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Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure 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
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infr...
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
HCI (24th)
 

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).
PS
Consolidated management and good documentation but very complex and difficult to operate
It is not user-friendly, and it is very difficult to operate. You have to have a deep understanding of the technical details of the infrastructure to implement it. When you compare it with VMware, it is totally different because the graphical user interface is not that easy to understand. It is not intuitive. To use it, you have to read a lot of documentation and even understand what is going on behind the solution. It is not for someone who has a little bit of knowledge. Currently, it is too complex. I need something that is easy to implement. It should have a basic configuration as well as a complex configuration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a solution that best suits thre needs of our organization."
"Great integration with backup software."
"The storage system is its most valuable feature. It has eliminated our entire need for having to worry about storage. We were storing a lot of syslog data and using a lot of templates in our data center. With the storage system, we are now saving an enormous amount of space."
"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."
"Easy to spin up and operate virtual machines without the overhead of managing a storage network."
"It allows us to authorize our residents to come in using their own personal devices to access any of our clinical applications and ensure that the PHI is secure and protected."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is simple to use, user-friendly and has been best for our purposes."
"The ease of use and the graphical user interface (GUI) are two of the most valuable features of this solution."
"The consolidation of the management in one control point is the most valuable. The whole infrastructure management is consolidated in just one console point. The documentation is also pretty good."
"The most useful feature is the solution's automation in terms of how we are able to spin up a certain workload in real-time when we are doing R&D."
"Both the scalability and stability of this solution are excellent."
"It is stable and scalable."
"The size of the hardware is what we need because it is very good for small configurations."
"I like that you can add other types of services."
 

Cons

"The utilization needs to be better. It needs more options."
"The solution could improve by having more customization."
"We would like to move off the GUI."
"The documentation could be substantially better, but the product itself does everything it needs to do."
"HyperFlex could be improved by reducing the minimum number of nodes supported from three to two."
"I have been receiving a memory overflow message every day when I use the solution."
"I would have liked it to be able to back up the system to a cloud, to be able to work from any other place"
"The pricing is pretty expensive."
"It should be more user-friendly, in my opinion."
"The licensing policy needs to be improved. They have a licensing policy based on the number of CPU sockets. Nowadays what has happened is that the license they are trying to move is based on the number of CPU cores. With the advancement in technology there are now more cores in a single CPU. It's been very challenging in terms of managing the license around everything. Today we have a processor with 24 and 32 cores on the same physical CPU."
"The main issue is the initial investment. It is an expensive product, and it should be cheaper. It should also be easier to use and manage. The professional service for this solution is quite complex and expensive."
"It is not user-friendly, and it is very difficult to operate. You have to have a deep understanding of the technical details of the infrastructure to implement it. When you compare it with VMware, it is totally different because the graphical user interface is not that easy to understand. It is not intuitive. To use it, you have to read a lot of documentation and even understand what is going on behind the solution. It is not for someone who has a little bit of knowledge. Currently, it is too complex. I need something that is easy to implement. It should have a basic configuration as well as a complex configuration."
"This product is not so stable. Maybe it is just not mature enough in its development."
"The cloud deployment could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is a bit too high."
"For customers in the private sector, this product can have a very high return on investment."
"Cisco is quite expensive, but not in the initial first buy."
"Here in Brazil... it is very expensive. It's very hard for almost all companies to buy even the small version of this solution."
"Our licensing is Hybrid. We have all of our applications for billing and outage management through this."
"Initially HyperFlex was a little costly, it was higher, but Cisco wanted to get into our company, so they gave us a fair discount."
"We are on an annual subscription and the price is fair."
"HyperFlex is a little pricey."
"It is quite pricey."
"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is an open-sourced, low-cost solution with full features."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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Also Known As

No data available
Red Hat HCI, Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Virtualization
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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