We performed a comparison between HPE SimpliVity and Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN) offers a significant breadth of features."
"StarWind vSAN has a lot of great features and is a perfect solution for mirroring internal disks and flash between servers."
"The install itself is easy as pie."
"The ability to run the software virtually on every virtualization platform and the ability to eliminate all storage vendor locking are the most valuable features."
"The primary purpose of this software is to create a virtual SAN between local storage on Hyper-V hosts. I find this feature most valuable since it accomplishes this quite well."
"The performance of the solution is accurate and concise."
"The most valuable feature is the reliable storage replication, which enables me to create a robust infrastructure to run our business."
"We are running Hyper-V on twin servers in failover, and being able to manage servers from anywhere I need to, virtually, has been a game changer."
"The most valuable feature for us is its integration, as it provides an entire solution in a single box."
"The rate of compression for the data in SimpliVity is the most valuable feature."
"We really enjoy the virtualization that the solution offers."
"The HPE SimpliVity disc compression is very valuable."
"Dedupe, compression, and replication of primary and secondary data, locally and remotely."
"I have found backup and replication to be useful. We have a 10 megabit line between the data center and our main site. The backup and replication are very good. Additionally, the solution runs on VMware which is a benefit."
"The pricing of the solution is very good."
"The replication from the different centers (the main to the secondary) has been very great. It is good value for us."
"The most valuable features of the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series are the ease of use and simple configuration."
"The initial setup is simple. We were able to deliver the hyper-convergence solution in a very good time."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that the product's deployment phase is pretty easy."
"I would like to see more monitoring and alert tools."
"Perhaps the developer should refine the product management through PowerShell."
"StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc. It would be useful if StarWind could incorporate the actual physical drive management inside of the solution, similar to Storage Spaces Direct."
"Performance when in storage-separate configuration needs to be improved."
"The number of different ways you can set it up can make it a little daunting."
"It should reclaim white spaces after big files are deleted."
"It is difficult to control all of the hardware components."
"When StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere nodes go offline unexpectedly, the nodes have to re-sync disks fully which takes a long time. We had a power failure and when both nodes came online, VMware vSphere didn't see StarWind disks before I manually re-scanned them form ESXi administration console even though it should happen automatically"
"The technical support is weak. It is a layered product. It has a software solution on top of the SimpliVity solution, which is built on top of the hardware of the HPE DL380s. When we call for a problem that we know is related to the DL380, we get a SimpliVity guy trying to solve a SimpliVity problem. If it is not a SimpliVity problem, it's a hardware problem. So, it takes awhile for them to figure out which part of the organization should really be helping us."
"An area for improvement would be the flexibility of server configuration."
"I would like to see it be a truly hybrid-cloud solution where I could take my on-prem SimpliVity environment and have replication to a cloud install."
"We would like to have more security with the solution."
"The fact that it is tied to a certain hardware platform would probably be the bigger negative versus just being able to buy something off the shelf."
"I have some worries about the support after the acquisition. The support was better before HPE acquired SimpliVity."
"It's a very complex installation. It's gotten easier, however, it's far from a double click on a link and a self-upgrade scenario. There's still an awful lot of magic that goes down to doing upgrades."
"The biggest feature, which should be included, is some method to handle archival backup or cloud-based backup. Where SimpliVIty typically falls down with their data structure is: The longer a backup is kept, the more space it ends up inevitably using. When you get into things that you have to keep for five or seven years for legal requirements or regulatory compliance, then you start taking up a lot of space with these old dead backups that you are probably never going to use again. Being able to offload those to a separate platform or cloud storage location would be ideal."
"Here in Nigeria, the only challenge that we have, which I think is also experienced globally is the delay in bringing in the spare parts. This is a challenge facing our country, such as the Forex market. However, this is beyond the control of Lenovo themselves."
"Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series could improve by having better integration with the solutions from VMware and vCenter"
"There is a delay in the availability of similar versions of firmware from both the products, which are VMware and Nutanix for Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series, due to the delayed releases from both products, maybe by a quarter or so."
HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 151 reviews while Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series is ranked 18th in HCI with 3 reviews. HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.6, while Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of HPE SimpliVity writes "Provides a unified management interface that allows administrators to manage all aspects of the infrastructure". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series writes "With an easy deployment phase, the tool offers good scalability and stability". HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and Scale Computing HC3, whereas Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series is most compared with Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node, Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, VxRail and HPE Alletra dHCI. See our HPE SimpliVity vs. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series report.
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