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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 (3rd), Cloud Backup (3rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (4th)
 

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 flexibility is its most valuable feature; the ability to quickly deploy a number of help machines, and it is not constrained by what we want to do."
"From an infrastructure level you achieve the highest availability, I am talking about 100% availability from a storage perspective."
"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."
"It is a hyper-converged solution which integrates with the network instead of the product."
"We see ROI every day; the return on investment is fantastic and is the primary reason why we deployed these clusters all around our site locations so that our SE engineers can show the customers."
"The scalability has been very good for us since we were stuck on our old platform with old drives and hardware, and HyperFlex has given us flexibility where we can scale up and down, allowing our servers to react and do large scales for data storage, which helps a lot."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX is that it is self-contained."
"The price of the solution is good, especially when it comes to complex network solutions, such as UCS and Connect."
"Having said that, we can instantly recover an entire customer's environment in minutes and run happily on the system until a storage vMotion is completed to production storage without any issues."
"The system is able to determine when it is the best time to do backups. This is SLA-driven, and if it is not possible to maintain this SLA, the system will tell you too."
"I haven't encountered any bugs or glitches using the solution."
"Rubrik is stable and easy to use."
"Rubrik has the best vendor support that I've dealt with; they're probably the best, they're the most knowledgeable, they're the most respectful, they call a lot better, and they will follow through to the end."
"Adaptative backup and SLAs simply allow you to tell a machine to backup without taking care of the backup window."
"The thing that sets Rubrik apart is the instant recovery feature."
"Live Mount is where we do the majority of our big recoveries, unless it is a file recovery. A file recovery takes a few minutes to restore to where the file in the event a file was accidentally deleted by a user, etc. There has been at least a 90 percent reduction in recovery time based on our previous solution, from the need to recover something to when it's actually recovered went from hours to minutes."
 

Cons

"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."
"Its price is a big road blocker when competing against Nutanix and VMware, which are its main competitors."
"Stability is really poor, especially the storage stability. We lost data. There were disruptions of clusters and that's one big pain point of the solution. It's not stable enough, the documentation is not good, there's not much documentation available. For every call we need a tech engineer."
"Technical support is very good. Not excellent, but good. There's still not enough data available on the web."
"They should have more blade options and more configuration flexibility."
"The initial setup can be complex."
"The setup was complex, especially since we usually do all the planning, sizing, and workflows before integration."
"Its price could be better."
"Setup is immediate but pricing is not cheap."
"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."
"The solution could improve by having fewer VM Stuns."
"It is not Windows Cluster-Aware at the moment or Exchange DAG-Aware. If they add support for these particular use cases, it would be even better."
"It is already very well furnished, but live mounts for Nutanix AHV would be amazing."
"There could be better reporting and better filtering."
"Initially, we encountered compatibility challenges with some of our technologies."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For customers in the private sector, this product can have a very high return on investment."
"There is a recurring cost for the VMware license and the HyperFlex licenses."
"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."
"We negotiated with Cisco and we got some price benefit from that."
"I would like a clearer licensing model. It should explain a bit more what you receive if you buy the more expensive license rather than the standard one."
"The licensing is perpetual and the only thing that you may need to pay for on a monthly basis is if you're going to use their cloud-based management features."
"It is highly priced compared to other vendors."
"Initially HyperFlex was a little costly, it was higher, but Cisco wanted to get into our company, so they gave us a fair discount."
"Rubrik is an expensive solution."
"As a technical person, I don't have the details, but from what I have heard, it can be expensive."
"Rubrik is a little bit expensive, but it's worth the price."
"It is an expensive product."
"When we compared the overall costs, Rubrik was cheaper because the engineering and operational side required FAR LESS dedication. So, all in all, they actually were cheaper than the competition."
"Rubrik's support is definitely on the expensive side, but I consider it to be top of the line. We incur no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"The setup cost is a bit high, but the solution is an all-in-one solution."
"It is a great value, but its cost is still a bit high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
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

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...
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

 

Sample Customers

BluePearl Veterinary Partners, Ready Pac Foods, Bryant University, Bellevue Group, KPIT Technologies, City Harvest
Driscoll's, Red Hawk Casino, Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, Wabash National, Chateau Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, Galliker Transport & Logistics
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: April 2026.
886,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.