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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

    Oracle VirtualBox

    Score8.2 out of 10
    N/AOracle VirtualBox is an open source, cross-platform, virtualization software, enables developers to deliver code faster by running multiple operating systems on a single device.

    $0

    per month

    Pricing
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Oracle VirtualBox
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Oracle VirtualBox
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Oracle VirtualBox
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Oracle
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    27 Answers
    95%
    Would buy again
    18 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    24 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    19 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    26 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    19 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    22 Answers
    85%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    26 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    17 Answers
    Features
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Oracle VirtualBox
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued) and Oracle VirtualBox
    Feature
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Oracle VirtualBox
    8.2
    50 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings8.036 Ratings
    Management console00 Ratings8.846 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings8.236 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings7.033 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings9.029 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Oracle VirtualBox
    Small Businesses
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Score9 out of 10
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Oracle VirtualBox
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.2
    (28 ratings)
    7.5
    (53 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (7 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.2
    (27 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)Oracle VirtualBox
    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
    Oracle
    It is best suited when you want to have different operating systems on your laptop or desktop. You can easily switch between operating systems without the need to uninstall one. In another scenario, if you expect some application to damage your device, it would be best to run the application on the VM such that the damage can only be done to the virtual machine. It is less appropriate when time synchronization is very important. At times the VMs run their own times differently from the host time and this may cause some losses if what you doing is critical. Another important thing to take note of is the licensing of the application you want to run your VM. Some licenses do not allow the applications to be run on virtual servers so it is not appropriate to use the VM at this time.
    Incentivized
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    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
    Oracle
    • It is simple to install - there is no advanced knowledge required to begin building virtual computers
    • It is easy to use - adding new virtual machines is simple with wizard-based deployment
    • It enables easy portability - moving virtual machines from one host to another is straight-forward and simple
    • It is free
    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
    Oracle
    • I have had issues in the past when it has come to resizing VM disk storage. The issue is entirely detailed here: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9103 -- the problem was caused because of having existing snapshots (which error message output was not detailing). I haven't had to deal with the issue due to my dynamic disk sizes not being small from the start anymore (this is mostly an issue for my Windows VMs where the base disk may need significant size for the OS). It looks like, for a resize, that a merge of all snapshots has to occur first -- one user on that list details a workaround to maintain snapshots by cloning the VM. (Note: 5.2 was just released a few weeks ago, and looks like it should prevent the problem happening in the future by properly informing users that it isn't possible with snapshots).
    • Certain scenarios, like resizing disks, required dropping into a terminal as there were no options to previously do so via the GUI. According to some recent posts, I've seen that v5.2 has added disk management stuff like that to the GUI (or will be adding it). I'm comfortable with dropping into the terminal, but in a teaching scenario or when evaluating the learnability of the tools, it complicates things.
    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
    Oracle
    I give this rating because virtual box is inexpensive but there is another product such as vm ware that can also be used
    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
    Oracle
    I love using the Graphical User Interface. The VirtualBox Manager is very easy to understand and use. You can quickly create, configure and manage all your virtual machines in one window. It makes operating virtual machines easy and simple. When using VBoxManage it gives the user comprehensive control over VirtualBox so that you can use automation and scripting at the command-line interface
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle
    Dependency on the Host OS means it is as reliable as it is possible to be. Application errors are beyond the purview of the application.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle
    No issues, especially with the extensions addons.
    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
    Oracle
    Oracle have a very fast response rate and a strong user community. One can geet help from many sources if they choose to research for themselves.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    Fast, powerful, flexible.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Oracle
    We really enjoy using virtual box. We do not require to buy expensive hardware but instead we can minimize costs and maximize profits.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Oracle
    VirutalBox is very similar to using Vmware with the slight difference in appearance and what might be considered a less polished look. However, what it lacks in polish and looks it makes up for in functionality, easy of use and the wide range of operating systems and features it supports without the need of buying the full professional edition
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle
    The only problem I have found is that the deployment is dependent and intrinsically linked to the Host OS. This is different from bare metal solutions which remove that dependency on a Host OS. The latter is more reliable and removes a layer of potential failure.
    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
    Oracle
    • Minimal-to-no support needed from the DevOps team.
    • Provides a direct and an easy way to access multiple VMs inside the same machines which enables performing various testing and QA tasks without the need to switch hardware.
    • Automatic provisioning using tools (esp. Vagrant) which enables developing a base image once, and allows for exporting/importing anywhere across the developers team.
    • Very cost-effective (no fees or monthly subscriptions).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots