We performed a comparison between HPE SimpliVity and Lenovo ThinkAgile VX 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."The backup is readily available for use, and the restoration process is easy."
"It enables us to provide more solution options for our clients, with the reassurance that, when implemented, they will be efficient and stable."
"The license price is one of the cheapest in the market."
"StarWind has provided us with a top-notch, well-supported, robust vSAN offering when other vendors have moved to hyper-converged solutions that are outside of our average clients' reach from a financial and resource perspective."
"Using our own choice of HW allowed us to price our service to answer our customers' needs."
"It includes every feature that a traditional SAN offers and so much more."
"The main benefit is that StarWind is almost maintenance-free."
"It also provides a high degree of mobility, as the virtual SAN can be moved relatively painlessly between on-site devices and the cloud."
"The access, high availability, and interface are the most valuable and important for us. There is one interface for the whole product, which is very important because you have a single pane to view all the infrastructure of a customer. You can improve your data recovery plan or DRP, or you can make a special emergency plan if a disk has any problem."
"Software upgrades and scalability can be done during normal business hours with no downtime."
"SimpliVity's console is useful."
"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."
"The compression and deduplication features are most valuable because they allow us to have a small footprint for storage. It is a very stable product, and we are also able to get all that we need in terms of reporting."
"The performance is good. It's stable and easy to operate."
"The scalability is its most valuable feature. It's also able to do stretch clustering."
"It 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."
"Installation is straightforward because it's a vSAN. It only took one or two days."
"The VX machines are scalable."
"Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series' deployment is easy. We are a tier-one platinum partner who is into multiple implementations."
"We find the setup quite straightforward and very easy."
"High availability for direct attached hardware drives could be useful for increasing the performance of a storage appliance."
"Besides not being able to use any filesystem, I do not have any additional cons."
"Currently, the StarWind management console is a bit clunky to navigate and isn't the most user-intuitive interface."
"If there are domain controllers inside the cluster, there needs to be some sort of logic allowing them to boot independently so all the rest of the domain clients can gain the authority they need to come online."
"It is difficult to control all of the hardware components."
"StarWind Virtual SAN could benefit from better integration with other tools and technologies, such as backup and disaster recovery solutions."
"In all areas the product could be made faster."
"The GUI deserves a little love."
"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."
"In terms of what I would define as a perfect solution, I am looking for one that is easy to manage, has a real user-friendly interface, and something that is not too complex."
"Integration with external solutions outside the HPE posed challenges."
"I have some worries about the support after the acquisition. The support was better before HPE acquired SimpliVity."
"It would be better if we could deploy a hybrid cloud integrated to SimpliVity."
"The installation process could be simplified. It's a bit technical for non-IT users."
"The solution's price could be lower, but it holds good value for the money. The VMware licensing costs have skyrocketed since Broadcom's takeover."
"Upgrading can be complicated."
"With the VX machines, the clients often confuse the hardware itself with the services and resources. VMs are configured according to resources - memory, hard disk capacity, and network. These resources, including memory and processor, are actually shared on the VX Series. So, if the server's processor is underpowered or unreliable for the VMs, many of the VMs will encounter issues. Ideally, the physical server configuration should align more closely with the needs of the virtual servers."
"Support could be better."
"The user management could be a bit better. It's something they could improve upon in future releases."
"Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series needs to improve its stability. Its resolution should be faster."
HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 151 reviews while Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series is ranked 15th in HCI with 4 reviews. HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.6, while Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series 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 Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series writes "simplifies management for clients familiar with VMware, and offers a user-friendly management and configuration experience". HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and Scale Computing HC3, whereas Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series is most compared with VxRail, Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series, HPE Alletra dHCI and VMware vSAN. See our HPE SimpliVity vs. Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series report.
See our list of best HCI vendors.
We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
