Hyperconverged infrastructure, compared from the source

Compare every HCI platform, side by side.

Pick the platforms, your use case and the points that matter. HCI Hero answers each point from the OEM's own documentation, links every answer to its source, estimates the cost, and draws the logical and implementation design.

19platforms
69comparison points
75editions
13use cases

What is the comparison for?

Choose the lens, then any use cases. They pre-select the right points and weight the ranking; you can change everything afterwards.

Project name Organisation (optional)

Comparison lens

▣ Full comparison Every point, technical and commercial. ⚙ Technical use case Architecture, storage, protection, networking, operations and deployment. ◆ Business use case Licensing, subscription, support, cost, vendor and the capabilities a buyer weighs.

Use cases & workloads (pick any)

Server virtualisation & consolidation Technical VMware exit / Broadcom alternative Business VDI & end-user computing Technical ROBO & edge sites Both Business-critical databases & tier-1 apps Technical Private cloud & self-service IaaS Both Kubernetes & modern applications Technical AI, ML & GPU workloads Technical Disaster recovery & secondary site Both Hybrid cloud Business SMB & lean IT teams Business Regulated, sovereign & air-gapped Both Test, development & labs Business

Choose the platforms

Up to 6 at a time. Mix software-defined, appliance, disaggregated and open-source options freely.

0 / 6

Quick picks:

Azure Local Microsoft · Software-defined Microsoft's Hyper-V and Storage Spaces Direct HCI stack, sold per core as an Azure service and managed from Azure through Azure Arc. Hyper-V Profile ↗ Dell VxRail Dell Technologies · Turnkey appliance Turnkey HCI appliance on Dell PowerEdge, jointly engineered with VMware, running vSAN with VCF or VVF and managed by VxRail Manager. VMware ESX (vSphere) Profile ↗ H3C UIS New H3C Technologies · Turnkey appliance H3C hyper-converged appliances and software: CAS (KVM) virtualization, ONEStor distributed storage and UIS Manager in one console. H3C CAS CVK (KVM-based), VMware vSphere (managed alongside, not as the HCI hypervisor) Profile ↗ HPE PC3000 Hewlett Packard Enterprise · Disaggregated HCI Disaggregated HCI: HPE ProLiant servers + HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, with HPE VM Essentials (KVM) and/or VMware, run from GreenLake. HPE Morpheus VM Essentials (HVM, KVM-based), VMware vSphere ESXi Profile ↗ HPE SimpliVity Hewlett Packard Enterprise · Turnkey appliance HPE ProLiant-based HCI appliance with built-in dedupe, backup and a choice of VMware or HPE VM Essentials. HPE Morpheus VM Essentials (HVM, KVM-based), VMware vSphere ESXi Profile ↗ Huawei FusionCube Huawei · Turnkey appliance Pre-integrated Huawei HCI appliances (and FusionCube Software) running FusionCompute with Huawei distributed storage, part of the DCS data center virtualization solution. FusionCompute (DCS eSphere), VMware vSphere 6.7U3/7.0 (older FusionCube 1000 releases only) Profile ↗ Nutanix NCI Nutanix · Software-defined Software-defined HCI (AOS storage + AHV hypervisor) with Prism management, on a choice of servers or public cloud. AHV, VMware ESXi Profile ↗ OpenShift Virt Red Hat · Software-defined KubeVirt VMs on OpenShift, with OpenShift Data Foundation (Ceph) for hyperconverged storage. KVM (KubeVirt) Profile ↗ Proxmox VE Proxmox Server Solutions · Open source Open-source KVM and LXC platform with integrated Ceph for hyperconverged clusters. KVM/QEMU, LXC (containers) Profile ↗ Sangfor HCI Sangfor Technologies · Software-defined KVM-based full-stack HCI (aSV, aSAN, aNET, aSEC) with Sangfor Cloud Platform for multi-cluster private cloud. Sangfor aSV (KVM-based) Profile ↗ Scale Computing Scale Computing · Turnkey appliance Self-healing KVM-based HCI for edge and SMB, sold mainly as appliances with cloud fleet management. SC//HyperCore (KVM-based) Profile ↗ StarWind StarWind by DataCore · Software-defined Hypervisor-agnostic virtual SAN and 2-node HCI for ROBO, SMB and edge, sold as software, a pre-packaged stack or a turnkey appliance. VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Proxmox VE, XCP-ng, oVirt / OLVM, KVM (VHCA Free) Profile ↗ StorMagic StorMagic · Software-defined Lightweight 1- and 2-node HCI for edge and ROBO: SvSAN virtual SAN for vSphere/Hyper-V/Proxmox, or SvHCI with its own KVM hypervisor. StorMagic hypervisor (KVM/QEMU, SvHCI), VMware vSphere (SvSAN), Microsoft Hyper-V (SvSAN), Proxmox VE (SvSAN) Profile ↗ SUSE Virt SUSE · Open source Open-source, Kubernetes-native HCI: KubeVirt VMs on SUSE Storage (Longhorn), managed with Rancher. KVM (KubeVirt) Profile ↗ Vates VMS Vates · Open source Open-source Xen virtualization with Xen Orchestra management and backup, and XOSTOR hyperconverged storage. Xen (XCP-ng) Profile ↗ VergeOS VergeIO · Software-defined Single-codebase private cloud OS combining KVM-based hypervisor, global-dedupe vSAN, SDN, multi-tenancy, DR and private AI. VergeHV (QEMU/KVM, integrated) Profile ↗ VMware VCF/vSAN Broadcom (VMware) · Software-defined Broadcom's private-cloud stack: ESX hypervisor, vSAN storage, NSX networking and VCF Operations/Automation, sold as per-core subscriptions. VMware ESX (vSphere) Profile ↗ Windows Server S2D Microsoft · Software-defined Do-it-yourself HCI from Windows Server Datacenter: Hyper-V, Storage Spaces Direct and Failover Clustering on certified servers, with no Azure subscription required. Hyper-V Profile ↗ Cisco HyperFlex End of sale Cisco · Turnkey appliance Cisco UCS-based HCI appliances running the HX Data Platform with VMware ESXi - end of sale, supported until February 2029. VMware ESXi Profile ↗

Choose the comparison points

Pre-selected from your lens and use cases. Tick or untick anything; each category can be switched on or off as a whole.

Architecture & platform Hypervisor(s) Architecture model Storage engine Minimum nodes per cluster Maximum nodes per cluster Single-node deployment Two-node cluster & witness Stretched / metro cluster Independent scaling (compute-only / storage-only nodes) External storage (SAN / NAS) alongside HCI All-flash / NVMe support Host & VM maximums

Storage & data services Deduplication & compression Erasure coding (RAID-5/6) Data resiliency (failures tolerated) Snapshots & clones Data-at-rest encryption & KMS Storage QoS File services (SMB / NFS) Object storage (S3) Block storage for external hosts

Data protection & DR Asynchronous replication (RPO) Synchronous replication (zero RPO) DR orchestration & runbooks Native backup Immutable snapshots & ransomware protection Third-party backup ecosystem DR to public cloud

Networking & security Software-defined networking Microsegmentation / distributed firewall RBAC, SSO & MFA Platform hardening Security certifications

Management & operations Management console Multi-cluster / fleet management Lifecycle management (full-stack upgrades) APIs & automation Monitoring, analytics & capacity planning Self-service & private-cloud portal Live migration & HA

Cloud, containers & AI Kubernetes & containers Hybrid / public cloud VDI / end-user computing GPU & AI workloads Database services

Deployment & hardware Deployment method & time Hardware options Hardware OEMs Edge / ROBO suitability Air-gapped / disconnected operation Migration tooling (e.g. from VMware)

Licensing & subscription Licence model Licence metric Licensing minimums Editions Free / community edition Guest OS (Windows Server) licensing Licence portability

Support & lifecycle Support offerings Single point of support (hardware + software) Critical-issue response Release & update cadence Lifecycle policy

Cost Published list pricing TCO drivers & hidden costs

Vendor & ecosystem Vendor & ownership Ecosystem & community Lock-in & exit options Regional availability & sovereignty

technical business both

Workload & cost estimate

Used to size each platform (its own overheads and data protection) and to price it over the term. Every figure can be changed later on the results page.

Workload profile Sizing Nodes (fixed mode)

Workload

VMs / desktops vCPU per VM RAM per VMGB Disk per VMGB vCPU : core: 1 Growth% GPUs per node

Node specification

CPU sockets Cores per socket RAM per nodeGB Raw capacityTB

Commercials

Termyears Include hardware Hardware per nodeUSD HW support / year% Implementation% Windows Server guests

Choose at least two platforms.

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