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.
"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."
"It has allowed us to save a lot of time and money by letting us create a vSAN within a Windows VM on the environment it controls."
"The configuration is so much simpler than that of a traditional SAN with fewer points of failure to worry about."
"In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems."
"It allows me to configure High Availability and failover clustering with some fault tolerance, at a cost point that doesn’t break the bank for a small business budget."
"We have experienced multiple hardware failures at one site and the fault-tolerant volume worked exactly as expected with zero downtime."
"The price was right."
"The most valuable feature is the managed service, which has been an important part of monitoring our critical infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature is full integration with Cisco API and UCS, which means you can have complete networking and storage from Cisco."
"The scalability of the product is quite good overall - as long as you plan correctly from the outset."
"The most valuable features of this solution are scalability, performance, and reliability. It scales well inside of a large data center."
"Cisco technical support is very skilled. From what I've had to access, there were quick responses and the necessary escalation."
"The solution is stable."
"The software defines networking, storage, and processing."
"The product is easy to manage and flexible for upgrading without major changes."
"I love the Cisco design, the visual interface to manage and use the platform."
"The initial setup was not complex."
"The tool's price is competitive and it is easy to use."
"VxRail can manage the whole cluster at the same time, so it's easy to expand. VxRail has more features vSAN ReadyNodes that make it easier to implement from scratch."
"It's a simple product, fast, and reliable."
"It's a turnkey solution, which is good for customers, because they are buying into stability."
"The solution is easy to use. When turning on a server or a machine that is required for, deployment or quality assurance, the dynamic deployment of resources is good."
"Low-maintenance solution with hyperscale feature so it has the ability to utilize the resources for the VMware cluster setup on which Citrix VDA runs."
"VxRail has improved our organization by providing our admin team with an easy-to-use interface."
"The GUI deserves a little love."
"I would like to see improvements in the documentation area."
"There is a general lack of documentation, especially up-to-date documentation to get started."
"It took a bit of knowledge and support to put in place but once installed it works fine. Migration (HyperV) from one server to another sometimes takes longer than expected but there is no data loss even if the host crashes."
"The software monitoring should be web-based to be reachable from any VLAN workstation."
"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."
"The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex."
"We have, in rare cases, received conflicting guidance between different support folks within StarWind."
"I would like for them to develop integration with other technologies, like SD Access. It's still lacking an enhancement management player."
"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."
"With the cache disk fails in Cisco, the whole node fails, and the workload goes down."
"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."
"We would like to have the ability to not have to reboot while doing updates. Being able to work through updates with as minimal amount of impact to users."
"I would like to see them expand onto the cloud."
"The initial setup could be faster, due to the prerequisites."
"The solution could improve by having more customization."
"If we could have some out of the box ideas in integration, I think that would be a great feature."
"Sometimes during implementation, you can some scripting errors. And there are some issues when we update the version. There are some issues like the version will not get updated or stable at some time. Dell needs to resolve these problems, we don't waste time fixing them."
"If they can provide deduplication compression through the traditional hard drives, as Cisco does in the HyperFlex system, it will be very cost-effective, especially when it comes to archiving workload. VxRail doesn't allow the mixing of old flash clusters and hyper clusters. When I'm starting with an old flash cluster and it comes to archiving workload, I will also need to attend the new cluster. So, I either manage two different clusters, or I pay and upload my work with the archiving mobile hard drive, which is not cost-effective at all. The main key is to allow mixing between two types of clustering, like Nutanix, or allow deduplication of completion over the period of shared hard drive on SAV. It will be much better."
"They should add automation and activation going forward."
"Its price needs to be improved. It is very expensive. NSX should be licensed together. It will make the network virtualization layer more usable. It would be better if they come together in a bundle, not separately."
"My customers want more storage for university databases."
"A more containerized approach in regards to the interface would be better."
"If they continue developing their product regarding VMware, it will be one of the best products in the HCI space. In terms of additional features, there is nothing missing because, for data protection, they also have the CDP option for VM. They can protect the VM at any point in time."
More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is ranked 8th in HCI with 90 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 117 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 VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and HPE Hyper Converged. See our Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs. VxRail report.
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