Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] vs NetApp HCI [EOL] comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Cisco and NetApp are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

Read 90 Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] reviews

89% willing to recommend

NetApp HCI [EOL]

Read 32 NetApp HCI [EOL] reviews

88% willing to recommend

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [...

NetApp HCI [EOL]

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] and NetApp HCI [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, StarWind and others in HCI.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: October 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

October 2026

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetApp HCI [EOL]

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

Nuno Mendes

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).

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Massimiliano Bartolozzi

Chief Information Officer at Lucart S.p.A.

Crashed continuously, complex to deploy, and bad after-sales support - NETAPP FIXED the problems in 2022

Their after-sales support, SLA, and third-parties availability should be improved. NetApp's support is very difficult to engage. We have an SLA of onsite support within 24 hours. but they don't respect the SLA. Its stability was very bad. It has been crashing continuously. In one year, we got three crashes, which is unbelievable for an appliance that is guaranteed for 10 years without any crashes. In 2022, NetApp Italy, driven by the country manager Davide Marini, fixed all our issues and added additional computation power for free. This is a great example of customer care. They could have done it right the first time of course, but admitting the errors and putting in place such a remediation plan has been a very professional behavior.

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

"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."

"It is a good system to run our virtual machines and services on for high performance and high availability."

"The integration between the storage and the server applications is the most valuable feature of this solution. It cuts down on the necessity to buy a secondary storage system.. It saves money in the long-run."

"This is very beneficial for our company as we own a service that should be up and running 24/7."

"Cisco HyperFlex is the best appliance-based product."

"Cisco offers very good quality."

"We haven't had any downtime; it is absolutely stable."

"The management feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pros

"The initial setup was straightforward; it was easy and fast to deploy, and NetApp Cloud Manager made getting up and running with Cloud ONTAP amazing, easy to use, simple, and it basically did everything."

"It is easy to administrate the solution, and the company handles its technical support well."

"NetApp HCI is a stable solution."

"Now you don't have to be a storage administrator to provision or do anything, and any VMware system administrator, with the ease of a button, would get storage provision, which makes their lives easier."

"Because NetApp usually marries capacity, performance, and upgrade planning together, there's not a whole lot that I need to worry about at this point."

"The ease of deployment is a positive feature that allows us to scale easily."

"Simple setup and having the storage and compute right on one deployment is the most valuable aspect of this solution. They're able to get set up and ready to go and start having their DevOp team deploy to that environment."

"The solution has generally affected storage performance in our organization by adding a high-performance storage option into the environment."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros

Cons

"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."

"The primary improvements should be made in the cluster storage controller VMs so that they don't break the upgrade process."

"The initial setup could be faster, due to the prerequisites."

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

"In the next release, I would like to see them able to connect to the public cloud."

"The initial setup can be complex."

"HyperFlex could be improved by reducing the minimum number of nodes supported from three to two."

"Comparable solutions with switches, storage, and services are cheaper than HyperFlex. It should be cheaper."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] cons

"The networking needs improvement."

"I would like to see a better upgrade process, like the one that ONTAP has."

"It is easy to install now, but could potentially be even simpler."

"They could improve the packaging."

"There's a limitation with a block in the file. That's where I see that it's not very efficient for upgrades and for management."

"Unfortunately, the solution has not reduced our hypervisor footprint."

"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."

"The product needs better support for installing the operating system on the machine."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is better if you buy more Cisco products."

"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is expensive. It's a standard license, and we pay for it yearly. I think we pay about 700."

"We would not have invested if we didn't feel the return was there for our customers."

"We are on an annual subscription and the price is fair."

"Its price is rather fair when compared with other solutions like VxRail, vSAN, and HPE SimpliVity. We got a fair amount of discount from Cisco for Cisco HyperFlex. It is cost-effective. We have renewed storage till next year, and we have already paid the vendor. When we talk about HyperFlex or any HCI solution, storage is the part where we can reduce a lot of costs. At the current moment, we are already using NetApp storage, which did not allow us to go for a full Cisco HyperFlex setup. We are planning to go to a larger scale next year. Then we will be able to see how cost-effective it really is for us."

"They are not the cheapest on the market. But there's an old saying I like to quote: "If you know that you are getting what you pay for, it's fine if it's expensive.""

"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."

"We have a yearly license."

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] pricing and cost advice

"This solution saved our organization time (35 percent) and money. We have a hefty group of developers, and if you multiply that by 30 to 35 percent, that is quite a bit of money."

"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."

"Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."

"Where we lost nearly 75 percent of our infrastructure due to a malicious attack and were able to recover two and a half hours into it due to the integration, it saved us and all of our customers. Because we were able to recover so fast from the attack, the solution paid for itself right there."

"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."

"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."

"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."

"There are the overall infrastructure costs. Even though the initial costing was higher, we calculated for year-to-year for five years. That brought us into a position where we decided, we have to go for HCI rather than having distributor systems."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Outsourcing Company

12%

Construction Company

12%

Marketing Services Firm

Construction Company

19%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	24
Midsize Enterprise	16
Large Enterprise	58

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	19

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Comparisons

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 22% of the time

Qualys Exposure Management vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 16% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 8% of the time

VxRail vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 22% of the time

VxRail vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 12% of the time

VMware vSAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 12% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

More NetApp HCI [EOL] Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL]

October 2026

Download Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp HCI [EOL]

October 2026

Download NetApp HCI [EOL] product report

Overview

The Cisco HyperFlex HX Data Platform is a purpose-built, high-performance, scale-out file system with a wide array of enterprise-class data management services. The data platform’s innovations redefine distributed storage technology, giving you complete hyper-convergence with enterprise storage features:

Enterprise-class data management
Continuous data optimization
Securely encrypted storage
Dynamic data placement
Clusterwide parallel data distribution
Linear and incremental scaling
API-based data platform architecture
A simplified approach

Cisco

NetApp HCI is the only true enterprise-scale hyper converged cloud infrastructure. NetApp HCI comes in a 2 RU chassis with 4 node expansion slots.

NetApp

Sample Customers

BluePearl Veterinary Partners, Ready Pac Foods, Bryant University, Bellevue Group, KPIT Technologies, City Harvest

American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, StarWind and others in HCI. Updated: October 2026.

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