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Cisco HyperFlex

Cisco HyperFlex

Overview

What is Cisco HyperFlex?

Cisco HyperFlex Systems is a hyper-converged infrastructure product, based on technology acquired with SpringPath (acquired September 2017).

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Recent Reviews

Cisco HyperFlex review

10 out of 10
December 19, 2023
Incentivized
My Organization uses Cisco HyperFlex to integrate VM and storage resources. We also provide backup. Cisco HyperFlex has a feature to …
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Video Reviews

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Cisco HyperFlex Review
04:05
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Product Details

What is Cisco HyperFlex?

Cisco Hyperflex extends the simplicity of hyperconvergence from core to edge and multicloud. Hyperflex with Cisco Intersight is engineered to meet the unique requirements for deploying hyperconverged infrastructure at the edge at a global scale.

Cisco Hyperflex provides flexible services for multicloud and allows users to deploy Cisco Hyperflex anywhere with Cisco Intersight for mission-critical applications.

Cisco HyperFlex Features

  • Supported: Unified network fabric
  • Supported: Virtualization optimization
  • Supported: Enterprise data protection
  • Supported: Cisco Integrated Management Controller (IMC)
  • Supported: Advanced reliability, availability, & serviceability (RAS) features
  • Supported: TPM 1.2 SPI supported

Cisco HyperFlex Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Cisco HyperFlex Downloadables

Frequently Asked Questions

Cisco HyperFlex Systems is a hyper-converged infrastructure product, based on technology acquired with SpringPath (acquired September 2017).

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, VMware vSAN, and Scale Computing Platform are common alternatives for Cisco HyperFlex.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.6.

The most common users of Cisco HyperFlex are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(56)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 27)
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Eleni Tatsi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In my organization, we design HyperFlex Solutions and sell them to our customers. We solve a multitude of their business and operational problems, via our Cisco HyperFlex solutions. Some of those problems are lack of computing power in their environment, lack of storage, or primarily network connectivity upgrades.
  • Easy to install
  • Easy to manage
  • Easy to expand
  • Centralized management
  • A 3D visualizing tool for partners to show customers while pitching the solution
Cisco HyperFlex is well suited for general-purpose scenarios in enterprise companies, as well as niche situations such as gaming companies, off-shore companies, etc. I couldn't fault it.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
HyperFlex was selected to replace aging infrastructure, for its built-in redundancy and reliability. It hosts the VMware environment including web servers, application servers, and database servers.
The challenge we faced with Cisco at the time was that our configuration was the largest deployed. It took time for firmware and other issues to be resolved.
  • Uptime.
  • Redundancy.
  • Small footprint in the data center.
  • Expansion is a pain. Because storage is dedicated to each cluster, you need to do capacity management for each cluster.
  • Probably better for smaller implementations.
Smaller-scale implementations. It seems to have challenges when you have a lot of nodes in a cluster. SSD storage performs well. If you do have performance issues, they can be very difficult to find. We spent months trying to figure out why copying VMs from other clusters to one specific cluster took so long. Firmware and software updates resolved issues.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
My organization Decsis, manages Cisco HyperFlex for public customers providing a cloud of multi/services to shareholders in a multi-site and multi-service ecosystem. Cisco HyperFlex provides the integration, manageability and resilient framework to achieve optimal results and performance for users.
  • Managing
  • Integration
  • Scalability
  • Resilience
  • Expansion
  • Multivendor
Multi-services, multi-org scenario. Complex ecosystems, critical infrastructures like hospitals.
December 19, 2023

Cisco HyperFlex review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My Organization uses Cisco HyperFlex to integrate VM and storage resources. We also provide backup. Cisco HyperFlex has a feature to monitor performance and it is easy to capture the data. Efficiency and performance when we make a backup and restore using a minimum time for RTO/RPO. Easy for configuring and managing security.
  • Backup
  • Restore
  • Storage
  • Simple
  • Easy
  • Graphical
Easy to use and enable centralized management. It also provides reporting, compliance tracking, and auditing capabilities easy to monitor. When using for Disaster Recovery, using minimum space with a minimum of time. Many agencies are satisfied with the ability to perform backup and restore so it will meet RPO/RTO for certain agencies.
Brigette Elise Tremblay | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
A very flexible and fast system that offers great technical support ready to help at all times. It adapts to the needs of each user since it provides us with high resistance and unmatched security. Without the need to purchase new storage devices and other computing resources, with Cisco HyperFlex we achieve everything, due to its great capacity. We need to have this product in use throughout the company so that all departments can enjoy unmatched results.
  • Excellent storage capacity.
  • Cost reduction in the company.
  • Very easy to implement.
  • Improvement of updates.
The product that complies with everything offered, so I would buy it again. In the company, we are all satisfied. We know that with the modernization of our infrastructure we achieve a better result in the application and administration of data center environments, optimizing operations in distributed environments is also possible, it is important to know that for a better operation, more than three nodes are implemented to increase range.
December 11, 2023

Cisco HyperFlex Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We using Cisco HyperFlex to simplify our data centers.
  • So when we need a server for our operation, it just only take less than 30 minutes to build the server to support our business application.
  • So far it's good.
It most appropriate for our enterprise, like our brewery business.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
The end customer decides to migrate from Convergence technologies to Hyperconvergence solutions, in order to overcome problems like storage and computer resources because many times these imply purchasing new devices and appliances that maybe will fill physical space on DC, With Cisco HyperFlex they solve this problem just increasing resources as they need and growth within their Virtual infrastructure.
  • VM Snapshots
  • Manage memory resources
  • Excellent Network segmentation
  • Easy to growth resources
  • More documentation and support for upgrades
  • Integration with third party vendors
Best suited for medium to great scale Virtual infrastructure with a plan for growth and expansion.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hyperflex is used to facilitate our back-end labs for production and test environments.
  • Ease of installation
  • Management
  • Scalability
  • on prem deployment method
small to medium deployments for remote customers that needs a highly available, and remote managed solution.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We were looking to replace older virtual servers and needed a new approach to handling our data. We are using HyperFlex as our primary UC data center environment. The scalability and ease use of management with Insight allows ease of use with managing VMs and Management of resources across the platform.
  • Resource Management
  • Storage visibility
  • Redundancy
  • Dedublication
  • Simplify Implementation
  • More Detailed Day 2 documentation for adding addition vNics
  • HyperFlex vs HyperFlex Edge clearer documentation
If you have an older environment and are looking for an all in one storage/network/vm solution you cannot go wrong with this product. Lets you scale to your needs and add on for future growth. If your needs are more to vSAN needs you will find limitations in this product. I found for a small IT work force, the units, after gathering requirements, were quick and easy to stand up.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco HyperFlex is being used in a different Govt Project. I got an opportunity to evaluate the system for our feature requirement. The biggest aspect of going for [Cisco] Hyperflex is to eliminate the traditional storage system & to get optimum production from the machines. Hope the new HyperFlex will be there soon in my inventory. I can have a good experience with the same.
  • Eliminated the year old concept of centralize storage system.
  • Onboard storages give tremendous performance.
  • The replication from one site to other is easy.
  • Expansion of cores and higher scalability.
February 11, 2023

HyperFlex pros and cons

Marcin Ślęczek | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
hosting all application in our customers DCs
  • easy to use
  • efficient and fast
  • good integration with the rest of the Cisco ecosystem
  • 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
mainlny HX + IBM FlashSystem (viia FC where there are NTP and DNS and some VMs with huge amount of not used frequently data) where we host VMs with traditional applications and control plane for Kubernetes/OpenShift.
February 11, 2023

ok

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Running a testenviroment in it, all in one system
  • allways on
  • all in one
  • can do updates and repairs without the user recorgnize it
  • faster deploy
  • more often updates
  • faster updates
building fast and big testenviroments
takes a little to learn to top to bottom
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
I've deployed HyperFlex to provide compute and storage resources in remote sites and small data centers. It provided a solid platform that was both cost-effective and scalable. This allowed us to move some services closer to users, improving their performance. It was also easy to deploy and manage.
  • Scalable
  • Easy to use.
  • Performance
  • If anything, AMD processor support.
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco Hyperflex is one of our favorite tools, which we are using to simplify our hybrid operations and enhance the performance of many other critical applications. We use it for a converged infrastructure system that integrates computing, networking, and storage resources to improve the efficiency of the organization and allow for centralized control that saves a lot of time and resources because no other software is a complete solution like that.
  • Flash
  • Cloud-Enabled.
  • Scale-Out.
  • Software-Defined.
  • Power of the cluster,
  • Multi Cloud services.
  • Support multiple hypervisors
It is the complete package that supports integration, storage resources, and networking in one place, so it saves cost and time to manage different resources and also has a user-friendly interface so that our employees use it easily and we don't need to hire an IT expert for the training process.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize Cisco HyperFlex to provide our XaaS product to our customers. The interoperability with the various OS versions is a plus. HyperFlex allows us to centrally manage our hardware and customize the hardware to meet our evolving demands via a hyperconverged platform. The ability to virtually add vHBAs and vNICs is invaluable as performance needs grow.
  • Software-defined hardware
  • Centralized management
  • Broad interoperability
  • Price-point
  • Training
Cisco HyperFlex is great in XaaS environments that need to expand and shrink depending upon demand. The movement of Service Profiles between blades provides uptime stability during hardware failures or troubleshooting.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Ease of use quick installation and ready to use
  • Integration with ESXi
  • Install via Installer
  • easy for enduser to understand the technology both Day-0 and Day-1 activities
  • replication - as we need to use the same amount to storage to backup
  • Cisco should come up with a strong hypervisor equal to vmware ESXi
  • should come up with the repository of OS images and download automatically when a new OS version is released
  • hybrid connectivity - missing
with the 4.5 version in place, the product is matured but needs some improvement stretched cluster upgrade procedure ( changes to witness VM upgrade from 4.0 to 4.5 is not clear and some of the validation steps are so confusing.
Nishanth Anbalagan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We wanted to deploy an agile, efficient, and hybrid IT infrastructure, Cisco HyperFlex met our expected criteria. Cisco HyperFlex supports end-to-end "Intelligent" Automation. Because of this, we simplified the deployment process by configuring intelligent automation. Cisco HyperFlex's Hyperconverged Infrastructure helps us to keep the storage and networking management in a single component. Because of these features, we have reduced the cost of spending to avail multiple storage disks. The encryption/security provided by Cisco HyperFlex is too secured, and the VDI and DAAS(Desktop as a Service) are literally great.
  • Cisco HyperFlex supports end-to-end intelligent automation
  • Documentation of the deployment process is simple and easy to understand for new users.
  • Will be able to automate the deployment process
  • Will be able to provide the support to business faster as it is based on the "Hyperconverged Infrastructure" principle
  • Small organization can't afford the cost of Cisco Hyperflex as it's yearly subscription
  • Virtual controller should be little more powerful
  • Integrating the graphics card feature is not available, it would be great if they make this so that it will enable the users to improve acceleration
Cisco HyperFlex is well suited if you are looking for agile, efficient, and Hybrid IT infrastructure. Cisco HyperFlex exclusively supports Hyperconverged Infrastructure, so we can gain agile, efficient, and quick deployment. If you are looking to reduce the power and cooling costs, then it's the ultimate solution to avail. When comes to any software supporting the business with high efficiency and speed is important and these can be achieved by HyperFlex. As it is Hybrid infrastructure will be able to manage everything in one place and we can eliminate the extra costs spent for buying other physical disks.
January 17, 2022

Cisco Hyperflex

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We resold a variety of hyperconverged infrastructure solutions including Nutanix, HPE Simplivity, Cisco Hyperflex and others. Typically these are bought by customers who are looking for flexible in-house storage for their own private clouds running on a hypervisor like VMware. (I am ignoring the cloud extensions of these products for purposes of this review)
  • Hyperflex has a good handle on data redundancy.
  • Snapshots work well in VMware and provide added value beyond the traditional VMware snapshot.
  • Installation is straightforward.
  • Too much integration with Cisco UCS fabric interconnects is required, which makes the product most useful for customers who already have Cisco UCS. Options without fabric interconnects are limited.
  • Hyper-V integration is way behind (but to be fair I think that's true for most vendors in this space).
Hyperflex is best for customers who already have Cisco UCS because of its integration with UCS fabric interconnects. You can add UCS blades to your Hyperflex cluster to increase compute capacity without increasing storage--which is great depending on your needs--but it's still limited to UCS. Installations without fabric interconnects have been limited in scope and most importantly expandability.

I like that it doesn't require data locality. While I've used Nutanix extensively and SimpliVity to a less extent, I'm not as sold on their use of it. On the one hand your reads are faster if they're all from the node currently running a VM, but it also means your data has to move around if you vmotion your VMs.

I do feel that Cisco has been playing catchup for a few years now with Nutanix, but Hyperflex has become a decent product that I would recommend to my customers where it's a good fit. However, I recommend being careful to make sure that it has all the features you need.
October 19, 2021

Cisco HyperFlex review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have 3 small Cisco HyperFlex clusters across three data centers. They run select VMs on VMware ESXI hosts.
  • Easy to manage.
  • Reliable storage.
  • Nice integration with UCSM and Intersight.
  • Data Platform Installer issues during setup or expansion.
Cisco HyperFlex is well suited for small to medium virtualization environments.
Alexandr Chsherbov | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco HF solution is used in both scopes - IT and OT. For IT serve common applications - MS SQL, Oracle, WEB Applications, service systems. For OT we have moved to a virtual SCADA environment - all OT services (DB, applications) has been moved on HF platform. Before Cisco HF it was a big outage time ranges due slow DB or physical serves down. After migration - 0. We have 100% OT availability. Same for IT infrastructure - new service implementation take 20 minutes VS 4 hours before.
  • Fast and responsive operation.
  • Great support.
  • One management and monitoring point.
  • Legendary reliability.
  • SNMP or API monitoring
  • Dependence on additional equipment
  • High cluster survival rate
  1. IT operations (databases, application servers).
  2. OT operations (V-SCADA, databases).
  3. University laboratory - to learn technologies, Big Data analyze, parallels calculation operations.
  4. Telecommunication providers.
  5. Companies with low space for powerful servers. It is best way to improve own infrastructure when only 3 servers may replaces 10 servers racks.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco HyperFlex is being used to support mission-critical applications within my organization. The platform services many tools and applications that helps maintain 24x7 monitoring and control of our campus data centers.
  • High performance platform.
  • Easy to deploy and maintain.
  • Reliable.
  • Continued streamlining of deployment tools.
  • Continued improvement on stretch cluster configurations.
HyperFlex is great option if you are looking for a high performance and reliable hyper-converged platform. We do not have to spend a great deal of time with administration of the platform, and can easily monitor the system health via Cisco Intersight.
We are still investigating the evolving stretch cluster capabilities, and have not fully vetted those capabilities to replace our existing converged virtual infrastructure yet.
January 05, 2021

Hyperflex, yes!

Nick Darnell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The Cisco HyperFlex is used in our data center to manage our student virtual desktops. Paired with VMware Horizon, Cisco HyperFlex's robustness helps us easily manage storage space and network functionality. The use of Cisco HyperFlex has isolated our VDI environment and made it much easier to manage because all the required resources are in one setup.
  • Expandability
  • Stability
  • Extremly low profile
  • Redundancy
  • UI in the CIMC
  • Less complicated upgrade method
  • More processor cores per box
If you require an all-in-one setup, Cisco HyperFlex is the perfect solution. The 24 drive bays and 18 memory slots per box make these boxes well suited for a virtual environment with very low required cabinet space. Any company could benefit from the use of Cisco HyperFlex. I would not recommend it for a small business or anyone with limited Cisco knowledge; the UI can be quite overwhelming with all of the features.
Wouter Hindriks | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We used HyperFlex to replace our separate server and storage environments. We are moving from Cisco UCS and Fiber Channel storage to a truly hyper-converged solution that will host thousands of virtualized machines for our customers. This is a Virtualised Server Infrastructure based upon VMWare ESXi for apx 6000 end users.
  • Ease of installation
  • Quality of product
  • Ease of operation
  • It can be overwhelming. There's a lot going on with compute storage network and hypervisor combined.
  • Some minor repeating warning messages when performing maintenance tasks.
Great for both private and hybrid cloud environments. Can support both general virtualized workloads and specific workloads (including SAP HANA). Strong hyperconverged offering which solves a lot of issues you have with other solutions by providing a complete solution including network and bespoke hypervisor images.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the Cisco HyperFlex structure for connecting our locations and set a redundant cluster for that. We have 4 locations across the country, with the need for a highly available server structure.
  • Reliability of services
  • Flexible and scalable cluster
  • Support for server replacement is kinda of slow
  • Some additional features (like managed updates) are not available for stretched clusters
We have quite a big data store covered up with our HyperFlex solution, it's well suited for bigger structures with importance in redundant systems. For smaller needs, there is an option to use the HX Edge, without the FIs. If you use VMware it’s well integrated, the same goes for an ACI structure. But I’m not quite sure if all features work that well with Hyper-V.
January 28, 2020

HyperFlex on the go

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are looking for an easy way to deploy servers that we can bring to our branch offices.
  • Ease of deployment.
  • Integration into UCS tools.
  • Local storage.
  • Workload limitation.
It really depends on the use case you plan to have. For us, it is good for small deployment solutions. For DC, we still prefer a UCS plain solution.
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