Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs VMware vSAN comparison

Cisco and VMware are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Read 90 Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] reviews

89% willing to recommend

VMware vSAN

Read 230 VMware vSAN reviews

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11,516 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

VMware vSAN

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

VMware vSAN and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure category. VMware vSAN generally has the upper hand due to its scalability, cost-effectiveness, and integration with other VMware products.

Features: VMware vSAN offers centralized management, ease of scalability, and seamless integration with VMware tools like vSphere. Cisco HyperFlex integrates well with Cisco's networking solutions and offers strong hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities.

Room for Improvement: VMware vSAN could enhance its management interface, hardware compatibility, and data protection features. Cisco HyperFlex could improve cloud service integration, reduce costs, and enhance storage performance management.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware vSAN is easier to deploy due to its integration with vSphere and provides responsive customer support. Cisco HyperFlex deployment can be more complex, needing coordination across teams, but its technical support is reliable.

Pricing and ROI: VMware vSAN, though expensive, provides cost savings from reduced hardware and operational expenses, offering good ROI with simplified management. Cisco HyperFlex is also costly, with users seeking more value for the licensing fees, comparing it to alternative solutions.

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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

VMware vSAN

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

230

Ranking in other categories

HCI (2nd)

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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Yves Sandfort

CEO & Majority Shareholder at Comdivision Consulting GmbH

Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources

Stability can be improved. Adding all these new features is nice, but we are now at the level where most of the features you need in production are there. The stability is not from a day-to-day operations perspective, but more from a supportability perspective, because currently some of the support scenarios require you to completely evacuate hosts or the complete cluster. That sometimes can be a stretch. This would clearly be an improvement if the support teams were given additional tools to make that easier. Upgradability could be a bit easier sometimes. We are now where vSAN can be updated without ESXi, but there is still enough dependency. So that would be good if that actually would be uncoupled even more. Dashboards are there, and we use vROps as well. So, we have all the beauty of capacity planning and everything over there. That's not really something where we need a lot of other things.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The flexibility is its most valuable feature; the ability to quickly deploy a number of help machines. It is not constrained by what we want to do."

"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 workload can handle anything and has an extended capacity."

"The possibility to share the workload is one of its most valuable features. We have many applications which have need of workloads only a few times in a month, so we share HyperFlex with them."

"The management feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."

"Easily facilitates remote work opportunities with storage and compute resources."

"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 most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX is that it is self-contained."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"The flexibility is most valuable. Being able to manage things quickly if something goes wrong is also valuable. Very recently, we had one node that went down due to a power problem, but there was really no major impact on the systems running on top of it."

"vSAN can help customers save on storage system costs, and also save on the human cost."

"You get the benefit of local storage, but you have the protection of shared storage."

"High availability is a valuable aspect of this solution."

"Technical support is very helpful and very good at resolving issues."

"The solution fits well with my requirements."

"I have found the solution to be scalable."

"Storage is expandable with no extra cost."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"Deployment scripts can be improved since several clans need to be created before the deployment effectively works."

"The scalability could use improvement."

"Lacks some integration and documentation could be improved."

"The pricing is pretty expensive."

"Some of our customers do not want to adopt the Cisco ACI solution. They want to manage Cisco HyperFlex by integrating it with their own management solution."

"This solution is lacking in replication and backup abilities that I would like to see in a future release similar to HPE SimpliVity."

"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."

"I would like to see them expand onto the cloud."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"he list of hardware supported should be increased in the future."

"When designing the implementation for vSAN, I have noticed that it requires a minimum of six nodes, and this creates a problem when it comes to maintenance. If, out of the six nodes, I put one node in maintenance mode, then vSAN does not create other VM components."

"This solution is not great for large file shares/object/rich media repository."

"One area that could be improved is the management feature."

"The usability is pretty good but it could use a little tweaking on the UI, with a clearer definition of exactly what some of the things do."

"The ability to access SAN environments with fiber channels (or even NVMe) would be a good addition."

"The upgrading process could be simplified."

"VMware vSAN could improve by having better integration with other vendors and the storage is limited, I prefer it to the traditional storage."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"We are on an annual subscription and the price is fair."

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

"Comparable solutions with switches, storage, and services are cheaper than HyperFlex. It should be cheaper."

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

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

"There is a recurring cost for the VMware license and the HyperFlex licenses."

"It is highly priced compared to other vendors."

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

"This solution requires the purchase of a license."

"The cost is expensive. I purchased two servers. The hardware cost was $19,000. The software cost for these two servers, including the vSAN, was $30,000, which is $11,000 more than the hardware. Then I had to pay another $5,000 for installation and implementation for professional services. In total, it was $54,000 for two vSAN Servers."

"The solution is relatively expensive compared to similar products."

"It is fairly cost-effective for entry to mid-level performance based on the underlying hardware components."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."

"In comparison with other solutions, such as HP or Cisco, I find the solution to be quite pricey."

"The product’s pricing is a bit higher than other solutions."

"The licensing cost is high and should be taken into account."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

27%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

53%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

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...

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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 Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?

While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?

We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...

See all answers

How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?

HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...

See all answers

Comparisons

VxRail vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 24% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 19% of the time

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

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN

Compared 16% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs VMware vSAN

Compared 8% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware vSAN

Compared 7% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

March 2025

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

March 2025

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

vSAN

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

VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

VMware vSAN Features

VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.

Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.

Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.

High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.

Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.

HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.

Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

VMware vSAN Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution.

Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance.

Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.

Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly.

Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “vSAN gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources. We have an overall larger host infrastructure, and we split that up for specific customer test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

VMware

Sample Customers

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