In terms of improvement, integration with external solutions outside the HPE posed challenges. It might be a combination of experience gaps and communication issues. For improvement, there is the need for better integration support and consideration of cost implications, particularly for smaller setups with budget constraints looking to leverage HCI advantages.

There is a file size limitation when you want to do an individual file restore, but they might have resolved this in newer versions. As I'm taking backups at the VM server level, I can restore a file from any one of those without standing up the VM, and I can restore it to any mounted VM that I want. The problem is that there is a file size limitation. It becomes problematic when I'm trying to restore. When I want to restore a backup of a SQL database, my backups are considerably larger than 10 gigs. So, the only way to restore that backup file is to mount the entire VM somewhere and then copy it, which doesn't take long at all. 

Every now and then, we would have an instance where the replication of a backup wouldn't complete in a timely manner, and that would get it all wigged out in terms of how it maintained the files in the background, the way it knows whether a file has changed or not, and whether it is backed up and replicated. We would basically just suspend that backup for a little bit, do a manual backup of that server, and completely replicate it to other sites. We would then turn the regular backup routine back on, and then it would be fine. So, that's all dependent on the bandwidth.

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.

I think our LAN and branches started to use the VDI. We are hitting the point of a bottleneck with the end users and are complaining to support about this. Now, after using the SimpliVity with these nodes, we solve all the problems to cut the support cases for the end users. Also, the applications that they are running over the SimpliVity and HCI solutions are running better than the normal traditional solution. Bottleneck is the main issue.

One thing that I would like to see improved is the flexibility of the node expansion. Currently, you have to match the same storage capacity and performance when you expand a node. This can be a challenge if you need to add more storage or performance to an existing cluster.

Telling a better story. Get better at telling your story and customers will be lined up! This thing WORKS AS ADVERTISED!

We haven't had any issues. Recently, we purchased new SimpliVity nodes. We are pretty confident with the platform. We are using it more than in the beginning.

The installation was a bit complicated. 

There may be issues around scaling. 

Technical support could be better.

SimpliVity has to evolve into a solution that is more integrated with the public cloud. At the moment, this is not the case. It's not our case, however, if we wanted to make some kind of hybrid integration between private cloud and public cloud, SimpliVity is not well prepared for this. 

It could integrate better with other platforms. It's a proprietary solution of HPE, so you are stuck. Before I was running SimpliVity as an independent solution. it wasn't a card and software, so you could put in whatever server, IBM, Dell, etc. Now it's a proprietary solution for HPE, but it's difficult for them to improve because they have both solutions. But it's the same with Nutanix, I will say. 

I would like to see an option to add external storage that can be seen by all of the nodes in a stack. For example, if I need to build a file share, or something, where there is not enough data than needs to be accessed quickly, but there is a lot of data, putting a large file share or user file share on SimpliVity currently doesn't makes sense.

We had failures out-of-the-box of our new technology along with a few bugs during the initial setup. Our initial five nodes had three power failures during setup.

The OmniStack module needs improvement, because from what I have read, the newer versions use even more memory. So, as we upgrade, we lose resources available for systems.

If I want to upgrade any hardware components or make any changes to the hardware configuration, there are a lot of parameters I need to consider with respect to HP security. If I want to upgrade, I sometimes have to replace the box or add a new server to the environment or setup. It's a limitation of HP connectivity.

It's not exactly straightforward to use. We need to train our people as some features that are there we are not used to or maybe we don't know how to use. Therefore, we need to train our people.

Maybe the price could be a bit better. 

The compatibility with other products needs an improvement.

There's a controller or something that is used. Instead of using vSAN, they use another technology, NFS. I don't like it. That said, it works.

I would like to see it be a truly hybrid-cloud solution where I could take my on-prem SimpliVity environment and have replication to a cloud install.

The biggest feature, which should be included, is some method to handle archival backup or cloud-based backup. Where SimpliVIty typically falls down with their data structure is: The longer a backup is kept, the more space it ends up inevitably using. When you get into things that you have to keep for five or seven years for legal requirements or regulatory compliance, then you start taking up a lot of space with these old dead backups that you are probably never going to use again. Being able to offload those to a separate platform or cloud storage location would be ideal.

It would be nice if the storage could be expanded by simply adding additional SSD drives. There are unused drive slots but I believe you have to add more nodes if additional storage is required in the future.

SimpliVity updates are a painful and complex process that takes about two hours per node. First, the drivers on each node need to be updated which, although it's a reasonably straightforward process, takes roughly an hour per node. Next, the OmniStack software needs to be updated and this is a complex, Linux command-line process that also takes about an hour per node. Fortunately, as part of HPE product support, they offer remote update assistance but I hope HPE will simplify the update process in the near future.

I would love to see a more proactive approach to implementing patches and reaching out to customers with new initiatives.

The installation process could be simplified. It's a bit technical for non-IT users. 

So, the deployment could be simpler. 

I don't have any criticisms of SimpliVity at the moment, but I would like to see how it stacks up to vSAN and Data Core. It's essential for the client to have the comparison and be secure that they made a good choice.

Although HPE has made significant improvements, the upgrade procedure is still overly complex. It's gotten much easier but it's still far from double clicking on a link and a self-upgrade scenario. Therefore, installing SimpliVity upgrades is an area that HPE could improve upon further.

Performing file-level restores, which is the most common backup recovery operation that we do, also seems more complex than it needs to be. The recovered files/folders are restored to an ISO file, mounted as a DVD, and then they need to be copied from that. Afterwards, the ISO needs to be removed from the VM and then deleted from the SimpliVity storage. It gets the job done but it's kind of clunky.

In my experience, the only improvement that can be made is the price. It is much more costly than other solutions such as VxRail.

We would like to provide our customers with a virtual demo and have not been able to find this available. We don't have access to show the demo virtually to our customers or partners. This is lacking in this sector. We are not able to provide hands-on experience.

The centric management could be simplified or more user-friendly. Customers require an easier way to handle any product.

I think the licensing cost could be lower.

When we make some upgrades to the platform, it does take time to stabilize the structure again.

We would like a simple interface to use.

Backup application integration: The backup actually allows creating some independent recovery points of the VM. It’s possible to duplicate and restore the entire VM or restore some guest files. The backup is consistent because the VMware integration and the VSS integration allows having an “application-consistent” restore point, but the restore doesn’t have an application integration function. So if the VM has, for example, installed an Exchange Server, I’m not able to restore a single mailbox or a single item from a specific mailbox. Doing this requires deploying a third-party backup solution. There aren’t specific issues about this, but I think it could be a good improvement.

Support for other hypervisors: Some our customers have installed Hyper-V or KVM; the Simplivity roadmap includes Hyper-V support with the Windows 2016 release. VMware-only support can actually restrict our business opportunity; it’s a business issue, not a technical issue.

The price can be dropped a little bit. The product should be competitive with other brands. 

The technical support around the world can be a lot more open as you cannot search all the KBs or the community for support. Most of the time, you need to call HPE directly. The solution really just lacks documentation. 

The interface is good but takes some time to get used to.

I would like them to add more connection capability, a hub and spoke model, to improve the number of connections that it can handle. That would be helpful because we have a lot of retail stores.

There are certain technical things that we run into. There's a matrix compatibility where, if you upgrade one piece, the rest have to fall into line. If that requirement could be eased up a bit it would be a good thing.

There is room for improvement in the operations area because the support for that server space is minimal. I want to sell a solution, but not bigger than the one I have. Maybe they can offer more features for more customers and optimize it, but with the same protections that I already have right now.

I want to replicate my business offering in the United States. I want to pay for HPE SimpliVity in Mexico, but they told me that it's not possible. They told me that I need to look for a representative in the United States and make all the payments over there.

There are some problems with the product's stability, specifically with backup, that could be improved. The integration and automation could also be improved. In addition, when updates appear, they are often delayed and don't provide new features. In the next release, I would like to see integrations with multiple OEM vendors and better compatibility with other OEMs.

There's nothing overly special or unique about the solution.

Overall, SimpliVity has a lot of features, however, those features need to be more precise. It's like a jack of all trades and master of none. It needs to hone in on a few features and really make them shine.

SimpliVity claims to have what you call a compression and dedup ratio, however, in practice, it doesn't really work.

They need to give more controls and more features as far as the backup is concerned.

The initial setup is not that easy.

The licensing could be more clear.

The technical support isn't ideal right now.

I don't think it's as simple as it is marketed, but it is a new product. Since it is a newer solution, there needs to be more knowledge transfer out there. The product needs more maturity because of the industry.

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.

Upgrades/Patches to ESXi have to be approved by SimpliVity and their support installs them...along with upgrades to their virtual controller. That's the one downside to having such an easy to manage integrated console...it needs to be validated against ESXi.

Its scalability can be improved. When we put a lot of nodes, sometimes, its performance decreases. Its price can also be improved.

I would like some reporting about backup and replication.

The greatest disadvantage is the update process. Every patch or release update must be checked and deployed with the HPE solution, which sometimes is a little bit difficult. It is not difficult in terms of installation, but it is difficult to get the patches in time.

Its scalability can also be improved.

When we failed it, there was a hardware accelerator card, however, now HP is saying the hardware is no longer available, and it will be the end of life. Now, we have only the software. That is a shock for us. When someone is using a hardware accelerator, then he needs some upgrades. Now, we have to say there is no hardware card. Now you have to use the software. There will be a mismatch.

The Omni Card consumes a lot of memory and CPU. On the HP selling site, it says Omni Card can offload your CPU and memory, however, in reality, it consumes more memory and CPU.

I would like more extensive deployment orchestration where the vCenter is deployed initially without being a separate thing. I feel that the deployment process of the vCenter should be included in the initial deployment to make it easier. Also, there are some issues when it comes to VMware's attaching and upgrades because HPE doesn't support all versions of VMware, and it can take some time before they have tested the latest versions. 

So the lifecycle management can be improved, and also the initial deployment to include vCenter.

Once I am into the SimpliVity environment, I always have to go with HP because I am somewhat blocked, like Apple. Secondly, if I want to increase only storage, I need to buy an entire computing node for that, an entire HCI node. However, there are certain other providers, like Hitachi and AirDeck, that provide solutions. You can go with any of the hardware infrastructure, and they can provide you with their solutions for HCI itself. HCI is a simple software layer, a hypervisor layer for them.

So, they can add computing, storage, and networking to it that is vendor agnostic. In HP, Dell, VxRail, or Cisco, there is a drawback. I have to go with that brand again, and I have to add a simple load of HCI in place if I want to increase computing, networking, or storage.

SimpliVity is also compatible with all HP appliances, though it is not compatible with other brands or vendors. It could be more compatible and more secure.

The price is one of the biggest problems our customers have. The solution is great, but at the end of the day, it's expensive. Compared to other solutions on the market, like Nutanix or vSAN, you are paying for something else. In this case, I have to explain the big differences within HPE SimpliVity. Overall, the biggest issue I have is regarding the price.

The problem is not necessarily with the HPE SimpliVity console itself because it's very easy to integrate with. Sometimes, our customers just want to have the opportunity to have the freedom to choose between Hyper-V and VMware. We love that kind of possibility. 

It's not so frequently that we have a request about Hyper-V, but our customers do ask about the differences regarding licensing prices because at the end of the day, with Microsoft, the hypervisor is included with the operating system — that saves money.

The feature that I would like to see improved in the next release is migrations. There needs to be a simple process for migrating one SimpliVity cluster to a new SimpliVity cluster. 

It crashes often. When one particular VM has random, large IOPS requests, it will bog down the node, and there isn't enough time for the replica to be brought up. So all the VMs on that one particular node will essentially become offline.

If it's not already included, an additional feature I would like to see would be better Storage vMotion. That would be number one on my wish list.

Increased storage capacity for big data, something that we have not had. DR "automation."

In the Life Sciences disciplines, we generate a lot of big data 500GB to 1TB in file size. For example, DNA and gene sequencing, image processing (sections of the heart or brain), and other data generated by a scientific instrument. I have not stored any of these data on SimpliVity. Rather, we use a traditional SAN type storage for those data.

I would like to try storing those kinds of big data on SimpiVity and see if the compression and de-dupe would make it work. Currently, I only store user generated data files on SimpliVity and have no issues. As for DR automation, I would like to purchase Rapid DR from SimpliVity, which allows me to automate the disaster recover process/procedure. Currently, disaster recovery is done manually.

There are some maintenance features (replica copy load-balancing) that could stand to be automated and/or streamlined for customer execution. Also, the ability to scale compute and storage independently of one another would be a way to add value to the entire product line.

They have made several technology changes. Compared to the previous version, SimpliVity was acquired by HPE and now the product has totally changed.

Initially, the response was great with SimpliVity. After the technology changed the feedback from customers was not good. As a result, we no longer focus on Simplivity.

Our focus is more on Nutanix Hyperconverged.

SimpliVity has very limited options for the virtualization layer. They may have to with VMware or something similar.

The flexibility should be present. It should be the customer's choice of what virtualization layer they will choose, and not mandated from the solution that you have to use VMware. VMware is not cheap. It comes with its own cost. 

If the customer has the option to go with the Microsoft Hyper-V then customers should get the flexibility to have Hyper-V in place of the hypervisor.

Ultimately, the hypervisor functionality by default when you go for the data center becomes more cost-effective.

It should have the intelligence, to alert you that a failure of the cache is about to happen. It should be able to give you the predictive alarm and it should create its own backup.

It should have some provision where the cache is being copied to another location. So when one copy has been deleted or a copy has been corrupted, we should be able to recover it from the other site to ensure the office data is secure.

It should have some provision wherein the cache is being copied to some other location so that even if one copy has been deleted or one copy has been corrupted, we are able to recover it from the other location which will keep the office data secure.

From a product perspective, it should be more flexible.

It should allow users to have more data control in areas such as the cache. It should allow the user to have more data reduction flexibility.

Data reduction is something that is completely missing in the current solution, once SimpliVity was bought by HPE. It was the primary reason customers were interested in it.

SimpliVity handles the data. HCI is about how RAID is maintained over the network, and how many duplicate copies have been stored, or whether you are going for RF2 or RF3. Those things have to be taken into consideration.

With VMware,vSAN, and SimpliVity they are more dependent on the cache. If the cache fails then I have to recover the data. It's complete downtown for me. Anytime the data is not recovered, it's business downtime.

Prior to the latest release, it was a real pain to upgrade SimpliVity. First, the host server had to be upgraded with the latest drivers, followed by an upgrade of the OmniStack controller software, and lastly, an upgrade of the VMware ESXi software. Each of the three steps were done independently and the process took 2 to 3 hours per node. Starting with the 4.0 Release, an Upgrade Manager orchestrates the whole process and greatly simplifies it. It still takes 2+ hours per node, however.

My main problem with the solution is that it is taking too much memory for something that we don't build. We are not creating the VM; it is created by the deployment. It is the SimpliVity solution which is using the memory that I was counting on for my production part. This is the biggest problem that I have. I know that the VM has to built there, but I would hope that they have a different area in the system to use this different type of memory. The production memory should stay with the customer when the machine is built, and during deployment, it should use different memory.

The upgrade path needs to be better defined on the spec sheets. I would like hard numbers to be revealed to me, instead of being hidden by, "We have to go to HPE to get you a special request, then fill a part number for me."

The upgrade path used to be a challenge, but it has gotten much much easier.

Not being able to apply ESXi patches as needed has always been a concern, but it has not become a big issue.

One area of the service that could use improvement is that it is an aging solution. The market activity shelf life is over as people are moving toward a more savvy cloud box.

One con to the solution is the expense. A second thing is it has to be tailor-made properly. The presales part has to be done properly. Otherwise, you can misguide the customer.

Another issue is that it's not growing. I don't know what they want to do and apply for that particular solution or if they are looking for something else. I haven't seen many improvements in the last couple of years.

Also, nowadays everything is a very lean architecture, but SimpliVity is not a lean architecture in terms of anything. SimpliVity should be very lean in terms of the solution.

We would like to have more security with the solution.

I think first we should make a hardware upgrade.

Additional features would be more visibility into the overall infrastructure and what's happening with the VMs.

I would like to see Simplivity come out with some sort of Simplivity Engineer certification, which would grant me the ability to handle the more technical issues on my own, without having to call support.

I'm not a technical guy, and I am pretty much okay with the way it is, but it would help if it was closest to Nutanix in Gartner's Magic Quadrants. Nutanix very often beats us. Nutanix provides Acropolis for free. It probably would be great if we have a virtualization layer. It is something that might be lacking in our solution. We depend on VMware, and it is very expensive. It is lacking the software that allows us to install it with HPE and not depend on a third party.

When it comes to upgrading and additional features, it would be nice if the solution had the ability to fully archive data in an external storage solution other than HPE Simplivity. 

I wish to see an improved compute node selection, to allow us to select something other than merely the two socket system. It can go through four sockets, such as the DL580.

I would like to see the ability to do the integration between HCI and dHCI. I understand that there is a roadmap for these, but I have yet to see the release. Hopefully, this will occur soon. 

Other than this, so far so good. 

The fact that it is tied to a certain hardware platform would probably be the bigger negative versus just being able to buy something off the shelf.

We had some hardware compatibility issues with the earlier versions of HPE SimpliVity. We upgraded to the latest version a few months ago, and since then, there is no hardware failure, and it is better.

They don't provide a portal to create a ticket directly for the HPE SimpliVity. We have a web portal to create a ticket when we have an issue, but for HPE SimpliVity, we need to call the local vendor for support. If they are not able to resolve the issue, they contact the global support, which takes more time.

Technology is moving very fast, and everybody nowadays is focusing on the cloud base. In the future, they should integrate it with the cloud base for the backup.

The price is quite high and the system could also be more scalable.

It would be great if SimpliVity could offer more hardware options. At the moment we have only a small choice of the systems you can buy. I think it would be better to sell it or buy it if they are more options.

I would love it if the solution would auto data balance within the cluster. It is possible, and eventually, it will be likely that certain nodes within the same cluster will hold more data than the other nodes. In order to balance this data out, a support call is required and the support technician will spend some time rebalancing the nodes. The access to do this by end users is not given. It is also somewhat difficult to monitor the actual node's physical storage with out-of-the box monitoring tools due to the virtualization of this layer. 

We definitely want to see more of the CLI commands come up to the GUI, and it is a legitimate question, if we are going to be happy with the integration in the vsphere web client, which is awfully slow. While this is responsibility of Vmware (having killed the c-client), the question is legitimate, because the client is what you need to restore your data in the end, and in such situation you do not have time to waste.

I would like to see more, more, more, more, more storage in the next version. Let us populate the entire node; right now, there are 24 slots in a server and you're only allowed to populate 14. So, give us those other 10 slots, it is going to increase our density, which allows us to scale out further.

Other customers want to see Windows Hyper-V Server 2016 support and also open-source VI. In our case, this is not necessary, but could help in the future to get more market share.

Being able to balance replicas across nodes on your own (without calling support) would be awesome.

SimpliVity has 2 copies of a guest virtual server on their nodes, a primary “live” copy and a secondary “replica” copy.

SimpliVity has some pretty good algorithms to initially balance those two copies across the physical nodes.

However, if the server size changes dramatically and you have too many large replicas or primaries on one of their physical servers, it will start to fill up.

Right now, you cannot move a replica (to balance storage across cubes) on your own, you have to call support. Support is very good and can do it very quickly, but it would be nice to be able to do it on our own.

We have been creating a lot of new servers lately, so I usually have to call them about once a month to take a look at our balance across cubes.

Some proactive / predictive monitoring of VMs health would be a plus. Speed in cathing up with Vmware Esxi releases could also be slightly improved.

Proactive monitoring of VMS: this is one item on my wish list. I would like an easy way to receive an alert when a VM is performing badly (due to latency, cpu or memory issues for example). I know there are ways to create alarms or alerts in vSphere or third party tools. But what I am talking about here is some easier way to achieve that, maybe with a few clicks in the GUI. It is not specifically a task which Simplivity must accomplish, but since it has a plugin in VC could be a good place to introduce it.

Regarding Esxi releases. Omnicubes run on Esxi and Simplivity has to officially support each Esxi release for you to go and install it on your Omnicube. This takes obviously a few weeks after each Vmware release. Sometimes it can take longer, so in those cases would be good to speed up the process.

SimpliVity has no file server services. That's one of the solution's biggest shortcomings. 

The initial configuration could be improved. 

The way that it handles the memory could be better.

The initial setup can be quite difficult. 

Technical support needs to be more responsive. 

The solution could improve by adding better support of the VMware add-ons and a more intuitive user interface for administrators.

In a future release, all the management features should be able to access from one location. For example, management of networking and system resources on the server should be in one place to view and manage.

SimpliVity has this thing where if a virtual machine is on the wrong node with two nodes, it will be optimized. However, if one of the nodes won't be optimized, then it will complain about that. It will give you a little warning to say the source is not optimized. Please move this to one of the other hosts. They should just add a little thing in SimpliVity to move all the VMs to the right host, because it is a pain to load balance across the three nodes when all these VMs are complaining and you have to move them to one. It's sort of silly. I feel like it would be like half a day of programming for somebody to write something that would just auto-balance it.

The vCenter integration could probably improve a little. It is just a plugin that you are interacting with, and it feels like it has been largely the same for a while. It could probably get better.

The ease of new deployments could be improved. Also, I think that the scalability of the solution may be inadequate for some people.

It would be good for this platform if we could have an independent gross-storage on the computer.

Technologies are going ahead with new patches and updates, and HPE has to find out a solution to make it more reliable and secure.

Its deployment should be easier.

The upgrades need improvement. 

Upgrading the firmware/software could be more seamless (or at least be assigned a technician who could walk us through the process for both the SimpliVity software as well as the VMware software).

I would like to see replication to a cloud solution. I would like to replicate the data so that we have a backup copy off-site. I could then be comfortable getting rid of our existing backup solution. The other feature would be a single copy of the data storage as opposed to a dual copy. In that way, when I do things that automatically have dual copies, such as with our SQL server databases, I would not then be making four copies of the data.

In regards to the HPE Simplivity current offering –

1. Replication of backup to a cloud solution would be advantageous. At present, I’d have to spin up a new site (data center, networking gear, etc.) and place Simplivity nodes there to get replication of backups to meet my offsite requirement. They’ve told me they have a hosting service option, but I’ve not received any real details.

2. Simplivity makes two copies of the VMs on different nodes for redundancy. It would be advantageous to include an option for a single copy. So when there is a product with its own redundancy (e.g. Microsoft SQL Server Always On Availability Groups), one is not then making 4 write I/Os for each write – two at the application layer – one to each SQL server node, two at the storage layer – one to two different Simplivity nodes.

I would like to ability to install a client on a remote server and download images from the federation service.

It would be good to have more compatibility with other solutions as an improvement in the future. As a suggestion, in order to have compatibility with other solutions, there could be a license fee for this, and if you don't need to them then you do not need to pay.

The solution has a complex configuration. So I think they should simplify the con. They should go back to having special hardware for the compression with T2, so you don't need to have a big processor if you use just one processor. 

There are a lot of features that they need to improve on, such as the backup and DR feature sets. I would also like to see it able to restore item levels, especially for databases. They don't have that right now.

The customer has 100 virtual machines. We need to offer high availability for their production environment.

• SimpliVity needs to improve the support for native backups, like SQL and Exchange.
• File level restores work well, but indexing will help make the process faster.  
• SimpliVity needs to add support for Hyper-V and KVM.  

The only problem I had was that when we initially purchased SimpliVity, I didn't know that the OmniCube took up 60 GB of RAM. I ordered a server with 260 GB of RAM, thinking I would have 260 GB of RAM. The OmniCube then stole 60 GB. That's the only problem I had. Now that I know that going forward, I just know I need to over provision the box when I buy it.

I'd love to see more of their cloud analytics. I guess big data kind of stuff, where we could practically monitor some of the stuff. And some of the integrated software they have with the DR.

The fact that it is compatible with vCenter (VMware) only; however, the company says Hyper-V and KVM are coming shortly.

In the next release of the solution, they should make updating the solution easier. Currently, we have HPE doing it for us but I would like to be able to do it.

There are some small changes that can be made to the interface to improve it but it typically works well.

It is not so cheap, and this is the most common complaint that my customers have. It is a very good product, but the price is an issue in Latin America.

VMware is a de facto tool. It would be useful for customers if HP can also use Red Hat or any other open-source virtualization product. Currently, you can only use VMware to manage the machines inside SimpliVity.

1. For SimpliVity to become a true DC solution, the limit of 32 nodes needs to be investigated. While this may not be a significant deterrent, it brings into question the underlying architecture.
2. HPE support is still not aware/trained on SimpliVity, and this is beginning to show.
3. While SimpliVity was a pioneer of cloud connect capability, they have simply not exploited it.
4. SimpliVity has little to no integrations. It may have APIs, etc., but there are very few signed on integrations in place. This is necessary to build a solutions ecosystem.

Additional features would be having more visibility into the overall infrastructure and to know what's happening with the VMs.

I would like to see more features around managing the data that it uses. Specifically, if your back-up data is filling up with your nodes, what to do with that tool is to make it a platform data you don't have a full load and just for backing up the data. Another improvement would be the ability for users like myself, administrators, to be able to run patches and upgrades with fewer issues.

I would love the solution to be able to move notes between federations. Right now, we use a manual process, but I know SimpliVity is working on a new and improved version of the product. Hopefully, they're going to make some kind of mechanism. In large implementations, it is a very useful tool.

We would like to see more possibilities to monitor the SimpliVity platform. Also, storage balancing between nodes within clusters with more than two nodes could be better. I believe this is solved in the new release of the software, but we still have to test it.

HPE SimpliVity could be more flexible and scalable. I don't feel SimpliVity is flexible or easily scalable because I still need to buy another server to add to my clusters. I can't just run or harvest and add to my solution. I need to buy another server.

There are a lot of components that are not giving a lot of value to me right now. I also had a few problems with the built-in hard disk drives. I've had many issues with the harvest stripes that the servers use. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's unusual to have a physical failure on the HPE platform. I don't see any value at the software level, especially in the software that manages that solution. 

I was waiting for something, especially in the application layer that I would use, but that is all over VMware, and it doesn't have an integrated module that I can use to manage the server and all the instances. 

An area for improvement would be the flexibility of server configuration.

The product is expensive. We are in Turkey and the Turkish Lira currency is higher than in other countries. $1 is about 9 Turkish Lira now. If you buy something in US dollars, and if you calculate it in our currency, that means we need to multiply the total by nine. It's costly.

The initial configuration is complicated. HPE had to help us. 

HPE is complex. 

HPE SimpliVity uses some additional memory inside in order to do site infrastructure work. However, you need to calculate this. You need to make sure you have enough memory and CPU for your purposes now and in the future. However, they don't explain that you might lose, for example, 10% of memory during configuration. Knowing that might affect what you actually need in the long run. They really have to lay out for their customers at the outset what is used and how much space is taken up, et cetera. That way, you can calculate that into your capacity. 

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.

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

• Back-end training for sysadmins

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.

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.

Reporting - improvements have been made, but I would like to see some enhancements for recalling historical information: automated reports on storage efficiency over time and backup growth over time.

Bandwidth throttling during offsite backups. When we implemented this solution for the first time to replace another system we brought down the WAN line until the initial data set was replicated. They do have an off-peak time setting but throttling would be better for a 24/7 shop.

I have some worries about the support after the acquisition. The support was better before HPE acquired SimpliVity. They are not very clear on what to expect. That makes me a bit nervous.

I would like to see a better price/performance in comparison with a standard ESX servers/storage farm solution.

There are a lot of different components to choose from in the chassis. This could be easier by providing a standard or a base model to create and configure from. 

A better GUI for some functions.

I gave it an excellent rating, thus I think it's well excellent! If there was anything I would like to see, it would be indexed backups. You have to hunt a bit if you have to restore a file. Index the backups and it would be perfect!

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.

Ability to add storage incrementally would be nice.

Single file restore capabilities and ease.

Backup and replications automation.

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.

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.

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.

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

We are in Turkey, because of the different currency they are not always compatible.

HPE SimpliVity should cost less. 

HPE could give us more options for server models to chose when using the product. Right now, we can only use the DL380.

I would like to see a single PROC option for things like Robo beause we have a lot of customers that just don't need dual CPU's in some of these locations. That's what drives up the cost a lot of the time. I would also like to see smaller core counts, as well. A lot of the core counts are just unbelievable. They are way under utilized over way too many cores.

Its price can be improved. Customers always look for better prices. It is more expensive as compared to other products available in the market.

The solution needs to improve the high data availability.

The backup and recovery process needs to be faster. Right now, it's a bit slow.

There needs to be more customization capabilities available for customers. That's lacking and clients would really like it if they could better customize the product to better fit their needs.

We haven't really explored all areas of this solution we are still in the POC phase.

Pricing and monitoring could be improved.

I think that they should have their own hyper-converged system.

I would like to see support for having different clustered environments for production and testing.

When it comes to performing backups, the dashboard is not intuitive and not user-friendly. This is something that should be improved. It should be easier to perform backups.

Needs decoupling of distributed data fabric to run in a hyperscale deployment outside the hypervisor on dedicated nodes.

The production server infrastructure is an area with room for improvement.

SimpliVity requires an arbiter to be installed on a non-virtualized (or at least on non-SimpliVity virtualized) storage. This means you can not totally virtualize your environment on SimpliVity. I would like to see the arbiter on a system that is virtualized and eliminate that external portion.

They can bring more awareness about this product. In this part of the world or this region, people normally don't know about SimpliVity and its capabilities. The company we have it sold to hasn't been able to fully utilize all the features or understand the features. So, product awareness should be improved.

Its scalability should be improved. We should be able to add drives without disrupting the services.

The product's installation process could be made easier.

The solution could have an optimization site and provide assistance at that site. HPE SimpliVity would also benefit if it installed bigger products like having a Blade solution.

I'd like to see some improvements in terms of simplifying deployment and making it more user friendly. I think the technical support could be improved as well.

The price could be better and it needs to back to other storage.

HPE SimpliVity needs improvement. I know there were some difficulties on the Hyper-V side. They worked very well on the VMware but unfortunately, Hyper-V is not well-developed. You have some bugs on it. On the small nodes, there's no problem, but on the medium and the big nodes they have some improvement to do on the Hyper-V.

Because Hyper-V is not very stable on SimpliVity, we would like a way that they can make an improvement on this, because many of our customers are only on Microsoft and would not like to move on VMware. It would be very nice if we can have a very stable solution for Hyper-V, on the hyper-converged side, so that when you have customers on VMware or Hyper-V we can provide a solution that is stable.

SimpliVity's data management could be better. Nutanix's interface is a bit more user-friendly. 

It would be better if it could integrate more easily with other vendors.

• Backup from D2D only to "D2D to tape"
• Supports hybrid HDD storage (lower cost for the second-tier workload, now all SSD storage only)
• Support

We should have something called micro segmentation inside the SimpliVity box, which can be easily implemented.

They are using backup from snapshots. Maybe they can integrate with VM or similar mechanics.

None on technologies side, but the cost of the solution and support would need some improvement

Simplify the backup and restore: With integrated backup and remote replication, it could reduce risk and eliminates the use of legacy data tools.

Its performance can be faster.

Cloud integration, such as Azure and AWS.

It would be better if we could deploy a hybrid cloud integrated to SimpliVity.

I think the support for the hypervisors needs to be on a higher level.