Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs NetApp HCI [EOL] comparison

"It increases efficiency, decreases the cost, and manages the network in one single way. That's the most important thing."

"The scalability of the product is quite good overall - as long as you plan correctly from the outset."

"Easy to spin up and operate virtual machines without the overhead of managing a storage network."

"The most valuable feature for our company is that it works internally. We have a lot of internal projects for optimization."

"Cisco HyperFlex is helping us to put everything in centrally so that we can manage in one place."

"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."

"When we use it for VDI solutions, it is very easy to deploy and support."

"By configuring networks, we are saving power."

"It is easy to set up, and you don't have to do much work to get it to do what it needs to do."

"Stability is one of the things we absolutely have to have, because if the HCI is down, our assembly lines are down, and that could potentially lead to our customer being down. If our customer is down, that's $10,000 a minute; and any time the assembly line is down, that could potentially lead to overtime. We don't get to charge one and a half times for something we billed just because you happened to build it on overtime. Any technology we bring in, has to be built for what I call "three in the morning." It can't be built for whenever everybody's in the plant, everybody can watch it, and everybody can babysit. It has to be built for three a.m. when you've got a skeletal staff there, and you just have to know that it's just running. As I stand here, right now, I don't have to check my phone, I don't have to check my email. I know it's running. Period"

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the SolidFire interface."

"It has reduced our hypervisor footprint by around 20%."

"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 scalability is great, because it can scale independently."

"Simple setup and having the storage and compute right on one deployment is the most valuable aspect of this solution. They're able to get set up and ready to go and start having their DevOp team deploy to that environment."

"We like SnapMirror and we've been using it for many years. We also like the object storage tools, as well as cloud sync for customers wanting to integrate between the cloud and local."

"The solution could improve by having more customization."

"It needs improvements in terms of I/O. Sometimes I have felt it is slightly slow while we are trying to provision VMs or access VMs."

"It needs more detailed documentation."

"I would like a lighter product; something which can be carried by a mere human. The typical size still looks like a stack of data center-sized servers, which is typically fine, but not so good if you want to carry it around."

"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."

"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."

"Does not support the stretch cluster, and the interface is not good."

"We would like to have the ability to not have to reboot while doing updates. Being able to work through updates with as minimal amount of impact to users."

"I would like to see higher level graphics support because we are going to be doing some virtual desktop for our CAD software, and I want to be able to support AutoCAD and Cantillo on remote desktop machines."

"I would like to see the implementation process improved."

"I'm not a fan of how they don't log you out properly from some of their web tools 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."

"The administration side of it needs to be improved. We expect an easier interface and a single upgrade for updating the infrastructure."

"The deployment process has room for improvement. I would like for it to be a cookie-cutter deployment."

"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."

"If you want to have a really dense data center then it's hard to have a big chunk of cabling going through everything."

"We have a yearly license."

"Comparable solutions with switches, storage, and services are cheaper than HyperFlex. It should 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."

"The product could be cheaper."

"The pricing is a bit expensive."

"It is relatively expensive, but it can easily return value by freeing up other resources."

"Here in Brazil... it is very expensive. It's very hard for almost all companies to buy even the small version of this solution."

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

"Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market."

"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."

"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."

"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."

"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."

"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."

"Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."