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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 most valuable features are scalability and the easy operation - if it works. You can configure everything from just one window."
"The management feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The ROI we have seen from the high performance that has saved us time and money."
"The price of the solution is good, especially when it comes to complex network solutions, such as UCS and Connect."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is full integration with Cisco API and UCS, which means you can have complete networking and storage from Cisco."
"The UCS, which is by far the best management tool there is on the market, regardless of vendor. It's the only tool I see that gives you the opportunity to size and scale all the assets and capacity you have in your data center, from a unified view."
"The most valuable feature for our company is that it works internally. We have a lot of internal projects for optimization."
"Its reporting is most valuable. I like how it reports that everything is successfully backed up. It provides a summarized report that I can give to auditors and management."
"Disk mount that lets a restore happen immediately, no need to re-hydrate."
"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 big thing, the big benefit, it gives us is that it just works."
"The product's most valuable feature is the immutability of a backup."
"If a fast recovery and scalability are critical points, then this is the best choice."
"The search functionality is second to none as the speed of the search is fast across the whole system and predictive."
"A Google-like file search, system scaling, and a frequent development cycle are some positives that this solution offers."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The cost is expensive, but there is a chance to save money in the future."
"Ultimately we've noticed the updates and upgrades take a bit of an impact on the solution, more so having to reboot the solution and having to restart it."
"You cannot just apply the VSXi updates. You are dependent on Cisco HyperFlex for metric services, analytics, and everything else. I don't like that dependency."
"The platform itself is very stable and robust, but when it comes to upgrading the system, it's not stable."
"The price could be better. I think it's more expensive than VxRail."
"They should give us a little more information about how to use the CLI and offer more commands."
"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 hope to see enhancements in areas like data governance and the incorporation of new features in future updates."
"I would love to be able to just get from the dashboard to a file that I need, or a system that I need."
"Better integration for complex NAS structures having to mount at root adds time and workload to the process of NDMP."
"I would like to see more information on encryption with the next release."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I need to create reports to know whether something is available or not, how much frontend data is being protected, etc. Rubrik gives a lot of things in the report, which can be confusing."
"It is a lot more expensive than other solutions, but you get what you pay for."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would like the pricing to be cheaper."
"The pricing is a bit expensive."
"Pricing is better if you buy more Cisco products."
"There is a 30 percent additional premium that all the companies are charging for Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series because of the lack of chips and bottlenecks in the market. The cost of the solution is high right now."
"We have a yearly license."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The product is not cheap, but for good reason. It simply works and is very fast."
"I rate the tool's pricing a six out of ten."
"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."
"I don't remember the cost, but I know that for Veeam, we were spending almost $250,000 a year for 205 licenses. It was an enterprise version. When we purchased Rubrik, it was just a little bit more. It was not a terribly huge amount, and if I recall, that was for three years of support as well. So, Veeam priced itself out of the market at a certain point in time."
"Rubrik is not cheap. Hopefully, you can archive your data on cheap storage to keep the investment minimal."
"Its price tends to go up with time. Its pricing definitely has room for improvement. If you negotiate right with them, you might get a good price. Support is a part of the package, and every three years, when we renew our contract, we get new hardware."
"It’s simple, straightforward, and we were able to see 50% hard savings."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
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.
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