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.
"In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems."
"Virtualizing data infrastructure with StarWind Virtual SAN improves efficiency and reduces operational costs."
"Besides being 80% cheaper than the other alternatives, the simplicity makes reconfiguration and support much easier."
"Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very easy-to-use solution that can be quickly and easily deployed and configured without intimate and specific knowledge in the virtualization sphere."
"It enables us to provide more solution options for our clients, with the reassurance that, when implemented, they will be efficient and stable."
"StarWind vSAN was very easy to integrate into our system and ran flawlessly during our entire use time."
"StarWind is very easy to use, even if you have had no experience using a SAN before."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"Cisco technical support is very skilled. From what I've had to access, there were quick responses and the necessary escalation."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is the integration with everything in a much smoother, such as in physical and virtual environments. VMware NSX is a simpler solution but, Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is more robust compared to VMware NSX."
"You can administer things easily. E.g., if you need more power, you can add a system."
"The solution can scale up and out."
"It is very scalable. It is also easy to scan."
"The solution is stable."
"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 valuable features of vSAN are that you can get it up and running quickly, you get redundancy built-in, and it's pretty much the perfect solution for a cluster."
"As a function of our core business, it's a sought after tool that helps us provide analytical support across a wide spectrum of client needs. It's allowed us to test out in our connected restaurant - "TheWorks" - a fully-functional restaurant experience center that allows our clients to discover the value of our connected solutions firsthand. We deploy vSAN in this customer-like environment within a hyperconvergent infrastruction (HCI) to give our clients a better understanding and help optimize data and the end-users' experience."
"I think vSAN's stability is good. It's an underlying solution for both on-prem and in the cloud, especially the VMC on AWS stuff too. VMware has been around for a long time, so it's pretty stable."
"It is easy to use. It is easy to implement for us, and it is also easy to maintain for the customers. It is not necessary to buy some extra devices and talk with other vendors."
"Overall the solution is very good."
"The most valuable thing about vSAN is that all of its features have been working well for us for the past two years. We haven't had an issue with them."
"It's completely hyper-converged, so it's very convenient."
"It's stable and scalable. Also, you can virtualize SAN so that you don't have to have a separate storage area network and can have your computer and storage on the same box or computer."
"It is difficult to control all of the hardware components."
"I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves."
"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."
"StarWind doesn't really have any performance reporting, especially compared with other vSAN products we've used."
"Having more support plan options would be nice."
"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."
"It should be improved in the way it detects the right filesystem image after a complete shutdown of the system or in the case of disaster recovery."
"Server-side snapshots are one thing the Linux appliance can't do yet."
"There are sometimes issues with memory failure."
"The initial setup of the Cisco HyperFlex HX platform was medium-level difficult. It's a little bit different from traditional servers. It takes getting used to the learning curve."
"I have been receiving a memory overflow message every day when I use the solution."
"We had a bit of complexity to think about how to migrate our legacy infrastructure into Cisco HyperFlex."
"The pricing is pretty expensive."
"The storage layer seems to be a little better on the VMware than on HyperFlex side."
"This solution is lacking in replication and backup abilities that I would like to see in a future release similar to HPE SimpliVity."
"Cisco has to continue improve the management tools to provide a better command line interface with more functions. That would be better for administration."
"The server files are larger than before."
"I have used the VMware Replication but I can't get it to work properly. The process should be simplified."
"The quality of the customer service and support depends on the vSAN case. For example, if I open ten cases, maybe two or three get resolved quickly. But the other cases have a slow response."
"As no product is 100% perfect, the price for VMware vSAN could still be improved, though it is good when compared to some of its competitors."
"The platform's cost affects the business. This particular area needs improvement."
"vSAN does not have online dedup. When opening the inline dedupe, the performance will be lower than off inline."
"We would like to see even more storage capacity."
"The main problem we had was hardware compatibility, finding the right hardware that was certified."
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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