HPE SimpliVity Reviews

I like SimpliVity because it can be adapted for small clients or the biggest ones. It's flexible.

I don't have any criticisms of SimpliVity at the moment, but I would like to see how it stacks up to vSAN and Data Core. It's essential for the client to have the comparison and be secure that they made a good choice.

I've been using SimpliVity for about two years.

SimpliVity's scalability is good, but you definitely need to opt for two processors if you want scalability. It's limited otherwise.

HPE's technical team helped us implement and support SimpliVity. Sometimes they took too long to respond.

Setting up SimpliVity is pretty easy. You just have to use the consultants from HPE. They handle the initial installation after you do the maintenance and the preparations. I rate the deployment eight out of 10. 

SimpliVity's price is excellent. You can get a good discount on the price, which is important for a small client. However, I'm not familiar with all the latest solutions because I've never implemented them. I only implement SimpliVity. It's not too expensive for a small client.

I rate HPE SimpliVity eight out of 10. If you're thinking about implementing it, I recommend conducting a good evaluation of your existing system so you have a decent understanding of your storage needs. Once you select the size of SimpliVity, it could be risky for you to downsize it because you may need maybe to reimplement some things. My second recommendation is about the network. If your network is not up to snuff, SimpliVity will not perform the best that it can.

We use it for our production system. We have many production systems.

It has helped us a lot. HPE SimpliVity reduces the administrative tasks for the system admin. It doesn't require many people for support. One or two guys are enough.

The feature that I like the most is the backup feature embedded inside the HPE SimpliVity. When we have any activity, within five minutes, we have a backup. It also has PDR for performing disaster recovery.

We had some hardware compatibility issues with the earlier versions of HPE SimpliVity. We upgraded to the latest version a few months ago, and since then, there is no hardware failure, and it is better.

They don't provide a portal to create a ticket directly for the HPE SimpliVity. We have a web portal to create a ticket when we have an issue, but for HPE SimpliVity, we need to call the local vendor for support. If they are not able to resolve the issue, they contact the global support, which takes more time.

Technology is moving very fast, and everybody nowadays is focusing on the cloud base. In the future, they should integrate it with the cloud base for the backup.

I have been using this solution for two years.

It has good stability.

It is easy to scale. We have more than 2,000 users.

We contact a local vendor for support. If they are not able to resolve the issue, they contact the global support, which takes time.

We used vSAN for the VMware solution.

The initial setup is complex. It is not easy like other solutions such as Windows Server. You need to have enough knowledge to set up SimpliVity. Your normal staff won't be able to do it. Only someone with experience and knowledge of SimpliVity can set it up. Each phase of deployment took around two hours.

We have a local consultant and a vendor. We work directly with the vendor. If there is any issue, they resolve it, but it can take time because if they aren't able to resolve it on their own, they have to create a ticket with global support. For its maintenance, we have two people.

We are seeing a return on investment.

The licensing is on a yearly basis. The licensing cost also includes vCenter at a cost in the cloud solution.

It is a good solution. It is a good hyper-converged solution as compared to other solutions like Cisco or Dell because they don't embed software inside the solution. SimpliVity is more useful for us because, during the month-to-month activity, it provides good features to back up, install, and roll back everything.

I would rate HPE SimpliVity an eight out of ten.

We use SimpliVity in our retail stores as a backup solution.

We had an incident once where one of our primary servers in a retail store went down. It took us less than a second to do a restore. It came back up and we were up and running. It used to take us days to restore those servers.

The most valuable feature is the quick restore.

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 seems pretty stable in regard to the way it's working with the Federation and in the local copies.

The scalability is good. It's scalable to what we need it for.

The technical support is amazing. It's really good. We've gotten the white-glove treatment from HPE and CDW.

We were running on antiquated equipment and older solutions that required a lot more hands-on work. We used a piecemeal solution. We had two Dell servers and a VNXe storage unit and we backed it up through Commvault. So we had a bunch of different providers, different supports that we'd have to call for the three different things. With SimpliVity it is all just one.

Initially, it was pretty complex for us because we didn't know anything about it. But once we got the hang of everything, it actually became pretty simple.

We used a reseller, CDW. Our experience with them has been great. They've been an awesome reseller for us. We do almost all of our stuff through CDW.

We haven't really seen ROI yet because we're still fairly new to the product.

Our shortlist included Dell and Commvault. We chose Simplivity for the simplicity of the way it works and the true hybrid converged appliance which was there. We didn't have to buy a bunch of equipment. We bought two nodes and were able to do everything with those two nodes.

If you're a retail company that has a bunch of stores, I would actually highly recommend this for your stores - for the simplicity of it, the ease of the restores, and keeping your environment up and running.

We use it as a backup solution and so that the nodes don't fail. When the nodes fail, it's all governed through SimpliVity. It's been working really great. We haven't had too many issues with it.

With SimpliVity, we can easily deploy multiple solutions, including storage, and allocate servers as needed. It's quite versatile.

I like the expandability of the solution. We can effortlessly grow the storage and resources without downtime.

The installation process could be simplified. It's a bit technical for non-IT users. 

So, the deployment could be simpler. 

I have been using it for one and a half years. 

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I faced no issues with stability. 

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. There are around nine end users in our company using this solution. 

The customer service and support are okay. Compared to Cisco, there is a big difference. Cisco has dedicated engineers. Cisco throws everything at it. An engineer will always be there, which is better.

Positive

Cisco's more about immediate support, like calling them. But HPE SimpliVity is a set-and-forget solution. Once you configure it, it runs itself. 

Cisco requires human intervention for management.

The initial setup was complicated for me. It took me a couple of weeks to deploy the solution.

The pricing is very high. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten, where one is high price, and ten is low price. Pricing is another point for improvement. 

I evaluated VxRail. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for disaster recovery. 

It's a very good solution for disaster recovery.

The support on offer is very good.

We don't mind the pricing.

The configuration capabilities are good.

For consolidation purposes, it's a very good product. We are able to reduce the footprint for space, including rack space in the data centers.

The initial setup process is not too hard. 

It's not exactly straightforward to use. We need to train our people as some features that are there we are not used to or maybe we don't know how to use. Therefore, we need to train our people.

Maybe the price could be a bit better. 

The compatibility with other products needs an improvement.

There's a controller or something that is used. Instead of using vSAN, they use another technology, NFS. I don't like it. That said, it works.

I've been using the solution for two years at this point. 

Technical support has been great. they are helpful and responsive. 

The setup is fine. I haven't heard of the team having any issues with the process. It's my understanding that it is largely straightforward. 

The pricing, for the most part, is pretty good. However, it could always be a bit less expensive. 

We are an HPE partner.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

Most of the installations are for branch offices that need an integrated solution for backup.

It helps branch offices in having an integrated solution for backup. That's the greatest benefit of SimpliVity.

Its performance is quite good, and it is also easy to use. One of the biggest benefits is the included backup solution.

The greatest disadvantage is the update process. Every patch or release update must be checked and deployed with the HPE solution, which sometimes is a little bit difficult. It is not difficult in terms of installation, but it is difficult to get the patches in time.

Its scalability can also be improved.

It is stable.

If I compare it to our recent solution, it is not so scalable. We have had about 10 customers. Normally, it is in a branch office, so there are less than 200 users.

Their support is customer-friendly. You can use the support portal. You can call them through telephone or web interface. There is an interface for an automatic call if there is an issue in the hardware system.

It is straightforward and easy. It takes one to three days. Our SimpliVity installations are not so big. Therefore, it takes a little bit less time.

We need an engineer or an admin guy from the storage team, and sometimes, we also need a networking guy.

Its licensing is quite easy. There is a model license, but it depends on the system you buy. 

There are no extra costs. There is only one license.

I would recommend this solution. I would rate it a seven out of 10.

We use it for servers, like the domain controller, DHCP, print server, file server, and distribution server as well as application servers.

We like the backup feature, which is inbuilt. This means that we didn't require an additional storage device. Everything is backed up in a single box and that always makes it easy to manage.

I think the licensing cost could be lower.

I've been using HPE SimpliVity for more than two years.

HPE SimpliVity is definitely a stable solution.

I think it is scalable.

I have found technical support to be good and have appreciated their immediate response.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We currently have a yearly license, and I think the cost could be lower.

If you go with a single node only, then you may encounter some issues if you don't have any backup nodes. However, if you go with at least two nodes, then you will be able to manage a disaster well.

If one of the nodes goes down, then the server and data center will be moved to another node. This will ensure that you don't lose anything.

I am very satisfied with HPE SimpliVity and would rate it at ten, on a scale from one to ten.

The biggest benefit of this solution is that if you use it, you can use it for the company headquarters and also for all the branches. You use the same system, only a smaller size. With SimipliVity you can also use the included backup solution. You don't need any other solution to back up the data or to transfer it.

It's a very fast system and the deduplication features are very interesting. You lose no performance when using the deduplication and compression because it depends on a separate card and this card is used for the compression and deduplication so you have no impact on the CPU.

The greatest benefit is the optimization and performance.

The price is quite high and the system could also be more scalable.

It would be great if SimpliVity could offer more hardware options. At the moment we have only a small choice of the systems you can buy. I think it would be better to sell it or buy it if they are more options.

I think it's a high stability solution because all the data will be synchronized with all the systems. You can also use some additional services like snapshotting your data and this doesn't add any performance impact. 

The solution is not so scalable, because you have only a few options to expand the system.
We have between 100 users and 500 users.

The support is quite good. If you have a question or a problem with the installation you can call on your implementation partner, or you can also call directly to HPE and open a support call. It works quite well.

We previously used a different solution, but SimpliVity is a fully integrated system. You have one vendor who is responsible for the hard and software. That is the main benefit.

The initial setup was quite easy.

We used a consultant to help with the implementation.

We did evaluate other options. The best solution will depend on the customer. But SimpliVity is a very interesting system especially if you have any need in also in recovering your data.

On the one hand, I think the price is really high for the solution. On the other hand, it's got a very user-friendly GUI because it's fully integrated with each center.

I would rate this solution eight out of 10.