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

The compared Cisco and NetApp solutions aren't in the same category. NetApp is ranked #5 in CI , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 9.2% 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

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201 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

FlexPod XCS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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

May 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 (5th)

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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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

"I love the Cisco design, the visual interface to manage and use the platform."

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

"I like Cisco Intersight."

"Performance-wise, everything is good. So far, we haven't had any issues. There has been no downtime at all."

"The initial setup was straightforward. With our partners and the consultancy that we had, we knew what we wanted to do. Therefore, we didn't have any problems with the installation and parametrization."

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

"The workload can handle anything and has an extended capacity."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the connectivity, consistency, and that we now have fewer vulnerabilities on the network."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

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

"The flexibility and data deduplication have been the biggest practical applications."

"Our downtime has significantly been reduced."

"For anyone who needs the flexibility of moving around profiles from physical device to physical device, it really adds an additional layer of virtualization."

"The most valuable thing for me is the shorter time to market."

"The vendor delivers a fully-configured prebuilt system with a certain baseline on it."

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

"We found FlexPod to be innovative when it comes to compute, storage, and networking. We've taken advantage of their storage optimizations to obtain better use out of the space. We upgraded to All Flash FAS (AFF), which has provided a huge performance increase that we haven't barely scratched the surface of. We have plenty of overhead, so that's always nice when taking on tasks which might have otherwise taxed a smaller system."

More FlexPod XCS pros

Cons

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

"I would like to see them expand onto the cloud."

"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"

"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."

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

"We would like to move off the GUI."

"Cisco is a bit more challenging in terms of deployment. The admin must be knowledgeable in order to complete the task. Without that knowledge, it will be difficult to complete."

"A stretch function is really needed. Germans think that because of the high availability and the security that two data centers are better but we want edge all in one cluster. This is a needed feature, the cluster feature, and we'd also like to see a possibility for ROBO offices."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"The FAS in it, with all its flexibility and scalability, it is much more complex and could be simplified."

"It would be nice to have something like an automated, upgrade solution The tasks needed to upgrade the hardware within FlexPod are still quite behind compared to some of its other aspects. That's more on the Cisco side."

"Updates are not frequent enough."

"I would like more orchestration and networking in-between the VMs, the virtualization layer for networking. I would like to see better tools for this."

"We would like one-click upgrades."

"I would like to see more CVDs and more published designs around a multi-hypervisor approach within a single pod."

"I'd like to see a little bit simpler management pane. Using UCS Director to front everything is good but for a lot of that upper mid-market, it's probably a little bit of overkill for what they need. They just want a nice, simply portal to go through and see what's going on. So if there was something that was middle of the road, it would be well received."

"The majority of the time, if we need more storage, then we need to work with customizing the NetApp deployment. Right now, we just do a generic deployment, then wherever we have a need for storage, we have to move some application out of the next FlexPod deployment. One thing is to customize based on the requirements, but the requirements change so frequently, they are absolutely obsolete in six months."

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."

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

"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."

"For customers in the private sector, this product can have a very high return on investment."

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

"The product could be cheaper."

"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."

"We have a yearly license."

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

"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."

"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 cost is a little high."

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

"We have saved time and money for new service deployments. Without FlexPod, it probably takes about ten hours. With FlexPod, within two hours, we are up and running. So, we have seen about an 80 percent time decrease."

"Cost is the primary factor behind why I would not give this product a perfect rating."

"We fear high availability so we can't buy from different providers."

"Licensing can be interesting with the new version because of the Intersight integration. I don't know what that looks like yet. I have seen some of the different licensing models, but with the new purchasing, all customers are going to have to buy some sort of Intersight licensing with the Blades or FlexPod. I am curious to see how that option shakes out. Previous to the UCS X-Series, the licensing was the same."

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

23%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

20%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

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 47% of the time

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

Compared 30% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 23% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 38% of the time

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 18% of the time

Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 16% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 16% of the time

VMware vSAN vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 12% of the time

More FlexPod XCS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

June 2025

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

June 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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