Azure Local vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure comparison

Azure Local vs. Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Download the complete report

Helped 900,747 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Azure Local

Ranking in HCI

11th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infr...

Ranking in HCI

17th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

2.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Azure Local is 3.3%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is 2.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Azure Local	3.3%
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure	2.2%
Other	94.5%

HCI

Featured Reviews

Martin Coloumbe

IT Solution Architect at a educational organization with 11-50 employees

Experience with seamless cost-saving capacity, though integration and support need refinement

An area that could be possibly improved with Azure Stack HCI is the stretched cluster functionality, which was included in version 23H2 for disaster recovery purposes. However, this functionality has been put on hold for the next release, and Microsoft has decided to discontinue stretched cluster technology completely, which is disappointing. They promise to bring back a significant or similar solution in a future release, but currently, there is no such functionality for stretched clusters between two sites in the latest versions of Azure Stack HCI, which poses a problem as we were looking forward to utilizing it. The integration with Azure Arc provides a unified management experience, but I find it to be fairly clunky. The integration exists, but it is not smooth or very easy to use. While they've started to integrate the two, the integration lacks maturity and makes it difficult to manage effectively. There are discrepancies between managing VMs through Azure Arc versus managing them directly, as changes made not using the Azure Arc integration are not easily reflected in Azure Arc. For instance, if I have an Arc-enabled VM and make changes to it outside the Arc interface, those changes may not be registered directly in Azure Arc, leading to issues in fully viewing the status and configuration of VMs depending on the management tool used. You either manage VMs fully through Arc or not at all because mixing the two methods results in incomplete visibility and inconsistencies.

Read full review

Maheshc Chathuranga

Senior Enterprise System Architect at Enterprise Technology (Pvt) Ltd

Has provided mature containerization support and responsive assistance while meeting diverse customer needs

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure can be improved primarily because the biggest problem in Sri Lanka is its high price compared to other solutions. Feature-wise, it's very mature for the containerization side, but the price point is an issue. I would like to see more features related to disaster recovery and continuity in Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure, specifically disaster recovery, disaster recovery sites, and business continuity.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The solution has the latest processor."

"The features of Azure Stack HCI that have proven to be the most beneficial for optimizing our company's data center operations revolve around its performance."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to manage VMs."

"Azure Stack HCI has been very beneficial for disaster recovery operations, though the main data center still has a mix of infrastructure between other products."

"In my hybrid cloud setup, there are three features I've found very efficient. The first is software-defined networking. Similar to Azure where you create virtual networks and software load balancing, Azure Stack HCI lets you configure them with a drag-and-drop experience on the on-premises cluster. That's one of the good feature."

"Azure Local, formerly known as Azure Stack HCI, is gaining attention due to its offering of a cloud experience on-premises."

"The integration with Azure using Azure Arc is excellent."

"The scalability is extremely good."

More Azure Local pros

"The size of the hardware is what we need because it is very good for small configurations."

"The consolidation of the management in one control point is the most valuable, as the whole infrastructure management is consolidated in just one console point and the documentation is also pretty good."

"It is stable and scalable."

"Their technical support is amazing in general."

"The stability of the solution is good; we haven't experienced any bugs or glitches and we've been satisfied so far."

"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is an open-sourced, low-cost solution with full features."

"Depending on the requirements of the consumers, Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure can be used for any application that can be deployed."

"The most useful feature is the solution's automation in terms of how we are able to spin up a certain workload in real-time when we are doing R&D."

More Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure pros

Cons

"There are a lot of areas for improvement. Since I've been working very closely with this product, there are many areas, especially in software-defined networking. We had to improve multiple areas because we depended on the service fabric cluster to manage the software-defined network. That means we're already running a hypervisor inside a VM, and we're managing the control plane of the software-defined network. That's another cluster. So, multiple layers make the complexity more. So, from an operational perspective, it's very difficult to manage."

"The product's initial setup phase can be a bit complex, making it an area where improvements are required."

"Hyper V seems to lag behind compared to VMware."

"The implementation was very difficult for the operation team at that time, as the necessary skills to implement and integrate this product were not available."

"The biggest challenge with the tool is not being able to manage everything from Microsoft Azure Portal."

"We faced multiple problems with the product’s stability."

"A little bit of the storage architecture could be improved."

"This product is not so stable. Maybe it is just not mature enough in its development."

"It is not user-friendly, and it is very difficult to operate. You have to have a deep understanding of the technical details of the infrastructure to implement it. When you compare it with VMware, it is totally different because the graphical user interface is not that easy to understand. It is not intuitive. To use it, you have to read a lot of documentation and even understand what is going on behind the solution. It is not for someone who has a little bit of knowledge. Currently, it is too complex. I need something that is easy to implement. It should have a basic configuration as well as a complex configuration."

"The licensing policy needs to be improved. They have a licensing policy based on the number of CPU sockets."

"The cloud deployment could be improved."

"It is not user-friendly, and it is very difficult to operate."

"It should be more user-friendly, in my opinion."

"The main issue is the initial investment. It is an expensive product, and it should be cheaper. It should also be easier to use and manage. The professional service for this solution is quite complex and expensive."

"The licensing policy needs to be improved. They have a licensing policy based on the number of CPU sockets. Nowadays what has happened is that the license they are trying to move is based on the number of CPU cores. With the advancement in technology there are now more cores in a single CPU. It's been very challenging in terms of managing the license around everything. Today we have a processor with 24 and 32 cores on the same physical CPU."

More Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is high compared to other tools."

"The main licenses are the OS licenses, the OEM licenses, and so on. They are very much aligned with the cost of expectations. We never had any challenges with the licensing at all."

"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is an open-sourced, low-cost solution with full features."

"It is quite pricey."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

Healthcare Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	1
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Stack HCI?

This solution costs €10 per core per month. The whole stack is free if you are renting Windows Server Datacenter.

What needs improvement with Azure Stack HCI?

There could be improvements with Azure Stack HCI regarding the license and price, as they have significantly higher prices compared to other competitors. The end-to-end encryption provided by Azure...

What is your primary use case for Azure Stack HCI?

Azure Stack HCI is used for integrated compute, storage, and networking.

What needs improvement with Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure?

What is your primary use case for Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure?

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is mainly used for customers' companies.

What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure?

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is not used for edge computing. Most people are referring to centralized data centers for requirements, and in Sri Lanka, there are not many edge computing sol...

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Azure Local

Comparisons

Compared 16% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Azure Local

Compared 12% of the time

VxRail vs Azure Local

Compared 8% of the time

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series vs Azure Local

Compared 6% of the time

Dell XC Appliance vs Azure Local

Compared 4% of the time

More Azure Local Competitors

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Compared 17% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Compared 9% of the time

evroc vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Compared 6% of the time

Scale Computing Platform vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Compared 6% of the time

VxRail vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Compared 6% of the time

More Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure Competitors

Product Reports

Azure Local

Download Azure Local product report

HCI

Download Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure product report

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat HCI, Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Virtualization

Overview

Azure Local integrates on-premises infrastructure with cloud services, offering tools for software-defined networking, Kubernetes deployment, and VM management. It ensures cost efficiency through existing Microsoft licenses and robust disaster recovery, despite some complexities in deployment.

Azure Local is designed for businesses needing a blend of local and cloud services while remaining compliant with data privacy regulations. It excels in environments demanding high computing power, software-defined networking, and seamless scaling through Azure Kubernetes Service and Azure DevOps. Although it offers excellent VM management and analytics capabilities with Microsoft Fabric, deployment complexity and operational challenges remain. Businesses looking for a robust edge computing solution find significant benefits, especially with efficient local Azure storage and advanced hardware such as the latest processors and SSDs. There are areas needing improvements like multi-cluster management, stability, and Initial setup, which can be cumbersome. Pricing can be a concern against competitors, and enhanced support and training are needed for smoother user experience.

What are the key features of Azure Local?

Software-Defined Networking: Facilitates management with drag-and-drop setup.
Kubernetes Deployment: Provides Azure Kubernetes Service for managing microservices.
VM Management: Reduces server count and enhances efficiency.
Integration with Azure Arc: Seamless collaboration with Azure Arc for hybrid deployments.
Infrastructure as Code: Utilizes Azure DevOps for deployment.
Analytics Capabilities: Microsoft Fabric enhances insights and decision-making.

What benefits should businesses expect from Azure Local?

Cost Efficiency: Leverages existing Microsoft licenses for financial savings.
Improved Disaster Recovery: Advanced edge computing features bolster resiliency.
High Performance: Enhanced by the latest processors and SSDs for demanding applications.
Seamless Cloud Integration: Smooth transition capabilities between local and cloud environments.

Azure Local finds application in sectors like manufacturing and maritime operations where robust edge computing helps in seamless data management and analytics. Factories benefit from compliance with data privacy rules while blended local and cloud services improve efficiency on ships, providing an alternative to VMware with support for virtual desktops and SQL Managed Instances.

Microsoft

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure offers a streamlined approach to manage IT infrastructure by combining storage, virtualization, and management within a single platform. Its compact design is ideal for small-scale deployments, facilitating enhanced data consistency through a focus on containerization.

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure provides an integrated solution for virtualizing legacy applications, facilitating Desktop as a Service and adapting to various industry verticals like banking, oil and gas, and retail. It consolidates management into one point while supporting interconnected x86 server setups. Though it demands significant technical expertise and has intricate licensing based on CPU cores, users appreciate its scalability and automation capabilities despite the high costs and potential improvements in cloud deployment and disaster recovery features.

What are the most important features?

Compact Size: Suitable for small configurations and space-limited environments.
Automation: Streamlines processes and reduces manual workloads.
Scalability: Easily adjusts to growing demands and data volumes.
Consolidated Management: Centralized control simplifies infrastructure management.
Containerization Focus: Emphasizes data consistency through container usage.
Software-Defined Storage: Enhances flexibility and data handling efficiency.

What benefits should users prioritize in reviews?

Stability: Reliable performance in demanding environments.
Efficient Updates: Regular enhancements ensure ongoing performance improvements.
Robust Support: Comprehensive support services are valued by users.
Expanded Service Integration: Incorporates additional services to meet user needs.

In industries such as banking, oil and gas, and retail, Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is implemented to streamline operations and enhance IT infrastructure flexibility. It is employed in virtualizing legacy systems, supporting R&D environments, and enabling sharp application deployments through integrated storage and virtualization solutions.

Red Hat

Azure Local vs. Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure