Hyper-Converged (HCI) » SimpliVity Reviews » Version 3.5.2 (Dell 5400) » Review

SimpliVity Review
It can present itself as NFS SAN to existing compute.

What is most valuable?

Backups
Recovery
VMware VirtualCenter integration
DR
Being able to present the solution as NFS SAN to existing compute

How has it helped my organization?

Backups are all automatic and admins do not have to worry if the production VMs are being backed up. Easy backup policy with no LUN administration is also one less task to worry about. DR and DR replication are no longer an issue; no longer have to seed a SAN locally and ship it out to the DR site.

What needs improvement?

I like how VMware vSAN has their ready node pre-configured for certain workload and application types.

The many models and EOL on certain areas on their site are a bit confusing. Allow customers to try and deploy the units themselves and have support follow up later to validate the deployments.

Invest more on sales and marketing as they have a great product.

Using the cheap 7200 RPM disks on certain models just drags the product down when first impression counts the most.

Make sure the customer fully understands the CPU and memory overhead of each hosts.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used it for six months in production with tier 1 servers.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

We encountered deployment issues, as it is was not as smooth as I planned, but things was corrected.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We encountered stability issues, we had the wrong model for our environment. Once we got the correct model, everything was very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

How is customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Customer service is 9/10.

Technical Support:

Technical support is 9/10.

Which solutions did we use previously?

I previously used DataCore SANSymphony, Nimble and from my last company, it was vSAN 6.0 and 3PAR SAN. Our Datacore SAN that we migrated off of lacks a lot of features and was built on very cheap hardware.

SimpliVity meets all of our requirements and also address other future requirements that were not in the scope of the primary storage project.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup was complex, as they would not let the customer try to deploy the configurations of the units.

What about the implementation team?

Implementation was mostly in-house, but leverage SimpliVity support for remote deployment and configurations.

What was our ROI?

Overall hardware cost savings compared to traditional fiber SAN.
Reduce SME of SAN admins.
Reduce SME of backup admins.
Reduce third-party backup.
Reduce datacenter footprint and complexity.
DR software was an added bonus.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Look at the bigger picture on your requirements as this solution can address the complete stack for most company's needs. Licensing is simple but be aware that the OmniView feature and RapidDR software is not free. You should use VMware enterprise plus licenses but can get away with standard edition licenses.