"They offer top-tier support."
"Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."
"Highly available storage is the most valuable feature. The entire rollout is hyper-converged and requires no extra storage further than the hosts in which Hyper-V is running. Another feature that has been great is the support from StarWind in general. We have their proactive support package on the main cluster that employs Starwind Virtual SAN."
"The install itself is easy as pie."
"Immediately we noticed huge performance gains, even on older hardware and once we implemented a 10GB link between both servers, the sync was near-instant after the initial sync was complete."
"The virtual tapes can be uploaded to the object storage of your choice with object locking/governance which gives you an extra layer of protection."
"The top-notch support before, during, and after deployments are better than any other vendor I have come across."
"Virtual SAN runs on iSCSI, which is free and easy to configure. It's easy to manage from StarWind's GUI console, and it only required a few extra switch ports."
"Its most valuable feature is its flexibility."
"The most valuable feature is that you can manage the whole cluster from the traffic interconnect."
"Great integration with backup software."
"It is a complete package. For any kind of on-premises hyper-converged solution, we usually have to separate networks, but Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is a complete solution. It has its own network and storage. The storage part is the most valuable feature."
"It's very easy to use and quite a mature product."
"I find the usability very valuable."
"The price of the solution is good, especially when it comes to complex network solutions, such as UCS and Connect."
"Performance-wise, everything is good. So far, we haven't had any issues. There has been no downtime at all."
"Its simplicity is most valuable. The management is easy, and you don't have to have a lot of knowledge about storage, network, etc. It is simple to manage and simple to implement, and that's its key feature."
"We like the backup feature, which is inbuilt."
"It's much more simple than Nutanix and other hyper-converged solutions, at least from our point of view."
"The feature that I like the most is the backup feature embedded inside the HPE SimpliVity. When we have any activity, within five minutes, we have a backup. It also has PDR for performing disaster recovery."
"The solution is user-friendly."
"We really enjoy the virtualization that the solution offers."
"The setup is very easy."
"The access, high availability, and interface are the most valuable and important for us. There is one interface for the whole product, which is very important because you have a single pane to view all the infrastructure of a customer. You can improve your data recovery plan or DRP, or you can make a special emergency plan if a disk has any problem."
"It would be nice to add the ability to use raw partitions instead of file containers."
"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."
"Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful."
"Management tools could be improved, sometimes the usage seems to be slowed down and confusing. A native web interface could also be an option. I love to see in the future port of the software on a general Linux distribution like RedHat or Ubuntu in order to avoid windows license costs. I would also like to see features like erasure coding implemented. On the VSAN software, I would like to see some improvements in the storage pools (eliminate the usage of the file as a data container and use the raw partition)."
"If there was a way to automatically put disks in maintenance mode when shutting the host down and exit maintenance mode automatically, that would simplify things."
"When StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere nodes go offline unexpectedly, the nodes have to re-sync disks fully which takes a long time. We had a power failure and when both nodes came online, VMware vSphere didn't see StarWind disks before I manually re-scanned them form ESXi administration console even though it should happen automatically"
"There is no Italian-language version of the software available."
"There are sometimes issues with memory failure."
"The solution could improve by having more customization."
"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."
"Deployment on-prem was quite difficult."
"The initial setup can be complex."
"With the cache disk fails in Cisco, the whole node fails, and the workload goes down."
"You have to get the same servers with the same storage; they need to be identical. However, in vSAN or in VMware we don't have to do that. We can just add storage and manage it in the same server."
"Lacks some integration and documentation could be improved."
"There needs to be a simple process for migrating one SimpliVity cluster to a new SimpliVity cluster."
"Once you select the size of SimpliVity, it could be risky for you to downsize it because you may need maybe to reimplement some things."
"The product should be competitive with other brands."
"SimpliVity has no file server services. That's one of the solution's biggest shortcomings."
"I would like some reporting about backup and replication."
"The compatibility with other products needs an improvement."
"The way that it handles the memory could be better."
"HPE SimpliVity could be more flexible and scalable. I don't feel SimpliVity is flexible or easily scalable because I still need to buy another server to add to my clusters. I can't just run or harvest and add to my solution. I need to buy another server. There are a lot of components that are not giving a lot of value to me right now. I also had a few problems with the built-in hard disk drives. I've had many issues with the harvest stripes that the servers use. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's unusual to have a physical failure on the HPE platform. I don't see any value at the software level, especially in the software that manages that solution. I was waiting for something, especially in the application layer that I would use, but that is all over VMware, and it doesn't have an integrated module that I can use to manage the server and all the instances."
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.
See our list of best Hyper-Converged (HCI) vendors.
We monitor all Hyper-Converged (HCI) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
