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Dell XC Appliance vs HPE SimpliVity comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell XC Appliance
Ranking in HCI
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE SimpliVity
Ranking in HCI
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
155
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Dell XC Appliance is 1.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE SimpliVity is 6.8%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HPE SimpliVity6.8%
Dell XC Appliance1.6%
Other91.6%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Enables seamless integration with multiple software and outstanding AI tools
The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor. If multi-hypervisor support is required and VMware does not provide it, then Dell's appliance won't support it. I find it overly reliant on VMware. In cases of company mergers involving different platforms, software that can handle a multi-hypervisor environment would facilitate quicker integration.
Mohammed Lokman Hossen - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Has integrated solutions and rapid recovery made management smoother and more reliable
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is that you can assign a volume to an off-shore workload on the fly."
"From a single screen, I can view VM details, performance, and hardware issues, such as power supply or fan malfunctions, along with RAM module problems."
"The most valuable features are the deduplication and the compression features."
"When we compare it to normal hardware servers, I'd say it is quite easy to configure and deploy."
"It's an extremely stable solution, and I highly recommend it."
"What I like the most is that it is easy to implement, easy deployment and that it's easy to manage."
"The most valuable feature is the low management overhead, and the lower skill set required to manage it."
"The solution's hardware is great."
"It is easy to set up."
"It is a stable solution."
"There are three big improvements that SimpliVity brought to our organization: The ability to quickly and reliably create and maintain a disaster recovery environment over a relatively, low bandwidth WAN connection."
"SimpliVity is probably the way to go if you want to stay nimble, innovative, have a smaller IT team, or if you want to have everything centralized with one login."
"We can scale the solution easily."
"For one of our clients who needed backup capability but did not want to invest in a dedicated backup tool, SimpliVity's native backup with app consistency came in handy."
"The ease of managing this system."
"We evaluated different solutions, but SimpliVity was the best choice in performance and scalability."
 

Cons

"The solution's storage size could be improved."
"The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor. If multi-hypervisor support is required and VMware does not provide it, then Dell's appliance won't support it."
"There should be more provisioning capabilities within the solution."
"The cost of using the public cloud deployment is astronomical."
"Currently, there is no support for the servers that are not in the cluster."
"We are not always advised of new features or updates, so we must research to stay up to date."
"In the next release, I would like to see support for Docker and containers."
"Dell needs to do a lot of work to simplify the maintenance and life-cycle upgrades for the product."
"Not being able to apply ESXi patches as needed has always been a concern, but it has not become a big issue."
"The production server infrastructure is an area with room for improvement."
"I think that they should have their own hyper-converged system."
"Deployment could be simplified and more user friendly."
"We want HPE to do whatever they can do to improve, in order to make it a better customer experience."
"The fact that it is compatible with vCenter (VMware) only; however, the company says Hyper-V and KVM are coming shortly."
"We have had some failures out-of-the-box. We have had some failures with the OmniStack module. One thing that we didn't fully understand was how much of the internal memory was used up by the OmniStack piece, which basically makes up SimpliVity."
"It is not as flexible as we want. We have asked for some more granular scalability. For example, the ability to add some disks, and not another node, if we need more storage.​"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We received a good price from Dell."
"The pricing is dependent on the technology and is in direct relation to the manufacturer and the components."
"The pricing is good."
"The price point is very fair for a product in this category but can vary depending on the components selected within the family of products."
"The pricing for Dell EMC solutions is quite expensive and not really made for small or medium-sized businesses."
"Other vendors fall short on price compared to HPE on this product."
"The solution is affordable and quite reasonably priced in terms of the product one gets."
"The pricing of HPE SimpliVity is comparable with other solutions so the price is good."
"Its licensing is yearly."
"The time savings on the administration side of things is huge. We had somebody who was dedicated pretty much full-time to hardware, and now, they spend about a quarter of their time a year on hardware-related issues."
"Its price is pretty good as compared to the other solutions, but it is quite expensive if we compare it with non-HCI solutions."
"HPE SimpliVity is much more affordable than Nutanix or VMware vSAN...The first pair of servers was about 90,000 EUR, including three years of warranty. It is 30,000 EUR per year."
"There are additional costs for storage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Performing Arts
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business67
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise80
 

Questions from the Community

What advice do you have for others considering Dell XC Appliance?
My advice for people who are selling this product is to first make sure that you educate the customers. The customer doesn't often know much about HCI and what the need to be using it for. If they ...
What needs improvement with Dell XC Appliance?
The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor. If multi-hypervisor support is required and VMware does not provide it, then Dell's applian...
What is your primary use case for Dell XC Appliance?
Dell offers several benefits with its appliances. Primarily, I can combine them horizontally and vertically, reaching up to sixty-four nodes. Additionally, Dell employs its own artificial intellige...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...
What do you like most about HPE SimpliVity?
The solution's technical support is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE SimpliVity?
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 ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SimpliVity, HPE HCI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cardlytics, AEW Energie, Aubert, Zhongtong Information Service, Commune de Villepinte, Teikyo University Hospital
Red Bull Racing, Mandarin Oriental, Brigham Young University, UCLA, Merlin Entertainments, Sasa Cosmetics, Travelport, St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Princess House
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell XC Appliance vs. HPE SimpliVity and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.