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HPE SimpliVity vs NetApp HCI [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

HPE SimpliVity
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
155
Ranking in other categories
HCI (6th)
NetApp HCI [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Lokman Hossen - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MB
Crashed continuously, complex to deploy, and bad after-sales support - NETAPP FIXED the problems in 2022
Their after-sales support, SLA, and third-parties availability should be improved. NetApp's support is very difficult to engage. We have an SLA of onsite support within 24 hours. but they don't respect the SLA. Its stability was very bad. It has been crashing continuously. In one year, we got three crashes, which is unbelievable for an appliance that is guaranteed for 10 years without any crashes. In 2022, NetApp Italy, driven by the country manager Davide Marini, fixed all our issues and added additional computation power for free. This is a great example of customer care. They could have done it right the first time of course, but admitting the errors and putting in place such a remediation plan has been a very professional behavior.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"SimpliVity's console is useful."
"We really enjoy the virtualization that the solution offers."
"What I like about SimpliVity is the brand value of HP. I also like the data compression ratio, which is around more than 75% data compression ratio. HP's support and the ease of working with SimpliVity are also valuable features."
"The backup and restore features are the most valuable."
"The scalability is its most valuable feature. It's also able to do stretch clustering."
"Looking at the way that our infrastructure team works now, we don't think about infrastructure, storage, or compute anymore. The solution just works. It is same with the backup and replication side of things, as it just works on schedule. We don't have to manage it tightly, like we used to."
"It's much more simple than Nutanix and other hyper-converged solutions, at least from our point of view."
"My day-to-day experiences are better now that my backups are no longer running into production."
"We're trying to move to a much more API-driven management of all of our products, and NetApp's product is, from all the SDS providers we have seen, the most fully-baked API out there."
"It is a unique product with simplified setup and independent control over storage and compute."
"It allows me to move a VM set and require extra performance. I can easily move them onto it and have it just run."
"It's an all-flash solution. NetApp guarantees 3-to-1 or more than 3-to-1. It has guaranteed performance, like 15K IOPS per node."
"The solution integrates well with all the other applications that we use on our environment."
"The most valuable feature is the software design storage that really provided a faster, agile, easier to scale up and out storage path."
"The solution is very scalable."
"Simple setup and having the storage and compute right on one deployment is the most valuable aspect of this solution. They're able to get set up and ready to go and start having their DevOp team deploy to that environment."
 

Cons

"The biggest feature, which should be included, is some method to handle archival backup or cloud-based backup. Where SimpliVIty typically falls down with their data structure is: The longer a backup is kept, the more space it ends up inevitably using. When you get into things that you have to keep for five or seven years for legal requirements or regulatory compliance, then you start taking up a lot of space with these old dead backups that you are probably never going to use again. Being able to offload those to a separate platform or cloud storage location would be ideal."
"Bottleneck is the main issue."
"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."
"The solution wasn't able to connect to the cloud, and there's no micro-segmentation. The configuration of this solution is also complex."
"High availability for large production environments needs to be offered."
"The main issue with HPE SimpliVity is that you are very attached to VMware or VMware dependencies because the tool works with VMware technology."
"I can say that the support was better when it was a separate company, when it was SimpliVity. But, now with HPE it has not been quite as good. B"
"SimpliVity has little to no integrations."
"If you want to have a really dense data center then it's hard to have a big chunk of cabling going through everything."
"It is difficult to get acclimated to all the new features quickly. The onboard process could be improved to bring clients up to speed faster."
"They could improve the packaging."
"The product needs better support for installing the operating system on the machine."
"I would like to have the ability to replicate to multiple sites."
"There's a limitation with a block in the file. That's where I see that it's not very efficient for upgrades and for management."
"I would like for them to fall a little closer to like the VMware release model. The new features and new solutions tend to come from the VMware side. I would like for NetApp to follow along closely with VMware's release schedule."
"I would like to see higher level graphics support because we are going to be doing some virtual desktop for our CAD software, and I want to be able to support AutoCAD and Cantillo on remote desktop machines."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive for this market. Everyone says that it is a very good product, but the only complaint is about the price."
"ESXi licensing is a big part of initial investment if you do not already have that covered."
"Scaling isn't cheap"
"There is a one-time purchase needed for the license for HPE SimpliVity. The solution is expensive, but it is worth the money."
"It seemed like it was expensive at first. Now that I have had it installed for a period of time, I think I got a great deal."
"Other vendors fall short on price compared to HPE on this product."
"If we compare the price of HPE SimpliVity with other vendors that are selling the hyper-converged infrastructure, all of them are not cheap and are priced similarly. However, the price we pay and what we receive makes it a good price."
"We bought this solution as a package that included all of the hardware and all of the software."
"Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."
"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."
"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."
"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."
"There are the overall infrastructure costs. Even though the initial costing was higher, we calculated for year-to-year for five years. That brought us into a position where we decided, we have to go for HCI rather than having distributor systems."
"This solution saved our organization time (35 percent) and money. We have a hefty group of developers, and if you multiply that by 30 to 35 percent, that is quite a bit of money."
"Where we lost nearly 75 percent of our infrastructure due to a malicious attack and were able to recover two and a half hours into it due to the integration, it saved us and all of our customers. Because we were able to recover so fast from the attack, the solution paid for itself right there."
"Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business68
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise79
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise19
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
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Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

SimpliVity, HPE HCI
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Red Bull Racing, Mandarin Oriental, Brigham Young University, UCLA, Merlin Entertainments, Sasa Cosmetics, Travelport, St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Princess House
American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology
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