We performed a comparison between Cisco Hyperflex HX series and VxRail based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: In our comparison, VxRail is the preferred solution. VxRail is easy to use and performs well without causing undue stress to operating systems. The competitive price and overall cost-effectiveness make it an easy choice for many organizations.
"When using new (warranty) servers, you can forget about the storage service for several years. The users will not even notice the failure of two servers out of three."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a highly flexible solution, as it can be deployed on physical servers or on top of virtual machines running on hypervisors such as VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V."
"Without the need for any downtime, enterprises can simply grow their storage infrastructure using StarWind Virtual SAN by adding new servers or disks to the current infrastructure."
"A great feature is that I basically set it and forget it, as everything is automatic."
"This has helped to improve the reliability of service and operation in all departments, without having to stop in case of emergency situations."
"In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems."
"StarWind allowed us to deploy highly available shared storage within our budget."
"Speed and high availability have been the most valuable for us."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The software defines networking, storage, and processing."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"We used to have a single customer-facing data center, which was vulnerable to failure. This product has allowed us to create high availability between two private data centers."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX has improved the way our organization functions on the storage side by having one big storage space for hosting VMs. We do not have to provision other ones. That's a positive aspect of it."
"The product is easy to manage and flexible for upgrading without major changes."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is its performance."
"The ease of use and the graphical user interface (GUI) are two of the most valuable features of this solution."
"It gives us tons of flexibility. We can create new machines, then destroy them if they don't work out. We test a lot of use cases that may or may not play out. We can build all types of scenarios into virtual machines that we may or may not use. If we don't use them, we just turn them off, no using up resources."
"It improved from an operations standpoint as we have reduced failures compared to a previous vendor. The hardware that we previously used had a lot of issues with components failing regularly."
"VxRail is an agile solution with easily scalable, simplify operations with software driven automation and lower operational cost."
"VxRail performs well in the VDI environment."
"The assurance that my systems would not suffer a performance drop no matter where they are is valuable. I do not need any extra hardware."
"The solution is perfect for the lifecycle management of hardware."
"The low latency and response times and having a virtualized environment within a single computer are valuable. I have no physical elements, and I can optimize or balance my data depending on the sales volume that I have in a specific store."
"With VxRail, we can manage the life cycle of a virtual machine."
"Improvements in documentation and support resources could enhance the user experience."
"I wish they would improve the documentation for the beginner level as it's not very clear on the web page."
"We just need more integration with Veeam."
"We ran into an issue with alerts."
"While it is possible to implement disk encryption in StarWind using Windows Bitlocker, such a solution can be a little tricky to manage."
"I struggled when bit figuring out how to go about doing the evaluation."
"I wish the sync after a failure, such as hardware failure or power-related issues, for example, was faster."
"The documentation is good. However, if compared with competitors, it could be enhanced and made more professional."
"The product does not have a cloud version...The product should be made more flexible in terms of integration capabilities."
"Deployment scripts can be improved since several clans need to be created before the deployment effectively works."
"The primary improvements should be made in the cluster storage controller VMs so that they don't break the upgrade process."
"I would like it to be easier to manage the server, create VMs, and manage the VMs on the client."
"With the cache disk fails in Cisco, the whole node fails, and the workload goes down."
"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."
"The solution could improve by having more customization."
"If we compare it with VMware, the VMware product is basically very open, and it can be easily integrated with any platform. VMware product is also available on the cloud and is not an appliance-based product, whereas Cisco HyperFlex is an appliance-based product. Companies that want to use HCI as a platform or as a service would prefer something without an appliance. A SaaS-based product is better for a customer who is using the cloud and has multiple resources, workflows, and devices on the cloud and wants to go for a hyper-converged solution. This is where improvement is needed. In addition to an appliance-based product, Cisco should provide a SaaS-based product. Its price should be lower. Cisco needs to work on the pricing model for this product. Its price is a big road blocker when competing against Nutanix and VMware, which are its main competitors."
"We'd like to see more automation capabilities in the future."
"The licensing costs are too expensive. They should work on their pricing model."
"What I find very valuable is VxRail's life cycle management. The life cycle management takes care of everything from firmware to the actual upgrading of the hypervisor and keeps everything up to level."
"The initial setup between the different Dell departments is fragmented. The engineers who come to rack/stack and do the initial config should be trained on all the areas and work with the different Dell departments whilst they are onsite to give a smoother install and better experience for customer."
"When using hybrid nodes, such as VxRail, there should not be compression and deduplication, only in All-Flash nodes."
"They should add automation and activation going forward."
"If we could have some out of the box ideas in integration, I think that would be a great feature."
"Its price could be better."
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 VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 120 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is rated 8.0, while VxRail is rated 8.6. 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 VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is most compared with VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and HPE Hyper Converged.
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