We performed a comparison between Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] and FlexPod XCS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI."The ability to choose our own hardware and our own vendors for this was hugely beneficial, as we had pre-existing relationships with vendors we wanted to maintain."
"I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN."
"The fact that we can expand our storage and add on to our compute nodes easily and how amazing the StarWind technical support team is really adding value to our purchase."
"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"
"Speed and high availability have been the most valuable for us."
"It integrates (fully) with VMware and Veeam, my hypervisor, and backup vendors, so for me, all the puzzle pieces simply fit and work smoothly."
"You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage."
"The StarWind Virtual SAN management console is intuitive and easy to use."
"You can administer things easily. E.g., if you need more power, you can add a system."
"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 integration between the storage and the server applications is the most valuable feature of this solution. It cuts down on the necessity to buy a secondary storage system.. It saves money in the long-run."
"The most valuable features of this solution are scalability, performance, and reliability. It scales well inside of a large data center."
"I find the usability very valuable."
"The software defines networking, storage, and processing."
"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 initial setup is very straightforward."
"When our clients choose to call NetApp or Cisco directly, the cooperative support model means they can get passed back and forth between the two organizations freely. It works really well."
"I really like the architecture and I like the fact that on the storage side I can swap it out. Right now I'm on NetApp, I might go to Pure Storage. I have the flexibility. But as far as the equipment itself, the way it's all bundled together, from the UCS perspective, its rock solid."
"We’ve seen an improvement in application performance."
"It runs our VMs. Our SQL databases are all on VMs, so everything is virtualized."
"I live by the Validated Designs. I do exactly what those designs say and I haven't had a problem as a result. For example, they used to do the FCoE. They figured out there was a problem and they went over to the NFS. I moved over and I agreed with them. It worked better."
"The most valuable feature for me is that you can swap out pieces when you have to lifecycle your equipment."
"The solution can be innovative when it comes to compute storage and networking. FlexPod is very flexible and innovative. We can design it as we like."
"UCS Profiles enable recovering a physical server in less than 15 minutes."
"The initial setup got a little confusing at a few points with differences between the VMware version in documentation vs the latest, etc."
"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."
"It could have a dashboard so that you can check all servers' SAN health and performance."
"High availability for direct attached hardware drives could be useful for increasing the performance of a storage appliance."
"The reconnection of the attached drives upon a reboot could be improved."
"I had issues locating the documentation that applied to my version of StarWind vSAN."
"We don't really have any issues with this product."
"I would like them to invest time in reducing the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure."
"Does not support the stretch cluster, and the interface is not good."
"You cannot just apply the VSXi updates. You are dependent on Cisco HyperFlex for metric services, analytics, and everything else. I don't like that dependency."
"The infrastructure team thinks that there are a lot of issues."
"The initial setup could be faster, due to the prerequisites."
"It needs more detailed documentation."
"We are operating two clusters for site resiliency. I would like to support running redundant/resilient vCenter server instances on each rather than a supported external server."
"Cisco should combine its features with its prices."
"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."
"Cisco support is much slower. Opening cases with Cisco tech is sometimes a bit tedious. The return time for less important calls can be slower. Even Priority 1 calls can sometimes be a bit long and they will have to call me back."
"It would be great to see some form of interoperability between the FAS units and the E-Series, specifically for replication, even if it is just one more replication from a FAS to an E-Series. That would be amazing."
"On the NetApp side, there are definitely things to improve in terms of software updates."
"On the UCS side, sometimes it is difficult to set up."
"We would like more integration with some other HCI solutions so we can take advantage of other opportunities."
"Possibly the UCS could get a bit better. Other than that, overall I don't necessarily have any sorts of constraints or issues with it. It's done the job that it's been bought to do."
"They need to improve the user interface to make it easier to work in this environment. The older version is poor."
"This is an expensive solution."
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Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in HCI with 90 reviews while FlexPod XCS is ranked 2nd in Converged Infrastructure with 295 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is rated 8.0, while FlexPod XCS 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 FlexPod XCS writes "Integrates everything so you are using fewer tools". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, whereas FlexPod XCS is most compared with Dell PowerFlex, VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Oracle Exadata and Dell VxBlock System.
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