We performed a comparison between Cisco Hyperflex HX series and VxRail based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: In our comparison, VxRail is the preferred solution. VxRail is easy to use and performs well without causing undue stress to operating systems. The competitive price and overall cost-effectiveness make it an easy choice for many organizations.
"StarWind is very easy to use, even if you have had no experience using a SAN before."
"It eliminates the use of expensive physical shared storage."
"StarWind saved us about 80% of our storage costs over our old solution."
"StarWind has provided us with a top-notch, well-supported, robust vSAN offering when other vendors have moved to hyper-converged solutions that are outside of our average clients' reach from a financial and resource perspective."
"The management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly."
"We are running Hyper-V on twin servers in failover, and being able to manage servers from anywhere I need to, virtually, has been a game changer."
"The ability to keep data accessible even in the event of hardware failures is highly valued, as it ensures business continuity."
"We have been able to use more on-prem hardware to reduce cost and also use old disks that we do not trust enough for ordinary RAID or usage."
"Performance-wise, everything is good. So far, we haven't had any issues. There has been no downtime at all."
"The implementation process is okay."
"It's very easy to integrate with the ACI network."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is full integration with Cisco API and UCS, which means you can have complete networking and storage from Cisco."
"It is helpful as a backup solution."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"You don't need to think about compatibility of components."
"like VxRail because it's fully integrated. The other hyperconverged solutions are also well integrated. They are all highly similar to each other in that regard. But we prefer VxRail for its physical integrations or lifecycle management. It also has vCenter, which integrates the hardware lifecycle management."
"Initial setup is straightforward, as everything is pre-installed."
"The ease of deployment and management of the solution are the most valuable aspects of the product."
"Cost-effective and easy to install."
"VxRail has improved our organization by providing our admin team with an easy-to-use interface."
"We are very happy with the purchase, and it works well. It is fast. We went with the full-flash version, meaning that we have SSDs. So, we can build a Windows virtual machine in two minutes. We were surprised when we first tried to do that."
"The tool's price is competitive and it is easy to use."
"I had issues locating the documentation that applied to my version of StarWind vSAN."
"Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful."
"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."
"I would say that the documentation is mostly great, however, some features could be expanded upon a bit."
"Diagnostics information or alerts on the state of systems could also be implemented to give more visibility."
"Proper training sessions should be included with the licensing."
"I'd love to see more clarification for us folks who are smart enough to do some damage yet not smart enough to use CLI."
"Besides not being able to use any filesystem, I do not have any additional cons."
"HyperFlex could be improved by reducing the minimum number of nodes supported from three to two."
"The initial setup could be faster, due to the prerequisites."
"We'd like the product to offer better integration with other products."
"I have been receiving a memory overflow message every day when I use the solution."
"They should give us a little more information about how to use the CLI and offer more commands."
"The initial setup can be complex."
"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 initial setup can be a bit complex."
"VxRail should try to improve the pricing."
"The scalability is limited to a single cluster with 64 nodes."
"Integration could be improved."
"We have some issues, but they are possibly out-of-the-box issues. There was a host that was dead on arrival, and there were some file issues on other hosts. We're currently working actively with Dell to resolve all these issues. Once they are resolved, the product should be stable."
"We'd like to see more automation capabilities in the future."
"They're getting better with their one-click upgrade. The success factor is now between 85% to 87% with the latest release. They should just continuously improve on that one-click factor and make it more seamless."
"The initial setup is very complex."
"Lacks integration of licenses so that it's an expensive solution."
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Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is ranked 7th in HCI with 24 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 44 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is rated 8.0, while VxRail 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 VxRail writes "It's built on platforms that have been in the industry for more than 15 years, so it's very stable". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is most compared with VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity, Dell PowerFlex and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. See our Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series vs. VxRail report.
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