HPE SimpliVity Reviews

It is used as a data center solution. We run all our company's workloads on SimpliVity. It has been running for a year now. We have no complaints as it has been running seamlessly.

• Fast data recovery
• Low on operational costs

There are two main drivers:

• Data protection
• Low operational costs.

I have some worries about the support after the acquisition. The support was better before HPE acquired SimpliVity. They are not very clear on what to expect. That makes me a bit nervous.

Stability is pretty good. We have no complaints as it has been running seamlessly with no downtime.

There was no downtime when this solution was acquired by HPE.

The scalability is linear.

The support organization has changed a bit since the switch to HPE, but that has not impacted any of the services yet.

Yes, we did have a previous solution. 

We switched because we have to renew components in the datacenter every so many years. First year, the storage; second year, the switching; third year, the computing; and so on. So, with SimpliVity, we know that we have boxes that we can add, and the oldest one can move out of the datacenter without all the hassle of making components obsolete. 

Other vendors fall short on price compared to HPE on this product.

Our reseller pitched SimpliVity.

Then, we consulted the market and asked for a solution for five years. We looked at the TCO, total cost of ownership, over those five years, including all the support. Overall, it made a good case to invest in SimpliVity. 

To really consider a solution based on SimpliVity. Also, look for a reseller that has the knowledge to give proper advice on the material. 

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. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: I fit with that company's cultural, basically. I chose HPE through the reseller that I use. With the reseller, I had the cultural fit.

• The backup and restore capability
• The speed with which it backs up
• Restores can be done in seconds

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.

Additional features would be having more visibility into the overall infrastructure and to know what's happening with the VMs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The simplicity is the most useful aspect of this product. Deployment wasn't perfectly easy, but relatively easy. After that, it's been extremely easy to manage, extremely easy to consolidate our systems and extremely easy to back up our systems; not only on site, but also to our disaster recovery (DR) site through the SimpliVity tools.

We didn't have a really good method in place to get our live data into a DR site and that was the primary driver for SimpliVity. By installing and implementing SimpliVity, it made it very simple to get all of our critical systems in a state that they could be easily brought up in a DR site.

I would like to see more features around managing the data that it uses. Specifically, if your back-up data is filling up with your nodes, what to do with that tool is to make it a platform data you don't have a full load and just for backing up the data. Another improvement would be the ability for users like myself, administrators, to be able to run patches and upgrades with fewer issues.

Stability has been great so far. I haven't had any issues with stability or even with nodes. It's been great.

Scalability is good. We have a small implementation, so I can't speak very well to scalability. We have a three-mode installation now. We're going to six modes already and I would expect that to be an improvement.

We have used technical support a couple of times and every time was a good experience with a quick response by a technician. The resolution was all standard.

We didn't have a previous solution.

When selecting a vendor, I want to know whether they look solid and stable. Now, with the acquisition by HPE, they look even more solid and more stable. Also, a vendor solution must provide functionality that we need to have in a way that is simple, particularly for our organization, because it's not IT. We needed something that didn't require a lot to manage them. A system that is very simple. It didn't increase the items on my plate that I had to do with one more thing.

We looked at Nutanix, SimpliVity and one other. We chose SimpliVity because it's by far the most stable solution. We also chose it for the simplicity of managing the solution and the price point. It was a great price.

I think they should look at it very seriously, especially if they want to keep their staff slim and still provide all the functionality they're looking for that it can provide.

The built-in backup data protection is the most valuable feature.

We streamlined our production servers in the way of space management, better redundancy, and efficiency.

• Back-end training for sysadmins

I have used it for one year.

Some things were not fully set up during deployment by their engineers.

We have not encountered any stability issues at all.

I have not scaled yet.

Customer service is good; not the best, but it's good.

Technical support is very good.

We previously used a centralized VMware solution; not enough resources and internal support was lacking. We needed more control over our environment.

Initial setup was both straightforward and a little complex. I think they can come up with a better way to automate some of the process for the end user sysadmin.

Implementation was through Simplivity's team.

Still working on ROI.

Depending on the vendor, Simplivity will try to work with you on the pricing.

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated Nutanix and VMware centralized solutions through our institution.

I highly recommend Simplivity to fill any hyper-converged needs.

My primary use case is virtualization and data storage.

SimpliVity helps us to manage and has made deduplication work really well.

An area for improvement would be the flexibility of server configuration.

I've been using this solution for around five months.

SimpliVity works well, we have no problems with its stability.

This product is easy to scale, but it's not cheap to do so.

The technical support team responds very quickly.

The initial setup was simple - we had two nodes connected to each other with direct connection to the ports, and that was all.

I implemented this solution myself.

Full bundle licenses are available on a three-yearly basis with no additional costs.

Plan your deployment, and then implementation will be easy. I would give this solution a score of 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. 

Our main idea is to use SimpliVity in a robot scenario. To create a robot, recovery assessment tool for our ranked offices.

It is a very interesting platform, because the operation is very easy. It is integrated with the interfaces which we use every day in all of our platforms. We think it could be a huge advantage for us. 

Probably in the business continuity scenarios, it is going to help us.

The deduplication and compression options integrated with the hardware. 

If we start using the application, there could be data for us to analyze, and we might have more ideas.

My impression is that it is a very nice solution. Very simple to use.

It is not as flexible as we want. We have asked for some more granular scalability. For example, the ability to add some disks, and not another node, if we need more storage.

Technical support is perfect. They explain to us the solution in a very clear and simple way. When we call them, they know the right answer and get the right person automatically.

No, we have not previously used a different solution. 

We have the need to implement a disaster recovery (DR) strategy in our branch offices. We were looking for different solutions, and one of them was HPE SimpliVity. We are checking it out at this moment.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was straightforward.

Right now, we are mainly IBM clients.

Check the solutions on the market. There are a lot of solutions on the market offering this kind of solution. Each solution could have a different approach and different things to offer. 

I do not see the product really working in productivity at the moment with real loads.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: a strong partner. We think that HPE is a strong partner.

• Backup 
• Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities

We now backup our core VMs on-site every 10 minutes and off-site every 15 minutes.

A better GUI for some functions.

Two years.

No issues.

No issues.

No, but we have only added one node so far.

Customer Service:

Very high.

Technical Support:

Very high.

Traditional stack with storage and compute.

I did not do the actual install. SimpliVity helped.

We implemented using a vendor team. They were good.

I do not have hard numbers.

Do not just go by the minimum. Give a little for growth and storage.

Yes, Nutanix.

I am very pleased with the performance and ease of use.