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 failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down."
"User friendly interface and straight forward implementation."
"Using our own choice of HW allowed us to price our service to answer our customers' needs."
"The fact that I can now count on a true failover solution is what is most appealing."
"The user interface for this application is amazing."
"The management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly."
"It's quite easy to manage."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very easy-to-use solution that can be quickly and easily deployed and configured without intimate and specific knowledge in the virtualization sphere."
"It increases efficiency, decreases the cost, and manages the network in one single way. That's the most important thing."
"Overall, the solution is extremely easy, flexible and secure."
"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 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."
"The automation is a valuable feature, it's interesting."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX is that it is self-contained."
"The compute storage and virtualization come all in one box."
"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."
"It easily integrates with all types of storage."
"The features of vSAN allow us to reduce our operational complexity to a large degree."
"This solution has a dashboard that you can log into and control if you need too while the VM is getting created."
"Allows us to implement more quickly, and to ease the maintenance."
"The most valuable features of vSAN are its simplicity to deploy and that we can use commodity disks in our servers without complexity or need for external storage arrays or storage specialists on our teams."
"It is easy to use. It is easy to implement for us, and it is also easy to maintain for the customers. It is not necessary to buy some extra devices and talk with other vendors."
"Very good VCG notification feature."
"It would be helpful if StarWind provided more precise and detailed documentation explaining how to configure the solution in various scenarios, including the advantages and disadvantages of each."
"We have, in rare cases, received conflicting guidance between different support folks within StarWind."
"I had issues locating the documentation that applied to my version of StarWind vSAN."
"The documentation can be better for the free tier."
"Sometimes documentation on their site can be out of date."
"Updating the software can be a bit tricky."
"The console is something that I believe could be enhanced."
"We would like to see the documentation more fully developed."
"Lacks some integration and documentation could be improved."
"The infrastructure team thinks that there are a lot of issues."
"Sometimes when there are multiple technologies involved in a support case, this is when there is a bit of a lag."
"The initial setup could be faster, due to the prerequisites."
"You have to get the same servers with the same storage; they need to be identical. However, in vSAN or in VMware we don't have to do that. We can just add storage and manage it in the same server."
"The architecture separates data, computing, memory, and storage into different parts."
"The utilization needs to be better. It needs more options."
"If we compare it with VMware, the VMware product is basically very open, and it can be easily integrated with any platform. VMware product is also available on the cloud and is not an appliance-based product, whereas Cisco HyperFlex is an appliance-based product. Companies that want to use HCI as a platform or as a service would prefer something without an appliance. A SaaS-based product is better for a customer who is using the cloud and has multiple resources, workflows, and devices on the cloud and wants to go for a hyper-converged solution. This is where improvement is needed. In addition to an appliance-based product, Cisco should provide a SaaS-based product. Its price should be lower. Cisco needs to work on the pricing model for this product. Its price is a big road blocker when competing against Nutanix and VMware, which are its main competitors."
"Improvements can be made with respect to scalability."
"The biggest room for improvement I see in vSAN is the lack of SAN connectivity. I've kind of joked around that there is no "SAN" in vSAN. And it's something that we've worked to try and introduce some options for, and we're going to continue to work towards that."
"What I would like to see, for the really small customers, is the ability to have two nodes."
"If the support could be provided more quickly, it would be very helpful."
"As no product is 100% perfect, the price for VMware vSAN could still be improved, though it is good when compared to some of its competitors."
"I would like to see it be more hardware-agnostic. Other than that, the only other complication is - and it has gotten better with the newer versions - that lately, once you're running an all-flash, if you need to grow or scale down your infrastructure, it's a long process. You need to evacuate all data and make sure you have enough space on the host, then add more hosts or take out hosts. That process is a little bit complex. You cannot scale as needed or shrink as needed."
"I would have liked it to have been more scalable. It's scalable but not as much as, for example, the ScaleIO systems were or the Kaminario"
"Dedupe in non flash drives can be improved."
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.
