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.
"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” accessible by all hosts. StarWind cuts down virtualization cost and complexity by eliminating the need for a physical shared storage (SAN). -StarWind offers the Enterprise-level high availability (HA), deployed and easily configured . we get technical support from star wind team when implementation software and after setup if we face any issue."
"StarWind Virtual SAN can improve an organization's storage infrastructure by providing high availability, scalability, cost-effectiveness, performance, and ease of use."
"Using our own choice of HW allowed us to price our service to answer our customers' needs."
"We like their high availability. It reduces the downtime for our entire organization's environment."
"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."
"One of the most valuable features is the way it sets up the virtual SAN, because we don't have to buy a separate appliance for storage. It uses the existing storage on the servers, which is definitely a cost savings for us."
"I've been really impressed with it so far. I think it's pretty great, actually. It does exactly what we need it to do, and it does it well, so I would recommend it. Plus, the support has been very good."
"The ease of reaching the support team and their promptness for support is great."
"Stretch cluster allows us to warranty a service for the customer."
"Easy to spin up and operate virtual machines without the overhead of managing a storage network."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The scalability of the product is quite good overall - as long as you plan correctly from the outset."
"The ROI we have seen from the high performance that has saved us time and money."
"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."
"Its most valuable feature is its flexibility."
"The most valuable feature for our company is that it works internally. We have a lot of internal projects for optimization."
"The ability to have a disaster recovery option for our end-users by being able to use VDI and the vSANs, and the ability to do replication across multiple data centers, are valuable to us."
"The most valuable features are Erasure Coding, Deduplication and Compression, and the advancement in stretching regarding replication."
"IOPS is comparatively best to run VDI solution."
"The scalability is very good and the solution is stable and reliable."
"High availability is a valuable aspect of this solution."
"There is not a lot of maintenance required."
"Overall the solution is very good."
"Flexibility, growth, and expansion are probably the more important features for us. As our environment grows, the more users come on, the more VDI workstations that we need, we can easily expand either horizontally or vertically with the environment"
"It should reclaim white spaces after big files are deleted."
"It is hard to find adequate technical documentation on their support website."
"The setup and documentation for the installation with the free version could definitely be improved."
"The GUI deserves a little love."
"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."
"Currently, the StarWind management console is a bit clunky to navigate and isn't the most user-intuitive interface."
"The product can include a more simple way of synchronization after a forced shutdown as the current process has a few more steps to check that hosts have synchronized and this can be automated."
"I would like to see more monitoring and alert tools."
"In the next release, I would like to see them able to connect to the public cloud."
"They should give us a little more information about how to use the CLI and offer more commands."
"The initial setup could be faster, due to the prerequisites."
"There is a VMware plugin for HyperFlex, which sometimes it hangs up in our environment, and doesn't function well."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could improve by having the documents be more readily available and the support could be more flexible."
"The initial setup can be complex."
"I would like it to be easier to manage the server, create VMs, and manage the VMs on the client."
"Stability is really poor, especially the storage stability. We lost data. There were disruptions of clusters and that's one big pain point of the solution. It's not stable enough, the documentation is not good, there's not much documentation available. For every call we need a tech engineer."
"I would like for the next release to be a bit cheaper."
"The solution must provide better customization."
"External storage would be a good thing to have in the next release, something other than iSCZI, something a little more, not HA, a little more production-oriented, than iSCZI."
"VMware vSAN could improve by having better integration with other vendors and the storage is limited, I prefer it to the traditional storage."
"Currently, one of the available features is shareable VMBKs. You can create the VMBK disc and you can make them shareable between the ends. But as soon as you start using this feature, you lose the ability to create snapshots."
"Lacks an integrated backup solution."
"There is a room for improvement on the latest version of compatibility with the VMware product, especially for vSAN and with other vendors on their motherboards and driver configurations."
"There is always a challenge with their firmware."
More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in HCI with 90 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is rated 8.0, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] writes "A fast and easy deployment that allows secure access to our medical applications ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is most compared with VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray.
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