HPE SimpliVity vs NetApp HCI [EOL] comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NetApp are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 88% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

HPE SimpliVity

Read 155 HPE SimpliVity reviews

10,046 Views
9,745 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

NetApp HCI [EOL]

Read 32 NetApp HCI [EOL] reviews

88% willing to recommend

HPE SimpliVity

NetApp HCI [EOL]

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between HPE SimpliVity and NetApp HCI [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

April 2026

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Lokman Hossen

Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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.

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Massimiliano Bartolozzi

Chief Information Officer at Lucart S.p.A.

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"PCX card implementation improves speed."

"No SAN switches and having a native backup is pretty cool."

"Having one management console to do everything from was a great improvement over dealing with separate hardware for servers, SANs, backups etc."

"The access, high availability, and interface are the most valuable and important for us."

"Currently, we are using it for our VMware workstation; we use it to host our non-production servers."

"The rapid backup and restore functionality improved our efficiency in the development area."

"This solution is best for companies just starting out or who are working with a small environment and are looking for a small infrastructure."

"The storage deduplication, as far as the storage space, is the most valuable feature, then the backups."

More HPE SimpliVity pros

"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."

"The scalability is great, because it can scale independently."

"The NetApp Deployment Engine that comes with it makes the actual deployment and usage very easy. That's our primary focus and it's hyper-converged. That's something that we want to use as well."

"Everything we've moved over runs two times faster and in some cases, a lot faster, far more than twice, which our users noticed."

"It is highly scalable. Their support is also extremely good."

"HCI definitely improved how flexible we scale, and our entrance into the cloud. The features are very rich, in terms of both avenues. It's helped us flexibly move and shift our workloads around, back and forth."

"It is a unique product with simplified setup and independent control over storage and compute."

"The ability to size the available space in a way that matches our company's needs is most valuable. For instance, you can decide if you want 80/20, 70/30, or 60/40 space. Redundancy depends on your needs without changing the appliance. You just add space and decide the percentage of space that you need free and the percentage of space that you need for backup. It is all automatic, and you don't have to do anything. You just add space, and the system automatically configures itself with the chosen option."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros

Cons

"It would be better if it could integrate more easily with other vendors."

"The product is expensive."

"The solution's price could be lower, but it holds good value for the money. The VMware licensing costs have skyrocketed since Broadcom's takeover."

"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."

"Pricing and support is on the high side, but well worth it."

"We definitely want to see more of the CLI commands come up to the GUI, and it is a legitimate question, if we are going to be happy with the integration in the vsphere web client, which is awfully slow."

"While it has been a while since HPE acquired SimpliVity, there is a lack of understanding/awareness about the product. In short, it took me time to actually make them understand they had a product named SimpliVity, which as you can imagine does not instill a great deal of confidence."

"SimpliVity has this thing where if a virtual machine is on the wrong node with two nodes, it will be optimized. However, if one of the nodes won't be optimized, then it will complain about that. It will give you a little warning to say the source is not optimized. Please move this to one of the other hosts. They should just add a little thing in SimpliVity to move all the VMs to the right host, because it is a pain to load balance across the three nodes when all these VMs are complaining and you have to move them to one."

More HPE SimpliVity cons

"The networking needs improvement."

"The deployment process has room for improvement. I would like for it to be a cookie-cutter deployment."

"HCI has not enabled us to consolidate workloads or break down silos and has not increased application performance."

"It doesn't have all the data points we need and all the historical data that I would like."

"I would like to see the implementation process improved."

"The administration side of it needs to be improved. We expect an easier interface and a single upgrade for updating the infrastructure."

"There have been some drive type of issues where we have to apply a new code level. Storage nodes kick certain drives until they act as though they have failed when really they haven't. You just have to reinsert them, then they go on about their happy way. It's sort of a bug."

"It would be nice to have better access to tutorials and a test environment for simulations."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its licensing is yearly."

"HPE has decided to sell the solution in all-flash configurations, which may not be as cost effective for smaller mid-market enterprises."

"It's about $10,000 monthly."

"The hardware is expensive. For the same price, Cisco can provide more hardware specifications for us."

"In terms of the licenses, customers do not actually get any benefit."

"All-in license, simple and fair."

"The only thing that I think we are paying for is the VMware licenses, but we are enterprise, so it is not horrible."

"It is expensive for this market. Everyone says that it is a very good product, but the only complaint is about the price."

More HPE SimpliVity pricing and cost advice

"Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market."

"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."

"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."

"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."

"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."

"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."

"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."

"This solution reduced our maintenance costs. We were going to have to pay one to two million dollars to put in compute nodes. We are avoiding those costs."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Construction Company

14%

Marketing Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

Wholesaler/Distributor

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	67
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	80

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	19

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 ...

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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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What needs improvement with HPE SimpliVity?

I haven't noticed anything that should be better in HPE SimpliVity, as I haven't done extensive work on this platform; I have only completed a couple of projects recently. Pricing could be an area ...

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Comparisons

VxRail vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 27% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 15% of the time

VMware vSAN vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 10% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 6% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 4% of the time

More HPE SimpliVity Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 30% of the time

VMware vSAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 16% of the time

VxRail vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 15% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 9% of the time

More NetApp HCI [EOL] Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE SimpliVity

May 2026

Download HPE SimpliVity product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp HCI [EOL]

April 2026

Download NetApp HCI [EOL] product report

Also Known As

SimpliVity, HPE HCI

No data available

Overview

HPE SimpliVity provides businesses with advanced features such as inline deduplication, compression, and instant recovery, enabling efficient backup and scalability. Its integration with VMware and centralized management fosters ease of use, establishing a streamlined IT infrastructure.

HPE SimpliVity stands as a comprehensive solution for organizations seeking a robust infrastructure capable of handling diverse workloads. Its features like integrated backup and disaster recovery ensure quick restores and high availability. Known for its efficient use of storage and data processing capabilities, it helps reduce operational costs. This system offers a reliable framework for virtualized environments, enhancing disaster recovery processes, IT operations, and application hosting while supporting workloads such as Oracle, SAP, and SQL.

What are HPE SimpliVity's key features?

Inline Deduplication: Minimizes data redundancy, enhancing storage efficiency.
Compression: Optimizes storage, reducing space requirements.
Instant Recovery: Facilitates rapid restoration of data and applications.
Centralized Management: Simplifies IT operations with unified management.
Scalable Architecture: Adapts to business growth seamlessly.

What benefits should users seek in HPE SimpliVity reviews?

Cost Reduction: Achieves savings through efficient data processing and storage utilization.
High Availability: Ensures consistent service and data accessibility.
VMware Integration: Provides compatibility and smooth operations in VMware environments.
Quick Disaster Recovery: Enables swift restoration processes for continued business operations.

Organizations deploy HPE SimpliVity mainly for virtualized environments, focusing on disaster recovery, IT operations, and application hosting. Extensively used in sectors for VDI, backups, and data center tasks, it supports major workloads like Oracle and SAP, simplifying infrastructure management while ensuring high availability.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

NetApp HCI is the only true enterprise-scale hyper converged cloud infrastructure. NetApp HCI comes in a 2 RU chassis with 4 node expansion slots.

NetApp

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: April 2026.

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