We performed a comparison between HPE Nimble Storage dHCI and HPE SimpliVity based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Both of these HPE solutions are part of the Hewlett Packard Enterprise brand of excellent data management products. Users say HPE SimpliVity is the more comprehensive product. It is a very user-friendly, simple product to use, implement, and manage. The storage virtualization layers and super fast backups make it extremely valuable. Some users say HPE Nimble Storage dHCI can be a bit buggy and should provide better file-level restoration and DVX system options.
"StarWind Virtual SAN is essentially hardware agnostic, allowing us to build out a specific hardware layer based upon the customer's unique requirements."
"The instant failover, with vSAN copying data to the second node, allowed for the continuous availability of our applications."
"The StarWind products have enabled our organization to modernize stations where larger and more expensive equipment was not an option."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a highly flexible solution, as it can be deployed on physical servers or on top of virtual machines running on hypervisors such as VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V."
"Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."
"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."
"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."
"Integration with virtualization platforms helped us to resolve many issues we were facing while using the physical storage."
"Nimble is easy to use, but hard to install. Once it's installed, it's user-friendly. Reporting is another advantage because we get a lot of statistical forecasting. It helps us see into the future with that."
"I love InfoSite. That gets you a lot of good detailed information."
"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is stable."
"HPE's InfoSight software, which does the comparative analysis and artificial intelligence built-in in the box, and with Nimble they do well against the competition. Additionally, the dashboards are good."
"So far, the solution's performance is very good."
"The solution is useful for taking storage snapshots, has high performance, and the CASL architecture is good for optimizing workloads."
"It is easier to manage compared to the other vendors."
"We have the ability to increase the storage without any additional costs."
"The built-in backup and quick restore are good features."
"PCX card implementation improves speed."
"There is no single feature that's the most valuable. All of SimpliVity's components work together to make daily operations easier for our customers."
"It's much more simple than Nutanix and other hyper-converged solutions, at least from our point of view."
"Its performance is quite good, and it is also easy to use. One of the biggest benefits is the included backup solution."
"The performance is good. It's stable and easy to operate."
"HPE SimpliVity is simple, it's very friendly."
"The most valuable feature is that the product has an inborn backup."
"I did not see any indication that StarWinds vSAN is a usable solution with non-GUI instances of Hyper-V."
"I wish the sync after a failure, such as hardware failure or power-related issues, for example, was faster."
"Regular updates to the software are required, and subtle design changes would be welcome."
"Android app for monitoring and receiving push notifications as alarms or monitoring I/O from any mobile device could be a good feature and nice to have as we are not always on our desk."
"The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex."
"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."
"When you will cease your contract with StarWind (for support) your product won't be updated and that is a big selling point, especially for us, as we have loads of products from StarWind."
"For me, the product could be improved by it being made cheaper."
"Cost-wise, this solution is slightly more expensive than other hyperconverged solutions."
"This year 2022, we have the possibility to include new kinds of storage with a high disk availability, such as Alletra 6000 and Alletra 9000. Those are the new storage available. If we would like to improve the quality and the capability and the high availability of these products, we can choose between different costs. This is another benefit from this HPE Nimble Storage dHCI solution of hyper-converged."
"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI currently is promoting only VMware as a hypervisor, whereas if they can look into other OSs, such as KVM or Red Hat, it would be an improvement."
"I'm not sure if there are features lacking."
"I rate Nimble one out of 10 for ease of setup. Setting up Nimble Storage was a nightmare. It took us three months to deal with all the kinks and bugs. We had two people from HPE assisting us and two from our team."
"The performance of HPE Nimble Storage dHCI could improve. Other solutions, such as Cisco, are better."
"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI only works with a hypervisor like VMware. There are plenty of other hypervisors that HP doesn't support. This is an area for improvement."
"Nimble Storage's integration with the management software could be better."
"The technical, commercial, and marketing support is not at the level that it should be. They are not structured well. Other vendors provide better support, such as Dell."
"An area for improvement would be the flexibility of server configuration."
"The installation is quite easy but it could still be improved."
"SimpliVity has no file server services. That's one of the solution's biggest shortcomings."
"There may be issues around scaling."
"The greatest disadvantage is the update process. Every patch or release update must be checked and deployed with the HPE solution, which sometimes is a little bit difficult. It is not difficult in terms of installation, but it is difficult to get the patches in time."
"The interface is good but takes some time to get used to."
"There is a file size limitation when you want to do an individual file restore, but they might have resolved this in newer versions. As I'm taking backups at the VM server level, I can restore a file from any one of those without standing up the VM, and I can restore it to any mounted VM that I want. The problem is that there is a file size limitation. It becomes problematic when I'm trying to restore. When I want to restore a backup of a SQL database, my backups are considerably larger than 10 gigs. So, the only way to restore that backup file is to mount the entire VM somewhere and then copy it, which doesn't take long at all."
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HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is ranked 11th in HCI with 11 reviews while HPE SimpliVity is ranked 6th in HCI with 41 reviews. HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is rated 7.8, while HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of HPE Nimble Storage dHCI writes "Scalable with good memory management and helpful technical support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of HPE SimpliVity writes "Phenomenal deduplication and compression, good support, and works on its own". HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is most compared with VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VxRail, HPE Hyper Converged and Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, whereas HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and HPE Hyper Converged. See our HPE Nimble Storage dHCI vs. HPE SimpliVity report.
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