HPE SimpliVity Reviews

• Scalability
• Ease of setup
• Reduced complexity
• Flexibility

We are resellers, so it allows us to sell our customers solutions that make their work easier. They can make a port more rapidly and fit a broader range of cloud data platforms.

I would like to see more storage options, such as hybrid storage options. We sell other products as well. We run across a lot of customers who are not quite ready to go to all-flash, while it's probably a better idea. Not having an all-flash option right now is probably a hindrance for us, because the customers just get turned off when they see that. Even though what HPE is selling is actually a better option, sometimes convincing customers of that, when they are only looking at the bottom line, is difficult.

So far, stability is great.

Scalability is very good.

We have not really used technical support. It is pretty self-explanatory.

We saw changes in the market and changes in the way applications are developed. The market is going away from what we think of as databases, and is moving toward cloud data applications.

The setup was very straightforward.

We have used HPE, Dell, EMC, and Cisco. Typically, it's the customers' preference. A lot of times we have customers who are very comfortable with their existing HPE equipment. Going forward, if we go to a customer who doesn't have an existing preference, then that is where we are going to start directing them because of the partnership cooperation. HPE shines right now when compared to the other options.

Compared to the protection offerings of the platforms, I think the competing native data protection just isn't there. SimpliVity really got that part nailed down. I would think that's probably an easy way to show the customer that it's the superior product.

In-line data-deduplication and data virtualization. DR Replication. Fast cloning, fast restores, and fast backups.

Our deploy times are greatly reduced, but what I love most is our ability to sync de-duped data across to our DR site quickly and efficiently. I hope I never need it, but I feel much better about our situation now that we have SimpliVity if we ever need to fail over to our DR site.

Ability to add storage incrementally would be nice.

3 months

Minor issues that were quickly resolved with support.

No.

Not yet.

Very good

Very good.

The initial setup was a bit complex. This was made easier with their deployment guide, and Professional Services group, who handled the deployment.

EMC VxRail

Backup and restore.

As a small IT shop we spend less time managing our VMware infrastructure which gives us more time to focus on the front end of our business.

Single file restore capabilities and ease.

18 months

NO -- went up fast and migrated quickly.

Very stable so far...

We added a fourth server with relative ease.

Technical support has been among the best we have dealt with.

Deduplication and backup and replication of Vm's.

Our RPO has gone from 8 hours to 3 hours and we can go back to 6 months of datasets.

Backup and replications automation.

6 months.

No deployment issues.

No stability issues.

No scalability issues.

Very good.

Very good.

Veeam and Dell Servers and Storage.

Very straightforward but their engineers are needed to install in our VMware environment.

Vendor and they were excellent.

2.5 years.

Yes. Dell, HP and EMC products. We also looked into Zerto and Recovery Point.

Make sure that you size the memory and CPU's to handle your entire environment.

A primary use case involves the length of deployment of the product, this year being three or four hours for the customers and two for a small company conducting sales with Veeam Backup, VMware, and Microsoft. It is not only for HPE.

I have a free project with SimpliVity deployment in the next three months. What can be improved is that in one or two of these projects, I need a cloud backup for the infrastructure and data.

As for the infrastructure of the product as it relates to customer size, it is not very good at this moment in Peru.

I need a solution for the cloud. In Peru, it's a three or four solution provider for cloud services.

As for the stability of HPE interface, it's a good brand.

I have three or four certified technicians to lend support.

The initial setup was simple. 

Our licensing costs are on a monthly basis. There are additional costs.

I would rate SimpliVity a ten out of ten. 

It is used for managing the infrastructure. It is combined with VMware software. We are using HPE SimpliVity Generation 10.

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.

They should optimize the administration stack because it is consuming too much memory. It ends up consuming 20% of memory. They have another product for this feature, but I would like to have this feature within HPE SimpliVity.

I have been using this solution for two years.

It is a very stable product.

It is scalable. Everybody in our organization is using this solution because internally, all our applications are running on it. We have around 50 users and 5 administrators.

We were using HPE BladeSystem.

We worked with a provider, and he installed it.

It is not expensive. We bought its license for two years. For support, we pay yearly.

I would recommend this solution. We plan to keep using it.

I would rate HPE SimpliVity an eight out of ten.

I'm a service provider. I install it for my customers. I typically implement it for telecoms.

Once you get the solution up and running, it is very good.

The solution is extremely stable.

The product offers good value for the amount you pay. It doesn't give you any issues once it's implemented.

The solution can scale very nicely.

The interface is very good and is very easy to navigate. You can find everything you need from one central place.

To install or to update it is more complicated than other solutions. 

They can automate a lot of things. We do a lot of things manually and this is somewhat unnecessary. For example, the installation of a plug-in, or VMware, and so on. If you can automate all these things, like Nutanix, you get a better result. It's very simple to install Nutanix. You click and wait. The whole implementation is pretty automatic. SimpliVity will be very, very good if it can automate many aspects of the deployment.

It would be ideal if they could include OpenView managers in one place with all the equipment.

We've been using the solution for two or three years.

While the implementation is difficult, once you get past that, it's an excellent solution. It's an extremely stable product and very reliable. We have no issues with it once it's up and running. It's not buggy or glitchy. It doesn't crash. It's great.

The solution is very, very scalable. If a company needs to expand it, they can do so easily.

HP Technical support is great. HP has developed instant AI, artificial intelligence. Support can be automatic now. When we activate the AI, when we have a problem on-site, HP will basically know in advance. If we have to repair something, it will be sent automatically. They do offer on-site support, however, that's something that needs to be paid for.

Overall, we've been satisfied with their level of support.

I have some experience with Nutanix. I've read about it and gone over documentation. I've never installed it, however, I find the implementation in theory easier and more automated than this product.

The installation is not straightforward. It is quite complex. Even updating it is complex. There are many steps you need to account for. It takes some time to get it done.

It's depend on the plan of the client, however, if there is one cluster only, it can go fast and you can deploy in a few days. However, if you add to an existing cluster, you have to update many things, and this will maybe one week or potentially two weeks.

While at first clients always comment on the pricing being very high. However, once it's deployed, and they see how well it works, they don't complain. Therefore, I think it's quite fair.

We are HPE partners.

Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I would caution others, to implement the solution effectively, you have to go step by step, and with no hurry. The documentation for implementation is very long. If you don't follow it exactly and do every step as described, you'll have a lot of challenges during the implementation, therefore, just go slow. 

Our main idea is to use SimpliVity in a robot scenario. To create a robot, recovery assessment tool for our ranked offices.

It is a very interesting platform, because the operation is very easy. It is integrated with the interfaces which we use every day in all of our platforms. We think it could be a huge advantage for us. 

Probably in the business continuity scenarios, it is going to help us.

The deduplication and compression options integrated with the hardware. 

If we start using the application, there could be data for us to analyze, and we might have more ideas.

My impression is that it is a very nice solution. Very simple to use.

It is not as flexible as we want. We have asked for some more granular scalability. For example, the ability to add some disks, and not another node, if we need more storage.

Technical support is perfect. They explain to us the solution in a very clear and simple way. When we call them, they know the right answer and get the right person automatically.

No, we have not previously used a different solution. 

We have the need to implement a disaster recovery (DR) strategy in our branch offices. We were looking for different solutions, and one of them was HPE SimpliVity. We are checking it out at this moment.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was straightforward.

Right now, we are mainly IBM clients.

Check the solutions on the market. There are a lot of solutions on the market offering this kind of solution. Each solution could have a different approach and different things to offer. 

I do not see the product really working in productivity at the moment with real loads.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: a strong partner. We think that HPE is a strong partner.