Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs FlexPod XCS comparison

The compared Cisco and NetApp solutions aren't in the same category. NetApp is ranked #6 in CI , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 9.3% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Read 90 Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] reviews

89% willing to recommend

FlexPod XCS

Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews

490 Views
216 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

FlexPod XCS

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Executive Summary

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

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Buyer's Guide

HCI

April 2025

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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

FlexPod XCS

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

295

Ranking in other categories

Converged Infrastructure (6th)

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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Chris Haight

Sr. Solutions Architect at CDW Canada Inc.

Integrates everything so you are using fewer tools

The traditional UCS Blades do not take much storage internally. You would be challenged to create an HCI (Hype converged Infrastructure) solution on FlexPod / UCS or any other solution that pools internal storage. Now, with UCS X-Series, you can carve off an HCI solution, software defined pooled solution if you want. This was one area of improvement that I wanted to see and can now realize with the refresh of the Cisco UCS infrastructure. With modern modular infrastructure, RESTful API has been added, there are more integrations, ServiceNow and vCenter along with tighter plug-ins. There is cross-user interface launching, for example with Windows Admin Center. The solutions are using Ansible and Terraform for deploying infrastructure as code. All the improvements that I wanted from the last gen are here or coming. With modern workloads and GPU use on the rise, adding GPUs to modern modular infrastructure will have some pros and cons. Typically, you can add one or two GPU's to a blade with no or little trade off. With the UCS X-Series, if you are doing a GPU farm, then you may have to sacrifice compute blades in the front slots to put in a GPU tray / module. A chassis holds eight compute blades, but if you are adding a ton of GPUs, a single GPU tray or more will reduce your blade count by as many GPU trays you add. This is not just a Cisco UCS X-Series problem. It is an industry problem with modular infrastructure and one that I would like to see get solved! I am looking into one such solution, VMware BITFUSION where you can send CUDA requests over the network to a BITFUSION server with the results sent back to the requestor, early stages here and only scratched the surface thus far. With Cisco UCS X-Series, I would like to see the fabric interconnects built into the chassis instead of being external. With the fabric interconnects, the real footprint of UCS X-Series is 9U, where some of the competing solutions are 7U and have collapsed the network fabric into the chassis. This is another thing that I would like to see from Cisco, though, not really on the NetApp side of the fence, NetApp is solid storage.

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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 a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."

"Cisco technical support is very skilled. From what I've had to access, there were quick responses and the necessary escalation."

"The initial setup is easy."

"By configuring networks, we are saving power."

"I find the usability very valuable."

"It allows us to authorize our residents to come in using their own personal devices to access any of our clinical applications and ensure that the PHI is secure and protected."

"The automation is a valuable feature, it's interesting."

"The solution is stable."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"FlexClone allows you to create copies of volumes in seconds, and without occupying physical space."

"The tool's most valuable features are the flexibility and ability to adapt to redundancy."

"It provides ease of automation."

"The overall versatility and validate designs are great. We previously used a different platform, but we gained a lot of utilization with FlexPod."

"I have never seen a more resilient HA product out there then NetApp's solution. If I want to know that I'm putting my workload on a solution, from a storage perspective, that is going to be up 100% of the time, I'm going to choose NetApp."

"It makes us more lateral and faster to production."

"It is innovative because it's bare metal and you can customize it easily. This brings a lot of benefits to the solution."

"Things got a lot faster. We can pull and test in DEV systems much more rapidly and are clearing up a lot of DBA time. In the past, every time we tested it, we needed to be refreshed. In the past, it would take a day of our DBA's time, and now it's just point, click, and ten minutes later it's done."

More FlexPod XCS pros

Cons

"We would like to move off the GUI."

"The initial setup of the Cisco HyperFlex HX platform was medium-level difficult. It's a little bit different from traditional servers. It takes getting used to the learning curve."

"The initial setup can be complex."

"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."

"Cisco has to continue improve the management tools to provide a better command line interface with more functions. That would be better for administration."

"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."

"We are moving further out with more cloud solutions, so we need HyperFlex to be more cloud-connected. They should develop more connection to Amazon Web Services and Google cloud because our customers use their services and are moving in that direction."

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

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"I would like to see improvements in the documentation. I understanding how things are coming together and a lot of that is from the UCS side."

"They need to improve the user interface to make it easier to work in this environment. The older version is poor."

"We would like to have more monitoring and reporting, because today some of the reporting, and if you purchase it separately is expensive. We use OnCommand Unified Manager today, which is great, but we are looking for more of that."

"I would be interested to see more integration with other applications."

"They should cram more space in there and find a way to compress things more; dedupe better."

"Unified management would be really nice, having one a single pane of glass to manage everything do with the solution."

"This solution is very hard to maintain and keep up."

"They should have an easier user interface to get it up and running."

More FlexPod XCS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive. Other solutions are cheaper."

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

"Our licensing costs are large, but it is combined between all of the Cisco products that we have."

"The licensing is perpetual and the only thing that you may need to pay for on a monthly basis is if you're going to use their cloud-based management features."

"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 pricing is a bit expensive."

"It is relatively expensive, but it can easily return value by freeing up other resources."

"There is a recurring cost for the VMware license and the HyperFlex licenses."

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

"We purchased from CDW•G. They are great partners on the government side."

"The cost is a little high."

"The product's pricing is high and I would rate it a nine out of ten."

"Coming from a rack and stack server model to FlexPod, it has saved us a lot of time (approximately hundreds to thousands of hours)."

"It's expensive, but when you pay for enterprise support and enterprise products, you have to pay the big bucks."

"The FlexPod licensing can adjust to your purse, i.e. there are different levels available for businesses of all sizes."

"Pricing and licensing is very affordable from a FlexPod perspective."

"The scalability is very good. I wish it was a more cost-effective, but you get what you pay for."

More FlexPod XCS pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user244362

Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees

Aug 30, 2015

Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod

Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

25%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

20%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Educational Organization

11%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 do you like most about Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series?

It's easy to get the tool started.

See all answers

What do you like most about FlexPod?

The system is designed for easy scaling. Because we define everything clearly. So when we plug the system in, we apply the profile, and it scales easily.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FlexPod?

The pricing is not cheaper, but stability is more important for us now. We focus on business gains, not static numbers. Following XCS rules ensures a stable environment, which is crucial. For me, C...

See all answers

What needs improvement with FlexPod?

FlexPod should focus more on automation. Integrating an automation tool with FlexPod would enable customers to leverage automation capabilities. More automation would be helpful. Currently, we cont...

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE SimpliVity vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 29% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 22% of the time

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

Compared 21% of the time

VxRail vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 13% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 31% of the time

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 15% of the time

Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 12% of the time

Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 12% of the time

More FlexPod XCS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

May 2025

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

May 2025

Download FlexPod XCS product report

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

FlexPod XCS is the secure platform your applications need from edge to cloud. Easily manage your suite of cloud-native, edge, and enterprise apps. Integrate advanced cloud services without compromising performance, security, reliability, or scale.

NetApp

Sample Customers

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

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group

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