HPE Hyper Converged Reviews

HPE Hyper Converged handles all the network setup for my servers and data.

My experience is in SMBs.

Before we bought the HPE Hyper Converged servers, we had scattered systems and servers. Our data was scattered. When the solution came into place, we were able to connect all our data and organize it in one place. Now, our storage and IT are at an enterprise level with all the necessary controls and restrictions being enacted.

We will also be using the HPE Hyper Converged solution for simulations going forward once we install SAP.

The performance is robust for HPE Hyper Converged. We have been underutilizing the storage. Though, we have almost consumed 70 percent of the storage, and I can access my data whenever I want without searching all over the place for it.

In comparison, the VxRail is better in resource utilization and performance. It is also faster. It automatically will detect anything and configure anything. Learning VxRail is easier, as everything is native and linked together.

The storage efficiency is weak and needs to be improved. However, I do not think HPE is planning to improve it at this time. They will probably look to EOL it, because HPE SimpliVity has resolved this issue, but at a higher price tag.

To resolve this issue with HPE Hyper Converged, I will buy a backup appliance, then I will shift my data which I am not using often to a backup appliance. This will be offline data and solve my issues.

It is a stable solution because combined with VMware, which is always stable. It is very robust. 

HPE Hyper Converged supports up to 60 nodes. It is scalable, but we have to use the HPE OneView solution and have it to pass through vCenter. This consumes 10 cores of CPUs, which compromises performance.

Dell EMC VxRail supports up to 32 nodes, but is more futuristic and easier to scale. If you want to scale up, you just plug the nodes, then the cluster will detect the new node and configure it.

With Dell EMC, they own everything and create one solution altogether. They design it in the way where they know the weaknesses of every solution that they have. 

This is much better than HPE. For example, I remember during the last storage issue that I had. HPE technical guys weren't able to support it, so I had to go back to VMware. This creates a loop or weakness. 

When you buy from Dell EMC directly, you receive that one point of contact for service and support.

The implementation took almost two days for us, even though HPE told us that it would take two hours.

When comparing VxRail vs HPE Hyper Converged, VxRail is easier to implement. You just initiate the start, then it automatically starts the configuration. It detects the nodes and everything else. Everything which is connected to the data center is set up within two to three hours (maximum). While I haven't done the set up, I have seen it done.

Pricing with Dell EMC is double the price which I paid for HPE. However, in the end, Dell EMC is double in performance. This is not an apple to apple comparison though, as I have a four node from Dell EMC and a three node.

I don't feel VxRail is that expensive.

The competitors in the market are HPE SimpliVity, VxRail, and Nutanix. All these solutions are extremely pricey. 

I feel VxRail is one of the best solutions you might ever have because of the protection it offers. 

SimpliVity is good, and it's reliable. It supports one node.

HP 380 is not up to the level of VMware products. They have more features, such as duplication or compression. 

My entire environment is actualized in VMware.

Before choosing a product, think why you are buying, the reason, and what you are looking to get from it. If you have too much data or you want to store data, seeking a hyperconverged storage will be costly. It will not be efficient for you. You should look into alternative storage solutions and ways of implementation before buying a hyperconverged solution. Make sure you are actually need those features.

The future is in hyperconverged solutions. They are much easier to manage and run. They are flawless. You can just log into VMware and have everything in front of you. However, it's costly compared to a traditional setup. 

A company should look at the data protection features, because in the end, the most valuable asset in any organization is its data. It should be protected as much as possible. Consider the way it works, with its space saving and space efficiency. Those are the key factors you should look at before deciding on a solution.

I would rate HPE Hyper Converged as seven out of ten.

I would rate VxRail as a nine out of ten.

Before deploying the product, we did not have any enterprise IT infrastructure. Now, with the HC380 deployment, we succeeded in building all the required servers, organizing the data and protecting it, which has increased our operational efficiency and level. 

Now, we have flexibility thanks to HPE HC380 and VMware.

1. The ease of use and management. 
2. The speed: It is extremely fast. 
3. The price per value compared to other solutions, like Nutanix and SimpliVity. (We made the deal before approval of HPE SimpliVity deal). 
4. The HA, which means I have a copy of the VMs always available, and the moment a VM is down, the system tries to power it on again. 

The drawback: I do not have deduplication, compression, and DR features, which were later addressed through HPE SimpliVity acquisition.

Data protection and optimization: It is really weak. They do not offer deduplication or compression. Also, we do not have a real backup solution. It is just snapshots, which is forcing us to do automatic backups of the extremely important data on different servers. Thus, if I can have a deal with HPE to have an upgrade to SimpliVity with our current agreement, it would work well. We are in negotiations and we hope to reach happy ending soon.

Not yet at all. It is very stable and robust. The only problem HC380 has is the data backup and management (deduplication, compression, and WAN optimization).

I have not faced this as we have not scaled up yet. We might scale up as we are planning to implement SAP S/4HANA.

I have proactive support from HPE. Their support is really good and the moment you need them, you can find them.

Not at all. Previously, we did not have a hyper-converged solution.

The initial setup took almost two days as we were the first to implement this solution in the region and none of the team had experience, although they were trained. They were always in contact with HPE support.

HPE pricing is good. It was much cheaper than their competitors. It does not have any hidden costs as the other competitors. I just have to pay for the support after my three year support contract finishes.

Yes, Nutanix and SimpliVity. 

Nutanix pricing was slightly more expensive. After three years, I have to pay support three times more than what I will pay for HPE. 

For SimpliVity, buying two servers of SimpliVity would cost me twice as much as buying three servers of HPE HC380 at that time of purchase. Now, the gap has been reduced, that is why I am in discussions with them.

It is a very robust solution and easy to manage. If you do not have the budget limitation constraints, my advice is to go for HPE SimpliVity as it is the most complete solution until now, if I am not mistaken.

We had four ESX hosts and a big storage rack. We needed to replace it really quickly. It's all VMware stuff and it involved moving it over. The unit came in. Our lead architect spent an hour with it, figured out a couple IP addresses that it needed to have, and it was up and running in four hours. He was able to migrate all the workloads off the old equipment in three days. From the time it came into the building, it took three days. Everything was moved over.

He was moving things slowly at first, moving non-critical things during the day. Then once we saw it was non-impact, he just moved the rest of it. That old equipment was ready to go just like that. This is a C250, which doesn't have the back up and all the extra features that SimpliVity has, but if they're delivering that kind of functionality in the same way that they delivered the C250, then that'd be great.

The most valuable feature was its time to delivery.

I'm guessing that the next release will be the SimpliVity stack. I don't know. It seems like they've got a lot of features packed in there. There's nothing that comes to mind in terms of improvement. It has worked pretty well. We've had to do a power cycle to bring it all the way down, bring it back up for power outages, A/C shut-downs of our DC office, but it hasn't presented a problem.

Stability is really good. I guess there's not much else to say. We've been running it for a year and a half. We bought it near the beginning of its offering to meet a specific challenge. We were a little bit nervous at first. We looked at Nutanix. We looked at some other hyper-converged units. We saw the HPE offering as a value proposition for us. It's worked out pretty well. We have decided to set that as a standard for our remote and branch offices. In fact, we just ordered another one for our San Francisco office to replace their equipment.

Scalability is a question that we have. We only have four node units and we were wondering if it makes sense. Where's the inflection point here? Will we actually implement that in our data center? Do we want a standard composable system, or would we do a bunch of nodes? At this point, we have a bunch of SimpliVity nodes versus blades plus Nimble Storage.

That's a decision that we're going to be looking at in the next two years. I'm very interested to see testimonies of how it scales. I just came from the Red Bull presentation, and it looks like they had a similar amount of VMs and storage, and they moved everything to six nodes of SimpliVity. That's very encouraging.

We haven’t needed to use technical support.

We decided on HPE because it was at the right price point. There's a certain brand confidence that we had with it. All of our other equipment worked with HPE. We had a good a good partner and it was at the right price point.

We knew it was time to look for a new product because we were doing a renovation in our DC office, which is our main office. We were moving a large amount of equipment to a new co-location in Ashburn, which is outside of Washington, DC. We still needed to maintain a significant amount of compute and storage on premises. As part of the renovation, we were losing our 400-square-foot computer room, and it was going down to maybe 150 square feet. We had to significantly reduce our rack space. In essence, we had to reduce two and a half racks down to two. That was one of the drivers. We wanted to reduce the amount of power, the number of UPS units, and the cooling. This solution hit all of those targets.

When I first went to get the product, it was a little bit of sticking my neck out, taking a little bit of a risk. For someone who's very risk-averse, that was my first step out. Looking back after a year and a half, I really think that it was the right decision.

It has made my job easier. As we're thinking about San Francisco, we had a month to try to figure out, "How are we going to move all this equipment?" We decided, let's get a new hyper-converged unit and move everything over. Then we'll leave the old equipment. We don't need to pay for the transportation costs of that old equipment. We can decommission it and send it back early, because it was on lease.

I was not directly involved in the initial setup, but I was watching it. He finished it an hour or two. From what he said, it was pretty straightforward.

We looked at Nutanix. We looked at some other hyper-converged units.

Make sure that you order the right connectors to connect to your existing storage to move everything. Make sure that you have that inter-connect to move all your data off of your old legacy equipment.

I just know that it works. If you find a good partner that gives you a PoC unit, I'm sure that they'll find that it's quick to get up and running.

It's easier to maintain. We think it offers performance benefits and easier use.

We like the fact that the hyper-converged infrastructure provides a simple to grow, easy to configure platform. It meets our needs now, but if there's growth later, it's easy to add on another node or two.

You don't have to go out and get more servers and get additional pieces of the SAN. It's one box that has its own warranty, so it's not mixing. With the SAN, you'd get additional drives, but they'd have a warranty that started and ended separate from the original SAN. It got complicated. This makes all of that process easier.

From the release that we have, we'd like to see better integration with vCenter and OneView. I believe the vCenter integration is available in an update that was released earlier this year. We have not applied it yet. It is complex to set up and it is not something you would really want to have to do yourself.

The software version on the HC380s we are using is version 1. It does not support spanned vCenter which we use since we have multiple sites. I heard that the version 2 of the software handles that better.

We are working with HPE to get the software updated to the new version.

Our implementation involved two separate clusters at two different locations. We wanted to be able to manage the two clusters from a peered vcenter instance so we could have 2 independent clusters but one management point. The version of software and OneView that were available at the time of installation did not support peered vCenters.

So better integration will all of the features supported by vCenter. There might be another option it was not discussed at the time of the install if there was or is.

We haven't had any issues with the stability. We're still in a pre-production phase and there was a drive fail in the first couple months. That's not uncommon for the initial stages. We haven't any other issues.

We haven't scaled it, but that's one of the reasons why we chose it, because of the fact that it is scalable.

We used technical support for the drive. They were very good.

We've been looking for something that was easily scalable and would meet our needs for our VMware platform. When we came across this solution, it fit those needs. When selecting a vendor, we look for reputation.

The setup was a little bit complex. There were a lot of things to do with the USB drive to reload the images and then build it up. If it didn't build in a particular order, then that node has to be reloaded and you start all over again. They were also fairly new at the time, so hopefully it's gotten easier since then.

We also looked at Simplivity and Nutanix. Simplivity was really our vendor of choice, but the price point was a little high and they didn't have the longevity that we were looking for in a vendor. If we were to do this again today, we probably choose Simplivity, because they were acquired by HPE.

They should talk with their HPE rep and see about either getting a demo or having a technical conversation about that. It's worth the time.

The time to deploy is very fast.

The provisioning is very fast. It’s not a problem for us to achieve the goals of the client.

I would like to see a more intuitive, user-friendly UI.

It is stable 95% of the time, and the rest is due to human error.

We haven't developed a scalability platform yet.

I would give technical support a rating of 10/10. We call for typical issues. Even for those of us who have taken the courses and are certified, we sometimes have issues that we need help with.

We knew we had to invest in a new solution because we needed more stability and faster connections. We didn’t have a solution previous to this one. In my country, we don't have many choices to select companies to provide us with hardware. HPE is in my country. We also had Dell, but we don't trust Dell. We had so many issues with Dell. So now it's all HPE.

The installation was very complex.

Take a course first, even if you are an engineer. At least take a course for the administration of this product. This can be very complex to use.

For HPE Hyper Converged 380, the added value is not having to buy multiple elements – servers, hard disks, memories, CPU, cables, and software – because you have to unpack it, install it, and update the firmware. You have to do it all by yourself.

With this solution, I buy everything together, pre-packaged, pre-installed, and in just 15 minutes, it's installed. It just asks a few questions about IP address and user passwords, and everything is installed. You don't need to have experts in servers, storage, and networking because an IT generalist can do the installation. That's why it's good in remote sites, remote offices, lines of business, and deployments. That is the real added value of this solution.

I would like to see improvement in the hardware underneath it. Currently, it's a Gen9 DL380. One day, there will be a Gen10 DL380 and maybe they will have bigger or smaller sizes.

The HE380 is already a good step forward with the first product, which was the CS250, which was really cool. It was just a 2U box (chassis). It had a lot of performance in there, but not that much flexibility on the storage and VDI side.

HPE CS380 is really spot on. It is the right answer from HPE to give you more flexibility. The next thing will be newer, faster hardware, more flexibility, and more options to get even more flexibility.

This solution is a DL380 server which is already the best-selling server in the last 20 years in the world. It is proven technology, so I'm quite confident that the technology and the hardware are proven. It is good. It is rock solid.

I've been in IT a long time, so I realize that by attending conferences, such as a recent one, it’s not just for the announcements. For me, it's more of a networking thing, shaking hands, and getting to know people. At these events, you can meet the developers and the product managers. It opens up doors so you can become more independent of that one phone number. It’s quite important knowing people.

If you do the networking, you feel that the service you get is top notch.
You get even more service. It makes it easier to get to the second and third line of support because you know what you're talking about. You get more information than just the marketing fluff. I know what it's about because I'm able to communicate directly with the hardware and software guys and the product managers.

One of my things I do in my company is publish a technology blog which is quite technical for the type of audience that I have. There is there an article in the blog about how to install this solution in 15 minutes. My nine-year-old daughter can do it.

In my pre-sales role, I see other customers looking at competitive solutions, be it Intel, EMC, or Nutanix. They all have some strengths.

The Nutanix solution is cool, because it's simple. But it's software and I'm not convinced about any of the hardware underneath it. Some people say, "Yeah, the hardware's not important." However, I have some real-life scenarios, cases with customers, in which it was proven that they had the software, they had the hardware, but they had a hardware issue and the software screwed up.

I prefer to go for the HPE solution. This is not because Nutanix is bad, but they are just a software company, independent of the hardware. I feel more confident with HPE because I know they build the hardware and the software. If I have a problem, I can contact one person with one phone number and I can make contact. I know the hardware guy and I know the software guy.

With Nutanix, for instance, this is not the case. They also say, "we have one phone number," but if they have a problem with the rate controller in their server, they have to call Dell or Lenovo. They have to escalate the case. They are not going to be able to solve my problem. They are going to escalate it.

I'm with HPE. I know that HPE will solve my problem directly.

It helped our business continuity. For example, if you have a failed disk or you have some errors, the system keeps running and you have time to fix it. The HPE computer center is notified automatically and they help us fix the problems.

The solution is integrated in a Hyper Converged unit. We don't really use this tool, but it manages our storage for us so that it becomes one logical unit that you can attach to the server.

Because it's so well integrated, you can't get away from it. You can't replace one part without the whole tool going down.

I would like to see more deduplication. This is incredibly important, because if you have five sets of the same piece of data, it is stored five times. We only want it stored once to save space.

This is a very stable tool. However, if you run out of space, the warnings are not very clear. Our administrators don't know that it ran of space and then the whole system is locked up. This is pretty annoying.

The scalability of this tool is very good. You can basically add more storage and seamlessly expand the current storage that you have.

We have used technical support. When we had downtime, we called technical support to help us troubleshoot the problem. It took us a very long time to get connected to them. We had different numbers on the website, and some of the numbers were wrong. You have different websites with different numbers and it's very difficult to get through to them. It took us about half an hour to deal with a P1 priority system that was down. Once we got in, it was perfect. But it took us a while to get in.

Previous to this solution, we were using normal blade servers. However, we wanted one unit where you can upgrade all of the OS and the firmware in one shot. We don't want to upgrade all the different pieces separately.

Our short list of alternatives was IBM and HPE. We don't use anybody else besides HPE for our data center. We don't use Dell. We have ordered all our stuff from HPE, so this solution was the logical choice.

You can build similar solutions by just using regular servers and then using 3PAR Storage. You can create the same kind of continuity and reliability so you don't have one unit that is enclosed.

When choosing a vendor, I look for reliability, continuity, and price.

The customers we have think it's a valuable product because of its ease of management, and its ability to work over different locations, and so on. The ease of management helps our customers’ business because they don't need to do so much with it. It just works. It's easy to provision, and so on.

I would like to see price points when there are larger solutions. If we have a solution where we’re going up against a couple hundreds of TBs, the price point is often too high.

It is a very stable solution, absolutely. When you're doing network RAID and so on, it's very stable because if one node goes down, it's still protected.

It is very scalable. You can scale up from two nodes to almost infinite nodes.

It is not difficult at all to deploy. You just plug and play, sort of. It's not very consultant-friendly.

Our customers would be looking at the top competitors like EMC and Dell. They chose StoreVisual because it’s a better product. I don't know much about the others. I only work with HPE.