HPE SimpliVity and Dell PowerFlex compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure category. HPE SimpliVity has the upper hand in simplicity and ease of management, while Dell PowerFlex excels in scalability and performance enhancements.
Features: HPE SimpliVity offers inline deduplication, rapid backup, and effective disaster recovery. It simplifies storage management and integrates seamlessly with vSphere environments. Dell PowerFlex delivers robust performance with high scalability and flexibility. It provides significant integration capabilities with broader ecosystems and application performance enhancements.
Room for Improvement: HPE SimpliVity needs to enhance automation in backup and replication processes and expand support beyond VMware. Users suggest improving storage capacity handling and making upgrades easier. Dell PowerFlex should focus on developing automation further, reducing complexity, and improving integration tools for cloud transitions. Users also note a need for smoother updates and greater virtualization flexibility.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HPE SimpliVity's ease of on-premises deployment and management attracts businesses seeking quick operationalization. However, its customer service consistency has been variable post-acquisition, with longer response times. Dell PowerFlex offers flexible deployment options across on-premises and hybrid cloud settings and is praised for reliable support and problem-solving capabilities, assisting smoother transitions.
Pricing and ROI: HPE SimpliVity is competitively priced, offering comprehensive features such as deduplication and disaster recovery within its base price, which helps achieve quicker ROI. Despite perceptions of higher initial costs, it is deemed less expensive over time due to efficient resource utilization compared to alternatives like Nutanix. Dell PowerFlex is more costly but provides solid ROI for mission-critical applications through long-term savings and reduced overhead, appealing to larger enterprises with extensive scaling needs.
The level of support needs improvement as the front-line support staff lack knowledge when we raise cases.
We do not have local Dell technical support.
The technical support from the HPE side is excellent, and I give them 10 out of 10.
The scalability is very good and is one of the key features of Dell PowerFlex.
With HPE, customers can scale up the HPE SimpliVity solution anytime.
From HPE's side, it is stable, and customers find it easy to manage and easy to grow.
They could have more AI functionality in the future.
The level of support needs improvement as the front-line support staff lack knowledge when we raise cases.
As more customers start deployment, I believe use cases will develop, leading companies to consider that.
In the future, if HPE integrates HPE SimpliVity with VM essential, that will be a great combination.
Dell PowerFlex includes PowerFlex Manager, which integrates with this solution to provide complete orchestration; you can manage your entire hardware as well as software segment and application segment through a single pane of glass, making it very easy to use and manage.
The scalability is very good and is one of the key features of Dell PowerFlex.
HPE SimpliVity is the best solution for customers because its compression capacity meets customer requirements, and it is a very robust solution.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Dell PowerFlex | 10.0% |
| HPE SimpliVity | 8.6% |
| Other | 81.4% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 8 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 8 |
| Large Enterprise | 15 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 67 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 49 |
| Large Enterprise | 79 |
Dell PowerFlex is a software-defined storage infrastructure delivering modern architecture and versatile deployment for on-premises or cloud. It achieves high performance, scalable storage, and workload consolidation through advanced automation.
PowerFlex's VMware compatibility ensures seamless integration, offering flexibility in compute and storage scaling. With its hyper-converged infrastructure, it caters to AI, cloud, and database environments, providing robust automation, resilience, and security. Flexible deployment options are complemented by a single-window management system, prioritizing cost optimization. However, enhancements are needed in monitoring tools, user interface, and AI functionality. Migration from Hyper-V and licensing flexibility also require attention, while improved documentation could simplify usage. Integration with services and streamlined upgrade processes are essential.
What are the key features of Dell PowerFlex?PowerFlex is essential in industries requiring support for mission-critical workloads and large-scale applications. It is instrumental for deploying storage, compute nodes, hyper-converged infrastructure, and private clouds. The platform integrates compute, storage, and networking, optimizing performance for modern applications like AI video analytics and disaster recovery.
HPE SimpliVity is an HCI software solution that provides powerful data protection, reducing data loss along with lowering the risk of ransomware attacks on your enterprise.
HPE SimpliVity Features
HPE SimpliVity has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
HPE SimpliVity Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing HPE SimpliVity. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by HPE SimpliVity users.
Jeff S., Information Technology Manager at Troyer Foods, Inc. says the solution has “Phenomenal deduplication and compression, good support, and works on its own. SimpliVity is integrated with the hypervisor, and you have a single pane of glass. It is really hands-off. Once you set your backup schedules, you're done.
A Senior Datacenter Consultant at a computer software company mentions, “The most valuable feature is the ease of use and the storage virtualization layer, together with the built-in backups. That's what makes SimpliVity really useful, and how you can replicate data between different sites without paying an extra license for that feature. All the features are built into the product.”
PeerSpot user Doug C., IT Engineer at a government, comments, “Backups and restores occur very quickly. All SimpliVity management is done through vCenter, providing a single-pane of glass for all management and configuration functions. The advanced deduplication and compression greatly reduce the storage requirements, reducing the amount of expensive flash storage required.The 10G interfaces between the SimpliVity nodes greatly speeds up VM migrations between nodes. SimpliVity enables "stretched-cluster" operation with mirrored storage between the nodes, enabling automated failover. If a node or site goes down for any reason, the VMs on that node are automatically restarted on the other node.”
German I., Solutions Architect Data Center Servers and Storage at Tecnologia informatica, explains, “The integration possibilities regarding the administration console are one of the best configurations and one of the best features that differentiates this product from others in the market. Also, you can add extra coverage protection that includes everything inside of the hard drives — similar products don't do this. You can use it directly from the hypervisor, which is great.”
We monitor all 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.
