HPE SimpliVity Reviews

We use it for storage.

The scalability is its most valuable feature. It's also able to do stretch clustering.

There are a lot of features that they need to improve on, such as the backup and DR feature sets. I would also like to see it able to restore item levels, especially for databases. They don't have that right now.

The stability is okay. I'm not that impressed.

The scalability is good.

Technical support is okay.

We were using what is called a traditional conversion solution. We switched to SimpliVity because it enabled us to consolidate our nodes. 

The initial setup was straightforward.

We used D-Plus. They're pretty good.

We have seen ROI.

It's about $10,000 monthly.

We compared it with other products, such as Nutanix and vSAN, and we weighed the features that we needed. This solution was the one that met the greatest number of our requirements. It's also less complicated to deploy and has a smaller footprint.

The product is good. It might not meet all your requirements, but it is one of the solutions that met most of our requirements. There's no "best product" out there but this is likely the best for your needs.

I would rate SimpliVity at a seven out of ten, based on the features and the requirements that we have.

We use it for VDI.

It helps us in supplying desktops to users.

The solution's simplicity is its most valuable feature. The usability is also good.

The scalability is good and simple.

Technical support at HPE has always been really good, with anything I've done with them.

We used Cisco HyperFlex. It was just another system that was brought to our attention by a different reseller. SimpliVity was introduced to us by sales and we needed something like that.

The initial setup was a little complex because we were in the first version, fresh releases.

We used a reseller and our experience with them was great.

We looked at NetApp but they couldn't do stretch clustering.

Evaluate it.

In terms of rating the solution, I have to go with an eight out of ten. A ten is hard to get from me. There's no perfect system and every system has its little hang-ups and issues.

The primary use is to run the business, production, and Oracle.

It has improved our response time.

The rate of compression for the data in SimpliVity is the most valuable feature.

When we make some upgrades to the platform, it does take time to stabilize the structure again.

We would like a simple interface to use.

The platform works okay. 

The scalability is okay. You only need to aggregate some nodes, then increase the capacity of the structure.

The technical support is okay. However, when we need to escalate issues to the next levels, they first go to India, then the USA. We do have some problems with the time zones.

We needed SimpliVity for our architecture. 

The initial setup was complex, because it was a new way of working. It was a disruption of technology. People has to learn the new way of working with the technology.

We used an integrator for the deployment, who was good.

We have not seen ROI yet.

We also looked at Dell EMC and Cisco.

We chose HPE based on its technology and cost.

I would recommend the product. It is good technology. The time and response of applications embrace the productivity of our enterprise.

We use it for optimization of the platform for the virtualization.

The replication from the different centers (the main to the secondary) has been very great. It is good value for us.

SimpliVity is simple to integrate with our backups.

We have used it for testing.

• Compression
• Deduplication
• As a point for optimization on our infrastructure, it works great for us.
• The solution is very innovative.

We would like to have more security with the solution.

It is very stable. We have not had any outages.

The scalability is great.

We have 13 nodes in our data center.

The technical support is very good. We have Tier 2 and 3 support.

We moved to SimpliVity from our previous solution because SimpliVity met our requirements. Our previous solution was four years old.

The initial setup was complex. It took a few months to integrate and adapt to the new platform.

We used a partner, Datavision, for our deployment. Our experience with them was very good.

HPE proposed Synergy and Simplicity. We chose Simplicity, which has been a great platform for us.

We are not looking to change our solution, at least not in the next three years.

We are using this solution in Brazil.

It has improved the delivery value for my clients.

It has reduced my data center activities.

It delivers value to my clients.

The solution has changed my necessities.

I haven't spoken with their technical support.

The initial setup was complex because it was a new solution.

We deployed it in-house with our own knowledge.

I have not seen ROI.

We only looked at HPE.

It is for the production virtual environment. I have virtualized almost 99 percent of my servers, and I'm using SimpliVity as a host for those virtual machines.

It does what needs to be done for us. The main thing for us is to make sure that we can recover a failed VM on a different site if the primary site fails. We need to be able to recover on the DR site. The performance was the main focus.

The department that ran our reporting in the legacy environment, it took them about six hours to run their report. Now, it is taking the same department less than an hour.

We aren't using a lot of space because it does everything that we need it to do on the back-end, which is a good thing.

• The performance
• The backups
• The DR strategy
• The deduplication is great.

My main problem with the solution is that it is taking too much memory for something that we don't build. We are not creating the VM; it is created by the deployment. It is the SimpliVity solution which is using the memory that I was counting on for my production part. This is the biggest problem that I have. I know that the VM has to built there, but I would hope that they have a different area in the system to use this different type of memory. The production memory should stay with the customer when the machine is built, and during deployment, it should use different memory.

We just implemented the lightest cluster a month ago.

So far, the stability is good. We don't have any issues. Everything is running 24/7.

Scaling isn't so hard.

We have not had many technical support calls. However, we had one call which was not completely answered to our satisfaction. Are they capable of answering that question or not? Based on that particular call, we didn't receive the right answer.

I used a three-tier solution, meaning SAN, hosts, and the network fabric. I wanted to move away from the three point failure environment into the single mirror environment, especially for performance.

I didn't know what exactly what I was looking for in the beginning. I knew we needed to move away from our legacy environment into the hyper-converged world. Therefore, I was looking at different solutions. I knew that Nutanix was the big one out there, and is still the big one out there. Somehow, I landed on the SimpliVity site.

Initially, the setup was complex for us. Once you know the product, we are planning to do the deployments ourselves now because we understand everything (most of it). We recorded what we needed and can redeploy the systems to a different clusters going forward.

We used an integrator through HPE. Our experience with them was great. Everything worked well. We didn't have any hiccups.

For three years, it is $60,000 for three nodes. It is quite pricey.

Nutanix was the closest to the HPE SimpliVity product. I had better conversations with the salespeople from HPE. They were able to explain how the solution worked and how it does everything I needed, so that naturally helped me with my decision.

The solution is great. Make sure you are aware of everything before you commit to deploying or purchasing it.

We are using SimpliVity for VDI and virtual desktops. We are also using it for some small manufacturing sites.

It has lessened our burden on multiple different products, so they are under one umbrella. This has been economically good.

SimpliVity is simple and all in one.

I don't think it's as simple as it is marketed, but it is a new product. Since it is a newer solution, there needs to be more knowledge transfer out there. The product needs more maturity because of the industry.

It is too early to tell about stability.

It scales well so far. We had to increase capacity. It was able to scale pretty simply, and that worked well.

Technical support has been awesome.

We were previously using basic compute storage.

We were lifecycle managing all our technology, so it was more about stability. We switched for a more converged solution.

Scheduling was a little rough, but other than that, it went okay.

HPE deployed it, but we used an integrator (CCP) for design. Our experience with CCP was good.

We looked at Nutanix and Dell EMC products.

We went with HPE partly because I have history them.

Do your homework.

We use it in a VMware environment that supports VMs.

The most valuable feature is that it's easy to manage.

It also has instantaneous backup and lag-free restore. When everything is running, I can bring back a huge VM in less than 30 seconds. That's even better than Veeam. 

It crashes often. When one particular VM has random, large IOPS requests, it will bog down the node, and there isn't enough time for the replica to be brought up. So all the VMs on that one particular node will essentially become offline.

If it's not already included, an additional feature I would like to see would be better Storage vMotion. That would be number one on my wish list.

The stability is not good. I have fewer than 20 VMs per node. I have nine nodes in my environment, and when it goes south, 20 VMs will go down, even though there's a replica on other nodes. There's a third copy which is a backup and I can't bring any of those online.

The scalability is very good. It's excellent for a branch office/remote office, instead of a data center.

Most of technical support has been excellent. I can escalate my support case to a developer very quickly, in less than a day. That's unbelievable.

We switched because we have a most-excellent salesperson. He promised something more than what the SimpliVity environment can support.

The short version regarding ROI is that it's not good. It takes two engineers all day to solve an ESXi node-down issue, and it takes between two days and two weeks to bring it back.

We signed a three-year contract.

On our shortlist there were only Vblock, which we didn't need, and Nutanix, which was more expensive. So we chose the least expensive, at least at the time.

Do a proof of concept on everything, instead of just relying upon the salesperson's pie-in-the-sky promise.

I'll rate this solution as a five out of ten. It may not be terribly mature yet. I see disk, for example, becoming all-flash. That may have overcome my painful learning experience.