HPE SimpliVity Reviews

Elimination of IOPS.

We are now backing up 32 TB an hour and 760 TB a day!
We are seeing a 107:1 efficiency rating.

Telling a better story. Get better at telling your story and customers will be lined up! This thing WORKS AS ADVERTISED!

We have been using this solution for three months.

I did not encounter any issues with deployment.

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability, and we already added another server to the cluster.

I haven't used customer service.

I do not say this often, but tech support is 'world class'. We've opened up maybe six tickets. Three were questions about 'best practices' and how they thought we should proceed with something. Two were bugs, and they were not under Simplivity's control. One was a firmware bug with the Cisco server, and one was a VMware bug with the NIC and slow network performance under a specific condition.

We never used hyper-convergence before SimpliVity

The setup required the assistance of professional services. We waited about a week to get on schedule.

We used SimpliVity for all pre-sales work: sizing, analysis, and deep dives.
We purchased it through a partner.

Our ROI is about two years. This is mainly because I committed to eliminating our entire NetApp (4 filers, maybe 2 dozen drawers) by the end of our lease in Q3, 2018.

There is sticker shock, with no doubt. But the product's value is there, and then some! I am turning in my NetApp in 1.6 years. I will save maybe $800K in OpEx over the next 36-40 months!

We evaluated Scale Computing, Nutanix, Cisco/IBM (their Frankenstein thing), and HPE.

We were under promised and over delivered! This thing is so much better than you can imagine. My lead engineer is actually 'giddy' playing with this stuff. NetFlix disrupted video watching, Uber disrupted how we publically commute, and SimpliVity will disrupt infrastructure.

The main reason for the selection was that SimpliVity ensures high availability, and, with the static cluster configuration, we are reasonably protected as we have two nodes with synchronous replication. That's why we feel comfortable enough to use this technology.

The simplicity of the solution is its most valuable aspect. It's much more simple than Nutanix and other hyper-converged solutions, at least from our point of view. It's easy to use.

The pricing is reasonable.

I've found the solution to be stable. 

We haven't had any issues. Recently, we purchased new SimpliVity nodes. We are pretty confident with the platform. We are using it more than in the beginning.

The installation was a bit complicated. 

There may be issues around scaling. 

Technical support could be better.

SimpliVity has to evolve into a solution that is more integrated with the public cloud. At the moment, this is not the case. It's not our case, however, if we wanted to make some kind of hybrid integration between private cloud and public cloud, SimpliVity is not well prepared for this. 

I started using the solution nearly three years ago. The first installation was before the pandemic, that's for sure. It was likely in the spring of 2019.

The stability has been good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

Scaling is problematic. It's not as scalable as other solutions, such as Nutanix. In our scenario, it's not a big point for us as we have a medium enterprise. Therefore, we don't need to scale straight to tens of nodes. We only have four nodes at this time. For us it's not a problem, however, maybe for larger organizations, it can become a problem.

We've had some issues, such as typical disc faults, however, on the same day, we open a ticket in the super-portal and we receive the new piece. It's very, very useful and affordable. However, for more technical issues, it's a little bit difficult to find the right person. Eventually, finally, you will find him.

The product is a little bit more complicated. That said, SimpliVity always is installed with certified personnel from the HPE, so it's a question of time. You always have to give them space in the racks for the servers. That's all.

We have certified HPE personnel install the solution on our behalf. 

The cost of the solution is pretty good. It's not too expensive. 

Before choosing this solution, we looked into Nutanix which was the competitor at that moment.

The main reason for our decision in 2019 was the price. Nutanix was a higher cost - much higher than SimpliVity. Nowadays, I think the price has reduced. Maybe, nowadays, we would decide on something else. However, at that moment, it was very, very clear for us.

I'm a customer and an end-user.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

I would recommend the solution to others, however, it depends on the environment. For a company of our size, it's a very good solution.

I work with medium-sized clients who have around 200 users. SimpliVity is a general-purpose solution for all kinds of VMs. With SimpliVity, because we can own the VMware, you can have all VMs of any type of VDI. 

What I like about the solution, is that SimpliVity is easy to deploy and maintain. It's really performing very well. The ratio of price to performance is really good. We just renewed and will receive new equipment in November. So even the price is really attractive compared to other solutions.

It could integrate better with other platforms. It's a proprietary solution of HPE, so you are stuck. Before I was running SimpliVity as an independent solution. it wasn't a card and software, so you could put in whatever server, IBM, Dell, etc. Now it's a proprietary solution for HPE, but it's difficult for them to improve because they have both solutions. But it's the same with Nutanix, I will say. 

I'm a consultant I've been I'm using SimpliVity for many years, about five. With my current client, I've been using it for two years now.

SimpliVity is definitely stable. I'm running infrastructure with six nodes, so it's always the same. It's small but all six are running very well. Maybe if you have 60 or 100, you might have a different point of view, but for me, it's absolutely stable.

SimpliVity's support is great. I was doing some experimenting last December and I had a strange problem, so got in touch with a woman from tech support and it was solved. So I only had one problem based on one experiment. Of course, if I had more than that, maybe I would experience some disappointment. But for me, I had only one problem.

Setting up SimpliVity is straightforward. In one day, you can have a complete solution up and running.

I think it's a complete package. We buy the license with support for five years. It's a subscription, I will say, but it's included when you buy the SimpliVity solution from HPE. You have a contract with the software warranty and upgrades. You can choose a license for one, three, or five years, and it's all included.

For me, SimpliVity is a 10 out of 10. I would recommend it, but also you have to follow the best practices. Like a lot of things, I can imagine that if you think you know what you're doing but you don't know, you can have some trouble. But if you follow the best practices and the rules, you will have no issues. 

We use it in our original data centers and large sites.

It let us create our regional data centers without a huge investment. We didn't have to have a lot of VL servers or an entire chassis to build out an ESX farm or attach storage.

• The data deduplication
• The integration with our VMware was pretty sweet.

I would like to see an option to add external storage that can be seen by all of the nodes in a stack. For example, if I need to build a file share, or something, where there is not enough data than needs to be accessed quickly, but there is a lot of data, putting a large file share or user file share on SimpliVity currently doesn't makes sense.

We had failures out-of-the-box of our new technology along with a few bugs during the initial setup. Our initial five nodes had three power failures during setup.

The OmniStack module needs improvement, because from what I have read, the newer versions use even more memory. So, as we upgrade, we lose resources available for systems.

After initial setup, it is okay. We have had some failures out-of-the-box. We have had some failures with the OmniStack module. One thing that we didn't fully understand was how much of the internal memory was used up by the OmniStack piece, which basically makes up SimpliVity.

Scaling is a piece of cake. We have been able to scale up in our Asia-Pac region. We even are doing site-to-site replication of certain systems that we need to have high availability on.

I haven't any problems with the technical support. The teams are usually pretty good at what they do. Getting them in certain regions is harder than actual fixing the problems, e.g., getting somebody onsite if there are not that many technicians, like in Europe or Asia, who are trained.

We have a very dispersed environment and were looking to centralize. We were using traditional VMware farms, standalone servers, etc.

With new technology as the next thing, when we are replacing our environment, we try to go with not only what fits from a cost perspective, but we also try to stay on the edge of technology since we tend to keep our environments past their usual lives. So, it's better to start new and work out the bugs.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It is pretty much out-of-the-box. Once Pointnext got the initial connection between all the nodes set, it was pretty straightforward from there. Then, building the ESX farm was a pretty standard build.

Everything in our organization is outsourced, so we use consultants. They are embedded vendors, so our experience with them is good.

We paid for installation services from Pointnext.

The only thing that I think we are paying for is the VMware licenses, but we are enterprise, so it is not horrible.

We are primarily an HPE shop with most of our storage, networking equipment, and servers.

We did a review on Dell EMC and Lenovo. However, it would have been a bigger stretch for us to switch than to stick with HPE.

Definitely consider the product. Once it is up and running, it is pretty rock solid.

We use this product when our customers need software protection, built-in backup, and an NDR solution. I'm a solutions specialist. 

The built-in backup and quick restore are good features. In general, the technology is very robust. 

If I want to upgrade any hardware components or make any changes to the hardware configuration, there are a lot of parameters I need to consider with respect to HP security. If I want to upgrade, I sometimes have to replace the box or add a new server to the environment or setup. It's a limitation of HP connectivity.

I've been using this solution for three years. 

For small and medium-sized businesses the scalability is fine. There are likely to be issues in large environments and it requires extra planning.

The technical support is good. They take on end-to-end responsibility for our Hypervisor as well as HPE components and security software. It's a good combination because both the hardware and software are supported by a single entity. 

We sometimes face challenges during the initial setup. Once the setup is completed everything is stable. HP has its own customization and deployment process. In theory, it's pretty simple. It's essential to have a properly configured network for successful completion of the deployment. Including the network configuration, implementation can be completed in less than two days. It just requires a certified engineer to complete the installation.

Licensing is slightly more expensive in comparison to the competition but I think SimpliVity provides very good value. 

I think SimpliVity has an edge over other solutions when it comes to the package as a whole.

I recommend Simplivity. It helps organizations implement their business applications and it provides a robust infrastructure to run a business. 

I rate this solution 10 out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution for disaster recovery. 

It's a very good solution for disaster recovery.

The support on offer is very good.

We don't mind the pricing.

The configuration capabilities are good.

For consolidation purposes, it's a very good product. We are able to reduce the footprint for space, including rack space in the data centers.

The initial setup process is not too hard. 

It's not exactly straightforward to use. We need to train our people as some features that are there we are not used to or maybe we don't know how to use. Therefore, we need to train our people.

Maybe the price could be a bit better. 

The compatibility with other products needs an improvement.

There's a controller or something that is used. Instead of using vSAN, they use another technology, NFS. I don't like it. That said, it works.

I've been using the solution for two years at this point. 

Technical support has been great. they are helpful and responsive. 

The setup is fine. I haven't heard of the team having any issues with the process. It's my understanding that it is largely straightforward. 

The pricing, for the most part, is pretty good. However, it could always be a bit less expensive. 

We are an HPE partner.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

We are using HPE SimpliVity for our organization's backup and recovery solution.

The solution is user-friendly.

I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately five years.

HPE SimpliVity is stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have approximately 80 people in my organization in France and we work together with 2,000 other regions that all use the solution.

The technical, commercial, and marketing support is not at the level that it should be. They are not structured well. Other vendors provide better support, such as Dell.

We were previously using the HPE MSA solution.

The installation is easy and the basic installation takes two days.

We have the certifications to do the implementation ourselves, but it has to be checked by HPE.

There is not a license required for the solution.

I have evaluated other solutions from Dell.

I rate HPE SimpliVity a nine out of ten.

We have a virtualized environment and we use it for backups and disaster recovery and to be able to store all of our data locally and replicate.

It's allowed us to be more efficient in disk space usage with a reduction of 47 to 1 in hard drive space.

• It's a complete solution
• Easy to use
• Not a lot of management time involved in operating the solution

I would like to see it be a truly hybrid-cloud solution where I could take my on-prem SimpliVity environment and have replication to a cloud install.

3+ years

The stability is very good. It has 100 percent uptime, other than regularly scheduled maintenance.

We're a relatively small organization so it was able to scale down to our level. We understand it can scale up exponentially.

We get very good technical support.

We used EqualLogic SAN with independent host but that solution was nearing end-of-life. By moving to SimpliVity we were able to reduce our hardware footprint.

The setup was complex to me, but to the integrator and the SimpliVity people, it was routine.

We used Advanticom out of Pittsburgh. Our experience with them was very good. They were very knowledgeable and worked well with SimpliVity's SEs and implementation people.

We have not done a true calculation, but based upon the support needs and the reduction in the footprint, there's definitely an ROI.

We're paying $3,000-$4,000 a month.

Nutanix was on the list. We chose SimpliVity - and this was about three years ago - based upon the simple deployment and interconnectivity ability.

Ask people who have already implemented a solution for their opinion and you'll likely find that most of the SimpliVity customers would put the solution in again if they had to do it over.

I would rate SimpliVity a nine out of ten due to the fact that it needs little intervention on a daily basis, the uptime is excellent, and it works.