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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).
Xavier Perez - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a deployment phase that is straightforward but needs improvement in the area of scalability
The main issue with HPE SimpliVity is that you are very attached to VMware or VMware dependencies because the tool works with VMware technology. HPE SimpliVity is an add-on from VMware. Nowadays, my company has a lot of concerns about VMware's licensing policy. Another big concern of the tool is related to security because one has to continuously update patch vulnerabilities that are appearing continuously in VMware's different versions. Actually, the foundation of all the architecture is VMware and that is one of the main issues with the tool. My company is analyzing our virtual infrastructure strategy to see if we can move to Nutanix because maybe it may work better and might have another approach. Nutanix is absolutely independent of VMware. I could add that since HPE SimpliVity is very precisely dependent on VMware, it is not open to containers unlike Nutanix, for example. The aforementioned area is a concern that needs to be resolved by HPE.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution scales extremely well."
"It saves space for data centers, which is good."
"The automation is a valuable feature, it's interesting."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The possibility to share the workload is one of its most valuable features. We have many applications which have need of workloads only a few times in a month, so we share HyperFlex with them."
"Easy to spin up and operate virtual machines without the overhead of managing a storage network."
"The product is easy to manage and flexible for upgrading without major changes."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The solution is user-friendly."
"We have not had any problem with customer support at SimpliVity."
"SimpliVity's console is useful."
"PCX card implementation improves speed."
"The ability to backup our data without requiring additional storage media or software application was a huge gain."
"The replication from the different centers (the main to the secondary) has been very great. It is good value for us."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"The HyperGuarantee is unique and the accelerator card is the primary IP with the product."
 

Cons

"We need to be able to scale out and not just up. When you want to scale up or scale out, you are quite limited."
"The pricing is pretty expensive."
"Cisco HyperFlex should decrease the amount of memory needed from the Controller VM that controls the physical discs. They control the discs by using the virtual VM over every ESXi host and the VM consumes memory and consumes more hardware resources. They have to improve that by decreasing the amount of required memory and CPUs to control this disc on the server."
"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."
"The problem is that we always have to keep an eye out for new releases to make sure that the version we're running is up-to-date."
"The documentation could be substantially better, but the product itself does everything it needs to do."
"The initial setup is very complex because there were some issues. It is not clear to how set up this solution."
"They should have more blade options and more configuration flexibility. Also, the price is expensive. It should be cheaper but it is worth the price."
"We had some hardware compatibility issues with the earlier versions of HPE SimpliVity. We upgraded to the latest version a few months ago, and since then, there is no hardware failure, and it is better. They don't provide a portal to create a ticket directly for the HPE SimpliVity. We have a web portal to create a ticket when we have an issue, but for HPE SimpliVity, we need to call the local vendor for support. If they are not able to resolve the issue, they contact the global support, which takes more time. Technology is moving very fast, and everybody nowadays is focusing on the cloud base. In the future, they should integrate it with the cloud base for the backup."
"SimpliVity has this thing where if a virtual machine is on the wrong node with two nodes, it will be optimized. However, if one of the nodes won't be optimized, then it will complain about that. It will give you a little warning to say the source is not optimized. Please move this to one of the other hosts. They should just add a little thing in SimpliVity to move all the VMs to the right host, because it is a pain to load balance across the three nodes when all these VMs are complaining and you have to move them to one."
"If there was anything I would like to see, it would be indexed backups."
"SimpliVity has no file server services. That's one of the solution's biggest shortcomings."
"There may be issues around scaling."
"To install or to update it is more complicated than other solutions."
"I think that they should have their own hyper-converged system."
"The setup was complex, as it has multiple integrations with multiple orients."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"HyperFlex is relatively expensive, but you get good value for money."
"It is highly priced compared to other vendors."
"There is a license required to use this solution."
"If you don't look at the costs of the systems, the scalability is quite good."
"We have a yearly license."
"Cisco is quite expensive, but not in the initial first buy."
"We would not have invested if we didn't feel the return was there for our customers."
"Our licensing costs are large, but it is combined between all of the Cisco products that we have."
"The product is expensive."
"The price of the solution is reasonable. We have purchased a five-year license with all the support and upgrades."
"For three years, it is $60,000 for three nodes. It is quite pricey."
"The price should be cheaper."
"Its licensing is yearly."
"The solution is affordable and quite reasonably priced in terms of the product one gets."
"Licensing costs are on a monthly basis. There are additional costs."
"Its licensing is quite easy. There is a model license, but it depends on the system you buy. There are no extra costs. There is only one license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
61%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
4%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

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?
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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
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: March 2025.
848,476 professionals have used our research since 2012.