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Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued) vs. Dell VxRail vs. Nutanix AHV

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)

    Score7.8 out of 10
    N/ACisco HyperFlex Systems is a hyper-converged infrastructure product, based on technology acquired with SpringPath (acquired September 2017). Cisco's modern HCI solution is Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix.N/A

    Dell VxRail

    Score9.4 out of 10
    N/AThe Dell VxRail is a VMWare-based hyper-converged infrastructure appliance.N/A

    Nutanix AHV

    Score9 out of 10
    N/ANutanix AHV is presented as a modern and secure virtualization platform that powers VMs and containers for applications and cloud-native workloads on-premises and in public clouds. Its tools and automated workflows simplify the day-to-day administration of VMs and containers.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Dell VxRailNutanix AHV
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Dell VxRailNutanix AHV
    Free Trial
    NoNoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Dell VxRailNutanix AHV
    Considered Multiple Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)
    Cisco tech support is one of the best in the market
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)
    HyperFlex is built on top of Cisco UCS infrastructure, which allows us to manage other non-HX servers attached to the same UCS environment. This allows us to tie everything together via Intersight and see all of the servers in our data centers. Other platforms don't really …
    Incentivized
    Dell Technologies
    Chose Dell VxRail
    At the time we had a deployment of SimpliVity which did not measure up. We demo'd other products such as HyperFlex. We appreciated the ease of use of the VxRail and the overall value.
    Incentivized
    Nutanix
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    27 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    24 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    12 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    26 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    22 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    12 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    26 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    12 Answers
    Features
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Dell VxRailNutanix AHV
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued) and Dell VxRail and Nutanix AHV
    Feature
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Dell VxRail
    -
    Ratings
    Nutanix AHV
    8.9
    5 Ratings
    10% above category average
    Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings00 Ratings8.84 Ratings
    Management console00 Ratings00 Ratings8.85 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings00 Ratings9.15 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings00 Ratings8.55 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings00 Ratings9.15 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Dell VxRailNutanix AHV
    Small Businesses
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Score9 out of 10
    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Score9 out of 10
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Dell VxRailNutanix AHV
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.2
    (28 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    9.0
    (25 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (4 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.9
    (18 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.2
    (27 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (17 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Dell VxRailNutanix AHV
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    Smaller sites that would benefit from a cluster of 2-5 nodes. Not saying that it can't scale above that, but I find HyperFlex a great solution for those sites. A simple 3-node edge cluster can provide a huge amount of resources and redundancy. It's also really easy to scale the environment to meet growth requirements.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Dell Technologies
    As Dell EMC VxRail comes as pre-built, the deployment process is simple and easy. It is possible to scale out easily and will get support from the vendor instantly. As it is a Hyperconverged Infrastructure and it is also the integration of Dell EMC hardware and Vmware, the flexibility that VxRail provides is effective. An organization that is looking for all in one place like data management, network management, Integration, and backup software ecosystem can go for this product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Nutanix
    I think Nutanix AOS is a great product and, I would recommend it to anyone. The only reason I did not give it a 10 out of 10 is because I don't do that for any product. Every product has room for improvement.
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • UCS manager in HX is truly helping us in doing one touch firmware upgrades. Scaling of HX cluster (in few minutes) is too seamlessly due to service profiles.
    • HX does not hold you back by creating a single data store unlike other HCI products. With HX, you can create multiple data stores and allocate those to desired services. This help logically separate the install base on HX and removes confusion for the admins too.
    • We run high IOPs workload on HX, and we never felt latency issues due to the Cisco backbone (as you get FI as a TOR switch and options to choose 10G or 40G speeds).
    • With HX you truly enjoy a single window support from Cisco including for the top of the rack switch (FI in HX case). In other HCI infra, you certainly have to bank on to network switch vendor for support and bring HCI and switch vendor at one pane for troubleshooting latency related issues.
    • While we increased our footprint on HX, we didn't added additional administrators to support the landscape. This was possible because of the simplicity in managing HX clusters.
    • With HX we had setup stretched cluster between two near site data centres. This is a unique proposition in HX (we have 2 nodes in each data centre) and data centre failover works absolutely seamless.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Dell Technologies
    • VxRail gives us a standard, predictable, unit of scale and purchase.
    • Infrastructure maintenance and upgrades are much easier than on a traditional infrastructure stack.
    • Performance tuning is much easier and more straightforward than on a traditional infrastructure stack
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Nutanix
    • One component to support both compute and storage needs for virtualization.
    • Easy expandable as business needs arise both at the node level and larger with blocks.
    • Well outlined interface with good historical data.
    • API tools are available to obtain logging information from Nutanix that can be used with other monitoring tools such as Splunk.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • there is the problem with starting cluster where there are not outside DNS and NTP services so we need to workaround this with additional storage or hosting it on the local storage.. many clusters has internal DNS/NTP services not available from outside and they need to be hosted on the HX
    • there is not RBAC or user mgmt on the CVMs so it is difficult to not add full permission for the people responsible for just shutdown and power on the cluster
    • native snapshots support with ibm backup products
    • running from not the only last snapshot in all use cases
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Dell Technologies
    • The software release cycle is slow compared to general release of software. Particularly with VMware based releases.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Nutanix
    • Nutanix has a huge learning curve. We purchased the on-line training course when we moved to the platform and it was literally weeks of instruction. It was so extensive, in fact, that we ran out of time to complete it before the test.
    • Operations that cannot be done from the browser require running commands from a terminal emulator; perhaps owing to the newness of the platform, documentation is not robust. I highly recommend you buy the tech support.
    • Software updates are sometimes rushed to release. I've gotten to where I wait at least a few weeks after release before installing them, as I've run into significant issues with buggy software. Such installations have required time-consuming tech support calls to resolve.
    • While the promise of perpetual VM uptime is being fulfilled, the dashboard frequently reports issues that need to be resolved.
    • Because of significant hardware redundancy, the cost per byte of storage capacity is high.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    We are doing it in the current moment. The platform expansion will be twofold.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Dell Technologies
    No answers on this topic
    Nutanix
    We made a huge financial investment with this platform (four clusters, all-flash storage array), so we're in it for the long haul. Luckily it's a beast. I've had to use support more than any other platform I've administered, but the help has been very good. Nutanix continues to add features and innovations which increase the ROI
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Cisco
    Everything is fine if you work as a user of the system. Difficulties in fine tuning the system.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Dell Technologies
    No answers on this topic
    Nutanix
    Nutanix Prism Element and Prism Central are easy-to-use HTML5-based web consoles. The layout makes sense; you're only a few clicks away from getting to where you need to be. The AHV hypervisor is integrated into the platform for a fast and seamless experience. Rich data on VM metrics is also available.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Dell Technologies
    No answers on this topic
    Nutanix
    Due to the cool DFS architecture, Nutanix has good read performance for loads. In general, everything works well. We only ran into problems with very specific workloads that did not allow multithreading. It is also worth noting that loads should be tuned according to best practices for best performance, which is not always an easy task.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    More documentation is available now than when the product initially came out (which was an issue early on). Because it only supports UCS hardware, I think it does help with support issues. Nutanix has to support much more hardware. At the same time, you're dealing with the Cisco TAC, which can be mixed at times.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Dell Technologies
    No answers on this topic
    Nutanix
    Nutanix [AOS] is a leader in the HCI industry and it becomes evident after deploying the software. The solution runs effortlessly and can scale seamlessly. We ran the Nutanix solution on Lenovo Servers and since Lenovo has a close working relationship with Nutanix, you can procure the Nutanix software directly from Lenovo as part of your Lenovo HCI solution. The advantage of going this route is that the hardware has been tested and verified by Lenovo that it is thus certified for Nutanix. The support is then also directly with Lenovo for both hardware and software.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    Fast, powerful, flexible.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Dell Technologies
    No answers on this topic
    Nutanix
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    HyperFlex is built on top of Cisco UCS infrastructure, which allows us to manage other non-HX servers attached to the same UCS environment. This allows us to tie everything together via Intersight and see all of the servers in our data centers. Other platforms don't really have a comparable offering.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Dell Technologies
    All of these solutions scored very close together in our testing. Nutanix actually was the highest scoring in ease-of-use, but the integration with Vmware and the pricepoint led us to choose VxRail.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Nutanix
    We looked at both Simplivity and Cisco HyperFlex. Both are pretty good in their own right. Simplivity was very 'efficient' in the way they handled data, but we didn't like the idea of a propitiatory hardware card. Cisco's HyperFlex was our second choice, but we were so impressed with what Nutanix had done for us already, that we were already leaning toward that.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • The simplified management makes it easier to operate and prevents mistakes.
    • Guided installation using the installer VM means you don't have to configure every component by hand. Improves deployment speed and lowers the risk of configuration issues.
    • Performance increase of 40-90% compared to our previous compute/storage cluster.
    Read full review
    Dell Technologies
    • We were able to exponentially reduce the cost spending to buy different components.
    • As it has VMWare integration, possible to work on different operating systems.
    • Automation of IT operations helped the colleagues to work on different manual tasks.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Nutanix
    • Nutanix Beam helps enable enterprises to take control of their total cloud spend with automated cost governance policies. Beam provides unified visibility into public and private cloud spending, including clusters, VMs, and other services.
    • Lower administrative overhead, increased employee productivity, and costs savings.
    • Nutanix AHV is also generally free to use, which can benefit organizations with budget constraints.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots