HPE SimpliVity and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes are competitive products in the hyperconverged infrastructure market. HPE SimpliVity often has the upper hand due to its seamless integrated backup and rapid data recovery features.
Features: HPE SimpliVity offers integrated data protection, inline deduplication, and an advanced data virtualization platform that ensures efficient storage management and seamless backup capabilities. Its infrastructure supports quick data recovery, reducing latency, and efficient data replication. On the other hand, Dell vSAN Ready Nodes provide robust deduplication, fast restores, and reliable disaster recovery functionalities, although the integrated backup feature remains more distinctive in SimpliVity.
Room for Improvement: HPE SimpliVity users express the need for enhanced automation in backup and replication processes and support for hypervisors beyond VMware. They also seek better reporting on backup history and more intuitive single-file restore options. Dell vSAN Ready Nodes face challenges with complex deployment processes and scalability, with users desiring improved integration with public cloud services and more flexible pricing structures.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HPE SimpliVity is applauded for its rapid on-premises deployment, although some users face challenges due to its reliance on VMware. Its customer service and technical support are regarded highly, despite occasional delays following the HPE acquisition. Dell vSAN Ready Nodes boast strong customer service, yet their deployment is often complex, especially in hybrid cloud setups, necessitating extra support for seamless integration.
Pricing and ROI: HPE SimpliVity’s pricing, while initially perceived as high, often proves cost-effective due to its feature set, bypassing the need for additional licenses and infrastructure, yielding satisfactory ROI. Conversely, Dell vSAN Ready Nodes are generally viewed as costlier, attributed to higher maintenance expenses and limited pricing flexibility, which can negatively influence ROI perception.
The OPEX benefits are around 30 to 40% because the same engineer who manages vSphere can handle Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, eliminating the need for additional support engineers.
Whether we have pro support plus or just the basic level, they are helpful and reliable as long as we provide the necessary details.
There is always room for improvement in terms of response time and reaching knowledgeable staff quickly.
The technical support from the HPE side is excellent, and I give them 10 out of 10.
With VCF we have significant automation built-in within the VCF console within SDDC manager as the primary management console.
I would rate scalability around seven because when customers want to expand capacity but all the drive slots are full, they are forced to buy new servers or nodes which adds more costs with licenses and hardware.
With HPE, customers can scale up the HPE SimpliVity solution anytime.
A disk group for five disks can be problematic, and customers need to tolerate downtime if the disk is not available.
From HPE's side, it is stable, and customers find it easy to manage and easy to grow.
A faster firmware lifecycle with the release of validated firmware catalogs more quickly would be a desired improvement.
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes are useful as a product, but the lack of expansion with VMware has led customers to refrain from further upgrades.
In some cases, we have seen hardware failures and performance issues where performance suddenly deteriorates.
In the future, if HPE integrates HPE SimpliVity with VM essential, that will be a great combination.
As a group under Comcast, we receive very good pricing from Dell due to our considerable business dealings.
The ability for single-team management without requiring a separate storage team for managing arrays and fiber channel switches is also a valuable feature.
I would say in-house management, administration, and storage policies are the three key differentiators compared to normal non-Dell vSAN Ready Nodes where we are leveraging external storage.
Dell's technical support is generally very good.
The greatest benefit is that customers don't need multiple hardware solutions from other vendors. Virtualization comes in a single box.
Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes are pre-configured building blocks that reduce deployment
risks with certified configurations, improve storage efficiency by up to 50%1
, and can help
you build or scale your vSAN cluster faster.14 Whether you're just getting started, and/or
expanding your existing VMware environment, Dell EMC is here for you every step of the
way with consulting, education, deployment and support services for the entire solution.
HPE SimpliVity is an HCI software solution that provides powerful data protection, reducing data loss along with lowering the risk of ransomware attacks on your enterprise.
HPE SimpliVity Features
HPE SimpliVity has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
HPE SimpliVity Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing HPE SimpliVity. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by HPE SimpliVity users.
Jeff S., Information Technology Manager at Troyer Foods, Inc. says the solution has “Phenomenal deduplication and compression, good support, and works on its own. 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.
A Senior Datacenter Consultant at a computer software company mentions, “The most valuable feature is the ease of use and the storage virtualization layer, together with the built-in backups. That's what makes SimpliVity really useful, and how you can replicate data between different sites without paying an extra license for that feature. All the features are built into the product.”
PeerSpot user Doug C., IT Engineer at a government, comments, “Backups and restores occur very quickly. All SimpliVity management is done through vCenter, providing a single-pane of glass for all management and configuration functions. The advanced deduplication and compression greatly reduce the storage requirements, reducing the amount of expensive flash storage required.The 10G interfaces between the SimpliVity nodes greatly speeds up VM migrations between nodes. SimpliVity enables "stretched-cluster" operation with mirrored storage between the nodes, enabling automated failover. If a node or site goes down for any reason, the VMs on that node are automatically restarted on the other node.”
German I., Solutions Architect Data Center Servers and Storage at Tecnologia informatica, explains, “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.”
We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
