We performed a comparison between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and VMware vSAN based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: VMware vSAN wins out in this comparison. The main difference between the two solutions is that Cisco Hyperflex HX Series users find deployment to be difficult, and also say the solution uses a lot of memory and hardware resources. In addition, they do not mention an ROI.
"The StarWind VSAN is always up and allows us to move VMS to other nodes for maintenance, without interruption to service."
"The StarWind Virtual SAN provides a clever and unique solution to the Computing Split Brain problem."
"I save both physical and virtual space."
"The user interface for this application is amazing."
"I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN."
"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."
"The management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly."
"The main benefit is that StarWind is almost maintenance-free."
"Offers very good data protection and provides system uptime availability effectively."
"Great integration with backup software."
"It is helpful as a backup solution."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is the integration with everything in a much smoother, such as in physical and virtual environments. VMware NSX is a simpler solution but, Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is more robust compared to VMware NSX."
"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 implementation process is okay."
"I like Cisco Intersight."
"It is a stable and scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature of VMware vSAN is the ease of management. VMware vSAN it's a part of VMware ESXi and when you do patching for VMware ESXi, VMware vSAN receives the patches too."
"VMware vSAN is a global solution, so we can manage all the storage solutions in one place. It's embedded in VCI solutions."
"Allows us to implement more quickly, and to ease the maintenance."
"The technical support is good."
"Storage virtualization software with a good storage management feature. It's a scalable and stable software."
"The vSAN features we've found most helpful are live application migrations and storage policies. It has storage, policies, application, and DRS policies. Automation is there."
"I have found that the multi-homing feature is very valuable in VMware vSAN. It is an easy-to-use solution."
"The performance of VMware vSAN is very good."
"We just need more integration with Veeam."
"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."
"Management of VSAN itself could be improved. A Web UI for management would be great rather than an application installation. StarWind is testing a command center virtual appliance that I have installed in my environment."
"It could have a dashboard so that you can check all servers' SAN health and performance."
"I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves."
"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 documentation is good. However, if compared with competitors, it could be enhanced and made more professional."
"The documentation could be clearer in terms of explaining the installation."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could improve by having the documents be more readily available and the support could be more flexible."
"I have been receiving a memory overflow message every day when I use the solution."
"The solution could improve by having more customization."
"Cisco HyperFlex should decrease the amount of memory needed from the Controller VM that controls the physical discs. They control the discs by using the virtual VM over every ESXi host and the VM consumes memory and consumes more hardware resources. They have to improve that by decreasing the amount of required memory and CPUs to control this disc on the server."
"The architecture separates data, computing, memory, and storage into different parts."
"They should give us a little more information about how to use the CLI and offer more commands."
"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."
"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."
"The updating process could be easier."
"Improvements can be made with respect to scalability."
"If we have some complicated issues, you have to use the command lines interface. Not everything is possible to be fixed in the GUI. This is a drawback, that some things have to be fixed via command-line interface and should be able to be done in the GUI."
"The solution functions as the marketing says, as long as you follow certain rules."
"The architecture of vSAN is not good. vSAN works with objects, such as disks, and it causes problems with availability."
"There is room for improvement in vSAN's ability to debug. When it's not working well, debugging becomes quite challenging. Identifying issues when it's lagging or not functioning properly can be difficult."
"Lacks sufficient storage terabytes."
"I would like for the next release to be a bit cheaper."
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Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is ranked 7th in HCI with 23 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 3rd in HCI with 40 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is rated 8.0, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.0. 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 VMware vSAN writes "Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is most compared with VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Dell PowerFlex, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series vs. VMware vSAN report.
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