Cisco HyperFlex

HyperFlex is Cisco’s vision of how Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) should look like. The solution bases itself on consistently high-storage performance, great extensibility and resiliency.

When you think about hyper-converged solutions, you will always have a hypervisor level cluster and the storage level cluster, and so is the case with Cisco HyperFlex.

On a hypervisor level, there is nothing new to learn if you are already familiar with hypervisors. If you have an VMware ESXi-based cluster, then you would manage all the virtual machines by using VMware vCenter. If you have a Hyper-V based cluster, then you would manage the virtual machines using Hyper-V manager or optionally system center virtual machine manager.

On a storage level you have a number of choices how to manage HyperFlex.

HyperFlex-Connect, which is a graphical user interface, is arguably the most popular choice when it comes to storage management, but you can manage HyperFlex from rest API if you prefer a programmatic approach.

You can also manage Cisco HyperFlex storage from a vCenter plugin if you have an ESXi-based cluster. However, Cisco HyperFlex can also be installed and managed from Cisco Intersight. Intersight is a cloud-based management platform for your Cisco products, such as HyperFlex, Cisco UCS, and third-party data center solutions such as Pure, Hitachi and NetApp storage.

Cisco Networking Licenses

Cisco Intersight

With Intersight management of Cisco HyperFlex becomes easier, especially for remote clusters, plus, it adds predictive analytics and machine learning. Cisco Intersight provides benefits for HyperFlex day zero, day 1 and day 2 activities.

Moreover, it is easy to deploy a Cisco HyperFlex cluster directly from Intersight, Not only in your data center but across 10, 100 or a thousand of your remote locations. Currently, two types of clusters are supported for deployment from Intersight:

standard ESXi-based cluster and edge ESXi-based cluster. Not only can you deploy HyperFlex clusters from Intersight but you can also upgrade them from there.

For example, for HyperFlex edge cluster, you can perform a full stack upgrade of HyperFlex data platform ESXi hypervisor and server firmware directly. The process is completely hands off and you can perform it on multiple clusters in parallel, while monitoring everything from your laptop or your android or apple mobile device.

Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series Models

The Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series in engineered for your core and edge computing needs, unifying compute, storage, and networking with cloud management. This Data Platform is a high-performance, extensible distributed file system that supports multiple hypervisors with a wide range of enterprise-grade data management and optimization services.

HX220c M5 Node, HX220c M5 All Flash Node, and HX220c M5 All NVMe Node

These platforms support up to 3 TB of memory, Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, Low-latency and lossless, 2×40 Gigabit Ethernet connections, up to 2 PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 slots and Offer all-flash-memory, all-NVMe, or hybrid storage configurations (combination of hard-disk drives [HDDs], and solid-state-disks [SSDs]).

Cisco HyperFlex HX240c M5 Node and HX240c M5 All Flash Node

These platforms support up to 3 TB of memory, Capability to use 16-, 32-, 64-GB, or 128-GB DIMMs, 1 or 2 Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Low-latency and lossless, 2 x 40 Gigabit Ethernet connections, and Offer Up to 23 x 3.8-TB or 23 x 960-GB SSDs for the capacity tier and 1 SAS SSD or NVMe write-logging drive for HX240c M5 All Flash Node.

Cisco HyperFlex HX220c Edge M5

Cisco HyperFlex Edge is deployed as a pre integrated cluster with a unified pool of resources that you can quickly provision, adapt, scale, and manage to efficiently power your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) locations.

This platform supports 128 GB or more of memory per node, capability to use 16-, 32-, 64-, or 128-GB DIMMs, 1 or 2 Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, deployment in existing edge locations with use of existing Gigabit Ethernet networks for cluster communication and All-flash-memory or hybrid (hard-disk drive [HDD] and solid-state-disk [SSD] memory) storage configurations.

Cisco HyperFlex License

Cisco HX Data Platform Software License for Cisco Hyperflex platforms are available in the following editions:

Edge Advantage: HyperFlex Data Platform Edge Advantage Edition (applicable only for Edge platform type). Starter license for Remote Office Branch Office (ROBO) environments and edge locations. Smaller footprint and cost.

Edge Premier: HyperFlex Data Platform Edge Premier Edition (applicable only for Edge platform types). Premier license for Remote Office Branch Office (ROBO) environments and edge locations. Smaller footprint and cost. Includes the following feature categories on top of the Edge Advantage license – Advanced Data Protection and Additional Hardware Platforms.

Datacenter Advantage: HyperFlex Data Platform Datacenter Advantage Edition (applicable only for Datacenter platform types). Starter license for the datacenter. Includes the following feature categories – basic management, Scale, Performance, High Availability and Resiliency, data services, security and data protection.

Datacenter Premier: HyperFlex Data Platform Datacenter Premier Edition (applicable only for Datacenter platform types). Premier license for the datacenter. Includes the following feature categories on top of the Datacenter Advantage license – Advanced Data Protection, Performance Turbo/ Boost and Advanced Scale.