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

"The management from the switches to the hyper-convergence solutions are quite good and well-developed."

"The solution is stable."

"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 ease of use and the graphical user interface (GUI) are two of the most valuable features of this solution."

"It's very easy to use and quite a mature product."

"I find the usability very valuable."

"Our customers have seen ROI in terms of the time they save troubleshooting."

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

"FlexPod's native integration with hyperscalers is one of the reasons we chose to look at it and NetApp. That is one of the key components of our infrastructure. That native integration is very important."

"The most significant benefit is storage flexibility. FlexPod is a reference design to build on and add the appropriate resources you need for your workloads. That's what differentiates it from something like HCI, where you have to buy certain size pieces when you want to expand."

"The solution has decreased the unplanned downtime incidents in our organization by 25 to 30 percent."

"From the Cisco side, the most valuable features of this solution are the data center density, the deployment, and the management of the servers and the networking."

"It definitely streamlined operations. TCO-wise, it reduced cabling in the architecture. So, there has definitely been some savings. There have been a lot of reductions in the IT admin's time: reduced time to troubleshoot, reduced time to inventory the infrastructure, and reduced time to set up a host with templates and storage. The solution is saving easily 10 hours a week in time."

"The product is very stable and it does what it needs to do."

"It takes all of the homework out of building the solution. The prearchitected design simplifies your deployment, gets you a quicker time to market, and a single point of support."

"The tool provides a single point for storing applications and it increases the availability of them. It also has improved the way we handle applications within VMware."

"The architecture separates data, computing, memory, and storage into different parts."

"The solution could improve by having more customization."

"They should give us a little more information about how to use the CLI and offer more commands."

"Lacks some integration and documentation could be improved."

"I would like to see more analytics. It could use better infographs in the HyperFlex Connect on how traffic is running in the network. If you were reaching any capacity issues on the Fabric Interconnects, it should be able to cool all of the servers and Fabric Interconnects, then possibly integrate it with, e.g., Nexus Series switches. This should all be available in a single pane of glass."

"If we compare it with VMware, the VMware product is basically very open, and it can be easily integrated with any platform. VMware product is also available on the cloud and is not an appliance-based product, whereas Cisco HyperFlex is an appliance-based product. Companies that want to use HCI as a platform or as a service would prefer something without an appliance. A SaaS-based product is better for a customer who is using the cloud and has multiple resources, workflows, and devices on the cloud and wants to go for a hyper-converged solution. This is where improvement is needed. In addition to an appliance-based product, Cisco should provide a SaaS-based product. Its price should be lower. Cisco needs to work on the pricing model for this product. Its price is a big road blocker when competing against Nutanix and VMware, which are its main competitors."

"The additional feature I would like to see included in the next release of this solution is more security. We want to add more data servers to all the hosts all over the world. We have 140 hosts that connect to one data center in Manila."

"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."

"FlexPod has not decreased the unplanned downtime incidents in our company. There was a problem with the back-end configuration and we had a downtime of three hours."

"The initial setup for FlexPod is complex."

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

"We would like them to improve the validate designs. It is hard to stay in a supported config with the software and firmware versions of the platform. It's always a concern to ensure things not only work well, but they work at all. If we run into incompatibility inside of the NetApp, Cisco, or VMware versions, it can cause real issues."

"The initial setup is complex because it has to be done in a certain way."

"I would like to see more storage-related features."

"I'd like to see some more Ansible integration for automation purposes. We automate everything else with Ansible, so it would be great if we could automate our FlexPod with Ansible as well."

"There have been issues upgrading the firmware."

"HyperFlex is a little pricey."

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

"We would not have invested if we didn't feel the return was there for our customers."

"They are not the cheapest on the market. But there's an old saying I like to quote: "If you know that you are getting what you pay for, it's fine if it's expensive.""

"It is highly priced compared to other vendors."

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

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

"I would like the pricing to be cheaper."

"In terms of the cost, the last bill I saw was about $3.5 million, from the latest contract. That might have been for a five-year contract."

"It is expensive. My company is small. When you look at the price point, this is a big thing for us to invest in."

"The main return on investment would be that instead of having to refresh all of our desktop hardware we have been able to go reimage existing machines and use those as thin clients, then also purchase new thin clients rather than buying actual hardware. It also reduces the overhead of having our technicians deploy those systems and maintain them."

"The investment has been great. We put our money into it and it has given us something that we have been able to rely on for years."

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

"The pricing and licensing are quite expensive. However, compared to other solutions, it is okay."

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

"It is cost-effective."