HPE SimpliVity Reviews

My main use case is hosting in-house applications as well as public applications over the cloud.

With HPE SimpliVity, hosting applications has become very easy and fast.

The most valuable feature is that the product has an inborn backup, which gives a copy of my primary and secondary copies.

There are some problems with the product's stability, specifically with backup, that could be improved. The integration and automation could also be improved. In addition, when updates appear, they are often delayed and don't provide new features. In the next release, I would like to see integrations with multiple OEM vendors and better compatibility with other OEMs.

I've been using HPE SimpliVity for around three years.

The product isn't stable yet, and we are facing a lot of issues. For example, when it comes to integration with multiple applications, it becomes more complex for us to handle, and the security goes wrong.

The scalability is good, but there can be problems with integration and compatibility when patching or updating the product.

I would not rate the technical support highly - we have multiple support cases open without any solution, despite having escalated several times and being told that management is working on it.

The setup was complex, as it has multiple integrations with multiple orients. Deployment took around fifteen minutes to half an hour.

I used a consultant from VMWare to implement the product.

Licensing is available on a yearly basis, with no mandatory additional costs.

Maintenance and monitoring requires a team of between 10-15 people. Before using this product, I would suggest that users check what kind of integrations they're looking for, as an alternative solution may work better for them. I would rate this product as five out of ten.

The primary use case is its an offsite virtualization. It runs all our servers at an offsite office in Brazil. Our main sites are in New York and London. We bought a company in Brazil that had aging hardware, so we replaced that with three nodes of the SimpliVity solution. Since it is small office and it does everything, you don't need to have a SAN nor a fancy network. It is a one stop shop, which was really good for this particular thing.

The way it does backups is its most valuable feature. It replicates snapshots with very low bandwidth. We only have a 50 megabit link to that site, and it doesn't really use much of it at all. Therefore, it is a really good fit for getting our backups done.

SimpliVity has this thing where if a virtual machine is on the wrong node with two nodes, it will be optimized. However, if one of the nodes won't be optimized, then it will complain about that. It will give you a little warning to say the source is not optimized. Please move this to one of the other hosts. They should just add a little thing in SimpliVity to move all the VMs to the right host, because it is a pain to load balance across the three nodes when all these VMs are complaining and you have to move them to one. It's sort of silly. I feel like it would be like half a day of programming for somebody to write something that would just auto-balance it.

The vCenter integration could probably improve a little. It is just a plugin that you are interacting with, and it feels like it has been largely the same for a while. It could probably get better.

It used to be kind of touchy. Now, it is great. I have not touched it in about six months since it doesn't break.

It is not very scalable. However, I think it is supposed to be like that. It is not supposed to be like a massive solution with about 30 clusters, and that is by design. I don't think that is a flaw. It is designed for small clusters, so it is not very scalable. 

The technical support is not the worst ever. It has changed, because it used to be bad. It used to be where they had amazing techs, but you could never get them on the phone. Now, you can get somebody on the phone but they never know what they are talking about. 

There is pretty good support for upgrades. I got a pretty senior tech the last time that we did an upgrade, so it is workable.

We had an aging infrastructure that we didn't want to replace with a ton of physical servers. We went from a whole mess of old, difficult servers to support to three servers that we never have to touch. Therefore, it has greatly reduced the amount of administration for our site, and we basically don't touch it.

I believe that we bought the solution through some reseller in Brazil.

I feel like all the other companies gave up.

For smaller node clusters, I wouldn't go with anybody else. For small node hyper-converged three-node clusters, it is the best game in town. It was great before HPE bought them. Now, it has a large organization standing behind it. I would definitely recommend SimpliVity. If people are using it for the right purposes, like we are, it is a really good solution.

You have to manage so much hardware if you have IT systems, and each system has a different web interface, log, and reporting service. When you check all of them in a day, you don't have enough time for other work, but I can manage all the services from a single interface with SimpliVity. It saves me time.

The backup and restore features are the most valuable. Because before SimpliVity, I was backing up the data to an external hard disk. It worked slowly sometimes, and I had to wait for hours. But now, I am backing up all my data in seconds.

I think first we should make a hardware upgrade.

No, it's stable.

No, it works well.

I haven't needed technical support yet.

I was using classical storage, server technology, because it's not easy to manage all hardware capacity.

It was straightforward.

The price should be cheaper.

I only looked at Nutanix and VMware vSAN, but SimpliVity is convenient for our systems.

Anyone looking to implement it should do so without losing any time.

VM backup and recovery.

Prior to Simplivity, we struggled to complete weekly file server backups over the weekend, and full VM restores would take hours. With Simplivity we are able to backup file servers every 4 hours and restore them in less than 20 seconds. These file servers are approximately 2TB.

I would like to see Simplivity come out with some sort of Simplivity Engineer certification, which would grant me the ability to handle the more technical issues on my own, without having to call support.

Approximately two years.

No issues with deployment.

None.

Not so far

Customer service has been great.

Technical support has been great. They have improved software upgrades dramatically, allowing me to perform my own upgrades without having to call support.

In the past we were running UCS with a NetApp SAN connected via FC. We were ready for a refresh when we saw Simplivity. It looked like a perfect fit.

Initial setup was very easy. We just input IP addresses for each network and the setup wizard took care of everything.

Pricing is a little high in my opinion. Prices have climbed consistently since our purchase and install.

We did an evaluation with Nutanix, but found their data redundancy was not sufficient for us.

The built-in ability to do backups to DR, do internal backups, and have on-the-fly deduplication is by far the most valuable to me.

Our organization went from not having DR to having a fully implemented and tested DR and DR plan in 6 months with SimpliVity. Migration off our legacy solution to SimpliVity was seamless.

Being able to balance replicas across nodes on your own (without calling support) would be awesome.

SimpliVity has 2 copies of a guest virtual server on their nodes, a primary “live” copy and a secondary “replica” copy.

SimpliVity has some pretty good algorithms to initially balance those two copies across the physical nodes.

However, if the server size changes dramatically and you have too many large replicas or primaries on one of their physical servers, it will start to fill up.

Right now, you cannot move a replica (to balance storage across cubes) on your own, you have to call support. Support is very good and can do it very quickly, but it would be nice to be able to do it on our own.

We have been creating a lot of new servers lately, so I usually have to call them about once a month to take a look at our balance across cubes.

I have used SimpliVity for about 1 year.

We had no issues with deployment.

We have not had any stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

They have the highest level of customer service I have experienced in a vendor. They have great people on at any time of day.

SimpliVity's technical support is great. I've never had an issue that had to be 'escalated'. The first person I talk to is able to quickly fix any problems I have had.

We had an aging infrastructure that was due to be replaced. We wanted our new product to have built-in DR capability.

I already had a good understanding of VMWare, moving to this solution was probably the most straightforward implementation I have ever done.

We implemented with the help of SimpliVity directly. Their expertise was great. Implementation went very smoothly.

I believe in the long run we found the reduced footprint, electricity, and other overhead costs, along with other reduced costs we had a 3 year ROI.

We looked at Dell Compellent and Pivot3.

I use the solution for virtualised infraestructure of servers.

HPE Simplivity improved the space of disk with deduplication, reduced the time of backups and recovers.

One of the key features is the solution is really fast for backups and deduplication is amazing.

It would be good to have more compatibility with other solutions as an improvement in the future. As a suggestion, in order to have compatibility with other solutions, there could be a license fee for this, and if you don't need to them then you do not need to pay.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The solution is very stable.

The scalability is good but you need to pay for the additional nodes that can be expensive. We are currently using the solution for one thousand people in our organization.

They could have better-specialized support for more countries.

I rate the customer service of HPE SimpliVity a seven out of ten.

Positive

I used CISCO.

The setup is very easy.

We have three nodes around the country and it took just one week for the deployment.

3 years.

The solution can be expensive if you are using a lot of nodes.

Dell and Cisco.

I would advise those wanting to use this product to be careful before setting up the solution that you have enough disk space, if you do not, you will have to pay for it which is expensive.

The solution works great, it is amazing.

I rate HPE SimpliVity a ten out of ten.

We are in the hospitality industry with 10 hotels, and all the systems are on HPE SimpliVity infrastructure. We have our 10 systems on the infrastructure, such as a huge hospitality application, finance, and material control systems.

I have found backup and replication to be useful. We have a 10 megabit line between the data center and our main site. The backup and replication are very good. Additionally, the solution runs on VMware which is a benefit.

The interface is good but takes some time to get used to.

I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately two years.

The solution is highly stable.

We do not need to scale the solution because we have purchased it with servers, with two processors, and 750 gigabytes of memory per server. We have everything that we need and do not need to upgrade or scale the server or scale the infrastructure.

The technical support is good.

When the Dell PowerEdge infrastructure became old we then decided to switch to SimpliVity. We have also used Dell VxRail and all the other solutions that we had upgraded at that time.

The initial setup is a bit complicated. Setting up the networking and other infrastructure can be difficult if you are have not done it before. There are lots of things that you have to take into consideration, and at that time it was quite new to us. The total time it took for everything to work correctly was approximately four days.

HPE did parts of the implementation with us.

The price of the solution is reasonable. We have purchased a five-year license with all the support and upgrades.

My advice to others is HPE SimpliVity It is a very good system, very stable, and has lots of features that we have not seen work well in other systems. All the features work incredibly well with HPE SimpliVity.

I rate HPE SimpliVity an eight out of ten.

HPE SimpliVity is mainly used for virtualized environments.

The most valuable features of SimpliVity are the built-in backup and immunity to ransomware.

I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately four years.

When it comes to virtualization, SimpliVity is based on VMware, and VMware is more stable than other solutions, such as Hyper-V.

I would recommend this solution to others.

We have approximately 10 customers using this solution.

The technical support has been good. They know a lot of information and are helpful.

The installation is quite easy but it could still be improved.

You have to have the environment set up correctly before the installation of SimpliVity, such as vCenter Server and AD. If you have the environment configured then the installation is approximately 45 minutes.

We have approximately five engineers that do the implementation and maintenance of the solution.

The solution is priced high. However, there are plenty of features as part of the package that other solutions do not have.

The solution comes with the VMware license that you need, but you can also buy the license outside of the initial purchase.

The features SimpliVity has there is no other solution in the market that can match it.

I rate HPE SimpliVity a nine out of ten.