We performed a comparison between HPE SimpliVity and VxRail based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, VxRail seems to be the superior solution. Our reviewers found HPE SimpliVity to be more difficult to deploy and more expensive to purchase than VxRail.
"StarWind is very easy to use, even if you have had no experience using a SAN before."
"We like their high availability. It reduces the downtime for our entire organization's environment."
"We have been able to use more on-prem hardware to reduce cost and also use old disks that we do not trust enough for ordinary RAID or usage."
"You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage."
"The failover protection and the ability to expand storage and nodes with no downtime are by far the best physical features we have benefited from."
"It's very easy to resize disks and they show up in VMware almost instantly."
"The customer support provided by StarWind is excellent."
"The product gave us a cost-effective way to deploy a highly available server environment."
"It's a very nice solution. It's a complete solution that we are looking for because we don't have personnel with expertise."
"It's much more simple than Nutanix and other hyper-converged solutions, at least from our point of view."
"Best for companies just starting out."
"It is a stable solution."
"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."
"Its simplicity is most valuable. The management is easy, and you don't have to have a lot of knowledge about storage, network, etc. It is simple to manage and simple to implement, and that's its key feature."
"The solution has integrated backup features that are useful."
"It doesn't take long to mount the entire VM somewhere and then copy it. That's one of the things that I like about SimpliVity's deduplication and compression. I can literally stand up a backup in minutes. It is like no time at all. They've got pretty phenomenal deduplication and compression. Within SimpliVity, one of the things that they do is deduplication and compression on ingestion. So, on the front side, everything is deduplicated and compressed, which, of course, adds some overhead to their solution. For instance, in my environment today, I've got roughly 30 terabytes of raw storage, and with their deduplication and compression, I'm over the 300 terabyte threshold with my active servers and all my backups."
"Enterprise is a complete solution that includes performance, backups and disaster recovery."
"VxRail is a simple, efficient solution. It's easy to upgrade and scale the solution. If we increase our user base, we can easily scale it out. We have several thousand using it now."
"The implementation was quick, we used a checklist and it took approximately one hour."
"What I like the most in terms of features is the fact that the VxRail update can be done in one week. It takes much less time to do a whole server upgrade and an infrastructure update as well."
"VxRail can manage the whole cluster at the same time, so it's easy to expand. VxRail has more features vSAN ReadyNodes that make it easier to implement from scratch."
"For me, VxRail's most valuable feature is its life-cycle management."
"You don't need to think about compatibility of components."
"We like the design and that it meets data storage needs."
"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."
"StarWind Virtual SAN could benefit from better integration with other tools and technologies, such as backup and disaster recovery solutions."
"Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so."
"If it's possible to make a driver/solution that does not make use of the iSCSI targets of Windows, that would be great. I don't know if that's possible, however, it could make the configuration a little easier."
"Currently, the StarWind management console is a bit clunky to navigate and isn't the most user-intuitive interface."
"I'd prefer it if a remote console was provided."
"StarWind doesn't really have any performance reporting, especially compared with other vSAN products we've used."
"We don't really have any issues with this product."
"The solution could have an optimization site."
"There are some small changes that can be made to the interface to improve it but it typically works well."
"In the next release of the solution, they should make updating the solution easier. Currently, we have HPE doing it for us but I would like to be able to do it."
"The product should be competitive with other brands."
"Product doesn't scale."
"We had minor problems with the initial setup but it was with our internal infrastructure."
"There is room for improvement in the operations area because the support for that server space is minimal."
"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."
"I would like to see Dell take a crack at simplifying the process of moving from a node to a cluster and assembling everything into the appliance. It would be great if Dell could provide a pathway where a customer could actually install it without the certifications. Of course, I can't say how you would dumb down something so complex."
"It could be improved by having more information on the integration portion of ACI."
"The fact that is based on vSAN is the main issue of this solution."
"They need to keep upgrading the environment and improving automation so that the solution keeps getting better and better."
"Dell wants to implement the disaster site in the new year, but they haven't decided yet. I hope we will have the opportunity to sell VxRail with this disaster site. It is not really clear at the moment, but hopefully, we will get some good news from the customers in the new year."
"They're getting better with their one-click upgrade. The success factor is now between 85% to 87% with the latest release. They should just continuously improve on that one-click factor and make it more seamless."
"If VxRail could also offer file services in addition to virtualization, that would be nice because sometimes people want to complement their environment with file services, and you don't have that in VxRail."
"We have some issues, but they are possibly out-of-the-box issues. There was a host that was dead on arrival, and there were some file issues on other hosts. We're currently working actively with Dell to resolve all these issues. Once they are resolved, the product should be stable."
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HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 26 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 37 reviews. HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.4, while VxRail is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of HPE SimpliVity writes "Phenomenal deduplication and compression, good support, and works on its own". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "It's built on platforms that have been in the industry for more than 15 years, so it's very stable". HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Nimble Storage dHCI and Dell PowerFlex, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. See our HPE SimpliVity vs. VxRail report.
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Hi, Refer to your questions if you are a COO of a small company then both solutions would be costly as a minimum of 3 nodes solution is required. Both are good at their places. Let's say, VxRail is deeply engineered with VMware and they have strong integration and performance testing results. in terms of expansion, federation, compression/deduplication, etc., is much more improved. Whereas HPE SimpliVity used its own storage virtualization software and backup software. Whereas in VxRail you can also use any backup software. Apart from the discussion, my suggestion would be to go with simple X86 Servers(any OEM) with Sangfor( they have built-in administrative software (i.e. VCenter), built-in backup (no need to buy any other software), multi-hypervisor support, cost-effective even if you plan to provide SaaS service you can easily do it from your company immediately. They also provide vNGFW, vADC, vIAM, etc. It is an end-to-end HCI Solution with Security support included. Prices are very reasonable(I don't know your region). Thanks