Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

Cisco and StarWind are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Read 90 Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] reviews

89% willing to recommend

StarWind Virtual SAN

Read 189 StarWind Virtual SAN reviews

4,040 Views
1,463 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

StarWind Virtual SAN

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] and StarWind Virtual SAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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HCI

January 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

StarWind Virtual SAN

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

189

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st), HCI (4th)

Featured Reviews

Nuno Mendes

IT Manager - Resp.Department at Parvalorem

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).

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MIT

IT System Administrator at Ludwig Meyer GmbH & Co. KG

Easy to set up and maintain with good performance capabilities

Feature-wise we are only waiting for the release of a "planned disaster" feature that would allow us to patch a hypervisor node without having to take the full storage offline. ATM (20220609) is still necessary, since taking a node offline without properly activating the maintenance mode on the vSAN would trigger a full sync of the vSAN nodes. This is fine and a good thing since it ensures data integrity. However, there is something in the making that would ensure integrity without a full sync after a node goes down, which, as stated above, one could "abuse" to patch (and boot = take down) the hypervisors during business hours 😁 Other than that, the thing is rock stable and chugging along without issues. We are an SMB so we "only" have around 50 VMs on our FO cluster, which is a medium load for SSDs. If you plan to go more to the "max" side of performance use, do proper testing!

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The implementation process is okay."

"Its most valuable feature is its flexibility."

"It saves space for data centers, which is good."

"Offers very good data protection and provides system uptime availability effectively."

"It has reduced the time it takes to put the servers in production by half the time."

"The management from the switches to the hyper-convergence solutions are quite good and well-developed."

"We are providing this solution for the customer or converting the customer from a traditional environment to a hyper-converged environment which consolidates all management and support on a single port. This is the main benefit of using the hyper-converged versus the traditional."

"The software defines networking, storage, and processing."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"We have experienced multiple hardware failures at one site and the fault-tolerant volume worked exactly as expected with zero downtime."

"In our case, the cost and high availability are the two most important factors which we were looking for in a solution."

"StarWind is very easy to use, even if you have had no experience using a SAN before."

"We have been able to use more on-prem hardware to reduce cost and also use old disks that we do not trust enough for ordinary RAID or usage."

"The StarWind Virtual SAN management console is intuitive and easy to use."

"The Windows-based StarWind GUI is easy to use and understand and integrates seamlessly with VMware's vSphere portal as well."

"For those basic uses, it's simple to set up and manage, and it seems to do a fine job."

"The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

Cons

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

"If we could have just a single pane of glass, where everything can be managed through that one app, rather than have multiple apps, it would be great."

"Technical support is very good. Not excellent, but good. There's still not enough data available on the web. For example, for the integration to VMware, I had a case recently and I searched for more information but didn't find any."

"I would like a lighter product; something which can be carried by a mere human. The typical size still looks like a stack of data center-sized servers, which is typically fine, but not so good if you want to carry it around."

"Cisco should combine its features with its prices."

"HyperFlex could be improved by reducing the minimum number of nodes supported from three to two."

"When it comes to customer needs, the licensing price could be better."

"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"

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"The documentation could be better."

"If there was one thing we could request, it would be the ability to shrink volumes. For example, we want to be able to decrease in the size of the volume."

"I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions."

"Updates seem to be non-existent."

"The Command Center, a free guest VM for management and monitoring, leaves something to be desired. It could have more accurate real-time information and better reporting visuals, which seem to be an afterthought."

"Server-side snapshots are one thing the Linux appliance can't do yet."

"I did not see any indication that StarWinds vSAN is a usable solution with non-GUI instances of Hyper-V."

"It could have a dashboard so that you can check all servers' SAN health and performance."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is a bit too high."

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

"The price is a bit high. It could be better, but the product is worth the cost."

"We negotiated with Cisco and we got some price benefit from that."

"There is a license required to use this solution."

"Initially HyperFlex was a little costly, it was higher, but Cisco wanted to get into our company, so they gave us a fair discount."

"HyperFlex is a little pricey."

"It's roughly $30,000 per Hyperflex license, so that would be about $60,000 a year."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pricing and cost advice

"The Price/Performance ratio for this solution is outstanding!"

"I think the cost of this solution is quite fair."

"We evaluated other options and this one was the most cost-effective."

"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."

"The pricing is fine for the work that it does."

"Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."

"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."

"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

27%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?

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...

See all answers

How does VxRail compare with Cisco HyperFlex HX Series?

VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company to invest in. Even if you are working with a limited budget, this platform offer...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series?

It's easy to get the tool started.

See all answers

What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?

It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” acce...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

Choose StarWind Virtual SAN, it is the most flexible, reliable and cheap solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

While using StarWind Virtual SAN so far, I have not found anything missing. It is true that we are using it in a very strict project in which we were looking for a solution that would satisfy a str...

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware vSAN vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 32% of the time

VxRail vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 26% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 17% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 14% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 6% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 26% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 17% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 13% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 7% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

January 2025

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

January 2025

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

StarWind SAN & NAS

Overview

The Cisco HyperFlex HX Data Platform is a purpose-built, high-performance, scale-out file system with a wide array of enterprise-class data management services. The data platform’s innovations redefine distributed storage technology, giving you complete hyper-convergence with enterprise storage features:

Enterprise-class data management
Continuous data optimization
Securely encrypted storage
Dynamic data placement
Clusterwide parallel data distribution
Linear and incremental scaling
API-based data platform architecture
A simplified approach

Cisco

StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

StarWind

Sample Customers

BluePearl Veterinary Partners, Ready Pac Foods, Bryant University, Bellevue Group, KPIT Technologies, City Harvest

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

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