We performed a comparison between HPE SimpliVity and VxRail based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, VxRail seems to be the superior solution. Our reviewers found HPE SimpliVity to be more difficult to deploy and more expensive to purchase than VxRail.
"It has been extremely stable for the three years we've been running it."
"Without the need for any downtime, enterprises can simply grow their storage infrastructure using StarWind Virtual SAN by adding new servers or disks to the current infrastructure."
"StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere is a software-defined storage solution that has reduced administration time for storage. It's pretty straightforward to install and setup it and so far it has been robust and worked as advertised from StarWind."
"The available GUI is excellent for monitoring and operating the system in an easy and direct way."
"You can build cheap, reliable, replicated virtual machines clusters using simple servers with an all flash disk or SAS\SATA hybrid tiered by performance storage."
"We went from "no way DB applications would have good performance" to "Wow! We can now actually have a DB running and have some VMs running at the same time.""
"It also provides a seamless and efficient solution for personal storage requirements, showcasing the versatility and scalability of my Virtual SAN configuration."
"I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN."
"The most valuable features of SimpliVity are the built-in backup and immunity to ransomware."
"The built-in backup and quick restore are good features."
"The rate of compression for the data in SimpliVity is the most valuable feature."
"The initial setup was very easy as I had the SimpliVity engineers work with our managed services."
"Backups happen very quickly."
"The most valuable aspect of the HPE SimpliVity is the DL380 G10. We have mostly been using VMware and Hyper-V. On one side we have Hyper-V and the other side we have the VMware."
"I like SimpliVity because it can be adapted for small clients or the biggest ones. It's flexible."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use and the storage virtualization layer, together with the built-in backups."
"It is very powerful. We find that to be the most valuable aspect. The movement of devices between nodes is very easy."
"We deploy VxRail systems to provide our customers with a distributed information solution. The customer was impressed because we delivered a serious data reduction. For example, we showed them that 10 terabytes on their traditional storage solution could be reduced to 1.5 terabytes in the VxRail systems. That's why the customers also like it so much,"
"Our clients value being able to upgrade with one click or a few clicks."
"We were able to speed up our gaming software, which was a big plus."
"We like the design and that it meets data storage needs."
"The stability continues to get better and better. It's pretty reliable."
"VxRail performs well in the VDI environment."
"It is truly a hyper-converged infrastructure, so everything is there together."
"We just need more integration with Veeam."
"StarWind currently has a Windows native application that it uses for management. There is not a web-based GUI at this time."
"Initially, when we first started, the sync was horrible."
"New versions of this solution should be tested more thoroughly before the release as we had a few problems with one version due to a bug."
"They need to invest more in the support documents for real issues happening when integrating the solution with the hypervisor."
"If there are domain controllers inside the cluster, there needs to be some sort of logic allowing them to boot independently so all the rest of the domain clients can gain the authority they need to come online."
"The cluster configuration is time-consuming and tedious."
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"I have a free project with SimpliVity deployment in the next three months. What can be improved is that in one or two of these projects, I need a cloud backup for the infrastructure and data. As for the infrastructure of the product as it relates to customer size, it is not very good at this moment in Peru. I need a solution for the cloud. In Peru, it's a three or four solution provider for cloud services."
"They should optimize the administration stack because it is consuming too much memory. It ends up consuming 20% of memory. They have another product for this feature, but I would like to have this feature within HPE SimpliVity."
"I do not see the product really working in productivity at the moment with real loads."
"There are some small changes that can be made to the interface to improve it but it typically works well."
"In the next release of the solution, they should make updating the solution easier. Currently, we have HPE doing it for us but I would like to be able to do it."
"The initial setup was complex because it was a new solution."
"Not being able to apply ESXi patches as needed has always been a concern, but it has not become a big issue."
"One thing that I would like to see improved is the flexibility of the node expansion."
"Lacks integration of licenses so that it's an expensive solution."
"All updates are supposed to be done through VxRail, however, the vCenter actually showed that there was an update it needed. I've just started using the product. I didn't know what I was doing. I actually updated my vCenter and that actually threw the VxRail system offline. We had to spend some time trying to get that working again. If possible, they should make the process a bit more clear so we don't make mistakes like this in the future. There should maybe be some sort of pop-up that can direct you."
"The version upgrade process should be simplified."
"I would like it to tier to the cloud effectively, making sure that cold data can be pushed out to some sort of Bitbucket."
"Sometimes during the upgrade process of VxRail, we experience errors that have nothing to do with reality and I cannot troubleshoot them without calling Dell and bringing in an engineer to figure it out."
"Deployment was not initially straightforward for us. We had an incompatibility issue that was very difficult for Dell Professional Service to solve."
"The product has high pricing. This particular area needs improvement."
"It would be nice if its installation can be simplified, but it is currently not too bad. They can provide deduplication and compression in hybrid configurations. To the best of my knowledge, these features are not there, and it would be nice if these are added. Some of its competitors already have these features, so it will help VxRail to have a better feature set and compete more effectively."
HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 151 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 120 reviews. HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.6, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of HPE SimpliVity writes "Provides a unified management interface that allows administrators to manage all aspects of the infrastructure". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI, Dell PowerFlex and Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Hyper Converged and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. See our HPE SimpliVity vs. VxRail report.
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Hi, Refer to your questions if you are a COO of a small company then both solutions would be costly as a minimum of 3 nodes solution is required. Both are good at their places. Let's say, VxRail is deeply engineered with VMware and they have strong integration and performance testing results. in terms of expansion, federation, compression/deduplication, etc., is much more improved. Whereas HPE SimpliVity used its own storage virtualization software and backup software. Whereas in VxRail you can also use any backup software. Apart from the discussion, my suggestion would be to go with simple X86 Servers(any OEM) with Sangfor( they have built-in administrative software (i.e. VCenter), built-in backup (no need to buy any other software), multi-hypervisor support, cost-effective even if you plan to provide SaaS service you can easily do it from your company immediately. They also provide vNGFW, vADC, vIAM, etc. It is an end-to-end HCI Solution with Security support included. Prices are very reasonable(I don't know your region). Thanks