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Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs NetApp HCI [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp HCI [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Nuno Mendes - PeerSpot reviewer
High performance solution that makes it easy to efficiently manage VM resources
In our case as a credit recovery company working with the state, our infrastructure is fixed and stable as we don't have the same need for growth as other types of companies. That said, one of the biggest problems with HyperFlex HX is that if you want to adjust your solution in terms of processing power, memory, or disk capacity, you have to buy completely new hosts. From a financial perspective, it can be very expensive to do so, and from a legal perspective, there are all kinds of compliance issues we would have to sort out before buying any new solution or application. Since we as a company will only be operating for perhaps the next ten years, when our HyperFlex solution comes to its end-of-life in 2024 our next step will likely not be with HyperFlex or any other solution from Cisco. Instead, from a financial point of view, we will likely turn toward a cloud solution because, that way, we won't have to spend so much money on physical infrastructure. We are, after all, only a small company and HyperFlex can be very expensive for other companies of our size, whether in Portugal or elsewhere like the United States. One other area for improvement is in regard to HyperFlex's integration with VMware. HyperFlex integrates with a specific version of VMware in such a way that HyperFlex doesn't always resolve security issues with VMware at the same pace as what you see in native implementations of VMware. This has happened in one or two situations in the past. On the other hand, the integration is otherwise adequate, especially in terms of availability and virtualization features (such as being able to split up each of our four hosts within VMware).
MB
Crashed continuously, complex to deploy, and bad after-sales support - NETAPP FIXED the problems in 2022
Their after-sales support, SLA, and third-parties availability should be improved. NetApp's support is very difficult to engage. We have an SLA of onsite support within 24 hours. but they don't respect the SLA. Its stability was very bad. It has been crashing continuously. In one year, we got three crashes, which is unbelievable for an appliance that is guaranteed for 10 years without any crashes. In 2022, NetApp Italy, driven by the country manager Davide Marini, fixed all our issues and added additional computation power for free. This is a great example of customer care. They could have done it right the first time of course, but admitting the errors and putting in place such a remediation plan has been a very professional behavior.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It consumes a smaller footprint when I compare it with other competitors."
"Easily facilitates remote work opportunities with storage and compute resources."
"Deduplication is a valuable feature available in Cisco HyperFlex."
"It saves space for data centers, which is good."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is simple to use, user-friendly and has been best for our purposes."
"By configuring networks, we are saving power."
"Cisco technical support is very skilled. From what I've had to access, there were quick responses and the necessary escalation."
"The technical support has been helpful. We are always able to get through to the right person."
"In terms of helping us with storage persistence across private and hybrid clouds, we do store data internally and in Azure. It has allowed us to consolidate a number of workloads, across our old NetApp and a number of our older storage arrays, into a single unit and have that unit also working with Azure."
"It's an all-flash solution. NetApp guarantees 3-to-1 or more than 3-to-1. It has guaranteed performance, like 15K IOPS per node."
"The ability to size the available space in a way that matches our company's needs is most valuable. For instance, you can decide if you want 80/20, 70/30, or 60/40 space. Redundancy depends on your needs without changing the appliance. You just add space and decide the percentage of space that you need free and the percentage of space that you need for backup. It is all automatic, and you don't have to do anything. You just add space, and the system automatically configures itself with the chosen option."
"Our goal with NetApp HCI is to have no single point of failure."
"We like SnapMirror and we've been using it for many years. We also like the object storage tools, as well as cloud sync for customers wanting to integrate between the cloud and local."
"The ease of deployment is a positive feature that allows us to scale easily."
"NetApp HCI is a stable solution."
"The NetApp Deployment Engine that comes with it makes the actual deployment and usage very easy. That's our primary focus and it's hyper-converged. That's something that we want to use as well."
 

Cons

"I would like to see them expand onto the cloud."
"The problem is that we always have to keep an eye out for new releases to make sure that the version we're running is up-to-date."
"Deployment scripts can be improved since several clans need to be created before the deployment effectively works."
"We would like to move off the GUI."
"I would like to see more analytics. 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."
"HyperFlex could be improved by reducing the minimum number of nodes supported from three to two."
"The additional feature I would like to see included in the next release of this solution is more security. We want to add more data servers to all the hosts all over the world. We have 140 hosts that connect to one data center in Manila."
"The utilization needs to be better. It needs more options."
"The price should be lowered. It's a little expensive."
"The administration side of it needs to be improved. We expect an easier interface and a single upgrade for updating the infrastructure."
"Because I like block mode, I'd like to see SAN connectivity. I would like to be able to easily put it into my current environment."
"The vCenter keeps crashing, meaning that there is no stability in our environment."
"I would like to see a better upgrade process, like the one that ONTAP has."
"I'd like to see some additional graphics capabilities because I'd like to look at some virtual desktop integration for CAD software."
"The networking needs improvement."
"It is difficult to get acclimated to all the new features quickly. The onboard process could be improved to bring clients up to speed faster."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Here in Brazil... it is very expensive. It's very hard for almost all companies to buy even the small version of this solution."
"HyperFlex is relatively expensive, but you get good value for money."
"We are on an annual subscription and the price is fair."
"The product could be cheaper."
"There is no additional licensing cost other than the cost for each part."
"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."
"It's roughly $30,000 per Hyperflex license, so that would be about $60,000 a year."
"The price is a bit high. It could be better, but the product is worth the cost."
"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."
"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."
"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."
"Where we lost nearly 75 percent of our infrastructure due to a malicious attack and were able to recover two and a half hours into it due to the integration, it saved us and all of our customers. Because we were able to recover so fast from the attack, the solution paid for itself right there."
"This solution saved our organization time (35 percent) and money. We have a hefty group of developers, and if you multiply that by 30 to 35 percent, that is quite a bit of money."
"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."
"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."
"The licensing fees are renewed annually."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
27%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Real Estate/Law Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

BluePearl Veterinary Partners, Ready Pac Foods, Bryant University, Bellevue Group, KPIT Technologies, City Harvest
American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: February 2025.
841,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.