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.
"The installation of StarWind Virtual SAN was pretty easy, and the configuration was done in no time."
"I've been really impressed with it so far. I think it's pretty great, actually. It does exactly what we need it to do, and it does it well, so I would recommend it. Plus, the support has been very good."
"The management interface on the software is very simple. It is insanely simple compared to most SANs. The interface is also powerful when used to complete tasks that an IT administrator needs to complete."
"The most valuable feature is the managed service, which has been an important part of monitoring our critical infrastructure."
"It has reduced our overall maintenance and overhead by having to only maintain physical boxes for one cluster instead of having to manage physical boxes for two clusters."
"In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to leverage our server infrastructure more completely without the need to add more hardware."
"Ten gigabit Ethernet compatibility, support, ease of use, and management are some positive features."
"Our clients are very comfortable with the single management of the complete stack. The creation of VM systems is also very fast."
"Our customers get a lot more horsepower for a lot less management."
"Disaster Recovery (DR) with very minimal effort."
"Its ease of use is valuable. It is being used in a mining company. They wanted their working nodes to be seamless, and they wanted ease of use. That's why they opted for SimpliVity. They are running VMware virtual machines on it."
"The technical support is exceptionally good."
"The solution is user-friendly."
"The interface is very good and is very easy to navigate. You can find everything you need from one central place."
"It comes all in one box."
"VxRail can manage the whole cluster at the same time, so it's easy to expand. VxRail has more features vSAN ReadyNodes that make it easier to implement from scratch."
"Its ease of administration is extremely valuable. It allows me to make better use of my time for other tasks instead of maintaining systems through multiple administration consoles."
"It is very powerful. We find that to be the most valuable aspect. The movement of devices between nodes is very easy."
"VxRail alleviates the operational constraints within an organization."
"Depending on your architecture type, it's simple to manage and implement VxRail compared to other solutions. That's why most of our customers use it."
"Valuable features for us are the VDI, UCC, and HCI."
"One beneficial feature is that the solution can handle complex environments."
"The solution is stable and reliable. This is one of the main reasons why we purchased this solution."
"While it is possible to implement disk encryption in StarWind using Windows Bitlocker, such a solution can be a little tricky to manage."
"The interface of the management console of the StarWind Virtual SAN is complex, and it's difficult for the novice user to interact with the management having less knowledge or training in the product."
"I would like to see more advanced free versions."
"Performance when in storage-separate configuration needs to be improved."
"This product would benefit from having automated alerting functionality."
"The initial setup got a little confusing at a few points with differences between the VMware version in documentation vs the latest, etc."
"The main issue we ran into was the documentation. We attempted to set up the product in our test environment by ourselves and ran into several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us."
"StarWind currently has a Windows native application that it uses for management. There is not a web-based GUI at this time."
"They could have better-specialized support for more countries."
"SimpliVity has this thing where if a virtual machine is on the wrong node with two nodes, it will be optimized. However, if one of the nodes won't be optimized, then it will complain about that. It will give you a little warning to say the source is not optimized. Please move this to one of the other hosts. They should just add a little thing in SimpliVity to move all the VMs to the right host, because it is a pain to load balance across the three nodes when all these VMs are complaining and you have to move them to one."
"There is room for improvement in the operations area because the support for that server space is minimal."
"I would like them to add more connection capability, a hub and spoke model, to improve the number of connections that it can handle."
"Not a lean architecture in terms of anything."
"While it has been a while since HPE acquired SimpliVity, there is a lack of understanding/awareness about the product. In short, it took me time to actually make them understand they had a product named SimpliVity, which as you can imagine does not instill a great deal of confidence."
"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."
"An area for improvement would be the flexibility of server configuration."
"It could be improved by having more information on the integration portion of ACI."
"The version upgrade process should be simplified."
"if we're looking at costs, Nutanix will win because it allows flexibility in the type of hardware you can use."
"You have to buy a new server if you want to scale up."
"The agility of the support team to provide you with better solutions should be improved. VxRail also has to be improved in terms of simplicity. Adding a simple node seemed like quite a project."
"I would like it to tier to the cloud effectively, making sure that cold data can be pushed out to some sort of Bitbucket."
"What I did not like so much was the amount of VMware that you have to put in your system related to the VxRail."
"Technically speaking, the vCenter and the administration of the integration of the vCenter could be improved."
HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 151 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 119 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