Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Reviews

We have a remote site. We are developing this site so that we can locally access the VMware environment with the least network bandwidth. We have deployed the ESXi host virtual edition.

It is a complete package. For any kind of on-premises hyper-converged solution, we usually have to separate networks, but Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is a complete solution. It has its own network and storage. The storage part is the most valuable feature.

Its price could be better.

I have been using Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series for the last one and a half years.

It is stable. There are no issues.

We have not contacted them regarding Cisco HyperFlex because the setup was straightforward. We have a team in the USA, and they were mostly dealing with any kind of sales-related queries, but for technical support, we have not encountered any problem to engage them.

The initial setup was straightforward. The deployment took around two hours.

Its price is rather fair when compared with other solutions like VxRail, vSAN, and HPE SimpliVity. We got a fair amount of discount from Cisco for Cisco HyperFlex.

It is cost-effective. We have renewed storage till next year, and we have already paid the vendor. When we talk about HyperFlex or any HCI solution, storage is the part where we can reduce a lot of costs. At the current moment, we are already using NetApp storage, which did not allow us to go for a full Cisco HyperFlex setup. We are planning to go to a larger scale next year. Then we will be able to see how cost-effective it really is for us.

I would encourage people to go with this solution. I would rate Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series a seven out of ten because we have not tested all the features so far.

We use it on our customer-facing network management and customer portals. It is run between two resilient data centers and runs very well.

We used to have a single customer-facing data center, which was vulnerable to failure. This product has allowed us to create high availability between two private data centers.

• High availability
• Replication

The stability has been really good. We haven't had any issues since it's been in production for the last six to nine months.

Scalability was one of the big selling points. Because we are using HyperFlex, we can add additional compute or storage resources without breaking the model that we have built.

I don't think we have had any issues, but the technical support that we have had has been good

We were using HPE SimpliVity. We knew we needed a high availability, resilient data center architecture. SimpliVity simply did not meet these requirements. This forced us to look around. Cisco had improved massively around HyperFlex. As a Cisco partner, it was a natural choice for us. 

It was fairly straightforward to bring online. We had a bit of complexity to think about how to migrate our legacy infrastructure into Cisco HyperFlex, but this was more of a risk management process for us as a business, as opposed to anything relating to the technology.

We are a Cisco partner. We used ourselves and our professional services for our deployment. I have to say, "They worked great."

We would not have invested if we didn't feel the return was there for our customers.

We were mostly looking between Cisco and HPE.

We are a Cisco partner, so Cisco is a more natural choice for us. Feature-wise, Cisco was a superior product, so it was a simple choice.

Work with Cisco and the Cisco partner. It is all about understanding your requirements. The product works well and supports your business. We recommend it.

Typically we use this Cisco HyperFlex cluster as our local server virtualization platform. We have all our services running in this cluster. In other words, we could say this is our local data center for all our business systems as well the core components of our IT infrastructure.

At this moment, we haven't upgraded to the latest version although Cisco has been encouraging us to upgrade, since they recently published a new version. We will schedule this change maybe next month.

I think its most valuable feature is its flexibility.

There are a lot of features that could be improved. We sorted out one critical issue left by the initial deployment team, our external partners. They made a mistake, a wrong configuration regarding the network settings. That left us a very, very painful troubleshooting process. Eventually, after four years, we sorted it out. After fixing that the system was stable. We even thought that maybe this is the root cause of those hardware failures.

In the next release, I would like to see them able to connect to the public cloud.

The first time that I started using the Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series platform was in 2016 and I'm still using it today.

Before I got the second group of this system, I would have said it was quite stable. However, with the second cluster that I received, I experienced lots of hardware issues, and almost all with the RAM stick. The memory stick had been replaced by Cisco due to some hardware failure. It was really painful, and we couldn't sort out the reason. Also we experienced some hard drive failures for which Cisco provided a replacement. So I would say it's not quite stable.

It has very high rate of hardware failure.

We have nine people using it in my department, IT. We are the key users. They rely on us for running the system. So far, it is the only system I have to run. And in recent years, it is running more stably.

Their customer service is very efficient. Usually if we experience some technical issue, we open a case and Cisco Global Support will be on within one hour. So that's very efficient.

We have our external partners to help us with the installation and configuration, and generally speaking, it's quite straightforward.

At the beginning of our project, I remember that it took about one week to set up.

There were three people involved in the system configuration and set up. One guy was in my team and another two from the external partners. They were responsible for the hands on configuration and my guy was responsible for the acceptance test and the communication between the university and the supplier.

In terms of their license, they don't actually call it a license, it's called technical support. We have to renew that after certain periods. And it's not cheap.

I would recommend Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series only in a certain situation.

Right now, considering many other external constraints, it is very hard to recommend it to people, especially if they are based in mainland China.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series a seven.

The primary use case is for people who are tired of messing around with old school solutions, like SANs and NASs, and want to improve the storage side of things in the data center.

The storage system is its most valuable feature. It has eliminated our entire need for having to worry about storage. We were storing a lot of syslog data and using a lot of templates in our data center. With the storage system, we are now saving an enormous amount of space.

I would like to see more analytics. The storage data is just IP packets. It could use better infographs in the HyperFlex Connect on how traffic is running in the network. If you were reaching any capacity issues on the Fabric Interconnects, it should be able to cool all of the servers and Fabric Interconnects, then possibly integrate it with, e.g., Nexus Series switches. This should all be available in a single pane of glass.

I would also like a fast on-premise service. While there is Intersight, which does a lot, there is not the same clarity of information from Intersight, as with an on-premise service.

The stability is great. I can pull the power cord from one of my servers, and everything will keep on running. Then, the VMs will be automatically transferred to another server and the user won't notice anything. If we had two sites, we can down an entire data center without issue.

The scalability is good, though it used to be lacking a bit. Now, the HyperFlex system probably has the scalability to be able to cover every single customer in Norway and their needs. With how much it can scale, Norway doesn't have that customers with this many servers, at least in the same use cases or workloads using HyperFlex.

The technical support is good. We use 24/7 contracts and they have never been late. I would rate the tech support as a nine out of ten.

I did have one time where I had an engineer who was just running scripts. He was reading off a tablet (or something). However, that was a next-business day contract, and we were not working with a high-level engineer. We needed a high-level engineer, so we just escalated the case to receive a better engineer, then everything was resolved.

It would be nice to have more qualified support agents get assigned to HyperFlex cases, at least the initial case, not just someone reading off a script.

We had an old Cisco System, which was an internal company system. We also had an old UCS server, which was spec'd out, along with a bunch of other servers. When we were starting to lack in CPU, memory, and storage, we knew that we needed faster storage and networking. In addition, we needed more CPU and RAM with the possibility to scale.

Now, if we need a new node, we can just order a new node. Then, when we get the node, it takes an hour to put it up and we have a new node in the system.

We needed that scalability. We also needed to upgrade the data center. However, the reason that we chose HyperFlex instead of trying to build a system and making it work with open source software, was with HyperFlex, we receive Cisco tech support and services.

We chose HyperFlex because of everything that binds up into it: the scalability, reliability, and services. 

The first time I did set it up, I deployed it with an existing UCS Cluster on the same Fabric Interconnect. This was not yet validated by Cisco. We had no information from Cisco how to do this. While it was coming, but we had a customer who didn't have spare FIs, so we had some problems. However, this was due to a configuration error from the team who had put up the SAN which was connected on the same FIs. So, the HyperFlex was okay. It was just configuration errors on the other one.

In the other deployments that I've done. It has been mostly just racking and stacking the servers, putting in some IP addresses on the Fabric Interconnects, going down to the office, sitting remotely on the good couch, and typing in everything, then pressing "Deploy". Afterwards, everything just runs smoothly.

I deployed it myself. I am the HyperFlex engineer.

The main purpose of our data center is to run our monitoring system, which uses huge databases. When we transferred the monitoring system, all of our logging servers, and everything to the HyperFlex system, we saved an enormous amount of data. We obtained a huge performance gain out of the monitoring system because it could cache the data more quickly. Everything went faster and obtained more space. So, we have definitely seen a large return of investment.

I would like a clearer licensing model. It should explain a bit more what you receive if you buy the more expensive license rather than the standard one. This would probably help in a lot of cases.

We were looking into a lot of open source and white box solutions before we chose HyperFlex. This was mainly due to cost because Cisco isn't the cheapest solution. However, we completely trust the system because we have all this knowledge about HyperFlex along with knowledge about all the other competitors. The way that HyperFlex does storage down to the bits and bytes is something that we feel that we can trust a lot more than its competitors.

The Virtual Interface Cards (VICs) which the servers use are only available through Cisco. There are no competitors in this area.

Look for what your business needs are, what your data center is using, and keep in mind that all of the big vendors are doing hyperconverged. However, Cisco is the only one who is doing it with the network integrated. With all of the other vendors, you can have whatever type of network you want, but with Cisco, they include the network in the whole hyperconverged scene instead of pawning it off to another vendor. They are sort of forcing you to chose Cisco on the network. Yet, when you choose Cisco on the network, you get validated designs along with tried, tested solutions. The whole data center will come together in one single package.

Cisco was a little late to the hyperconverged scene.

The Fabric Interconnects integrates with UCS. The UCS servers are some of the best on the market. The UCS servers can manage all of the servers from the Fabric Interconnects, which is just phenomenal.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is essential to our vSAN solution; it's integrated.

I find the usability very valuable.

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.

In the next release, I would like to see more integration with VMware. I would also like to see more automation with other Cisco products so that we could have one dashboard for all Cisco products.

We've been using Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series this year.

The scalability of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is good.

We currently have 1,000 to, maybe, 10,000 users.

I have found the technical support to be very good.

The initial setup is straightforward. I think it took two to three hours maximum to set up.

We have two engineers and one manager for deployment and maintenance.

We used a system integrator consultant for the implementation.

There is no additional licensing cost other than the cost for each part.

I recommend Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and would rate it at nine on a scale from one to ten.

We are a solution provider and Cisco HyperFlex is one of the products that we propose to our customers. This product is used for hyper-convergence in IT transformation and can be used for very heavy workloads such as VDIs or HAP HANA.

The most valuable feature is that you can manage the whole cluster from the fabric interconnect.

The physical switches are more reliable than the virtual machines.

using a virtual machine to manage the cluster, needs lots of pre-configuration & validation steps, as well may lead to cluster fail in case of the fail / corruption of the VM (unless you manage to have a valid backup to restore, with a valid cluster restoration plan), 

despite the managing of the Cisco Hyperflex, it comes almost preloaded & stand ready for deploying, as well in redundant architecture, which reflect a solid base for managing & reliability deployment. 

They need to make many improvements to this solution but the most important area is the compression. Most customers are concerned with the compression for a specific workload, and then maintaining it. The performance and compression vary depending on the type of workload; for example with SAS HANA, Cisco forces compression and that affects performance very badly. At the least, the customer should have the option to choose what types of workload should be affected by the data reduction functionality.

The second point is that they need to work on the erasure code. Cisco doesn't support erasure code, even over flash. If they fix this then they will only waste 25%. With replication and mirroring, it uses 100% of the allocated capacity. This means that Cisco needs to work on the architecture. I have conducted many PoCs and it is a problem that they need to work on.

Cisco offers a single cache drive cluster, whereas VxRail offers up to four cache disks per drive. When the cache disk fails in Cisco, the whole node fails, and the workload goes down. But when it comes to VxRail, if a cache disk files then only the node fails and the workload remains up and running. This is an area that Cisco needs to work on. Essentially, they have to raise the number of cache disks that can be included in a single node.

We have been working with Cisco HyperFlex for the past four years.

This is a reliable solution

This product is quite scalable.

Our usage of this product may increase but it is up to the customer. For example, when a customer is loyal to Cisco, they will implement HyperFlex. On the other hand, if it's a customer with a hyper-converged infrastructure then they will definitely implement VxRail.

Technical support from Cisco is responsive and depending on the problem, a hardware replacement is offered 24/7, which is good.

I have experience with similar products from other vendors.

HyperFlex is a very good solution, although not compared to Dell EMC VxRail. Both of them have many good features, although VxRail is better and yet, Cisco is more expensive.

If you consider my customers to be a community, 70% of them have VxRail and 30% of them have HyperFlex.

The initial setup is straightforward. The length of deployment depends on the number of channels but for between four and five nodes, it takes approximately two weeks.

This is an expensive solution, although Cisco will offer it free of charge when there is a large networking opportunity that arises. The licensing is perpetual and the only thing that you may need to pay for on a monthly basis is if you're going to use their cloud-based management features. This requires a subscription.

Cisco offers the on-cloud management system for HyperFlex but most of our customers that are using a hyper-converged infrastructure prefer to build their own, private cloud. In most cases, they have this solution installed on-premises.

Cisco HyperFlex is a product that I can recommend, although VxRail is my first choice. Depending on the customer, their environment, and history with Cisco, I will recommend one of these products over the other.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use it in our production environment for some tasks, such as availability, easy scalability, easy setup, and independence from too many solutions put together. We use FlexPod as another one for mutualized infrastructure.

It is easy for one person to manage, and you don't need to have different expert specialists to configure your storage networking, on the server side, power side, etc. 

It is an out-of-the-box solution. It can be used with little to large size equipment and make things work quickly.

Its most valuable features are:

• Its flexibility
• It is a non-stop solution.
• It is an all-in-one solution.
• It is a cost saving solution. 
• When we use it for VDI solutions, it is very easy to deploy and support.

I would like to have an easy solution calculation to plan my infrastructure and complete my licenses. Because as of now, I have to read a lot of materials and documents.

We have been using this solution for about two years and nothing has happened. We have had no downtime yet. I believe it will work perfectly over the long-term.

It is very easy to scale with this solution.

Their tech support is very clear and easy to work with, and we haven't any problem with them.

We evaluated:

• Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series vs Dell EMC
• Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series vs NetApp
• Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series vs AppDynamics.

The setup was complex, especially since we usually do all the planning, sizing, and workflows before integration.

We always deploy all the solutions for our team. Because our market is not as large as in big countries, our partners sometimes do not seek out teams who can deploy difficult solutions. Since our company is one of the biggest in our country, deployments depends on very hard integrations between system. This is too hard for an external company because they would need to take a long time to understand what we need and how we need to deploy it. The easiest way is to have our own team.

Pricing is better if you buy more Cisco products.

Don't afraid to try other solutions. Companies are constantly changing. Sometimes some little companies bring about the perfect solution for other products. You should research everything.

Cisco has a very wide range of products. You can build everything within Cisco products, and it will be easily deployable. The programming language is the same between it and other software and hardware companies.

We don't use the solution for security. It's for converged infrastructure. 

We're a reseller and implement it for our clients. 

The solution is very reliable. It can manage activities very well. Its operation management is quite useful. The product makes monitoring easy.

It's secure.

Cisco offers many features.

Cisco offers very good quality.

We'd like the product to offer better integration with other products. 

We've used the solution for just the last year. 

The solution is stable. It's reliable, and the performance is good. We haven't had issues with bugs or glitches. 

We have various customers using the solution. I'm not sure how many end users they have that use the solution. 

We have not had issues with scaling. 

Technical support is very responsive. 

We have previously used a variety of different products. 

The deployment was very easy. It might take a few hours and then it is ready to go.

You only need one person to handle deployment and maintenance. 

We are resellers. 

We're dealing with the latest version of the solution. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.