We performed a comparison between Cisco Hyperflex Hx Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Cisco Hyperflex Hx Series seems to be a superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Nutanix Acropolis AOS to be more difficult to deploy than Cisco Hyperflex Hx Series. Additionally, Nutanix Acropolis AOS lacks the level of integration that Cisco offers.
"You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage."
"Highly available storage is the most valuable feature. The entire rollout is hyper-converged and requires no extra storage further than the hosts in which Hyper-V is running. Another feature that has been great is the support from StarWind in general. We have their proactive support package on the main cluster that employs Starwind Virtual SAN."
"A great feature is that I basically set it and forget it, as everything is automatic."
"StarWind vSAN has a lot of great features and is a perfect solution for mirroring internal disks and flash between servers."
"We are able to do maintenance by bringing down one node at a time, rather than having to schedule a complete shutdown."
"A typical system administrator with minimal experience in Hyper-V, VMware, or Windows can do VSAN configuration and maintain VSAN operations."
"The support team is available to solve any problem efficiently."
"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."
"Scalability is easy and simple."
"The compression and deduplication are very high. Therefore, we can use the size of the product more efficiently than other storage solutions."
"The most valuable features of this solution are scalability, performance, and reliability. It scales well inside of a large data center."
"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."
"It increases efficiency, decreases the cost, and manages the network in one single way. That's the most important thing."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"Support is very responsive."
"Our customers have seen ROI in terms of the time they save troubleshooting."
"A great feature involves real-time hardware changes."
"This operating system offers stability. Setup is straightforward."
"It has a single pane of glass and you don't have to jump around various toolsets."
"Hyperconverged Infrastructure is the most valuable feature of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure."
"It has enterprise data services with consolidated storage data protection and disaster recovery. One valuable aspect is its efficiency as a robust platform. There is an ease of managing all processes. The data recovery process is remarkably fast. It’s a stable solution. The product is scalable. It provides high-speed live migration capability."
"Most beneficial feature is simplicity, ease of use."
"I like NCI's dashboard. If there are any infrastructure issues, we'll get alerts inside the dashboard. NCI provides a single platform for managing all of our databases. We are running SQL and Linux databases."
"It has centralized management. It is easy for an engineer to manage. More work goes to patching, upgrades, and maintenance. Nutanix is very easy to upgrade. It takes one click. Engineers do not need to spend additional time with Nutanix for upgrades. With one click, it will complete the upgrade and show the results. Other hypervisor solutions are not like this, specifically since you must do all the components one by one."
"The GUI deserves a little love."
"Server-side snapshots are one thing the Linux appliance can't do yet."
"Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful."
"For the StarWind VSA vSphere solution, I would like to see a simpler and automated virtual machine installation process in terms of network settings."
"The system performs as expected, but we're always looking for performance improvements regarding the best utilization of NVMe disks."
"When StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere nodes go offline unexpectedly, the nodes have to re-sync disks fully which takes a long time. We had a power failure and when both nodes came online, VMware vSphere didn't see StarWind disks before I manually re-scanned them form ESXi administration console even though it should happen automatically"
"The only point they should improve is the amount of documentation available for the user, especially in the first preliminary phase in which we were testing the product on our own."
"Geolocation could be better, for example, for site mirroring for DR purposes."
"Its price could be better."
"Sometimes when there are multiple technologies involved in a support case, this is when there is a bit of a lag."
"The setup was complex, especially since we usually do all the planning, sizing, and workflows before integration."
"Maybe a better version is required to gather all of the information to allow HyperFlex to bring everything online more rapidly."
"The initial setup is very complex because there were some issues. It is not clear to how set up this solution."
"I would like to see them expand onto the cloud."
"It would have been nice if the product provided some cloud integrations."
"I would have liked it to be able to back up the system to a cloud, to be able to work from any other place"
"AHV is a great hypervisor but still limited compared to VMware. AHV is the one product they must improve."
"The look and feel of the web GUI of this system needs improvement, when compared to other systems. Its hardware integration also needs improvement."
"The scalability of Nutanix Acropolis AOS needs improvement."
"Nutanix should improve AHV to support migration VMs between clusters and storage containers. Migration between containers is possible, but it requires shutting down the VM. The procedure is long and there is no migration between clusters at all."
"If they can simplify the software slightly for the installation, that would make all the difference."
"Our client had some old Citrix Xen servers for which there is no direct migration. Nutanix has a move utility for Microsoft Hyper-V clusters or VMware clusters. You can easily migrate them using the move utility, but the Xen clusters cannot be migrated in a simple way. That is the only thing that is lacking, but nowadays, no one uses the Citrix Xen server for their clusters. Everything else is already there. Nutanix keeps on upgrading its hardware's or hypervisor's capability to be able to support new technologies."
"In the future, I would like to see multi-tenancy in Nutanix Acropolis AOS."
"I would like them to update their licensing to provide more features with their basic license."
More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is ranked 8th in HCI with 90 reviews while Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 2nd in HCI with 194 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is rated 8.0, while Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series writes "A fast and easy deployment that allows secure access to our medical applications ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "A powerful solution with easy deployment, upgrades, and management". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, HPE SimpliVity, VMware vSphere and Proxmox VE. See our Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series vs. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) report.
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With Nutanix you have the freedom of choice. You can deploy it with several server hardware vendors or completely in the cloud.
I don’t know Hyperflex at heart, though.
Also, support at Nutanix is outstanding.
Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS
Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from core to edge and multi-cloud environments. It helps IT and OT teams deploy hyper-converged infrastructure at scale. We looked into it but then ultimately chose Nutanix Acropolis.
We liked Hyperflex’s virtualization feature and the unified network fabric it provides. The Integrated Managed Controller was a nice feature to have. It is expandable, stable, and has good redundancy. If you require more processor cores per box, Cisco HyperFlex is a good solution for you. Support will depend on the type of contract you have, with some requests taken care of immediately and others taking longer according to the engineer’s expertise.
While Hyperflex is designed for any company size, I wouldn’t recommend them for small businesses. It also requires a solid knowledge of Cisco products, as the UI can be difficult to manage. Upgrading to a newer version can also be cumbersome and could use some improvement.
We chose Nutanix because it is easier to use and is more cost-effective. Nutanix allows us to deploy, run and scale applications both on-premises and in the cloud. It has excellent support. You can log the query straight to a technical expert, which is good if you have staff not familiar with AOS. It is easy to scale by adding new nodes, and the company is constantly adding new features.
Nutanix is not for everyone, though. The Nutanix Cloud System can be complex to maneuver when at the command line or when troubleshooting.
Conclusions
Nutanix is better for medium-sized companies and when you need a cost-effective solution. Cisco Hyperflex is a complete solution but is better suited for large enterprises. It works better if you are already a Cisco user.