Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

HPE SimpliVity vs Sunlight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

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
Ranking in HCI
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
155
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sunlight
Ranking in HCI
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of HPE SimpliVity is 7.7%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sunlight is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE SimpliVity7.7%
Sunlight0.5%
Other91.8%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Lokman Hossen - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
RajeshKANUMURY - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Executive Officer at GniYes Inc.
Performs well, effective, and has responsive remote technical support
Sunlight is a scalable solution. It supports on-premises and distributed deployments, as well as public deployments. It has a single pane of management so I can manage all of my VM installations in a distributed manner. It also has a footprint, that allows me to operate on Edge. If for example, you have a retail shop with 2,000 locations and they use a networked point of sale system, or if you are Chipotle and they have so many locations and they have to use a backend system at each location. At the moment, these are all standalone systems that operate with very little connection to the central. We could, however, connect and create a network using Sunlight. We can virtualize and run with Edge thanks to Sunlight. This allows us to operate and obtain high-end computing on Edge for retail. Sunlight is a startup. I am not sure how many users they have, but we have been using it constantly and using the technology to bring in customers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The rate of compression for the data in SimpliVity is the most valuable feature."
"In terms of HPE SimpliVity's most valuable features, its backup integration is a good thing. Its performance is very good as is the whole integration."
"SimpliVity helps us to manage and has made deduplication work really well."
"Offsite backup, replication, and duplication of data are important for our plant environment since we are hard on our equipment."
"It's a very nice solution. It's a complete solution that we are looking for because we don't have personnel with expertise."
"The most valuable feature for us is its integration, as it provides an entire solution in a single box."
"The most valuable features are replication and backup."
"The performance and small footprint of this solution are its most valuable features. I am able to obtain and use more than 90 percent of the physical hardware capacity."
"It supports the latest technology of NVMe SSD, which is PCIe-based SSD. It has a very good IOPS performance as compared to vSAN. For the same system, I get 1,000 IOPS with vSAN, and with Sunlight, I am able to get almost 10,000 IOPS. In terms of features, it has almost all the features, such as HA and centralized dashboards. It can be managed centrally, and the visibility of the system is very good. They also have very good technical support and customer or partner training."
 

Cons

"The price is quite high. The system could also be more scalable."
"Bottleneck is the main issue."
"The installation process could be simplified. It's a bit technical for non-IT users."
"We would like to have more security with the solution."
"Product doesn't scale."
"I think that they should have their own hyper-converged system."
"If there was anything I would like to see, it would be indexed backups."
"I would like to see it be a truly hybrid-cloud solution where I could take my on-prem SimpliVity environment and have replication to a cloud install."
"My recommendation would be to add this technology to Azure, Microsoft Azure so that we can bring it to the market, or deploy it on public clouds such as Microsoft Azure and Google. It is currently only available on Amazon's public cloud."
"Its reporting and dashboards need to be improved. It currently has very basic reporting options. It should also be made easier to deploy on Unix operating systems. It is easy to deploy on Windows and Linux, but it is currently not easy to deploy on Unix."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The hardware is expensive. For the same price, Cisco can provide more hardware specifications for us."
"The licensing cost could be lower."
"For most use cases, look to see if you can use all-flash as the price point, as it has come down significantly."
"It is expensive for this market. Everyone says that it is a very good product, but the only complaint is about the price."
"HPE SimpliVity is much more affordable than Nutanix or VMware vSAN...The first pair of servers was about 90,000 EUR, including three years of warranty. It is 30,000 EUR per year."
"The pricing of HPE SimpliVity is comparable with other solutions so the price is good."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution is affordable and quite reasonably priced in terms of the product one gets."
"There is an operating cost for the VDIs, which is an additional cost. However, the licensing fee is half that of VMware or Nutanix."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business67
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise80
No data available
 

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 ...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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
Lavazza, Infraspace
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE SimpliVity vs. Sunlight and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.