HPE SimpliVity provides businesses with advanced features such as inline deduplication, compression, and instant recovery, enabling efficient backup and scalability. Its integration with VMware and centralized management fosters ease of use, establishing a streamlined IT infrastructure.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| HPE SimpliVity | 6.1% |
| VxRail | 10.4% |
| Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) | 9.1% |
| Other | 74.4% |
| Type | Title | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | HCI | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Product | Reviews, tips, and advice from real users | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | HPE SimpliVity vs VxRail | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | HPE SimpliVity vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Title | Rating | Mindshare | Recommending | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) | 4.3 | 9.1% | 94% | 200 interviewsAdd to research |
| VMware vSAN | 4.2 | 8.5% | 87% | 234 interviewsAdd to research |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 51 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 35 |
| Large Enterprise | 44 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 571 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 220 |
| Large Enterprise | 446 |
HPE SimpliVity stands as a comprehensive solution for organizations seeking a robust infrastructure capable of handling diverse workloads. Its features like integrated backup and disaster recovery ensure quick restores and high availability. Known for its efficient use of storage and data processing capabilities, it helps reduce operational costs. This system offers a reliable framework for virtualized environments, enhancing disaster recovery processes, IT operations, and application hosting while supporting workloads such as Oracle, SAP, and SQL.
What are HPE SimpliVity's key features?Organizations deploy HPE SimpliVity mainly for virtualized environments, focusing on disaster recovery, IT operations, and application hosting. Extensively used in sectors for VDI, backups, and data center tasks, it supports major workloads like Oracle and SAP, simplifying infrastructure management while ensuring high availability.
HPE SimpliVity was previously known as SimpliVity, HPE HCI.
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| Author info | Rating | Review Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees | 5.0 | I use HPE SimpliVity for virtualized workloads in a factory setting, benefiting from its comprehensive, fast recovery, and efficient data compression. While satisfied with its functionality, integrating its own virtualization could enhance cloud compatibility and streamline operations. |
| Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech | 3.5 | I’ve used HPE SimpliVity for VMware workloads and found it reliable, scalable, and efficient, though somewhat expensive. Setup is moderately easy, recovery is smooth, and support is solid, but pricing could be more competitive. |
| Senior System Specialist at General Directorate of Residence and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) | 3.5 | We leverage HPE SimpliVity in our corporate environment for its hardware acceleration and built-in storage, which reduce CPU usage and setup time. While support and installation have challenges, the deduplication rates offer significant cost and time savings. |
| Administrador TIC at Cementos Molins | 3.5 | In my company, HPE SimpliVity offers high availability through continuous replication in a stretched cluster. However, its dependency on VMware raises licensing and security concerns. We're considering Nutanix for a more independent, container-friendly solution. |
| Enterprise architect at Reliance Industries Ltd | 4.0 | I appreciate HPE SimpliVity for its seamless hardware integration and hypervisor flexibility. However, better integration with external solutions and cost considerations are needed, especially for smaller setups. The reliance on VMware ESXi may limit flexibility compared to alternatives like Nutanix and Dell VxRail. |
| system engineer at Yaşar Holding | 2.5 | I use HPE SimpliVity to run virtual machines but faced issues with vCenter updates and non-support for VMware vSphere AK. Setup complexity, stability, and scalability need improvement. Despite challenges, I expect an ROI in five years. |
| IT- Manager at Mjørud AS | 4.5 | We use HPE SimpliVity primarily for VMware, appreciating its good performance and ease of use. While pricing could improve due to rising VMware licensing costs, we're satisfied with its overall value and have moved from Hyper-V, despite its lower cost. |
| Information Technology Manager at Troyer Foods, Inc. | 4.5 | I've used SimpliVity for five years, appreciating its hands-off management and phenomenal deduplication. While stable with good support, individual file restore limits are a drawback. Once groundbreaking, competitors have caught up, but I still rate it highly. |
| Head of technical Follow-up and Development at Greater Amman Municipality | 4.5 | I use SimpliVity HCI for our VDI solution, finding it stable and effective. It resolved our previous bottleneck issues, simplifying operations and improving performance. Setup was easy. I highly recommend it and rate it 9/10. |
| CTO & Presales Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees | 4.5 | I use HPE SimpliVity for general virtualization, different workloads, and VDI. It's easy to manage, offers great storage efficiency, and has excellent integrated backup and data protection. While it excels with VMware, more hypervisor options would be beneficial. |
The main use case for HPE SimpliVity is that the customer is a group of companies consisting of factories. They need virtual machines and want a complete, faster solution. That's why they purchased HPE SimpliVity for virtualized workloads.
The customer purchased the HPE SimpliVity solution with the VMware vCenters.
HPE SimpliVity is a complete solution and its recovery point in time is very fast. There is another solution, the rapid DR, which is a very good solution.
When discussing data efficiency capabilities, the compression level from HPE SimpliVity is very good.
It is also useful to use vCenter for managing HPE SimpliVity.
The measurable benefits HPE SimpliVity provides to users is that customers get everything in a single solution, and OmniStack is another excellent solution. The greatest benefit is that customers don't need multiple hardware solutions from other vendors. Virtualization comes in a single box. With other solutions, customers can individually configure VMware and virtual workloads, but HPE SimpliVity is the best solution for customers because its compression capacity meets customer requirements, and it is a very robust solution. Additionally, it saves money.
There is the latest update from HPE regarding HPE SimpliVity. For virtualization, HPE has to depend on other manufacturers, OEMs such as VMware or Hyper-V. Recently, HPE declared the VM essential virtualization solution. In the future, if HPE integrates HPE SimpliVity with VM essential, that will be a great combination.
Functionality-wise, I am totally satisfied with HPE SimpliVity, but for improvement, if HPE integrates its own virtualization solution, this combination and integration will be beneficial because this integration can be configured with the cloud-based system. A VM can be uploaded to the cloud from this, which will be advantageous for backup to other sites.
I am still working with HPE as a partner.
The initial setup for HPE SimpliVity is very simple. Just a few pieces of information are needed, and it's a very simple installation process.
When rating stability for HPE SimpliVity from 1 to 10, stability is very good. We have received no complaints from the customer side.
HPE SimpliVity is the solution for customers for virtual workloads that is great in the market. While other solutions exist, from HPE's side, it is stable, and customers find it easy to manage and easy to grow. That is the actual scenario.
Regarding scalability, the ability to scale or expand is very straightforward because the customer purchased initially two nodes, and if they want to increase the workload, scalability becomes quite simple. As far as we started with the two nodes, if their business demand increases in the future, they will add more nodes as per their needs.
Other vendors may not have that scalability facility as easily, but with HPE, customers can scale up the HPE SimpliVity solution anytime.
I rate HPE tech support as very good with no issues. The technical support from the HPE side is excellent, and I give them 10 out of 10.
Positive
The initial setup for HPE SimpliVity is very simple. Just a few pieces of information are needed, and it's a very simple installation process.
Currently, I have applied for the on-prem deployment of HPE SimpliVity, but the customer has planned for the cloud-based extension.
I love HPE SimpliVity, that is my final thought.
On a scale of one to ten, I rate HPE SimpliVity a ten.
My typical use case for HPE SimpliVity is essentially demanded from the customer for VMware workload in a same rack, where all the workloads on the same rack include compute, storage, network, and virtualization, making it a converged solution regarding virtualization.
HPE SimpliVity is a strong competitor to Dell VxRail and some Huawei solutions. Regarding functionality, HPE SimpliVity is a complete solution for converged infrastructure, having its own local data store for the virtual machines and workloads.
The data efficiency capabilities in HPE SimpliVity are impressive, as it is capable of storing data in its converged infrastructure with good resiliency and future expandability.
Regarding recovery capabilities, if the primary workload is being backed up periodically, the recovery is very easy and smooth.
I haven't noticed anything that should be better in HPE SimpliVity, as I haven't done extensive work on this platform; I have only completed a couple of projects recently.
Pricing could be an area for improvement, as there are many other options that are very cost-effective compared to HPE SimpliVity or converged solutions.
I have limited experience with HPE SimpliVity, as I have completed a couple of projects on this solution in the past three months.
As far as HPE SimpliVity is concerned, it is a reliable solution.
HPE SimpliVity is scalable, as it can be scaled in terms of addition of nodes, starting with at least three nodes and scaling up to a significant number of nodes.
I would rate technical support from HPE SimpliVity eight out of ten.
Positive
The initial setup of HPE SimpliVity is moderate; it is not complex or difficult, but the sizing part is somewhat complex. When we discuss the sizing of SimpliVity solutions, the sizing tool is a bit complex, but we can get support from HPE tech and other pre-sales resources in HPE, so that is not a significant challenge.
Standalone HPE SimpliVity is more expensive than other OEMs and solutions. Regarding the software side, VMware is costing significantly more nowadays compared to other solutions in the market. The combination of HPE hardware and software from VMware comes with substantial costs.
Based on my experience, I rate HPE SimpliVity seven out of ten.
We are actually in a corporate environment system, and we have that relationship with HPE and VMware. We use SimpliVity, and some of the other workloads are running on it.
The hardware accelerator gives more responsive and cost-effective results, as it has an NVMD disk. In terms of performance, it is excellent. We have also achieved substantial deduplication, getting around 20-1 compared to 9-1 with our previous solution.
SimpliVity has hardware acceleration, which frees up CPU utilization. It also features inbuilt storage, allowing us to spin out the data store directly without extra setup.
There are some problems with support from HPE. Tickets often go to Tunisian engineers who do not attend promptly. Updates are required when we have an update on vCenter or host level, and we must procure support from HPE SimpliVity team, which is complicated. Some IPs are not reachable due to subnet issues. Installation by the HPE support team can be messy.
We have been using this solution since 2017.
In terms of stability, if the maintenance is perfect, then there should not be many issues.
There are some limitations, such as scalability up to 64 nodes.
Support is problematic, and reachability issues with engineers based in Tunisia make urgent support attention challenging.
Neutral
We used VMware previously and switched to SimpliVity due to better deduplication ratios.
The initial setup is straightforward but requires extensive documentation before implementation.
Installation was done by the HPE support team. There was one knowledgeable individual from India who was very helpful.
SimpliVity has provided substantial cost and time savings, particularly due to its deduplication rates and built-in storage capabilities.
The price is almost equal to VMware vSAN, making it not much cost saving. However, the time-saving during upgrades is notable.
We also considered WeChat and VMware.
When deploying, ensure all documentation is prepared, and IP configurations are sorted out to avoid issues with subnet communication.
I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.
In my company, we use HPE SimpliVity. Our company has four HPE SimpliVity nodes working in pairs because it works in the stretched cluster mode, and ensures the replication between data centers. Every virtual machine is replicated in the cluster. When Our company has some issues, some problem in one of the data centers or one of the hosts, the other can resume or move the workload and can start after five minutes, more or less the automation again. Our company can have some kind of high availability in our on-premises equipment.
The most important advantage that I can share about the tool is the high availability feature, along with the continuous and synchronous replication between nodes in a stretcher cluster.
The main issue with HPE SimpliVity is that you are very attached to VMware or VMware dependencies because the tool works with VMware technology. HPE SimpliVity is an add-on from VMware. Nowadays, my company has a lot of concerns about VMware's licensing policy. Another big concern of the tool is related to security because one has to continuously update patch vulnerabilities that are appearing continuously in VMware's different versions. Actually, the foundation of all the architecture is VMware and that is one of the main issues with the tool. My company is analyzing our virtual infrastructure strategy to see if we can move to Nutanix because maybe it may work better and might have another approach. Nutanix is absolutely independent of VMware.
I could add that since HPE SimpliVity is very precisely dependent on VMware, it is not open to containers unlike Nutanix, for example. The aforementioned area is a concern that needs to be resolved by HPE.
I have been using HPE SimpliVity for four years.
It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
The tool is not very good when it comes to the scalability part, and it doesn't work like Nutanix alternatives that work in active stretcher clusters and nodes, as both work in pairs. If you need to scale up and increase the workloads, the fact is that we have to deploy a new pair of security nodes, and they don't work smoothly and transparently. There are many things that are not very well resolved in HPE SimpliVity.
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a five out of ten.
There are four admins working with the tool.
My company is unsure about increasing the use of the product since we are still analyzing certain areas of the solution.
Our company may use HPE SimpliVity, and it means purchasing new pairs of the product, or maybe we may go for a change and go for an alternative like Nutanix.
For customer support, you need to go to HPE's support center, where you can open a ticket, and they are very, very quick in responding and managing issues. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.
Positive
On a scale of one to ten, where ten means the setup process was easy, I rate the product's initial setup phase as six. You need to work with HPE engineers, as they have to come to your house and deploy by following their practices, and they can only do that because the tool has a very controlled and certified portfolio that doesn't allow you to do the setup by yourself. You need the participation of certified engineers from the manufacturer.
The product's deployment phase is straightforward if everything goes well. In the initial deployment in 2019, I remember that the process was not so straightforward, and we experienced a few problems. Our company's recent experiences with the tool were good.
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.
The solution can be deployed in four hours.
HPE SimpliVity is much more affordable than Nutanix or VMware vSAN, which are HPE's typical competitors. I don't have updated or up-to-date news about the tool's prices. Two years ago, the tool was less expensive. The first pair of servers was about 90,000 EUR, including three years of warranty. It is 30,000 EUR per year.
To streamline our data center operations, I would say that the vast majority of our company's servers are posted on HPE SimpliVity nodes, which ensures that our infrastructure or on-premises infrastructure is running and working properly.
The built-in data protection of HPR SimpliVity has been beneficial and it is another good feature of the tool. The tool has something similar to internal backups, which allows it to perform a scheduled backup policy inside HPE SimpliVity's cluster. When you have some kind of need to recover from backups, then you don't need to recover from an external source. You can also use HPE SimpliVity as the backup source, and it is a very good feature because you don't need to go to a third party like Veeam or things like that. You can use HPE SimpliVity as a first level of backup. HPE SimpliVity should not be the only tool, but it shouldn't be the only one that gets considered as the first one in a company.
The tool offers VMware vCenter's interface, so you won't notice anything special. You just have a little extra feature that appears in the contextual menus.
I would say that there is no particular positive influence of the tool's user interface on management. It has the same interface that we have been working on for the last six years we are working.
People should be sure about the product and must get direct assistance from HPE since it is very critical during the deployment process
The general impression is that the technology is good, and the solution is useful to get rid of our issues. My feedback about the tool is good.
I rate the tool a seven out of ten.
What I appreciate most about HPE SimpliVity is its seamless integration of hardware. The flexibility to use any hypervisor adds an extra layer of convenience, making it a standout solution for streamlined and adaptable infrastructure management.
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.
I have been working with HPE SimpliVity for seven months.
I would rate the stability of the solution as an eight out of ten.
HPE SimpliVity is scalable within certain limits. Adding nodes to a cluster is straightforward, but there's a constraint on the number of nodes you can add. If you need extensive scalability, you might want to compare it with solutions like Nutanix or Dell, which support a larger number of nodes. I work with a diverse range of clients, including small, medium, and large enterprises. HPE SimpliVity is suitable for all of them.
HPE support has been generally good but has room for improvement. There were instances where internal coordination seemed lacking, making it challenging to connect with the right person promptly. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate it an eight.
HPE SimpliVity compares well with other HCI solutions, but its reliance on VMware ESXi as the primary hypervisor might limit flexibility. In the hypervisor landscape, VMware holds a strong position, followed by Nutanix, Dell VxRail, and then SimpliVity. HPE may need to consider diversifying hypervisor options for broader compatibility.
I would rate the easiness of the initial setup as a nine out of ten. In my experience, deployment time for HPE SimpliVity varies. With the right setup and proper configurations, it can be done in a day. However, if there are complex integrations with insufficient documentation, it can take several days to sort out the intricacies. I believe implementing an "integration as a service" model, where common integrations are pre-configured as consumable plugins, could significantly streamline the process and add considerable value.
HPE SimpliVity offers competitive pricing, generally lower than some alternatives. However, I believe there is room for further price adjustments, where there might be opportunities for more competitive pricing.
I would definitely recommend HPE SimpliVity to others. Overall, I would rate it as an eight out of ten.
I use the solution in my company to run approximately ten virtual machines in one region. HPE stated that my company could use SimpliVity without making any changes in our environment, especially the VMware environment. After installing HPE SimpliVity, my company saw that we could not update our central server without its permission. HPE SimpliVity must approve vCenter update, but it was not something that HPE had mentioned to our company. My company also learned that HPE SimpliVity does not support vCenter and VMware vSphere AK. HPE should have told us about the aforementioned details before we purchased HPE SimpliVity in our company, owing to which we are a bit disappointed with the tool.
From an improvement perspective, the setup phase needs to be made easier.
The deployment process must be made easy because currently it is complex and based on Java platform. It gives out many Java errors, and the errors are not understandable, so it is very difficult to find the error point.
The stability and scalability of the product are areas of concern where improvements are required. My company experienced a situation where the product was not responsive, and afterward, we learned that three days prior, one of the disks broke, due to which the system became unresponsive.
My company installed the product last week. I have been using the solution for a week.
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a five out of ten.
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a five out of ten.
Approximately 50 people in my company use the product.
The product is used on a regular and daily basis for operations.
The solution's technical support is good.
I have experience with servers and storage units from IBM and Lenovo.
The product's installation is a very complex, difficult, and software-based process.
My organization does not have any experience installing the product, so we usually get support for it from a different company.
My company expects to experience a return on investment from the use of the product after five years.
HPE said that my company could use SimpliVity with VMware licenses, but HPE recommends that we separate it from the vCenter server. HPE wanted my company to purchase a few additional licenses. The licenses from the product are expensive compared to the other solutions in the market.
HPE SimpliVity does not support vCenter HA and vCenter's update, which is a negative point attached to the tool.
I don't recommend that any company buy HPE SimpliVity.
I recommend companies buy traditional solutions, servers, and storage. I don't recommend HPE SimpliVity to any company.
Though I have no experience with the product's data protection capabilities, HPE stated that its backup schedule works perfectly.
I think the tool is worthy enough to be used in a company, but I won't recommend it to others.
I rate the tool a five out of ten.
We use the solution for VMware.
The solution provides good performance and ease of use.
The solution's price could be lower, but it holds good value for the money. The VMware licensing costs have skyrocketed since Broadcom's takeover. This has become a major issue. In the long run, this could negatively impact SimpliVity.
The solution offers robust recovery features. While it does integrate with networking components to some extent, it's not particularly seamless, except for some high-end HPE products.
I have been using HPE SimpliVity for six years. We will update to the latest version by next week.
The product is stable.
I rate the solution’s stability a ten out of ten.
The tool has operated without any need for adjustments or expansions. Initially, we received guidance from HPE regarding system sizing, which ensured that it could effectively operate for at least five years without significant modifications. The solution's scalability is suitable based on our experience and this initial sizing package.
150 users are using this solution.
We have tried Hyper-V in Microsoft's solution for some years. SimpliVity is only supported by VMware, so we changed it to VMware. Hyper-V is cheaper than VMware.
The logical deployment is quick. You need to have the physical infrastructure. The setup takes some time, but once the physical components are in place and people are ready to install or perform the necessary tasks, it typically takes about a day or two days.
We are very pleased with the product.
HPE SimpliVity has performed quite well. We encountered a couple of incidents where users caused damage to their servers or devices, but SimpliVity's recovery capabilities were impressive, restoring operations within seconds.
SimpliVity excels in terms of data storage performance. Its compression technology is highly effective, leading to significant storage efficiency gains. The recovery solutions and automated maintenance processes are top-notch, making server management relatively easy.
We've had to rely on HPE for firmware updates and hardware corrections. We had a few major maintenance sessions over six years. However, these were manageable, typically taking hours or sometimes days to complete, depending on the nature of the updates and our monitoring of public postings for potential issues. We can perform maintenance without disrupting production because of SimpliVity's capabilities.
Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
We purchased it about five years ago to replace our existing traditional SAN server VM environment. At that time, SimpliVity was the only platform that could house an enterprise-level SQL database. Nobody else had a platform that could handle SQL transactions without imploding. Everybody has got that figured out by now, and it is understandable.
We are using an older version because we purchased SimpliVity before it was owned by HPE. After about six to eight months of its implementation, it was purchased by HPE. When we purchased it, it was on the Cisco UCS server platform.
SimpliVity is integrated with the hypervisor, and you have a single pane of glass. It is really hands-off. Once you set your backup schedules, you're done. I'm not creating and tearing down virtual servers a lot. Our environment is fairly static, so unless I get an alert on something being wrong, and there is any predictive failure on a hard drive, I don't have to touch it. It is just on cruise control.
It doesn't take long to mount the entire VM somewhere and then copy it. That's one of the things that I like about SimpliVity's deduplication and compression. I can literally stand up a backup in minutes. It is like no time at all. They've got pretty phenomenal deduplication and compression. Within SimpliVity, one of the things that they do is deduplication and compression on ingestion. So, on the front side, everything is deduplicated and compressed, which, of course, adds some overhead to their solution. For instance, in my environment today, I've got roughly 30 terabytes of raw storage, and with their deduplication and compression, I'm over the 300 terabyte threshold with my active servers and all my backups.
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.
It has probably been five years. We have been using it before it was owned by HPE.
Its stability is great. When we put our servers in, solid-state arrays were not a thing. The performance five years ago was exponentially high. So, we went with 24 servers, and four of them were solid state. The other 20 were large spinning disks, and obviously, performance is way better today because solid state is more price effective now. So, you get the speed of that, but we're getting ready to replace it with something because SimpliVity has completely stopped supporting their solution on Cisco hardware. I'm now running it without a maintenance contract.
Their support is good. HPE is a big organization, and they handled keeping that support group together very well. You call the same 800 number that everybody else does, but once they identify it as a SimpliVity issue, you get transferred over to that group right away. Instead of trying to disseminate that knowledge amongst their existing engineers, they appeared to have kept the little nucleus of those knowledge-based guys. So, when I called, I had people who knew exactly what was going on.
It was almost hands-off to me. SimpliVity did it, but it was just about migrating over the VMs. You temporarily mount your existing VM environment in your new cluster or show it as a separate cluster, and then you just migrate them over. It is all done through the utilities that are built into the VM.
We spent $250,000 back in the day, and that was for two servers in my data center for that cluster. We then ran what they call an arbiter, and that took the place of a third server or the third node in the cluster. My DR site was one standalone server, and its horsepower was more than the two at my main site. It included my Cisco Switches that I needed to re-upgrade. It was comparable to what we were paying a year in VM.
I don't know if it's my HPE reseller or if it's an actual HPE initiative, but they're not pushing me to go with SimpliVity. They don't want me to go with their other storage solution with which they are leading more. In the research that I've done, I've found out that I can run SimpliVity on top of that storage solution. If I wanted to do that, HPE does offer that configuration.
While sizing your storage, knowing how a solution or a vendor does compression and deduplication is important. For example, Scale doesn't do compression and deduplication on the front side. So, you've got to make sure that you've got that accounted for, especially when you start doing backups.
They were definitely a 10 five years ago when we implemented them. What they were doing was incredible. The rest of the market and all other technology providers have caught up with what they're doing. I don't know how they stack up and compare to everybody now because I've been out of the loop long enough to know that. It is probably a level playing field as it boils down to today's market. I would still give them a nine out of 10 because they do have good service. My hardware is five years old, and it is not HPE hardware. I get it that it is time to renew.
We are using the SimpliVity HCI servers to work as a VDI solution. Mainly it's a VDI solution that is using the HCI nodes.
HPE simplivity makes the computer technogy as simple and enjoyable to use as possible, HPE Simplivity design efficient, effective and satisfying.
The HCI concept by itself is the most valuable feature of the solution. It is a full-fledged HCI. It is the main component. I think this is what makes the project valuable
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.
Our connection with HPE is not a new relationship. It's 15 or 20 years old. It's such a long history with HPE that they were just HP when we started.
I think the stability is perfect. We deployed the first part one and half years ago, or more. I think we had only one or two cases that needed support, otherwise it's stable and very convenient.
In terms of maintenance for SimpliVity, we have a three year support with the vendor through SMS partner for HPE that covers us until the end of the period. After that, we usually do a reassessment and ask for an estimate for maintenance for the coming years. So at the moment maintenance is handled by HPE and HPE partner (SMS) .
In terms of scalability, our expansion depends on how many end users I want to be using it because the sizing of the HCI depend on the number of end users that will connect to the HCI node.
I think that we have witnessed improvement in the performance between the HCI solution and traditional servers.
We have 600 users now, and next year we will have an additional 400. This brings us to 1000 users. Then we'll look for an expansion.
The quality of customer service depends on the cases. At the beginning of the projects, every environment has customized procedures. Our environment needed a little bit of customization that made some headache for HPE and SMS partner. But after that, it worked perfectly. And their responses are quite good with all the cases that we brought to them.
Positive
The initial setup was simple because it has a wizard GUI interface that helped to set up the project and set the needed configuration. Additionally, SMS partner was already connected step by step with a vendor. So it was quite easy and simple.
The licensing depends on the servers that it is going to run on. But SimpliVity didn't have a license to run on their devices. I think the license will be on the VMware or Citrix or the environment that you want to run on it. With SimpliVity, it is just a one time purchase and not actually any license.
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.
SimpliVity was the first HCI solution we deployed in our organization. It was a good experiment to start with. Now we are planning to start with a new HCI deployment next year.
I recommend SimpliVity to other organizations because it is quite easy to deal with, quite easy to start the configuration, and it is easy to manipulate if you want to track anything.
On a scale of one to ten, I would give SimpliVity a 9.
HPE Simplivity Simplifies our infrastructure thanks to HCI with Data optimitation that includes easy and Simple Backup so we reduced the time oriented to manage the infrastructure and reduce the investment in Storage and different technologies and consoles
The product can be managed easily. The storage efficiency is valuable. The tool has an integrated backup. The data protection capabilities are very good. I did not face any issues with it. We do the standard virtualization. We use VMware. Everything we do on VMware, we can do also on SimpliVity.
The solution must provide other hypervisors. VMware is changing its licensing model. I would like to test the VME version to see if it maintains all the features I like from HPE Simplivity
I have been using the solution for six years.
The tool has been working fine for a very long time. The stability is very good.
I rate the tool’s scalability a seven out of ten. It's a system based on appliances. If we want to scale, we must get a new appliance. Every hyperconverged infrastructure has a similar model. If I want more storage, it's not flexible because I need to add more appliances. The tool is suitable for medium and small companies.
HPE provides good support.
Positive
Yes, compute and Storage with Virtualization, we change to simplify the infrastructure and get more features in less components, compute, storage, virtualization and backup
The setup is easy. We have two on-premise clusters deployed in our organization.
Nutanix and VxRail are competitors of the solution. HPE SimpliVity is better than its competitors because of its storage optimization and backup features.
I will recommend the tool to others. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
