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Azure Stack HCI vs HPE SimpliVity comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
3.8
Azure Stack HCI offers strong ROI by enhancing cost-efficiency, performance, stakeholder engagement, and understanding beyond IT domains.
Sentiment score
4.8
HPE SimpliVity offers varying ROI timelines, significant cost savings, reduced complexity, and easy VM expansion, reported by users.
There has been some return on investment in terms of just time usability and reduction of footprint.
Solution Architect DC at Natilik
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
4.8
Azure Stack HCI support receives mixed reviews, with excellent resolution praised but delays and expertise issues causing dissatisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.7
HPE SimpliVity is praised for responsive, knowledgeable support, despite minor issues with response times and documentation accessibility.
They have more advantages than VMware, especially for containerization, and they provide good support as well.
Iinfrastructure Architect at Ministry Of Justice
Not every support team member is very knowledgeable about Azure Stack HCI, creating delays in resolution.
IT Solution Architect at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
The technical support from the HPE side is excellent, and I give them 10 out of 10.
Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
I would rate technical support from HPE SimpliVity eight out of ten.
Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.3
Azure Stack HCI provides scalable, reliable cloud integration, supporting multiple nodes and configurations for efficient application scaling without performance issues.
Sentiment score
6.9
HPE SimpliVity offers easy scalability but may face limitations and flexibility issues in large enterprise environments.
With HPE, customers can scale up the HPE SimpliVity solution anytime.
Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
HPE SimpliVity is scalable, as it can be scaled in terms of addition of nodes.
Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
5.9
Azure Stack HCI is stable and scalable, built on Hyper-V, yet needs improved documentation and integration with some idiosyncrasies.
Sentiment score
8.5
HPE SimpliVity is highly stable and reliable, with most issues linked to external factors, earning high user ratings.
It does not feel like a well-oiled machine yet, with too many idiosyncrasies and insufficient documentation and integration, feeling more like software that is still in beta.
IT Solution Architect at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
After achieving good maturity, it became easier.
Iinfrastructure Architect at Ministry Of Justice
From HPE's side, it is stable, and customers find it easy to manage and easy to grow.
Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Stack HCI needs enhancements in networking, integration, ease of use, pricing, encryption, and deployment process for better performance.
HPE SimpliVity requires improved integration, faster updates, enhanced features, simplified interface, better support, and expanded cloud compatibility.
Microsoft has decided to discontinue stretched cluster technology completely, which is disappointing.
IT Solution Architect at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
Hyper V seems to lag behind compared to VMware.
Solution Architect DC at Natilik
There could be improvements with Azure Stack HCI regarding the license and price, as they have significantly higher prices compared to other competitors.
Iinfrastructure Architect at Ministry Of Justice
In the future, if HPE integrates HPE SimpliVity with VM essential, that will be a great combination.
Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Pricing could be an area for improvement, as there are many other options that are very cost-effective compared to HPE SimpliVity or converged solutions.
Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech
 

Setup Cost

Azure Stack HCI costs mainly involve OS licenses and hardware, with potential cost offsets via Windows Server Datacenter rental.
HPE SimpliVity offers cost-effective hyper-converged solutions with competitive pricing and lower total ownership costs compared to alternatives.
The licensing is quite expensive because it's per call.
Solution Architect DC at Natilik
VMware is costing significantly more nowadays compared to other solutions in the market.
Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech
 

Valuable Features

Azure Stack HCI enhances hybrid cloud with efficient networking, Kubernetes support, cloud integration, and cost-effective, robust edge computing.
HPE SimpliVity provides efficient data management with deduplication, backup, and recovery, enhancing performance and reducing complexity and costs.
Azure Stack HCI has been very beneficial for disaster recovery operations.
Iinfrastructure Architect at Ministry Of Justice
The integration with Azure using Azure Arc is excellent.
Solution Architect DC at Natilik
The greatest benefit is that customers don't need multiple hardware solutions from other vendors. Virtualization comes in a single box.
Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The data efficiency capabilities in HPE SimpliVity are impressive, as it is capable of storing data in its converged infrastructure with good resiliency and future expandability.
Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Stack HCI
Ranking in HCI
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE SimpliVity
Ranking in HCI
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
155
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Azure Stack HCI is 3.5%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE SimpliVity is 8.0%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE SimpliVity8.0%
Azure Stack HCI3.5%
Other88.5%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

MC
IT Solution Architect at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
Experience with seamless cost-saving capacity, though integration and support need refinement
An area that could be possibly improved with Azure Stack HCI is the stretched cluster functionality, which was included in version 23H2 for disaster recovery purposes. However, this functionality has been put on hold for the next release, and Microsoft has decided to discontinue stretched cluster technology completely, which is disappointing. They promise to bring back a significant or similar solution in a future release, but currently, there is no such functionality for stretched clusters between two sites in the latest versions of Azure Stack HCI, which poses a problem as we were looking forward to utilizing it. The integration with Azure Arc provides a unified management experience, but I find it to be fairly clunky. The integration exists, but it is not smooth or very easy to use. While they've started to integrate the two, the integration lacks maturity and makes it difficult to manage effectively. There are discrepancies between managing VMs through Azure Arc versus managing them directly, as changes made not using the Azure Arc integration are not easily reflected in Azure Arc. For instance, if I have an Arc-enabled VM and make changes to it outside the Arc interface, those changes may not be registered directly in Azure Arc, leading to issues in fully viewing the status and configuration of VMs depending on the management tool used. You either manage VMs fully through Arc or not at all because mixing the two methods results in incomplete visibility and inconsistencies.
Mohammed Lokman Hossen - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Has integrated solutions and rapid recovery made management smoother and more reliable
There is the latest update from HPE regarding HPE SimpliVity. For virtualization, HPE has to depend on other manufacturers, OEMs such as VMware or Hyper-V. Recently, HPE declared the VM essential virtualization solution. In the future, if HPE integrates HPE SimpliVity with VM essential, that will be a great combination. Functionality-wise, I am totally satisfied with HPE SimpliVity, but for improvement, if HPE integrates its own virtualization solution, this combination and integration will be beneficial because this integration can be configured with the cloud-based system. A VM can be uploaded to the cloud from this, which will be advantageous for backup to other sites.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business67
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise80
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Stack HCI?
This solution costs €10 per core per month. The whole stack is free if you are renting Windows Server Datacenter.
What needs improvement with Azure Stack HCI?
There could be improvements with Azure Stack HCI regarding the license and price, as they have significantly higher prices compared to other competitors. The end-to-end encryption provided by Azure...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...
What do you like most about HPE SimpliVity?
The solution's technical support is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE SimpliVity?
Standalone HPE SimpliVity is more expensive than other OEMs and solutions. Regarding the software side, VMware is costing significantly more nowadays compared to other solutions in the market. The ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SimpliVity, HPE HCI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Red Bull Racing, Mandarin Oriental, Brigham Young University, UCLA, Merlin Entertainments, Sasa Cosmetics, Travelport, St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Princess House
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Stack HCI vs. HPE SimpliVity and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.