Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs VxRail comparison

Cisco and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Read 90 Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] reviews

89% willing to recommend

VxRail

Read 130 VxRail reviews

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15,933 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

VxRail

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and VxRail are two notable hyper-converged solutions. While Cisco HyperFlex stands out for flexibility and all-in-one integration, especially appealing to environments requiring expansive scalability, VxRail is more favored for seamless VMware integration, presenting a compelling choice for VMware-centric users due to its robust features and ease of use.

Features: Cisco HyperFlex is renowned for its integrated computing, storage, and networking, flexibility in deployment especially in virtual desktop infrastructure, and ease of scaling. VxRail offers exceptional VMware integration, high availability, and efficient deduplication features, making it highly desirable for VMware environments.

Room for Improvement: Cisco HyperFlex is critiqued for its closed platform and high costs for smaller setups, and there's a call for simpler integration and deployment process. VxRail users highlight vendor lock-in and high pricing, as well as the need for more efficient upgrade processes and better cloud platform integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco HyperFlex is easy to deploy in integrated environments but may challenge new users familiarizing with Cisco systems, occasionally leading to complex support interactions. VxRail is recognized for efficient deployment, especially with VMware systems, although complex integration can sometimes hinder support.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco HyperFlex is seen as an expensive choice due to its comprehensive offerings, though it offers good ROI in the long term. VxRail, while also costly, is often seen as good value due to its seamless VMware integration, fitting well in VMware-heavy ecosystems. Both solutions promise cost-saving management, but VxRail might present more financial benefits for VMware-focused scenarios.

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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

VxRail

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

130

Ranking in other categories

HCI (1st)

Q&A Highlights

Netanya Carmi

Content Manager at PeerSpot

Oct 26, 2021

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 offers freedom of choice and a number of different options. In contrast, Cisco HyperFlex HX does run on the more expensive side and cannot offer the same level of cost-effective solution. VxRail is able to provide both an ability to upgrade the system with an ever-growing library of resources as well as to provide powerful processors. This is something that I greatly appreciate. Being able to simply add upgrades to the system without necessarily having to worry about the system being bogged down is invaluable. The ability that it provides to apply updates to the system with ease is something worthy of note. If you add this to the fact that VxRail runs on multiple cores at 2 gigahertz or higher, then that means that in terms of ability, the VxRail is difficult to match. In terms of usability, it is hard to argue that VxRail delivers. It is pretty simple and easy to both set up and manage. Once the system is set up, all of the management tools are centrally located to assist in providing ease of use. The Cisco Hyperflex HX Series is both stable as well as reasonably easy to set up. Cisco has a step-by-step program guide that leads you through the process. Once it is set up, it is not prone to glitching or freezing. However, the pricing model that Cisco applies to this product requires users to pay a yearly subscription. This can end up being rather expensive in the long run. Conclusion Both systems offer stable solutions. Ultimately, VxRail is more cost-effective.

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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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Rami Jadallah

Data Center Solution Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Streamline management and integration with seamless upgrades

The primary reasons customers choose VxRail include ease of management, ease of upgrades, and integration with VMware. The hyper-converged infrastructure simplifies software and hardware upgrades. Customers prefer the single pane of glass management and integration with VMware, which makes it easier for them to proceed with decisions involving VMware products.

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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 speed, storage, and management are the most valuable features."

"It's easy to get the tool started."

"Deduplication is a valuable feature available in Cisco HyperFlex."

"The price of the solution is good, especially when it comes to complex network solutions, such as UCS and Connect."

"Most of our users are Cisco customers, so it fits in within the suites we use. Primarily for me, as a solution architect, it's the technology and architecture that is the most valuable. I know from my technical colleagues that it's easy to use and for the customer, the up-time is the most valuable asset. It's running, has low failure, and so on which is why we use it."

"The solution can scale up and out."

"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 initial setup was straightforward. With our partners and the consultancy that we had, we knew what we wanted to do. Therefore, we didn't have any problems with the installation and parametrization."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"The stability of VxRail is good, we have not had any issues."

"The manageability for controlling the console is the most valuable feature."

"The initial setup was very easy."

"It helps our servers and it is very efficient."

"The compute is good and we have not had any issues with the vSAN."

"Offers zero-day deployment"

"I like that there is a dependency on the storage controller."

"The most valuable feature is its high performance."

More VxRail pros

Cons

"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could improve by having the documents be more readily available and the support could be more flexible."

"With the cache disk fails in Cisco, the whole node fails, and the workload goes down."

"Their technical support is very bad. We had an issue where instead of an engineer we got a PDF "doctor" that didn't know anything about our problem which was very frustrating."

"Deployment on-prem was quite difficult."

"I would like it to be easier to manage the server, create VMs, and manage the VMs on the client."

"There are sometimes issues with memory failure."

"We are operating two clusters for site resiliency. I would like to support running redundant/resilient vCenter server instances on each rather than a supported external server."

"Its price could be better."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"The present SaaS model license structure can be improved."

"They're getting better with their one-click upgrade. The success factor is now between 85% to 87% with the latest release. They should just continuously improve on that one-click factor and make it more seamless."

"We have issues at times with the one-click upgrade, which is bugging us. At times, the one-click upgrade does not work or does not work well."

"This solution needs to have the capability where even older versions of hardware can be seamlessly utilized and additional expansion becomes so much easier."

"The update for the graphics integration and the media drivers isn't included in the VxRail update."

"The initial setup is very complex."

"From a hardware and software perspective, there could be an improvement in the sales cycle, as there is a lot of hoops to go through to get pricing on a solution."

"They should have better compatibility with other processors, such as AMD processors."

More VxRail cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is relatively expensive, but it can easily return value by freeing up other resources."

"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is expensive. It's a standard license, and we pay for it yearly. I think we pay about 700."

"When we negotiated with Cisco for the HyperFlex solution, they gave us a good price because they wanted to break into the market in Portugal for the first time. However, in general, I think it's a very expensive solution. It's a huge amount of money to acquire this kind of infrastructure."

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

"The price is a bit too high."

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

"The product is expensive. Other solutions are cheaper."

"It is highly priced compared to other vendors."

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

"We made a one-time purchase of the solution and the price is expensive."

"Since VMware is detached from Dell, the solution's pricing is a bit higher than before."

"The price is a little bit on the higher side but the system and management are so quick and easy that it's worth it for the customer."

"We were expecting Dell EMC to bring us something that would work very quickly and easily, but also be at a reasonable price point, and they did."

"VxRail is still more expensive than its competitor solutions."

"It is just as cheap to move over to an HCI solution as it is to maintain a legacy system."

"The solution is on the higher end of the price range."

"There is a permanent vSAN license included since it is required, but vCenter\ESXi host licensing should be validated in the purchase process."

More VxRail 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

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

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...

See all answers

How does VxRail compare with Cisco HyperFlex HX Series?

See all answers

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

It's easy to get the tool started.

See all answers

How does HPE Nimble Storage compare to VxRail?

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one, zero rule. That means I need three copies of my data on two different types of me...

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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

What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?

VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company to invest in. Even if the user is working with a l...

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware vSAN vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 32% 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

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

Dell PowerFlex vs VxRail

Compared 33% of the time

VMware vSAN vs VxRail

Compared 21% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VxRail

Compared 13% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VxRail

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs VxRail

Compared 6% of the time

More VxRail Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

January 2025

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

VxRail

January 2025

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Also Known As

No data available

VCE VxRail

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

VxRail is a hyper-converged appliance based on VMware virtual SAN Software and is jointly engineered and built with VMware, for VMware, to enhance Vmware. VxRail software-defined architecture simplifies compute, storage, virtualization, and management. It will safeguard performance, reliability, and flexibility across your organization with a broad range of workloads and applications from business-critical to next-gen. With VxRail, you are covered.

VxRail is a single turn-key appliance that is a validated, fully integrated, pre-configured, pre-tested solution and offers non-disruptive scaling. Every node includes compute storage and IO. All-flash configurations can contain between 12-28 cores per node. The storage capacity options run from 7.6 TB to 19TB with either 256 GB or 512GB of memory. Hybrid appliances may have 6-20 cores per node, 3.6 TB to 10 TB of storage capacity, and 24GB to 256 GB of memory.

VxRail offers high availability fail-over, an active/active stretch cluster, and VSan Kernal integration. VxRail is a power-edged server with APIs built on automation. There are over 15 million different combinations of hardware available with VxRail. VxRail provides a simple, cost-effective solution that solves a large range of use cases. Additionally, you also get a mixed workloads automated system that is backed with fully automated system updates, and complete end-to-end lifecycle management all in a single two-rack appliance.

VxRail is a value-added suitable solution for distributed small to mid-sized enterprises, remote offices, private clouds, and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). You choose the deployment option that best suits your organizational needs, from appliance to integrated rack offerings, with or without networking, and it will be delivered to you, ready to deploy out-of-box.

If you know VMware, you know VxRail.

VxRail Features and Benefits

Seamlessly accelerate deployment to a hybrid cloud
Fast data center modernization
Create developer-ready Kubernetes platforms

Powerful performance and reliability
Improve and simplify operational efficiency
Excellent integration
Save time
Reduce costs

Reviews from Real Users

VxRail is an all-in-one solution: "You don't have to worry too much about the hardware and you don't have to work on integrating a storage device. We instead have this as an all-in-one solution and everything is available as a box."

VxRail is remarkable: “The cover points feature in VxRail is remarkable. It's unique. It has an intervention failover system as well as an automatic failover system, reaching clusters existing in VxRail…”

VxRail is a powerful performer: “...VxRail delivers a very high number of IOPS for a hybrid configuration or an all-flash configuration. The processors that are available in the Xeon family are very powerful. They are multi-core with typically 2 gigahertz, 2.4 gigahertz, or higher frequency, so the performance is very much appreciated.”

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

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

World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: January 2025.

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