We performed a comparison between Cisco Hyperflex Hx Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Cisco Hyperflex Hx Series seems to be a superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Nutanix Acropolis AOS to be more difficult to deploy than Cisco Hyperflex Hx Series. Additionally, Nutanix Acropolis AOS lacks the level of integration that Cisco offers.
"Starwind made it easy to deploy fully redundant, highly available storage at a low cost."
"The iSCSI protocol is quite simple to configure."
"It enables us to provide more solution options for our clients, with the reassurance that, when implemented, they will be efficient and stable."
"High Availability is the best feature of product."
"This software lets us maintain storage redundancy across both of our Hyper-V hosts, so if one goes down the environment fails over to the other and we have minimal to no downtime."
"This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business."
"The fact that the solution is vendor-agnostic allows it to be used with any virtualization vendor while remaining a powerful abstraction over storage."
"The solution is also quite flexible. As an example, other vSAN solutions that we looked at had more stringent requirements regarding mixed HDD/SSD storage which wouldn't have worked in our environment."
"The solution scales extremely well."
"The technical support has been very good for this solution."
"The management feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The workload can handle anything and has an extended capacity."
"Support is very responsive."
"The solution is stable."
"It's very easy to integrate with the ACI network."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is simple to use, user-friendly and has been best for our purposes."
"Acropolis' main advantages are high performance and availability."
"It has a user-friendly dashboard and interface."
"The HCI environment itself is very intuitive. Everything is centralized under one solution. And, they also have fast server built in in addition to a network analyzer."
"In general, being able to patch and not having to pay for SanDisk is the best thing about hyper-converged."
"Great flexibility and scalability."
"One of the most valuable features of Nutanix is that it's easy to use. I love this solution—it's easy to maintain and update, and I think it's almost perfect."
"It's quite easy to scale, and you have the option to have distributed nodes everywhere around the world that work as one. You can also have a solution for small branch offices with only two nodes for redundancy, and that's good enough to start."
"The most valuable feature is Move, which allows you to migrate virtual machines from VM to AHV."
"If there was a way to automatically put disks in maintenance mode when shutting the host down and exit maintenance mode automatically, that would simplify things."
"There is no Italian-language version of the software available."
"The main thing I would like to see improved is the level of documentation."
"I had to buy upgraded support, which was not a problem, but it wasn't a prorated amount, so I paid for the support, the full upgrade, but I only got a couple of months out of it because it was only good until renewal time."
"The console is something that I feel could be improved. There is nothing technically wrong with it, but it can be jazzed up and/or made to be a little more intuitive."
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"There needs to be more visibility on how long the cloud replication will take as there is no current ETA."
"The gathering of monthly consumption and performance reports for future dissemination to concerned parties is very important. Unfortunately, StarWinds vSAN doesn't offer this functionality."
"I would rate the installation of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series an eight out of ten. It can be complex."
"Its price could be better."
"The initial setup can be a bit complex."
"We need to be able to scale out and not just up. When you want to scale up or scale out, you are quite limited."
"When it comes to customer needs, the licensing price could be better."
"If we compare it with VMware, the VMware product is basically very open, and it can be easily integrated with any platform. VMware product is also available on the cloud and is not an appliance-based product, whereas Cisco HyperFlex is an appliance-based product. Companies that want to use HCI as a platform or as a service would prefer something without an appliance. A SaaS-based product is better for a customer who is using the cloud and has multiple resources, workflows, and devices on the cloud and wants to go for a hyper-converged solution. This is where improvement is needed. In addition to an appliance-based product, Cisco should provide a SaaS-based product. Its price should be lower. Cisco needs to work on the pricing model for this product. Its price is a big road blocker when competing against Nutanix and VMware, which are its main competitors."
"I have been receiving a memory overflow message every day when I use the solution."
"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."
"An area for improvement would be the cyber security features."
"The productivity and work efficiency of Nutanix Acropolis AOS could improve."
"The cost of the solution is too expensive. There are other options, such as VMware, that are offered for less money. In Latin America, it seems to be overpriced for the market."
"In the future, I would like to see multi-tenancy in Nutanix Acropolis AOS."
"I would like to see Acropolis add the ability to migrate VMs between storage containers. I don't know if they've added this in the latest versions, but I haven't seen it yet. It's mainly about AHV. When we use VMware, we can move between storage containers. In VMware, it's just like regular storage, and we can move it."
"The process of migrating from old hardware to new could improve."
"We ran into an issue as a managed service provider because Acropolis isn't designed to be used the way we are running it. For example, if we want to deploy a Kubernetes service, the customer networks need to reach our protected cluster network. We have isolated our customers in separate VLANs. However, our customers' networks must access our cluster network to get features like iSCSI or Kubernetes to run. It's challenging."
"To have internal stability, we needed to network the solution ourselves. Performance depends on the application. Performance could be the lack of IOPS, memory and CPU and configuration issues."
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Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is ranked 8th in HCI with 28 reviews while Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 1st in HCI with 86 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is rated 7.6, while Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series writes "An all-in-one option that is stable and offers good management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "Serious reliability and stability across the entire system makes for ROI". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, Dell PowerFlex and NetApp HCI, whereas Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, VMware vSphere and Hyper-V. See our Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series vs. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) report.
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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.
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.