HPE SimpliVity Reviews

We are using this solution for a VDI system.

HPE SimpliVity can improve our DR solution.

I would recommend this for the Hospitality industry because of the data recovery. I think that HPE SimpliVity is the answer.

The most valuable feature is high availability.

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 started using HPE SimpliVity approximately two months ago.

It's a stable solution. We have not had any issues with stability.

This solution is scalable. You can add additional nodes at any time. It's easier to scale than Cisco Hyperflex and better than Nutanix.

Technical support is excellent.

Previously, we did not use another solution.

SimpliVity is the first HCI that we have implemented in this company. We have learned and gained more experience in this area.

The initial setup was simple. It took one week to deploy.

We did not deploy this solution ourselves, we used a system provider.

The hardware is expensive. For the same price, Cisco can provide more hardware specifications for us.

The hardware costs are more of an issue than the licensing costs.

We also evaluated Nutanix.

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

This is a product that I would recommend to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are a solution provider and we implement HPE products such as SimpliVity for our customers. I am not a customer and I do not use all of the products that we sell, although I know these solutions. SimpliVity is a product that also we use ourselves. 

The most valuable features are replication and backup.

This solution is very intuitive and flexible.

The vendor was quick to provide support for VMs in the product.

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.

I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately four years.

Using SimpliVity improves the stability of the environment.

The scalability is the best in the market. We have between 10 and 15 users in our organization, and it is installed in the data center.

Technical support is very good and I would rate them a ten out of ten.

The initial setup is easy and it will take five or six hours to deploy.

My advice for anybody who is considering this product is that it is easy to deploy and set up replication for use in a data center. It can be used in production for DLP.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Typically, our customers use it to try to consolidate their solutions on VMware with multiple virtual machines — almost more than 15 in every case.

The integration possibilities regarding the administration console are one of the best configurations and one of the best features that differentiates this product from others in the market. Also, you can add extra coverage protection that includes everything inside of the hard drives — similar products don't do this. You can use it directly from the hypervisor, which is great.

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. 

I have been using this solution for almost two years.

We have no problems with SimpliVity. If you configure it well, the product works well, but once you consider the possibility of growing a SimpliVity cluster after one or two years, it's not easy for costumers to understand that the original nodes are not available — you have to buy specific new nodes or whatever is available at that moment. You will lose some space, capabilities, or some benefits with the new nodes — you may need to configure a new cluster and migrate the older one. 

SimpliVity should have the capability to integrate with other clusters in the future. Here in Colombia, our customers try it with just one additional node, but although that additional node could be easy to configure, you still will lose some features and characteristics.

The technical support is exceptionally good. 

There's some information missing from the manual. I had to request special help in some cases because the documents are not complete. For example, wherever you go, unless you have some kind of experience with the product, there are some ports on the backend of the servers that are not easily identifiable. When you read over the documents and try to find that information, you can't find it anywhere — you have to contact SimpliVity support.

They need to provide more complete information about the components and their uses, especially the ports on the back.

The initial setup is not bad when you use the OCA. The OCA is a configuration utility but you have to know what you're doing or you could easily drive up the end-price for the customer.

Regarding configuration, it would be nice to have the flexibility to easily select the right low-cost service for any implementation or configuration. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine. If the customer has the right environment, I would definitely recommend this solution.

We sell HP products. Hyperconvergence with SimpliVity is one of the main products that we are pushing. The virtual application is the main product. It is based on the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), but it is only an application. We sell this infrastructure to our customers and put the virtual application in this infrastructure.

A solution that provide a simple way to HA , is absolutely efficient and improve the work for the IT team

The access, high availability, and interface are the most valuable and important for us. There is one interface for the whole product, which is very important because you have a single pane to view all the infrastructure of a customer. You can improve your data recovery plan or DRP, or you can make a special emergency plan if a disk has any problem.

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.

I have been selling HPE SimpliVity for less than one year.

It is stable.

You can easily scale without any problem by adding new nodes, which is a very good part of the product. Currently, my customers don't have a requirement for scalability, but they will have a requirement in the future. They will have to scale the platform, storage, and virtual machines in the near future. A customer is planning to add one or two nodes at the beginning of the next year. My customers are medium-sized and big-sized companies.

They can maybe improve the response time. When a customer has an emergency and is pushing us, we need to respond in the best way. This is not a complaint. Customers always want the solution immediately. We help our customers in getting the most uptime for this service.

No, previously we didn't use a differente solutio , just HP DL nodes separately

It is a new technology, and the setup is a little complicated. The learning curve is not so high, and you can learn to deploy the product easily in a couple of weeks. You have to get people certified in different technologies of HP before the deployment.

Deployment can take from a couple of weeks to a month and a half. There could also be problems with a customer's infrastructure. In some cases, putting the devices is a whole new project because the customer is not prepared.

In Latam is very different a ROI. Depends of the industry and all the return has more time to return

It is expensive for this market. Everyone says that it is a very good product, but the only complaint is about the price. The enterprises must evalute carefully what they want to do and how many people has tod do te job. A simple interface improve operational time

Nutanix, Dell nodes

I would recommend this solution. It is very good for me. 

I would rate HPE SimpliVity a nine out of ten.

I'm a service provider. I install it for my customers. I typically implement it for telecoms.

Once you get the solution up and running, it is very good.

The solution is extremely stable.

The product offers good value for the amount you pay. It doesn't give you any issues once it's implemented.

The solution can scale very nicely.

The interface is very good and is very easy to navigate. You can find everything you need from one central place.

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.

We've been using the solution for two or three years.

While the implementation is difficult, once you get past that, it's an excellent solution. It's an extremely stable product and very reliable. We have no issues with it once it's up and running. It's not buggy or glitchy. It doesn't crash. It's great.

The solution is very, very scalable. If a company needs to expand it, they can do so easily.

HP Technical support is great. HP has developed instant AI, artificial intelligence. Support can be automatic now. When we activate the AI, when we have a problem on-site, HP will basically know in advance. If we have to repair something, it will be sent automatically. They do offer on-site support, however, that's something that needs to be paid for.

Overall, we've been satisfied with their level of support.

I have some experience with Nutanix. I've read about it and gone over documentation. I've never installed it, however, I find the implementation in theory easier and more automated than this product.

The installation is not straightforward. It is quite complex. Even updating it is complex. There are many steps you need to account for. It takes some time to get it done.

It's depend on the plan of the client, however, if there is one cluster only, it can go fast and you can deploy in a few days. However, if you add to an existing cluster, you have to update many things, and this will maybe one week or potentially two weeks.

While at first clients always comment on the pricing being very high. However, once it's deployed, and they see how well it works, they don't complain. Therefore, I think it's quite fair.

We are HPE partners.

Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I would caution others, to implement the solution effectively, you have to go step by step, and with no hurry. The documentation for implementation is very long. If you don't follow it exactly and do every step as described, you'll have a lot of challenges during the implementation, therefore, just go slow. 

It is easy to set up. 

Its performance can be faster.

I have been using HPE SimpliVity for one to two years.

It is stable.

It is scalable.

They provide good support.

It was easy.

It is not too expensive, but it is quite expensive for me.

I am completely satisfied with this solution. I would rate HPE SimpliVity a nine out of ten.

We have a virtualized environment and we use it for backups and disaster recovery and to be able to store all of our data locally and replicate.

It's allowed us to be more efficient in disk space usage with a reduction of 47 to 1 in hard drive space.

• It's a complete solution
• Easy to use
• Not a lot of management time involved in operating the solution

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.

3+ years

The stability is very good. It has 100 percent uptime, other than regularly scheduled maintenance.

We're a relatively small organization so it was able to scale down to our level. We understand it can scale up exponentially.

We get very good technical support.

We used EqualLogic SAN with independent host but that solution was nearing end-of-life. By moving to SimpliVity we were able to reduce our hardware footprint.

The setup was complex to me, but to the integrator and the SimpliVity people, it was routine.

We used Advanticom out of Pittsburgh. Our experience with them was very good. They were very knowledgeable and worked well with SimpliVity's SEs and implementation people.

We have not done a true calculation, but based upon the support needs and the reduction in the footprint, there's definitely an ROI.

We're paying $3,000-$4,000 a month.

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

Ask people who have already implemented a solution for their opinion and you'll likely find that most of the SimpliVity customers would put the solution in again if they had to do it over.

I would rate SimpliVity a nine out of ten due to the fact that it needs little intervention on a daily basis, the uptime is excellent, and it works.

We're using it to refresh our retail stores.

It has improved our backup situation by reducing its complexity and improving recovery time.

As a refresh, we've improved our CPU and memory capability which allows us to build a foundation and continue to move forward in our app development. We can release new applications.

• The easy to use interface
• Already using VMware
• A very small package but with lots of memory and CPU

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.

I would consider it stable.

For the most part, for what it does, the scalability is fine.

Technical support is very good.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

We used a reseller. Our experience with them was kind of interesting. CDW was the main partner but they had sub-contracted parts of it out to Tech Data, a move which added another layer that we didn't expect and was not fully disclosed at the beginning.

You definitely have to do a PoC and check-mark all the different items that are in your requirements. Go from there and see if it actually works.

I'd give it a nine. It has pretty much everything there.