Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs VMware vSAN comparison

Cisco and Broadcom are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Read 90 Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] reviews

89% willing to recommend

VMware vSAN

Read 234 VMware vSAN reviews

14,300 Views
9,009 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

VMware vSAN

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

VMware vSAN and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure market. VMware vSAN appears to have a slight advantage due to its broader deployment options and strong integration with VMware products.

Features: VMware vSAN is known for its high performance, easy scalability, and strong integration with VMware solutions like vMotion and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series offers complete integration of computing, storage, and networking, providing high availability and a single platform for management.

Room for Improvement: VMware vSAN users desire enhanced management tools, better deduplication, and broader hardware compatibility. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series users suggest improvements in integration with cloud platforms, better documentation, and pricing optimization.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware vSAN provides broader deployment options, including private and hybrid clouds. It offers good technical support, though response times could improve. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series has responsive support and is well-regarded, though users report mixed experiences with licensing and customer service.

Pricing and ROI: VMware vSAN is considered expensive due to licensing tied to CPU cores, but provides long-term cost savings and significant ROI. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series also has a high initial cost, increased by subscription fees, but justifies the expense through comprehensive integration and operational benefits.

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

Buyer's Guide

HCI

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 880,901 peers since 2012

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

VMware vSAN

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

234

Ranking in other categories

HCI (2nd)

Featured Reviews

reviewer2133501

Assistant VP, Information Technology at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Effective deduplication feature, but lacks a unified architecture

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could be improved by reducing the number of nodes. Currently, the architecture separates data, computing, memory, and storage into different parts. For example, if I need around 200 servers with a requirement of TB of storage, I would need 200 clusters, which can be quite cumbersome. Other solutions like Dell and Nutanix have a single combined unit that includes computing, memory, and storage, which can reduce the number of nodes required and also reduce licensing and power consumption. Therefore, I suggest improving the architecture of the Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series by combining computing, memory, and storage into a single unit, making it more efficient and easier to manage. It will also reduce the number of nodes required and licensing costs and help to reduce power consumption. I would like to see improved internal integration capabilities in the next release. Currently, it is constrained only to VMware only. So, there is no integration part of the RAC or IEL or anything, and it isn't easy to manage it. If I want to hold another partner, then that part will not be possible. So, you have to manage that particular integration. Another feature could be in terms of memory usage.

Read full review

ShyamikaThamel

Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium

Managing mixed RAID workloads has improved data protection and delivers strong performance

VMware vSAN can be improved in certain areas. In cases involving our large data stores with large VMs, we experience some latency, not during normal operation, but during database backup operations. We observed latency due to buffer issues from the top-of-the-rack switches. These issues are mostly network-related because all storage data traffic travels through the network. I have recently used Nutanix, and I observed that Nutanix provides better performance than VMware vSAN due to its data locality features. VMware vSAN is now providing data locality, but we did not use that option. If VMware vSAN provides additional features in the next release, such as the VM balancing feature called DRS on the cluster that VMware previously had, it would be beneficial. With DRS, VMs can move easily from one node to another within the same cluster. Nutanix does not provide that flexibility. When placing a VM on a cluster in Nutanix, the placement uses a balancing component. After that, the VM remains on the same host. If any contention occurs on the CPU or memory side, the VM stays in place until contention happens. If issues occur, the VM migrates to another host while transferring all objects to the same host. This is how their data locality is maintained. When a VM moves to any host, it moves with all VM objects. VMware vSAN does not currently offer this option. If a VM moves to another host, it accesses the disk object through the network, which increases latency. VMware vSAN now offers an option to select data locality, but it does not function like Nutanix. This is why some latency remains. If VMware vSAN can improve this feature, it would be very helpful and VMware would regain its top position.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You can administer things easily. E.g., if you need more power, you can add a system."

"The implementation process is okay."

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

"The most valuable feature was the backup - it was easy to back up. It was also very easy to administrate and manage the system; much easier and faster. Finally, it was easy to extend the disk capacities."

"Our customers have seen ROI in terms of the time they save troubleshooting."

"The technical support has been very good for this solution."

"Support is very responsive."

"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."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"VMware has been around for a long time are are doing a decent job at catching up with the latest technologies i.e. bringing in kubernetes and containerization. Overall, this is a great tool for virtualization."

"It is scalable, overall. If you need to add storage, it makes it easy to scale by adding additional hard drives into the existing servers or you can add storage by just adding more servers."

"It completely removes the need for a storage network and for a storage administrator and all of that infrastructure and the costs that are involved with them."

"VMware vSAN is easy to configure, with basic functionality and the customer can maintain the solution."

"The product's initial setup phase was very straightforward."

"Overall the solution is very good."

"I like the tolerance of VMware vSAN."

"It allows us to put our infrastructure in remote locations and still get the same performance we get from our onsite SAN solutions."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"It needs more detailed documentation."

"You cannot just apply the VSXi updates. You are dependent on Cisco HyperFlex for metric services, analytics, and everything else. I don't like that dependency."

"The price could be better. I think it's more expensive than VxRail. In the next release, I would like to see a better level of protection and availability with six clients."

"The solution could improve by having more customization."

"The initial setup can be complex."

"The product needs work in the area of deduplication which currently is inefficient."

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

"The product does not have a cloud version...The product should be made more flexible in terms of integration capabilities."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"It would be ideal if the solution offered some intelligent monitoring."

"VMware vSAN could improve by adding NAS and object storage."

"This solution could be improved by having more than one controller for the environment. VMware depends on one controller for the whole environment, whereas Nutanix has one controller for each node. Because there is only one controller with VMware, if there was any drop, then the whole environment would stop working. In Nutanix, I have five nodes—there is one controller for each node and it depends on a virtual controller—so if the controller of any node is down, the whole environment will still work."

"The only negative point relates to the licensing. If you want multiple, different servers, it costs money, but you have all the capacity for vSAN. You do not reach the data, but the processor arrays and the current architecture."

"Maybe incorporation of automation to build clusters in a more automated way would be beneficial."

"I would like to see a little bit more documentation on the initial setup, and a little bit more explanation on the expandability: How to extend out your vSAN much more simply through the console because, a lot of the time, you have to do it through the command line."

"Pricing is something of a concern."

"The problem for many is that you become dependent on Broadcom; you have no competitor then, and you are stuck with it."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"HyperFlex is a little pricey."

"It is relatively expensive, but it can easily return value by freeing up other resources."

"Its price is high. Cisco needs to work on the pricing model for this product. Nutanix or VMware are cheaper products, and they provide almost the same functionality. Its price is a big road blocker when we are working with an end customer, and Nutanix and VMware are in competition. If they can reduce its price, it is actually a better choice for customers."

"There is a recurring cost for the VMware license and the HyperFlex licenses."

"Cisco is quite expensive, but not in the initial first buy."

"Comparable solutions with switches, storage, and services are cheaper than HyperFlex. It should be cheaper."

"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."

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

"We pay for a license to use the solution through our company CapEx and then we continue to pay annually."

"The licensing cost is high and should be taken into account."

"It is cheap. It is $0.02 a gig."

"It is not a subscription model. It is a purchase model, but it is very important that you also buy technical support from VMware. This is probably the only disadvantage of vSAN. It depends on the use case, but it can be very expensive."

"The price of VMware vSAN is expensive and there is an annual license required."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."

"Enterprise customers can customize their licenses according to their own needs and budget."

"Every product is licensed with full support for a certain number of years. The licensing could be cheaper."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

880,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

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	100
Midsize Enterprise	58
Large Enterprise	129

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 Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?

While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...

See all answers

How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?

HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...

See all answers

How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is best suited for small- to medium-sized organizations. It is easy to create load bal...

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE SimpliVity vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 15% of the time

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

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 12% of the time

VxRail vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 12% of the time

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

Compared 12% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 20% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN

Compared 11% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware vSAN

Compared 7% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

January 2026

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

December 2025

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

vSAN

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

VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

VMware vSAN Features

VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.

Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.

Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.

High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.

Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.

HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.

Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

VMware vSAN Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution.

Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance.

Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.

Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly.

Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “vSAN gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources. We have an overall larger host infrastructure, and we split that up for specific customer test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

Broadcom

Sample Customers

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

Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, StarWind and others in HCI. Updated: December 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

880,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best HCI vendors.

We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.