No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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

"I like Cisco Intersight."
"When we did benchmarking on this particular product line, the results were great and quite amazing."
"The flexibility is its most valuable feature; the ability to quickly deploy a number of help machines. It is not constrained by what we want to do."
"It is a complete package; for any kind of on-premises hyper-converged solution, we usually have to separate networks, but Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is a complete solution with its own network and storage, and the storage part is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features are scalability and the easy operation - if it works, as you can configure everything from just one window."
"With our four HyperFlex HX hosts (consisting of processor, memory, and disk), the performance is very fast and we have no problems at all. In all of the five years that we have been using HyperFlex, we haven't needed to increase our budget to buy additional hosts."
"It increases efficiency, decreases the cost, and manages the network in one single way. That's the most important thing."
"On the VDI side, because the storage is local to the HyperFlex, it was very easy and convenient, and the performance is exceptional."
"It has a streamlined user interface, provides an improved tech support experience, and reduces time required to locate and restore data."
"This is a centralized tool where we are able to schedule backups and perform monitoring."
"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."
"The fact that the API is so available to us with the playground — there's an internal and public playground — is also valuable. We can write API calls — and although I'm sure there's a way we could hurt the data — we write those calls with a lot of certainty that we won't be destroying anything. We write these API calls using really easy mechanisms and generate automation a lot faster."
"I value the options it has for storage tiering (i.e. whether it should be a flash, SSD, or pushed to the cloud) depending on the data provided."
"With an easy backup process, simple and fast recovery process, ability to scale out and still keep a single deduplication domain and a fast storage appliance, all I can think of to say is to shut up and take my money."
"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."
"The live mount reduces complexity."
 

Cons

"I would have liked it to be able to back up the system to a cloud, to be able to work from any other place"
"It is quite new solution, so it is not very stable."
"I have been receiving a memory overflow message every day when I use the solution."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could improve by having the documents be more readily available and the support could be more flexible."
"We are operating two clusters for site resiliency. I would like to support running redundant/resilient vCenter server instances on each rather than a supported external server."
"You have to get the same servers with the same storage; they need to be identical. However, in vSAN or in VMware we don't have to do that."
"We would like HyperFlex to connect the storage directly into Fabric Interconnect along with the features of the solution. We have enough ports in HyperFlex. We don't want to buy another set of switches to connect to Fabric Interconnect, complicating the solution."
"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."
"Better integration for complex NAS structures having to mount at root adds time and workload to the process of NDMP."
"The solution needs to be more secure and needs to better protect against ransomware."
"I would like for unmanaged backups to be able to be saved in a separate policy."
"Looking at how the data is broken down, we can see the total story, but sometimes it's difficult to see how big a particular snapshot is. Across 90 days of snapshots, which one is a particularly large one? Looking at the data holistically could be a lot easier."
"Setup is immediate but pricing is not cheap."
"We have some challenges with the solution's reporting because historical reports have some limitations."
"It needs to keep innovating to stay relevant in the data management field."
"There is room for improvement in pricing. After the licensing, the price tends to go up as time goes by."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We currently have a perpetual license, which is kind of unlimited, so we don't have the normal licensing cost, yet."
"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."
"There is a license required to use this solution."
"There is a recurring cost for the VMware license and the HyperFlex licenses."
"The product is expensive. Other solutions are cheaper."
"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's competitive pricing and strong return on investment make it a compelling choice, especially compared to alternatives like Data Domain and Avamar. Commvault was considered but deemed too expensive."
"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 pricing has been quite good from our perspective, in terms of being able to negotiate with the Rubrik team to get the product that we want and be able to sell that out to our end customers."
"The cost was less than our previous provider, and this is a much better product."
"Some people say it is expensive, but you get what you pay for. If you want a Maserati, you have to pay for it. If you want to buy a Porsche, you have to pay for it."
"There is a license requirement for the solution. If you expand or if the maintenance period expires, there's a license renewal as well."
"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."
"As a technical person, I don't have the details, but from what I have heard, it can be expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.
885,728 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
11%
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.
885,728 professionals have used our research since 2012.