Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs FlexPod XCS comparison

"It is helpful as a backup solution."

"The most valuable feature is that it is something small that can be more easily deployed than a full data center set of servers."

"Support is very responsive."

"Cisco offers very good quality."

"The automation is a valuable feature, it's interesting."

"It has reduced the time it takes to put the servers in production by half the time."

"It is very scalable. It is also easy to scan."

"I like Cisco Intersight."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the integration and ease of use."

"The hardware has been rock solid so far. It has gone up easy. It runs well. We have not had issues with it."

"The most valuable feature is the one support. Anytime that a customer buys a solution for a server, storage, or network, once they have trouble in their environment, everyone wants to find out who was wrong. With FlexPod, everyone is wrong and there is unified support. The best way to solve the problem is have it be everyone's problem, not just one person's problem. For FlexPod, you can call NetApp or Cisco, and I think it's the best way to solve the problem that the customer has."

"The solution can be innovative when it comes to cloud computing storage and networking."

"When our clients choose to call NetApp or Cisco directly, the cooperative support model means they can get passed back and forth between the two organizations freely. It works really well."

"Large and small companies do not have time to design the compute, the amount of storage, and how it works together. They are buying pre-proven, pretested solutions with reference architectures already in place."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the stability."

"It reduces the time required to dynamically provide applications to our end users and developers."

"The scalability could use improvement."

"We are moving further out with more cloud solutions, so we need HyperFlex to be more cloud-connected. They should develop more connection to Amazon Web Services and Google cloud because our customers use their services and are moving in that direction."

"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."

"We would like to have the ability to not have to reboot while doing updates. Being able to work through updates with as minimal amount of impact to users."

"With the cache disk fails in Cisco, the whole node fails, and the workload goes down."

"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."

"Maybe a better version is required to gather all of the information to allow HyperFlex to bring everything online more rapidly."

"It needs more detailed documentation."

"The solution could be improved by including automation for user updates."

"The FAS in it, with all its flexibility and scalability, it is much more complex and could be simplified."

"According to the product managers, there are some new products coming which will address some of our concerns around portability and compliance."

"Parts of the initial setup were complex, especially on the networking side."

"I would like them to scale more to rack unit servers instead of blade servers."

"With the next solution, if there is a virtual Flex part where we can deploy it to private clouds or in public clouds rather tying up the hardware, it would reduce costs and complexity. Then, we could do a lot more automation."

"As the technology grows, we're looking to upgrade our storage systems to something faster, and we're hoping to improve our servers with next-generation technology. So we want to enhance our server infrastructure and explore server virtualization with VMware. That's the improvement that our clients are demanding."

"The cost may be high compared to other solutions."

"The price is a bit too high."

"We negotiated with Cisco and we got some price benefit from that."

"The product is expensive. Other solutions are cheaper."

"It's roughly $30,000 per Hyperflex license, so that would be about $60,000 a year."

"The product could be cheaper."

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

"It is highly priced compared to other vendors."

"When we negotiated with Cisco for the HyperFlex solution, they gave us a good price because they wanted to break into the market in Portugal for the first time. However, in general, I think it's a very expensive solution. It's a huge amount of money to acquire this kind of infrastructure."

"The NetApp portion was a $5 million investment five years ago. That has served the customer well over five and a half years."

"Anytime that you are buying any storage make sure you understand storage. Do not just buy storage based on what somebody sells you in terms of IO or throughput."

"Overall, the solution works pretty well. The biggest complaint I have from customers is the cost."

"You get better management and orchestration, but it still costs you money."

"We have saved time and money for new service deployments. Without FlexPod, it probably takes about ten hours. With FlexPod, within two hours, we are up and running. So, we have seen about an 80 percent time decrease."

"It is cheaper than other products. For example, Dell EMC VxBlock is more expensive."

"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."

"I find the licensing and pricing structure to be favorable."