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.
"It is extremely stable."
"Speed and high availability have been the most valuable for us."
"It provides shared storage to multiple hypervisor hosts. Times had changed, however. StarWind Virtual SAN is the “software replaces hardware” for SAN. We have access control and CCTV systems up and running using Microsoft clustering and shared storage"
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to leverage our server infrastructure more completely without the need to add more hardware."
"The fact that I can now count on a true failover solution is what is most appealing."
"StarWind support has been great in helping resolve other issues not caused by their software."
"This product now allows us to migrate virtual machines between nodes as if we had a dedicated $100,000 SAN in the mix without the additional cost and management of the SAN."
"The StarWind products have enabled our organization to modernize stations where larger and more expensive equipment was not an option."
"This is not the only product we use, so we have other solutions to compare it with. We can compare different products and different vendors and tell our customers which products have which advantages and disadvantages so that they can leverage these products in their own environment. This product helps us to understand the customer's needs and what issues they can run into."
"The management feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"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 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."
"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."
"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 ease of use and the graphical user interface (GUI) are two of the most valuable features of this solution."
"It's easy to get the tool started."
"The support has been excellent, especially if you compare it to IBM."
"VxRail alleviates the operational constraints within an organization."
"Our clients value being able to upgrade with one click or a few clicks."
"It improved from an operations standpoint as we have reduced failures compared to a previous vendor. The hardware that we previously used had a lot of issues with components failing regularly."
"The ease of deployment and management of the solution are the most valuable aspects of the product."
"The scalability of VxRail is very good."
"My customers use it for VDI. It has been very usable and very fast to use with VDI. On the VxRail side also, it has been very fast."
"The manageability for controlling the console is the most valuable feature."
"It runs until it does not - and disaster recovery documentation is sparse and mostly unclear."
"The reconnection of the attached drives upon a reboot could be improved."
"The gathering of monthly consumption and performance reports for future dissemination to concerned parties is very important. Unfortunately, StarWinds vSAN doesn't offer this functionality."
"The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex."
"The Command Center, a free guest VM for management and monitoring, leaves something to be desired. It could have more accurate real-time information and better reporting visuals, which seem to be an afterthought."
"Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so."
"This product could be improved with the inclusion of new health check procedures."
"A better overall view of the different deployments could be beneficial, although this is difficult due to how flexible the solution is."
"In the next release, I would like to see them able to connect to the public cloud."
"We had a bit of complexity to think about how to migrate our legacy infrastructure into Cisco HyperFlex."
"Deployment scripts can be improved since several clans need to be created before the deployment effectively works."
"With the cache disk fails in Cisco, the whole node fails, and the workload goes down."
"There are sometimes issues with memory failure."
"They should have more blade options and more configuration flexibility. Also, the price is expensive. It should be cheaper but it is worth the price."
"Does not support the stretch cluster, and the interface is not good."
"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."
"My customers want more storage for university databases."
"We spend around six months waiting for a confirmation and firmware upgrade to confirm this step."
"The SCL database sends out a warning and you have to download the adjacent file from the Dell website. You have to upload it and retest it. We cannot always connect our systems to the internet which means we sometimes miss these important updates."
"We'd like to see more automation capabilities in the future."
"I would like to see VxRail add duplication features to its hybrid solution."
"I would prefer it if each cell had a tool geared toward billing clients."
"In the next release, maybe they could add in integration with the hyper-cloud so it will be easier to do the movement up and back to the cloud in order to scale in and scale out."
"The requirements need improvement. Some of the managers of VMs are a little sensitive to where they need to be placed in the environment and what names they need to have. I would like a little more control over that so that it fits into our naming scheme and it fits our organizational structure within vSphere."
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 VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 121 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is rated 8.0, while VxRail is rated 8.6. 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 VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is most compared with VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas VxRail is most compared with Dell PowerFlex, VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and HPE Hyper Converged.
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