HPE SimpliVity Reviews

The main use cases for this solution are consolidation and virtualization.

The main way the solution improves an organization is it simplifies daily use, and it cuts costs for the customer, because they often come from a silo-based storage and computer environment. That equals a lot more components, and you have to be more knowledgeable to be able to administer a traditional storage and computer-based solution. With SimpliVity, you have a hyper-converged infrastructure, which means everything is server-based and storage is software-based.

The most valuable feature is the ease of use and the storage virtualization layer, together with the built-in backups. That's what makes SimpliVity really useful, and how you can replicate data between different sites without paying an extra license for that feature. All the features are built into the product.

I would like more extensive deployment orchestration where the vCenter is deployed initially without being a separate thing. I feel that the deployment process of the vCenter should be included in the initial deployment to make it easier. Also, there are some issues when it comes to VMware's attaching and upgrades because HPE doesn't support all versions of VMware, and it can take some time before they have tested the latest versions. 

So the lifecycle management can be improved, and also the initial deployment to include vCenter.

I've been working with SimpliVity ever since HPE acquired the company.

I think the solution is very stable.

The scalability of the solution is very good. It's quite scalable, but one problem with all HCI solutions is that maybe the customer is just growing on storage and not on compute or memory. Then you have to add more nodes although you don't need more compute or memory. But with SimpliVity, you can actually upgrade your storage in the nodes, so you can go from a medium-sized SimpliVity node to a large or an extra-large. In that case, you don't have to buy more nodes, because more nodes requires more VMware licenses, and that's a big cost for a customer.

I've had a good experience so far with the technical support. There can be days where you don't feel you get support, but mostly it works fine.

The initial setup for the solution is more complex than setting up hyper-converged VxRail or vSAN solution in VMware. Dell VxRail is built on VMware technology; the software-based storage is built in VMware, so VxRail is really VMware on Dell hardware. What I feel is simpler with VxRail is setting it up, but also the life-cycle management, upgrades, and things like that.

But SimpliVity has been improved over the years, and they also released a new version on SimpliVity now in December. They have really simplified both the upgrades and the installation. I wouldn't say it's very complex if you know what you're doing, but that's almost always the thing. If you've never done it, of course it could be complicated, but one big problem is that you always need to have a pre-deployed vCenter to set up a SimpliVity solution.

I do everything for the implementation myself, because I'm a certified SimpliVity consultant.

Return on investment could be quite good if you look at the five-year investment compared to other HCI solutions, because other HCI solutions don't include backup built in. If you take into account that you can consolidate even your backup solution, you have a solid TCO case. Backup is a quite big part of the cost of a data center, and if you can have that built in without any extra costs. SimpliVity backups are very efficient. Because you don't store backup, you don't need extra capacity in the same way as in a traditional backup solution. But if you can't include the backups in SimpliVity, it's much harder to motivate the solution.

One big advantage with SimpliVity is that you don't need the higher license cost or VMware to put together a simple SimpliVity solution. You can run it as VMware essentials plus licensing. For the small customers, that's really quite affordable. But on top of that, you pay for SimpliVity licensing, so depending on how large your solution is, that could be quite a big part of the solution when it comes to cost.

You can start very small. You can have one node as the smallest, but the recommendation is to have at least two nodes to get some redundancy when it comes to upgrades and things like that.

There are certain things to take into consideration regarding whether to buy SimpliVity: that everything is compressed and deducted, and not every application is deductible or compressible, which could lead to you not getting the efficiency you first wanted.

One thing that separates SimpliVity from VxRail is the InfoSight portal. That's a cloud-based management tool, which you hook up to your SimpliVity solution, and this sends telemetry data to InfoSight. You can use your portal to maintain your solution and to monitor it for growth. And you also have the SimpliVity support team. They get the support data all the time, so if you have a problem with your solution and you are unaware of it yourself, HPE SimpliVity team will contact you and tell you that you have a problem.

I'd rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We are a large enterprise and are partners of HPE. We use the solution for hyperconverged simple usage scenarios.

HPE SimpliVity is simple, it's very friendly.  Our customers like to use this product.

The solution could have an optimization site and provide assistance at that site. HPE SimpliVity would also benefit if it installed bigger products like having a Blade solution.

I have been using SimpliVity for over five years.

HPE SimpliVity is stable enough for our business. We never have a problem.

The solution is scalable if you size the requirement of your client at the first stage, otherwise scalability is difficult.

SimpliVity is really easy to setup.

The pricing of HPE SimpliVity is comparable with other solutions so the price is good.

For hyperconverged, HPE SimpliVity is the right choice. 

I would rate this solution a 9 out of 10.

I use HPE SimpliVity for the virtual infrastructure of my servers.

The solution has integrated backup features that are useful.

There are some small changes that can be made to the interface to improve it but it typically works well.

I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately one year.

The solution is highly stable. I'm using the cluster deployment, site A and site B as if it was only one site and it is very good for zero downtime.

The solution is scalable, I only need to add new nodes to expand.

The support from HPE is very good, they are helpful.

HPE SimpliVity is easy to implement.

My advice to others wanting to use HPE SimpliVity is for them to try it out. It's really good if you compare it with different solutions. I would suggest trying other solutions to see which one suits their business better. In this case, HPE SimpliVity brought a lot of things to the table, such as the backup is already integrated with this solution, which is very helpful. There are a lot of advantages to HPE SimpliVity.

I rate HPE SimpliVity a nine out of ten.

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.

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.

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.