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.
"With an uptime of 384 days, StarWind has improved overall server reliability."
"I save both physical and virtual space."
"The control panel is nice. It gives you a lot of good feedback as to the status and health of the VSAN."
"This solution made it possible to deploy a new infrastructure in the shortest amount of time, at a low cost without purchasing expensive hardware storage, and use unused servers."
"Ten gigabit Ethernet compatibility, support, ease of use, and management are some positive features."
"It has been extremely stable for the three years we've been running it."
"It has reduced the amount of switching, network connections, etc., because the converged StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to connect high-speed network interfaces between different boxes instead of having to connect SANs via the network, then connect those two clusters together."
"Being hardware agnostic is a must and definitely scored points for us."
"The ease of use and the graphical user interface (GUI) are two of the most valuable features of this solution."
"It is very scalable. It is also very secure. Cisco's security portfolio is integrated with it, which makes it secure. It is a platform-based device. Its performance is also fairly good in comparison to any other solution."
"Support is very responsive."
"It is a stable and scalable solution."
"The implementation process is okay."
"It is scalable and easy to use."
"The feature that we are most interested in is the scalability. When needed, we are able to add more nodes and scale it up further."
"We used to have a single customer-facing data center, which was vulnerable to failure. This product has allowed us to create high availability between two private data centers."
"The solution's technical support is good."
"Very good VCG notification feature."
"The most valuable feature is the simplicity of its scalability: being able to grow it without having to make sure you get the right disks and the right nodes. The solution is also easy to manage. It's all right there in the vSphere Client. You're not going through multiple things. You don't have to know, once you've created the vSAN node. You add storage, it sees it, and you create your data storage from there. Everything is right there for you."
"The most important functionality is the ability to extend cluster storage and cluster computing power securely without loss of data."
"The most valuable features are its performance, simplicity, and synchronicity with vSphere."
"The migration of servers feature makes server rack maintenance easy."
"One of the valuable features for us is the ability to restrict the performance capacity per client. Other solutions don't have this feature."
"Technical support is good."
"I would like to see different levels of support offered."
"The configuration can a bit cumbersome."
"It would be great to have more automated tooling around managing the iSCSI connections in Windows"
"It would be great if it provided thin provisioned virtual disks."
"Performance when in storage-separate configuration needs to be improved."
"The console is something that I feel could be improved. There is nothing technically wrong with it, but it can be jazzed up and/or made to be a little more intuitive."
"The logs can also become very noisy when there is an issue, which is very infrequent."
"It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI."
"The setup was complex, especially since we usually do all the planning, sizing, and workflows before integration."
"The solution could improve by having more customization."
"It needs improvements in terms of I/O. Sometimes I have felt it is slightly slow while we are trying to provision VMs or access VMs."
"We would like to move off the GUI."
"The initial setup can be complex."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could improve by having the documents be more readily available and the support could be more flexible."
"The pricing is pretty expensive."
"It is quite new solution, so it is not very stable."
"We would like to see additional backup and recovery options added. In particular, integration with popular applications like databases."
"Its installation should be easier, and its price should be cheaper. It would be good for the product if they can include the data locality feature."
"We plan to switch products since the hardware nowadays is a little bit outdated and we need to scale up a bit."
"The solution must provide better customization."
"It can be very expensive."
"The interface is a little complicated, it could be simplified with more graphical gadgets. We have many servers, and the built-in functions, such as rate configuration, are a bit complex."
"I would like to be able to limit IOPS."
"As a software-based product, it requires a lot of system resources."
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.
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.
