We performed a comparison between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and VMware vSAN based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: VMware vSAN wins out in this comparison. The main difference between the two solutions is that Cisco Hyperflex HX Series users find deployment to be difficult, and also say the solution uses a lot of memory and hardware resources. In addition, they do not mention an ROI.
"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” accessible by all hosts. StarWind cuts down virtualization cost and complexity by eliminating the need for a physical shared storage (SAN). -StarWind offers the Enterprise-level high availability (HA), deployed and easily configured . we get technical support from star wind team when implementation software and after setup if we face any issue."
"The instant failover, with vSAN copying data to the second node, allowed for the continuous availability of our applications."
"I've had to open a few support cases over the years due to administrator errors, and the support received was top-notch."
"StarWind vSAN is a great solution to create a redundant two-node-only Hyper-V cluster, both for domain or workgroup scenarios."
"You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage."
"The support team is available to solve any problem efficiently."
"StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere is a software-defined storage solution that has reduced administration time for storage. It's pretty straightforward to install and setup it and so far it has been robust and worked as advertised from StarWind."
"We are running Hyper-V on twin servers in failover, and being able to manage servers from anywhere I need to, virtually, has been a game changer."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is its performance."
"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."
"Cisco HyperFlex is helping us to put everything in centrally so that we can manage in one place."
"The implementation process is okay."
"The feature that we are most interested in is the scalability. When needed, we are able to add more nodes and scale it up further."
"By configuring networks, we are saving power."
"The initial setup is easy."
"It has reduced the time it takes to put the servers in production by half the time."
"We are finding that vSAN is a lot more scalable and adaptable, because we can go in with hybrid arrays for our lower-end storage needs or with all-flash versions of vSAN for places where we need more performance, and it's coming in at a lower cost point than an actual traditional array."
"VMware vSAN is compatible with the legacy hypervisor solutions and most of the features are good."
"The most valuable feature is that it is software-defined storage. Also, being able to do maintenance on the fly is a real benefit: migrating off, updating, and then moving the guest back on to the nodes."
"The technical support is good."
"I like the orchestration feature."
"It is very well known in the industry, and there are a lot of technical resources around it. This is a big thing for me because, at the end of the day, when you implement it, you need to support it."
"Allows us to implement more quickly, and to ease the maintenance."
"The product's initial setup phase is simple."
"I am expecting to see it more user-friendly in the future."
"An update caused a syncing issue and it took over a month to resolve it"
"Pricing is a bit high."
"I would like to see an extensive set of cmdlets that could allow for easier automation as well as status management."
"If there was one feature I would like to see it would be a built-in subsystem for managing UPS backups shutdown procedures providing a way to initiate VM shutdown on all host servers, shut down the host servers, then put the fault-tolerant mirroring in standby, and finally shut down the StarWind SANs."
"I would love to see more vendor selection to be available for the HCA/vSAN appliances."
"You have to do a "full" sync on write-back cache disks instead of a quick sync if there is an issue."
"I would like to see more advanced free versions."
"We are working with a lot of different technologies and trying to manage them with one tool. The API could be improved for better integration with other systems."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to see them able to connect to the public cloud."
"We are moving further out with more cloud solutions, so we need HyperFlex to be more cloud-connected. They should develop more connection to Amazon Web Services and Google cloud because our customers use their services and are moving in that direction."
"I would like to see them expand onto the cloud."
"I would rate the installation of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series an eight out of ten. It can be complex."
"Cisco should combine its features with its prices."
"The main problem we had was hardware compatibility, finding the right hardware that was certified."
"I would like to see more comprehensive lifecycle management. The current path and process for upgrading or updating the firmware, as well as the storage controller software to interact with that firmware, is fairly manual and not very well documented. A little more time and effort spent on the documentation of the lifecycle management for vSan would be really great."
"If we have some complicated issues, you have to use the command lines interface. Not everything is possible to be fixed in the GUI. This is a drawback, that some things have to be fixed via command-line interface and should be able to be done in the GUI."
"Pricing is something of a concern."
"he list of hardware supported should be increased in the future."
"We want see a better monitoring tool in vSAN. Monitoring is not that great as of now because it shows us false alarms in the Health status. We would like that to be improved."
"The server files are larger than before."
"There needs to be an increase in the supported memory and hard disk space, as it is an area where the product currently has certain shortcomings."
More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in HCI with 90 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is rated 8.0, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] writes "A fast and easy deployment that allows secure access to our medical applications ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is most compared with VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray.
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