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 ability to keep data accessible even in the event of hardware failures is highly valued, as it ensures business continuity."
"StarWind vSAN was very easy to integrate into our system and ran flawlessly during our entire use time."
"The management interface on the software is very simple. It is insanely simple compared to most SANs. The interface is also powerful when used to complete tasks that an IT administrator needs to complete."
"The ProActive support gives me peace of mind because I am a one man shop, but with the technical support behind me, I feel like more than just one person. We spent two to three hours, depending on what we have to do, always on the phone, and they do not push to end the call."
"The configuration is so much simpler than that of a traditional SAN with fewer points of failure to worry about."
"StarWind support has been great in helping resolve other issues not caused by their software."
"Integration with virtualization platforms helped us to resolve many issues we were facing while using the physical storage."
"The customer support provided by StarWind is excellent."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX has improved the way our organization functions in the way that the time to deliver a VM takes me five minutes. In comparison, my cloud team's response is a couple of days based on all their overhead policies, procedures, and ticket requests. This is substantial."
"When we use it for VDI solutions, it is very easy to deploy and support."
"It allows us to authorize our residents to come in using their own personal devices to access any of our clinical applications and ensure that the PHI is secure and protected."
"The ROI we have seen from the high performance that has saved us time and money."
"The most valuable feature for our company is that it works internally. We have a lot of internal projects for optimization."
"Great integration with backup software."
"The solution is stable."
"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 most valuable feature is the ability to continue our business needs and have higher visibility. It has definitely increased our business productivity levels."
"The most valuable feature is that it is software-defined storage. Also, being able to do maintenance on the fly is a real benefit: migrating off, updating, and then moving the guest back on to the nodes."
"Very good VCG notification feature."
"It is very well known in the industry, and there are a lot of technical resources around it. This is a big thing for me because, at the end of the day, when you implement it, you need to support it."
"The solution is stable."
"The performance has exceeded our expectations and exceeded our traditional converged infrastructure."
"vSAN is one of the easiest implementations of any VMware product. It's almost like click it to enable it, then you're almost done."
"The solution is easy to use."
"I'd love to see native export of metrics (via Prometheus or something of that nature) to allow us to get more metrics available on our existing dashboard software."
"The software monitoring should be web-based to be reachable from any VLAN workstation."
"Perhaps the developer should refine the product management through PowerShell."
"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."
"I'd prefer it if a remote console was provided."
"The only thing that I have any difficulty with is that in order to perform upgrades, it is required that the SANs be detached from the Hosts before that can happen."
"StarWind really needs to market its product more."
"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."
"The initial setup can be a bit complex."
"I would like for them to develop integration with other technologies, like SD Access. It's still lacking an enhancement management player."
"Cisco is a bit more challenging in terms of deployment. The admin must be knowledgeable in order to complete the task. Without that knowledge, it will be difficult to complete."
"We'd like the product to offer better integration with other products."
"Lacks some integration and documentation could be improved."
"There should be the opportunity to create more than one div group"
"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."
"Sometimes when there are multiple technologies involved in a support case, this is when there is a bit of a lag."
"Enterprise customers get discounts on the solution's licensing pricing, but it is too expensive for SMB customers."
"VMware vSAN could improve by adding NAS and object storage."
"While I like the replication and compression features, there is a problem with them running too slowly."
"Pricing is something of a concern."
"The pricing could be better when it comes to renewing the licenses."
"I have used the VMware Replication but I can't get it to work properly. The process should be simplified."
"Customers who are using Essentials Plus or even Essentials have to pay for technical support. However, they should not have to pay for support."
"Integration could be better."
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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