud solution."
"ESXi licensing is a big part of initial investment if you do not already have that covered."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
44%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
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 ...
What do you like most about HPE SimpliVity?
The solution's technical support is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE SimpliVity?
The price is almost equal to VMware vSAN, making it not much cost saving. However, the time-saving during upgrades is notable.
 

Also Known As

No data available
SimpliVity, HPE HCI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BluePearl Veterinary Partners, Ready Pac Foods, Bryant University, Bellevue Group, KPIT Technologies, City Harvest
Red Bull Racing, Mandarin Oriental, Brigham Young University, UCLA, Merlin Entertainments, Sasa Cosmetics, Travelport, St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Princess House
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