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

The compared Cisco and NetApp solutions aren't in the same category. NetApp is ranked #2 in CI , and holds a 12.3% 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

3,863 Views
1,932 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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January 2026

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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 (2nd)

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

"Overall, the solution is extremely easy, flexible and secure."

"The initial setup is very straightforward."

"With our four HyperFlex HX hosts (consisting of processor, memory, and disk), the performance is very fast and we have no problems at all. In all of the five years that we have been using HyperFlex, we haven't needed to increase our budget to buy additional hosts."

"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."

"Support is very responsive."

"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."

"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is simple to use, user-friendly and has been best for our purposes."

"The solution scales extremely well."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"The Cisco Validated Designs are the most valuable feature along with the Industry-leading technology, put together; and the fact that it just works."

"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."

"Technical support has been good when we have contacted them in the past. They have been helpful."

"When you open the box, they give you a very nice diagram. Which was my initial guide through setting up any NetApp SAN. It worked itself out pretty well."

"It's a common platform, which provides for ease of use between all of the blade servers. It uses all the same tech, moving service profiles seamlessly across from one blade to the next. There is also combined support."

"The most valuable features are the Fabric Interconnect Manager and the UCS Manager."

"Validate designs are a good. They work in the background to combine all the infrastructure and storage. They create automation which can create volumes and attach VMs directly to massive CIFS."

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

More FlexPod XCS pros

Cons

"Lacks some integration and documentation could be improved."

"Unlike other options, you need to pay a subscription to Cisco yearly instead of paying for the hardware outright, which makes it more expensive in the long run."

"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."

"In the next release, Cisco should add more integration and management capabilities as well as some tweaks to the dashboard that make it more user-friendly. They could also add support for multiple hypervisors."

"I would have liked it to be able to back up the system to a cloud, to be able to work from any other place"

"The initial setup could be faster, due to the prerequisites."

"Cisco HyperFlex should decrease the amount of memory needed from the Controller VM that controls the physical discs. They control the discs by using the virtual VM over every ESXi host and the VM consumes memory and consumes more hardware resources. They have to improve that by decreasing the amount of required memory and CPUs to control this disc on the server."

"Technical support is very good. Not excellent, but good. There's still not enough data available on the web. For example, for the integration to VMware, I had a case recently and I searched for more information but didn't find any."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"One of the things that I've wanted would be availability of a health status, similar to Active IQ from my converged platform, on an app. I have dashboards so I can see the health of the system when I'm in the office, but when I'm not in the office I can't."

"If you have expertise setting up such environments, then you are good, but for customers or novices, it becomes a nightmare and stuff may actually be left out."

"There is a lot of documentation that has to be reviewed before you go through an upgrade. It is not as straightforward as some other solutions."

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

"I want to use the expansion to its fullest extent, scaling by deploying 10 to 15 virtual missions in a given FlexPod."

"Hyper-V is not as well supported by NetApp and Cisco as VMware is, which is something that should be improved."

"Hardware stability needs improvement. We replaced a lot of RAM this past year. We had to replace the complete blade once after extensive troubleshooting. Any given time, we have approximately one blade down within the entire infrastructure, unfortunately."

"I had one problem at the site where I had an aggregate that would not shrink after I had deleted some stuff. It took a few tries to get the right guy on the call. We do have a NetApp SAM with our company, and it really took getting to him to get the solution fixed."

More FlexPod XCS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"One of the challenges we have with HyperFlex is that they have a subscription fee for the operating system that runs on it, and if I remember correctly, it costs approximately $15,000 USD per month."

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

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

"It's roughly $30,000 per Hyperflex license, so that would be about $60,000 a year."

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

"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is expensive. It's a standard license, and we pay for it yearly. I think we pay about 700."

"The pricing is a bit expensive."

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

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

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

"As a whole, it is inexpensive, and it uses the least amount of parts."

"We have saved 50 percent on new service deployments."

"Everything is purchased, so we do not do any leasing with this product."

"We have seen our data center rack space collapse about 90 percent. We have a data center which only has two racks now out of the 20 that were there previously."

"We would like everything in one piece of hardware. This way we can just sell the product like a silo by putting everything in a stack together."

"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."

"We immediately saw a return on investment due to the fact that replacing our legacy storage arrays with the new AFFs reduced the footprint and maintenance costs. Overall, we saw an almost immediate ROI."

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Marketing Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

17%

Marketing Services Firm

12%

Performing Arts

Educational Organization

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...

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Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

January 2026

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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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