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Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs HPE SimpliVity comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE SimpliVity
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
155
Ranking in other categories
HCI (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

Nuno Mendes - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager - Resp.Department at Parvalorem
High performance solution that makes it easy to efficiently manage VM resources
In our case as a credit recovery company working with the state, our infrastructure is fixed and stable as we don't have the same need for growth as other types of companies. That said, one of the biggest problems with HyperFlex HX is that if you want to adjust your solution in terms of processing power, memory, or disk capacity, you have to buy completely new hosts. From a financial perspective, it can be very expensive to do so, and from a legal perspective, there are all kinds of compliance issues we would have to sort out before buying any new solution or application. Since we as a company will only be operating for perhaps the next ten years, when our HyperFlex solution comes to its end-of-life in 2024 our next step will likely not be with HyperFlex or any other solution from Cisco. Instead, from a financial point of view, we will likely turn toward a cloud solution because, that way, we won't have to spend so much money on physical infrastructure. We are, after all, only a small company and HyperFlex can be very expensive for other companies of our size, whether in Portugal or elsewhere like the United States. One other area for improvement is in regard to HyperFlex's integration with VMware. HyperFlex integrates with a specific version of VMware in such a way that HyperFlex doesn't always resolve security issues with VMware at the same pace as what you see in native implementations of VMware. This has happened in one or two situations in the past. On the other hand, the integration is otherwise adequate, especially in terms of availability and virtualization features (such as being able to split up each of our four hosts within VMware).
Mohammed Lokman Hossen - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Has integrated solutions and rapid recovery made management smoother and more reliable
There is the latest update from HPE regarding HPE SimpliVity. For virtualization, HPE has to depend on other manufacturers, OEMs such as VMware or Hyper-V. Recently, HPE declared the VM essential virtualization solution. In the future, if HPE integrates HPE SimpliVity with VM essential, that will be a great combination. Functionality-wise, I am totally satisfied with HPE SimpliVity, but for improvement, if HPE integrates its own virtualization solution, this combination and integration will be beneficial because this integration can be configured with the cloud-based system. A VM can be uploaded to the cloud from this, which will be advantageous for backup to other sites.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are scalability and the easy operation - if it works, as you can configure everything from just one window."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is essential to our vSAN solution; it's integrated."
"It's a very robust solution; there are a lot of products on the market you can access, but this is an end-to-end compact solution for the end customer, it's good, and it's a high-end type of product."
"For customers in the private sector, this product can have a very high return on investment."
"It is a complete solution for proper software-defined data centers with hardware, software, and everything else."
"It saves space for data centers, which is good."
"It is helpful as a backup solution."
"It is a good system to run our virtual machines and services on for high performance and high availability."
"Operational efficiency is definitely one of the biggest benefits, as they could get rid of all those man hours worrying about babysitting their SAN and their servers and the network and take those hours and put them back into real value for the business working on issues with the applications, not the SAN and the infrastructure."
"The compression and deduplication features are most valuable because they allow us to have a small footprint for storage. It is a very stable product, and we are also able to get all that we need in terms of reporting."
"In conclusion SimpliVity delivers an incredibly elegant solution that is built for the VM, not LUN, which delivers on the vision of VMware Virtual Volumes today."
"It makes it easy for our customers to manage all virtual machines and different workloads and be agile."
"The backup feature is valuable, and replication is also valuable. It is very quick and easy to use."
"It is good technology, and the time and response of applications embrace the productivity of our enterprise."
"The most valuable feature is that it's easy to manage, and it also has instantaneous backup and lag-free restore, so when everything is running, I can bring back a huge VM in less than 30 seconds, which is even better than Veeam."
"The whole backup and recovery capability, where we are able to create full backups and restore full backups in typically 40 to 50 seconds with a data reduction ratio of 290:1, has been a great feature."
 

Cons

"Cisco is a bit more challenging in terms of deployment. The admin must be knowledgeable in order to complete the task. Without that knowledge, it will be difficult to complete."
"Ultimately we've noticed the updates and upgrades take a bit of an impact on the solution, more so having to reboot the solution and having to restart it."
"They can't get a POC to work because there are big latencies between the two sites we have. Even though we have a private fiber connection and everything else works well, they can't get the two products to talk to each other. They are not able to build it up. It looks like it's a firmware issue. They said it isn't but now it's looking like it is. I hope we can sort it out."
"We have not had a good experience with the support. They were not very helpful with the cosmetic error we were receiving."
"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."
"Does not support the stretch cluster, and the interface is not good."
"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."
"The architecture separates data, computing, memory, and storage into different parts."
"Let us populate the entire node; right now, there are 24 slots in a server and you're only allowed to populate 14."
"The local support in Argentina is not good. This is a new technology and HP doesn't have a lot of technology specialists here in Argentina. It's very hard to find the specialist here."
"Its performance can be faster."
"To install or to update it is more complicated than other solutions."
"A better GUI for some functions."
"SimpliVity has this thing where if a virtual machine is on the wrong node with two nodes, it will be optimized. However, if one of the nodes won't be optimized, then it will complain about that. It will give you a little warning to say the source is not optimized. Please move this to one of the other hosts. They should just add a little thing in SimpliVity to move all the VMs to the right host, because it is a pain to load balance across the three nodes when all these VMs are complaining and you have to move them to one."
"HPE SimpliVity could be more flexible and scalable. I don't feel SimpliVity is flexible or easily scalable because I still need to buy another server to add to my clusters. I can't just run or harvest and add to my solution. I need to buy another server. There are a lot of components that are not giving a lot of value to me right now. I also had a few problems with the built-in hard disk drives. I've had many issues with the harvest stripes that the servers use. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's unusual to have a physical failure on the HPE platform. I don't see any value at the software level, especially in the software that manages that solution. I was waiting for something, especially in the application layer that I would use, but that is all over VMware, and it doesn't have an integrated module that I can use to manage the server and all the instances."
"The ease of new deployments could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is perpetual and the only thing that you may need to pay for on a monthly basis is if you're going to use their cloud-based management features."
"There is no additional licensing cost other than the cost for each part."
"We have a yearly license."
"I would like a clearer licensing model. It should explain a bit more what you receive if you buy the more expensive license rather than the standard one."
"It's much more expensive than rack servers. It was an issue, but when you compare it to the number of people who were administrative assistants before, it's on the positive ROI side. It's much cheaper."
"Our licensing is Hybrid. We have all of our applications for billing and outage management through this."
"The price is a bit too high."
"There is a license required to use this solution."
"It is not too expensive, but it is quite expensive for me."
"The price of the solution is reasonable. We have purchased a five-year license with all the support and upgrades."
"ESXi licensing is a big part of initial investment if you do not already have that covered."
"The price should be cheaper."
"One big advantage with SimpliVity is that you don't need the higher license cost or VMware to put together a simple SimpliVity solution."
"Customers always complain that SimpliVity is a little bit higher in price point as compared to other solutions available in the market."
"Other vendors fall short on price compared to HPE on this product."
"If we compare the price of HPE SimpliVity with other vendors that are selling the hyper-converged infrastructure, all of them are not cheap and are priced similarly. However, the price we pay and what we receive makes it a good price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise57
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business67
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise80
 

Questions from the Community

How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?
Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from core to edge and multi-cloud environments. It helps IT and OT teams deploy hyper...
How does VxRail compare with Cisco HyperFlex HX Series?
VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company to invest in. Even if you are working with a limited budget, this platform offer...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE SimpliVity?
Standalone HPE SimpliVity is more expensive than other OEMs and solutions. Regarding the software side, VMware is costing significantly more nowadays compared to other solutions in the market. The ...
What needs improvement with HPE SimpliVity?
I haven't noticed anything that should be better in HPE SimpliVity, as I haven't done extensive work on this platform; I have only completed a couple of projects recently. Pricing could be an area ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SimpliVity, HPE HCI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BluePearl Veterinary Partners, Ready Pac Foods, Bryant University, Bellevue Group, KPIT Technologies, City Harvest
Red Bull Racing, Mandarin Oriental, Brigham Young University, UCLA, Merlin Entertainments, Sasa Cosmetics, Travelport, St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Princess House
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, Broadcom and others in HCI. Updated: August 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.