HPE SimpliVity Reviews

Our clients' primary use for HPE SimpliVity has been for general infrastructure, not for any one specific thing. This includes different uses - for the server, SQL, the internal information server, different servers, etc.

The backup solution is a good functionality that the client is very happy with.

In terms of HPE SimpliVity's most valuable features, its backup integration is a good thing. Its performance is very good as is the whole integration.

In terms of what should be improved, I think that the local support in Argentina is not good. This is a new technology and HPE doesn't have a lot of technology specialists here in Argentina. It's very hard to find the specialist here.

Additionally, the price must be better. Here in Argentina, Dell is very competitive. If the client doesn't understand the functionality that SimpliVity has, he will chose by price, and Dell is very, very competitive here in Argentina.

Lastly, Stretched Cluster is a new functionality and is something that the client needs.

We have been using HPE SimpliVity for two to three years.

The stability is very good. Stability is not a problem.

Our clients are small and medium-sized businesses, so we implement small infrastructures - three nodes to five nodes.

Our clients are very happy with this solution. I don't know if they will buy more SimpliVity though.

Here in Argentina tech support is very hard to find. But, if we scale our problem with external support in, say, the United States or another country, it's good. Here in Argentina, though, it's not good.

Initial setup is very simple. It takes one or two days.

Dell is a competitor, as is Nutanix.

Dell is a good solution and is cheaper than HPE, but their support is bad here in Argentina too. We've found that the client likes HPE because he knows it.

For now Nutanix is still very small here in Argentina.

We recommend our clients use SimpliVity.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give HPE SimpliVity a nine.

It is a hyperconverged system with all the benefits that can lead to.

It was an important step to add this product to our portfolio because it meets our customers needs and demands.

The graphical interface and reports need to be improved compared to other brands.

We have been using SimpliVity OmniCube for 2.5 years: 1 in internal evaluation and 1.5 in reselling and supporting it for our customers.

We have a lot of implementations and until now, we never found any issue due to the product itself. Only in one situation we encountered some sort of problem not caused by the OmniCube subsystem. It was due to Dell hardware.

We have absolutely not had any issues with scalability. A customer just has to buy another box and plug it into the system if they need more logical space. Or, if they need more memory or cores, just attach a non-SimpliVity system.

We rate technical support 4.5/5 based on their professionalism and time of resolution.

We evaluated different solutions, but SimpliVity was the best choice in performance and scalability.

It takes just 20 minutes to have an entire SimpliVity federation to be operative in a production area. There is nothing simpler.

Compared to other brands with the same functional levels and structure, SimpliVity has lower implementation and licensing costs regarding a VMware environment infrastructure, for example.

We even evaluated software solutions such as DataCore, which we support and manage as well. But, software-based solutions cannot be on the same level as a 3.0 hyperconverged system.

We advise everybody to invest in evaluating the product directly. For example, we can do a PoC where we implement SimpliVity in an existing environment without interruption of customer services as a test for a couple of weeks. Then the customer is free to decide.

The built-in backup data protection is the most valuable feature.

We streamlined our production servers in the way of space management, better redundancy, and efficiency.

• Back-end training for sysadmins

I have used it for one year.

Some things were not fully set up during deployment by their engineers.

We have not encountered any stability issues at all.

I have not scaled yet.

Customer service is good; not the best, but it's good.

Technical support is very good.

We previously used a centralized VMware solution; not enough resources and internal support was lacking. We needed more control over our environment.

Initial setup was both straightforward and a little complex. I think they can come up with a better way to automate some of the process for the end user sysadmin.

Implementation was through Simplivity's team.

Still working on ROI.

Depending on the vendor, Simplivity will try to work with you on the pricing.

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated Nutanix and VMware centralized solutions through our institution.

I highly recommend Simplivity to fill any hyper-converged needs.

We implemented SimpliVity last year to attend to two client projects. Since the pandemic, we chose this solution to improve the VDI, the virtual desktop for staff.

It's a good solution because they implement the PCX cards differently to improve speed. SimpliVity worked well in supporting the implementation of VDI.

We've been using this solution since last year.

Dell EMC puts the direct application in the store, like MySQL or Oracle databases. The equipment is all-flash. 

We had minor problems with the initial setup but it was with our internal infrastructure. 

We also tried VMware, but HPE Simplivity was a better soluiton.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We are in a stretched cluster environment. So far, it has been really good.

We can get backups faster. We have a smaller footprint for hardware, which takes up less space. So, we use less electricity and floor space.

The storage deduplication, as far as the storage space, is the most valuable feature, then the backups.

It has a smaller footprint. We can restore faster. Things run faster and smoother.

We have only been using it for a little less than a year. So far, it has been good. We haven't had any issues.

Scalability sounds easy, just add nodes. We haven't had to do that yet, since we just started.

The technical support is good. We are in contact with HPE. It seems like anytime that we have problems people are there to help us. 

We went from our old technology to the new technology. So far, it has helped us with backups to save us money from the old technologies.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We had help with them doing it.

We used a reseller for the deployment, and our experience with them was good. We have had them for a long time.

I have not seen ROI.

We also looked at Nutanix.

We chose HPE because of the cost savings. With the backup and restore, we didn't have to have a third-party backup solution for it, instead we could use SimpliVity.

Do your research. We talked with many people about it. Do what is right for your environment.

We are hosting virtual machines on it, and it is performing quite well.

We used to have a lot more units reserved in the rack for virtual machine hosting. Now it is only two units per site.

Another improvement of course is the backup, the disaster recovery functionality, how it behaves, how fast the backups are done. And the reduction of data.

It's very simple to manage. It has reduced the footprint in the datacenters quite a lot.

The stability is also okay.

It scales quite nicely. We are not very big so I don't know if it really scales up that big. But for a small to medium company, I would say it is much better, for example, than the competition. For us, it is the right size. I think it was the right choice.

I can say that the support was better when it was a separate company, when it was SimpliVity. But, now with HPE it has not been quite as good. But that is normal. HPE is a big company. Things are a little bit, I would say, more "official" than the person-to-person communication that startups have. But that is natural.

The support might take a little bit more time, but we are a non-standard support case because we are actually using the HPE software on a non-HPE hardware. 

We have this pre-HPE hardware. We use it on Dell, and Cisco, and that probably can create more confusion for HPE support. So, I'm really hoping that HPE will come up with some on-premise replacement so that we can actually switch to HPE units, so that HPE can have full support on the system.

We were using traditional server and storage based. We switched to SimpliVity because it was looking promising. It was simple. It reduced hardware presence in the datacenter. It increased backup speeds. The simplicity of the SimpliVity.

It was quite straightforward. We didn't see big problems. It was quite easy. It's easy to manage. It was easy to install also.

The other hyper-converged products, they were not that complete.

In terms of the most important criteria when selecting a vendor, that really depends on the vendor. But of course trustworthiness. And it usually comes down to product rather than partner. But, of course partners, and vendors themselves, are also important.

I think it's really complex to focus on a few things. If you bring in something new we usually like to to see what the end product can actually do. But of course the support on top of that is also important. If you have a good product but nobody can install it or maintain it or give support, then it would also be bad.

I've always said to everybody that SimpliVity is one of the best hyper-converged solutions. But, again, it really depends on the business case. Everybody has to evaluate it for themselves, because businesses are different. I've known that hybrid is the thing for years because that's why we bet on that, we had to have datacenters onsite, and then we can put something in the cloud. But, there are companies that could be only in the cloud, that need to be on-premise only. It really depends on the company.

Our customer has a limited IT staff, so they were looking at something that will:

• Be a little more centralized
• Be easier for them to manage
• Give them the functionality that their customers really need
•  

We have a lot of customers who are looking at the whole hyper-converged infrastructure. Comparing this solution to some of the other competitors that we've been going up against, they like the ease of use, the centralized management, and big cost-savings. We had one SimpliVity deal so far, but that's what everybody from the customer standpoint really liked about it. They just received the product and they were just setting it up. Hypothetically, it's going to solve a lot of business problems that they were running up against.

That's a good question and I don't really have a good answer for that right now. I'm still learning about the product as a whole and I really want to see, once it's stood up in our customer environment, how it performs. I will then probably have some better ideas once our engineers go through it and talk with the customers as to what improvements there could be.

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. I want something that is the best bang for the buck, especially when we're trying to keep HPE onboard. There are all the competitors that are always trying to come in and say, "We can bring in our product for you, and you'll spend less, ours is easier to use." We want HPE to do whatever they can do to improve, in order to make it a better customer experience.

From what I've seen, it looks like it's a really stable solution. This is our first one that we're implementing. I believe it's going to do everything we want it to do. As far as how it will be in the real world, we will have wait and see.

No customers have tried to scale yet.

Technical support will be involved in the implementation, but that's it for right now. It's in process right now, so I would rate their support as "so far, so good." We'll see when it has all been completed.

We were partnered with SimpliVity before they were bought by HPE, but we never really had any deals as far as HPE goes.

We've sold a lot of blades and 3PAP. We've had some other solutions, like ExaGrid, that tries to compete with HPE. We've done a couple of deals for them. Usually, we try to promote the HPE infrastructure whenever we can, so this product is going to help out with that.

I really can't comment on the setup right now, because I was not involved in that. I don't want to say one way or another.

My advice would be to actually listen to the whole SimpliVity story. Really compare apples to apples, when a lot of manufacturers will bring up their own selling points, which are geared towards their product

It looks like a good thing in the initial presentation. In the long run, it may not answer all of your business needs or it might be way more expensive. Really go through the story and see everything that SimpliVity has to offer.

When selecting a vendor, the first thing I look for is if they stand behind your product. I want to know that when the customer has issues or problems arise, support will be there right away.

Pricing is always good to have, but more importantly, check for a quality product that has been researched, has been proven in the market, or is following business trends.

The rapid backup and restore functionality improved our efficiency in the development area.

We no have the ability to restore a production environment to multiple development environments with a few clicks in a very short time. With 6 development teams working on different modules on the same system, this helps a lot in their agile approach.

One thing that might be a deal killer is the additional VM Ware licenses. It is important to keep this in mind, especially when moving over from free hypervisor like Hyper-V.

This would be applicable if users migrate from a free Hypervisor like Hyper-V. With Simplivity not yet supporting these, one has to procure the VMWare licenses. As this cost is in US$, it can become very pricey, especially for clients in South Africa!

So again, it is just something people need to be aware of if they are not already using VMWare.

18 months.

None.

The only issue we once had (it took us and then engineers a while to figure out) was a heating/airflow problem. This was self inflicted after upgrading the cooling system.

None. We started with two, got another one, and then another three. Deployment and expansion was a breeze.

Excellent. Local sales team always available and involved.

Also excellent. Always helpful and available during upgrades or maintenance windows.

Had a traditional Server/SAN setup. Upgrading that turned out to be more expensive than moving over to the new solution.

Lots of work, but straightforward. We basically rebuild all our VM's (from Hyper-V to VMWare).

We made use of the local team. Very skilled!

One must make sure that you understand all the functionality that comes with the solution, and then try to establish the cost of not having these in place!

Yes. Looked at expanding the old solution, and also looked at Nutanix.

Apart from being a great product supported by a very skilled and friendly team, it is very sexy, and will give you lots of bragging rights!