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 199 Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) reviews

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7,305 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series are leaders in hyper-converged infrastructure solutions, competing in enterprise IT environments. NCI seems to have an edge in ease of management and cost-effectiveness, whereas HyperFlex stands out with its strong integration and high availability.

Features: NCI boasts high performance, ease of administration, and seamless integration with its distributed file system. Valued features include data protection, storage auto-tiering, and one-click upgrades. HyperFlex, however, integrates compute, storage, and network, excelling in its ability to integrate with Cisco’s network solutions and offers robust support for various hypervisors, with high availability being a notable strength.

Room for Improvement: NCI could improve network switch convergence, DRC solutions, and enhance built-in backup features, with demands for a more user-friendly interface. HyperFlex's scalability options require enhancement, along with integration tools for external solutions, and users have highlighted the high cost and complexity as deterrents. Better analytics and cloud integration would benefit HyperFlex further.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NCI enables rapid deployment with its intuitive interface and outstanding technical support, consistently appreciated for responsiveness and expertise. HyperFlex's deployment, while effective, can seem complex, with a need for better guidance and documentation. Cisco’s comprehensive support is perceived as slightly less agile than Nutanix, affecting the customer service experience.

Pricing and ROI: NCI is seen as cost-effective, benefiting deployment and operational expenses through inclusive features and reduced infrastructure needs, contributing to faster ROI. Nutanix’s licensing simplicity is favored, albeit with notable upfront costs. HyperFlex, with a higher initial cost, is justified by its integrations and support, although annual subscription costs and licensing complexities suggest areas for improvement.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

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

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

199

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (6th), HCI (5th), 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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Obasanjo Biliaminu

Head Systems Administration/Security at Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System PLC

Infrastructure efficiency has improved significantly with quick server provisioning, though physical to virtual migrations need a streamlined in-house tool

From my experience with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), there is one area that needs improvement. When moving a critical infrastructure from a physical machine to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), we currently have to use a third-party tool to convert the physical machine to a VM. We have to use VMware converter to perform this conversion before moving it to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). I would suggest that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) should develop their own P2V (physical to VM) tools instead of requiring users to rely on third-party solutions.

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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 product is stable. No one complains about the stability, which is fabulous."

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

"The implementation process is okay."

"The speed, storage, and management are the most valuable features."

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

"It is a solution that best suits thre needs of our organization."

"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."

"Deduplication is a valuable feature available in Cisco HyperFlex."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"The most valuable aspect of Nutanix is the performance of the storage, which is excellent. And controlling compute, storage, the network, and security all together in one box is very efficient for us. It gives us a single platform to manage our all infrastructure."

"Management is simple"

"One of the most valuable features that can be found, is the inclusion of a hypervisor for free."

"One of the most valuable features is how well this solution performs. It's stable, aside from some patch issues, but it's great from a virtualization and scalability perspective."

"Hyperconverged Infrastructure is the most valuable feature of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure."

"The dashboard of Nutanix Acropolis AOS allows for simple management. The dashboard has all the information online about what's going on at any given time."

"It is less expensive than VMware products. It is also a little bit more flexible, but it really comes down to price for us."

"Some of the most valuable features of Nutanix Acropolis are that it's free from Nutanix and it's very stable."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) pros

Cons

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

"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."

"Maybe a better version is required to gather all of the information to allow HyperFlex to bring everything online more rapidly."

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

"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."

"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."

"We would like to move off the GUI."

"We'd like the product to offer better integration with other products."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"The licenses for Nutanix are very complicated."

"The file services that they also provide need some more features, like on the Windows file server."

"The compatibility and integration of Nutanix Acropolis AOS could be improved. For example, we have a WAF application firewall and it does not work on this solution. Not all the OS's run on AOS. You need to have a newer version of an operating system if you want Nutanix to perfectly run all the different options."

"The product requires a lot of resources."

"In terms of what I would like to see improved, I would say the life cycle management. I don't know if it is because they changed to an LCM from the previous way of upgrading the hardware or software but sometimes it feels that it needs a wizard that says, "Check this, check this," telling you your options. The only thing that's a bit frustrating for me is the life cycle management interface. That's the only thing on the entire system that frustrates me."

"Nutanix needs to improve network features like Passthrough – SR-IOV. It could be improved by supporting SR-IOV, if they had that support, I would not have needed to implement the VMWare vSAN."

"The GUI for this solution needs improvement."

"I think some of the tasks that must be done using CLI could be added to the web interface."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"HyperFlex is relatively expensive, but you get good value for money."

"We negotiated with Cisco and we got some price benefit from that."

"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."

"It is highly priced compared to other vendors."

"The cost is expensive, but there is a chance to save money in the future."

"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."

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

"The solution could be a little less expensive."

"The solution is quite expensive."

"Our Nutanix license is for five years. There is a support arrangement there, but that aspect is more or less taken care of during the initial installation. With HCI architecture, whenever we do any kind of auto scaling or scaling of servers and resources, there is a significant amount of software licensing involved."

"Extra features should not be so expensive. We would love to be able to use or even just try some of the extra features without having to buy them. Buying those features is just as expensive as buying vSphere licenses, so the cost savings is nullified."

"The pricing is fair for the package."

"We have a three-year license for the use of this solution."

"We are aware of the pricing since we renew every year, at almost $100,000 per year."

"The price of the solution could improve. Nutanix has recently changed its pricing model from perpetual to subscription. They have identified there are challenges with the pricing model."

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.

Read full answer

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

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	91
Midsize Enterprise	77
Large Enterprise	82

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 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...

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Have you received reliable help from Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's support when you contacted them?

NCI is one of the best out there. For any software, no matter how good it is, technical support makes it or breaks it for me. You may have an amazing product but if there is not anyone to help you ...

See all answers

Do you think Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is a secure solution?

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is a very secure solution and ensures this through its Flow Network Security feature. The platform establishes a foundation through a Zero Trust strategy that is compat...

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE SimpliVity vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 13% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 13% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 10% of the time

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 10% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

VxRail vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 7% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 7% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 7% of the time

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

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Stack HCI 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]

January 2026

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

December 2025

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) report

Download Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) product report

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, Broadcom, StarWind and others in HCI. Updated: December 2025.

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