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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

    VMware vCenter

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AVMware vCenter is an advanced server management software that provides a centralized platform for controlling vSphere environments for visibility across hybrid clouds. VMware vCenter is no longer sold as a standalone product and is now available as a part of VMware Cloud Foundation.

    $6,044

    per year

    Pricing
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)VMware vCenter
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Basic
    6,044
    per year
    Production
    6,244
    per year
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)VMware vCenter
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)VMware vCenter
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    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
    Chose Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)
    Interestingly enough, depending on which box you purchased the two may be able to be combined into one setup. The UCS series is great and provides a lot of compute but lacks the storage. Hyperfex has a bit less compute but contains lots of storage space and memory needed for …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)
    HyperFlex had the best technical solution fitting into our problems.
    Incentivized
    VMware by Broadcom
    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
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    16 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    26 Answers
    89%
    Happy with the feature set
    17 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    22 Answers
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    18 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    26 Answers
    95%
    Implementation went as expected
    18 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)VMware vCenter
    Small Businesses
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    cPanel
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    StarWind HCA
    Score8.6 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)VMware vCenter
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.2
    (28 ratings)
    8.3
    (55 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.8
    (7 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.2
    (27 ratings)
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco HyperFlex (discontinued)VMware vCenter
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    The VMware vCenter server is very useful in maintaining the CPU/RAM/datastore resources are balanced when there are multiple ESX/ESXi host servers. It is clear what resources are being used, and it is easy to migrate VMs to different ESX/ESXi hosts. Being able to remotely connect to the VM servers in vCenter when you cannot have other remote connections helps in maintenance and troubleshooting.
    Incentivized
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    • VSAN storage management and redundancy - high performance IO with built in fault tolerance across the cluster, not reliant on a single hardware item
    • VM fault tolerance. The ability to relocate a running VM and restart VMs from failed or isolated nodes
    • Resource management and alerting. Tracking load across physical systems and allowing us to rebalance for better utilisation
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    • Currently, the HTML 5-based vSphere Client lets you manage the essential functions of vSphere from any browser, however, it would be nice if they would port all management functions over to the HTML 5-based Client.
    • Performing updates and upgrades to the infrastructure is a bit challenging for someone that may not be as intimate with vSphere. I think the updates/upgrades should be more integrated into the UI and provide the ability to push to the hosts, etc...
    • It would also be nice to have a more robust snapshot management tool to prevent snapshot overgrowth. It would be nice to be able to set a lifespan for the snapshot(s)
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    We are very dependent on this software, it has become a much needed tool to perform the daily tasks that are required to maintain the virtual server environment. VMware has become very pricey over the years, so we are looking for alternatives for cost savings strategy, but nothing has been found to be on par to what we are currently using
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    I work with vCenter for 10+ years and i love it. I can find my way around and can help building and expanding the platform. It is easy to use and there are a lot good communities for the extra support when needed. Even the Homelab community is of great value.
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    VMware support has always been fantastic and they have been invaluable in solving tougher issues that have been run into. Most of the time, any oddities encountered are fixed by available updates. This can be deduced by support quickly with logs within vCenter. We have not run into something yet that support was unable to help with. They either have a solution already, or they are able to find one quickly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    Fast, powerful, flexible.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    Since moving away from the Windows Server hosting the vCenter application and instead using a virtual appliance, it has become much easier to implement and deploy the new versions. We can easily create a snapshot or clone of the vCenter vApp to ensure any problems encountered during the upgrade can be mitigated with a fall back to the old version to prevent unscheduled downtime.
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    Citrix Xen Server.... Great Hypervisor but very limited in terms of functionality
    MS Hyper-V... [VMware vCenter Server] is better for almost everything and appliance form makes a clear winner for security and ease of deployment
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    • The positive impact of vcenter is definitely felt in larger organisations in terms of being able to manage multiple servers all in one environment
    • It will decrease the amount of time your server engineers will have to spend in the server room or datacenter.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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