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."
"The primary purpose of this software is to create a virtual SAN between local storage on Hyper-V hosts. I find this feature most valuable since it accomplishes this quite well."
"It has been extremely stable for the three years we've been running it."
"Their support goes above and beyond with the integration of their software."
"The main benefit is that StarWind is almost maintenance-free."
"The ability for us to manage all of our nodes from the same console makes systems administration very easy."
"The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget."
"VSAN works great; it's very easy to install, configure, and manage."
"There are some slight cost advantages when you need fewer resources to manage it."
"It is a stable and scalable solution."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX has improved the way our organization functions on the storage side by having one big storage space for hosting VMs. We do not have to provision other ones. That's a positive aspect of it."
"The speed, storage, and management are the most valuable features."
"The solution is stable."
"The implementation process is okay."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is its performance."
"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."
"If we decide to expand, vSAN could offer us some flexibility. We are researching ways to set this up from a new data center, which is located somewhere different from the current location right now."
"The flexibility is most valuable. Being able to manage things quickly if something goes wrong is also valuable. Very recently, we had one node that went down due to a power problem, but there was really no major impact on the systems running on top of it."
"I have used VMware for 15 years and I never had any problems with stability."
"The most valuable features are productivity and data storage."
"The most valuable features are secure IOPs and LAN security."
"Everyone uses virtualization to more efficiently utilize hardware resources. That's the main point of vSAN and VMware."
"The solution is easy to use."
"It is scalable, overall. If you need to add storage, it makes it easy to scale by adding additional hard drives into the existing servers or you can add storage by just adding more servers."
"This is a great product."
"We would like the documentation to be more complete. Most items are covered, but if you don't know something, you may need to contact their support."
"It is hard to find adequate technical documentation on their support website."
"I would like to see more monitoring and alert tools."
"I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions."
"StarWind really needs to market its product more."
"There needs to be more visibility on how long the cloud replication will take as there is no current ETA."
"I would definitely like to see quite a bit more on the monitoring side of things."
"We would like to see better integration in the next release of this solution."
"One of the biggest problems with HyperFlex HX is that if you want to adjust your solution in terms of processing power, memory, or disk capacity, you have to buy completely new hosts. From a financial perspective, it can be very expensive to do so, and from a legal perspective, there are all kinds of compliance issues we would have to sort out before buying any new solution or application."
"Deployment scripts can be improved since several clans need to be created before the deployment effectively works."
"The initial setup could be faster, due to the prerequisites."
"In the next release, I would like to see them able to connect to the public cloud."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could improve by having the documents be more readily available and the support could be more flexible."
"Unlike other options, you need to pay a subscription to Cisco yearly instead of paying for the hardware outright, which makes it more expensive in the long run."
"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."
"Because of virtual storage, the system reaches reserve storage for its functions. It also consumes a certain amount of storage, which then results in the creation of a fault tolerance for the system. All of this adds to a lot of capacity being consumed in terms of storage for each drive for vSan. I find this to be one drawback of using vSan."
"The product's complex setup phase is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The architecture of vSAN is not good. vSAN works with objects, such as disks, and it causes problems with availability."
"The only negative point relates to the licensing. If you want multiple, different servers, it costs money, but you have all the capacity for vSAN. You do not reach the data, but the processor arrays and the current architecture."
"The pricing model is sometimes a challenge for us because their licenses are very costly."
"The quality of the customer service and support depends on the vSAN case. For example, if I open ten cases, maybe two or three get resolved quickly. But the other cases have a slow response."
"This solution could be improved by having more than one controller for the environment. VMware depends on one controller for the whole environment, whereas Nutanix has one controller for each node. Because there is only one controller with VMware, if there was any drop, then the whole environment would stop working. In Nutanix, I have five nodes—there is one controller for each node and it depends on a virtual controller—so if the controller of any node is down, the whole environment will still work."
"The price for the hard drive, for vSAN, is very expensive."
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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