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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 (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 price of the solution is good, especially when it comes to complex network solutions, such as UCS and Connect."
"It allows us to authorize our residents to come in using their own personal devices to access any of our clinical applications and ensure that the PHI is secure and protected."
"The solution is stable."
"The integration between the storage and the server applications is the most valuable feature of this solution; it cuts down on the necessity to buy a secondary storage system and saves money in the long-run."
"The scalability of the product is quite good overall - as long as you plan correctly from the outset."
"Overall, the solution is pretty good."
"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."
"Performance-wise, everything is good. So far, we haven't had any issues. There has been no downtime at all."
"Rubrik can also serve as a secondary host for emergency recoveries."
"Rubrik support is outstanding."
"From Rubrik being delivered to it ingesting backups, it took about an hour."
"There is a lot of flexibility in how it can be deployed, and where their data can be backed up (i.e. on-premise or in the cloud)."
"One of the best quote is: “it looks simple because we make it simple”, Bipul Sinha."
"In terms of usage, Rubrik has allowed us to retrieve data 80 to 90 percent faster than our previous technology."
"This product will simplify your life beyond belief."
"Rubrik's customer service is excellent."
 

Cons

"The initial setup of the Cisco HyperFlex HX platform was medium-level difficult. It's a little bit different from traditional servers. It takes getting used to the learning curve."
"A disadvantage is the higher costs involved in using this product."
"The initial setup of the Cisco HyperFlex HX platform was medium-level difficult. It's a little bit different from traditional servers."
"They should have more blade options and more configuration flexibility."
"The initial setup can be complex."
"HyperFlex could be improved by reducing the minimum number of nodes supported from three to two."
"Their technical support is very bad. We had an issue where instead of an engineer we got a PDF "doctor" that didn't know anything about our problem which was very frustrating."
"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."
"I would like to see Rubrik better integrate with Microsoft Active Directory. Instead of just backing up a full domain controller, I would like the solution to have Active Directory object knowledge so we can restore specific objects in Active Directory versus restoring the whole domain controller."
"I would improve the cost part of Rubrik; they should improve in that area."
"There is room for improvement in pricing. After the licensing, the price tends to go up as time goes by."
"It is a lot more expensive than other solutions, but you get what you pay for."
"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."
"Global management of multiple systems is lacking, as is reporting across multiple installed units."
"If I could take a snapshot from a physical and be able to stand it up as a virtual immediately without the need to rebuild an entire system and restoring files, that would be HUGE."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Comparable solutions with switches, storage, and services are cheaper than HyperFlex. It should be cheaper."
"Here in Brazil... it is very expensive. It's very hard for almost all companies to buy even the small version of this solution."
"They are not the cheapest on the market. But there's an old saying I like to quote: "If you know that you are getting what you pay for, it's fine if it's expensive.""
"Its price is rather fair when compared with other solutions like VxRail, vSAN, and HPE SimpliVity. We got a fair amount of discount from Cisco for Cisco HyperFlex. It is cost-effective. We have renewed storage till next year, and we have already paid the vendor. When we talk about HyperFlex or any HCI solution, storage is the part where we can reduce a lot of costs. At the current moment, we are already using NetApp storage, which did not allow us to go for a full Cisco HyperFlex setup. We are planning to go to a larger scale next year. Then we will be able to see how cost-effective it really is for us."
"It's roughly $30,000 per Hyperflex license, so that would be about $60,000 a year."
"Pricing is better if you buy more Cisco products."
"The price is a bit too high."
"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."
"The pricing and licensing of Rubrik is better than products that we've had in the past. It was quite a bit cheaper than Commvault and NetBackup."
"It is an expensive product."
"I rate the tool's pricing a six out of ten."
"Rubrik is not cheap. Hopefully, you can archive your data on cheap storage to keep the investment minimal."
"Rubrik is expensive, but due to its data management capabilities, customers can save a lot by reducing hardware and storage."
"Due to this effective, faster backup and recovery solution, we are now able to focus on other creative tasks to meet our entire pipeline. So, we have seen ROI in terms of the improvement of productivity in our team. We save around one million dollars a year."
"We pay annually for the license for Rubrik. There are no additional costs. Initially, we needed to set it up, negotiate and finalize the offer."
"The solution is expensive for small businesses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
10%
Educational Organization
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
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: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.