HPE SimpliVity Reviews

The use case depends on what our customers need. We don't have SimpliVity on our infrastructure, but we deploy it at the customers' sites. Generally speaking, SimpliVity is for prediction, SAP, and VDI.

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. 

SimpliVity has no file server services. That's one of the solution's biggest shortcomings. 

I've been using HPE SimpliVity for five years now.

SimpliVity is pretty stable. 

SimpliVity is a good fit for small to medium-sized companies, but it's not scalable enough for large enterprises. 

HPE support is good. 

Our customers usually have VMware infrastructure already, so we can easily migrate everything with the VMware technologies. It typically takes about two to three days maximum. One systems engineer can handle the whole deployment. 

I rate SimpliVity seven out of 10. I would rate it higher if HPE added file services.

We are a partner of HPE. Our customer are using this solution to solve their auto-commerce infrastructure to give space for the process.

We are in Turkey, because of the different currency they are not always compatible.

I have been using HPE SimpliVity for two years.

HPE SimpliVity is a stable product.

This is a scalable solution.

We have not had any problem with customer support at SimpliVity. 

Our customers are always looking or a discount on the product.

I would rate HPE SimpliVity a 9 out of 10.

We primarily use the solution for hyper-converged purposes.

It's quite simple to work with. I don't have to configure any other storage system.

The solution is scalable.

The initial configuration could be improved. 

The way that it handles the memory could be better.

The initial setup can be quite difficult. 

Technical support needs to be more responsive. 

I've used the solution for a while.

The product is very scalable.

We use the solution for 15 people. 

We are increasing usage. We already bought some systems that are the same as HPE. However, that's due to the fact that our company has a standard of using HPE. If I could, might choose another solution.

Technical support is not so good. We have some issues with the memory and we still don't have answers for that problem.

This was the first hyper-converged system we used, however, we do have some experience with VMware now. 

The initial is quite difficult for me. That's mostly due to the configuration as it is difficult to understand the configuration.

The deployment process took quite a long time. I cannot remember exactly how many days or weeks, however. 

We only need two engineers for deployment and maintenance.

We handled the solution with the help of a partner. 

I can't speak to the licensing costs. I don't have access to that information.

We did look at some other options. I can't speak to the exact brands, however.

I'm a customer.

This is an overall good product. However, they do need to work a little bit on the support. 

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. 

I use HPE SimpliVity for my private cloud, and all my production servers are running on this private cloud. My ERP software and the most important system, SAP, is running on HPE SimpliVity. Their metal server is physical, but all the other digital ecosystems or digital platforms are running on my private cloud in SimpliVity HPE.

I like HPE SimpliVity's hard disk compression capabilities. The data is compressed into very little space or volume. I think that the principal value of HP SimpliVity is its capacity to compress the data, and I'm saving a lot of disk space using SimpliVity.

HPE SimpliVity could be more flexible and scalable. I don't feel SimpliVity is flexible or easily scalable because I still need to buy another server to add to my clusters. I can't just run or harvest and add to my solution. I need to buy another server.

There are a lot of components that are not giving a lot of value to me right now. I also had a few problems with the built-in hard disk drives. I've had many issues with the harvest stripes that the servers use. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's unusual to have a physical failure on the HPE platform. I don't see any value at the software level, especially in the software that manages that solution. 

I was waiting for something, especially in the application layer that I would use, but that is all over VMware, and it doesn't have an integrated module that I can use to manage the server and all the instances. 

HPE SimpliVity could be more scalable.

I think the initial setup was easy. It was really fast. 

The technicians assigned by HPE implemented this solution in a very short time. At most, it took about two or three days. It was really amazing. It was very simple, and they helped us migrate the materials and the digital machine.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give HPE SimpliVity an eight.

I trust HPE a lot because it's an excellent product. I think SimpliVity is a better solution than other basic HPE solutions. Maybe not the best, but it's a good solution.

We purchased it about five years ago to replace our existing traditional SAN server VM environment. At that time, SimpliVity was the only platform that could house an enterprise-level SQL database. Nobody else had a platform that could handle SQL transactions without imploding. Everybody has got that figured out by now, and it is understandable.

We are using an older version because we purchased SimpliVity before it was owned by HPE. After about six to eight months of its implementation, it was purchased by HPE. When we purchased it, it was on the Cisco UCS server platform.

SimpliVity is integrated with the hypervisor, and you have a single pane of glass. It is really hands-off. Once you set your backup schedules, you're done. I'm not creating and tearing down virtual servers a lot. Our environment is fairly static, so unless I get an alert on something being wrong, and there is any predictive failure on a hard drive, I don't have to touch it. It is just on cruise control.

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.

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. 

Every now and then, we would have an instance where the replication of a backup wouldn't complete in a timely manner, and that would get it all wigged out in terms of how it maintained the files in the background, the way it knows whether a file has changed or not, and whether it is backed up and replicated. We would basically just suspend that backup for a little bit, do a manual backup of that server, and completely replicate it to other sites. We would then turn the regular backup routine back on, and then it would be fine. So, that's all dependent on the bandwidth.

It has probably been five years. We have been using it before it was owned by HPE.

Its stability is great. When we put our servers in, solid-state arrays were not a thing. The performance five years ago was exponentially high. So, we went with 24 servers, and four of them were solid state. The other 20 were large spinning disks, and obviously, performance is way better today because solid state is more price effective now. So, you get the speed of that, but we're getting ready to replace it with something because SimpliVity has completely stopped supporting their solution on Cisco hardware. I'm now running it without a maintenance contract.

Their support is good. HPE is a big organization, and they handled keeping that support group together very well. You call the same 800 number that everybody else does, but once they identify it as a SimpliVity issue, you get transferred over to that group right away. Instead of trying to disseminate that knowledge amongst their existing engineers, they appeared to have kept the little nucleus of those knowledge-based guys. So, when I called, I had people who knew exactly what was going on.

It was almost hands-off to me. SimpliVity did it, but it was just about migrating over the VMs. You temporarily mount your existing VM environment in your new cluster or show it as a separate cluster, and then you just migrate them over. It is all done through the utilities that are built into the VM.

We spent $250,000 back in the day, and that was for two servers in my data center for that cluster. We then ran what they call an arbiter, and that took the place of a third server or the third node in the cluster. My DR site was one standalone server, and its horsepower was more than the two at my main site. It included my Cisco Switches that I needed to re-upgrade. It was comparable to what we were paying a year in VM.

I don't know if it's my HPE reseller or if it's an actual HPE initiative, but they're not pushing me to go with SimpliVity. They don't want me to go with their other storage solution with which they are leading more. In the research that I've done, I've found out that I can run SimpliVity on top of that storage solution. If I wanted to do that, HPE does offer that configuration. 

While sizing your storage, knowing how a solution or a vendor does compression and deduplication is important. For example, Scale doesn't do compression and deduplication on the front side. So, you've got to make sure that you've got that accounted for, especially when you start doing backups.

They were definitely a 10 five years ago when we implemented them. What they were doing was incredible. The rest of the market and all other technology providers have caught up with what they're doing. I don't know how they stack up and compare to everybody now because I've been out of the loop long enough to know that. It is probably a level playing field as it boils down to today's market. I would still give them a nine out of 10 because they do have good service. My hardware is five years old, and it is not HPE hardware. I get it that it is time to renew.

My primary use case is virtualization and data storage.

SimpliVity helps us to manage and has made deduplication work really well.

An area for improvement would be the flexibility of server configuration.

I've been using this solution for around five months.

SimpliVity works well, we have no problems with its stability.

This product is easy to scale, but it's not cheap to do so.

The technical support team responds very quickly.

The initial setup was simple - we had two nodes connected to each other with direct connection to the ports, and that was all.

I implemented this solution myself.

Full bundle licenses are available on a three-yearly basis with no additional costs.

Plan your deployment, and then implementation will be easy. I would give this solution a score of nine out of ten.

We implemented SimpliVity last year to attend to two client projects. Since the pandemic, we chose this solution to improve the VDI, the virtual desktop for staff.

It's a good solution because they implement the PCX cards differently to improve speed. SimpliVity worked well in supporting the implementation of VDI.

We've been using this solution since last year.

Dell EMC puts the direct application in the store, like MySQL or Oracle databases. The equipment is all-flash. 

We had minor problems with the initial setup but it was with our internal infrastructure. 

We also tried VMware, but HPE Simplivity was a better soluiton.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The product's installation process could be made easier.

I have been working with this solution for two to three years.

This is a stable solution.

This product doesn't scale - it's for small environments with two or three nodes, no more.

Tech support is ok.

Installation doesn't take a long time, one or two days. Deployment and maintenance can be done by one person.

The cost of this product is high, so some customers may be better off building their own system or buying their own servers and set of devices.

This solution is best for companies just starting out or who are working with a small environment and are looking for a small infrastructure. Those intending to install SimpliVity should have vCenter integrated somewhere beforehand. I would give this solution a score of eight out of ten.