What is the biggest difference between SimpliVity and Nutanix

in my position as Head of IT I have looked and compared both solutions about 3-4 years ago for the first time, and we clearly went for Simplivity. For these reasons: Data efficiency (Dedupliation and compression), and resiliency. The file System of Nutanix wasn't able to handle a 2-drive failure, so this was a clear showstopper for us. Simplivity can handle even 3! And Nutanix was also lacking a real deduplication, like Simplivity has
.
My experience with Simplivity has been great, so positive that we moved all of our server infrastructure into it. The accelerator card with deduplication reduces IOs, and this simple thing pays off in many aspects: improved general performance (because of less IOs), faster restores and backups (because of dedup) - so fast that we are NOT using our traditional backup solution (market leader) for ANY restore anymore, because it is so slow in comparison! Integration in Vmware virtual center, so there is basically nothing to learn to manage Simplivity. Deduplication allowed us to squeeze the content of our SAN at that time into a 'smaller' Storage in terms of TB, and to grow 3 years on it without reaching its limits.
We scaled up and added new nodes last year, and are going to get new ones now, as our company has grown and the server infrastructure accordingly.

I had a look a Nutanix again last summer, and will do again next month. My impression: great vision, especially because of the own hypervisor. This is interesting to me because it could potentially save licences costs in the long run by removing Vmware. And I said in the long run: it was still a 'concept' last year at Nutanix. Some important features were on the roadmap, but not yet there. Then it has to be carefully evaluated, if this hypervisor really can be a substitute for Vmware, market leader since more than a decade. I guess it will need a few years. It is a great vision, but still lacks execution.

The greatest downside I saw was the weakness of the deduplication in Nutanix. Dedup is modest in terms of ratio which may be reached (the vendor did not dare to name anything better than 2:1 to me, which is a very modest result in comparison to Simplivity. I was also explained, that dedup or compressions are features which needs to be enabled at the datastore level, and which could eventually limit performance. In other words: you have a set of features/policies which you may enable there, but you should not enable them all on each datastore. This sounds limiting to me, when I think that it’s exactly having dedup and compression in place at all time anywhere on simplivity which reduces IOs and makes the solution great and fast in moving, copying, restoring data.

I would really look at the use case: if you are starting from scratch, and do not care about which hypervisor you want to use, or do not need the benefits of vmware, then Nutanix might be interesting. In that case I would compare the total costs of hardware and software including the hypervisor licenses and also considering the costs of backup/restore given the functionality Nutanix offers vs Simplivity.
If you are an existing Vmware shop, which is probably true for most companies these days, and/or want to consolidate your datacentre, to me the choice is clear: Simplivity. I still did not find any reason to prefer Nutanix and am really surprised, how widespread Nutanix is while lacking such key features.

Regards

Matteo

The two biggest differences are that you can only run SimpliVity with VMware whereas with Nutanix you can use their own hypervisor and that compression/deduplication on SimpliVity is done via hardware whereas Nutanix does this via software.

What does all this mean?
Well, let’s start with the first difference. With SimpliVity you can only run VMware as your hypervisor. If you already run VMware don’t have to budget for this it is not a big deal unless price is a factor in your datacenter refresh. The reason for this is because with Nutanix you can use their hypervisor built by them that offers almost all of the same features and more added all the time. So if you need to bring the price down significantly and you are willing to work with a different hypervisor then I would suggest looking into Nutanix over SimpliVity.

The second difference and the most impressive is that SimpliVity uses a hardware dedup and compression piece whereas Nutanix does this via software.

Why is this important, well by doing this in hardware you are not taking up any of the CPU and RAM of the system itself leaving move for your VMs. Also, when you have a dedicated hardware component handling all the compression and dedup you are able to be more efficient and get better numbers when it comes to data savings as well as a decrease in IO writing to disk. The drawback to this is you have a single point of failure when it comes to that hardware piece as with Nutnaix since they are doing that with software you don’t have to worry about it ever going down as long as you have a node running.

When it is all said and done if cost is a huge factor and you can do without VMware, I would go with Nutanix. If you don’t want to learn a new hypervisor and you can spend the extra money on VMware I would go with SimpliVity.

Please find here below my comparison and what Simplivity does better. Few additional things to pay attention to, Nutanix uses a small microserver, HPE uses Gen10 server which is a market leader server. Yes, with Simplvity the price is slightly higher but you get a 1 box solution where Virtualization and back up is already attached where Nutanix has gone to 3rd party vendors. Plus, at Nutanix when you go over 3 nodes the prices goes up massively. Support is also very important. With Nutanix support, we don’t what it covers, plus you need separate support packs for all the 3rd party products as well where we can give 1 support pack covers everything.

Let me know if you need anything else.

Issue

HPE SimpliVity

Nutanix

Why this matters

Data Efficiency

1. HPE SimpliVity data efficiency applies to all data, all of the time.
2. Accelerator card eliminates production CPU overhead and improves overall performance.
3. SimpliVity data efficiency is 30-40:1 typical.
4. SimpliVity data efficiency is of 10:1 guaranteed.

1. Dedup and compression consume additional vCPU resources
2. Dedup not recommended for server workloads and snapshots.
3. No published customer production system data efficiency results.
4. No guaranteed data efficiency gains.

HPE SimpliVity’380 data efficiency is so effective that HPE SimpliVity can guarantee 10x data efficiency in customer production systems. Customers typically report 30-40x efficiency. This results in dramatically reduced server and storage costs and reduced data center footprint. Nutanix data efficiency features will be several times less effective. Nutanix dedupe and compression draw from the same resources as production, degrading app performance.

Data Protection

1. HPE SimpliVity’s built-in backup and disaster recovery capabilities fully leverage SimpliVity global data deduplication and compression.
2. HPE SimpliVity guarantees 60-seconds or less on average for local backup or restore of a 1 TB VM.

1. Nutanix relies on 3rd party backup.
2. Native snapshots impose overhead on storage performance.
3. Native snapshots are now 15 minute or less with 15 min RPO
4. No guaranteed backup and restore performance outcomes in production environments.

1. Superior data protection reduces recovery point and recovery time objectives and thereby reduce the risk of interruption of operations or loss of data due to human or technical errors.
2. Reduces the time required to backup and recover virtualized workloads from hours or days to minutes or seconds.
3. Reduces the cost of implementing disaster recovery.

Resilience

1. HPE SimpliVity tolerates ANY 3 simultaneous drive failures without data loss.
2. HPE SimpliVity achieves high availability with a minimum of 2 nodes.

1. Nutanix RF-2 configuration can lose data when just 2 drives fail (1 each on separate nodes in a cluster).
2. Nutanix production-grade resiliency setting (RF-3) requires 5 nodes minimum, and imposes additional sequential write, and random write performance overhead.

HPE SimpliVity provides superior resiliency to failure, with better performance and lower cost than Nutanix.

Scalability: Data Center

1. HPE SimpliVity can scale from 1 node minimum (2 node HA)
2. Up to 1000VMs per cluster. Linear I/O performance while doing backups, restores, and clones.
3. 1,000 VDI logins in 1,000 seconds. 1,000 desktops deployed in 70 minutes.
4. Validated by ESG & Login VSI.
5. Independently scale compute with any x86 server.

1. Nutanix has a 3-node minimum (RF2), 5-node minimum (RF3) for datacenter. 1 and 2 node configs supported in ROBO (no HA). RF3 is recommended for enterprise production workloads.
2. Nutanix nodes are burdened by data efficiency overhead.
3. Nutanix nodes have 30% less desktop/node capacity.
4. No “Validated by Login VSI” VDI White Papers.
5. No external customer supplied compute nodes supported

1. HPE SimpliVity provides better economics for single-site deployment, today and tomorrow.
2. SimpliVity can scale from a smaller minimum and has been validated by independent third-parties to scale to handle large server and desktop workloads under severe test conditions.

Scalability: Multi-site

1. Minimum 1 node/site, 2 nodes/site for HA
2. No 10 gig switch required for 2-node
3. Built-in data protection
4. Global data efficiency reduces WAN bandwidth costs
5. Add or change systems, change backup/DR targets without reconfiguration

1. Nutanix now has 1 and 2 node minimum but only for ROBO. 3 node (RF2) for datacenter, 5-node minimum (RF3). RF3 is recommended for enterprise production workloads.
2. 10G switch required for most models.
3. Nutanix nodes are burdened by data efficiency overhead.
4. Partial global deduplication
5. No federated management; PRISM Central is a manager of managers

1. HPE SimpliVity provides superior economics for ROBO, today and tomorrow.
2. HPE SimpliVity can scale from a smaller minimum, with built-in data protection, direct-connect 10G networking, WAN data efficiency, and federated global management for lowest TCO.

Management

1. Integrated into vCenter, the tool you already use. No new consoles.
2. Globally unified: same right-click operation for local and remote-site backup.
3. Turnkey integration with VMware vRealize Automation, Cisco UCS Director
4. No management licenses

1. Nutanix Prism is not integrated into vCenter, forcing you to learn and train on a new GUI and making you captive to Nutanix.
2. Third-party tools required for full third-party backup.
3. Separate Prism instances are needed for each site.

No separate screens, no separate GUIs, no management licenses, no new training needed: if you know how to use vCenter, in 5 minutes, you’ll know how to use SimpliVity.

Absolutely. I have architected solutions on both of these and here is my feedback:

From a technology standpoint, Simplivity’s claim to fame revolves around the use of a proprietary accelerator card that allows for inline de-dupe/compression and optimization. Simplivity was a pioneer of this technology in the HCI world. Next, Simplivity’s global federation is very powerful particularly when talking about ROBO type scenarios. It also includes a rich feature set including native snapshot based backups, replication and support for DR technologies (RapidDR). Its cloud connect capabilities allow for backups to be moved to the cloud. Backups are policy driven which is pretty cool. All in all a pretty solid box for ROBO, infra apps, web servers and VDI. However, Simplivity at a disk level still relies on good old RAID technologies which while not a problem with its accelerator card is nothing unique. Also, not all workloads benefit from de-dupe and you cannot turn on and off the feature. It is an always-on feature.

Now to Nutanix. Very powerful thought leadership from day one. Is a solid DC solution. Has all the bells and whistles. The NDFS filesystem is unique as is its ability to deliver its capabilities all at a software layer. Nutanix has strong OEM ties with Dell, Lenovo, Cisco etc. For about 85-90% of workloads, Nutanix would be a great fit. Nutanix’s native Acropolis Hypervisor is KVM based and is free. Makes for a strong DR use case. Support is awesome. Nutanix now has cloud orchestration and micro segmentation capabilities in its Acropolis hypervisor.

The simple answer would be to look at the actual use case. For ROBO I would go the Simplivity route. Leaving commercials out, Simplivity would also be ok for lightweight workloads. If this is a DC use case particularly for things like Oracle/MS SQL etc, you would be better off with Nutanix. Also both support all flash options. Nutanix allows for block and file storage to be presented. The last point is that, remember when you go the HCI route you most definitely want to look at your apps first. Things like Oracle if not architected to best practices can and will fall flat on its face. A word of caution. Tks

Regards

Anush Santhanam
HCL Technologies

We went for Nutanix. ( and we don’t regret it )

There is not one difference that made us go for Nutanix , there were several actually.

I’ll resume the 10 main differentiators for us to go for Nutanix :

1. Great support from Nutanix ( we read about it and experienced it later on), we use Nutanix hardware (supermicro) and hence one single point who deals with any issue ( hardware or software).
2. Constant upgrades and improvements, the roadmap they shared with us ( under NDA at that time ) , they followed true …
3. Easy A-sync DR (via protection domains ) and Metro replication included in the ultimate version (so no catch in tooling nor licenses nor per TB charge).
4. The freedom of choice in hypervisors and hardware ( so not an immediate vendor lock-in, one can still use VMware ESX for instance, although we will move to the native AHV as it has become mature enough and it’s free ) I would not recommend Hyper-v though , it works but hyper-v has its quirks when it comes to taking ownership of the storage.
5. The ease of upgrades, one-click upgrades … even when one uses ESXi as hypervisor then your esx bin/patches also can be included in a rolling upgrade.
6. The choices in Redundancy ( single node, dual node ( since AOS 5.5) , RF2 in three node config and RF3 in 5 node config.
7. Fully REST-API exposed, so not just some API calls but a full lib. set.
8. Self-healing ( ie a CVM will be removed from ring without admin need and preserve your RF factor )
9. The distributed nature of prism and the prims central features.
10. Most importantly: It works …and it works fast … (we did a bunch of tests during our PoC )

I can go on for a while ( also on price ie CAPEX versus 5yr TCO) but for people who are interested I’ve made a comparison sheet with capabilities which one can weigh ( because what is important for one company may not be important for an another obviously), the capabilities are still from the year 2015 so they have to be extended/reviewed on that sheet, but happy to share if people are interested in trying to make an objective decision.

Since 2015 ( when we started looking at mature HCi vendors/solutions ) we hoped that HPE Simplivity would have been further along (catching up) , but it doesn’t seem to be the case (yet), one can still see the remnants of their origins in the backup world, the fact that one still has to balance a cluster manually makes no sense … ( I hope they fixed it by now)

The basic differences

Simplivity
relies on it's it's custom Dedupe-Card and ALL written data has to pass through it, when I checked it out last year it was 2-3 years old
They are built like tanks using RAID 10 and 50
Max 32 nodes per cluster

Nutanix
Does not use RAID
Uses off the shelf components
Depudes data after it's written
Unlimited nodes per cluster

The questions and considerations are
more servers VS bigger servers (OS pricing)
where / when your bottle neck will occur
Be wary of Dedupe it all depends of what your data is, My data dupe level is low.
Both will depude OS well and can really help with the size of HDs

Simplivity and Nutanix both are very mature HCI solutions, but if I had to choose a solution, I would go with Nutanix because of the flexibility it offers to meet different requirements. Nutanix could be All Flash or Hybrid solution. Compatibility with different Hypervisors (VMware, Hyper-V, AHV) offers no dependency on one hypervisor vendor. Also the migration from one hypervisor to another is seamless. AHV which is bundled with the Nutanix is also a good alternative to VMware, but the features like Micro segmentation comes with Acropolis Ultimate version only.
An advantage which I see in Simplivity is the accelerator card which offload storage functions from the CPU and hence the higher consolidation ratio could be achieved.

Both Nutanix and Simplivity are great solutions for the modern IT infrastructure.

Advantages of Nutanix over Simplivity are; choice of hardware to run Nutanix, choice of hypervisor (supports Hyper-V, Xenserver, AHV and VMware), Prism management console is pure pleasure to any IT operations team, Nutanix support is top draw, Nutanix Metro provides unparalleled protection and allows box to box replication.

As with Simplivity, the installation is extremely complex and supports only VMware which automatically adds up to the TCO of the solution. This gets very pricey in the long run.

We run Nutanix on CISCO UCS since September 2017 and everyone is so pleased with it.

In my opinion, the key differences in favor of HPE Simplivity are:
- It includes advanced data services built-in in the architecture such as always‑on deduplication and compression, native backup and DR and high data efficiency (the data efficiency is global at Federation level, the data is compressed and deduplicated once and never rehydrated which saves bandwidth when doing remote backups and restores, which are very fast)
HPE Simplivity guarantees a minimum of 10:1 efficiency (deduplication + compression) and the mean of customer’s efficiency is 40:1 (HPE claim).
Also, the minimum number of nodes to get enterprise resilience is 2 for HPE Simplivity (tolerates any 3 simultaneous drive failures) and 5 for Nutanix (to implement RF3 data protection)
The advantage for Nutanix:
- It gives the choice of several hypervisors and brings its own hypervisor (Acropolis) for customers that can take advantage of its features.

My 2 cents….

I recommend VxRail.

My standard answer to this type of question is, wait for it... "It Depends". It's always best to understand your needs for a storage system and evaluate vendors and their solutions to find the one that best fits your needs and requirements. Take the time to define your requirements and your evaluation phase should be fairly simple. Once you settle on a couple of vendors/solutions that most closely meet your needs then do an in-depth evaluation. This will help ensure you get the best solution for you.

We have chosen VMware as the best fit for our needs. The Enterprise version of the vSphere suite includes VSAN and VSAN is tightly integrated into the Hypervisior code with little overhead and no additional controller VM's taking up host resources. With the ability to use commodity hardware vSphere is the best fit for us. There are also vSphere/Hardware full solutions like VX Rail available.

I do have a Nutanix cluster and it performs very well and is really easy to use and manage. I have found that it is very expensive to add additional hardware/resources. If you want to add memory, you have to buy a Nutanix license for the additional memory. Same with disks, want to add more, buy more licenses. The last major software update required that each of the controller machines memory be upped to 28GB (in my environment) each. For a 3 node cluster that is 84GB of memory overhead.

Philosophically, the two are very different in their thinking.

* Nutanix is focused more on VM management, workloads, and simplicity.
* Customers who love Simplivity, talk only about storage management capabilities, i.e. dedupe, compression. That’s it. No one talks about how they deploy VMs faster, better or support containers etc.

At the end of the day – Nutanix is a Virtualization, HCI & Workloads Company. While Simplivity is around HCI only. They leverage on HyperV and Vmware to do the virtualization part. This makes Nutanix a better value proposition.

Architecturally, Nutanix is 100% software. Simplivity uses FPGA to do storage compression, improving performance. That’s their differentiation, and only value. Rest belongs to the hypervisor. Because Nutanix is 100% software, they are able to create single click experiences for customers, improving VM and Data management capabilities (which is a bigger pain point for customers).

Simplivity is a single trick pony.

To illustrate – below are some “quotes” from customers on the two

PROS – HPE SimpliVity

PROS – Nutanix

Improves backup time and DR solution.
We can back up with more frequency and minimize RPO and RTO.
It's very simple to manage. It has reduced the footprint in the datacenters quite a lot.
It has been performing well. It was more than what we expected.
My impression is that it is a very nice solution. Very simple to use.
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.
Stability is pretty good. We have no complaints as it has been running seamlessly with no downtime.
We use the Omnicubes to replicate our data to a second datacenter. By having our company data on the Omnicubes, we ensure that all of our data is constantly replicated within the defined intervals to the remote site.

Nutanix has several unique capabilities to ensure linear scalability.
Single click actions is definitely the most important. They were not even aware that they wanted this.
Being able to upgrade our entire cluster with the click of a button during business hours with zero downtime has made managing our infrastructure so easy.
I can use VMware or Hyper-V license, if I already have. But if I use a similar solution as Nutanix Acropolis hypervisor (AHV) that comes embedded in Nutanix solution, I can manage all my virtual environments with everything I need without sspendingmore money on licenses.
Hyper-convergence is the most valuable feature for me as it allows me to scale the hardware accordingly to project requirements.
Management is simple
Data locality provides super-fast data access and ultra-low latency.
Ease of deployment

Cons – HPE Simplivity

CONS - Nutanix

It would be better if we could deploy a hybrid cloud integrated to SimpliVity.
Needs to improve the cloud integration, such as Azure and AWS.
I can say that the support was better when it was a separate company, when it was SimpliVity. But, now with HPE it has not been quite as good.
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.
​I do not see the product really working in productivity at the moment with real loads.
​​I have some worries about the support after the acquisition. ​The support was better before HPE acquired SimpliVity.
We definitely want to see more of the CLI commands come up to the GUI, and it is a legitimate question, if we are going to be happy with the integration in the vsphere web client, which is awfully slow.
Not being able to apply ESXi patches as needed has always been a concern, but it has not become a big issue.

There is a need is to be able to consume Nutanix storage from outside the cluster for other, non-Nutanix workloads.
Native File-Services are under heavy development and Container Services just came out.
Nutanix now supports four hypervisors but they are not all at feature parity.
AHV is a great hypervisor but still limited compared to VMware. AHV is the one product they must improve.
It would be great if it could emulate some of the features that their competitor VMware has, for example port mirroring or Netflow output at hypervisor level.
The product needs improvement in the areas of SAN attachment for high capacity and high I/O profile workloads.
To receive a performance enhancement by merely clicking the one button upgrade is the true value of the platform and what I look forward to the most.
Benchmark testing indicated that workloads did slightly better on our Vblock by a few percentage

In my opinion, it is not a one-time decision that is on our doorsteps. Both Simplivity and Nutanix are good solutions. The question is who needs which?
The main breakthrough is the hardware vs software difference. However, there are some cases that customer has no choice at all. If they are using hyper-v you cannot offer cross-platform migration. The only choice is Nutanix. In very rare cases there might be a company which does not use either of vmware or hyper-v, that could be a challenger.
If you start from scratch, Simplivity is a better choice because of hardware offload of the storage burden and very promising deduplication. That could be a lifesaver for a company making replication over relatively slow wan links. Therefore it is a wise choice to build a DR scenario.
On the other hand, Nutanix has a build in distributed file server, which can be a decision maker by itself. For a multipoint company distributing file services between campuses is a very important tiebreaker.
As a result, the answer to the question is; "It depends on the customers' needs" This should be handled differently in each case. So, don't look for the answer on the internet, rather go and ask somebody to produce a real IT review and offer custom made HCI (or may be other) infrastructure migration plan for you.

I will choose HPE Simplivity because:

1. SimpliVity running on Proliant Platform which so reliable for more than
25 years.
2. Best protect our data cause SimpliVity has HW RAID protection.
3. I can reduce my RPO and RTO significantly.
4. I can manage it all under one console.
5. Based on my Experience with HPE support, they are quite good and very reliable.

I think Nutanix has the edge,

· Nutanix supports multiple hardware vendors, commodity through to Enterprise, SimpliVity now only HPE, therefore, hardware lock-in

· Different hypervisor support, VMware, AHV, Hyper-V and external physical server support through Acropolis Block and File Services

· Nutanix has 55% HCI market share SimpliVity 5%.

I read above that Simplivity is an evolution and Nutanix the revolution. Well for me it is the opposite. Creating a new software shell to make live easier of admins is very good and thoughtfull but is not a revolution. Developing another hypervisor based on KVM is not revolution?

Customers want flexibility in hypervisor? BS... I have never seen a company with multiple hypervisors... They pick 1 and move on with it... Or VMware or Hyper-V... Where is KVM, welcome to the real life...

The true value for me from Simplivity is however not the technical but the 5 guarantees I get from HPE... Proven performance (thanks to the hardware accelerator) and data efficiency... Guaranteed... Things I don't see or get from Nutanix... Yes they think they can have it when you have enough resources (and so nodes). Simplivity allows me to deliver full high availability with just 2 nodes, where Nutanix and VSAN based solutions needs 5...
Some people will like the easy-to-use Nutanix interface (for daily management), Simplivity just uses the console you use for years already... Just use the vCenter console and with maximum 3 clicks in there you get all access to the power of Simplivity... No training to follow for that.

Talking about the other guarantees: full restore per VM within 1 minute, full HA and DR with only 2 nodes, move VM's across DC in other regions in minutes due to their high (and guaranteed) dedup ratio, global management across clusters and deployment on Gen10 hardware that delivers me as well the most secure server in the world with built-in firmware protection... Don't need to look further for me...

You want performance? Just got some numbers from a customer comparing Simplivity with Nutanix... SQL databases were running 20 times faster (no not 20%, 20 times...) on Simplivity compared to Nutanix... The software does the thing but hardware matters! Proven here...

Nutanix may be easy and support may be OK, be sure you buy the support... Because you will need it, unless you are an experienced Linux dude... My real life experience with Nutanix is that you need to go CLI as soon that there is an issue... And in this world of Windows and VMware it is still a challenge to find a Linux guy... So just let's call support!

Sorry here again is revolution for HPE that will integrate this year InfoSight (from the Nimble acquisition) in Simplivity as well, like they did now for their 3PAR line. InfoSight removes first and second line support by adding Artificial Intelligence in their platform. 86% of all cases are solved automatically without user intervention... This is revolution...

So I (and my customers) go definitely for Simplivity...

I would recommend for NUTANIX, the best part of NUTANIX is upgrade and management it really makes you feel the beauty of invisible infrastructure. I did many upgrades of NUTANIX with AHV, Hyper-v, and VMware and it is really piece of cake.

I recommend Nutanix.

The reasons are:

Nutanix is fully Software Defined product.
Simplivity is not. Simplivity has its own Dedupe-Card (it dependents on hardware).
That means Simplivity will occur those bad things in the future.
- Upgrade Limitation. Can you add the newer nodes in your old generation hardware?
- Software Updates. What will happen if your Dedupe-Card has a criminal error.
Who will eliminate this error without changing the individual Card?

Product Price. Simplivity looks extremely expensive.
Customer needs “Small Start Solution”

Product market share.
Nutanix is supported by many Server Vendors such as Dell, Lenovo, and etc...
Because Nutanix software is Well-Done level now, they have many users of OEM and Nuntanix itself.
Having a big market-share means, they can find many errors reported by users,
then eliminate those errors soon by their software-updates.

I also recommend EMC VxRail if the user chooses VMware environment.
VxRail is fully designed by VMware. Who doubts its quality under VMware environment...

If you are trying to understand one key difference between SimpliVity and Nutanix it is Flexibility.

Nutanix is deployed on platforms across most major hardware platforms from Lenovo, Dell EMC, Cisco etc.

It runs on HyperV from Microsoft, VMWare ESXi and even provides its own Virtualization SW.

It will cost a bit more than the SimpliVity – which is only deployed on HPE platforms after the buy-out.

These are gross generalizations and a decision requires an understanding of the applications space, expansion needs, budget and what kind of key performance criteria are most important – compute or storage.

Please find biggest differences between HPE SimpliVity and Nutanix:

1. Superior data efficiency equals lower cost and higher performance: HPE SimpliVity customers get an average of 52:1 data efficiency,8
10:1 guaranteed. Nutanix provides only a fraction of efficiency when it can be used—which isn’t often because of its deduplication and compression
slow performance. HPE SimpliVity deduplicates, compresses, and optimizes all customer data at inception, as well as maintains it in that efficient
state through all points in time and between data centers. Nutanix doesn’t publish customer results and doesn’t guarantee outcomes.
2. Accelerated data efficiency equals more efficient use of computing and storage: The HPE OmniStack Accelerator Card eliminates CPU overhead
of deduplication and compression, and its inline operation improves storage performance by eliminating redundant write operations. Nutanix’s data
efficiency competes with your business applications for CPU. Its deduplication scheme does not eliminate redundant write operations.
3. Enterprise-grade resilience equals less downtime, lower cost: HPE SimpliVity achieves enterprise-level resilience with just two nodes.
Nutanix will lose data if a drive fails on two nodes using the default RF2 configuration. For enterprise-level resilience, Nutanix must use RF3
and a minimum of five nodes—which drives up hypervisor license costs and power consumption—and imposes an additional 50% storage and
25% performance overhead.9 HPE SimpliVity maintains performance when recovering from media failure, whereas a Nutanix recovery drains
compute and storage resources away from production workloads.
4. Superior native backup and disaster recovery—no add-ons required: The built-in backup and integrated DR of HPE SimpliVity leverages
global data deduplication and compression for extremely fast operations: 10-minute RPO and 60 seconds or less on average for local backup
or restore of a 1 TB VM—guaranteed. Nutanix makes no guarantees. It has a 1-hour RPO for asynchronous replication and lacks native
DR automation. No wonder Nutanix partners with Veeam and Commvault to provide third-party backup—at additional cost and without the
speed or convenience of HPE SimpliVity.
5. HPE SimpliVity and vCenter integration—simple to learn and use: Anyone who knows vCenter can get going with HPE SimpliVity in
minutes. Nutanix forces you to learn and use its proprietary Prism tool, a complex environment and yet another pane of glass to manage.

Sources
8 s/b: 1
9 youtube.com/watch?v=tVPhl52thDY&feature=youtu.be

Basically, in my opinion, Simplivity is a much more complete solution than Nutanix. There´s only one advantage on Nutanix vs Simplivity. If your apps or environment is not mandatory to run on a certified platform like VMWare, the freedom of Nutanix is more likely to be accepted and especially the cost reduction. But in my opinion, it´s not a big deal, since the majority of the Market runs over VMWare. And the best part of the Simplivity Solution is the Backup and mostly the restore agility and replication features built in. It´s amazing and Works really fine.

Based on my first comment and experience, I´d take Simplivity instead of Nutanix. I´d only buy Nutanix if I´d have budget limitations and no HA, Backup and fast recovery needs. Simplivity is just fabulous if you put that on the table.

We faced this same decision a year ago, and decided on Simplivity. We regret it for one reason. The support is non-existent. We were promised many things prior to the purchase, and none of them materialized. HPE has completely let us down.

Cool comparetion

No question, Simplivity is the real deal. when it comes to saving time and money and having less hands on needs day to day. The accelerator card is what makes all the difference.

www.datacenterzombie.com

It all about why you want yer platform ... remember they all do the exact same thing no matter what anyone says ... support for this support for that ... near all HC/CI platforms have complete support, they all have to be setup the exact same way ... Manually or Automated to any degree ...

What interests every client is bottom line! Cost to purchase, scale/Tiering, implement, maintain, and migrate to and from.

In addition to all infrastructure differentiation Nutanix has over Simplivity, we can say for sure that Simplivity is an evolution and Nutanix is revolution. Main reason is Hypervisor more powerful than vSphere Enterprsie Plus at no cost - First time we have a vendor who can really challenge VMware. In addition, Nutanix is providing real Enterprise Cloud while providing Self Service Portal and CALM for real IT automation. HPE/Simplivity is not there

I moved to Nutanix 4 month ago and the system works well, snapshots are near instantaneous, I can clone or recover an entire VM with almost 1 TB of data in under 5 minutes. Their tech support is great and are always helpful.

In the company where I work, we are in the process of analyzing hyper-convergence solutions. We have researched and studied a lot on this subject.

It is not an easy task since many technical aspects must be observed when comparing the solutions. However, when we compare Nutanix with the HP solution (HPE Simplivity), we note that Nutanix offers a plus in hyper-convergence that others do not offer.

Unlike other solutions, including HPE Simplivity, Nutanix stands out because of:

- Native Virtualization
ATENTION! Multi-hypervisor Support - HP only works with VMware
- Hybrid-Cloud Service
- MAchine Intelligence
- System and Operations Management
- File and Block Storage

Regarding the architecture of the solution, Nutanix is unparalleled. Integrates up to 04 independent compute / storage nodes per appliance I SAID INDEPENDENT, watch out for this feature. Inside a Nutanix appliance, the box that stores the 04 physical servers (nodes) shares only power (power supply) and heat dissipation, nothing more. The rest is totally INDEPENDENT. No other solution offered me this architecture.

OBS: HP bought Simplivity in 2017. Some things are still set in-house yet and one of them is support for the HPE Simplivity solution which Gartner surveys say is not as good as Nutanix support.

OBS: Nutanix Named a Leader in 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Hyperconverged Infrastructure

After a lot of research I have been implementing HCI solutions using MAXTA.

MAXTA allows us to use our own hardware configurations and no special proprietary equipment.
Makes for cheaper implementation
Able to reallocate equipment when upgrading, all equipment is reusable in normal environments
Able to support systems easier
Unlimited configuration options and sizing
Use any of Multiple Hardware Company’s hardware
Great Responsive Support Team

I would like that answer also.
I have looked at each and see there is pros and cons of each.

I wouldn't go with either. I would go with Hitachi UCP CI/HC Infrastructure. They won VMWare's Partner of the year last 2 years spearheading HC in the industry.

All do the same thing, who is giving you the roadmap to yer future is what should be focused on!

Hyperconverged solutions selection totally depends on a solution for a problem/transformation we are looking for; if customer or end user is looking for a solution into which they are planning their enterprise team to scale and optimize their data center and putting their efforts to have SDI at place then at first by keeping in view the Roadmap of their ITD we can follow below approach:

1. If customer need and wants to adapt VMware Environment to adapt that technology then the best solution is to go with VxRail (The only VMware Integrated Appliance ever)

2. If customer need and wants to adapt heterogeneous hypervisors support, then both Nutanix & SimplVity are the good available choices depends upon further analysis and assessment of their current infrastructure to select and follow product accordingly. Nutanix Excellent product Excellent Technology; SimpliVity Excellent product Excellent Technology; purpose built HCIs can be selectable according to the need and roadmap.

Question is that, if any platform or vendor is pushing End User with a certain product then can we make one virtual cluster of VMs using multiple hypervisors like VMware/ESXi, Hyper-V, KVM the answer is very simple No; then it is not questionable that which product is doing and offering what; actual proposition is that what customer wants to achieve and adapt keeping in view of their existing and planned IT transformation they want to get in so that they can achieve planned peak to further optimize their SDI as well as optimize to adapt technologies accordingly.

No HCI Appliance can run multiple hypervisors in single cluster so; keep up the assessment and proceed with the true approach which will fasten the transformation process from traditional to modern SDI Environment.

Hence, make a checklist of all milestones you want to achieve and map accordingly.

Thanks & Regards,
Sufyan Ali Khan
New Horizon
+923018224536

Nutanix is very impressive, i find Acropolis and PRISM software from Nutanix very good and easy to manage

there is so many differences between them, the most one is Nutanix give open platform like you can run AHV, VMware, Hyper V, KVM, Xen where as Simplivity design only for Hyper V. No Enterprise Scalability,No Data Locality, No Integrated Virtualization, No Native Block and File Services, No Erasure Coding, No Native Self Service Portal, Partial Hybrid Cloud Services, No Native Applications Automation and Orchestration, No 1 Click Upgrades, No 1 Click Cluster Upgrades, No Capacity Planing, No Native software Base Encryption and many more. So Nutanix is the best Hyper Converged Infrastructure for all types of Environment.

Nutanix is the best solution at moment, much more mature and robust.