Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

Cisco and StarWind are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Read 90 Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] reviews

89% willing to recommend

StarWind Virtual SAN

Read 200 StarWind Virtual SAN reviews

4,684 Views
2,998 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

StarWind Virtual SAN

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] and StarWind Virtual SAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Buyer's Guide

HCI

October 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

StarWind Virtual SAN

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

200

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st), HCI (5th)

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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Vladimir Simion

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

Achieving seamless cost-saving implementation with exceptional support

The best features that StarWind Virtual SAN offers include the price because comparing to other virtual SAN solutions, this one is the best, and it also has a great support team behind it. My experience with their support has been positive, as their guides regarding the integration are very useful. They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly. They will be able to connect and verify your setup, run its parameters and see exactly what's working and what is not, and they really help you with that. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization and my customer through initial cost saving. They use this product in a dark site, so I'm not able to provide any additional details about this, but they were really glad about it, they're still using it, and they asked for extending the capacity for it and the support. They really want to use it and are enjoying using it.

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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

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

"The solution can scale up and out."

"The scalability of the product is quite good overall - as long as you plan correctly from the outset."

"The solution is easy to use and to learn. It is well integrated with VMware."

"Overall, the solution is extremely easy, flexible and secure."

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

"It's easy to get the tool started."

"Most of our users are Cisco customers, so it fits in within the suites we use. Primarily for me, as a solution architect, it's the technology and architecture that is the most valuable. I know from my technical colleagues that it's easy to use and for the customer, the up-time is the most valuable asset. It's running, has low failure, and so on which is why we use it."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"The virtual tapes can be uploaded to the object storage of your choice with object locking/governance which gives you an extra layer of protection."

"The management interface on the software is very simple. It is insanely simple compared to most SANs. The interface is also powerful when used to complete tasks that an IT administrator needs to complete."

"For those basic uses, it's simple to set up and manage, and it seems to do a fine job."

"The performance of the solution is accurate and concise."

"The control panel is nice. It gives you a lot of good feedback as to the status and health of the VSAN."

"The fact that I can now count on a true failover solution is what is most appealing."

"The most valuable features of StarWind Virtual SAN include its cost-effective repurposing of older hardware, seamless integration with vSphere, and high scalability."

"StarWind allowed us to deploy highly available shared storage within our budget."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

Cons

"It needs more detailed documentation."

"It would have been nice if the product provided some cloud integrations."

"HyperFlex could be improved by reducing the minimum number of nodes supported from three to two."

"This solution is lacking in replication and backup abilities that I would like to see in a future release similar to HPE SimpliVity."

"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."

"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."

"We would like HyperFlex to connect the storage directly into Fabric Interconnect along with the features of the solution. We have enough ports in HyperFlex. We don't want to buy another set of switches to connect to Fabric Interconnect, complicating the solution."

"The deployment could be made a little bit easier, as we still seem to struggle with it a little bit for a day or so to get it running."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"Lastly, I think the severity two response time incidents could be improved upon; it's eight hours, and if that could be better, I'd like that."

"We have, in rare cases, received conflicting guidance between different support folks within StarWind."

"We ran into an issue with alerts."

"I would like to see some additional, and possibly clearer, implementation videos with some slower and possibly more detailed descriptions of what the various steps of implementation are for someone who is unfamiliar with high availability and failover clustering in Windows."

"The documentation can be better for the free tier."

"This product could be improved with the inclusion of new health check procedures."

"If it's possible to make a driver/solution that does not make use of the iSCSI targets of Windows, that would be great. I don't know if that's possible, however, it could make the configuration a little easier."

"Android app for monitoring and receiving push notifications as alarms or monitoring I/O from any mobile device could be a good feature and nice to have as we are not always on our desk."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Here in Brazil... it is very expensive. It's very hard for almost all companies to buy even the small version of this solution."

"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."

"There is no additional licensing cost other than the cost for each part."

"I would like the pricing to be cheaper."

"For customers in the private sector, this product can have a very high return on investment."

"We are on an annual subscription and the price is fair."

"The licensing is perpetual and the only thing that you may need to pay for on a monthly basis is if you're going to use their cloud-based management features."

"Initially HyperFlex was a little costly, it was higher, but Cisco wanted to get into our company, so they gave us a fair discount."

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

"The pricing is more than reasonable."

"The cost takes into account the number of nodes, so the size of the storage is not important."

"This solution has a great price for the functionality."

"StarWind is best price/performance for SMB."

"I would suggest that you download the free version, deploy in your lab, and play with it."

"This is a good, economical solution compared to data storage systems."

"The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."

"Their pricing seems pretty good, and their licensing structure is pretty straightforward."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

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	162
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	33

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 StarWind Virtual SAN?

It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” acce...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for StarWind Virtual SAN was okay.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

Currently, StarWind Virtual SAN is working perfectly fine, so there are no changes I would suggest.

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE SimpliVity vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 38% of the time

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

Compared 22% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 20% of the time

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

Compared 20% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 19% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 13% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 10% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

October 2025

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

October 2025

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

StarWind SAN & NAS

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

StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

StarWind

Sample Customers

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

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

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