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.
"The most useful aspect is the hyper-converged SD SAN and the ease to expand it by just adding cheap SSD or NVME disks."
"The price was right."
"Besides being 80% cheaper than the other alternatives, the simplicity makes reconfiguration and support much easier."
"The ability for us to manage all of our nodes from the same console makes systems administration very easy."
"The fact that we can expand our storage and add on to our compute nodes easily and how amazing the StarWind technical support team is really adding value to our purchase."
"Integration with virtualization platforms helped us to resolve many issues we were facing while using the physical storage."
"The management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to grow rapidly while still providing flexibility and reliability."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The workload can handle anything and has an extended capacity."
"With our four HyperFlex HX hosts (consisting of processor, memory, and disk), the performance is very fast and we have no problems at all. In all of the five years that we have been using HyperFlex, we haven't needed to increase our budget to buy additional hosts."
"The technical support has been very good for this solution."
"I like Cisco Intersight."
"The management feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"Great integration with backup software."
"We are providing this solution for the customer or converting the customer from a traditional environment to a hyper-converged environment which consolidates all management and support on a single port. This is the main benefit of using the hyper-converged versus the traditional."
"The most valuable features are the RBAC, role-based access control, and the reporting. NCI also provides a single platform, a single pane with a dashboard, to manage the entire infrastructure. We have complete information about overall utilization, performance, and a forecast for our platform in that single pane."
"The solution remains stable across versions."
"It has a user-friendly dashboard and interface."
"Acropolis AOS is scalable to nodes and the cloud."
"There are a lot of things I really like. Perhaps the best part is taking a snapshot of a virtual machine. It's very quick. Another useful part is replication and creating a protection domain: using the protection feature to replicate a machine to a remote site for DR purposes."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS is easy to use, it is a great platform."
"This is a very flexible solution that you are able to run however you want."
"This operating system offers stability. Setup is straightforward."
"The platform needs to improve user management and the web console."
"The only point they should improve is the amount of documentation available for the user, especially in the first preliminary phase in which we were testing the product on our own."
"The main issue we ran into was the documentation. We attempted to set up the product in our test environment by ourselves and ran into several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us."
"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."
"It took a bit of knowledge and support to put in place but once installed it works fine. Migration (HyperV) from one server to another sometimes takes longer than expected but there is no data loss even if the host crashes."
"It would be helpful if StarWind provided more precise and detailed documentation explaining how to configure the solution in various scenarios, including the advantages and disadvantages of each."
"Diagnostics information or alerts on the state of systems could also be implemented to give more visibility."
"The console is something that I believe could be enhanced."
"The initial setup can be complex."
"Unlike other options, you need to pay a subscription to Cisco yearly instead of paying for the hardware outright, which makes it more expensive in the long run."
"In the next release, Cisco should add more integration and management capabilities as well as some tweaks to the dashboard that make it more user-friendly. They could also add support for multiple hypervisors."
"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."
"Lacks easy integration with other vendors."
"The utilization needs to be better. It needs more options."
"With the cache disk fails in Cisco, the whole node fails, and the workload goes down."
"Does not support the stretch cluster, and the interface is not good."
"One disadvantage of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is it doesn't support external storage. Connecting external SAN storage to Nutanix, it's not supported."
"USB dongle-based licenses do not allow us to directly locate the USB ports on Nutanix."
"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."
"I would like them to update their licensing to provide more features with their basic license."
"Limits on increasing space with the inability to have or attach external storage."
"I'd like it to be more API-based."
"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."
"It is a CentOS-based operating system, but CentOS releases security patches almost every week or every other week. However, Nutanix releases their upgrade at three or four month intervals. According to my organization's SLA, if a critical patch is released during that time, then I need to implement the patches within 30 days. If it is a standard patch, then I need to patch it within 60 days. Since that is my SLA, I cannot meet my SLA for security because Nutanix will not release the upgrade within these 30 days. Between the critical patch release and the Nutanix release, my customers say they are vulnerable and I am accepting the risk while the SLA is breached."
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Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is ranked 8th in HCI with 29 reviews while Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 1st in HCI with 74 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is rated 7.8, while Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series writes "High performance solution that makes it easy to efficiently manage VM resources". 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 FlexPod, whereas Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, VMware vSphere and Sangfor HCI. 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.