We performed a comparison between Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series and HPE SimpliVity based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly."
"Ten gigabit Ethernet compatibility, support, ease of use, and management are some positive features."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very mature software that supersedes its capabilities with my use cases."
"The management interface on the software is very simple. It is insanely simple compared to most SANs. The interface is also powerful when used to complete tasks that an IT administrator needs to complete."
"The most valuable features are high availability and real-time replication between two servers."
"As the client had acquired another company some distance away, they were concerned about having a single SAN in one location or the other. StarWind vSAN allowed us to keep a copy of the data local to each site without asking the client to pay for two SANs in addition to the two new servers they needed."
"PowerShell library is pretty good feature as I created with APC PowerChute a script to put volumes on maintenance mode then turning off the StarWind nodes together with the VM and Hosts when UPS reaches 15 percent, this way after a blackout or electrical problems when turning servers on again, there is no issues for syncing or data loss due to energy interrupts."
"Active-active HA provides top performance and redundancy."
"In our implementations, HDS Storage Virtualization has helped in migrating data with the least amount of downtime, compared to other storage technologies."
"This solution allowed us to move from using standalone systems to having all our data center management in one place."
"The replication technology can move data faster than EMC MirrorView and requires less bandwidth. The Storage Virtualization technology is the most mature in the market, outside of IBM’s Storwize (which has a lot of compatibility issues, and EMC’s very expensive VPLEX solution); and it works."
"Best for companies just starting out."
"The globally federated architecture means that the backup across sites does not consume precious MPLS bandwidth, which is cool."
"The compression and deduplication features are most valuable because they allow us to have a small footprint for storage. It is a very stable product, and we are also able to get all that we need in terms of reporting."
"Our customers get a lot more horsepower for a lot less management."
"It has instantaneous backup and lag-free restore. When everything is running, I can bring back a huge VM in less than 30 seconds. That's even better than Veeam."
"The backup and recovery is very fast, effective, and easy to use."
"I have saved time and money by moving to the platform."
"The HPE SimpliVity disc compression is very valuable."
"The documentation could be clearer in terms of explaining the installation."
"I would like to see more advanced free versions."
"An update caused a syncing issue and it took over a month to resolve it"
"It should reclaim white spaces after big files are deleted."
"The number of different ways you can set it up can make it a little daunting."
"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."
"I am expecting to see it more user-friendly in the future."
"I found that certain browsers are not fully compatible with the administration web access portal."
"An area for improvement would be technical support. In the next release, I would like to see more features added to make this a more complete solution."
"HDS reaches a ceiling depending on model. The G200 cannot transition to G400, the G400 can transition to G600 but cannot transition to G800, which is the top-end model."
"An update to its technology would be good. The G Series has been around for more than five years and HDS seriously needs to ramp up, since the competition has better performance at a lower cost with better features and functionalities. For example, it needs redirect on write Snapshot, preconfigured storage tiering with better IOPS, built-in deduplication technology on hybrid disk, etc."
"There needs to be a simple process for migrating one SimpliVity cluster to a new SimpliVity cluster."
"There is room for improvement in that there is a need for so many Federation nodes. It would help if they increased that capacity so that we didn't have to have so much hardware in our secondary site."
"It's a very complex installation. It's gotten easier, however, it's far from a double click on a link and a self-upgrade scenario. There's still an awful lot of magic that goes down to doing upgrades."
"The technical support is weak. It is a layered product. It has a software solution on top of the SimpliVity solution, which is built on top of the hardware of the HPE DL380s. When we call for a problem that we know is related to the DL380, we get a SimpliVity guy trying to solve a SimpliVity problem. If it is not a SimpliVity problem, it's a hardware problem. So, it takes awhile for them to figure out which part of the organization should really be helping us."
"I'm not a technical guy, and I am pretty much okay with the way it is, but it would help if it was closest to Nutanix in Gartner's Magic Quadrants. Nutanix very often beats us. Nutanix provides Acropolis for free. It probably would be great if we have a virtualization layer. It is something that might be lacking in our solution. We depend on VMware, and it is very expensive. It is lacking the software that allows us to install it with HPE and not depend on a third party."
"The initial setup was complex because it was a new solution."
"Since it is a newer solution, there needs to be more knowledge transfer out there."
"I wish to see an improved compute node selection, to allow us to select something other than merely the two socket system."
Earn 20 points
Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series is ranked 23rd in HCI while HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 151 reviews. Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series is rated 8.0, while HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series writes "Allows for centralized management with great interconnectivity". On the other hand, the top reviewer of HPE SimpliVity writes "Provides a unified management interface that allows administrators to manage all aspects of the infrastructure". Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VxRail, VMware vSAN and HPE Alletra dHCI, whereas HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and Scale Computing HC3. See our HPE SimpliVity vs. Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series report.
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