Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs DataCore SANsymphony comparison

Cisco and DataCore are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of DataCore users who would recommend it.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Read 90 Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] reviews

89% willing to recommend

DataCore SANsymphony

Read 58 DataCore SANsymphony reviews

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2,070 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

DataCore SANsymphony

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] and DataCore SANsymphony based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, StarWind and others in HCI.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

December 2025

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Helped 881,227 peers since 2012

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

DataCore SANsymphony

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), HCI (7th), Storage Performance (3rd)

Featured Reviews

reviewer2133501

Assistant VP, Information Technology at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Effective deduplication feature, but lacks a unified architecture

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could be improved by reducing the number of nodes. Currently, the architecture separates data, computing, memory, and storage into different parts. For example, if I need around 200 servers with a requirement of TB of storage, I would need 200 clusters, which can be quite cumbersome. Other solutions like Dell and Nutanix have a single combined unit that includes computing, memory, and storage, which can reduce the number of nodes required and also reduce licensing and power consumption. Therefore, I suggest improving the architecture of the Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series by combining computing, memory, and storage into a single unit, making it more efficient and easier to manage. It will also reduce the number of nodes required and licensing costs and help to reduce power consumption. I would like to see improved internal integration capabilities in the next release. Currently, it is constrained only to VMware only. So, there is no integration part of the RAC or IEL or anything, and it isn't easy to manage it. If I want to hold another partner, then that part will not be possible. So, you have to manage that particular integration. Another feature could be in terms of memory usage.

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SigfridCecillon

Owner at Arsium

High availability and user-friendliness enhance infrastructure health and redundancy

I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10. Each time I contact the technical support, it's when I don't have a choice because it's very difficult for me on site, and each time, I have good people online who are able to help me solve the problem. Usually, the problems are not very technically difficult, but sometimes they are, and the support team is still there to help us resolve them. The majority of the problems are linked to licensing, so when the license has expired or the number is not correct, they are proactive and change things live, which is very good.

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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

"Scalability is easy and simple."

"The most valuable feature is that you can manage the whole cluster from the traffic interconnect."

"It is very scalable. It is also very secure. Cisco's security portfolio is integrated with it, which makes it secure. It is a platform-based device. Its performance is also fairly good in comparison to any other solution."

"I like Cisco Intersight."

"The technical support has been very good for this solution."

"Cisco provides the ability to configure BIOS, something that no one else can do, on a remote basis. That's really helpful sometimes. The bus-snooping alteration tool for BIOS is fantastic. That's one of the game-changing features that Cisco alone has at this point."

"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. It has its own network and storage. The storage part is the most valuable feature."

"The feature that we are most interested in is the scalability. When needed, we are able to add more nodes and scale it up further."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"Auto-tiering to obtain performance at a lower cost without the customer having to purchase ultra-fast storage is great."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its versatility, with there being support for all new hardware technologies and platforms, disc mirroring and very effective auto tiering."

"The support is excellent."

"DataCore's ability to seamlessly move virtual volume data between storage pools as well as their synchronous mirroring has made maintenance and disaster recovery planning achievable."

"The most valuable feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS is its high availability. This solution also exhibits good performance and has high stability."

"DataCore has helped provide flexible, highly available, high-performance storage that otherwise would have been outside our price range."

"It is a well-proven, automated management tool in all dynamic provisioning, auto-tiering, great performance, parallel I/O, cache speed mechanism, etc."

"The interface is user-friendly."

More DataCore SANsymphony pros

Cons

"It needs improvements in terms of I/O. Sometimes I have felt it is slightly slow while we are trying to provision VMs or access VMs."

"I would like it to be easier to manage the server, create VMs, and manage the VMs on the client."

"Stability is really poor, especially the storage stability. We lost data. There were disruptions of clusters and that's one big pain point of the solution. It's not stable enough, the documentation is not good, there's not much documentation available. For every call we need a tech engineer."

"Cisco should combine its features with its prices."

"The solution's price could be affordable."

"I would like for them to develop integration with other technologies, like SD Access. It's still lacking an enhancement management player."

"The product does not have a cloud version...The product should be made more flexible in terms of integration capabilities."

"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."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"Having an enterprise "Storage Dashboard" that can show capacity, usage, performance, and any issues would be very beneficial."

"For customers or technicians that don't speak and understand English, it could be great to have other languages support, all the more so given the number of countries in which SanSymphony is used."

"I still see room for improvement with DataCore SANsymphony in the area of alarm and task management."

"DataCore SANsymphony should integrate file servers at a good price into the solution."

"Problem detection could be easier. It should help customers identify problems very quickly because it's not easy to analyze on the platform today."

"We are waiting for container support (on the roadmap), as well as a user-friendly full web-administration capability, and an improved API."

"When I sometimes reboot for maintenance, the connectivity from the iSCSI initiator host could be improved."

"One limitation of this solution is that it's Windows-based, e.g. one requirement to install DataCore SANsymphony SDS is putting it on a Windows server machine. It relies on Windows and that is a limitation because there are some customers who are looking for non Windows systems."

More DataCore SANsymphony cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The product could be cheaper."

"Our licensing is Hybrid. We have all of our applications for billing and outage management through this."

"Initially HyperFlex was a little costly, it was higher, but Cisco wanted to get into our company, so they gave us a fair discount."

"The cost is expensive, but there is a chance to save money in the future."

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

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

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

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

"The pricing and licensing are better with DataCore."

"It is relatively expensive, and the additional costs for hardware and storage can make it a significant investment for customers."

"This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."

"This product has a good ratio between quality and price. In many cases, it's less expensive to work with DataCore than other storage systems."

"Make sure you are made aware of the annual subscription cost when purchasing."

"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."

"We have licensing costs on a yearly basis. They charge per terabyte, so in terms of cost, it can be very costly. They have three different features, and you have to pay extra for those."

"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."

More DataCore SANsymphony pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

11%

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	36
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	21

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 your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?

Before choosing DataCore SANsymphony, I did not evaluate other options.

See all answers

What do you like most about DataCore SANsymphony?

The dashboard is very intuitive, and there are a lot of counters to diagnose what happens during a short period (like when a backup is in progress).

See all answers

What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?

DataCore SANsymphony can be improved with high availability as it offers synchronous mirroring between physical and separate sites to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery. I do not have...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 6% of the time

NetApp ONTAP vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 6% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 5% of the time

More DataCore SANsymphony Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

January 2026

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony

January 2026

Download DataCore SANsymphony product report

Also Known As

No data available

DataCore Virtual SAN

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

Experience peace of mind with DataCore SANsymphony, the ultimate software-defined storage solution alleviating storage management challenges. Say goodbye to the complexities of managing different storage tiers and disruptions with SANsymphony's block-level storage virtualization technology, empowering you to automate capacity provisioning and data placement across diverse storage environments including SAN, DAS, HCI, and JBOD. Break down silos, control data placement, meet business continuity objectives, boost performance, and seamlessly expand or refresh hardware with SANsymphony. Benefit from features like asynchronous replication for disaster recovery, minimizing data loss, accelerating application responsiveness, and integrating new technology non-disruptively. Trusted by industry leaders like NASA, Thorntons, Inc., and TUI Cruises, DataCore SANsymphony guarantees unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and reliability, ensuring uninterrupted data access and application availability while reducing storage costs and inefficiencies.

DataCore

Sample Customers

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

Volkswagen , Maimonides Medical Center, NASA, Thorntons, Inc., TUI, ISCO Industries, Pee Dee Electric Cooperative, United Financial Credit Union, Derby Supply Chain Solutions, Mission Community Hospital, Bellarmine College Preparatory, Colby-Sawyer College, Mount Sinai Health System, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Quorn Foods, Bitburger, University of Birmingham, Stadtverwaltung Heidelberg, NetEnt to name a few.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, StarWind and others in HCI. Updated: December 2025.

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