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

 

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
6.8
Number of Reviews
153
Ranking in other categories
HCI (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Nuno Mendes - PeerSpot reviewer
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).
Xavier Perez - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a deployment phase that is straightforward but needs improvement in the area of scalability
The main issue with HPE SimpliVity is that you are very attached to VMware or VMware dependencies because the tool works with VMware technology. HPE SimpliVity is an add-on from VMware. Nowadays, my company has a lot of concerns about VMware's licensing policy. Another big concern of the tool is related to security because one has to continuously update patch vulnerabilities that are appearing continuously in VMware's different versions. Actually, the foundation of all the architecture is VMware and that is one of the main issues with the tool. My company is analyzing our virtual infrastructure strategy to see if we can move to Nutanix because maybe it may work better and might have another approach. Nutanix is absolutely independent of VMware. I could add that since HPE SimpliVity is very precisely dependent on VMware, it is not open to containers unlike Nutanix, for example. The aforementioned area is a concern that needs to be resolved by HPE.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It increases efficiency, decreases the cost, and manages the network in one single way. That's the most important thing."
"It's very easy to integrate with the ACI network."
"The compute storage and virtualization come all in one box."
"Easy to spin up and operate virtual machines without the overhead of managing a storage network."
"The most valuable feature is that it is something small that can be more easily deployed than a full data center set of servers."
"It's easy to get the tool started."
"The implementation process is okay."
"The ease of use and the graphical user interface (GUI) are two of the most valuable features of this solution."
"The department that ran our reporting in the legacy environment, it took them about six hours to run their report. Now, it is taking the same department less than an hour."
"The solution is scalable."
"The initial setup was very easy as I had the SimpliVity engineers work with our managed services."
"I like HPE SimpliVity's hard disk compression capabilities. The data is compressed into very little space or volume. I think that the principal value of HP SimpliVity is its capacity to compress the data, and I'm saving a lot of disk space using SimpliVity."
"The HCI concept by itself is the most valuable feature of the solution. It is a full-fledged HCI. It is the main component. I think this is what makes the project valuable."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the backup rate and the backup transfer."
"Offsite backup, replication, and duplication of data are important for our plant environment since we are hard on our equipment."
"The most valuable aspect of the HPE SimpliVity is the DL380 G10. We have mostly been using VMware and Hyper-V. On one side we have Hyper-V and the other side we have the VMware."
 

Cons

"Lacks easy integration with other vendors."
"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."
"The problem is that we always have to keep an eye out for new releases to make sure that the version we're running is up-to-date."
"Some of our customers do not want to adopt the Cisco ACI solution. They want to manage Cisco HyperFlex by integrating it with their own management solution."
"I have been receiving a memory overflow message every day when I use the solution."
"We are operating two clusters for site resiliency. I would like to support running redundant/resilient vCenter server instances on each rather than a supported external server."
"I would like to see more analytics. It could use better infographs in the HyperFlex Connect on how traffic is running in the network. If you were reaching any capacity issues on the Fabric Interconnects, it should be able to cool all of the servers and Fabric Interconnects, then possibly integrate it with, e.g., Nexus Series switches. This should all be available in a single pane of glass."
"You cannot just apply the VSXi updates. You are dependent on Cisco HyperFlex for metric services, analytics, and everything else. I don't like that dependency."
"The initial setup is not that easy."
"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."
"It's a very complex installation. It's gotten easier, however, it's far from a double click on a link and a self-upgrade scenario. There's still an awful lot of magic that goes down to doing upgrades."
"Its deployment should be easier."
"The installation process could be simplified. It's a bit technical for non-IT users."
"I wish to see an improved compute node selection, to allow us to select something other than merely the two socket system."
"​I have some worries about the support after the acquisition. ​The support was better before HPE acquired SimpliVity."
"SimpliVity has little to no integrations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Our licensing is Hybrid. We have all of our applications for billing and outage management through this."
"The price is a bit too high."
"We have a yearly license."
"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."
"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 a 30 percent additional premium that all the companies are charging for Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series because of the lack of chips and bottlenecks in the market. The cost of the solution is high right now."
"It is relatively expensive, but it can easily return value by freeing up other resources."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis. The licensing cost also includes vCenter at a cost in the cloud solution."
"All-in license, simple and fair."
"HPE SimpliVity is much more affordable than Nutanix or VMware vSAN...The first pair of servers was about 90,000 EUR, including three years of warranty. It is 30,000 EUR per year."
"We're paying $3,000-$4,000 a month."
"There are additional costs for storage."
"The solution is expensive; not every budget can fit in there."
"​Investing less time in configuration and management means that you will have more time to focus on what is really important: Your company's innovation and rapid commercialization.​"
"Scaling isn't cheap"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
59%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
4%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about HPE SimpliVity?
The solution's technical support is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE SimpliVity?
The price is almost equal to VMware vSAN, making it not much cost saving. However, the time-saving during upgrades is notable.
 

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, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.