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HPE SimpliVity vs Sunlight 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

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
Sunlight
Ranking in HCI
28th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of HPE SimpliVity is 6.3%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sunlight is 1.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HPE SimpliVity6.3%
Sunlight1.3%
Other92.4%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

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.
RajeshKANUMURY - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Executive Officer at GniYes Inc.
Performs well, effective, and has responsive remote technical support
Sunlight is a scalable solution. It supports on-premises and distributed deployments, as well as public deployments. It has a single pane of management so I can manage all of my VM installations in a distributed manner. It also has a footprint, that allows me to operate on Edge. If for example, you have a retail shop with 2,000 locations and they use a networked point of sale system, or if you are Chipotle and they have so many locations and they have to use a backend system at each location. At the moment, these are all standalone systems that operate with very little connection to the central. We could, however, connect and create a network using Sunlight. We can virtualize and run with Edge thanks to Sunlight. This allows us to operate and obtain high-end computing on Edge for retail. Sunlight is a startup. I am not sure how many users they have, but we have been using it constantly and using the technology to bring in customers.

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 high availability."
"Has good performance and ease of use"
"Among the valuable features are that it's a complete solution, it's easy to use, and there is not a lot of management time involved in operating the solution."
"Technical support is perfect. They explain to us the solution in a very clear and simple way."
"We have full trust that it will help us in the next few years to deliver the IT functionality that we need in the firm that I work for."
"This is an overall good product."
"It is good technology, and the time and response of applications embrace the productivity of our enterprise."
"Software upgrades and scalability can be done during normal business hours with no downtime."
"The performance and small footprint of this solution are its most valuable features. I am able to obtain and use more than 90 percent of the physical hardware capacity."
"It supports the latest technology of NVMe SSD, which is PCIe-based SSD. It has a very good IOPS performance as compared to vSAN. For the same system, I get 1,000 IOPS with vSAN, and with Sunlight, I am able to get almost 10,000 IOPS. In terms of features, it has almost all the features, such as HA and centralized dashboards. It can be managed centrally, and the visibility of the system is very good. They also have very good technical support and customer or partner training."
"If I had to use VMware or Nutanix, the same application would take three nodes and provide 400,000 IOPS, or input-output operations, but with Sunlight, I can get four million IOPS for the same price, allowing me to run an application on much less hardware."
"It supports the latest technology of NVMe SSD, which is PCIe-based SSD, and it has very good IOPS performance as compared to vSAN because for the same system I get 1,000 IOPS with vSAN, and with Sunlight, I am able to get almost 10,000 IOPS."
 

Cons

"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."
"The initial setup was a little complex because we were in the first version, fresh releases."
"To install or to update it is more complicated than other solutions."
"Bandwidth throttling during offsite backups would be better than the off-peak time setting for a 24/7 shop."
"The installation is quite easy but it could still be improved."
"Its deployment should be easier."
"SimpliVity has no file server services. That's one of the solution's biggest shortcomings."
"There are a lot of features that they need to improve on, such as the backup and DR feature sets."
"Its reporting and dashboards need to be improved. It currently has very basic reporting options."
"My recommendation would be to add this technology to Azure, Microsoft Azure so that we can bring it to the market, or deploy it on public clouds such as Microsoft Azure and Google. It is currently only available on Amazon's public cloud."
"It lacks the bells and whistles that are typically associated with Amazon Services or Nutanix."
"Its reporting and dashboards need to be improved. It currently has very basic reporting options. It should also be made easier to deploy on Unix operating systems. It is easy to deploy on Windows and Linux, but it is currently not easy to deploy on Unix."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are additional costs for storage."
"​Investing less time in configuration and management means that you will have more time to focus on what is really important: Your company's innovation and rapid commercialization.​"
"The only thing that I think we are paying for is the VMware licenses, but we are enterprise, so it is not horrible."
"​Cost is a factor. It is quite expensive."
"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."
"It's a costly solution and is more expensive than VxRail."
"We bought this solution as a package that included all of the hardware and all of the software."
"It is not too expensive, but it is quite expensive for me."
"There is an operating cost for the VDIs, which is an additional cost. However, the licensing fee is half that of VMware or Nutanix."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business67
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise80
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

SimpliVity, HPE HCI
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Red Bull Racing, Mandarin Oriental, Brigham Young University, UCLA, Merlin Entertainments, Sasa Cosmetics, Travelport, St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Princess House
Lavazza, Infraspace
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE SimpliVity vs. Sunlight and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.