Cisco HyperFlex HX Data Platform

Three converged nodes for Fabric Interconnect clusters; two nodes for HX Edge.

FI-attached (HXDP 5.5): 3-32 converged plus up to 32 compute-only (Advantage) or 64 (Premier), 96 nodes max; Edge up to 16 converged + 16 compute-only; DC-no-FI 4 nodes.

Not supported; HX Edge starts at two nodes.

HX Edge two-node clusters use Cisco Intersight as an Invisible Cloud Witness, so no local witness VM is needed but Intersight connectivity is.

Stretched clusters (Premier licence): 2-16 converged nodes per site, up to 32 nodes per site / 64 per cluster, with a witness at a third site; Invisible Cloud Witness option in 5.5.

Compute-only UCS nodes can join clusters at up to a 2:1 compute-to-converged ratio.

Hosts are standard ESXi on UCS, so existing FC/iSCSI/NFS arrays can be mounted as vSphere datastores alongside HX datastores.

Hybrid, all-flash and all-NVMe nodes (e.g. HX220c/HX240c M6 All NVMe); no new hardware since sales ended.

Always-on inline deduplication and compression in every edition, applied while destaging after the write is acknowledged.

Not available; protection is by replication (RF2/RF3) only.

Replication factor 2 or 3 (RF3 recommended for data-centre clusters), with Logical Availability Zones that let large clusters survive multiple node failures.

Metadata-based, zero-copy native snapshots and writable clones (ReadyClones), integrated with vCenter.

Self-encrypting drives with local or remote KMIP key management, or FIPS 140-2 software encryption (HXDP 5.0(1b)+, Premier plus Intersight Essentials) with Intersight Key Manager.

No native per-VM storage QoS in HX Data Platform.

No native SMB/NFS file shares for clients; a third-party file server VM is needed.

No native S3 object storage.

Native iSCSI targets (HXDP 4.5+) present LUNs to external hosts and Kubernetes, with LUN snapshots.

Native VM-level async replication between paired clusters, and N:1 replication from many Edge or data-centre clusters to a central cluster orchestrated by Intersight.

Zero RPO only within a stretched cluster (Premier); no synchronous replication between separate clusters.

Protection groups in HX Connect with planned migration, failover and test recovery; no multi-step runbooks, so partners (e.g. Cohesity, Veeam) were used for orchestration.

No native backup; snapshots and replication only.

No immutable snapshots or ransomware detection in HX Data Platform; relies on partner backup products.

Validated designs with Veeam, Cohesity and Commvault, which protect HX as standard vSphere with HX snapshot integration.

No native cloud DR target; only through third-party backup and replication products.

No native SDN; networking is UCS Fabric Interconnects with vSphere switching, optionally VMware NSX or Cisco ACI.

No native distributed firewall; microsegmentation requires VMware NSX or Cisco ACI/Secure Workload.

Roles in HX Connect, vCenter SSO and AD, and Intersight RBAC with SSO/SAML.

Cisco publishes a HyperFlex security hardening guide and UCS secure boot; since September 2025 no new security patches are released.

FIPS 140-2 validated software encryption; SEDs for HIPAA, PCI-DSS and FISMA use cases.

Cisco Intersight manages many HX clusters and sites, including deployment, upgrades and N:1 replication.

Combined upgrades of HXDP, UCS firmware and ESXi from HX Connect or Intersight; no new HXDP releases or fixes after 2025-09-11.

HX REST API and CLI, Intersight API with Terraform, Ansible and PowerShell modules, plus vSphere APIs.

HX Connect performance and capacity dashboards, Intersight health and HCL checks; advanced analytics via VMware tools.

None native; relied on VMware Aria/vRealize Automation or Intersight Cloud Orchestrator.

vSphere vMotion, HA and DRS, which require appropriate VMware licensing.

HyperFlex CSI plug-in provides persistent volumes over HX iSCSI; no Cisco Kubernetes distribution is current for HX.

No public-cloud version of HyperFlex; Intersight is a SaaS management plane only.

Cisco Validated Designs for Citrix and VMware Horizon on HX, including GPU-equipped nodes; no new validations since end of sale.

NVIDIA GPUs in HX240c nodes with vGPU or passthrough via vSphere; no packaged AI offering.

No built-in database service.

HX Installer VM or Intersight-based cloud deployment, including zero-touch Edge installs; no new clusters can be purchased.

Cisco HX-Series nodes only (HX220c/HX240c hybrid, all-flash, all-NVMe, Edge) plus UCS compute-only nodes; hardware end of sale 2024-03-12.

HX Edge ran 2-node and larger clusters without Fabric Interconnects, with cloud witness and N:1 replication; not an option for new sites.

Possible with the Intersight Private Virtual Appliance and HX Connect, but two-node Edge relies on the Intersight witness and upgrades need offline bundles.

No migration tooling onto HX beyond vSphere vMotion/Storage vMotion. Cisco's exit path is migration to Nutanix on Cisco UCS.

None.

HXDP licences are tied to Cisco HX nodes and cannot move to other hardware or cloud; Intersight licences can be reused for Nutanix on UCS.

Cisco supports HX hardware, HXDP and UCS firmware in one contract; VMware software support comes from Broadcom.

Cisco TAC takes Severity 1 cases 24x7, but after end of software maintenance fixes are no longer produced, so resolution is best-effort.

Broad VMware ecosystem and Cisco Validated Designs, but the partner and skills ecosystem for HX itself is shrinking since end of sale.

Workloads are standard vSphere VMs, so leaving is a vMotion/replication exercise; HX licences and hardware are Cisco-only.