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Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs Rubrik 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
Rubrik
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (4th), Cloud Backup (4th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (5th)
 

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).
KB
Information Technology Specialist at LIGHTHOUSE DOCUMENT TECHNOLOGIES, INC
Technical support has improved my data management process but I encounter GUI and cost challenges
The solution is available in the Azure Marketplace, but approaching directly is more cost-effective. The Marketplace approach incurs additional platform and reporting costs. We initially built Rubrik at host level and DB level. We encountered latency issues when reverting back, with numerous snapshots available. This resulted in increased costs and occupied spaces. I performed manual deletion of snapshots and verified with the Rubrik team for confirmation. The GUI reporting functionality lacks flexibility. For instance, obtaining specific server reports considering drive space and backup quantities is not possible, as it only provides overall reporting.

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 is a solution that best suits thre needs of our organization."
"Stretch cluster allows us to warranty a service for the customer."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX is that it is self-contained."
"The most valuable features are scalability and the easy operation - if it works. You can configure everything from just one window."
"It is a hyper-converged solution which integrates with the network instead of the product."
"Most of our users are Cisco customers, so it fits in within the suites we use. Primarily for me, as a solution architect, it's the technology and architecture that is the most valuable. I know from my technical colleagues that it's easy to use and for the customer, the up-time is the most valuable asset. It's running, has low failure, and so on which is why we use it."
"Scalability is easy and simple."
"A reduced infrastructure complexity and fast to rack and go."
"The solution’s ransomware recovery, from a security perspective, is one of the biggest features of the product. We don't have to worry about the operational complexity of air-gapped backups and can rely more on the immutability approach. It is a highly valued feature in this solution."
"The feature that I have found most valuable from Rubrik is its protection against ransomware attacks. Rubrik is a very nice, very good solution because it is able to protect your data and you have the possibility from the backup to detect any abnormal behavior, like a ransomware attack. You are able to detect and restore very easily with this solution. This is a major differentiator in comparison to the other competitors."
"I haven't encountered any bugs or glitches using the solution."
"Rubrik is cheap, and you get good performance."
"The search functionality is second to none as the speed of the search is fast across the whole system and predictive."
"Not having to specify a time to run a backup with a fixed schedule is something that's really beneficial. In the past we had to schedule and try to manually stagger things over the window, to back up everything. Because Rubrik is SLA-based, you say, "Well, I need it to fit in this window here," and it just backs it up when it's most convenient for the Brik and for the third-party system. It looks at the CPU usage and says, "Okay, it's not as busy now. I know I've got time to take the backup." That's a real advantage."
"The most valuable feature is the Instant Recovery, where we can restore a VM or SQL database or any server or application, and have it up and running on their appliance within a few seconds."
 

Cons

"I would like it to be easier to manage the server, create VMs, and manage the VMs on the client."
"Lacks some integration and documentation could be improved."
"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."
"We had a bit of complexity to think about how to migrate our legacy infrastructure into Cisco HyperFlex."
"Unlike other options, you need to pay a subscription to Cisco yearly instead of paying for the hardware outright, which makes it more expensive in the long run."
"Maybe a better version is required to gather all of the information to allow HyperFlex to bring everything online more rapidly."
"The architecture separates data, computing, memory, and storage into different parts."
"In the next release, I would like to see them able to connect to the public cloud."
"With multiple Rubrik clusters setup in an environment, it becomes painfully obvious that this product needs a central management console."
"I would like to see more openness for partners to access and assist in system management. Currently, access is limited, often handled by Rubrik personnel, likely due to security concerns."
"They should give more access to the backend capabilities. From a customer point of view, you do not have access to all the features on the system. You have to engage their support to perform some of the tasks. It would be helpful for an experienced engineer to be able to go and do some of those tasks prior to contacting the support."
"I would like to have a built-in index searching ability of files/system files within the Rubrik interface to determine if a file or item exists, rather than just recovering it, and then doing a search for the file afterwards."
"The only thing that can be improved is catering for open source databases because at the moment it doesn't cater for Mongo, MySQL, and Postgres."
"I would like for unmanaged backups to be able to be saved in a separate policy."
"It does not offer image-level backups for Hyper-V 2012."
"In terms of what could be improved with Rubrik, we need to improve the backup for remote sites. The competitors are stronger in terms of their remote office back up. Rubrik needs to improve to be stronger for backup. This is the main thing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a recurring cost for the VMware license and the HyperFlex licenses."
"Cisco is quite expensive, but not in the initial first buy."
"For customers in the private sector, this product can have a very high return on investment."
"Our licensing costs are large, but it is combined between all of the Cisco products that we have."
"HyperFlex is a little pricey."
"There is a license required to use this solution."
"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."
"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."
"Rubrik is priced high, but it was the solution that was providing us encryption and was secure. The solution price is high, but you get what you pay for."
"Rubrik is expensive, but due to its data management capabilities, customers can save a lot by reducing hardware and storage."
"There are additional costs for add-ons, and they recently upgraded a new cluster, which also carries a price."
"Rubrik was probably the most expensive solution but in the long run, it's justified by the value of the data that it protects."
"We do perpetual licensing... It was all based on the amount of storage we needed to use. We did a cost analysis compared to Tivoli and it was in line with other solutions."
"Rubrik is not the cheapest solution, but we've been happy with the time savings that we have seen. At least from what we have spent so far, we have been happy with the return on investment."
"You need to understand what you're getting for the price. You are getting a backup solution, which is state of the art and works absolutely flawlessly. You are getting the storage needed to store your backups. You have all the sexy features that a modern backup solution can provide you, like deduplication, erasure coding, compression, fast execution time, secured data, and top-notch customer support. So, it might be expensive on paper. It's not free, but when you analyze what you are getting and the time you can spend on other stuff, then Rubrik is very cost-efficient."
"You pay a premium for Rubrik, but you're getting a premium service that comes with immutable backups, instant recovery, and world-class support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
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 Business23
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise55
 

Questions from the Community

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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...
Which would you choose - Rubrik or Veeam Backup & Replication?
Veeam Backup & Replication provides an easy-to-set-up solution to the issue of data storage and recovery. Setting it up is a relatively simple affair. For the most part it prompts you from scre...
What do you like most about Rubrik?
It's easy to manage and has an innovated solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rubrik?
Regarding pricing, Rubrik is a costly solution, and I would rate it an eight.
 

Overview

 

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