• Pivot3
• Nutanix
• VMware vSAN 6.0
• Nimble
• Tegile
• Pure Storage
• Compellent
• EMC VCE and vxRail
• Tintri

We started using SimpliVity after we made several POCs with many vendors. We did a POC for Dell EMC, for Fujitsu, for Nutanix, and also for HPE SimpliVity. They all succeeded with the POC projects, but HPE won the competition and got the tender.

I think the reason that HPE was chosen in our tender was the technical level. Our tender was for a technical and financial proposal. 70% of our proposal depended on the technical offer and 30% on the financial offer.

We evaluated Scale Computing, Nutanix, Cisco/IBM (their Frankenstein thing), and HPE.

Before choosing this solution, we looked into Nutanix which was the competitor at that moment.

The main reason for our decision in 2019 was the price. Nutanix was a higher cost - much higher than SimpliVity. Nowadays, I think the price has reduced. Maybe, nowadays, we would decide on something else. However, at that moment, it was very, very clear for us.

We are primarily an HPE shop with most of our storage, networking equipment, and servers.

We did a review on Dell EMC and Lenovo. However, it would have been a bigger stretch for us to switch than to stick with HPE.

I think SimpliVity has an edge over other solutions when it comes to the package as a whole.

I have evaluated other solutions from Dell.

Nutanix was on the list. We chose SimpliVity - and this was about three years ago - based upon the simple deployment and interconnectivity ability.

SimpliVIty, HPE's previous hyper-converged solution, Nutanix, and Scale Computing were on our shortlist. 

What made us chose SimpliVity was the tight integration on the backup and DR aspects of the product. Everybody else had that type of capability, but it felt like it was added on after the fact, whereas with SimpliVIty, it was built from the ground up to do these things, which was our primary use case. So, it made sense for us to move forward with that product.

We also evaluated VxRail, vSAN, StorMagic, Nutanix, Pivot, and others.

I spent several months looking at different options. I looked at VxRail and Nutanix.

I evaluated VxRail. 

We evaluated Dell VxRail, VMware vSAN, and Nutanix.

We also looked at Dell EMC and Cisco.

We chose HPE based on its technology and cost.

We looked at a lot of other converged infrastructure solutions. To be honest, many of them are ‘one-trick ponies’ which didn’t deliver the inline deduplication, scalability, built-in data protection capabilities or superior architecture that SimpliVity’s OmniCube did.

I choose Simplivity after evaluating Nutanix and Data Domain. I chose Simplivity for its data virtualization platform.

We looked at Nutanix and Dell EMC products.

We went with HPE partly because I have history them.

Our shortlist included Dell and Commvault. We chose Simplivity for the simplicity of the way it works and the true hybrid converged appliance which was there. We didn't have to buy a bunch of equipment. We bought two nodes and were able to do everything with those two nodes.

Cisco Flexpod/NetApp, Dell Compellant SAN

We deal with a variety of products. It's case by case. We are not selling any product. We are selling solutions. If a customer prefers Nutanix, then we can go with Nutanix, however, we can tell them the features and advantages. As a product, SimpliVity is better than others due to the fact that it has its own WAN optimizer optimization technologies then dedupe and compression ratios are high, and we can get support from a single vendor. SimpliVity is the leader.

There are plenty of hyperconverged solutions in the market like Nutanix, Dell, VxRail, etc.

On our shortlist there were only Vblock, which we didn't need, and Nutanix, which was more expensive. So we chose the least expensive, at least at the time.

Before choosing, we evaluated Cisco UCS FlexPod. We also evaluated and did a proof of concept (PoC) of a direct competitor's product after our SimpliVity acquisition. In short, we validated our investment with 100% confidence.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated Nutanix, Scale HC3, Nimble SmartStack, and Maxta.

The difference between the HCI and the basic traditional environment is that it mitigates the bottleneck of the traditional solution. 

Customers are looking to have an environment that is completely scalable. HCI is a platform that you can always choose. That is the flexibility that is in demand when it comes to the private cloud.

Whenever building a private cloud, scalability should be a built-in feature.

SimpliVity does offer it but there is an override in terms of the data reduction policy they are providing. What kind of flexibility in terms of managing the complete virtual machines.

Now when it comes to SimpliVity, they have very limited options for the virtualization layer.

They may have to go with VMware and that is something that I'll say not all the customers will be keen to consider.

We evaluated options from Dell, IBM, Nutanix, Scale, and others before choosing SimpliVity.

Nutanix was the closest to the HPE SimpliVity product. I had better conversations with the salespeople from HPE. They were able to explain how the solution worked and how it does everything I needed, so that naturally helped me with my decision.

Nutanix and traditional SAN solutions (NetApp and Compellent).

HPE proposed Synergy and Simplicity. We chose Simplicity, which has been a great platform for us.

I only looked at Nutanix and VMware vSAN, but SimpliVity is convenient for our systems.

We did an evaluation with Nutanix, but found their data redundancy was not sufficient for us.

We did evaluate other options. The best solution will depend on the customer. But SimpliVity is a very interesting system especially if you have any need in also in recovering your data.

We evaluated other traditional stack options with Zerto as our replication software. We looked at Nutanix and EMC VxRail.

Nutanix, and other traditional storage/server architecture options.

We have done PoCs with a number of the other competitors. Ease of use, support, price, and durability are the factors that we look for while selecting a vendor. That was a big check for us, as far as moving further with HPE SimpliVity; the fact that we can buy it on HPE. Being an HPE shop, we like that we can now purchase the product, a HPE product, and an HPE hardware.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options because it is clear that SimpliVity provides the best ROI out of all the candidates.

We looked at Dell Compellent and Pivot3.

We looked at Nutanix and vSAN.

We did look at some other options. I can't speak to the exact brands, however.

I feel like all the other companies gave up.

When it comes to selecting a vendor, I think that partnership is one of the most important criteria. We needed a technology that is universally deployable and has the capability of functioning in the cloud. This allows us to use the service not only in our own premise's data centers but with cloud providers as well.

At the time we were evaluating solutions but there were not many players in the market. We considered Nutanix, but it had its own hardware platform. SimpliVity had an OmniStack configuration that could run on hardware platforms that we already had within the organization. We chose SimpliVity because of this. 

No, once we found out about the SimpliVity product and saw a demo, we were sold. We have been very happy with our decision.

We didn’t bring in any alternative solutions for a PoC. However, I have done evaluations of other solutions. We chose HPE because it allowed us to get in with a smaller footprint than some of the other solutions, which might require three, four, or five nodes. When selecting vendors, I look for technical feasibility, then operability, and then cost.

Yes, Nutanix.

Dell and Cisco.

We compared it with other products, such as Nutanix and vSAN, and we weighed the features that we needed. This solution was the one that met the greatest number of our requirements. It's also less complicated to deploy and has a smaller footprint.

We definitely evaluated others, including VMware, vSAN, Nutanix, and Pivot3 lead hyper-converged, along with SimpliVity.

Then we evaluated the traditional Dell, EMC, and then a couple more of the players. I basically looked at all of the Gartner top vendors out there and we started filtering down based on requirements and budget.

Most comparable would be Nutanix, both solid solutions. Depending on use case, you could go back and forth with which one makes the most sense.

Nutanix, Dell nodes

Nutanix, VxRail and HyperFlex. Nutanix comes into almost all discussions and is a leader. The only area of concern is the expense as it adds up. VxRail is definitely the number one contender when discussing ROBO use cases but SimpliVity's DVE with its accelerator card is a strong option, particularly from the point of not needing additional hardware to address add-on requirements. SimpliVity also brings capacity savings.

We looked at Nutanix, SimpliVity and one other. We chose SimpliVity because it's by far the most stable solution. We also chose it for the simplicity of managing the solution and the price point. It was a great price.

We chose this solution because the product was very innovative. The latest and greatest. I think it's the future of data center technology.

We had a couple other vendors, such as Nutanix, but they didn't really compare to SimpliVity. It's a really great solution.

We did look into Nutanix and also did a few implementations. We found that if you want the same level of performance and protection for your data, you will need to invest in many more Nutanix nodes. Nutanix has much more overhead, is less efficient in the use of storage capacity, and requires much more platform to get VMs running.

ROBO implementations are much easier and efficient to do with SimpliVity.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

We looked at other solutions before purchasing SimpliVity (Nutanix), but SimpliVity was a better fit for our requirements and had what I judged as features Nutanix could not compete with.

Our reseller pitched SimpliVity.

Then, we consulted the market and asked for a solution for five years. We looked at the TCO, total cost of ownership, over those five years, including all the support. Overall, it made a good case to invest in SimpliVity. 

Performance scalability was easily achieved for a virtual environment running a mix of common IT business applications, while providing fast, predictable response times.

Combined with the ability to offer the same level of administrative simplicity, data efficiency, complete functionality across data centers around the globe, and low-cost cloud capabilities, SimpliVity OmniCube is noteworthy.

Yes, Nutanix.

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated Nutanix and Dell Compellent.

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.

EMC VxRail

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

Right now, we are mainly IBM clients.

We only looked at HPE.

We are an HPE shop. Most of the stuff that we have is HPE, so there was only one choice for us.

As a reseller, we like to give our customers a lot of options and we're not gonna sit here and say we only sell one product cause that would never be the way to do it. But HPE is a very strong company to partner with as far as total portfolio and solutions set goes.

We also evaluated Nutanix.

Nutanix is quite expensive. It's at least two times more expensive than SimpliVity.

We looked at NetApp but they couldn't do stretch clustering.

Before choosing, we evaluated Nutanix, but didn't like the 3 nodes concept at that time.

I researched many different options before choosing.

I also evaluated Nutanix and Scale.

SimpliVity is an HPE brand, and it comes with the advantage of easily using Hyper-V and VMware solutions. Hyper-V customers can move to VMware or use both solutions. HyperFlex for this isn't so easy. 

Before choosing, we also evaluated Nutanix and Cisco.

Nutanix, VxRail.