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

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is helpful as a backup solution."

"Easy to spin up and operate virtual machines without the overhead of managing a storage network."

"The product has helped our organization work seamlessly with staff in remote offices by providing storage and compute resources."

"Performance-wise, everything is good. So far, we haven't had any issues. There has been no downtime at all."

"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."

"It increases efficiency, decreases the cost, and manages the network in one single way. That's the most important thing."

"Cisco HyperFlex HX has improved the way our organization functions in the way that the time to deliver a VM takes me five minutes. In comparison, my cloud team's response is a couple of days based on all their overhead policies, procedures, and ticket requests. This is substantial."

"It consumes a smaller footprint when I compare it with other competitors."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"For our VMUG group, I was trying to set up a lab, and I tried to go with the VSAN for storage purposes; it's a very rock solid product, very robust, and compared to the previous iterations it is very flexible and very strong now."

"It has lowered our storage costs while still maintaining High Availability and offers easy installation."

"You get the benefit of local storage, but you have the protection of shared storage."

"It is very well known in the industry, and there are a lot of technical resources around it. This is a big thing for me because, at the end of the day, when you implement it, you need to support it."

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

"Currently, I believe VMware provides some of the best virtualization, security, storage, and operational solutions on the market."

"VMware vSAN is a global solution, so we can manage all the storage solutions in one place."

"For a PaaS platform which I’ve developed, the scalability of VMware vSAN was a necessary feature enabling us to grow with the onboard customers."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"I'd like to see easier integration with other vendors."

"Lacks easy integration with other vendors."

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

"We need to be able to scale out and not just up. When you want to scale up or scale out, you are quite limited."

"I haven't been too impressed with the Cisco HyperFlex HX, honestly. It's a hard concept."

"In terms of the stability, we can't get it to work."

"With the cache disk fails in Cisco, the whole node fails, and the workload goes down."

"Cisco's technical support originally was outstanding, but it has declined over the last 12 months."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"It should be easier to use."

"The hardware compatibility list (HCL) is a sore point for vSAN."

"Integration could be better. It should be easier to integrate vSAN with the dashboard you have, with Google, and the others."

"A vSAN cluster must have compression and deduplication to be an all-flash array, but it's not supported with a hybrid array."

"If one node out of your ten nodes fails, it takes a lot of time to replicate and rebalance VMware vSAN. This time can be reduced. When a node fails and the data is not accessible, vSAN has to be rebalanced to make the redundancy level of two again. However, if it is taking a lot of time and any other hardware fails during that time, then we have a problem. Two disk failures mean that all data will be lost, and we may have to recover it from the backup. So, the number of threads that run to do the rebalancing could be more so that the time taken to make it fully redundant again is not so much."

"The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"Based on my testing, I would like to expand deduplication to include hybrid deployments and not just for all-flash deployments."

"It's not quite there yet. We've had a few outages that were addressed."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We negotiated with Cisco and we got some price benefit from that."

"HyperFlex is a little pricey."

"There is no additional licensing cost other than the cost for each part."

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

"The price is a bit too high."

"There is a license required to use this solution."

"The pricing is a bit expensive."

"Pricing is better if you buy more Cisco products."

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

"From a cost perspective, it is expensive. From a usability perspective, it reduces the overhead costs attached to its users' servers."

"The product is quite expensive, regarding the open source solution."

"The price is expensive."

"It is cheap. It is $0.02 a gig."

"Enterprise customers can customize their licenses according to their own needs and budget."

"It is too expensive."

"It is fairly cost-effective for entry to mid-level performance based on the underlying hardware components."

"I have been told that if I used VxRail it would be cheaper than the system we are using now with buying the products separately. The solution is expensive overall."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Marketing Services Firm

13%

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

10%

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	101
Midsize Enterprise	58
Large Enterprise	135

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

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

Compared 19% of the time

VxRail vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 10% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 13% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware vSAN

Compared 10% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% 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

May 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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