Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs VMware vSAN comparison

Cisco and Broadcom are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Read 90 Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] reviews

89% willing to recommend

VMware vSAN

Read 234 VMware vSAN reviews

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10,701 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

VMware vSAN

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

VMware vSAN and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure market. VMware vSAN appears to have a slight advantage due to its broader deployment options and strong integration with VMware products.

Features: VMware vSAN is known for its high performance, easy scalability, and strong integration with VMware solutions like vMotion and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series offers complete integration of computing, storage, and networking, providing high availability and a single platform for management.

Room for Improvement: VMware vSAN users desire enhanced management tools, better deduplication, and broader hardware compatibility. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series users suggest improvements in integration with cloud platforms, better documentation, and pricing optimization.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware vSAN provides broader deployment options, including private and hybrid clouds. It offers good technical support, though response times could improve. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series has responsive support and is well-regarded, though users report mixed experiences with licensing and customer service.

Pricing and ROI: VMware vSAN is considered expensive due to licensing tied to CPU cores, but provides long-term cost savings and significant ROI. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series also has a high initial cost, increased by subscription fees, but justifies the expense through comprehensive integration and operational benefits.

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware vSAN

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

234

Ranking in other categories

HCI (2nd)

Featured Reviews

Nuno Mendes

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).

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ShyamikaThamel

Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium

Managing mixed RAID workloads has improved data protection and delivers strong performance

VMware vSAN can be improved in certain areas. In cases involving our large data stores with large VMs, we experience some latency, not during normal operation, but during database backup operations. We observed latency due to buffer issues from the top-of-the-rack switches. These issues are mostly network-related because all storage data traffic travels through the network. I have recently used Nutanix, and I observed that Nutanix provides better performance than VMware vSAN due to its data locality features. VMware vSAN is now providing data locality, but we did not use that option. If VMware vSAN provides additional features in the next release, such as the VM balancing feature called DRS on the cluster that VMware previously had, it would be beneficial. With DRS, VMs can move easily from one node to another within the same cluster. Nutanix does not provide that flexibility. When placing a VM on a cluster in Nutanix, the placement uses a balancing component. After that, the VM remains on the same host. If any contention occurs on the CPU or memory side, the VM stays in place until contention happens. If issues occur, the VM migrates to another host while transferring all objects to the same host. This is how their data locality is maintained. When a VM moves to any host, it moves with all VM objects. VMware vSAN does not currently offer this option. If a VM moves to another host, it accesses the disk object through the network, which increases latency. VMware vSAN now offers an option to select data locality, but it does not function like Nutanix. This is why some latency remains. If VMware vSAN can improve this feature, it would be very helpful and VMware would regain its top position.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It is very scalable. It is also easy to scan."

"The most important benefits that we've seen from this solution is that it reduces the cost of management and it has easy monitoring systems."

"Cisco HyperFlex is the best appliance-based product."

"We used to have a single customer-facing data center, which was vulnerable to failure, and this product has allowed us to create high availability between two private data centers."

"I find the usability very valuable."

"Cisco HyperFlex HX is the best on the market."

"Overall, the solution is extremely easy, flexible and secure."

"We haven't had any downtime; it is absolutely stable."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"VMware vSAN is compatible with the legacy hypervisor solutions and most of the features are good."

"The most valuable feature is the simplification of storage. We no longer need to deal with Fibre Channel and the external storage arrays."

"IOPS is comparatively best to run VDI solution."

"The most valuable feature of VMware vSAN is you do not have to use additional hardware for storage. The operation of VMware vSAN does not take a lot of effort. If you have VMware technology on your site, then it's easy for the operational support of the system."

"If you have the budget or it's available to you, definitely go for it, because it's going to save money over the traditional SAN."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"All orchestration and monitoring are routed to the cloud."

"The valuable feature of the solution is the total hyperconverged facility, and that either it's hyperconverged, or it's standalone with storage arrays."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"One aspect that really needs to be looked at, is to fix the bugs issue."

"In the next release, I would like to see them able to connect to the public cloud."

"If you need to expand, scalability is an issue."

"It would have been nice if the product provided some cloud integrations."

"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."

"Cisco is quite expensive but not in the initial first buy."

"Single console management (like Hyperflex and FIs management). I mean to say that, we need to log in 2 console one for vcenter and another for Hyperflex manager, this should be on same console page either hyperfex manager settings and monitoring in vcenter or vcenter can be managed by hyperflex console too."

"Technical support is very good. Not excellent, but good. There's still not enough data available on the web."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"I would love to see vSAN integrate Persistent Memory and NVDIMMs. I know they're supposed to be working on an elastic tier so that we don't have the issues with destaging from the cache to the capacity."

"It should be easier to use."

"We would like to see additional backup and recovery options added. In particular, integration with popular applications like databases."

"We had some issues with dedupe and compression in 6.2, where we had to delete all the storage off of it and recreate the storage groups."

"External storage would be a good thing to have in the next release, something other than iSCZI, something a little more, not HA, a little more production-oriented, than iSCZI."

"This product is very expensive."

"The pricing model is sometimes a challenge for us because their licenses are very costly."

"I think it needs to be more cost-effective. I would also say that even though the capacity is good, there is also room for improvement there. Also, they could improve the security of the system."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When we negotiated with Cisco for the HyperFlex solution, they gave us a good price because they wanted to break into the market in Portugal for the first time. However, in general, I think it's a very expensive solution. It's a huge amount of money to acquire this kind of infrastructure."

"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."

"Comparable solutions with switches, storage, and services are cheaper than HyperFlex. It should be cheaper."

"It is highly priced compared to other vendors."

"Here in Brazil... it is very expensive. It's very hard for almost all companies to buy even the small version of 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."

"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."

"The product could be cheaper."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pricing and cost advice

"Clients have to pay for VMware vSAN licensing based on the number of CPUs. The purchases would be lifetime or perpetual, but you need to have support, e.g. the support is negotiated from one, two, three, or four years."

"I would rate the licensing model a three out of ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap."

"vSAN has many versions with standard and advanced including Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. Regarding the Enterprise and the Advanced, it could be lower."

"If they could reduce the cost, it would be better. Licensing costs are something that they could take care of. If you are a smaller and strong IT team, then VMware vSAN is a very good product. If you want to expand in the service provider space, then you will have to go for an open-source solution like OpenStack. We are now looking at OpenStack because we sell licensing costs. We are a service provider, so the IT component data is a substantial component in our overall costing. We feel that OpenStack might help us to cut down the licensing cost. Therefore, we are looking at SAS storage instead of vSAN. SAS is open source, but it is not wise to have open source without having the backend support. We are using RedHat SAS, and it is an open-source solution. You can also have a free version, but we are using it with support from RedHat so that we have somebody to back us up in case we have a problem. If you do normal business, then IT expense is 1% or 2% of the total turnover. The higher licensing costs sometimes don't make difference to the big companies who are not service providers and are using it only for their internal use. For them, the IT cost is 1% or 2%, but for an IT service provider, the IT costs will go up to 15% to 16% of the total cost of the operations. This is where the licensing costs become irrelevant. For example, the licensing cost of using VMware, VC, and vSAN is 8% of my monthly revenue. Every month, I pay about $35,000, and, with the revised plan, it will be something like $50,000 or revenue of 600k per month, which means almost 8% of the revenue is going into VMware licensing. In a very competitive world, 8% as a cost element is huge. So, if I can bring it down to 2%, I save 6% in revenue expenditure. In terms of profit, 6% of 30% is something like another 25% increase in my profit. My profit can be almost 25%. It would be 20% to 25% in case I am able to handle the licensing costs and bring them to a very low level. Because these IT costs are substantial for us, that is why we are going with OpenStack. OpenStack has a limitation that it requires more hardware. There will be some increase in the hardware cost, but overall we will save 5% to 6% of our licensing cost by using OpenStack."

"The cost of the solution is high and if it could be reduced the customers would be very happy."

"The licenses are very expensive. The renewal of licenses has extra costs attached to it."

"The price of the solution package depends on the nodes and other factors. The cost some of our customers paid was $500,000. The licensing cost for the components is very good."

"Due to recent changes in VMware's licensing approach by Broadcom, the cost has increased significantly, making it less attractive from a cost perspective."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Marketing Services Firm

12%

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	24
Midsize Enterprise	17
Large Enterprise	57

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	100
Midsize Enterprise	58
Large Enterprise	129

Questions from the Community

How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?

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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...

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What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?

While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...

See all answers

How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?

HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...

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How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is best suited for small- to medium-sized organizations. It is easy to create load bal...

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Comparisons

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 17% of the time

VxRail vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 8% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 14% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware vSAN

Compared 11% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

NetApp AFF vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

Everpure FlashArray vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

May 2026

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

April 2026

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

vSAN

Overview

The Cisco HyperFlex HX Data Platform is a purpose-built, high-performance, scale-out file system with a wide array of enterprise-class data management services. The data platform’s innovations redefine distributed storage technology, giving you complete hyper-convergence with enterprise storage features:

Enterprise-class data management
Continuous data optimization
Securely encrypted storage
Dynamic data placement
Clusterwide parallel data distribution
Linear and incremental scaling
API-based data platform architecture
A simplified approach

Cisco

VMware vSAN is renowned for scalability, speed, and management ease. Its performance equals traditional SANs, offering fast speeds with diverse disk types at a reduced cost, ensuring VM access amidst hardware failures, and integrating effortlessly with VMware tools for straightforward setup.

As a leader in virtualization solutions, VMware vSAN offers high-performance storage comparable to traditional SANs, allowing SSD-like speeds with a mix of disk types. It integrates into VMware tools, leading to easy setup and policy-driven management, leveraging diverse storage policies, deduplication, and compression for enhanced efficiency. It's especially valued for its ability to scale storage and applications affordably, supporting growth without heavy initial investments. Despite the advantages, areas for improvement include encryption, UI, hardware compatibility, and affordability for SMBs, with notable resync and performance monitoring challenges. Compatibility issues with non-VMware environments and complex updates and support are critical points highlighting a need for improved management interfaces and troubleshooting to enhance user experience.

What are the key features of VMware vSAN?

Scalability: Allows easy scaling of storage and applications without significant initial investments.
Speed: Rivals traditional SANs, offering SSD-like speeds.
Management: Seamless management through integration with VMware tools and policy-driven frameworks.
Resilience: Ensures VM access during hardware failures.
Efficiency: Offers deduplication and compression to optimize storage use.

What benefits or ROI should organizations consider in reviews?

Cost-Effectiveness: Supports horizontal and vertical growth without heavy costs.
Integration: Enhances cloud infrastructure and VDI with easy integration.
Automation: Provides automation for storage and compute consolidation.
Availability: Ensures high availability for VMs and workloads.
Performance: Known for strong performance suited for diverse workloads.

VMware vSAN is implemented across industries for virtualization and cloud infrastructure enhancements, being a cornerstone for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and the management of VMs. It supports major workloads like ERP and hyperconverged infrastructure, widely respected for its performance, seamless integration into VMware's ecosystem, and cost-efficiency, particularly appealing to small and medium businesses without extensive storage infrastructure investments.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

BluePearl Veterinary Partners, Ready Pac Foods, Bryant University, Bellevue Group, KPIT Technologies, City Harvest

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