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.
"StarWind vSAN has a lot of great features and is a perfect solution for mirroring internal disks and flash between servers."
"User friendly interface and straight forward implementation."
"The control panel is nice. It gives you a lot of good feedback as to the status and health of the VSAN."
"The ability to choose our own hardware and our own vendors for this was hugely beneficial, as we had pre-existing relationships with vendors we wanted to maintain."
"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."
"The StarWind products have enabled our organization to modernize stations where larger and more expensive equipment was not an option."
"StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere is a software-defined storage solution that has reduced administration time for storage. It's pretty straightforward to install and setup it and so far it has been robust and worked as advertised from StarWind."
"The StarWind tech support is extremely helpful, especially during the initial setup."
"The ease of managing this system."
"The built-in backup and quick restore are good features."
"Stability is pretty good. We have no complaints as it has been running seamlessly with no downtime."
"The storage efficiency is valuable."
"The backup feature is valuable, and replication is also valuable. It is very quick and easy to use."
"I like SimpliVity because it can be adapted for small clients or the biggest ones. It's flexible."
"What I like about the solution, is that SimpliVity is easy to deploy and maintain. It's really performing very well. The ratio of price to performance is really good."
"It has reduced my data center activities."
"Being able to perform upgrades and check the system through the VxRail Manager has been very helpful."
"Initial setup is straightforward, as everything is pre-installed."
"Our clients value being able to upgrade with one click or a few clicks."
"It's very easy to upgrade."
"VxRail's integration with VMware environments is very good. Our VxRail is built on VMware, and the integration is seamless. We haven't faced any challenges. We can migrate VMs between servers in real-time and replicate them to our DR site without any problems."
"It has a valuable deduplication feature."
"The most valuable feature is the fact that the storage is integrated with the VxRail so I don't have to go in between systems when I have to monitor my storage."
"The most valuable feature for me in this latest release has been the ability to add a compute or storage node. In the previous release, if I wanted to add only the compute mode, I need to buy a full node, including both compute and storage. That is no longer the case; I can upgrade whatever I want one based on my demand."
"It would be great if it provided thin provisioned virtual disks."
"High availability for direct attached hardware drives could be useful for increasing the performance of a storage appliance."
"In the next release, they could make some graphs of the real-time loading, speed of storage, and interfaces. Of course, these can be viewed in other places. But, in the event of a malfunction or troubleshooting, this would be convenient."
"If there was one feature I would like to see it would be a built-in subsystem for managing UPS backups shutdown procedures providing a way to initiate VM shutdown on all host servers, shut down the host servers, then put the fault-tolerant mirroring in standby, and finally shut down the StarWind SANs."
"In all areas the product could be made faster."
"This product could be improved with the inclusion of new health check procedures."
"I would like to see an extensive set of cmdlets that could allow for easier automation as well as status management."
"With data verification, I would like to know how does the solution perform validation of data being synced between two VSANs."
"The solution could have an optimization site."
"I would love to see a more proactive approach to implementing patches and reaching out to customers with new initiatives."
"The backup and recovery process needs to be faster. Right now, it's a bit slow."
"The upgrades need improvement."
"I have some worries about the support after the acquisition. The support was better before HPE acquired SimpliVity."
"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."
"The initial setup was a little complex because we were in the first version, fresh releases."
"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 implementation of a VxRail, it's straightforward, but the ongoing utilization, and integration, are where it can start to become difficult if you're not used to doing it."
"It needs faster deployment of security patches."
"There are still some features which aren't built into Cisco, like virtualized networking, that use its applications. However, these can be purchased through another product as an additional licensing cost to us."
"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."
"I would like to see integration with vCenter if possible."
"The product could support and have more compliance with other vendors."
"The cost is quite high. It's a very expensive solution to run."
"While VxRail offers compatibility with AMD processors, its capabilities in this area could benefit from further development."
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