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.
"StarWind Virtual SAN can improve an organization's storage infrastructure by providing high availability, scalability, cost-effectiveness, performance, and ease of use."
"I like StarWind's high availability. The failover is almost immediate, so the end users have no idea the guest VM moved at all. We can failover all guest VMs onto a single hypervisor, place it into maintenance mode, install updates, and reboot a hypervisor all during the daytime and remotely, with confidence the process will be successful."
"The management interface on the software is very simple. It is insanely simple compared to most SANs. The interface is also powerful when used to complete tasks that an IT administrator needs to complete."
"The support team is available to solve any problem efficiently."
"StarWind allowed us to deploy highly available shared storage within our budget."
"The solution is also quite flexible. As an example, other vSAN solutions that we looked at had more stringent requirements regarding mixed HDD/SSD storage which wouldn't have worked in our environment."
"The ROI is great on this product."
"vSAN we found was simple to set up, easy to configure and manage and allows us to achieve storage redundancy."
"The management from the switches to the hyper-convergence solutions are quite good and well-developed."
"We are providing this solution for the customer or converting the customer from a traditional environment to a hyper-converged environment which consolidates all management and support on a single port. This is the main benefit of using the hyper-converged versus the traditional."
"It's very easy to integrate with the ACI network."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is that you can manage the whole cluster from the traffic interconnect."
"When we use it for VDI solutions, it is very easy to deploy and support."
"Offers very good data protection and provides system uptime availability effectively."
"The speed, storage, and management are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable feature is its high performance."
"The solution is perfect for the lifecycle management of hardware."
"I like the managed updates. They are really nice in VxRail. Everything comes packaged and the updates are much easier than with other solutions that I've had to work with."
"It supports VDI deployment, enabling easy use for running different platforms in similar environments."
"A valuable feature of the solution is that it allows everything to be integrated into a single model, comprised of hardware and software."
"VxRail is an agile solution with easily scalable, simplify operations with software driven automation and lower operational cost."
"The tool's price is competitive and it is easy to use."
"It's a good product based on the features. You can upgrade the solution with only one click."
"It would be great if it provided thin provisioned virtual disks."
"Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment."
"We have, in rare cases, received conflicting guidance between different support folks within StarWind."
"While StarWind.com excels in numerous areas, there are a couple of notable functionalities that it currently lacks. One of these is duplication, which could be an invaluable feature for data redundancy and backup purposes. The ability to duplicate data across different storage locations can be crucial for safeguarding against data loss, and its absence is a minor limitation in an otherwise stellar offering."
"The initial setup got a little confusing at a few points with differences between the VMware version in documentation vs the latest, etc."
"Our company was hoping for deduplication and encryption across HCI. That is currently not supported."
"Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."
"There should be publicly available tutorials on YouTube or other platforms that help the users to integrate this solution with other platforms, for example."
"Its price could be better."
"Maybe a better version is required to gather all of the information to allow HyperFlex to bring everything online more rapidly."
"The solution could improve by having more customization."
"The product needs work in the area of deduplication which currently is inefficient."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series could improve by having the documents be more readily available and the support could be more flexible."
"The price could be better. I think it's more expensive than VxRail. In the next release, I would like to see a better level of protection and availability with six clients."
"A stretch function is really needed. Germans think that because of the high availability and the security that two data centers are better but we want edge all in one cluster. This is a needed feature, the cluster feature, and we'd also like to see a possibility for ROBO offices."
"Deployment on-prem was quite difficult."
"It would be an improvement if VxRail could be integrated with some other hypervisors and not just with VMware."
"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."
"The support charges for VxRail should be optimized and made cheaper."
"The price could be better. The backup mechanism could also be better. Some of our clients prefer to work with backup software from a different vendor. They don't do a built-in backup solution. It would be better if they had guidelines on proper sizing and the whole life cycle from the requirement collection. If there aren't any proper guidelines, how do I go to the customer and evaluate their existing infrastructure? How can you do appropriate sizing to migrate to a hyper-converged environment? I think this is a requirement because most of our clients are migrating to a hyper-converged environment. In the next release, they can improve absolutely anything you can think of to improve the product in general—for example, the clusters and backup software."
"We'd like to see more automation capabilities in the future."
"What I did not like so much was the amount of VMware that you have to put in your system related to the VxRail."
"It still has some maturity to grow. It needs to be more tightly integrated with its own family of products. It has shown that it is open with the other products within the market, through its stack, but it needs to have the proof in the market (with use-cases), and it has to have the scalability with the integration."
"While VxRail offers compatibility with AMD processors, its capabilities in this area could benefit from further development."
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.
See our list of best HCI vendors.
We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.