Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Reviews

We are using this product right now for our virtual environment.  

As the product develops, we are looking forward to utilizing the product on the cloud.

It has been great for the deduplication and compression of data, allowing us to save a lot of space.

If we wanted to deploy a virtual or new application, it used to take months to buy the product or hardware. Now, we can do it within fraction of seconds. That is time.

The compression and deduplication are very high. Therefore, we can use the size of the product more efficiently than other storage solutions.

I would like to see them expand onto the cloud.

HyperFlex has been very stable. It was implemented at our bank a year ago and has had no downtime.

It is scalable. We recently added three more nodes, which went very smoothly.

The technical support is very good, especially from the Cisco side.

We were not previously using another solution.

The initial setup was straightforward when implementing the hardware and deploying the software.

We used a reseller called Data Consult from Lebanon for our deployment. Our experience with them was good.

We have saved a lot of money with this solution, especially with implementation because time is money. Implementing the solution on the same box saves a lot of space.

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

We compared Cisco HyperFlex vs Dell EMC.

Try it. The HyperFlex solution is perfect.

The product does not have a cloud version. I would like Cisco to introduce a cloud version of the solution in the future. The product should be made more flexible in terms of integration capabilities.

I have been using Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series for two years. I use a high-end version of the solution. My company has a partnership with Cisco.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

I am satisfied with the solution's technical support. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

The technical people are the ones who can answer whether the product is easy to deploy or not.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is a bit pricier compared to other brands in the market. Yearly payments are to be made toward the licensing cost of the solution. The approximate licensing cost of the product depends on the model a person chooses. There is a need to make additional payments towards the maintenance and support of the solution.

My company is not considering the other available options in the market.

I am satisfied with the overall product.

Cisco has already made a name for itself in the industry as a good brand.

I rate the overall product a ten out of ten.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is essential to our vSAN solution; it's integrated.

I find the usability very valuable.

You have to get the same servers with the same storage; they need to be identical. However, in vSAN or in VMware we don't have to do that. We can just add storage and manage it in the same server.

In the next release, I would like to see more integration with VMware. I would also like to see more automation with other Cisco products so that we could have one dashboard for all Cisco products.

We've been using Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series this year.

The scalability of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is good.

We currently have 1,000 to, maybe, 10,000 users.

I have found the technical support to be very good.

The initial setup is straightforward. I think it took two to three hours maximum to set up.

We have two engineers and one manager for deployment and maintenance.

We used a system integrator consultant for the implementation.

There is no additional licensing cost other than the cost for each part.

I recommend Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and would rate it at nine on a scale from one to ten.

Our primary use case for the product is for the data center. We are hosting all of the servers and building infrastructure.

Cisco HyperFlex is helping us to put everything in centrally so that we can manage in one place. 

That's the whole reason why we got the solution, so that we can have better integration with all of our product applications.

We are still exploring Cisco HyperFlex. We have just deployed it. It's all automation. We want to automate everything. That's the reason why we bought it. 

One problem is that whenever we want to do something on VMware, you are dependent on HyperFlex. With everything now, you have to look into HyperFlex. 

You cannot just apply the VSXi updates. You are dependent on Cisco HyperFlex for metric services, analytics, and everything else. I don't like that dependency.

Stability is good so far, but there is a lot of learning. A lot of things are dependent on VMs. There are controlled VMs and you have to always make sure to keep those VMs up and running.

There is a lot of learning involved with ACI. That's huge. The technology which goes around HyperFlex, you have to learn, i.e. ACI, HyperFlex, VMware, etc.

One thing I like about this product is it is more scalable and fast, i.e. the disks and everything. We can extend our data center to some other places.

Technical support is fairly good. I have been able to get through to the right person. It took me a while, but it was not something very urgent. I didn't think it was much trouble.

We used a reseller called DIG. It was good. I was not part of that.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the product an eight. It's a great data center tool. I look at the weight of the costs too.

None of the products is 100% correct. We just deployed the Cisco HyperFlex. We have to see how it goes. We are also in the cloud. You have to keep looking for that option as it saves a lot on hardware and power consumption

We are still migrating all our old infrastructure, which is on C7000. We are doing that right now. Once that is done, I'll be able to get some metrics. Every company is different.

Our use case would be deployable mobile headquarters, headquarters on the move, where we can quickly deploy to our small user community and quickly create a mobile data center. This includes using business advantage communications.

We are in the architecting phase. We are looking at it being more agile in our deployed headquarters. We are in the testing and deployment phase.

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. 

The product's disadvantage is that it is not necessarily open as I would like it to be. The main platform has some closed features that I would rather not see. For example, I need a mechanism to orchestrate services and an infrastructure as a service model, which is how we are deploying it. We would like to orchestrate it using an open, non-Cisco tool. While there is an API, in order to deploy it, we need to indicate it with a higher layer Network Services Orchestrator. This requires a lot of work to be done. If it could support a more open model, where we have standardized blueprints, templates, or virtual machines, it would be nice. This is an industry problem, not necessarily specific to Cisco.

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.

It works as expected.

Based on the bigger picture, scalability should be good. However, we haven't tested in on scale yet. On paper, it is perfectly fine.

The technical support is good.

Our other solution works perfectly fine. However, we do capability upgrades every so often. This is a trigger for me to determine if we are looking in the right direction. As our requirements to be more agile have increased over time when working with our previous system, we learned the system is too complicated. We needed something which is smarter and can be more automated, where a physical engineer use a template and let it run, then get a green light because the system works.

The initial setup was somewhat complex, but this was because of our requirements. We were pushing the physical structure beyond what Cisco could deliver. This made life a bit miserable for the engineer.

Cisco delivered the solution directly to us. They contributed skill, personnel, equipment, and prototypes.

We are looking at Microsoft, VMware, Cisco, and Dell EMC. In the end, we will make our decision on price and functionality.

Give it a go. Work with their engineers and support staff to see if your solution fits. Challenge them to go a bit further than than their standard product.

Our primary use case is virtualization on VMware. We have some virtual machines, which need a lot of computing power, and HyperFlex seems to be a good solution.

It is a good system to run our virtual machines and services on for high performance and high availability.

You can administer things easily. E.g., if you need more power, you can add a system.

There is a VMware plugin for HyperFlex, which sometimes it hangs up in our environment, and doesn't function well.

We started in an early firmware version, so the software release version was a little unstable in the beginning. Now, it is good.

You can add a package to expand the storage space or machines if you need more machine power. If you don't look at the costs of the systems, the scalability is quite good.

I only had one tough case that I brought to the technical support, and they dealt with it quite well.

We have a lot of IBM Systems, which were getting older. 

Our entire network is Cisco. There was also a good bundle for the HyperFlex system at the beginning when comparing price and value, and overall, it was a good investment. We received more performance for less money at the start.

A year before we set it up, relative to the software the release, there were a few things you could not know as a customer. This is why we used an integrator who knew how to use and follow command line commands that we couldn't know. However, I think this is now fixed.

For the first time that we installed, we used an integrator for the day.

Take a look at HyperFlex because it is a good system. Out-of-the-box, it runs quite well.

We normally use a UCS, a uniform communication service, I'm still learning how HyperFlex works. We are evaluating it for use in the intermediate to deep future.

I do troubleshooting and monitoring on Cisco HyperFlex HX for our customers. I do maintenance and monitoring for the infrastructure environment.

We do a lot of internal projects like optimization, we also use ACI for optimizing the network. It simplifies the cost reduction.

The most valuable feature for our company is that it works internally. We have a lot of internal projects for optimization. 

HyperFlex is flexible for various projects. We have a lot of vendors doing projects where HyperFlex has been good at solving issues.

The scalability could use improvement. 

HyperFlex performs very well.

The scalability is up around 75%.

My team works on ACI and HyperFlex. They've had great Cisco support for that.

Our marketing team told us about the solution. They introduced every new technology that came in and gave us a demo. My managers considered the options and approved Cisco. 

The initial setup for HyperFlex is straightforward. It doesn't take much time. 

HyperFlex lowered our deployment times around one to two days based upon the environment of workers that we needed to invest.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate this product an eight. 

I completely recommend whatever Cisco solutions you use. They provide the best option to maintain infrastructure environment. It's very useful. 

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is storage that is integrated with the stack as a standalone mobile unit. There is less infrastructure required. 

We have better computing power, better uptime, and easier management of the infrastructure due to it being a single unit.

I would like to see more flexibility in the storage.

If you have experience with Cisco, or you have experience with the HyperFlex HX itself, then it's a lot easier. If you do deployment on your own, there's a pretty steep learning curve.

Cisco technical support is very skilled. From what I've had to access, there were quick responses and the necessary escalation.

We were approached by Cisco originally to try out the HyperFlex HX. They installed a very small deployment of it and we grew from that.

The age of our equipment dictated that we have to upgrade. It was becoming end-of-life. That's what precipitated the move originally.

The setup was neutral since I was just learning. It was a little complex, but once I understood the purpose of the profiles and the templates, it became a lot clearer and easier. I would suggest getting contract services involved to help with the initial setup of the product. The setup time to figure it out yourself, especially if you are brand new to it, is extensive.

We used a professional integrator.

I can't quantify, but it seems to have a very good return on investment. We kept the equipment for a long time and it's worked flawlessly for us.

Our licensing is hybrid. We have all of our applications for billing and outage management through this.

Something else that we used before was the IBM BladeCenter. It was fine, but it was not as flexible. We couldn't deploy it and expand as easily as the Cisco HyperFlex HX.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Cisco HyperFlex HX with an eight out of ten at this point. Only because I'm not as versed to it as I could be.

The initial setup of profiles and templates could be improved. Maybe some end profiles that you can use based on your type of deployment would be good, i.e. instead of having to go through and configure every portion of the template.