We performed a comparison between HPE SimpliVity and VxRail based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, VxRail seems to be the superior solution. Our reviewers found HPE SimpliVity to be more difficult to deploy and more expensive to purchase than VxRail.
"Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."
"Virtual SAN runs on iSCSI, which is free and easy to configure. It's easy to manage from StarWind's GUI console, and it only required a few extra switch ports."
"In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems."
"As the client had acquired another company some distance away, they were concerned about having a single SAN in one location or the other. StarWind vSAN allowed us to keep a copy of the data local to each site without asking the client to pay for two SANs in addition to the two new servers they needed."
"StarWind Virtual SAN offers high availability and data resilience features to prevent data loss if hardware fails."
"The management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly."
"The ease of reaching the support team and their promptness for support is great."
"The management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard."
"We can scale the solution easily."
"It is simple and easy to use."
"Disaster Recovery (DR) with very minimal effort."
"The initial setup was very easy as I had the SimpliVity engineers work with our managed services."
"Up scaling is very possible, and at any time it is scalable."
"We really enjoy the virtualization that the solution offers."
"Its performance is quite good, and it is also easy to use. One of the biggest benefits is the included backup solution."
"Our customers get a lot more horsepower for a lot less management."
"I like that there is a dependency on the storage controller."
"We enjoy the ease of management since all of the resources are located on one box — one single point of support."
"It is very powerful. We find that to be the most valuable aspect. The movement of devices between nodes is very easy."
"VxRail does not require fiber switches or external storage. It's easy to replace and manage. It's centralized management through VxRail Manager."
"The technical support is very helpful and answers questions whenever we have issues with the product."
"The most valuable feature is that it is VMware-embedded. VxRail HCI is on VMware, and we can use VMware vCenter and vSphere. Our infrastructure consists of servers and VMware, and by using VxRail, our experience and familiarity have not changed because VxRail HCI is on VMware."
"VxRail's feature that we found most valuable was its really good performance. That was one of VxRail's advantages."
"like VxRail because it's fully integrated. The other hyperconverged solutions are also well integrated. They are all highly similar to each other in that regard. But we prefer VxRail for its physical integrations or lifecycle management. It also has vCenter, which integrates the hardware lifecycle management."
"The documentation could be a little more concise, but, for the most part, it just works."
"I'd love to see more clarification for us folks who are smart enough to do some damage yet not smart enough to use CLI."
"There is no IPv6 support. That is our only issue at this time."
"Sometimes documentation on their site can be out of date."
"It would be nice to see a new UI for the windows client, as it is not the easiest to find settings."
"The StarWind Management Console is available only for Microsoft Windows/Windows Server, and should also be available for Linux and macOS, as it would reduce implementation costs."
"I would love to see more vendor selection to be available for the HCA/vSAN appliances."
"StarWind Virtual SAN could benefit from better integration with other tools and technologies, such as backup and disaster recovery solutions."
"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."
"There may be issues around scaling."
"The initial setup was complex because it was a new solution."
"Our customers are always looking or a discount on the product."
"The solution could have an optimization site."
"There is room for improvement in that there is a need for so many Federation nodes. It would help if they increased that capacity so that we didn't have to have so much hardware in our secondary site."
"The backup and recovery process needs to be faster. Right now, it's a bit slow."
"We have had some failures out-of-the-box. We have had some failures with the OmniStack module. One thing that we didn't fully understand was how much of the internal memory was used up by the OmniStack piece, which basically makes up SimpliVity."
"The version upgrade process should be simplified."
"When it comes to maintenance, it takes 16 hours to upgrade a 12 node VxRail plus. This could be improved in the system."
"This solution needs to have the capability where even older versions of hardware can be seamlessly utilized and additional expansion becomes so much easier."
"It would be nice if the update process was shortened and that patching would be simpler."
"I would like to see VxRail add duplication features to its hybrid solution."
"Its price needs to be improved. It is very expensive. NSX should be licensed together. It will make the network virtualization layer more usable. It would be better if they come together in a bundle, not separately."
"The price should come down a little bit. It has become better than it was at the beginning. There was a really big price difference between a hyper-converged infrastructure and the classic servers and storage. The gap is lessening, however, it's still there."
"If they can provide deduplication compression through the traditional hard drives, as Cisco does in the HyperFlex system, it will be very cost-effective, especially when it comes to archiving workload. VxRail doesn't allow the mixing of old flash clusters and hyper clusters. When I'm starting with an old flash cluster and it comes to archiving workload, I will also need to attend the new cluster. So, I either manage two different clusters, or I pay and upload my work with the archiving mobile hard drive, which is not cost-effective at all. The main key is to allow mixing between two types of clustering, like Nutanix, or allow deduplication of completion over the period of shared hard drive on SAV. It will be much better."
HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 151 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 120 reviews. HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.6, while VxRail is rated 8.6. 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 VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI, Dell PowerFlex and Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Hyper Converged and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. See our HPE SimpliVity vs. VxRail report.
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Hi, Refer to your questions if you are a COO of a small company then both solutions would be costly as a minimum of 3 nodes solution is required. Both are good at their places. Let's say, VxRail is deeply engineered with VMware and they have strong integration and performance testing results. in terms of expansion, federation, compression/deduplication, etc., is much more improved. Whereas HPE SimpliVity used its own storage virtualization software and backup software. Whereas in VxRail you can also use any backup software. Apart from the discussion, my suggestion would be to go with simple X86 Servers(any OEM) with Sangfor( they have built-in administrative software (i.e. VCenter), built-in backup (no need to buy any other software), multi-hypervisor support, cost-effective even if you plan to provide SaaS service you can easily do it from your company immediately. They also provide vNGFW, vADC, vIAM, etc. It is an end-to-end HCI Solution with Security support included. Prices are very reasonable(I don't know your region). Thanks