Our primary use case of this solution is for VDI, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, for our community college.
Senior Network Administrator at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Does a good job of combining both software and hardware and enables us to backup user data easily
Pros and Cons
- "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."
- "We would like to have the ability to not have to reboot while doing updates. Being able to work through updates with as minimal amount of impact to users."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
It ultimately provides a virtual desktop so that we can backup user data a lot more easily. In the past, it was all a straight desktop computer so if your desktop dies, all your data would die as well.
In terms of it being flexible for various projects, it does seem to lend itself to other applications, for example, our VMware, as well as servers that we may want to bring up under the HyperFlex solution so we may go in that direction sometime in the future.
It has the potential of actually being a six million dollar impact to the college because it replaces people's computers. Until we start to transfer users over to it we really won't know how much of that six million dollars is savings for us.
I don't know if it's lowered the deployment time per se because we really haven't gotten to the point where we added shelves or added servers to it. We're expecting for that to be a simple process given what Cisco claims it will do. Ultimately we're expecting no downtime for that.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
We would like to have the ability to not have to reboot while doing updates. Being able to work through updates with as minimal amount of impact to users.
Buyer's Guide
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]
March 2025

Learn what your peers think about Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,690 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is great but ultimately we've noticed the updates and upgrades take a bit of an impact on the solution. More so, having to reboot the solution and having to restart it. While it is stable, rebooting it for updates isn't always convenient. Ultimately, just like any organization, we would do that on off hours whether it be weekends, nights, or whatnot. But that costs money because you have to have staff on weekends, nights and whatever overtime they have to account for.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is just as they predicted. It combined the frontend servers with the backend storage. While it is a little cumbersome to learn, it is scalable to be able to add more shelves if I need more memory or additional servers very easily. It does scale nicely.
How are customer service and support?
I'm pretty neutral about technical support right now given that we're still setting up the solution to some degree. The support is great, as long as there is a maintenance contract in place. But because the overall solution is still rather new, using knowledge base or just generic knowledge base out on the internet is not as prevalent as I would like.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We are a Dell shop. We looked at HP but ultimately because of the features that Cisco brought with the HyperFlex solution, we felt that that was a superior product to everyone else.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward. We simply wanted to understand how the two worked together given that the claim is that it's supposed to be easy to combine both storage and servers.
What about the implementation team?
We used a consultant for the deployment that Cisco suggested. Because the solution is rather new to us the scenario was pleasant. They knew what they were doing but I felt like the knowledge transfer could have been a lot better.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate it a high eight or nine out of ten because of the features and functions that it comes with that the competitors really can't do just yet. The advantage I think so far has been that Cisco developed the entire solution from scratch as opposed to other solution providers like HP and Dell who are still trying to reinvent existing solutions.
I think it's a viable solution if you have a need to cut down on your overall implementation costs on hardware. This does a good job of combining both software and hardware.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Senior Systems Engineer at a pharma/biotech company with 501-1,000 employees
Helps put everything in centrally so it can be managed from one place
Pros and Cons
- "Cisco HyperFlex is helping us to put everything in centrally so that we can manage in one place."
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case for the product is for the data center. We are hosting all of the servers and building infrastructure.
How has it helped my organization?
Cisco HyperFlex is helping us to put everything in centrally so that we can manage in one place.
That's the whole reason why we got the solution, so that we can have better integration with all of our product applications.
What is most valuable?
We are still exploring Cisco HyperFlex. We have just deployed it. It's all automation. We want to automate everything. That's the reason why we bought it.
What needs improvement?
One problem is that whenever we want to do something on VMware, you are dependent on HyperFlex. With everything now, you have to look into HyperFlex.
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.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability is good so far, but there is a lot of learning. A lot of things are dependent on VMs. There are controlled VMs and you have to always make sure to keep those VMs up and running.
There is a lot of learning involved with ACI. That's huge. The technology which goes around HyperFlex, you have to learn, i.e. ACI, HyperFlex, VMware, etc.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
One thing I like about this product is it is more scalable and fast, i.e. the disks and everything. We can extend our data center to some other places.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support is fairly good. I have been able to get through to the right person. It took me a while, but it was not something very urgent. I didn't think it was much trouble.
What about the implementation team?
We used a reseller called DIG. It was good. I was not part of that.
What other advice do I have?
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the product an eight. It's a great data center tool. I look at the weight of the costs too.
None of the products is 100% correct. We just deployed the Cisco HyperFlex. We have to see how it goes. We are also in the cloud. You have to keep looking for that option as it saves a lot on hardware and power consumption
We are still migrating all our old infrastructure, which is on C7000. We are doing that right now. Once that is done, I'll be able to get some metrics. Every company is different.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]
March 2025

Learn what your peers think about Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,690 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Pre Sales Manager at Vortex TI
Helps our clients achieve better performance in VDI, clusters, and database consolidation
Pros and Cons
- "I love the Cisco design, the visual interface to manage and use the platform."
- "Cisco has to continue improve the management tools to provide a better command line interface with more functions. That would be better for administration."
What is our primary use case?
I'm a solution architect and I use it to help my clients to achieve better performance in VDI solutions, in clusters, in database consolidation. The solution addresses these kinds of scenarios.
How has it helped my organization?
We have a large e-commerce client in Brazil. The company name is Sinova. This company has a lot of e-commerce portals. Every Black Friday in Brazil, before the HyperFlex implementation, the site would go down. The portals didn't have the performance ability to achieve the goals. After the implementation of Cisco HyperFlex, we added a lot of performance to these portals. We no longer have problems when high demand occurs.
Every year, we add one or two nodes to Sinova's web services clusters. The client uses the servers to support web servers for e-commerce.
What is most valuable?
I love the Cisco design, the visual interface to manage and use the platform. I love this kind of visual.
It is a great platform because it's easy to use. It's easy to put a business inside this box. It's so practical.
What needs improvement?
Cisco has to continue improve the management tools to provide a better command line interface with more functions. That would be better for administration.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is very good. I have never seen problems with the clusters or any component of the solution. It's very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In terms of scalability, it is the best among all the competitors in the data center-hyperconverged world. We can add nodes to improve the compute of a cluster. We can add nodes to increase storage. We can grow a cluster up to 32 nodes.
The biggest that I have been involved in implementing was five nodes.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup depends on the business context. All the implementations that I participate in are a little bit complex. It's hard to integrate the platform with the client's data center network. The clients don't have the correct view for best implementing this solution. We need to help them understand, to provide the prerequisites. This is a little bit complex.
A deployment takes between three days and a week. A week is a good amount of time to understand, to implement it, to document it, and to help the clients understand it.
Our implementation strategy first requires us to write a good summary of the client's requirements so they will be using HyperFlex correctly. We need to understand the requirements. With this site survey, we can design the environment.
For a standard size of clusters with three nodes, two analysts is more than enough to implement the solution. After it's deployed and configured, one good analyst is needed to maintain it.
What was our ROI?
This kind of solution adds a lot of value because it helps the IT department to align with the business' view. We can participate, we can add value to the business because we do implementations faster and we can add compute and storage, many kinds of variables to the environment, very quickly and easily.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Here in Brazil, our point of view about the cost to implement or buy this kind of solution is that it is very expensive. It's very hard for almost all companies to buy even the small version of this solution. For me, this is the most negative point of the Cisco solution: the price and the licensing costs.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have knowledge of VxRail from Dell EMC. I have also read about solutions from Hitachi and Super Micro. I haven't used them though.
To me, the key difference for me between the Dell infrastructure and Cisco infrastructure is that Cisco is more integrated. The hardware and software work the way I want them to.
What other advice do I have?
Collect all the information about the environment to determine the prerequisites, understand the business, and understand the value of infrastructure solutions.
We are a small partner. We have four clients right now that use the Cisco HyperFlex solution.
I would rate HyperFlex at ten out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
Senior Account Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Stable, with okay technical support, and a validated design approach for components
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is stable."
- "The initial setup can be a bit complex."
What is our primary use case?
We deploy these for our customers, we're in the reseller space.
Use cases are typically around data center revolutions, consolidations in virtualization density, and being able to scale both up and out.
What is most valuable?
On the architectural side of it, there's the single pane of glass. In the hyper-converged, there is that validated design approach of having all of the components which should work together.
The solution is stable.
Technical support is better than most.
What needs improvement?
The pricing can always be better on everything.
The interdependencies of each of these functions and the configuration side are something that needs to be carefully architected so that if something isn't working in my memory stick, it doesn't have a cascading waterfall effect through the rest of my operation. The interdependency could be improved so that everything will not be so interrelated.
The initial setup can be a bit complex.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been a partner with Cisco for over 20 years, and, as it pertains to HyperFlex, we probably deployed the first HyperFlex in the Northeast region - and that was probably four years ago. We did it when it first came out.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In terms of stability, it's way more stable than when it first came out. The earlier evolutions of this were like building the plane as we were flying it.
How are customer service and support?
Cisco tech support, as bad as it can be, is better than most.
How was the initial setup?
There's additional complexity around the solution.
In a hyper-converged scenario, the financial outcome is that you need to further align your refresh cycles of your storage, of your compute stack, and of your networking. From the client-side, that can also lead to a little bit of solution lock-in, a slight vendor lock-in.
Before, if I wanted to see maybe if my storage is up, and I'm looking at the time to adopt all-flash SSD or putting NVME in my environment, and updating my either blade centers, or pizza box servers, et cetera, it would all fit together. Even though that there's modularity built into the hyper-converged, there's still a little bit of a tax where you have to overbuy on other resources to provision that you want.
You don't need a huge team to deploy the solution. A deployment team is lightweight. It's two different individuals or maybe three with project management included.
What other advice do I have?
We're a gold partner, one of their leading partners in our area.
Historically, I'm not very much pro-hyper-converge as there's a lot to the market still. What happens is, if it's poorly architected, that if something's screwed up, everything is screwed up. That's the part of the issue with the hyper-converged. You've got it very tightly knit. However, there are still advantages to the separation of failure domains, whether that be your compute, your storage, your memory.
I would take a Cisco Flex approach over a Cisco hyper-converged approach, all day, every day. It's the most widely adopted platform in the world for converged architecture and has a knowledge base that is way larger and has way more experience running. Also, just because you have to update one piece of it doesn't mean you have to update all pieces of it. My honest opinion is to still see what else is in the market to validate your approach to go with an all Cisco solution in the hyper-converged space.
I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Engineering Manager at OCP TECH
Works faster and is flexible to use
Pros and Cons
- "It is a stable and scalable solution."
- "The solution's price could be affordable."
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution to combine and migrate regular servers to a hyper-converged infrastructure.
How has it helped my organization?
The solution works faster and is easy to use than any regular system. Also, its fabric interconnect provides flexibility for the system to scale up.
What is most valuable?
The solution's most valuable feature is the high availability of the system.
What needs improvement?
The solution's price could be affordable.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using the solution for around two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the solution's stability as a ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have 1000 users of the solution in our organization. We plan to increase the usage as well.
I rate its scalability as an eight.
How are customer service and support?
The solution's technical support is excellent.
How was the initial setup?
The solution's initial setup is straightforward. You have to follow the configuration guide.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is highly priced compared to other vendors.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend it to others and rate it as a ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
IT Consultant at moj
Helpful in hosting applications, but some features are missing, and the interface is not good
Pros and Cons
- "It is helpful as a backup solution."
- "Does not support the stretch cluster, and the interface is not good."
What is our primary use case?
We use this solution as Active-Active and to host some of our applications. Compared to Nutanix, it is not as good. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is not a matured HCI solution. If something goes wrong with Nutanix, we use Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, so we at least have half of our systems running. It is helpful as a backup solution.
What needs improvement?
A lot needs to be improved. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series does not support the stretch cluster, and the interface is not good. Features are missing, and it does not support VMware Seven.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this solution for about three years, and I believe we are using version 4.5. It is deployed on-premises.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is not a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have about 10,000 users. Maintenance is okay, but the hardware failure is too much, and sometimes memory is lost.
How are customer service and support?
The support is okay but unprofessional.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was complicated, and we had to struggle a lot. The switches, such as WAN switches, LAN switches, Nexus, and all those areas, are perfect. But when it comes to HCI, it is not a good solution. So we completed deployment with Cisco support.
What other advice do I have?
I rate this solution a four out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Data Center Engineer at Emerging Communications Limited
Good value for money with full Cisco integration
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature is full integration with Cisco API and UCS, which means you can have complete networking and storage from Cisco."
- "HyperFlex could be improved by reducing the minimum number of nodes supported from three to two."
What is our primary use case?
I use HyperFlex for high-performance infrastructure.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is full integration with Cisco API and UCS, which means you can have complete networking and storage from Cisco.
What needs improvement?
HyperFlex could be improved by reducing the minimum number of nodes supported from three to two. In the next release, Cisco should include full integration with other virtualization vendors like Nutanix, the same way they do with VMware.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using HyperFlex for a year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
HyperFlex is very stable because it has complete solutions for networking and computing from Cisco.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
HyperFlex is very scalable because you can scale up by increasing the number of nodes and scale out by increasing the number of discs in the storage.
How are customer service and support?
Most of Cisco's products come with warrants and SmartNet, so if you have an issue, the customer interface allows you to rate it, and the technical team will respond based on the critical level.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The setup is very easy, I'd rate it five out of five.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
HyperFlex is relatively expensive, but you get good value for money.
What other advice do I have?
I would give HyperFlex a rating of nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
IT Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
An all-in-one option that is stable and offers good management
Pros and Cons
- "The scalability of the product is quite good overall - as long as you plan correctly from the outset."
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
HyperFlex is a hyper-converged infrastructure system that is a cluster of servers that provide compute and storage at the same time. Most other networking systems provide either computation separately from storage and networking. However, HyperFlex is a combined system that provides compute, networking, and storage in the same solution. That is, it gives you a single point of management for everything instead of separately for different components.
How has it helped my organization?
We've adopted Hyperflex as the new Virtualization solution for our network. all new workloads will be created on Hyperflex, and all existing workloads will be migrated to Hyperflex over the next few years.
What is most valuable?
The product makes management much easier since there's a single pane of glass to use to monitor, manage and upgrade the system.
You can achieve similar performance for your system by buying separate components, however, HyperFlex allows you to achieve the same performance using one system. It's basically one integrated system. That's the most powerful aspect of it.
The solution is quite stable.
The scalability of the product is quite good overall - as long as you plan correctly from the outset.
What needs improvement?
A disadvantage is the higher costs involved in using this product. If it were more affordable, it would be easier to recommend and HCI adoption rate would increase. 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.
The initial setup could be easier. Right now, it's a bit difficult.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've used the solution over the last 12 months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's been stable since we set it up. It's been very stable and providing good service.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We are considering expansion at the moment. The solution is easily scalable if it is planned correctly from the beginning.
Our previous generation is going to end support in two years. We're planning to migrate our whole virtualization infrastructure from the old generation solution to the Cisco solution. Basically, within one or two years, we'll be moving all our instrumentation and all our workloads will be moving to this solution.
A minimum of three servers is needed. If these servers have good specifications from the beginning, it's as easy as adding another node. You can expand the solution with more and more nodes. That said, if the node isn't configured properly in the amount of CPU, RAM, and storage, then when you try to expand, you must either expand with more than one node to add more and more scalability, or you must upgrade the existing nodes.
HyperFlex is hosting our financial systems. In terms of users, for management, it's just the ITT and we're managing the solution. However, if you consider people who are using the servers as infrastructure, then you can say more than 50 people technically are on the solution. Basically, the whole company uses the PBX system as an exchange for phone calls, for example.
How are customer service and technical support?
We haven't reached out to Cisco in terms of needing technical support. We've reached out for other reasons, however, and they were very quick to respond. For this solution, in particular, we've been working with Cisco's partners - and since our partner provides good support, then we haven't needed to reach out to Cisco directly.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used to have a non-converged solution before Hyperflex that had separate components, however, when we chose to go with a hyper-converged solution for our network, we chose HyperFlex.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not exactly straightforward or simple. It's a bit difficult, a bit complex.
Luckily, we had the support of the Cisco partner to install and integrate the solution. However, it would have been much easier if we could do it in a shorter time.
It is a complicated process for integration and it takes time. It can take several hours to install and configure the solution. If the setup process was faster, it could have been done in a shorter time. Basically, it took about two or three days to finish the whole setup. From unpacking to going online, it took us a few days. While the installation is a part of the process, the most time-consuming point was the initial setup.
What about the implementation team?
We had a Cisco partner that assisted us in the initial implementation.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution comes at a higher cost than if you had separate integrations grouped together.
There are licenses included with the hardware, and then there are annual subscriptions that you need to pay. You need to pay an annual subscription service to Cisco for operating the solution. There are other solutions that are purely hardware and whatever licenses you pay, you pay one time along with the purchase, or if you need to expand. This solution has an annual subscription payment.
What other advice do I have?
We are customers and end-users.
The HyperFlex is on-premise the hardware infrastructure. You can set it up with VMware ESXi or with Microsoft Hyper-V. We chose to go with VMware ESXi. It was a requirement of the other systems that we depended on. We could have gone with Hyper-V, however, VMware turned out to be the right solution. The system is hardware and it's compatible with both software solutions or hypervisor solutions. We chose VMware ESXi and turned out to be a better solution than Hyper-V.
I would recommend the product to other users, as long as it's affordable for the company. The cost is high. It is about 150% more costly than a comparable older generation solution. However, if you can afford it, then by all means go for it.
I'd also advise new users to choose a higher-end specification for the servers. This is also important. That would make extending it easier. For example, the fiber interconnected component the solution sells is like a switch. It's sold per port. If you buy exactly what you need now, you have to replace the hardware when you want to expand. Therefore, plan for the needs of the future, not the present.
Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Buyer's Guide
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Updated: March 2025
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