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

Cisco and Nutanix are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Nutanix users who would recommend it.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Read 90 Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] reviews

89% willing to recommend

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...

Read 198 Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) reviews

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4,342 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure market. NCI appears to have an advantage due to its robust feature set, ease of deployment, and customer service.

Features: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers high performance I/O and high availability. It features ease of administration and advanced data management with distributed file systems supporting deduplication and compression. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, while integrating computing, storage, and networking, focused on scalability and Cisco environment integration but lacked some advanced functionality found in competitors.

Room for Improvement: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure could enhance network integration, improve support for various hypervisors, and expand storage capabilities. Cisco HyperFlex faced challenges with cloud integration, scalability, and high cost, along with complex storage and backup integration issues.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is praised for easy deployment across on-premises and hybrid environments. It provides exceptional customer service with responsive support. Cisco HyperFlex, though providing good integration within Cisco ecosystems, can be complex and costly to deploy, and its support has received mixed reviews.

Pricing and ROI: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers competitive pricing, with high performance and reduced downtime justifying the investment. Cisco HyperFlex is perceived as expensive, with high initial costs and licensing issues. Although some users report decent ROI, it varies significantly based on deployment scale and additional service costs.

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Buyer's Guide

HCI

July 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

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

198

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (5th), HCI (3rd), Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) (1st), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (4th)

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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Andrea Beccia

IT Systems Architect at Cividale S.p.A.

Offers satisfying data protection and workload movement features with exceptional stability

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure can be used up to 100% of its capacity, but our company is presently using 80% of the solution's resources. Our company manufactures iron casting products in the metal industry, and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is also used. For virtualization purposes, Nutanix Acropolis is used as a full-stack solution. For the Windows virtual machines in our company's server, Nutanix Acropolis is utilized instead of solutions like VMware Hypervisor. One of the main reasons our company adopted Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure was its data protection features. The solution is also used in disaster recovery through the automatic snapshots feature on the local site. Next year, our organization will try to join clusters in the network using the solution. Network clustering will help our organization's team move workloads into the geographical cluster automatically. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is considered an ideal solution for disaster recovery where data protection remains embedded. The solution is capable of even capturing auto snapshots for remote sites. Next year, our company plans to test new features of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure that will assist in automated workload movements on two sides at a distance of 60 kilometers. I would recommend others use the solution for its exceptional stability, performance, hardware compatibility, and overall flexibility. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure allows the use of varying hardware for the same cluster. I would rate the solution a nine out of ten overall.

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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

"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 most valuable feature for our company is that it works internally. We have a lot of internal projects for optimization."

"The solution is stable."

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

"Easy to spin up and operate virtual machines without the overhead of managing a storage network."

"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."

"It has reduced the time it takes to put the servers in production by half the time."

"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

"Acropolis AOS's networking concept is excellent."

"The configuration is easy, and it's flexible."

"You can be sure that whatever you patch is already compatible with the current firmware and the current version of the Acropolis that you're using."

"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure has a simple, user-friendly GUI, and I also like the remote recovery capabilities. It provides a single platform for managing databases."

"The speed of the operations and of creation of VM is fantastic."

"To receive a performance enhancement by merely clicking the one button upgrade is the true value of the platform and what I look forward to the most."

"One major thing that comes up again and again is stability. Our downtime is literally based on hardware upgrades that need to be done. Acropolis is very, very user friendly. You don't have to physically have a super IT guy to manage the system. You can actually give it to a younger guy to manage and there won't be problems. And if he makes a mistake, it's very, very easy to fall back and sort out the mistake."

"The fact that there is only one interface to deploy a complete solution for maximum storage is fantastic."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) pros

Cons

"The initial setup can be a bit complex."

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

"You have to get the same servers with the same storage; they need to be identical. However, in vSAN or in VMware we don't have to do that. We can just add storage and manage it in the same server."

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

"The utilization needs to be better. It needs more options."

"It is quite new solution, so it is not very stable."

"Lacks easy integration with other vendors."

"The solution's price could be affordable."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"They should support more VM, which is not currently supported."

"I'm sure there are a lot of things that could be improved, but I'm actually very satisfied with this product. There may be some possibilities to move the virtual server dismounting points or to move the server from one group to another, but I can't think of any special improvements or update features."

"It does not have good backup feature tools, like having templates or being able to back up every two or three days."

"One thing I've noticed is that, when you do a shift from VMware to Nutanix, it opens the setup of the VM that's currently running. If people from another site double click on it, it opens the VM instead of the setup of the unit. So I would suggest that this could perhaps be switched. That is so far the only change I would like. I would like it if they could fix the instance where you double click on a VM and it opens the VM instead of the setup. That's the only thing that's a major bother to me."

"Regarding third-party backup solutions, the only agentless option is Commvault, which is expensive, complex, and requires intensive vendor training."

"The GUI for this solution needs improvement."

"The reporting section of the dashboard could be improved to include more detailed reporting about the servers."

"Native File-Services are under heavy development and Container Services just came out."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"When we negotiated with Cisco for the HyperFlex solution, they gave us a good price because they wanted to break into the market in Portugal for the first time. However, in general, I think it's a very expensive solution. It's a huge amount of money to acquire this kind of infrastructure."

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

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

"Its price is rather fair when compared with other solutions like VxRail, vSAN, and HPE SimpliVity. We got a fair amount of discount from Cisco for Cisco HyperFlex. It is cost-effective. We have renewed storage till next year, and we have already paid the vendor. When we talk about HyperFlex or any HCI solution, storage is the part where we can reduce a lot of costs. At the current moment, we are already using NetApp storage, which did not allow us to go for a full Cisco HyperFlex setup. We are planning to go to a larger scale next year. Then we will be able to see how cost-effective it really is for us."

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

"We currently have a perpetual license, which is kind of unlimited, so we don't have the normal licensing cost, yet."

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

"The licensing costs are a bit expensive but when you compare the features, it's reasonable."

"The overall cost depends on the contract of each customer and the discounts they have, but the price for the three-tier architecture can be slightly lower."

"The pricing is fair for the package."

"The solution could be a little less expensive."

"They offer multiple tier licensing which means that lower level licensing will have less features."

"The software only licensing model is priced normally, but the licensing model that comes with hardware is priced very high. You can choose to pay the license yearly, or you can pay every three years, or every five years."

"When compared to the competitors, the price is reasonable."

"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure’s pricing is very good and competitive."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) 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

Answers from the Community

Netanya Carmi

Content Manager at PeerSpot

Aug 2, 2022

How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?

See 2 answers

Leah Fainchtein Buenavida

Tech Blogger

Oct 17, 2021

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-converged infrastructure at scale. We looked into it but then ultimately chose Nutanix Acropolis. We liked Hyperflex’s virtualization feature and the unified network fabric it provides. The Integrated Managed Controller was a nice feature to have. It is expandable, stable, and has good redundancy. If you require more processor cores per box, Cisco HyperFlex is a good solution for you. Support will depend on the type of contract you have, with some requests taken care of immediately and others taking longer according to the engineer’s expertise. While Hyperflex is designed for any company size, I wouldn’t recommend them for small businesses. It also requires a solid knowledge of Cisco products, as the UI can be difficult to manage. Upgrading to a newer version can also be cumbersome and could use some improvement. We chose Nutanix because it is easier to use and is more cost-effective. Nutanix allows us to deploy, run and scale applications both on-premises and in the cloud. It has excellent support. You can log the query straight to a technical expert, which is good if you have staff not familiar with AOS. It is easy to scale by adding new nodes, and the company is constantly adding new features. Nutanix is not for everyone, though. The Nutanix Cloud System can be complex to maneuver when at the command line or when troubleshooting. Conclusions Nutanix is better for medium-sized companies and when you need a cost-effective solution. Cisco Hyperflex is a complete solution but is better suited for large enterprises. It works better if you are already a Cisco user.

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Steffen Hornung

Administrator at Neuberger Gebäudeautomation GmbH

Aug 2, 2022

With Nutanix you have the freedom of choice. You can deploy it with several server hardware vendors or completely in the cloud. I don’t know Hyperflex at heart, though. Also, support at Nutanix is outstanding.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing 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 is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?

We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?

See all answers

What makes Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) worth using?

NCI is a product with many tools and services but the one that, in my opinion, makes it better than similar products and worth using, is the full-stack lifecycle management. This capacity allows u...

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE SimpliVity vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 47% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 23% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

VxRail vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 8% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 6% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 6% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 6% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 5% of the time

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

July 2025

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

June 2025

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) report

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Also Known As

No data available

Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis

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

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is a top-ranking HCI software, cloud management tool, and Software Defined Storage (SDS) tool that is marketed as the foundation for users' hybrid clouds. It offers a powerful and secure hyperconverged infrastructure to deliver all data and applications at any scale and on any cloud. The solution offers a complete software stack that allows users to unify their hybrid cloud infrastructure.

NCI’s services include computer, storage and network, hypervisors and containers, and deployment in public or in private clouds. The product also comes with built-in resilience, disaster recovery capabilities, self-healing, and high-security capacities. It provides further deployment flexibility through several software and hardware options and platforms. NCI includes a full set of enterprise capabilities. It can also be deployed on a wide range of servers from popular manufacturers.

The capabilities of the product are categorized into three main groups:

AOS storage
Flexible and open compute
Automated and secure networking

Outside of these categories, NCI also offers other capabilities:

Integrated disaster recovery
Full-stack lifecycle management
VMware with Nutanix
Intelligent operations

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Features

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers its customers various features and tools in each of the previously mentioned categories. The available features for users currently include:

High-performance: This set of features utilizes hardware advances such as NVMe and RDMA to accelerate users' most demanding applications with consistent performance. The tools in this feature category work alongside data locality to ensure successful results.
Foolproof resiliency: These Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure features protect data and keep it available by facilitating advanced distributed consistency algorithms. Users can utilize these features to protect their data from issues like bit rot, hardware failures, and even entire site failure.
Flexibility: This set of features allows storage to be sized for the needs of each organization and expanded promptly and easily so that the organization and its data can grow. The features offer flexibility to users in terms of applying storage policies logically on a pre-workload basis, instead of being tied to hardware.
Hypervisor choice: Users can choose from the leading hypervisors - Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware ESXi. They can also leverage the built-in hypervisor AHV that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides.
Integrated virtualization: These features offer simplified automation and AHV streamlined operations. The services in this category are optimized for high performance and reliability.
Kubernetes: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers features to build and deploy cloud-native applications on intelligent distributed infrastructure. Apps can be integrated with cloud-compatible storage and both building and deployment can be achieved within the same platform.
Microsegmentation: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers features to prevent malware spread and reduce attack surfaces by leveraging machine learning (ML).
Virtual networking: This set of features allows users to easily implement multi-tenancy in their environment or stretch networks across clouds.
Centralized network management: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides organizations with a way to manage networking configurations centrally. Users can utilize it across their human-computer interaction (HCI) environment with simple virtual switch management.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Benefits

The product offers various benefits to users who utilize its capacities. Some of these include:

NCI reduces technology sprawl and frees up technical resources to allow organizations to focus on other activities, potentially reducing costs for the business.
The product allows customers to deploy, scale, and bridge to the public cloud to be able to react in evolving business environments.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure improves data availability while simultaneously protecting it against several kinds of failures and attacks.
The solution offers high-performance, resilient distributed storage for all workloads.
Working alongside Nutanix Cloud Platform, NCI offers simple management of data from one console.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure works by the zero trust philosophy, protecting users' apps and data through specially designed security protocols.

Reviews from Real Users

According to Gerhard J., an IT manager at Q4 Fuel, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides serious reliability and stability across the entire system makes for ROI.

A solutions architect at a computer software company describes NCI as a stable, straightforward to set up, and scalable solution.

Nutanix

Sample Customers

BluePearl Veterinary Partners, Ready Pac Foods, Bryant University, Bellevue Group, KPIT Technologies, City Harvest

St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: July 2025.

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