HPE SimpliVity Reviews

In a thinly provisioned IT staffed environment, we were able to accomplish our work without having to stay after-hours anymore. Our backup RPO and RTO policies are met and done during business hours. Issues are resolved by calling one support line/number. No more headaches and hassles with finger-pointing blame between/among technology vendors. We now have a DR site with the ability to failover our production servers.

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) or the consolidation of the traditional server stack; i.e., compute nodes, storage, and storage networking were a perfect fit for our environment. Also, SimpliVity's compression and deduplication of data at inception yielded "more" capacity than we expected. Furthermore, the ability to backup our data without requiring additional storage media or software application was a huge gain. Finally, the reality of having a remote disaster recovery (DR) site without needing heavy financial investment sealed the deal for us.

Increased storage capacity for big data, something that we have not had. DR "automation."

In the Life Sciences disciplines, we generate a lot of big data 500GB to 1TB in file size. For example, DNA and gene sequencing, image processing (sections of the heart or brain), and other data generated by a scientific instrument. I have not stored any of these data on SimpliVity. Rather, we use a traditional SAN type storage for those data.

I would like to try storing those kinds of big data on SimpiVity and see if the compression and de-dupe would make it work. Currently, I only store user generated data files on SimpliVity and have no issues. As for DR automation, I would like to purchase Rapid DR from SimpliVity, which allows me to automate the disaster recover process/procedure. Currently, disaster recovery is done manually.

We had to update a SimpliVity patch that made the networking compatible with our internal networking.

We have not encountered any scalability issues. We've added nodes into our server federation without issues.

Customer Service:

Customer service is 10/10.

Technical Support:

Technical support is 10/10.

We previously used a different solution. It was not a true HCI.

The initial setup was almost painless! We had a misconfigured network setting, which the SimpliVity engineer resolved for us at no extra charge.

We have a SimpliVity sales engineer do the installation. I would rate him to be an expert. The installation was completed within four hours.

HCI has indeed reduced the complexities of our server environment. My systems architect/engineer now has more time to work on other pressing projects and investigate new technologies, which he was able to acquire and implement. No need to work overtime to resolve issues anymore.

Talk to your SimpliVity team about it. They will assist you in right-sizing your environment and getting you the correct systems and licenses so that you are able to accomplish the same production or more for less than your current infrastructure.

Before choosing, we evaluated Cisco UCS FlexPod. We also evaluated and did a proof of concept (PoC) of a direct competitor's product after our SimpliVity acquisition. In short, we validated our investment with 100% confidence.

Be open minded and consider a PoC to run some of your production load. You won't be disappointed.

• Redundancy
• Cross-site federation
• Data virtualization
• Integration with vSphere

We introduced OmniStack as a tool in helping effect a datacenter migration and its ability to execute rapid backup and migration of VMs across geographically distant sites was integral in the success of the project. By placing OmniCubes at both datacenters and federating them together, we were able to pre-populate the destination site's nodes with the unique 4K blocks composing our VMs and make the final production move in a matter of hours instead of days.

There are some maintenance features (replica copy load-balancing) that could stand to be automated and/or streamlined for customer execution. Also, the ability to scale compute and storage independently of one another would be a way to add value to the entire product line.

I have used it for 18 months.

We encountered some deployment issues as part of the complexity of hardware refreshes and datacenter moves; none related to SimpliVity's technology itself.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

Customer service is excellent. Deployment and turn-up was a white-glove experience, with dedicated technical staff (Richard Gay) and very attentive account managers (Ryan Huhtala).

Technical support is excellent. Support staff are responsive and knowledgeable, and we have had all concerns about which we've called in resolved to our satisfaction.

We wanted the advantages of HCI versus legacy stacks as a means of expanding our capabilities, as we are a VMware-based environment and make heavy use of cloning and templates which OmniStack can deduplicate efficiently.

Initial setup was more complex for us than for many, as we had to integrate it alongside our legacy equipment and perform a multi-stage transition from legacy gear at our old DC --> legacy/SVT hybrid at old DC --> legacy/SVT hybrid at old DC with SVT at new DC --> SVT at old DC with SVT at new DC --> SVT at new DC. There was some network expansion required, as well as coordinating planned outages in production systems as we migrated from server to server and site to site.

Customers integrating OmniStack at a single datacenter and gradually retiring old equipment will have a more straightforward implementation.

Implementation was a partner effort between SimpliVity and our own IT. Their expertise was unparalleled, with every point addressed and handled without issue.

HCI is going to be expensive compared to legacy architecture or converged stacks. However, in the case of SimpliVity, the benefit is worth the cost in terms of ease of management and efficient use of storage resources. Licensing is the standard VMware pricing model; no different than with any other solution.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated Nutanix, Scale HC3, Nimble SmartStack, and Maxta.

It is well worth seriously considering for any operation that makes heavy use of VMs, particularly clustered servers, VDI, and other highly-redundant data sets. Once installed, OmniStack performs beautifully, integrates painlessly, and can improve virtual datacenter performance magnificently.

We have about 45 virtual servers running for the company. These include file servers, SQL servers, public safety, GIS, Exchange, and all other applications used by a local government.

The whole backup and recovery capability. We are able to create full backups and restore full backups in typically 40 to 50 seconds. This has been a great feature.

The deduplication is resulting in a data reduction ratio of 290:1 at the moment.

The interface is fairly user-friendly.

Prior to the latest release, it was a real pain to upgrade SimpliVity. First, the host server had to be upgraded with the latest drivers, followed by an upgrade of the OmniStack controller software, and lastly, an upgrade of the VMware ESXi software. Each of the three steps were done independently and the process took 2 to 3 hours per node. Starting with the 4.0 Release, an Upgrade Manager orchestrates the whole process and greatly simplifies it. It still takes 2+ hours per node, however.

We have been using SimpliVity for about two years.

SimpliVity has been very stable. We've had no downtime.

Scalability is something that needs to be improved because if you need more storage then you have to add more nodes. You can't just add more disks to it.

We have about 250 users.

We've had a few instances where we've had to work with HPE support and they've resolved everything very quickly. We've had zero downtime.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward.

We had HPE implement and deploy the product for us. We purchased it from a local HPE partner and they set the whole thing up.

We bought this solution as a package that included all of the hardware and all of the software.

We evaluated options from Dell, IBM, Nutanix, Scale, and others before choosing SimpliVity.

In summary, this is a good solution aside from the issues with scalability and improving the ease of upgrading. The upgradability has improved but it's still far from simply clicking a link and it automatically upgrades. It's not quite that simple yet, but it's getting there.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

It is for the production virtual environment. I have virtualized almost 99 percent of my servers, and I'm using SimpliVity as a host for those virtual machines.

It does what needs to be done for us. The main thing for us is to make sure that we can recover a failed VM on a different site if the primary site fails. We need to be able to recover on the DR site. The performance was the main focus.

The department that ran our reporting in the legacy environment, it took them about six hours to run their report. Now, it is taking the same department less than an hour.

We aren't using a lot of space because it does everything that we need it to do on the back-end, which is a good thing.

• The performance
• The backups
• The DR strategy
• The deduplication is great.

My main problem with the solution is that it is taking too much memory for something that we don't build. We are not creating the VM; it is created by the deployment. It is the SimpliVity solution which is using the memory that I was counting on for my production part. This is the biggest problem that I have. I know that the VM has to built there, but I would hope that they have a different area in the system to use this different type of memory. The production memory should stay with the customer when the machine is built, and during deployment, it should use different memory.

We just implemented the lightest cluster a month ago.

So far, the stability is good. We don't have any issues. Everything is running 24/7.

Scaling isn't so hard.

We have not had many technical support calls. However, we had one call which was not completely answered to our satisfaction. Are they capable of answering that question or not? Based on that particular call, we didn't receive the right answer.

I used a three-tier solution, meaning SAN, hosts, and the network fabric. I wanted to move away from the three point failure environment into the single mirror environment, especially for performance.

I didn't know what exactly what I was looking for in the beginning. I knew we needed to move away from our legacy environment into the hyper-converged world. Therefore, I was looking at different solutions. I knew that Nutanix was the big one out there, and is still the big one out there. Somehow, I landed on the SimpliVity site.

Initially, the setup was complex for us. Once you know the product, we are planning to do the deployments ourselves now because we understand everything (most of it). We recorded what we needed and can redeploy the systems to a different clusters going forward.

We used an integrator through HPE. Our experience with them was great. Everything worked well. We didn't have any hiccups.

For three years, it is $60,000 for three nodes. It is quite pricey.

Nutanix was the closest to the HPE SimpliVity product. I had better conversations with the salespeople from HPE. They were able to explain how the solution worked and how it does everything I needed, so that naturally helped me with my decision.

The solution is great. Make sure you are aware of everything before you commit to deploying or purchasing it.

General purpose fertilization is our primary use case. 

This IT solution covers our hardware. We are using it in our VMware virtualization aesthetic to cover all the workloads within our region.

If something goes wrong with a patch, or whatever, and we need to make a recovery, it takes about six seconds to recover and get it back to normal. Previously, it could take hours.

We are a bit more productive with this solution because we don't have to spend as much time managing backups and recoveries.

It is easier to manage than what we are doing before.

Speed and recovery are its most valuable features.

The solution has eliminated the need for overprovisioning. It is designed to take advantage of deduplication strategies, which means we don't have to have as much disk in the system to do the job that we used to have to do.

The upgrade path needs to be better defined on the spec sheets. I would like hard numbers to be revealed to me, instead of being hidden by, "We have to go to HPE to get you a special request, then fill a part number for me."

Right now, the stability is good. There has been no degradation of the product.

What has really been affected is our ability to keep our workloads running and playing safely.

I haven't had to try and scale it yet.

It is pretty good for a small to medium-sized business.

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.

Our previous solution failed, which is why we switched. We were using the HPE HC380. We had already started examining the SimpliVity solution as a replacement for that stack, but then it failed. So, we had to put SimpliVity in as an emergency.

The initial setup is straightforward. It just runs according to a script.

We went from having our core data spread across tapes that would have come down to days of downtime to working with SimpliVity, where we can lose an entire datacenter and still be fully operational within minutes.

I can also now have my IT generalist do daily tasks easily as it is very easy to use.

• Inherent data protection
• Backup
• Disaster Recovery (DR) with very minimal effort.

The upgrade path used to be a challenge, but it has gotten much much easier.

Not being able to apply ESXi patches as needed has always been a concern, but it has not become a big issue.

No, not at all.

No, but we sized correctly in the beginning and have not needed to since.

Customer Service:

Excellent.

Technical Support:

Excellent.

First hyper-converged solution that I have ever used.

It is very straightforward to migrate existing VMs into the SimpliVity environment. Just VMotion the servers across and realize the benefits immediately.

It was implemented in-house.

Not sure.

But in comparison to other solutions, SimpliVity gave us all we need bundled into one at a much cheaper price point.

Try to do a true comparison.

SimpliVity includes backup, deduplication, and WAN optimization, so it is only fair to compare that with solutions having the same (or added in) features.

ESXi licensing is a big part of initial investment if you do not already have that covered.

Nutanix and traditional SAN solutions (NetApp and Compellent).

It truly is as good as it seems, which three and a half years ago was a bit of a leap of faith. We are very happy that we made the leap.

One of the most valuable features is the solution is simple. You get everything in one place, one rack for everything. So you don't have to get bits and pieces for a whole solution.

The solution works very well for banking or oil and gas sectors, and for the branch offices. 

One area of the service that could use improvement is that it is an aging solution. The market activity shelf life is over as people are moving toward a more savvy cloud box.

One con to the solution is the expense. A second thing is it has to be tailor-made properly. The presales part has to be done properly. Otherwise, you can misguide the customer.

Another issue is that it's not growing. I don't know what they want to do and apply for that particular solution or if they are looking for something else. I haven't seen many improvements in the last couple of years.

Also, nowadays everything is a very lean architecture, but SimpliVity is not a lean architecture in terms of anything. SimpliVity should be very lean in terms of the solution.

I've been working with the solution for five years.

Once you've taken the right course of action, the solution is quite stable, but it should be in the proper hands to maintain.

Scalability is very good in SimpliVity. Up scaling is very possible, and at any time it is scalable.

Compared to NewtonX, technical support for HPE is a lot better. We had a few situations where we need to get connected with them. The usual turnaround time is the next business day or whatever option the customer has. It'll be resolved accordingly in time.

The initial setup is complex. You need experts on that to kick start it, or it would be screwed up.

You need to go with a vendor, or find a niche experts, and there are only a handful of people available in the market.

The solution is expensive; not every budget can fit it. With the technical experts, for after-sales, you need to be a bit careful because it can burn your pockets if you don't expect it because there are only a few people available.

The solution is a one-time investment that the customer has to make, but the scalability is there. The performance is very good on any application you are trying to build on top of it, it performs according to that hardware layer. They offer very good presale support in the region here, if you need to get connected.

Now that AI is changing, hyper-convergence is there, but the hybrid model is applied in any scenario. Everybody doesn't want fully on-prem because SimpliVity is something where you want to convert everything on-prem. So if you are approaching a hybrid model, that solution should be in the cloud as well as on-prem. It should be not hardware agnostic, one solution. Anytime your data is your property, you can move it to any solution.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We run our 50+ virtual servers on SimpliVity and also use it for backups.

The all-flash storage in SimpliVity provides much better performance that the spinning-disk of our previous virtualization system. The extremely fast backups and restores (typically less than 1 minute) enable us to easily backup all our VMs every 2 hours. Lastly, the incredibly high data reduction ratio through compression and deduplication enables us to store 38 Days of full backups done every 2 hours in a remarkably small space. We're currently seeing a data reduction ratio of almost 300:1.

Backups and restores occur very quickly.

HPE Technical Support has been very responsive to any problems we've had.

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.

Although HPE has made significant improvements, the upgrade procedure is still overly complex. It's gotten much easier but it's still far from double clicking on a link and a self-upgrade scenario. Therefore, installing SimpliVity upgrades is an area that HPE could improve upon further.

Performing file-level restores, which is the most common backup recovery operation that we do, also seems more complex than it needs to be. The recovered files/folders are restored to an ISO file, mounted as a DVD, and then they need to be copied from that. Afterwards, the ISO needs to be removed from the VM and then deleted from the SimpliVity storage. It gets the job done but it's kind of clunky.

We've used the solution for three years. 

The stability is, for the most part, pretty good. I won't say we haven't had problems.

Our biggest problem has been SSD failures. Over the three years we've had it, we've replaced over half of our SSDs due to drive failures. Of course, it's all been under warranty and therefore it hasn't cost us anything other than a lot of time and headaches. I suspect HPE received a bad batch of SSDs from their SSD vendor and many of them ended up in our system.

Technical support has been good. They have been very responsive to our SSD failure issues and we usually have a replacement drive in hand within 2 hours of calling HPE SimpliVity support. We have had a few software issues and, again, the HPE support has been very responsive and usually quickly resolves our problems.

Positive

Our previous solution used three VMware servers and two mirrored SANs. The servers were end-of-life and the SANs were almost out of available storage space.

The initial setup and configuration was reasonably complex and we used our local HPE reseller to assist us.

We have two nodes and it probably took a couple of hours per node to get everything configured and working. Then it was just a matter of migrating our VMs from our old system to the new SimpliVity system.

We used our reseller for the implementation. We have a local HPE shop here that we buy most of our network and computer equipment from and they came in and did most of the initial configuration. They were extremely knowledgeable and I doubt we would have been able to get everything properly configured and operational without them.

Since we were faced with having to replace our entire VMware system (three host servers and two SANs), we found that the cost of a two-node SimpliVity hyper-converged system was very close to what it would have cost to build a comparable conventional discrete system. 

We evaluated Dell VxRail, VMware vSAN, and Nutanix.

We're customers and end-users. 

I'd rate the solution as an eight out of ten. 

We really like it. As stated earlier, most backups take a minute or less. Within our first year, one of our SQL servers got corrupted somehow and wouldn't boot. We restored the VM from the previous backup, which was at that time about an hour old, and in under a minute we had that 950 GB VM up and running. Restoring this VM with our old backup system would have taken six or seven hours. For us, this was a real eye opener.

I'd advise potential new users to definitely do some kind of a trial, if at all possible, and go into it with their eyes open. We had a pretty good idea of its capabilities beforehand. Although we didn't do a trial, we had witnessed several demos of it. Overall, we've been pretty happy with it. However, like any product, there are always a few things that could be improved.