"A great feature is that I basically set it and forget it, as everything is automatic."
"The most useful aspect is the hyper-converged SD SAN and the ease to expand it by just adding cheap SSD or NVME disks."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to leverage our server infrastructure more completely without the need to add more hardware."
"Updates to server hardware are now painless and done during working hours with zero stress. We had a RAID failure a few months back, and nobody in the building even noticed and there was no after hours time used for repair."
"This solution enables us to make better cost-effective use of our existing hardware and leverage the current infrastructure at a higher level than we could before."
"Recovery and maintenance are now less stressful and most importantly, it allows our users to keep working."
"The primary purpose of this software is to create a virtual SAN between local storage on Hyper-V hosts. I find this feature most valuable since it accomplishes this quite well."
"The fact that the solution is vendor-agnostic allows it to be used with any virtualization vendor while remaining a powerful abstraction over storage."
"The solution scales extremely well."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is its performance."
"Overall, the solution is extremely easy, flexible and secure."
"The management feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"Offers very good data protection and provides system uptime availability effectively."
"The most valuable feature is that you can manage the whole cluster from the traffic interconnect."
"We are providing this solution for the customer or converting the customer from a traditional environment to a hyper-converged environment which consolidates all management and support on a single port. This is the main benefit of using the hyper-converged versus the traditional."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is simple to use, user-friendly and has been best for our purposes."
"The most valuable features are replication and backup."
"The features I have found most valuable are the convergence of the infrastructure and multi-platform support, for example, VMware and Hyper-V"
"The compression and deduplication ratio."
"The whole backup capability, where we are able to create backups and restore backups in typically 40 to 50 seconds, has been great."
"The HPE SimpliVity disc compression is very valuable."
"I like HPE SimpliVity's hard disk compression capabilities. The data is compressed into very little space or volume. I think that the principal value of HP SimpliVity is its capacity to compress the data, and I'm saving a lot of disk space using SimpliVity."
"The most valuable features of SimpliVity are the built-in backup and immunity to ransomware."
"Its performance is quite good, and it is also easy to use. One of the biggest benefits is the included backup solution."
"It would help if the manufacturer provided clearer and more detailed documentation, with explanations of how the application can be installed in various HA configurations."
"Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful."
"If it's possible to make a driver/solution that does not make use of the iSCSI targets of Windows, that would be great. I don't know if that's possible, however, it could make the configuration a little easier."
"It would be helpful if StarWind provided more precise and detailed documentation explaining how to configure the solution in various scenarios, including the advantages and disadvantages of each."
"There is no Italian-language version of the software available."
"I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves."
"Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."
"A mobile app to sync up for overview and status would really be helpful."
"This solution is lacking in replication and backup abilities that I would like to see in a future release similar to HPE SimpliVity."
"With the cache disk fails in Cisco, the whole node fails, and the workload goes down."
"The pricing is pretty expensive."
"Its price could be better."
"Unlike other options, you need to pay a subscription to Cisco yearly instead of paying for the hardware outright, which makes it more expensive in the long run."
"If we compare it with VMware, the VMware product is basically very open, and it can be easily integrated with any platform. VMware product is also available on the cloud and is not an appliance-based product, whereas Cisco HyperFlex is an appliance-based product. Companies that want to use HCI as a platform or as a service would prefer something without an appliance. A SaaS-based product is better for a customer who is using the cloud and has multiple resources, workflows, and devices on the cloud and wants to go for a hyper-converged solution. This is where improvement is needed. In addition to an appliance-based product, Cisco should provide a SaaS-based product. Its price should be lower. Cisco needs to work on the pricing model for this product. Its price is a big road blocker when competing against Nutanix and VMware, which are its main competitors."
"We need to be able to scale out and not just up. When you want to scale up or scale out, you are quite limited."
"In the next release, I would like to see them able to connect to the public cloud."
"Bottleneck is the main issue."
"There are some small changes that can be made to the interface to improve it but it typically works well."
"It would be better if it could integrate more easily with other vendors."
"Not a lean architecture in terms of anything."
"We had some hardware compatibility issues with the earlier versions of HPE SimpliVity. We upgraded to the latest version a few months ago, and since then, there is no hardware failure, and it is better. They don't provide a portal to create a ticket directly for the HPE SimpliVity. We have a web portal to create a ticket when we have an issue, but for HPE SimpliVity, we need to call the local vendor for support. If they are not able to resolve the issue, they contact the global support, which takes more time. Technology is moving very fast, and everybody nowadays is focusing on the cloud base. In the future, they should integrate it with the cloud base for the backup."
"Product doesn't scale."
"There needs to be a simple process for migrating one SimpliVity cluster to a new SimpliVity cluster."
"To install or to update it is more complicated than other solutions."
Try it today
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is ranked 8th in Hyper-Converged (HCI) with 22 reviews while HPE SimpliVity is ranked 4th in Hyper-Converged (HCI) with 60 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is rated 8.0, while HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series writes "An all-in-one option that is stable and offers good management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of HPE SimpliVity writes "Phenomenal deduplication and compression, good support, and works on its own". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is most compared with VxRail, Nutanix Acropolis AOS, VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex and FlexPod, whereas HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VxRail, Nutanix Acropolis AOS, VMware vSAN, HPE Nimble Storage dHCI and Sangfor HCI. See our Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series vs. HPE SimpliVity report.
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