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Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs NetApp HCI [EOL] 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
NetApp HCI [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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).
MB
Chief Information Officer at Lucart S.p.A.
Crashed continuously, complex to deploy, and bad after-sales support - NETAPP FIXED the problems in 2022
Their after-sales support, SLA, and third-parties availability should be improved. NetApp's support is very difficult to engage. We have an SLA of onsite support within 24 hours. but they don't respect the SLA. Its stability was very bad. It has been crashing continuously. In one year, we got three crashes, which is unbelievable for an appliance that is guaranteed for 10 years without any crashes. In 2022, NetApp Italy, driven by the country manager Davide Marini, fixed all our issues and added additional computation power for free. This is a great example of customer care. They could have done it right the first time of course, but admitting the errors and putting in place such a remediation plan has been a very professional behavior.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Less rack space, decreased power and cooling costs, overall information technology team efficiency, and a single point of management."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX has improved the way our organization functions on the storage side by having one big storage space for hosting VMs."
"By configuring networks, we are saving power."
"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."
"Performance-wise, everything is good. So far, we haven't had any issues. There has been no downtime at all."
"The software defines networking, storage, and processing."
"Cisco HyperFlex is helping us to put everything in centrally so that we can manage in one place."
"The scalability of the product is quite good overall - as long as you plan correctly from the outset."
"Since implementing this solution, we have to do less work."
"HCI definitely improved how flexible we scale, and our entrance into the cloud. The features are very rich, in terms of both avenues. It's helped us flexibly move and shift our workloads around, back and forth."
"The stability is fantastic; in my mind, it's one of the best storage products and the software around it has got to be the best across all different storage environments."
"The most valuable feature, currently, is the density of the system as hardware. I'm able to leverage the density of the product and remove bigger hardware which requires more space, cooling, and power costs, obviously. There are cost savings, obviously."
"It is easy to administrate the solution, and the company handles its technical support well."
"The most valuable aspects are that it's an all-in-one solution and it's very self-contained."
"The benefits for our organization are the performance that we're able to get out of it, as well as the guaranteed minimum performance from a storage perspective."
"HCI has helped with storage persistence across private and hybrid clouds for the last year. It's faster and more reliable with minimal downtime, as it doesn't require any maintenance."
 

Cons

"The initial setup can be complex."
"They should have more blade options and more configuration flexibility."
"The architecture separates data, computing, memory, and storage into different parts."
"I would like it to be easier to manage the server, create VMs, and manage the VMs on the client."
"In the next release, I would like to see them able to connect to the public cloud."
"When it comes to customer needs, the licensing price could be better."
"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."
"I would like it to be easier to manage the server, create VMs, and manage the VMs on the client."
"There's a limitation with a block in the file. That's where I see that it's not very efficient for upgrades and for management."
"The fact that it doesn't have all the data points we need and all the historical data that I would like. I find that a lot of the performance analysis is done through support, where they have something that we don't have. It would be nice just to have all that on-prem."
"My biggest pain point is the installation part. I would like to see the appliance itself remove the entire switch that goes behind it and figure out how to do all the cluster interconnects within the box itself."
"HCI has not enabled us to consolidate workloads or break down silos and has not increased application performance. It has also not resulted in more efficient use of compute resources."
"The networking needs improvement."
"I would like to see the implementation process improved."
"The reason I give it a nine instead of a ten is because of the need for pre-check work. While it is simpler than most products, there is still a lot of configuration that needs to be done."
"It would be nice to have better access to tutorials and a test environment for simulations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We negotiated with Cisco and we got some price benefit from that."
"The product could be cheaper."
"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 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."
"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."
"The cost is expensive, but there is a chance to save money in the future."
"I would like the pricing to be cheaper."
"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."
"Where we lost nearly 75 percent of our infrastructure due to a malicious attack and were able to recover two and a half hours into it due to the integration, it saved us and all of our customers. Because we were able to recover so fast from the attack, the solution paid for itself right there."
"Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."
"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."
"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."
"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."
"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."
"This solution reduced our maintenance costs. We were going to have to pay one to two million dollars to put in compute nodes. We are avoiding those costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
16%
Educational Organization
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Performing Arts
6%
Marketing Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 Enterprise9
Large Enterprise19
 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

BluePearl Veterinary Partners, Ready Pac Foods, Bryant University, Bellevue Group, KPIT Technologies, City Harvest
American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.