It's a game changer. They have the inline compression, which is really good. It can present itself as the NAS, so it can leverage our existing compute and then the backup. The backup in DR has been a lifesaver. It makes jobs so much easier. It makes my job a lot easier.
Senior Systems/Storage Engineer at Banc of California
Provides inline compression, leverages our existing compute, and does backup in DR.
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
Overall benefits include reducing the cost of administration. We have a small head count of IT. This simplifies the job duties and we don't have to worry about performance or backup issues.
What needs improvement?
I'd love to see more of their cloud analytics. I guess big data kind of stuff, where we could practically monitor some of the stuff. And some of the integrated software they have with the DR.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability has been very good, very solid. I used to check on the SAN or the VM on a daily basis, and now I don't. I can work on other projects and worry about other stuff. Their DR is just super simple.
Buyer's Guide
HPE SimpliVity
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about HPE SimpliVity. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It scales very easy. Like I told you, I have coverage. You just rack and stack, and it just scales.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate technical support as excellent. They are one of the best.
How was the initial setup?
The setup was pretty straightforward. If you can get that design requirement down and you design it right, then you can basically hand it over to their deployment support. It's pretty easy.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We definitely evaluated others, including VMware, vSAN, Nutanix, and Pivot3 lead hyper-converged, along with SimpliVity.
Then we evaluated the traditional Dell, EMC, and then a couple more of the players. I basically looked at all of the Gartner top vendors out there and we started filtering down based on requirements and budget.
What other advice do I have?
When selecting a vendor, I look for customer references if they claim to do something. I definitely had to research. I did a lot of reference checks.
the number of customers they have is important, their reference, and where they are at in the industry. It's a very innovative game changer. Go after your requirements, your budget, and your stakeholders.
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.
I would like to see what Nimble has done with their InfoSite cloud monitoring, and analytics integrate into with Simplivity since they are now HPE. Nimble Storage has a simple licensing model which includes everything with the purchase, and that is a great trend that most new vendors are heading to.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Technical IT Manager at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Simplivity and the proliferation of Hyperconvergence – VFD4
In a first of series of blog posts covering some of the vendors that caught my eye at VFD4, I’d like to introduce you all to Simplivity.
Hyperconvergence, Convergence, Modular, Traditional – Lots of buzz words used in I.T. covering a multitude of offerings but for the purpose of this post I’d like to define hyperconvergence. Simply put, this involves collapsing several I.T. building blocks such as Compute, Storage, Networking & Apps into a single building block that can be deployed to a datacenter with minimal fuss. Simplivity have taken this a step further by intelligently adding capabilities such as Backup with Dedupe, D.R., WAN acceleration and Cloud Gateway. The diagram below (taken from Simplivity) highlights the journey from the traditional stack to a Hyperconveged stack. This truly simplifies the method of deploying virtualisation stacks to a datacenter and encompasses several technologies aiming to make this a lean and cost effective approach to companies wanting to go down the road of virtualisation. Simplivity uses its patented Omnistack technology on commodity x86 hardware to give you its building block known as the Omnicube.
The company is led by its charismatic CEO – Doron Kempel. This is a man I admire for his tenacity and ambition and moving from a very different life outside I.T. to his MBA and onwards to work for some large I.T companies has helped him to develop his vision and understanding for where Simplivity can deliver value in a simplistic fashion.
The People behind the Presentation
It was Jesse St. Laurent’s role to present the technology briefing. Jesse is VP of Product Strategy and backing him up were some formidable associates. Both Brian Knudtson and Matt Vogt, who I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time, work in the technical marketing and solutions architecture areas and provided ample support to Jesse although they were not needed too much for the main presentation as Jesse delivered the content like a pro. If you have any questions then I encourage you to reach out to any of these guys as they share a passion for this tech that runs deep in their blood.
The Differentiator
The product was demonstrated and as with most solutions it is managed by a tab in vCenter. This is currently in the C# client with a web client also being available in the next release of vSphere. It was very easy to setup policies in the interface with regard to datacenters and with these you can then setup backup regimes. Currently AWS is the only supported cloud provider where backups can be sent to otherwise you need to send them to another storage device. Watch for more cloud providers in the future I hope….
File Level Recovery is not possible right now but is coming in a future release which was good to here. It was very quick and simple to recover VM’s in from 1 datacenter to another and this was demonstrated but the key was that there is no automation at the moment. SRM could not be used as there is no SRA but I guess that Simplivity customers do not have a need for this right now. We were promised that some level of automation may be in the product in a future release.
The real secret source to the solution is the patents that are held in the product and the way in which dedupe and compression happen inside the cube. Jesse showed us the Omnistack Accelerator card that is responsible for all of these functions. It has a FPGA on board that is responsible for all the compute functions offloading this from the hypervisor.
This essentially means that I/O is deduped and compressed as it enters the data management layer and therefore this hits the disk as full striped writes. Very clever technology !!! Post process deduplication is a thing of the past and very inefficient according to Simplivity. Fault Tolerance in the cube itself is also very important so any failures have mechanisms whereby they can be tolerated. If the card developed a fault then this would simply mean all I/O is served to or from a surviving OmniCube through its accelerator card and is still deduped/compressed/optimized in real time. The omnicube never writes data without first deduplicating it. Also key point to remember here is no data is required to be rehydrated unless there is data that needs to be read.
All of these awesome features make Simplivity a real game changer in the market.
Conclusion
I’d like to leave you with some final thoughts. Hyperconvergence is an ever growing market and many big names are jumping onto the bandwagon. There is clearly a value proposition here for scale out and to keep data centers dynamic in nature whilst keeping Capex costs at a minimum. If you’d likve to find out more then please read more on the Simplivity website or contact one of the names mentioned above.
Finally – This recent study by IDC shows how Simplivity is faring against the competition.
This is testament to their solution offering and being in stealth for a number of years before coming to the market. Great job by the team at Simplivity.
This article originally appeared here.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
HPE SimpliVity
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about HPE SimpliVity. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Software & Services Advisor at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
It is compatible with vCenter only; however, the company says Hyper-V and KVM are coming shortly.
What is most valuable?
- Integrated data protection
- Inline deduplication
- Hybrid performance
How has it helped my organization?
One customer deployed the OmniCube for a test/dev environment for it's ease of use and performance. Developers can spin up new VM's with no capacity or IO impact, easily without learning a new storage platform. And as for performance, the customer had a VMAX for primary storage, the OmniCube offered similar performance for developers at a fraction of the cost.
What needs improvement?
The fact that it is compatible with vCenter (VMware) only; however, the company says Hyper-V and KVM are coming shortly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I am not a user, as an integrator, I've worked in multiple environments with the OmniCube technology.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
No, it was very simple.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No issues encountered.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
100 VM limit per OmniCube (not sure if its the OmniCube or VMware related).
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Customers have moved to SimpliVity for ease of use, consolidation of vendors, reducing cost, improving performance, improve data protection capabilities, and even managing storage at multiple sites.
How was the initial setup?
Feedback has been that it is very simple since it is managed entirely through vCenter.
What about the implementation team?
SimpliVity stays very involved with all installs at this point, minor involvement of vendors from an install perspective.
What was our ROI?
Varies based on use casesr... VDI, test/dev, production database and apps, etc.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Most comparable would be Nutanix, both solid solutions. Depending on use case, you could go back and forth with which one makes the most sense.
What other advice do I have?
If it's a VDI usere case, how many endpoints on day one, what's your projected growth for the next 5yrs? If it's to replace primary SAN, what is your network today? You do need 10GbE networking.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Professional ICT at a non-tech company with 11-50 employees
Beneficial data compression, excellent support, and highly reliable
Pros and Cons
- "The HPE SimpliVity disc compression is very valuable."
- "In the next release of the solution, they should make updating the solution easier. Currently, we have HPE doing it for us but I would like to be able to do it."
What is our primary use case?
We are using HPE SimpliVity in a water distribution facility and for computer administration backups.
What is most valuable?
The HPE SimpliVity disc compression is very valuable.
What needs improvement?
In the next release of the solution, they should make updating the solution easier. Currently, we have HPE doing it for us but I would like to be able to do it.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
HPE SimpliVity has been stable for us in the two years we have been using it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable. If we want to expand then we only need to purchase new nodes and set them up.
We have approximately 100 users using this solution.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support and support, in general, are very good. When I had discs that stopped working, they sent the disc to be on the same day. They are very good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We are using VMware and HPE SimpliVity together. The backup and the decompression of the files are very useful. Previously the updating was not easy when I only used my servers alone. However, with the HPE SimpliVity, it's updating the firmware and VMware in one step.
I have used Nutanix and updating the system was simple, HPE SimpliVity could improve in this area.
How was the initial setup?
The installation with VMware was fine. We are using VMware on this solution, and there are a couple of new features.
What about the implementation team?
We used HPE for the implementation of the solution because they were able to provide us with a guarantee. I could not do the process myself. It took approximately two weeks.
We have one engineer that does the maintenance of the solution.
What was our ROI?
It did not take me long to see a return on investment when using HPE SimpliVity.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
There is a one-time purchase needed for the license for HPE SimpliVity. The solution is expensive, but it is worth the money.
What other advice do I have?
I rate HPE SimpliVity an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Support analyst with 5,001-10,000 employees
Responsive support, integrated backup features, and simple node expansion
Pros and Cons
- "The solution has integrated backup features that are useful."
- "There are some small changes that can be made to the interface to improve it but it typically works well."
What is our primary use case?
I use HPE SimpliVity for the virtual infrastructure of my servers.
What is most valuable?
The solution has integrated backup features that are useful.
What needs improvement?
There are some small changes that can be made to the interface to improve it but it typically works well.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is highly stable. I'm using the cluster deployment, site A and site B as if it was only one site and it is very good for zero downtime.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable, I only need to add new nodes to expand.
How are customer service and support?
The support from HPE is very good, they are helpful.
How was the initial setup?
HPE SimpliVity is easy to implement.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others wanting to use HPE SimpliVity is for them to try it out. It's really good if you compare it with different solutions. I would suggest trying other solutions to see which one suits their business better. In this case, HPE SimpliVity brought a lot of things to the table, such as the backup is already integrated with this solution, which is very helpful. There are a lot of advantages to HPE SimpliVity.
I rate HPE SimpliVity a nine out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Product Manager at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Good access, high availability, and interface
Pros and Cons
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
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.
How has it helped my organization?
A solution that provide a simple way to HA , is absolutely efficient and improve the work for the IT team
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been selling HPE SimpliVity for less than one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and technical support?
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.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
No, previously we didn't use a differente solutio , just HP DL nodes separately
How was the initial setup?
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.
What was our ROI?
In Latam is very different a ROI. Depends of the industry and all the return has more time to return
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Nutanix, Dell nodes
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution. It is very good for me.
I would rate HPE SimpliVity a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller HPE
Technical Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
The HyperGuarantee is unique and the accelerator card is the primary IP with the product
Pros and Cons
- "The globally federated architecture means that the backup across sites does not consume precious MPLS bandwidth, which is cool."
- "The simple management comes in handy since a standard VMware admin can manage it."
- "The HyperGuarantee is unique and the accelerator card is the primary IP with the product."
- "No SAN switches and having a native backup is pretty cool."
- "HPE support is still not aware/trained on SimpliVity, and this is beginning to show."
- "While SimpliVity was a pioneer of cloud connect capability, they have simply not exploited it."
- "SimpliVity has little to no integrations."
- "While it has been a while since HPE acquired SimpliVity, there is a lack of understanding/awareness about the product. In short, it took me time to actually make them understand they had a product named SimpliVity, which as you can imagine does not instill a great deal of confidence."
What is our primary use case?
As a service integrator we have recommended and implemented SimpliVity for numerous use cases but the product is particularly suited for ROBO and VDI use cases. We are looking at SImpliVity as a solution for Tier 2 and some Tier 1 apps in DC.
How has it helped my organization?
Our clients have been very happy with the data efficiency features (OmniCube accelerator card) and the HPE/SimpliVity HyperGuarantee, which is unique. 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. When you do this across more than 80 sites, the savings is significant and the WAN bandwidth efficiency is impressive.
What is most valuable?
- Simple management
- HyperGuarantee
- Accelerator card
- Globally federated architecture
The simple management comes in handy since a standard VMware admin can manage it. The HyperGuarantee is unique and the accelerator card is the primary IP with the product. The 4KB based dedupe and optimization are definitely helpful as observed by our clients. The globally federated architecture means that the backup across sites does not consume precious MPLS bandwidth, which is cool.
What needs improvement?
- For SimpliVity to become a true DC solution, the limit of 32 nodes needs to be investigated. While this may not be a significant deterrent, it brings into question the underlying architecture.
- HPE support is still not aware/trained on SimpliVity, and this is beginning to show.
- While SimpliVity was a pioneer of cloud connect capability, they have simply not exploited it.
- SimpliVity has little to no integrations. It may have APIs, etc., but there are very few signed on integrations in place. This is necessary to build a solutions ecosystem.
For how long have I used the solution?
Three to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No issues. The product has been performing well. No problems.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The product initially had a limitation of 12 nodes in a federation, which has been increased to 32. Keep this in the back of your mind, particularly when looking at the number of nodes in a single stack.
How are customer service and technical support?
SimpliVity (before HPE) was pretty darn good. While it has been a while since HPE acquired SimpliVity, there is a lack of understanding/awareness about the product. In short, it took me time to actually make them understand they had a product named SimpliVity, which as you can imagine does not instill a great deal of confidence.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Being vendor agnostic, we are not partial to any solution or product. Where we have deployed SimpliVity we have not faced issues. In short, no switching.
How was the initial setup?
The implementation is straightforward when you follow the deployment guide. Stick to the default settings as they work for most setups. If you have the option of having multiple 10Gbps NIC cards, you can explore the option of having a NIC dedicated for storage.
What about the implementation team?
In house.
What was our ROI?
- Simpler operations
- No more monolithic SANs
- No SAN switches and having a native backup is pretty cool.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
In terms of setup, there are some gotchas and caveats, particularly when discussing stretched clusters. Rapid DR also pretty much goes the same way. Otherwise the process is pretty straightforward. Upgrades were a problem but have been addressed to a large extent. The biggest concern is around support and HPE's apparent lack of knowledgeable people.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Nutanix, VxRail and HyperFlex. Nutanix comes into almost all discussions and is a leader. The only area of concern is the expense as it adds up. VxRail is definitely the number one contender when discussing ROBO use cases but SimpliVity's DVE with its accelerator card is a strong option, particularly from the point of not needing additional hardware to address add-on requirements. SimpliVity also brings capacity savings.
What other advice do I have?
Have a look at multiple solutions before making up your mind. Remember to take a top down approach and start with the app layer first. Your workload decides the infrastructure, not the other way around. Also, for most use cases, look to see if you can use all-flash as the price point, as it has come down significantly. However ridiculous as this may seem, read the guides and manuals carefully before implementation as they do have points that need to be looked at. If you do not believe me, you will end up going back to the same document anyway, which you want to avoid.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
IT Systems Architect at a university
A valuable feature is the backup and restore capability
What is most valuable?
- The backup and restore capability
- The speed with which it backs up
- Restores can be done in seconds
How has it helped my organization?
The tool makes it more efficient for us. Instead of having to get support for multiple different solutions like storage, compute, and network, and having to contact individual vendors, it's all one solution. We can contact one person and get support over the phone. We don't have to call multiple vendors, having them point fingers at each other.
What needs improvement?
Additional features would be having more visibility into the overall infrastructure and to know what's happening with the VMs.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability has been rock solid. We've put it in. The transition was easy, and it stayed up the whole time. There have been no issues at all.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have not done a whole lot with scalability. We've upgraded a little bit, but based on everything that we've seen, it's easy, simple, and can scale as much as we need it.
How are customer service and technical support?
I've used SimpliVity and HPE. Once I get a hold of them, they are great. Sometimes, it's a little bit difficult to get a hold of them, but once we do, their technicians are great.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were using a different solution, and it was reaching end of life. That is when we started evaluating different vendors and products. We didn't know about this tool. We saw their solution, saw the backup and restore, the ability to do disaster recovery and business continuity, and we were sold.
We chose HPE because we ran a test between this and one other competitor. We tested some drive failures and that type of thing, and found out that the data protection was much better with SimpliVity.
When selecting a vendor, the most important criteria are functionality, performance, and support. We looked at all of those and that's why we chose SimpliVity.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was very simple and easy. We had it up in half a day and we were up, running, and migrating our VMs.
What other advice do I have?
I would have them take a look at it and do a proof of concept. They should take a look the backup and restore and the ability to restore very large VMs in seconds.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Updated: November 2024
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