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Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs NetApp HCI [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp HCI [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Nuno Mendes - PeerSpot reviewer
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).
MB
Crashed continuously, complex to deploy, and bad after-sales support - NETAPP FIXED the problems in 2022
Their after-sales support, SLA, and third-parties availability should be improved. NetApp's support is very difficult to engage. We have an SLA of onsite support within 24 hours. but they don't respect the SLA. Its stability was very bad. It has been crashing continuously. In one year, we got three crashes, which is unbelievable for an appliance that is guaranteed for 10 years without any crashes. In 2022, NetApp Italy, driven by the country manager Davide Marini, fixed all our issues and added additional computation power for free. This is a great example of customer care. They could have done it right the first time of course, but admitting the errors and putting in place such a remediation plan has been a very professional behavior.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The technical support has been very good for this solution."
"The compression and deduplication are very high. Therefore, we can use the size of the product more efficiently than other storage solutions."
"Its most valuable feature is its flexibility."
"The most valuable feature is that it is something small that can be more easily deployed than a full data center set of servers."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX is that it is self-contained."
"The solution is easy to use and to learn. It is well integrated with VMware."
"It has reduced the time it takes to put the servers in production by half the time."
"The solution scales extremely well."
"NetApp HCI is a stable solution."
"This is a strong product and it works very well, and the processes around it continue to grow and mature."
"The solution is very scalable."
"It is easy to administrate the solution, and the company handles its technical support well."
"HCI definitely improved how flexible we scale, and our entrance into the cloud. The features are very rich, in terms of both avenues. It's helped us flexibly move and shift our workloads around, back and forth."
"The most valuable feature is the software design storage that really provided a faster, agile, easier to scale up and out storage path."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the SolidFire interface."
"The multi-vertical aspect is what is most valuable for us. The main reason we wanted a multi protocol was because Amazon was not able to provide us with access to the same data as we could get from Linux and Windows lengths. That was our value proposition for this solution."
 

Cons

"Maybe a better version is required to gather all of the information to allow HyperFlex to bring everything online more rapidly."
"The scalability could use improvement."
"Cisco should combine its features with its prices."
"Their technical support is very bad. We had an issue where instead of an engineer we got a PDF "doctor" that didn't know anything about our problem which was very frustrating."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could improve by having the documents be more readily available and the support could be more flexible."
"We are working with a lot of different technologies and trying to manage them with one tool. The API could be improved for better integration with other systems."
"I haven't been too impressed with the Cisco HyperFlex HX, honestly. It's a hard concept."
"You cannot just apply the VSXi updates. You are dependent on Cisco HyperFlex for metric services, analytics, and everything else. I don't like that dependency."
"There have been some drive type of issues where we have to apply a new code level. Storage nodes kick certain drives until they act as though they have failed when really they haven't. You just have to reinsert them, then they go on about their happy way. It's sort of a bug."
"I'm not a fan of how they don't log you out properly from some of their web tools for management."
"The deployment process has room for improvement. I would like for it to be a cookie-cutter deployment."
"HCI has not enabled us to consolidate workloads or break down silos and has not increased application performance. It has also not resulted in more efficient use of compute resources."
"The administration side of it needs to be improved. We expect an easier interface and a single upgrade for updating the infrastructure."
"The product needs better support for installing the operating system on the machine."
"The networking needs improvement."
"I'd like to see some additional graphics capabilities because I'd like to look at some virtual desktop integration for CAD software."
 

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."
"We have a yearly license."
"There is a 30 percent additional premium that all the companies are charging for Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series because of the lack of chips and bottlenecks in the market. The cost of the solution is high right now."
"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."
"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."
"HyperFlex is relatively expensive, but you get good value for money."
"We currently have a perpetual license, which is kind of unlimited, so we don't have the normal licensing cost, yet."
"This solution saved our organization time (35 percent) and money. We have a hefty group of developers, and if you multiply that by 30 to 35 percent, that is quite a bit of money."
"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."
"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."
"Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market."
"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."
"Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."
"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."
"This solution reduced our maintenance costs. We were going to have to pay one to two million dollars to put in compute nodes. We are avoiding those costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise57
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise19
 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

BluePearl Veterinary Partners, Ready Pac Foods, Bryant University, Bellevue Group, KPIT Technologies, City Harvest
American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: September 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.