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

The compared Cisco and NetApp solutions aren't in the same category. NetApp is ranked #1 in CI , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 12.6% 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

3,176 Views
1,493 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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December 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

7.1

Number of Reviews

295

Ranking in other categories

Converged Infrastructure (1st)

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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John Kevin

Deputy IT Manager at MBBank

Enforces standardized setup procedures following Certified Validated Design (CVD) guidelines and offers greater flexibility and control over the system compared to traditional systems

The GUI setup follows the right setup, meaning we have to follow the CVDi.e. Certified Validated Design. Everything is clear, because you can build CI yourself, but without rules, it can be messy. With FlexPod, there are rules to follow, making it more standardized. This helps with troubleshooting and compatibility assessments, simplifying troubleshooting significantly. We also use FlexPod pre-validated architectures to validate the design. It is very, very important to us because we had a bad case in 2015 where separate items integrated poorly due to no version or firmware compatibility certification. Troubleshooting became a nightmare. So, standards are crucial for us, and everything entering production should be verified or at least documented for certification.

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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 scalable and easy to use."

"It is a stable and scalable solution."

"The most valuable features are scalability and the easy operation - if it works. You can configure everything from just one window."

"The solution is easy to use and to learn. It is well integrated with VMware."

"The management feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."

"The compute storage and virtualization come all in one box."

"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."

"The possibility to share the workload is one of its most valuable features. We have many applications which have need of workloads only a few times in a month, so we share HyperFlex with them."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"We save days of work when doing new service deployments. With LUN clones we have a template provisioned for the image of our hypervisor on our NetApps, and we can deploy a brand new hypervisor in under an hour. Everything is scripted. We just clone a template LUN and boot from SAN, so there are no single points of failure."

"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."

"FlexPod’s prevalidated architectures are very important to our organization... Especially in healthcare, it is absolutely critical that we have a validated performance platform. It has to work every time."

"The real benefit of this solution is that it is pre-architected with the ability to scale-up and scale-out."

"It scales well. It allows us to have very flexible architecture but to have the same level of simplicity that we'd normally expect in hyper-converged environments."

"Our performance increase has been about 15 percent from what we previously used."

"The hardware has been rock solid so far. It has gone up easy. It runs well. We have not had issues with it."

"Software flexibility. Everything is fully configurable. The reliability results from the design. Elements are well projected (disks, blade, network, etc.). No single point of failure is identifiable."

More FlexPod XCS pros

Cons

"Sometimes when there are multiple technologies involved in a support case, this is when there is a bit of a lag."

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

"The pricing is pretty expensive."

"I would rate the installation of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series an eight out of ten. It can be complex."

"When it comes to customer needs, the licensing price could be better."

"We had a bit of complexity to think about how to migrate our legacy infrastructure into Cisco HyperFlex."

"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could improve by having the documents be more readily available and the support could be more flexible."

"Some of our customers do not want to adopt the Cisco ACI solution. They want to manage Cisco HyperFlex by integrating it with their own management solution."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"For the next release, because I know that we are using Pure Storage, what I want to see is the GUI interfaces on this UCS monitor."

"I would like them to scale more to rack unit servers instead of blade servers."

"We have experienced issues with patching. When there are Cisco releases, there are some vulnerabilities, i.e., security vulnerabilities. We are as a financial company and need to be on top patching. As a company, we cannot have continuous downtime to do patching, which is a challenge that we have faced."

"The solution has not reduced our data center costs."

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

"If there were going to be any improvements, they should probably be UI improvements, overall. It can get a little kludgy sometimes when trying to figure out what to do."

"I would like to see synchronous replication and easier automation in the next release."

"There are times where we have had issues with technical support."

More FlexPod XCS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"We are on an annual subscription and the price is fair."

"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."

"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is a bit pricier compared to other brands in the market...There is a need to make additional payments towards the maintenance and support of the solution."

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

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

"The price is a bit too high."

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

"We have saved time, money, space, and power consumption on new service deployments. We have a data center in Toronto which had ten racks on one of the new servers. This was all reduced to two racks with six chassis, which is amazing."

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

"The solution has saved our customers' organization in terms of CapEx. E.g., with the cloud availability, it's turned into sort of a hybrid CapEx/OpEx model."

"Storage is very expensive. To buy MIC cards and additional storage either on-prem or in the cloud, the IT department does not have money for it, so you need a more niche product or a more flexible way to store your data. That is the benefit that you get from this product."

"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."

"The cost is a little high."

"The pricing is not cheaper, but stability is more important for us now. We focus on business gains, not static numbers."

"We can just swap in new equipment or hardware as we need, which has probably saved us several weeks."

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

12%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

20%

Performing Arts

10%

Educational Organization

Transportation Company

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	34
Midsize Enterprise	66
Large Enterprise	182

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...

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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...

See all answers

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Comparisons

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Compared 16% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

January 2026

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

January 2026

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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