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HPE Mixed Use - SSD - 1.92 TB - SATA 6Gb/s (pack of 5)

Mfg # Q5V86A CDW # 4681358 | UNSPSC 43201830

Quick tech specs

  • SSD
  • 2.5" SFF
  • with HPE SmartDrive carrier (pack of 5)
  • 380 Gen9 Node
  • 1.92 TB
  • SATA 6Gb/s
  • for SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Node
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Know your gear

Do you need more performance from your HPE ProLiant Sever series or HPE Synergy platforms? HPE Solid State Drives (SSDs) deliver exceptional performance and endurance while reducing power consumption for customers with applications requiring high random read and write IOPs performance. Categorized by Read Intensive (RI), Mixed Use (MU), and Write Intensive (WI), you can choose the right SSD that tailors to your workload demands. Also, you can prevent data loss and monitor the SSD life with HPE SmartSSD Wear Gauge compatibility in management tools. Leveraging NAND Flash technology, they support HPE ProLiant servers including Gen9 and server storage platforms. Available as Small Form Factor (SFF) and Large Form Factor (LFF) hot plug devices, non-hot plug SFF devices, and SFF Quick Release devices, you have great flexibility in your installation. These drives deliver higher performance, better latency, and more power-efficient solutions when compared with traditional rotating media.

This item was discontinued on February 20, 2024

Enhance your purchase

HPE Mixed Use - SSD - 1.92 TB - SATA 6Gb/s (pack of 5) is rated 4.50 out of 5 by 140.
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Stable and easy to deploy with good technical support What is our primary use case? We primarily use the solution for the virtualization and the hyper-converged solutions in the software backup and recovery as well as the high data reduction rate. What is most valuable? The solution is very stable. The installation is easy and the deployment is quick. The configuration is pretty easy. It's a pretty out-of-the-box solution and comes mostly pre-configured for you. What needs improvement? The solution needs to improve the high data availability. The backup and recovery process needs to be faster. Right now, it's a bit slow. There needs to be more customization capabilities available for customers. That's lacking and clients would really like it if they could better customize the product to better fit their needs. For how long have I used the solution? While the company has worked with the solution for about two years at this point, I'm a newer member of the team and don't have quite the same level of experience. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Our organization has found that the stability of the product is quite good. It's reliable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's been good. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We have about five different customers who are utilizing the solution currently. How are customer service and technical support? The technical support is quite good. We're satisfied with the level of service provided. They are knowledgeable and responsive. How was the initial setup? The installation was very straightforward. We didn't find it overly complex. We didn't run into any difficulties in the implementation process. The deployment was fast and only took about two or three days or so. What about the implementation team? We're a solutions integrator and therefore we are able to implement the solution ourselves. We don't need the assistance of consultants. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? There are licensing costs involved as virtualization comes pre-packaged in the solution. What other advice do I have? Our organization is using the latest version of the solution. We're both integrators and implementors. I would recommend the solution to other organizations. It's so far worked well for us and our clients. Overall, I would rate the product at a nine on a scale from one to ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Integrator
Date published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Easy to use, stable product What is most valuable? It is easy to use. What needs improvement? HPE SimpliVity should cost less. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using this solution for two years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? HPE SimpliVity is stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? HPE SimpliVity is scalable. Some 200 people at my organization are using this solution at present. How are customer service and technical support? Our experience with technical support has been good. What other advice do I have? It is very easy to use this product. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Reseller
Date published: 2021-03-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Good price, very stable, and scalable with useful compression and deduplication features What is our primary use case? It is used for managing the infrastructure. It is combined with VMware software. We are using HPE SimpliVity Generation 10. What is most valuable? The compression and deduplication features are most valuable because they allow us to have a small footprint for storage. It is a very stable product, and we are also able to get all that we need in terms of reporting. What needs improvement? They should optimize the administration stack because it is consuming too much memory. It ends up consuming 20% of memory. They have another product for this feature, but I would like to have this feature within HPE SimpliVity. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using this solution for two years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is a very stable product. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It is scalable. Everybody in our organization is using this solution because internally, all our applications are running on it. We have around 50 users and 5 administrators. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We were using HPE BladeSystem. What about the implementation team? We worked with a provider, and he installed it. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? It is not expensive. We bought its license for two years. For support, we pay yearly. What other advice do I have? I would recommend this solution. We plan to keep using it. I would rate HPE SimpliVity an eight out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-03-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Easy to scale and setup, with excellent support, but the price could be improved What is our primary use case? We are using this solution for a VDI system. How has it helped my organization? HPE SimpliVity can improve our DR solution. I would recommend this for the Hospitality industry because of the data recovery. I think that HPE SimpliVity is the answer. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature is high availability. What needs improvement? We haven't really explored all areas of this solution we are still in the POC phase. Pricing and monitoring could be improved. I think that they should have their own hyper-converged system. For how long have I used the solution? I started using HPE SimpliVity approximately two months ago. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It's a stable solution. We have not had any issues with stability. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? This solution is scalable. You can add additional nodes at any time. It's easier to scale than Cisco Hyperflex and better than Nutanix. How are customer service and technical support? Technical support is excellent. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? Previously, we did not use another solution. SimpliVity is the first HCI that we have implemented in this company. We have learned and gained more experience in this area. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was simple. It took one week to deploy. What about the implementation team? We did not deploy this solution ourselves, we used a system provider. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The hardware is expensive. For the same price, Cisco can provide more hardware specifications for us. The hardware costs are more of an issue than the licensing costs. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We also evaluated Nutanix. Nutanix is quite expensive. It's at least two times more expensive than SimpliVity. What other advice do I have? This is a product that I would recommend to others who are interested in using it. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2020-12-21T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from A stable and scalable solution with good disaster recovery performance and useful backup feature What is our primary use case? We use it for our production system. We have many production systems. How has it helped my organization? 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. What is most valuable? 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. What needs improvement? 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. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using this solution for two years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It has good stability. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It is easy to scale. We have more than 2,000 users. How are customer service and technical support? We contact a local vendor for support. If they are not able to resolve the issue, they contact the global support, which takes time. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We used vSAN for the VMware solution. How was the initial setup? 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. What about the implementation team? 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. What was our ROI? We are seeing a return on investment. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The licensing is on a yearly basis. The licensing cost also includes vCenter at a cost in the cloud solution. What other advice do I have? 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. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2020-12-18T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Valuable replication and backup capabilities, and good technical support What is our primary use case? We are a solution provider and we implement HPE products such as SimpliVity for our customers. I am not a customer and I do not use all of the products that we sell, although I know these solutions. SimpliVity is a product that also we use ourselves. What is most valuable? The most valuable features are replication and backup. This solution is very intuitive and flexible. The vendor was quick to provide support for VMs in the product. What needs improvement? I would like to see support for having different clustered environments for production and testing. When it comes to performing backups, the dashboard is not intuitive and not user-friendly. This is something that should be improved. It should be easier to perform backups. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately four years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Using SimpliVity improves the stability of the environment. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability is the best in the market. We have between 10 and 15 users in our organization, and it is installed in the data center. How are customer service and technical support? Technical support is very good and I would rate them a ten out of ten. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is easy and it will take five or six hours to deploy. What other advice do I have? My advice for anybody who is considering this product is that it is easy to deploy and set up replication for use in a data center. It can be used in production for DLP. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2020-12-12T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from We can take snapshots and backups of really big servers and restore them in just a matter of seconds What is our primary use case? We use it for financial applications. We are a small organization, so it has all of our servers, financial applications, SQL database, file servers, etc. I believe we are up to date with the latest version for our hardware specs. What is most valuable? The main thing is its performance. In terms of performance, it is a lot better than VMware. Obviously, technology is changing a lot all the time. We were on just VMware with a separate attached array. The performance was kind of a step backward from just running separate servers. Now, the performance is much better, and we can take snapshots and backups of really big servers in just a matter of seconds. We can even restore them in a matter of seconds. What needs improvement? The fact that it is tied to a certain hardware platform would probably be the bigger negative versus just being able to buy something off the shelf. For how long have I used the solution? I have probably been using it for three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is stable. We haven't had any issues. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It is not easy to scale. In our instance, we would probably have to upgrade to a whole new hardware platform. In terms of end-users, our company is small, but we support school districts. There are probably 500 users. How are customer service and support? I have used their support. They're good. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We didn't use any other hyper-converged technology. We just moved from a VMware system that was kind of the old school type with two servers, a disk array, and a separate disk. How was the initial setup? It was kind of complex. There were just a lot of pieces. I wasn't so involved in the networking piece, but it seemed like it was a little bit more complicated. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? We did get some quotes from Nutanix, and they were ballparks. So, it is not cheap, and there is nothing free, but those two were comparable. What other advice do I have? I would advise others to just be sure and do their homework and compare. I'm not sure if we made the best decision, but I'm not dissatisfied with it. I'm pretty comfortable with the way it operates. I don't know enough about the other products to compare it in terms of the ease of doing updates and things like that. Usually, we get a support vendor involved when we do anything major. I would give HPE SimpliVity an eight out of 10. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-10-02T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Stable solution with easy initial setup What is our primary use case? Our clients' primary use for HPE SimpliVity has been for general infrastructure, not for any one specific thing. This includes different uses - for the server, SQL, the internal information server, different servers, etc. How has it helped my organization? The backup solution is a good functionality that the client is very happy with. What is most valuable? In terms of HPE SimpliVity's most valuable features, its backup integration is a good thing. Its performance is very good as is the whole integration. What needs improvement? In terms of what should be improved, I think that the local support in Argentina is not good. This is a new technology and HPE doesn't have a lot of technology specialists here in Argentina. It's very hard to find the specialist here. Additionally, the price must be better. Here in Argentina, Dell is very competitive. If the client doesn't understand the functionality that SimpliVity has, he will chose by price, and Dell is very, very competitive here in Argentina. Lastly, Stretched Cluster is a new functionality and is something that the client needs. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using HPE SimpliVity for two to three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability is very good. Stability is not a problem. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Our clients are small and medium-sized businesses, so we implement small infrastructures - three nodes to five nodes. Our clients are very happy with this solution. I don't know if they will buy more SimpliVity though. How are customer service and technical support? Here in Argentina tech support is very hard to find. But, if we scale our problem with external support in, say, the United States or another country, it's good. Here in Argentina, though, it's not good. How was the initial setup? Initial setup is very simple. It takes one or two days. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Dell is a competitor, as is Nutanix. Dell is a good solution and is cheaper than HPE, but their support is bad here in Argentina too. We've found that the client likes HPE because he knows it. For now Nutanix is still very small here in Argentina. What other advice do I have? We recommend our clients use SimpliVity. On a scale of one to ten, I would give HPE SimpliVity a nine. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2021-02-04T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Replication beneficial, uncomplicated install, and scalable What is our primary use case? We use the solution for HCM, secondary distribution endpoints, file sharing, domain controller, all many kinds of applications. What is most valuable? I find the replication feature valuable. What needs improvement? There are a lot of different components to choose from in the chassis. This could be easier by providing a standard or a base model to create and configure from. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using the solution for a couple of years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I believe the solution is stable, I did not see any issues. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is converging in a public place, the scalability is good. We have approximately 70 users using the solution in my company, Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We previously used Dell PowerEdge rack servers. How was the initial setup? I found the installation straightforward. However, I am not sure about others. What about the implementation team? The solution took a couple of hours to do the implementation with two technicians, and we have one technician for the maintenance. Next time I am going to use a consultant or a supplier to do the implementation. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The product is expensive. What other advice do I have? We are going to continue to use the solution in the future, and I recommend it to others. I rate HPE SimpliVity a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-02-01T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Stable with good pricing but needs to clarify the licensing terms What is our primary use case? The product is a hyper-converged solution. We are using this for local databases and application settings. What is most valuable? It's a normal solution and offers all of the typical features of a typical production on the market. The pricing of the solution is very good. The solution offers good stability. What needs improvement? There's nothing overly special or unique about the solution. Overall, SimpliVity has a lot of features, however, those features need to be more precise. It's like a jack of all trades and master of none. It needs to hone in on a few features and really make them shine. SimpliVity claims to have what you call a compression and dedup ratio, however, in practice, it doesn't really work. They need to give more controls and more features as far as the backup is concerned. The initial setup is not that easy. The licensing could be more clear. The technical support isn't ideal right now. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using the solution for two years at this point. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is quite stable, however, there's a lot of dependability on VMware. It interfaces a lot with it. Therefore, if there are any changes in VMware, it has to be reflected on SimpliVity as well. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We have not really tried to expand the product, due to the fact that we don't really want to invest more into it. Therefore, I can't really speak to the solution's capabilities in this matter. We're just going to use it and maybe over a period of time, we might just come out of it. How are customer service and technical support? When we had purchased SimpliVity, it was a stand-alone product. Then, HPE acquired SimpliVity. Therefore, whatever support that is there, it is not really the complete, comprehensive support that you would experience with other HPE products. Basically, since this is an acquired system, there are limitations when it comes to support. How was the initial setup? We're just customers. We aren't resellers or consultants. The initial setup is not straightforward. It's fairly complex. The deployment didn't take too long, however, It was done in about a week or so. In terms of recommending the product, it depends on what a company needs and it depends on what they want it for. It's a solution-driven implementation. What didn't really work for me, might work for someone else. I'm not sure if HPE is very keen on SimpliVity, as I don't really see them promoting this product very much. I'm curious to see if they'll continue with it or not. Overall, I would rate the solution at a five out of ten. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Our solution is on a perpetual license. The pricing itself is okay. It's not too expensive. There's a bit of confusion around licensing. Initially, SimpliVity did not talk about licensing for the software. However, later on, when the customers tried to update it, then SimpliVity said that they would have to pay for the update. Ideally, HPE should be very transparent about pricing and the licensing of this particular solution. It's not right now. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-01-31T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Provides great compression and a very good deduplication ratio What is our primary use case? This solution is for general purpose utilization. We are partners with HPE and I'm a system engineer. How has it helped my organization? The improvement to the company has been in terms of data reduction, we're storing more data with a lower footprint. What is most valuable? The compression and deduplication ratio would be the most valuable features. What needs improvement? I'd like to see some improvements in terms of simplifying deployment and making it more user friendly. I think the technical support could be improved as well. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using this solution for two years. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? With the newer models we can scale as we need. There are 20 users in our office and probably 200 more worldwide. How was the initial setup? We've carried out this deployment numerous times so it's not an issue. We're able to carry out the physical implementation in two or three hours. Project management and related work takes about two to three weeks. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The licensing price is okay, there would be extra costs for replication licenses, for RapidDR but nothing on top of that. What other advice do I have? It's important to use the best solution for your requirements and use case. I rate this solution an eight out of 10. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-03-01T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Has an inbuilt backup feature and is stable and scalable What is our primary use case? We use it for servers, like the domain controller, DHCP, print server, file server, and distribution server as well as application servers. What is most valuable? 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. What needs improvement? I think the licensing cost could be lower. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using HPE SimpliVity for more than two years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? HPE SimpliVity is definitely a stable solution. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I think it is scalable. How are customer service and technical support? I have found technical support to be good and have appreciated their immediate response. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was straightforward. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? We currently have a yearly license, and I think the cost could be lower. What other advice do I have? 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. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-04-20T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from A good brand with a simple setup What is our primary use case? A primary use case involves the length of deployment of the product, this year being three or four hours for the customers and two for a small company conducting sales with Veeam Backup, VMware, and Microsoft. It is not only for HPE. What needs improvement? I have a free project with SimpliVity deployment in the next three months. What can be improved is that in one or two of these projects, I need a cloud backup for the infrastructure and data. As for the infrastructure of the product as it relates to customer size, it is not very good at this moment in Peru. I need a solution for the cloud. In Peru, it's a three or four solution provider for cloud services. What do I think about the stability of the solution? As for the stability of HPE interface, it's a good brand. How are customer service and technical support? I have three or four certified technicians to lend support. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was simple. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Our licensing costs are on a monthly basis. There are additional costs. What other advice do I have? I would rate SimpliVity a ten out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? Hybrid Cloud Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Setup easy, stable, and very fast at setup and operating What is our primary use case? I use the solution for virtualised infraestructure of servers. How has it helped my organization? HPE Simplivity improved the space of disk with deduplication, reduced the time of backups and recovers. What is most valuable? One of the key features is the solution is really fast for backups and deduplication is amazing. What needs improvement? 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. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using the solution for one year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is very stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? 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. How are customer service and technical support? They could have better-specialized support for more countries. I rate the customer service of HPE SimpliVity a seven out of ten. How was the initial setup? The setup is very easy. What about the implementation team? We have three nodes around the country and it took just one week for the deployment. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The solution can be expensive if you are using a lot of nodes. What other advice do I have? 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. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-01-01T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from I like the ability to do frequent full VM backups in seconds What is our primary use case? We're running more than 40 ESX 6.5 VMs on a two-node SimpliVity system. The SimpliVity nodes are at two different locations and operate in a stretched cluster mode. This provides mirroring of the flash storage in each node. Approximately half of our VMs run on the site on one node and the other half run on the site on two nodes. In the event of a node failure, all VMs will automatically run on the one good node. How has it helped my organization? * Noticeably better VM performance due to all-flash storage * Incredibly fast VM backups and restores * Backups and restores take less than one minute. What is most valuable? * The ability to do frequent full VM backups in seconds * Currently seeing data reduction ratios of 250:1 with one month of backups * 2 PB of data reduced to 7.8 TB. What needs improvement? It would be nice if the storage could be expanded by simply adding additional SSD drives. There are unused drive slots but I believe you have to add more nodes if additional storage is required in the future. SimpliVity updates are a painful and complex process that takes about two hours per node. First, the drivers on each node need to be updated which, although it's a reasonably straightforward process, takes roughly an hour per node. Next, the OmniStack software needs to be updated and this is a complex, Linux command-line process that also takes about an hour per node. Fortunately, as part of HPE product support, they offer remote update assistance but I hope HPE will simplify the update process in the near future. For how long have I used the solution? Less than one year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The system has been very stable and trouble-free for the six months that it has been in service and we expect it to remain this way for many years. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability of the storage and memory are less than ideal. Although there are unused drive slots in the SimpliVity hosts, you can't just add additional drives. You must purchase additional nodes to increase the storage capacity. We needed to expand the RAM after putting the nodes in service, and the only option was to add another 384 GB of RAM, the same amount that the node came with. How are customer service and technical support? We've only placed two technical support calls, and they were very helpful. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? Previously, we had a conventional architecture with three host servers and two SANs. How was the initial setup? The initial configuration was somewhat more complex than a conventional setup as the OmniStack controller requires additional configuration. What about the implementation team? A vendor team did the complete installation from the racking-and-stacking to the SimpliVity and VMware configuration. The vendor team was very knowledgeable and made what would have been a daunting task a piece of cake. What was our ROI? N/A. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? While SimpliVity is not inexpensive, we found it was not significantly more expensive than the cost of buying equivalent host servers and equivalent SAN storage. HPE installed and configured the equipment as part of the purchase, so that was painless. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We also evaluated VxRail, vSAN, StorMagic, Nutanix, Pivot, and others. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-03-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from I switched from a non-hyperconverged solution. This was less hardware and VMware licensing to manage. What is most valuable? Seamless backup, quick deployment. What needs improvement? SimpliVity ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/simplivity ) requires an arbiter to be installed on a non-virtualized (or at least on non-SimpliVity virtualized) storage ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/hyper-converged-infrastructure ). This means you can not totally virtualize your environment on SimpliVity. I would like to see the arbiter on a system that is virtualized and eliminate that external portion. For how long have I used the solution? About a year. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? The VAR that helped with deployment did not know that the arbiter could not be virtualized and this lead to problems down the road when installing updates. What do I think about the stability of the solution? No. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I have not scaled it yet. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Good. Technical Support: Excellent. Which solutions did we use previously? I switched from a non-hyperconverged solution. This was less hardware and VMware ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/vmware ) licensing to manage. How was the initial setup? Initial setup took a day. What about the implementation team? The VAR was still learning the product. I would rate their level of expertise as low. Which other solutions did I evaluate? I also evaluated Nutanix ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/nutanix ) and Scale. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-12-19T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It has reduced my data center activities What is our primary use case? We are using this solution in Brazil. How has it helped my organization? It has improved the delivery value for my clients. It has reduced my data center activities. What is most valuable? It delivers value to my clients. The solution has changed my necessities. How are customer service and technical support? I haven't spoken with their technical support. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was complex because it was a new solution. What about the implementation team? We deployed it in-house with our own knowledge. What was our ROI? I have not seen ROI. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We only looked at HPE. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-10T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Provides scalability and reduces complexity. I would like to see hybrid storage options. What is most valuable? * Scalability * Ease of setup * Reduced complexity * Flexibility How has it helped my organization? We are resellers, so it allows us to sell our customers solutions that make their work easier. They can make a port more rapidly and fit a broader range of cloud data platforms. What needs improvement? I would like to see more storage options, such as hybrid storage options. We sell other products as well. We run across a lot of customers who are not quite ready to go to all-flash, while it's probably a better idea. Not having an all-flash option right now is probably a hindrance for us, because the customers just get turned off when they see that. Even though what HPE is selling is actually a better option, sometimes convincing customers of that, when they are only looking at the bottom line, is difficult. What do I think about the stability of the solution? So far, stability is great. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Scalability is very good. How is customer service and technical support? We have not really used technical support. It is pretty self-explanatory. Which solutions did we use previously? We saw changes in the market and changes in the way applications are developed. The market is going away from what we think of as databases, and is moving toward cloud data applications. How was the initial setup? The setup was very straightforward. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We have used HPE, Dell, EMC, and Cisco. Typically, it's the customers' preference. A lot of times we have customers who are very comfortable with their existing HPE equipment. Going forward, if we go to a customer who doesn't have an existing preference, then that is where we are going to start directing them because of the partnership cooperation. HPE shines right now when compared to the other options. What other advice do I have? Compared to the protection offerings of the platforms, I think the competing native data protection just isn't there. SimpliVity really got that part nailed down. I would think that's probably an easy way to show the customer that it's the superior product. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-19T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Scalable and less complicated to deploy, but backup and DR feature sets need work What is our primary use case? We use it for storage. What is most valuable? The scalability is its most valuable feature. It's also able to do stretch clustering. What needs improvement? There are a lot of features that they need to improve on, such as the backup and DR feature sets. I would also like to see it able to restore item levels, especially for databases. They don't have that right now. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability is okay. I'm not that impressed. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability is good. How are customer service and technical support? Technical support is okay. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? We were using what is called a traditional conversion solution. We switched to SimpliVity because it enabled us to consolidate our nodes. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was straightforward. What about the implementation team? We used D-Plus. They're pretty good. What was our ROI? We have seen ROI. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? It's about $10,000 monthly. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We compared it with other products, such as Nutanix and vSAN, and we weighted the features that we needed. This solution was the one that met the greatest number of our requirements. It's also less complicated to deploy and has a smaller footprint. What other advice do I have? The product is good. It might not meet all your requirements, but it is one of the solutions that met most of our requirements. There's no "best product" out there but this is likely the best for your needs. I would rate SimpliVity at a seven out of ten, based on the features and the requirements that we have. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Provides an entire solution in a single box and offers a single management platform for the entire staff What is our primary use case? Our primary use case for this solution is to offer a combination of computing storage services to remote locations. It operates in our data centers. How has it helped my organization? This solution has improved our organization because it provides ease of management and offers a single management platform for the entire staff. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature for us is its integration, as it provides an entire solution in a single box. The performance is also very good. What needs improvement? The ease of new deployments could be improved. Also, I think that the scalability of the solution may be inadequate for some people. It would be good for this platform if we could have an independent gross-storage on the computer. For how long have I used the solution? One to three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I have good a good impression of the stability of this solution. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? In terms of scalability, this solution fits us. However, I think that the actual limitations are somewhat less than what people might want. For our purpose, it's ok. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? We did not use a solution previous to this one. It was added to our IT portfolio because there was a need for it. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was not extremely easy, so we needed specific skills in order to bring it into production. Once it was up and running, it was ok. Which other solutions did I evaluate? When it comes to selecting a vendor, I think that partnership is one of the most important criteria. We needed a technology that is universally deployable and has the capability of functioning in the cloud. This allows us to use the service not only in our own premise's data centers but with cloud providers as well. At the time we were evaluating solutions but there were not many players in the market. We considered Nutanix, but it had its own hardware platform. SimpliVity had an OmniStack configuration that could run on hardware platforms that we already had within the organization. We chose SimpliVity because of this. What other advice do I have? There is a massive technology shift now toward software-defined storage, so we are trying to move from a functionality perspective to an abstraction layer above the equipment we buy. I think that this is a safe investment for anyone who wants to have a straightforward solution that comes out of the box and can be deployed on an appliance. I would rate this solution eight out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-04-23T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It has a proven track record of stability What is our primary use case? Currently, we are using it for our VMware workstation. We use it to host our non-production servers. What is most valuable? The hardware deduplication, because it is better for this use case. What needs improvement? We should have something called micro segmentation inside the SimpliVity box, which can be easily implemented. They are using backup from snapshots. Maybe they can integrate with VM or similar mechanics. For how long have I used the solution? Less than one year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It has a proven track record of stability. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability is okay. How is customer service and technical support? HPE has a good track record of support. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was straightforward. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-08-07T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Operational efficiency is definitely one of the biggest benefits. How has it helped my organization? Operational efficiency is definitely one of the biggest benefits. A lot of times, when you write a TCO and ROI, one of the biggest things is administration. So they could get rid of all those man hours worrying about babysitting their SAN and their servers, and the network, etc. Take those hours and put them back into real value for the business working on issues with the applications; not the SAN and the infrastructure. What is most valuable? It's ease of use and it's simplicity within the infrastructure. For a lot of our customers hyper-converge is not a one size fits all. But for a lot of workloads and for a lot of applications it does work very well and it's an extremely simple solution; very viable. What needs improvement? I would like to see a single PROC option for things like Robo beause we have a lot of customers that just don't need dual CPU's in some of these locations. That's what drives up the cost a lot of the time. I would also like to see smaller core counts, as well. A lot of the core counts are just unbelievable. They are way under utilized over way too many cores. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Stability is good. It's rock solid. If you size them properly, you shouldn't really ever run into issues. We have only run into one workload so far out of all of our customers that doesn't fit correctly with the solution. It was essentially a batch process job that just would require a completely separate SAN and server environment. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Scalability so far has been pretty good. We haven't really had customers that have had a scale beyond an extreme amount of nodes; eight, nine, ten nodes. It's been rock solid. How is customer service and technical support? We haven’t used technical support because we still go through SimpliVity for support even though HPE bought the company. It is still a separate support structure. They could work on support a little bit, but that's just HPE going through the growing pains. Which solutions did we use previously? We did not have a previous solution. As far as hyper converge goes, that was the first one we started selling. We've sold vSAN, as well, and the same with Nutanix. But SimpliVity is kind of the horse for picking a ride now. I want stability when picking a vendor. Look at a company like Simplivity. They were a great company, but poorly managed as far as money goes and luckily HPE was able to swoop them up and that’s better than a lot of the other companies that could have bought them. How was the initial setup? Setup is pretty straightforward. Everyone tries to say how simple their solutions are to set. Everything is plug-and-play and while they are, there are still little things that you need to know and understand, especially when it comes to the network. It's very easy solution. As a sales guy, I've installed them. Which other solutions did I evaluate? As a reseller, we like to give our customers a lot of options and we're not gonna sit here and say we only sell one product cause that would never be the way to do it. But HPE is a very strong company to partner with as far as total portfolio and solutions set goes. What other advice do I have? Do it. Try it. PLC it. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-18T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Our RPO has gone from 8 hours to 3 hours and we can go back to 6 months of datasets. Valuable Features Deduplication and backup and replication of Vm's. Improvements to My Organization Our RPO has gone from 8 hours to 3 hours and we can go back to 6 months of datasets. Room for Improvement Backup and replications automation. Use of Solution 6 months. Deployment Issues No deployment issues. Stability Issues No stability issues. Scalability Issues No scalability issues. Customer Service and Technical Support Customer Service: Very good. Technical Support: Very good. Previous Solutions Veeam and Dell Servers and Storage. Initial Setup Very straightforward but their engineers are needed to install in our VMware environment. Implementation Team Vendor and they were excellent. ROI 2.5 years. Other Solutions Considered Yes. Dell, HP and EMC products. We also looked into Zerto and Recovery Point. Other Advice Make sure that you size the memory and CPU's to handle your entire environment. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2014-11-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Reduced our data center footprint, increased our application delivery performance, and lowered operational costs. What is most valuable? DR, Dedupe, Efficiency Rating. How has it helped my organization? Simplified our DR Solution. Lowered the Backup Increment from 1 hour to under 15 minutes. What needs improvement? I would like to ability to install a client on a remote server and download images from the federation service. For how long have I used the solution? 3 Years. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? No, Very easy to implement. What do I think about the stability of the solution? No, Very pleased with the stability of the solution. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No, We have increase capacity 2X. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Outstanding Customer Service. Technical Support: Outstanding Technical Support. Which solutions did we use previously? I migrated from IBM Blade Servers ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/hpe-bladesystem_vs_lenovo-blade-servers ) and traditional SAN infrastructure. How was the initial setup? Very Straightforward. It was a much easier rollout than expected. What about the implementation team? In House. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Very Economical. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Yes, Nutanix ( https://www.google.co.il/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjQrZn3gqTRAhVQOVAKHRhFDeQQFggkMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.itcentralstation.com%2Fproducts%2Fnutanix&usg=AFQjCNGiCoMSMXIhHCFU_YpA_HpCpDQx-A&sig2=XUnbM5qpj06hfCefrdgQow&bvm=bv.142059868,d.ZWM ). What other advice do I have? As an early adopter of SimpliVity ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/simplivity )’s hyper-converged infrastructure, we’ve seen significant benefits of the solution. SimpliVity reduced our data center footprint from 20U to 4U, increased our application delivery performance by 75%, and lowered operational costs in a major way. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-11-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Freed up resources to do more application delivery type functionalities What is our primary use case? Our primary use case for SimpliVIty was around backup and disaster recovery. We were trying to replace our existing DR service platform, then consolidate our backups from the different solutions, whether that was Veeam on the VMware side, Robocopy for file shares, or Windows Backup or SQL backup for certain applications. How has it helped my organization? Looking at the way that our infrastructure team works now, we don't think about infrastructure, storage, or compute anymore. The solution just works. It is same with the backup and replication side of things, as it just works on schedule. We don't have to manage it tightly, like we used to. That has freed up those resources to do more application delivery type functionalities. What is most valuable? * The ease of management in these deployments were some of the most valuable things. * The date storage infrastructure that it provides is pretty fantastic. * The ease of use on the backup and DR and replication side of things is good. It can be done by a VMware admin with no additional training. What needs improvement? The biggest feature, which should be included, is some method to handle archival backup or cloud-based backup. Where SimpliVIty typically falls down with their data structure is: The longer a backup is kept, the more space it ends up inevitably using. When you get into things that you have to keep for five or seven years for legal requirements or regulatory compliance, then you start taking up a lot of space with these old dead backups that you are probably never going to use again. Being able to offload those to a separate platform or cloud storage location would be ideal. For how long have I used the solution? We did the initial setup three years ago. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is very stable. We have had very limited problems. When we do have problems, it is typically not on the SimpliVIty side of the house, but on the hardware side or VMware side. However, the support is phenomenal at getting all of the right resources on the line together, whether they have to call up VMware or your networking provider, whomever it happens to be, to get to the bottom of the problem. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Scalability is fine. We are a fairly small organization, so it hasn't really come up. We fit well into their small end of deployments. From what I hear, it can scale quite high. However, that is not a functionality or feature that we've come across yet. How are customer service and technical support? The technical support is good. We purchased SimpliVIty prior to HPE owning them, so there was a different support when the buyout occurred. However, it is at a level now where it is second to none. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? We didn't initially think we needed to invest in a new hardware solution. We really were focused on DR backup. As we went through the use case and worked out the financials on it, we determined that SimpliVIty was the right move for us, as it financially made sense to the point that we had an HPE 3PAR that was two years old and we put that on the shelf. So, it was not hardware refresh related at all. How was the initial setup? There were definitely some complexities to the initial setup, as we had to migrate off of our older infrastructure, which was the more complex part. Generally, the SimpliVIty install and migration was pretty straightforward. What about the implementation team? We used a reseller, IMP Solutions, to purchase the deployment, but we did the actual install and deployment ourselves with SimpliVIty support. IMP Solutions was fantastic. What was our ROI? When we did our financials, it became a wash based on what we were doing previous with regular hardware refreshes. However, the time savings on the administration side of things is huge. We had somebody who was dedicated pretty much full-time to hardware, and now, they spend about a quarter of their time a year on hardware-related issues. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? For the VMware licensing, it is approximately $10,000 a year. Which other solutions did I evaluate? SimpliVIty, HPE's previous hyper-converged solution, Nutanix, and Scale Computing were on our shortlist. What made us chose SimpliVity was the tight integration on the backup and DR aspects of the product. Everybody else had that type of capability, but it felt like it was added on after the fact, whereas with SimpliVIty, it was built from the ground up to do these things, which was our primary use case. So, it made sense for us to move forward with that product. What other advice do I have? Try to understand your rate of change on your data: When you take a backup, how quickly is your information changing or being updated, and whether it is a database, file server, or whatever it happens to be. This will affect the way that you size the solution and get into those archives. It will affect how much space it starts to take up and how you calculate that. Know your data. It does everything that we need it to do. The only spot that it falls out is the archival backups. Otherwise, it is a rock-solid platform. It has freed up a bunch of resources to do different types of work, instead of dealing with storage allocations, backups, and recoveries. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-07T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It has a unique platform of computing, cloud management, storage, and integrated networks What is our primary use case? Powerful, unbeatable hyper-converged solution from HPE SimpliVity ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hpe-simplivity ) 380 with OmniStack. How has it helped my organization? It allows you to take advantage of the unique platform of computing, cloud management, storage, and integrated networks, as well as software-defined data management, which is easy to use. What is most valuable? The most complete hyper-convergence infrastructure solution in the industry complying with the number one server platform in the market. What needs improvement? Simplify the backup and restore: With integrated backup and remote replication, it could reduce risk and eliminates the use of legacy data tools. For how long have I used the solution? Trial/evaluations only. What was our ROI? Investing less time in configuration and management means that you will have more time to focus on what is really important: Your company's innovation and rapid commercialization. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Infinia Solutions & Services is a Mexican technology and services company focused on the search for solutions in cutting-edge information technology that integrate, facilitate and optimize resources, improving the productivity and profitability of our clients' business. We offer our customers and business partners virtualization solutions and converged computation infrastructure.
Date published: 2018-04-16T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It has been performing well. It was more than what we expected. What is our primary use case? We use it for a Tentacle system, which we provide to our customers. At the moment, it is not in full release, we have just been testing the following: * Virtualization * VMs. It has been performing well. It was more than what we expected. We have been testing it for three months now. How has it helped my organization? We are still on a PoC. We have not pushed it out that far. We are expecting the speed that we have seen so far. What is most valuable? From a generic point of view: * The sheer speed * The sheer power. For how long have I used the solution? Trial/evaluations only. What do I think about the stability of the solution? No issues. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No issues. Which solutions did we use previously? We had a standard HPE blade server. Our reseller put forward SimpliVity to us. We tried it out and tested it. I was like, "Wow." It blew us away. How was the initial setup? I was not involved in the initial setup, but I was told that it was very straightforward. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Cost is a factor. It is quite expensive. What other advice do I have? Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: price and service. HPE emcompasses these values. Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Date published: 2017-12-26T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from We migrated from our legacy solution. I like the uilt-in ability to do backups to DR, do internal backups, and deduplication. What is most valuable? 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. How has it helped my organization? 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. What needs improvement? 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. For how long have I used the solution? I have used SimpliVity for about 1 year. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? We had no issues with deployment. What do I think about the stability of the solution? We have not had any stability issues. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We have not had scalability issues. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: They have the highest level of customer service I have experienced in a vendor. They have great people on at any time of day. Technical Support: 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. Which solutions did we use previously? We had an aging infrastructure that was due to be replaced. We wanted our new product to have built-in DR capability. How was the initial setup? I already had a good understanding of VMWare ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/vmware-vsan ), moving to this solution was probably the most straightforward implementation I have ever done. What about the implementation team? We implemented with the help of SimpliVity directly. Their expertise was great. Implementation went very smoothly. What was our ROI? 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. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We looked at Dell Compellent ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/compellent ) and Pivot3 ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/pivot3 ). Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-12-19T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It has improved our response time What is our primary use case? The primary use is to run the business, production, and Oracle. How has it helped my organization? It has improved our response time. What is most valuable? The rate of compression for the data in SimpliVity is the most valuable feature. What needs improvement? When we make some upgrades to the platform, it does take time to stabilize the structure again. We would like a simple interface to use. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The platform works okay. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability is okay. You only need to aggregate some nodes, then increase the capacity of the structure. How are customer service and technical support? The technical support is okay. However, when we need to escalate issues to the next levels, they first go to India, then the USA. We do have some problems with the time zones. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? We needed SimpliVity for our architecture. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was complex, because it was a new way of working. It was a disruption of technology. People has to learn the new way of working with the technology. What about the implementation team? We used an integrator for the deployment, who was good. What was our ROI? We have not seen ROI yet. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We also looked at Dell EMC and Cisco. We chose HPE based on its technology and cost. What other advice do I have? I would recommend the product. It is a good technology. The time and response of applications embrace the productivity of our enterprise. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-17T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Technology consolidation resulted in lower overall costs in the form of less administrative overhead What is our primary use case? We use HPE SimpliVity for general corporate IT applications and to support our DevOps automation software. How has it helped my organization? There are three big improvements that SimpliVity brought to our organization: * The ability to quickly and reliably create and maintain a disaster recovery environment over a relatively, low bandwidth WAN connection. * The reduction in physical storage, due to SimpliVity's data virtualization layer, which includes inline deduplication and compression. * The consolidation of many technology solutions into one solution, which resulted in lower overall costs in the form of fewer software and hardware purchases, reduced backup costs, lower bandwidth charges between sites, and less administrative overhead. What is most valuable? The ease of setting up our DR site with SimpliVity. It was very simple. I did not have to set up a separate storage, server, and networking environments. There was no additional WAN optimization or backup hardware/software, and it did not choke my WAN link. What needs improvement? I would love it if the solution would auto data balance within the cluster. It is possible, and eventually, it will be likely that certain nodes within the same cluster will hold more data than the other nodes. In order to balance this data out, a support call is required and the support technician will spend some time rebalancing the nodes. The access to do this by end users is not given. It is also somewhat difficult to monitor the actual node's physical storage with out-of-the box monitoring tools due to the virtualization of this layer. For how long have I used the solution? One to three years. Which solutions did we use previously? I previously used a traditional virtualization stack with a SAN, compute, and network layers. I switched because, at the time, we had no DR solution in place for many of our services. We were looking for the best available options to replicate data for a DR site and bring up services at that site. SimpliVity provides an all-in-one solution and has been a great addition to our tech portfolio. How was the initial setup? It was easy to install. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Upfront costs seems high at first look, but after analyzing all the benefits of SimpliVity, we have come out ahead. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We evaluated other traditional stack options with Zerto as our replication software. We looked at Nutanix and EMC VxRail. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Good disaster recovery, backup simplification, deduplication, and compression features What is our primary use case? Our primary use case for this solution is for our data center. How has it helped my organization? Disaster recovery, backup simplification, deduplication, and compression features have helped improve my organization. What is most valuable? The feature that I have found most valuable is the backup recovery. What needs improvement? The upgrades need improvement. For how long have I used the solution? One to three years. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-04-16T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from We have stored data, compressed and deduplicated, with less transfer over the WAN. What is most valuable? "Less space and power, less management". We have stored all data, compressed and deduplicated, with less transfer over the WAN. How has it helped my organization? Adding a node to the federation is as simple as plugging it into the network, selecting it in the GUI, and clicking "Join". What needs improvement? I would like to see a better price/performance in comparison with a standard ESX servers/storage farm solution. For how long have I used the solution? As a trade and service SimpliVity partner since 2013, we have sold and installed dozens of systems based on CN-3000/5000 in various configurations. These include models from: CN3400-12abc, miniCube, 2xE5-2640v3, 16C, 4x400GB SSD, 20x1TB HDD, 256GB Memory to models CN5000-bcc - OmniCube CN-5000 platform, Dual 12 Cores, 384 RAM, 400GB SSD, etc. In multiple cases, we have upgraded the first versions of OmniCube Box (delivered in 2013/2014) based on the request of our clients to higher configurations, in a time span of 12-18 months. Our company has been using the OmniCube CN-3000 system internally since 2013. What do I think about the stability of the solution? We did not have any issues with stability. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability options are clear and mostly satisfying. How is customer service and technical support? Technical support varies based on the level of paid service (Gold/Silver). Which solutions did we use previously? The SimpliVity OmniCube solution was the first that we have used for software defined, data center field. We have been using it ever since How was the initial setup? The initial setup was fairly simple. SimpliVity offers high-level technical training and the system itself is well documented. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price of OmniCube Box is still higher compared to standard ESX server/storage farm solutions. Its advantages are only appealing to clients who: * Want to increase the efficiency of both physical and human resources * Want to decrease complexity * Are lacking data room space * Have more branches SimpliVity can help organizations take on the challenges of maximizing efficiency while reducing costs. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Performance scalability was easily achieved for a virtual environment running a mix of common IT business applications, while providing fast, predictable response times. Combined with the ability to offer the same level of administrative simplicity, data efficiency, complete functionality across data centers around the globe, and low-cost cloud capabilities, SimpliVity OmniCube is noteworthy. What other advice do I have? Visit the SimpliVity website for reference information and familiarization with the product. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:As a trade and service SimpliVity partner since 2013.
Date published: 2017-03-20T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Backup and DR capabilities are its most valuable features What is most valuable? * Backup * Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities How has it helped my organization? We now backup our core VMs on-site every 10 minutes and off-site every 15 minutes. What needs improvement? A better GUI for some functions. For how long have I used the solution? Two years. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? No issues. What do I think about the stability of the solution? No issues. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No, but we have only added one node so far. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Very high. Technical Support: Very high. Which solutions did we use previously? Traditional stack with storage and compute. How was the initial setup? I did not do the actual install. SimpliVity helped. What about the implementation team? We implemented using a vendor team. They were good. What was our ROI? I do not have hard numbers. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Do not just go by the minimum. Give a little for growth and storage. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Yes, Nutanix. What other advice do I have? I am very pleased with the performance and ease of use. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-11-14T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It helps us save on the cost of storage What is our primary use case? Production servers running on virtualization (such as web, DB, mail, and file), and the report server requires more disk performance to reduce report generation. How has it helped my organization? Improves backup time and DR solution. We can backup with more frequency and minimize RPO and RTO. What is most valuable? * Deduplication * Compression It helps us save on the cost of storage and improves the backup and DR solution. What needs improvement? Cloud integration, such as Azure and AWS. It would be better if we could deploy a hybrid cloud integrated to SimpliVity. For how long have I used the solution? Trial/evaluations only. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
Date published: 2018-02-18T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Backup and restore are valuable. Valuable Features Backup and restore. Improvements to My Organization As a small IT shop we spend less time managing our VMware ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/vmware-esxi ) infrastructure which gives us more time to focus on the front end of our business. Room for Improvement Single file restore capabilities and ease. Use of Solution 18 months Deployment Issues NO -- went up fast and migrated quickly. Stability Issues Very stable so far... Scalability Issues We added a fourth server with relative ease. Customer Service and Technical Support Technical support has been among the best we have dealt with. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-10-13T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Offsite backup, replication, and duplication of data are important for our plant environment What is our primary use case? I was searching for a high availability system that could replace our traditional SAN and be responsible for computer configuration and backup. How has it helped my organization? This solution was an easy way for us to ensure high availability along with offsite backup of data. It has made offsite recovery a faster process than in the past. What is most valuable? Offsite backup, replication, and duplication of data are important for our plant environment since we are hard on our equipment. The ability to restore quickly and get the business back up and running is priceless. What needs improvement? Bandwidth throttling during offsite backups. When we implemented this solution for the first time to replace another system we brought down the WAN line until the initial data set was replicated. They do have an off-peak time setting but throttling would be better for a 24/7 shop. For how long have I used the solution? Three to five years. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-07-12T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Cross-site federation and integration with vSphere are valuable. What is most valuable? * Redundancy * Cross-site federation * Data virtualization * Integration with vSphere How has it helped my organization? 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. What needs improvement? 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. For how long have I used the solution? I have used it for 18 months. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? We encountered some deployment issues as part of the complexity of hardware refreshes and datacenter moves; none related to SimpliVity's technology itself. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We have not encountered any scalability issues. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: 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: 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. Which solutions did we use previously? 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. How was the initial setup? 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. What about the implementation team? Implementation was a partner effort between SimpliVity and our own IT. Their expertise was unparalleled, with every point addressed and handled without issue. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? 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. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Before choosing this product, we evaluated Nutanix, Scale HC3, Nimble SmartStack, and Maxta. What other advice do I have? 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. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-01-31T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from A valuable feature is the backup and restore capability What is most valuable? * The backup and restore capability * The speed with which it backs up * Restores can be done in seconds How has it helped my organization? 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. What needs improvement? Additional features would be having more visibility into the overall infrastructure and to know what's happening with the VMs. What do I think about the stability of the solution? 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. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? 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. How is customer service and technical support? 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. Which solutions did we use previously? 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. How was the initial setup? 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. What other advice do I have? 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. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-08-02T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Simple, scalable, and comes with good tech support What is our primary use case? We use it for VDI. How has it helped my organization? It helps us in supplying desktops to users. What is most valuable? The solution's simplicity is its most valuable feature. The usability is also good. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability is good and simple. How are customer service and technical support? Technical support at HPE has always been really good, with anything I've done with them. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? We used Cisco HyperFlex. It was just another system that was brought to our attention by a different reseller. SimpliVity was introduced to us by sales and we needed something like that. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was a little complex because we were in the first version, fresh releases. What about the implementation team? We used a reseller and our experience with them was great. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We looked at NetApp but they couldn't do stretch clustering. What other advice do I have? Evaluate it. In terms of rating the solution, I have to go with an eight out of ten. A ten is hard to get from me. There's no perfect system and every system has its little hang-ups and issues. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Simple to integrate with our backups What is our primary use case? We use it for optimization of the platform for the virtualization. How has it helped my organization? The replication from the different centers (the main to the secondary) has been very great. It is good value for us. SimpliVity is simple to integrate with our backups. We have used it for testing. What is most valuable? * Compression * Deduplication * As a point for optimization on our infrastructure, it works great for us. * The solution is very innovative. What needs improvement? We would like to have more security with the solution. For how long have I used the solution? I have had the solution for one year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is very stable. We have not had any outages. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability is great. We have 13 nodes in our data center. How are customer service and technical support? The technical support is very good. We have Tier 2 and 3 support. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? We moved to SimpliVity from our previous solution because SimpliVity met our requirements. Our previous solution was four years old. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was complex. It took a few months to integrate and adapt to the new platform. What about the implementation team? We used a partner, Datavision, for our deployment. Our experience with them was very good. Which other solutions did I evaluate? HPE proposed Synergy and Simplicity. We chose Simplicity, which has been a great platform for us. What other advice do I have? We are not looking to change our solution, at least not in the next three years. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-10T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Provides inline compression, leverages our existing compute, and does backup in DR. What is most valuable? It's a game changer. They have the inline compression, which is really good. It can present itself as the NAS, so it can leverage our existing compute and then the backup. The backup in DR has been a lifesaver. It makes jobs so much easier. It makes my job a lot easier. How has it helped my organization? Overall benefits include reducing the cost of administration. We have a small head count of IT. This simplifies the job duties and we don't have to worry about performance or backup issues. What needs improvement? I'd love to see more of their cloud analytics. I guess big data kind of stuff, where we could practically monitor some of the stuff. And some of the integrated software they have with the DR. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability has been very good, very solid. I used to check on the SAN or the VM on a daily basis, and now I don't. I can work on other projects and worry about other stuff. Their DR is just super simple. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It scales very easy. Like I told you, I have coverage. You just rack and stack, and it just scales. How is customer service and technical support? I would rate technical support as excellent. They are one of the best. How was the initial setup? The setup was pretty straightforward. If you can get that design requirement down and you design it right, then you can basically hand it over to their deployment support. It's pretty easy. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We definitely evaluated others, including VMware, vSAN, Nutanix, and Pivot3 lead hyper-converged, along with SimpliVity. Then we evaluated the traditional Dell, EMC, and then a couple more of the players. I basically looked at all of the Gartner top vendors out there and we started filtering down based on requirements and budget. What other advice do I have? When selecting a vendor, I look for customer references if they claim to do something. I definitely had to research. I did a lot of reference checks. the number of customers they have is important, their reference, and where they are at in the industry. It's a very innovative game changer. Go after your requirements, your budget, and your stakeholders. SimpliVity is probably the way to go if you want to stay nimble, innovative, have a smaller IT team, or if you want to have everything centralized with one login. I would like to see what Nimble has done with their InfoSite cloud monitoring, and analytics integrate into with Simplivity since they are now HPE. Nimble Storage has a simple licensing model which includes everything with the purchase, and that is a great trend that most new vendors are heading to. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-07T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Provides storage compute, speed, and performance. What is most valuable? Valuable features include ease-of-use and being all-in-one-box. That is what I needed at the time. I wanted storage compute, speed, and performance. What needs improvement? The only problem I had was that when we initially purchased SimpliVity, I didn't know that the OmniCube took up 60 GB of RAM. I ordered a server with 260 GB of RAM, thinking I would have 260 GB of RAM. The OmniCube then stole 60 GB. That's the only problem I had. Now that I know that going forward, I just know I need to over provision the box when I buy it. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability is good. I haven't had any problems with it so far. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I haven't tried to scale it. Which solutions did we use previously? I needed an all in one solution. I had looked at Nutanix and SimpliVity and between the two, Nutanix would only sell me in nodes of three and SimpliVity was willing to sell me a box by itself. When you're a vendor, I look for support. That's the most important thing. I like that SimpliVity ran on a Dell backend. Now that it is going to HV, we'll have to see how that runs, but the support that I knew I could get from SimpliVity was very important. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It was pretty simple. What other advice do I have? Understand how the product is actually writing to the hard drives. That's the biggest thing when you're getting to the hyper-converge space where you could lose performance over a direct connect system. Understand what each product is doing differently. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-18T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from In-line data-deduplication and data virtualization. What is most valuable? In-line data-deduplication and data virtualization. DR Replication. Fast cloning, fast restores, and fast backups. How has it helped my organization? Our deploy times are greatly reduced, but what I love most is our ability to sync de-duped data across to our DR site quickly and efficiently. I hope I never need it, but I feel much better about our situation now that we have SimpliVity if we ever need to fail over to our DR site. What needs improvement? Ability to add storage incrementally would be nice. For how long have I used the solution? 3 months What was my experience with deployment of the solution? Minor issues that were quickly resolved with support. What do I think about the stability of the solution? No. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Not yet. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Very good Technical Support: Very good. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was a bit complex. This was made easier with their deployment guide, and Professional Services group, who handled the deployment. Which other solutions did I evaluate? EMC VxRail Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-11-09T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Comes with backup and site-to-site DR function What is our primary use case? * To build up HCI and upgrade existing VMware farm * To set up local HA and site DR solution for business * Fast backup solution How has it helped my organization? From eight ESXi servers (local HA only, without site DR) to three SimpliVity solutions in prod site with HA and one SimpliVity solution in DR site. For setting up site-to-site DR. What is most valuable? * It comes with backup and site-to-site DR function * All license included * Backup and restore are very fast What needs improvement? * Backup from D2D only to "D2D to tape" * Supports hybrid HDD storage (lower cost for the second-tier workload, now all SSD storage only) * Support For how long have I used the solution? One to three years. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-01-23T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The HyperGuarantee is unique and the accelerator card is the primary IP with the product What is our primary use case? As a service integrator we have recommended and implemented SimpliVity for numerous use cases but the product is particularly suited for ROBO and VDI use cases. We are looking at SImpliVity as a solution for Tier 2 and some Tier 1 apps in DC. How has it helped my organization? Our clients have been very happy with the data efficiency features (OmniCube accelerator card) and the HPE/SimpliVity HyperGuarantee, which is unique. For one of our clients who needed backup capability but did not want to invest in a dedicated backup tool, SimpliVity's native backup with app consistency came in handy. When you do this across more than 80 sites, the savings is significant and the WAN bandwidth efficiency is impressive. What is most valuable? * Simple management * HyperGuarantee * Accelerator card * Globally federated architecture The simple management comes in handy since a standard VMware admin can manage it. The HyperGuarantee is unique and the accelerator card is the primary IP with the product. The 4KB based dedupe and optimization are definitely helpful as observed by our clients. The globally federated architecture means that the backup across sites does not consume precious MPLS bandwidth, which is cool. What needs improvement? * For SimpliVity to become a true DC solution, the limit of 32 nodes needs to be investigated. While this may not be a significant deterrent, it brings into question the underlying architecture. * HPE support is still not aware/trained on SimpliVity, and this is beginning to show. * While SimpliVity was a pioneer of cloud connect capability, they have simply not exploited it. * SimpliVity has little to no integrations. It may have APIs, etc., but there are very few signed on integrations in place. This is necessary to build a solutions ecosystem. For how long have I used the solution? Three to five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? No issues. The product has been performing well. No problems. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The product initially had a limitation of 12 nodes in a federation, which has been increased to 32. Keep this in the back of your mind, particularly when looking at the number of nodes in a single stack. How is customer service and technical support? SimpliVity (before HPE) was pretty darn good. While it has been a while since HPE acquired SimpliVity, there is a lack of understanding/awareness about the product. In short, it took me time to actually make them understand they had a product named SimpliVity, which as you can imagine does not instill a great deal of confidence. Which solutions did we use previously? Being vendor agnostic, we are not partial to any solution or product. Where we have deployed SimpliVity we have not faced issues. In short, no switching. How was the initial setup? The implementation is straightforward when you follow the deployment guide. Stick to the default settings as they work for most setups. If you have the option of having multiple 10Gbps NIC cards, you can explore the option of having a NIC dedicated for storage. What about the implementation team? In house. What was our ROI? * Simpler operations * No more monolithic SANs * No SAN switches and having a native backup is pretty cool. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? In terms of setup, there are some gotchas and caveats, particularly when discussing stretched clusters. Rapid DR also pretty much goes the same way. Otherwise the process is pretty straightforward. Upgrades were a problem but have been addressed to a large extent. The biggest concern is around support and HPE's apparent lack of knowledgeable people. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Nutanix, VxRail and HyperFlex. Nutanix comes into almost all discussions and is a leader. The only area of concern is the expense as it adds up. VxRail is definitely the number one contender when discussing ROBO use cases but SimpliVity's DVE with its accelerator card is a strong option, particularly from the point of not needing additional hardware to address add-on requirements. SimpliVity also brings capacity savings. What other advice do I have? Have a look at multiple solutions before making up your mind. Remember to take a top down approach and start with the app layer first. Your workload decides the infrastructure, not the other way around. Also, for most use cases, look to see if you can use all-flash as the price point, as it has come down significantly. However ridiculous as this may seem, read the guides and manuals carefully before implementation as they do have points that need to be looked at. If you do not believe me, you will end up going back to the same document anyway, which you want to avoid. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-03-01T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from This solution’s most valuable feature is its simplicity. What is most valuable? This solution’s most valuable feature is its simplicity. How has it helped my organization? It allowed me to have a hyper converged system that grows with multiple training centers and data centers. What needs improvement? I would love the solution to be able to move notes between federations. Right now, we use a manual process, but I know SimpliVity is working on a new and improved version of the product. Hopefully, they're going to make some kind of mechanism. In large implementations, it is a very useful tool. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is very stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It is very scalable. How is customer service and technical support? We have Platinum support. I give them two thumbs up. Which solutions did we use previously? Most of our data center was running on IBM BladeCenter and they just became obsolete. So we started to look into something more advanced, more innovative and simpler to manage. When selecting a vendor the most important aspect is technical help and their support and simplicity of the system itself. How was the initial setup? Setup was very straightforward. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We chose this solution because the product was very innovative. The latest and greatest. I think it's the future of data center technology. We had a couple other vendors, such as Nutanix, but they didn't really compare to SimpliVity. It's a really great solution. What other advice do I have? Really give it a test to understand how solution works and how simple it is to manage. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-14T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The built-in backup data protection is valuable. What is most valuable? The built-in backup data protection is the most valuable feature. How has it helped my organization? We streamlined our production servers in the way of space management, better redundancy, and efficiency. What needs improvement? * Back-end training for sysadmins For how long have I used the solution? I have used it for one year. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? Some things were not fully set up during deployment by their engineers. What do I think about the stability of the solution? We have not encountered any stability issues at all. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I have not scaled yet. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Customer service is good; not the best, but it's good. Technical Support: Technical support is very good. Which solutions did we use previously? We previously used a centralized VMware solution; not enough resources and internal support was lacking. We needed more control over our environment. How was the initial setup? 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. What about the implementation team? Implementation was through Simplivity's team. What was our ROI? Still working on ROI. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Depending on the vendor, Simplivity will try to work with you on the pricing. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Before choosing this product, we also evaluated Nutanix and VMware centralized solutions through our institution. What other advice do I have? I highly recommend Simplivity to fill any hyper-converged needs. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-02-09T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Prior to Simplivity, we struggled to complete weekly file server backups over the weekend, and full VM restores would take hours. What is most valuable? VM backup and recovery. How has it helped my organization? 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. What needs improvement? 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. For how long have I used the solution? Approximately two years. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? No issues with deployment. What do I think about the stability of the solution? None. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Not so far How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Customer service has been great. Technical Support: Technical support has been great. They have improved software upgrades dramatically, allowing me to perform my own upgrades without having to call support. Which solutions did we use previously? 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. How was the initial setup? Initial setup was very easy. We just input IP addresses for each network and the setup wizard took care of everything. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Pricing is a little high in my opinion. Prices have climbed consistently since our purchase and install. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We did an evaluation with Nutanix, but found their data redundancy was not sufficient for us. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It includes backup, deduplication, and WAN optimization and can do disaster recovery with very minimal effort How has it helped my organization? 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. What is most valuable? * Inherent data protection * Backup * Disaster Recovery (DR) with very minimal effort. What needs improvement? 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. What do I think about the stability of the solution? No, not at all. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No, but we sized correctly in the beginning and have not needed to since. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Excellent. Technical Support: Excellent. Which solutions did we use previously? First hyper-converged solution that I have ever used. How was the initial setup? It is very straightforward to migrate existing VMs into the SimpliVity environment. Just VMotion the servers across and realize the benefits immediately. What about the implementation team? It was implemented in-house. What was our ROI? Not sure. But in comparison to other solutions, SimpliVity gave us all we need bundled into one at a much cheaper price point. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? 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. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Nutanix and traditional SAN solutions (NetApp and Compellent). What other advice do I have? 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. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-11-14T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Compression and deduplication of data at inception yielded more capacity than we expected. How has it helped my organization? 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. What is most valuable? 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. What needs improvement? 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. * What do I think about the stability of the solution? We had to update a SimpliVity patch that made the networking compatible with our internal networking. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We have not encountered any scalability issues. We've added nodes into our server federation without issues. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Customer service is 10/10. Technical Support: Technical support is 10/10. Which solutions did we use previously? We previously used a different solution. It was not a true HCI. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was almost painless! We had a misconfigured network setting, which the SimpliVity engineer resolved for us at no extra charge. What about the implementation team? We have a SimpliVity sales engineer do the installation. I would rate him to be an expert. The installation was completed within four hours. What was our ROI? 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. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? 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. Which other solutions did I evaluate? 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. What other advice do I have? Be open minded and consider a PoC to run some of your production load. You won't be disappointed. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-01-23T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from ??It has a smaller footprint, and we can restore faster What is our primary use case? We are in a stretched cluster environment. So far, it has been really good. How has it helped my organization? We can get backups faster. We have a smaller footprint for hardware, which takes up less space. So, we use less electricity and floor space. What is most valuable? The storage deduplication, as far as the storage space, is the most valuable feature, then the backups. It has a smaller footprint. We can restore faster. Things run faster and smoother. For how long have I used the solution? We just implemented it within the last year at all five of our major facilities in the United States. What do I think about the stability of the solution? We have only been using it for a little less than a year. So far, it has been good. We haven't had any issues. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Scalability sounds easy, just add nodes. We haven't had to do that yet, since we just started. How are customer service and technical support? The technical support is good. We are in contact with HPE. It seems like anytime that we have problems people are there to help us. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? We went from our old technology to the new technology. So far, it has helped us with backups to save us money from the old technologies. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We had help with them doing it. What about the implementation team? We used a reseller for the deployment, and our experience with them was good. We have had them for a long time. What was our ROI? I have not seen ROI. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We also looked at Nutanix. We chose HPE because of the cost savings. With the backup and restore, we didn't have to have a third-party backup solution for it, instead we could use SimpliVity. What other advice do I have? Do your research. We talked with many people about it. Do what is right for your environment. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-04T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Enables us to be more efficient in disk usage with a significant reduction in space used What is our primary use case? We have a virtualized environment and we use it for backups and disaster recovery and to be able to store all of our data locally and replicate. How has it helped my organization? It's allowed us to be more efficient in disk space usage with a reduction of 47 to 1 in hard drive space. What is most valuable? * It's a complete solution * Easy to use * Not a lot of management time involved in operating the solution What needs improvement? I would like to see it be a truly hybrid-cloud solution where I could take my on-prem SimpliVity environment and have replication to a cloud install. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability is very good. It has 100 percent uptime, other than regularly scheduled maintenance. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We're a relatively small organization so it was able to scale down to our level. We understand it can scale up exponentially. How are customer service and technical support? We get very good technical support. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? We used EqualLogic SAN with independent host but that solution was nearing end-of-life. By moving to SimpliVity we were able to reduce our hardware footprint. How was the initial setup? The setup was complex to me, but to the integrator and the SimpliVity people, it was routine. What about the implementation team? We used Advanticom out of Pittsburgh. Our experience with them was very good. They were very knowledgeable and worked well with SimpliVity's SEs and implementation people. What was our ROI? We have not done a true calculation, but based upon the support needs and the reduction in the footprint, there's definitely an ROI. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? We're paying $3,000-$4,000 a month. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Nutanix was on the list. We chose SimpliVity - and this was about three years ago - based upon the simple deployment and interconnectivity ability. What other advice do I have? Ask people who have already implemented a solution for their opinion and you'll likely find that most of the SimpliVity customers would put the solution in again if they had to do it over. I would rate SimpliVity a nine out of ten due to the fact that it needs little intervention on a daily basis, the uptime is excellent, and it works. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from I like the ease of management and speed of deployment. Valuable Features Data protection that is inherent with the system. Speed of deployment and extremely easy to manage. Backup and replications take just seconds! I have a junior level tech maintaining the system! Improvements to My Organization We update our main pharmacy system monthly at three locations. Standing up a test environment for validation takes just minutes. Also, during the upgrade process after hours our maintenance window has decreased over 50% with blazing fast entire server backups. Room for Improvement Upgrades/Patches to ESXi have to be approved by SimpliVity ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/simplivity ) and their support installs them...along with upgrades to their virtual controller. That's the one downside to having such an easy to manage integrated console...it needs to be validated against ESXi. Use of Solution 2 years Deployment Issues No Stability Issues No Scalability Issues No Customer Service and Technical Support Customer Service: Great. Technical Support: Technical Support is very knowledgeable and responsive. First Class. Previous Solutions Legacy Dell Equallogic SAN. Needed a datacenter refresh and loved the feature rich all in one SimpliVity solution. Initial Setup It was very straightforward. Your part is to provide LAN connectivity, Ipmc and rack them. Implementation team pretty much handled the rest including knowledge transfer. ROI Given we needed a datacenter refresh, we were able to implement SimpliVity at a cheaper cost than replacing our legacy compute and SAN. We inherited true business continuity (priceless)...and were able to prune our preexisting server backup solution. Just the backup solution software costs saved us >$15,000 annually. ROI was instant. Other Solutions Considered Cisco Flexpod/NetApp ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/flexpod ), Dell Compellant ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/compellent ) SAN Other Advice This solution protects your data with minimal effort. Due to the deduplication, optimization, compression and small block size; our replication happens every 15 minutes without feeling it. We have a very elaborate backup schedule that allows us to keep various levels of backups for extended periods times without hardly using any physical storage. A savings rate of over 130 to 1! Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-10-14T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from One of the most valuable features is the backup and restore capability. What is most valuable? The most valuable features are the backup and restore capability, the speed with which it can back-up, and restores can be done in seconds. How has it helped my organization? It makes it more efficient for us. Instead of having to get support for multiple different solutions like storage, compute, network, and having to contact individual vendors, it's all one solution. We can contact one person, get support over the phone without having to call multiple vendors, and not have them point fingers at each other. What needs improvement? Additional features would be more visibility into the overall infrastructure and what's happening with the VMs. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Stability has been rock solid. We've put it in. The transition was easy and it stayed up the whole time, with no issues at all. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We have not done a whole lot with scalability. We've upgraded a little bit, but from everything that we've seen, it's easy, simple, and it can scale as much as we need it to. How is customer service and technical support? I've used SimpliVity technology support a lot. In terms of HPE technology support, I've only used them a little bit in the last few weeks. Once I get a hold of them, they're great. Sometimes it's a little bit difficult to get a hold of them, but once we get a hold of them, their technicians are great. Which solutions did we use previously? We were using a different solution and we were reaching end of life. That's when we started evaluating different vendors and different products. We didn't know much about HPE. We saw their solution, saw the backup restore, and the ability to do disaster recovery and business continuity, and we were sold. We chose HPE because we did a test between this and one other competitor. We tested some dry 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. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was very simple and easy. We had it up in half a day. We were up and running and migrating our VMs over. What other advice do I have? I would have them take a look at it and do a proof of concept. Take a look at the backup and restore capability and the ability to restore very large VMs in seconds. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-07-07T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Versatile and provides more velocity in our applications What is our primary use case? Hyperconvergence. How has it helped my organization? More velocity in applications. What is most valuable? Versatile. What needs improvement? The price could be better and it needs to back to other storage. For how long have I used the solution? Less than one year. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-05-15T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It is compatible with vCenter only; however, the company says Hyper-V and KVM are coming shortly. Valuable Features: * Integrated data protection * Inline deduplication * Hybrid performance Improvements to My Organization: One customer deployed the OmniCube for a test/dev environment for it's ease of use and performance. Developers can spin up new VM's with no capacity or IO impact, easily without learning a new storage platform. And as for performance, the customer had a VMAX for primary storage, the OmniCube offered similar performance for developers at a fraction of the cost. Room for Improvement: The fact that it is compatible with vCenter (VMware) only; however, the company says Hyper-V and KVM are coming shortly. Use of Solution: I am not a user, as an integrator, I've worked in multiple environments with the OmniCube technology. Deployment Issues: No, it was very simple. Stability Issues: No issues encountered. Scalability Issues: 100 VM limit per OmniCube (not sure if its the OmniCube or VMware related). Previous Solutions: Customers have moved to SimpliVity for ease of use, consolidation of vendors, reducing cost, improving performance, improve data protection capabilities, and even managing storage at multiple sites. Initial Setup: Feedback has been that it is very simple since it is managed entirely through vCenter. Implementation Team: SimpliVity stays very involved with all installs at this point, minor involvement of vendors from an install perspective. ROI: Varies based on use casesr... VDI, test/dev, production database and apps, etc. Other Solutions Considered: Most comparable would be Nutanix, both solid solutions. Depending on use case, you could go back and forth with which one makes the most sense. Other Advice: If it's a VDI usere case, how many endpoints on day one, what's your projected growth for the next 5yrs? If it's to replace primary SAN, what is your network today? You do need 10GbE networking. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2015-01-06T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Provides our organization with a cost effective DR/data protection solution What is our primary use case? We run almost all of our production environment on SimpliVity. This includes Citrix, SQL, file, and production applications. How has it helped my organization? SimpliVity has provided our organization with a cost effective DR/data protection solution. Training time has be reduced due to SimpliVity's seamless integration with vCenter Flex and Flash clients. What is most valuable? * The backup and recovery is very fast, effective, and easy to use. * The ability to manage the environment without special consoles or interfaces is a plus. * Managing storage doesn't require a specialized skill set. * Software upgrades and scalability can be done during normal business hours with no downtime. What needs improvement? * SimpliVity needs to improve the support for native backups, like SQL and Exchange. * File level restores work well, but indexing will help make the process faster. * SimpliVity needs to add support for Hyper-V and KVM. For how long have I used the solution? Three to five years. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? HPE has decided to sell the solution in all-flash configurations, which may not be as cost effective for smaller mid-market enterprises. It has helped to reduce our VMware licensing costs due to host consolidation. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-05-14T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Provides Inline deduplication, instant recovery of data across datacenters, and low latency. What is most valuable? Inline deduplication, instant recovery of data across datacenters, low latency, easiness of management. The solution is fully integrated in the Virtual center client, which makes for a very lean learning curve. Simplivity adds as a plugin into virtual center and delivers a fully featured dashboard. Backup Policies are VM-centric, but can be applied at a datastore level as well. The dashboard displays live and historic latency values, overall and for each VM, and is used as a GUI for backup and restore. Backup and restore are performed automatically but can be also performedmanually at any time. This is done with a couple of klicks and takes a few seconds. How has it helped my organization? We consolidated five servers and one SAN with three arrays into two OmniCubes. Our SAN was full with 20 TB at the time of migration, and we accomodate the whole amount of data into less as the half of the disk space. Since then the infrastructure grew constantly, but the data foot print on the Omnicubes barely increases. Dedup is currently around 3.3. Additionally, we implemented DR with a third OmniCube residing in a second datacenter, where we replicate our data. Recovery of VMs is done in a couple of seconds. We now almost never use our backup software to restore data anymore. What needs improvement? Some proactive / predictive monitoring of VMs health would be a plus. Speed in cathing up with Vmware Esxi releases could also be slightly improved. Proactive monitoring of VMS: this is one item on my wish list. I would like an easy way to receive an alert when a VM is performing badly (due to latency, cpu or memory issues for example). I know there are ways to create alarms or alerts in vSphere or third party tools. But what I am talking about here is some easier way to achieve that, maybe with a few clicks in the GUI. It is not specifically a task which Simplivity must accomplish, but since it has a plugin in VC could be a good place to introduce it. Regarding Esxi releases. Omnicubes run on Esxi and Simplivity has to officially support each Esxi release for you to go and install it on your Omnicube. This takes obviously a few weeks after each Vmware release. Sometimes it can take longer, so in those cases would be good to speed up the process. For how long have I used the solution? 1.5 years What was my experience with deployment of the solution? No. What do I think about the stability of the solution? No. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Excellent support. Technical Support: Perfect, the technical team is great, one of the greatest I know so far. Which solutions did we use previously? No, this is our first hyperconverged solution. How was the initial setup? Not really, OmniCubes were deployed in a couple of hours. What about the implementation team? Through a vendor, their expertise was good. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We looked at Nutanix and vSAN. What other advice do I have? We have found no other solution in the market which has the same full set of features. Specifically inline deduplication is unique in its implementation here. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-12-14T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from We also chose it for the simplicity of managing the solution and the price point. What is most valuable? 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. How has it helped my organization? 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. What needs improvement? 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. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Stability has been great so far. I haven't had any issues with stability or even with nodes. It's been great. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? 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. How is customer service and technical support? 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. Which solutions did we use previously? 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. Which other solutions did I evaluate? 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. What other advice do I have? 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. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-14T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It is a very nice solution. Very simple to use. What is our primary use case? 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. How has it helped my organization? Probably in the business continuity scenarios, it is going to help us. What is most valuable? The deduplication and compression options integrated with the hardware. What needs improvement? If we start using the application, there could be data for us to analyze, and we might have more ideas. For how long have I used the solution? Trial/evaluations only. What do I think about the stability of the solution? My impression is that it is a very nice solution. Very simple to use. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? 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. How is customer service and technical support? 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. Which solutions did we use previously? 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. How was the initial setup? I was involved in the initial setup. It was straightforward. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Right now, we are mainly IBM clients. What other advice do I have? 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. Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Date published: 2017-12-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Reduces complexity of our backup process and improves recovery time What is our primary use case? We're using it to refresh our retail stores. How has it helped my organization? It has improved our backup situation by reducing its complexity and improving recovery time. As a refresh, we've improved our CPU and memory capability which allows us to build a foundation and continue to move forward in our app development. We can release new applications. What is most valuable? * The easy to use interface * Already using VMware * A very small package but with lots of memory and CPU What needs improvement? I would like them to add more connection capability, a hub and spoke model, to improve the number of connections that it can handle. That would be helpful because we have a lot of retail stores. There are certain technical things that we run into. There's a matrix compatibility where, if you upgrade one piece, the rest have to fall into line. If that requirement could be eased up a bit it would be a good thing. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I would consider it stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? For the most part, for what it does, the scalability is fine. How are customer service and technical support? Technical support is very good. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was pretty straightforward. What about the implementation team? We used a reseller. Our experience with them was kind of interesting. CDW was the main partner but they had sub-contracted parts of it out to Tech Data, a move which added another layer that we didn't expect and was not fully disclosed at the beginning. What other advice do I have? You definitely have to do a PoC and check-mark all the different items that are in your requirements. Go from there and see if it actually works. I'd give it a nine. It has pretty much everything there. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Our backups are now more efficient and reliable because the system manages them much better for us How has it helped my organization? Our backups are now more efficient and reliable because the SimpliVity system manages them so much better for us. It allows us to replicate them as often as we like to another pair of SimpliVity boxes at one of our remote sites. What is most valuable? Having one management console to do everything from was a great improvement over dealing with separate hardware for servers, SANs, backups etc. Also, the ability to spin up a new VM within minutes has been a huge time saver. What needs improvement? Upgrading the firmware/software could be more seamless (or at least be assigned a technician who could walk us through the process for both the SimpliVity software as well as the VMware software). What do I think about the stability of the solution? The SimpliVity solution has been very reliable and stable for us. A few times over the years where we had errors or hardware issues, they were resolved in a timely manner by SimpliVity support. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: It's been pretty good. Before HPE bought Simplivity, I feel the customer service was great. The couple times I have had to contact support after HPE bought SimpliVity, it has been what I have come to expect from large companies. Technical Support: The techs that I have worked with have been really good and seem to know their stuff. Which solutions did we use previously? This was our first hyper-converged solution. Previously, we had used separate blade servers tied to separate SANs tied to separate backup solutions. How was the initial setup? With the assistance from SimpliVity engineers who were on site for the initial deployment, everything went very smoothly. What about the implementation team? Our solution was recommended by our trusted vendor and SimpliVity engineers were on site to help implement the solution. Everyone was very knowledgeable. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Make sure you plan for future growth and get a solution that has enough storage/resources for years to come. Originally, we thought we were only going to deploy our most critical VMs using this product, but once we saw how much better it was to manage the VMs, back them up, and deploy new VMs, we started moving a lot more servers over to it. Eventually, we had to buy another pair of SImpliVity OmniCubes to accommodate everything. Which other solutions did I evaluate? No, once we found out about the SimpliVity product and saw a demo, we were sold. We have been very happy with our decision. What other advice do I have? If you are looking to consolidate and simplify the management of various servers, definitely look into a solution from SimpliVity. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-11-14T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Dedupe, compression, and replication of primary and secondary data, locally and remotely What is our primary use case? General IT workloads of core services and standard line of business applications. How has it helped my organization? Reduced storage footprint of primary and secondary copies of data and WAN replication bandwidth with good performance. What is most valuable? Dedupe, compression, and replication of primary and secondary data, locally and remotely. Less experienced admins can perform storage tasks. What needs improvement? Needs decoupling of distributed data fabric to run in a hyperscale deployment outside the hypervisor on dedicated nodes. For how long have I used the solution? One to three years. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-08-19T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Crashes often when a VM has random, large IOPS requests, but lag-free restore is good What is our primary use case? We use it in a VMware environment that supports VMs. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature is that it's easy to manage. It also has instantaneous backup and lag-free restore. When everything is running, I can bring back a huge VM in less than 30 seconds. That's even better than Veeam. What needs improvement? It crashes often. When one particular VM has random, large IOPS requests, it will bog down the node, and there isn't enough time for the replica to be brought up. So all the VMs on that one particular node will essentially become offline. If it's not already included, an additional feature I would like to see would be better Storage vMotion. That would be number one on my wish list. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability is not good. I have fewer than 20 VMs per node. I have nine nodes in my environment, and when it goes south, 20 VMs will go down, even though there's a replica on other nodes. There's a third copy which is a backup and I can't bring any of those online. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability is very good. It's excellent for a branch office/remote office, instead of a data center. How are customer service and technical support? Most of technical support has been excellent. I can escalate my support case to a developer very quickly, in less than a day. That's unbelievable. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? We switched because we have a most-excellent salesperson. He promised something more than what the SimpliVity environment can support. What was our ROI? The short version regarding ROI is that it's not good. It takes two engineers all day to solve an ESXi node-down issue, and it takes between two days and two weeks to bring it back. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? We signed a three-year contract. Which other solutions did I evaluate? On our shortlist there were only Vblock, which we didn't need, and Nutanix, which was more expensive. So we chose the least expensive, at least at the time. What other advice do I have? Do a proof of concept on everything, instead of just relying upon the salesperson's pie-in-the-sky promise. I'll rate this solution as a five out of ten. It may not be terribly mature yet. I see disk, for example, becoming all-flash. That may have overcome my painful learning experience. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-09T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from We don't have to spend as much time managing backups and recoveries What is our primary use case? 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. How has it helped my organization? 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. What is most valuable? 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. What needs improvement? 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." For how long have I used the solution? It has been in a year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? 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. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I haven't had to try and scale it yet. It is pretty good for a small to medium-sized business. How are customer service and technical support? 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. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? 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. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is straightforward. It just runs according to a script. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-04T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The compression and backup features are valuable. Provides stability and scalability. What is most valuable? The most valuable features are the compression and backup. How has it helped my organization? Backups are done on disk, and no longer use tapes. Also, restoration of backups is within seconds. What needs improvement? None on technologies side, but the cost of the solution and support would need some improvement For how long have I used the solution? I have used it for one year. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? We have not encountered any deployment issues. What do I think about the stability of the solution? We have not encountered any stability issues. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We have not encountered any scalability issues. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Customer service is 10/10. Technical Support: Technical support is 10/10. Which solutions did we use previously? We previously used regular Windows servers. We switched for better efficiency of storage and backup. How was the initial setup? Initial setup was straightforward. What about the implementation team? A vendor team with good knowledge implemented it. What was our ROI? ROI is 100%. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Pricing and support is on the high side, but well worth it. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Before choosing, we also evaluated Nutanix and Cisco. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-02-15T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Reduced our virtual machine hosting to two units per site; fast backups, good DR What is our primary use case? We are hosting virtual machines on it, and it is performing quite well. How has it helped my organization? We used to have a lot more units reserved in the rack for virtual machine hosting. Now it is only two units per site. Another improvement of course is the backup, the disaster recovery functionality, how it behaves, how fast the backups are done. And the reduction of data. What is most valuable? It's very simple to manage. It has reduced the footprint in the datacenters quite a lot. For how long have I used the solution? One to three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability is also okay. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It scales quite nicely. We are not very big so I don't know if it really scales up that big. But for a small to medium company, I would say it is much better, for example, than the competition. For us, it is the right size. I think it was the right choice. How is customer service and technical support? 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. But that is normal. HPE is a big company. Things are a little bit, I would say, more "official" than the person-to-person communication that startups have. But that is natural. The support might take a little bit more time, but we are a non-standard support case because we are actually using the HPE software on a non-HPE hardware. We have this pre-HPE hardware. We use it on Dell, and Cisco, and that probably can create more confusion for HPE support. So, I'm really hoping that HPE will come up with some on-premise replacement so that we can actually switch to HPE units, so that HPE can have full support on the system. Which solutions did we use previously? We were using traditional server and storage based. We switched to SimpliVity because it was looking promising. It was simple. It reduced hardware presence in the datacenter. It increased backup speeds. The simplicity of the SimpliVity. How was the initial setup? It was quite straightforward. We didn't see big problems. It was quite easy. It's easy to manage. It was easy to install also. Which other solutions did I evaluate? The other hyper-converged products, they were not that complete. What other advice do I have? In terms of the most important criteria when selecting a vendor, that really depends on the vendor. But of course trustworthiness. And it usually comes down to product rather than partner. But, of course partners, and vendors themselves, are also important. I think it's really complex to focus on a few things. If you bring in something new we usually like to to see what the end product can actually do. But of course the support on top of that is also important. If you have a good product but nobody can install it or maintain it or give support, then it would also be bad. I've always said to everybody that SimpliVity is one of the best hyper-converged solutions. But, again, it really depends on the business case. Everybody has to evaluate it for themselves, because businesses are different. I've known that hybrid is the thing for years because that's why we bet on that, we had to have datacenters onsite, and then we can put something in the cloud. But, there are companies that could be only in the cloud, that need to be on-premise only. It really depends on the company. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-12-26T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Metadata caching and the acceleration card support the efficiency of using less SSD and less HDD access. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature is inline deduplication. Inline dedup allows us to support more VMs per host, because less IO goes to disk if you use the same OS on the server side. Deduplication at SimpliVity means that metadata caching and the acceleration card support the efficiency of using less SSD and less HDD access. Only unwritten blocks flow through the system; double blocks coming out of cache. This also helps to reduce latency of the whole system, because the acknowledge to requests of servers are supported faster and out of cache instead from disk. You can manage at this point more and different workloads, but at least not all. So, the newer systems with full flash supports these requirements better than the hybrid systems. How has it helped my organization? It has less latency (from 6ms to about 1ms). What needs improvement? Other customers want to see Windows Hyper-V Server 2016 support and also open-source VI. In our case, this is not necessary, but could help in the future to get more market share. For how long have I used the solution? I have used it for one year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I have not encountered any stability issues. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I have not encountered any scalability issues in my environment and situation. How is customer service and technical support? Technical support is perfect for me. Which solutions did we use previously? We previously used a different solution and we switched because of total cost (ROI) and efficiency. How was the initial setup? Initial setup is easy and can be done by any technician with a basic understanding of VMware. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Calculate all savings and build an ROI. (Have a look at www.holistic3.com.) Which other solutions did I evaluate? Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options because it is clear that SimpliVity provides the best ROI out of all the candidates. What other advice do I have? Take care with 10gbE networking. To save a lot of space and power with this solution, use VMware as the primary hypervisor. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-01-16T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It can present itself as NFS SAN to existing compute. What is most valuable? * Backups * Recovery * VMware VirtualCenter integration * DR * Being able to present the solution as NFS SAN to existing compute How has it helped my organization? Backups are all automatic and admins do not have to worry if the production VMs are being backed up. Easy backup policy with no LUN administration is also one less task to worry about. DR and DR replication are no longer an issue; no longer have to seed a SAN locally and ship it out to the DR site. What needs improvement? I like how VMware vSAN has their ready node pre-configured for certain workload and application types. The many models and EOL on certain areas on their site are a bit confusing. Allow customers to try and deploy the units themselves and have support follow up later to validate the deployments. Invest more on sales and marketing as they have a great product. Using the cheap 7200 RPM disks on certain models just drags the product down when first impression counts the most. Make sure the customer fully understands the CPU and memory overhead of each hosts. For how long have I used the solution? I have used it for six months in production with tier 1 servers. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? We encountered deployment issues, as it is was not as smooth as I planned, but things was corrected. What do I think about the stability of the solution? We encountered stability issues, we had the wrong model for our environment. Once we got the correct model, everything was very stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I have not encountered any scalability issues. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Customer service is 9/10. Technical Support: Technical support is 9/10. Which solutions did we use previously? I previously used DataCore SANSymphony, Nimble and from my last company, it was vSAN 6.0 and 3PAR SAN. Our Datacore SAN that we migrated off of lacks a lot of features and was built on very cheap hardware. SimpliVity meets all of our requirements and also address other future requirements that were not in the scope of the primary storage project. How was the initial setup? Initial setup was complex, as they would not let the customer try to deploy the configurations of the units. What about the implementation team? Implementation was mostly in-house, but leverage SimpliVity support for remote deployment and configurations. What was our ROI? * Overall hardware cost savings compared to traditional fiber SAN. * Reduce SME of SAN admins. * Reduce SME of backup admins. * Reduce third-party backup. * Reduce datacenter footprint and complexity. * DR software was an added bonus. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Look at the bigger picture on your requirements as this solution can address the complete stack for most company's needs. Licensing is simple but be aware that the OmniView feature and RapidDR software is not free. You should use VMware enterprise plus licenses but can get away with standard edition licenses. Which other solutions did I evaluate? * Pivot3 * Nutanix * VMware vSAN 6.0 * Nimble * Tegile * Pure Storage * Compellent * EMC VCE and vxRail * Tintri What other advice do I have? See https://www.linkedin.com/pulse... ( https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-simplivity-made-hyper-convergence-little-more-awesome-tommy-hong ). Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-01-11T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The accelerator card is a lifesaver for speeding up backups What is our primary use case? Day-to-day use. We implemented SimpliVity a little over a year ago. I could not be more pleased with the outcome. How has it helped my organization? I have saved time and money by moving to this platform. I am happy to share my results on the amount of power, time, and space saved. What is most valuable? The accelerator card is a lifesaver for speeding up backups. My day-to-day experiences are better now that my backups are no longer running into production. What needs improvement? I would love to see a more proactive approach to implementing patches and reaching out to customers with new initiatives. For how long have I used the solution? One to three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Not at this time. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No issues. The system was sized right by the SimpliVity engineers How is customer service and technical support? So far, the support has been great. I have not needed to call many times. Which solutions did we use previously? I did have another product. I found a need to upgrade due to space issues and the amount of time that it was taking to run my backups at night. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was very easy as I had the SimpliVity engineers work with our managed services. I had no issues. What about the implementation team? The vendor team worked with my managed services team. What was our ROI? I have proven to my CIO that I have saved more money than expected. I am still calculating how much. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? It seemed like it was expensive at first. Now that I have had it installed for a period of time, I think I got a great deal. Which other solutions did I evaluate? I spent several months looking at different options. I looked at VxRail and Nutanix. What other advice do I have? If you are just starting your vetting process, make sure SimpliVity is on the table, you won't be disappointed. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-02-28T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from No additional training is necessary for support personnel and engineers. The federation is managed via a plugin in the VMware vSphere client or webclient. What is most valuable? Backup and DR applications are very good and easy to use. Due to inline deduplication, optimization and compression of data, very high IO throughput is possible. No additional training is necessary for support personnel and engineers, as the SimpliVity federation is managed via a plugin in the VMware vSphere client or webclient. How has it helped my organization? Our company acts as a SimpliVity implementation partner. We also do platform maintenance/management for customers who do not want to do it themselves. We only get positive feedback from customers as to performance, RTO/RPO times, and day-to-day management. What needs improvement? We would like to see more possibilities to monitor the SimpliVity platform. Also, storage balancing between nodes within clusters with more than two nodes could be better. I believe this is solved in the new release of the software, but we still have to test it. For how long have I used the solution? We have used SimpliVity for about three years now and have done several small and midsize implementations on OmniCube and OmniStack server systems. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Overall stability is great, except for some incidental hardware failures with DIMMs and remote access cards. The SimpliVity software and hardware acceleration card has never let us down. As long you use the BOM (bill of material), you are good to go. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The product is very scalable, if you can work with the building blocks. If you need more computing power, you can add computing nodes, which can be any x86 server. If you need more storage, you need to add a SimpliVity OmniCube or OmniStack node. How is customer service and technical support? The technical support is very good, probably the best we have encountered until now. Which solutions did we use previously? In the past, we deployed the more traditional systems, such as a hypervisor with shared storage. We see the advantages of hyperconverged solutions and were impressed by the SimpliVity product, so we have shifted our main focus to hyperconverged solutions; in particular, SimpliVity. How was the initial setup? The initial setup demands you to think through the IP addressing plan. Once you have that in place, initial deployment and configuration is very simple. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I don't have any pricing and licensing at hand, so no advice here. Please consult a SimpliVity Partner for that. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We did look into Nutanix and also did a few implementations. We found that if you want the same level of performance and protection for your data, you will need to invest in many more Nutanix nodes. Nutanix has much more overhead, is less efficient in the use of storage capacity, and requires much more platform to get VMs running. ROBO implementations are much easier and efficient to do with SimpliVity. What other advice do I have? Carefully look into your workload and discuss this with a SimpliVity Partner or Solution Architect. We know that a small set of workloads are not suitable to run OK on the SimpliVity platform. Large database servers could be a problem running on the platform. It’s a great product for most workloads. It may be less useful with very large database server VMs. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We are a Simplivity Implementation Partner.
Date published: 2017-01-25T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Helps us with the elimination of IOPS. What is most valuable? Elimination of IOPS. How has it helped my organization? We are now backing up 32 TB an hour and 760 TB a day! We are seeing a 107:1 efficiency rating. What needs improvement? Telling a better story. Get better at telling your story and customers will be lined up! This thing WORKS AS ADVERTISED! For how long have I used the solution? We have been using this solution for three months. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? I did not encounter any issues with deployment. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I did not encounter any issues with stability. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I did not encounter any issues with scalability, and we already added another server to the cluster. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: I haven't used customer service. Technical Support: I do not say this often, but tech support is 'world class'. We've opened up maybe six tickets. Three were questions about 'best practices' and how they thought we should proceed with something. Two were bugs, and they were not under Simplivity's control. One was a firmware bug with the Cisco server, and one was a VMware bug with the NIC and slow network performance under a specific condition. Which solutions did we use previously? We never used hyper-convergence before SimpliVity How was the initial setup? The setup required the assistance of professional services. We waited about a week to get on schedule. What about the implementation team? We used SimpliVity for all pre-sales work: sizing, analysis, and deep dives. We purchased it through a partner. What was our ROI? Our ROI is about two years. This is mainly because I committed to eliminating our entire NetApp (4 filers, maybe 2 dozen drawers) by the end of our lease in Q3, 2018. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? There is sticker shock, with no doubt. But the product's value is there, and then some! I am turning in my NetApp in 1.6 years. I will save maybe $800K in OpEx over the next 36-40 months! Which other solutions did I evaluate? We evaluated Scale Computing, Nutanix, Cisco/IBM (their Frankenstein thing), and HPE. What other advice do I have? We were under promised and over delivered! This thing is so much better than you can imagine. My lead engineer is actually 'giddy' playing with this stuff. NetFlix disrupted video watching, Uber disrupted how we publically commute, and SimpliVity will disrupt infrastructure. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-18T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Stability is pretty good. We have no complaints as it has been running seamlessly with no downtime.? What is our primary use case? 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. How has it helped my organization? * Fast data recovery * Low on operational costs What is most valuable? There are two main drivers: * Data protection * Low operational costs. What needs improvement? 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. For how long have I used the solution? Less than one year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? 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. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability is linear. How is customer service and technical support? The support organization has changed a bit since the switch to HPE, but that has not impacted any of the services yet. Which solutions did we use previously? 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. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Other vendors fall short on price compared to HPE on this product. Which other solutions did I evaluate? 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. What other advice do I have? 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. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-12-13T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It has reduced our reporting time, but the solution takes up too much memory What is our primary use case? 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. How has it helped my organization? 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. What is most valuable? * The performance * The backups * The DR strategy * The deduplication is great. What needs improvement? 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 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. For how long have I used the solution? We just implemented the lightest cluster a month ago. What do I think about the stability of the solution? So far, the stability is good. We don't have any issues. Everything is running 24/7. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Scaling isn't so hard. How are customer service and technical support? 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. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? 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. How was the initial setup? 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. What about the implementation team? We used an integrator through HPE. Our experience with them was great. Everything worked well. We didn't have any hiccups. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? For three years, it is $60,000 for three nodes. It is quite pricey. Which other solutions did I evaluate? 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. What other advice do I have? The solution is great. Make sure you are aware of everything before you commit to deploying or purchasing it. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-10T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Used in conjunction with Hyper-V and VMware but it's not so stable and there are bugs in the nodes What is most valuable? The most valuable aspect of the HPE SimpliVity is the DL380 G10. We have mostly been using VMware and Hyper-V. On one side we have Hyper-V and the other side we have the VMware. What needs improvement? HPE SimpliVity needs improvement. I know there were some difficulties on the Hyper-V side. They worked very well on the VMware but unfortunately, Hyper-V is not well-developed. You have some bugs on it. On the small nodes, there's no problem, but on the medium and the big nodes they have some improvement to do on the Hyper-V. Because Hyper-V is not very stable on SimpliVity, we would like a way that they can make an improvement on this, because many of our customers are only on Microsoft and would not like to move on VMware. It would be very nice if we can have a very stable solution for Hyper-V, on the hyper-converged side, so that when you have customers on VMware or Hyper-V we can provide a solution that is stable. What do I think about the stability of the solution? A lot of our customers are using VMware and also are using Hyper-V. Hyper-V is not very stable on the HPE SimpliVity. What other advice do I have? We are an HPE partner ourselves. We have access directly to the HPE portal, and our engineers can directly register with HPE training online. I would give this solution a six out of 10 because it's not so stable and there are some bugs in the nodes. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner.
Date published: 2019-07-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Removes all the complicated tasks of backup storage management. Valuable Features * Integrated backup and DR features * De-duplication and compression * Management using the vSphere client * Total ease of management Improvements to My Organization Backups - policies are built in and managed using the SimpliVity ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/simplivity ) extension in vSphere. It makes working with backups and recovery extremely simple and removes all the complicated tasks of backup storage management. The ability to place backups at any datacenter within the vSphere environment is nice too. These are full backups too, not just snapshots. Room for Improvement Reporting - improvements have been made, but I would like to see some enhancements for recalling historical information: automated reports on storage efficiency over time and backup growth over time. Use of Solution I have used it since January 2015. Stability Issues I have not encountered any stability issues. We were able to migrate all of our legacy environment of physical servers and data over to SimpliVity with no issues. Performance was improved and storage efficiency with the deduplication really works. When we had an Accelerator card fail in one host (the card manages the deduplication tasks for the host), we got an alert the card had failed but never had a service interruption. The card on the other host takes over for the failed card until it is replaced. Very resilient. Scalability Issues I have not encountered any scalability issues ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/simplivity/by_topic/scalability_issues ). We initially started out with a 2+1 configuration and then scaled up to a 3+2 with no issues. Customer Service and Technical Support Technical support ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/simplivity/by_topic/technical_support ) is the best. Their first-line guys know the product and can solve issues. I have always had any issue or support request resolved in a timely manner and by the same guy who was assigned the ticket. Initial Setup Initial setup was very easy. I actually set up the “Federation” myself one Saturday morning with no help from support. I just followed the instructions for the rack and stack, powered up assigned IP addresses to the networks it required and the embedded wizard did the rest. Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing The nice thing about SimpliVity is that ALL the features are included in the base price. You don’t have to try to pick and choose and fight the pricing game. Other Solutions Considered We looked at other solutions before purchasing SimpliVity (Nutanix), but SimpliVity was a better fit for our requirements and had what I judged as features Nutanix ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/nutanix_vs_simplivity ) could not compete with. Other Advice Do your homework and compare them to the competition apples for apples so that you see the value the product has from features, ease of use and pricing. I have spoken to other customers at SimpliVity road show events and serve as a customer reference for them when asked. I really believe in the product that much. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-08-31T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It offers instant file-level restore. No deployment or scalability issues. What is most valuable? Instant file-level restore is the product's most valuable feature. How has it helped my organization? We have marketing users that tend to save over their files by accident and before SimpliVity, I could not restore a file from 15 minutes ago. Now, I can do that for my users. I also was able to install a disaster recovery site with this solution and it has given our IT team peace of mind knowing we have full backups offsite. What needs improvement? The production server infrastructure is an area with room for improvement. For how long have I used the solution? I have used it for six months. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? No issues with deployment. What do I think about the stability of the solution? We did encounter stability issues at first due to a CPU issue. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No issues with scalability. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Customer service is top-notch. Technical Support: Technical support went above an beyond to help get our network environment ready for the upgrade. Which solutions did we use previously? We had old end-of-life and end-of-support servers. How was the initial setup? Initial setup was very straightforward with fantastic documentation from the project team. What about the implementation team? An in-house team implemented it. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I recommend a five-year contract, as it will give you the best ROI. Which other solutions did I evaluate? I researched many different options before choosing. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-01-22T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Hyper-converged infrastructure that provides centralized management. How has it helped my organization? Our customer has a limited IT staff, so they were looking at something that will: * Be a little more centralized * Be easier for them to manage * Give them the functionality that their customers really need * What is most valuable? We have a lot of customers who are looking at the whole hyper-converged infrastructure. Comparing this solution to some of the other competitors that we've been going up against, they like the ease of use, the centralized management, and big cost-savings. We had one SimpliVity deal so far, but that's what everybody from the customer standpoint really liked about it. They just received the product and they were just setting it up. Hypothetically, it's going to solve a lot of business problems that they were running up against. What needs improvement? That's a good question and I don't really have a good answer for that right now. I'm still learning about the product as a whole and I really want to see, once it's stood up in our customer environment, how it performs. I will then probably have some better ideas once our engineers go through it and talk with the customers as to what improvements there could be. In terms of what I would define as a perfect solution, I am looking for one that is easy to manage, has a real user-friendly interface, and something that is not too complex. I want something that is the best bang for the buck, especially when we're trying to keep HPE onboard. There are all the competitors that are always trying to come in and say, "We can bring in our product for you, and you'll spend less, ours is easier to use." We want HPE to do whatever they can do to improve, in order to make it a better customer experience. What do I think about the stability of the solution? From what I've seen, it looks like it's a really stable solution. This is our first one that we're implementing. I believe it's going to do everything we want it to do. As far as how it will be in the real world, we will have wait and see. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No customers have tried to scale yet. How is customer service and technical support? Technical support will be involved in the implementation, but that's it for right now. It's in process right now, so I would rate their support as "so far, so good." We'll see when it has all been completed. Which solutions did we use previously? We were partnered with SimpliVity before they were bought by HPE, but we never really had any deals as far as HPE goes. We've sold a lot of blades and 3PAP. We've had some other solutions, like ExaGrid, that tries to compete with HPE. We've done a couple of deals for them. Usually, we try to promote the HPE infrastructure whenever we can, so this product is going to help out with that. How was the initial setup? I really can't comment on the setup right now, because I was not involved in that. I don't want to say one way or another. What other advice do I have? My advice would be to actually listen to the whole SimpliVity story. Really compare apples to apples, when a lot of manufacturers will bring up their own selling points, which are geared towards their product It looks like a good thing in the initial presentation. In the long run, it may not answer all of your business needs or it might be way more expensive. Really go through the story and see everything that SimpliVity has to offer. When selecting a vendor, the first thing I look for is if they stand behind your product. I want to know that when the customer has issues or problems arise, support will be there right away. Pricing is always good to have, but more importantly, check for a quality product that has been researched, has been proven in the market, or is following business trends. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-14T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The rapid backup and restore functionality improved our efficiency in the development area. What is most valuable? The rapid backup and restore functionality improved our efficiency in the development area. How has it helped my organization? We no have the ability to restore a production environment to multiple development environments with a few clicks in a very short time. With 6 development teams working on different modules on the same system, this helps a lot in their agile approach. What needs improvement? One thing that might be a deal killer is the additional VM Ware licenses. It is important to keep this in mind, especially when moving over from free hypervisor like Hyper-V. This would be applicable if users migrate from a free Hypervisor like Hyper-V. With Simplivity not yet supporting these, one has to procure the VMWare licenses. As this cost is in US$, it can become very pricey, especially for clients in South Africa! So again, it is just something people need to be aware of if they are not already using VMWare. For how long have I used the solution? 18 months. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? None. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The only issue we once had (it took us and then engineers a while to figure out) was a heating/airflow problem. This was self inflicted after upgrading the cooling system. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? None. We started with two, got another one, and then another three. Deployment and expansion was a breeze. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Excellent. Local sales team always available and involved. Technical Support: Also excellent. Always helpful and available during upgrades or maintenance windows. Which solutions did we use previously? Had a traditional Server/SAN setup. Upgrading that turned out to be more expensive than moving over to the new solution. How was the initial setup? Lots of work, but straightforward. We basically rebuild all our VM's (from Hyper-V to VMWare). What about the implementation team? We made use of the local team. Very skilled! What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? One must make sure that you understand all the functionality that comes with the solution, and then try to establish the cost of not having these in place! Which other solutions did I evaluate? Yes. Looked at expanding the old solution, and also looked at Nutanix. What other advice do I have? Apart from being a great product supported by a very skilled and friendly team, it is very sexy, and will give you lots of bragging rights! Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-01-10T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from When we had to increase capacity, it scaled very simply What is our primary use case? We are using SimpliVity for VDI and virtual desktops. We are also using it for some small manufacturing sites. How has it helped my organization? It has lessened our burden on multiple different products, so they are under one umbrella. This has been economically good. What is most valuable? SimpliVity is simple and all in one. What needs improvement? I don't think it's as simple as it is marketed, but it is a new product. Since it is a newer solution, there needs to be more knowledge transfer out there. The product needs more maturity because of the industry. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is too early to tell about scalability. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It scales well so far. We had to increase capacity. It was able to scale pretty simply, and that worked well. How are customer service and technical support? Technical support has been awesome. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? We were previously using basic compute storage. We were lifecycle managing all our technology, so it was more about stability. We switched for a more converged solution. How was the initial setup? Scheduling was a little rough, but other than that, it went okay. What about the implementation team? HPE deployed it, but we used an integrator (CCP) for design. Our experience with CCP was good. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We looked at Nutanix and Dell EMC products. We went with HPE partly because I have history them. What other advice do I have? Do your homework. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-10T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Removes the complexities of the storage administration. What is most valuable? It removes the complexities of the storage administration. How has it helped my organization? It has allowed us to reduce our rack footprint. It allowed us to simplify our administration. What needs improvement? I would like to see replication to a cloud solution. I would like to replicate the data so that we have a backup copy off-site. I could then be comfortable getting rid of our existing backup solution. The other feature would be a single copy of the data storage as opposed to a dual copy. In that way, when I do things that automatically have dual copies, such as with our SQL server databases, I would not then be making four copies of the data. In regards to the HPE Simplivity current offering – 1. Replication of backup to a cloud solution would be advantageous. At present, I’d have to spin up a new site (data center, networking gear, etc.) and place Simplivity nodes there to get replication of backups to meet my offsite requirement. They’ve told me they have a hosting service option, but I’ve not received any real details. 2. Simplivity makes two copies of the VMs on different nodes for redundancy. It would be advantageous to include an option for a single copy. So when there is a product with its own redundancy (e.g. Microsoft SQL Server Always On Availability Groups), one is not then making 4 write I/Os for each write – two at the application layer – one to each SQL server node, two at the storage layer – one to two different Simplivity nodes. What do I think about the stability of the solution? When it is properly operated and configured, it is very stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? When you go past eight nodes, you have to get approval. That has been a concern of ours. Sometimes they say that that it has been approved, and other times, they say that they have to go through the approval process again. How is customer service and technical support? I used tech support prior to the acquisition and it has been good. Which solutions did we use previously? We knew that we needed to invest in new solution because we were using a standard, best of breed solution, and it was time to refresh that. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was straightforward. Unfortunately, with the deployment services, there was a delay in getting things set up. There's usually a project manager and you have to wait until the gear arrives. The project manager gets involved a week later. After a week, there's a pre-flight. By the time you are up and running, it may be a month from the time you actually had boxes land on the ground. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We didn’t bring in any alternative solutions for a PoC. However, I have done evaluations of other solutions. We chose HPE because it allowed us to get in with a smaller footprint than some of the other solutions, which might require three, four, or five nodes. When selecting vendors, I look for technical feasibility, then operability, and then cost. What other advice do I have? I would say that with hyper-converged infrastructure, it's important to understand how the solution is going to meet your needs. It is possible that if the requirements are different, a different vendor would be more appropriate. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-19T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Hyperconvergence is Terrific SimpliVity has been an excellent solution for us. We replaced our aging servers and near-capacity SAN for nearly the same cost as simply replacing our old infrastructure. Besides the ease of use, the ability to create and restore full VM backups in less than 1 minute per VM is a huge plus. Furthermore, the data reduction provided by the OmniStack controller is unbelievable. We're currently doing full backups of our 40+ VMs every 2 hours and we're seeing data reduction ratios of over 275:1.
Date published: 2020-02-19T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Good access, high availability, and interface What is our primary use case? We sell HP products. Hyperconvergence with SimpliVity is one of the main products that we are pushing. The virtual application is the main product. It is based on the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), but it is only an application. We sell this infrastructure to our customers and put the virtual application in this infrastructure. How has it helped my organization? A solution that provide a simple way to HA , is absolutely efficient and improve the work for the IT team What is most valuable? The access, high availability, and interface are the most valuable and important for us. There is one interface for the whole product, which is very important because you have a single pane to view all the infrastructure of a customer. You can improve your data recovery plan or DRP, or you can make a special emergency plan if a disk has any problem. What needs improvement? It is not so cheap, and this is the most common complaint that my customers have. It is a very good product, but the price is an issue in Latin America. VMware is a de facto tool. It would be useful for customers if HP can also use Red Hat or any other open-source virtualization product. Currently, you can only use VMware to manage the machines inside SimpliVity. For how long have I used the solution? I have been selling HPE SimpliVity for less than one year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? You can easily scale without any problem by adding new nodes, which is a very good part of the product. Currently, my customers don't have a requirement for scalability, but they will have a requirement in the future. They will have to scale the platform, storage, and virtual machines in the near future. A customer is planning to add one or two nodes at the beginning of the next year. My customers are medium-sized and big-sized companies. How are customer service and technical support? They can maybe improve the response time. When a customer has an emergency and is pushing us, we need to respond in the best way. This is not a complaint. Customers always want the solution immediately. We help our customers in getting the most uptime for this service. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? No, previously we didn't use a differente solutio , just HP DL nodes separately How was the initial setup? It is a new technology, and the setup is a little complicated. The learning curve is not so high, and you can learn to deploy the product easily in a couple of weeks. You have to get people certified in different technologies of HP before the deployment. Deployment can take from a couple of weeks to a month and a half. There could also be problems with a customer's infrastructure. In some cases, putting the devices is a whole new project because the customer is not prepared. What was our ROI? In Latam is very different a ROI. Depends of the industry and all the return has more time to return What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? It is expensive for this market. Everyone says that it is a very good product, but the only complaint is about the price. The enterprises must evalute carefully what they want to do and how many people has tod do te job. A simple interface improve operational time Which other solutions did I evaluate? Nutanix, Dell nodes What other advice do I have? I would recommend this solution. It is very good for me. I would rate HPE SimpliVity a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use? Other Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Reseller HPE
Date published: 2020-11-04T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Very scalable with fair pricing and a nice interface What is our primary use case? I'm a service provider. I install it for my customers. I typically implement it for telecoms. What is most valuable? 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. What needs improvement? 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. For how long have I used the solution? We've been using the solution for two or three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? 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. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is very, very scalable. If a company needs to expand it, they can do so easily. How are customer service and technical support? 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. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? 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. How was the initial setup? 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. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? 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. What other advice do I have? 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. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:partner
Date published: 2020-10-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from User-friendly, good support, stable with zero downtime, and the deduplication ratio is excellent What is our primary use case? 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. What is most valuable? 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. What needs improvement? 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. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using SimpliVity for about two years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? SimpliVity has been very stable. We've had no downtime. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? 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. How are customer service and technical support? 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. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was fairly straightforward. What about the implementation team? 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. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? We bought this solution as a package that included all of the hardware and all of the software. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We evaluated options from Dell, IBM, Nutanix, Scale, and others before choosing SimpliVity. What other advice do I have? 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. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2020-11-07T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from A hyper-converged infrastructure that offers enterprise-level data protection What is our primary use case? Typically, our customers use it to try to consolidate their solutions on VMware with multiple virtual machines — almost more than 15 in every case. What is most valuable? The integration possibilities regarding the administration console are one of the best configurations and one of the best features that differentiates this product from others in the market. Also, you can add extra coverage protection that includes everything inside of the hard drives — similar products don't do this. You can use it directly from the hypervisor, which is great. What needs improvement? The price is one of the biggest problems our customers have. The solution is great, but at the end of the day, it's expensive. Compared to other solutions on the market, like Nutanix or vSAN, you are paying for something else. In this case, I have to explain the big differences within HPE SimpliVity. Overall, the biggest issue I have is regarding the price. The problem is not necessarily with the HPE SimpliVity console itself because it's very easy to integrate with. Sometimes, our customers just want to have the opportunity to have the freedom to choose between Hyper-V and VMware. We love that kind of possibility. It's not so frequently that we have a request about Hyper-V, but our customers do ask about the differences regarding licensing prices because at the end of the day, with Microsoft, the hypervisor is included with the operating system — that saves money. The feature that I would like to see improved in the next release is migrations. There needs to be a simple process for migrating one SimpliVity cluster to a new SimpliVity cluster. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using this solution for almost two years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? We have no problems with SimpliVity. If you configure it well, the product works well, but once you consider the possibility of growing a SimpliVity cluster after one or two years, it's not easy for costumers to understand that the original nodes are not available — you have to buy specific new nodes or whatever is available at that moment. You will lose some space, capabilities, or some benefits with the new nodes — you may need to configure a new cluster and migrate the older one. SimpliVity should have the capability to integrate with other clusters in the future. Here in Colombia, our customers try it with just one additional node, but although that additional node could be easy to configure, you still will lose some features and characteristics. How are customer service and technical support? The technical support is exceptionally good. There's some information missing from the manual. I had to request special help in some cases because the documents are not complete. For example, wherever you go, unless you have some kind of experience with the product, there are some ports on the backend of the servers that are not easily identifiable. When you read over the documents and try to find that information, you can't find it anywhere — you have to contact SimpliVity support. They need to provide more complete information about the components and their uses, especially the ports on the back. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is not bad when you use the OCA. The OCA is a configuration utility but you have to know what you're doing or you could easily drive up the end-price for the customer. What other advice do I have? Regarding configuration, it would be nice to have the flexibility to easily select the right low-cost service for any implementation or configuration. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine. If the customer has the right environment, I would definitely recommend this solution. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2020-11-13T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from A complete user-friendly solution with a straightforward setup What is our primary use case? We are using the solution for our customers. We buy and rent HPE SimpliVity to our customers as a SaaS. How has it helped my organization? In our case, we have an improvement in the operatives area because the support for that server space is minimal. For instance, I don't have to be an expert to work with them. What is most valuable? I have a lot of benefits from it. I like that I can create a service as I need it. I don't need new licenses for operating systems. I don't need to ask for server space, I don't need to wait for support, and I don't need to wait for monitoring. What needs improvement? There is room for improvement in the operations area because the support for that server space is minimal. I want to sell a solution, but not bigger than the one I have. Maybe they can offer more features for more customers and optimize it, but with the same protections that I already have right now. I want to replicate my business offering in the United States. I want to pay for HPE SimpliVity in Mexico, but they told me that it's not possible. They told me that I need to look for a representative in the United States and make all the payments over there. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using HPE SimpliVity for two months. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It's a very nice solution. It's a complete solution that we are looking for because we don't have personnel with expertise. How was the initial setup? The setup was very easy, but it is hard to deploy. We had problems with training after the setup. We think that we need at least four weeks. What other advice do I have? Training is important before integration. Ask HPE for at least four weeks for integration before they start sending out invoices. On a scale from one to ten, I would give HPE SimpliVity a nine. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? Hybrid Cloud Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2020-11-12T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from A complete hyperconverged solution with useful hard disk compression capabilities What is our primary use case? I use HPE SimpliVity for my private cloud, and all my production servers are running on this private cloud. My ERP software and the most important system, SAP, is running on HPE SimpliVity. Their metal server is physical, but all the other digital ecosystems or digital platforms are running on my private cloud in SimpliVity HPE. What is most valuable? I like HPE SimpliVity's hard disk compression capabilities. The data is compressed into very little space or volume. I think that the principal value of HP SimpliVity is its capacity to compress the data, and I'm saving a lot of disk space using SimpliVity. What needs improvement? HPE SimpliVity could be more flexible and scalable. I don't feel SimpliVity is flexible or easily scalable because I still need to buy another server to add to my clusters. I can't just run or harvest and add to my solution. I need to buy another server. There are a lot of components that are not giving a lot of value to me right now. I also had a few problems with the built-in hard disk drives. I've had many issues with the harvest stripes that the servers use. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's unusual to have a physical failure on the HPE platform. I don't see any value at the software level, especially in the software that manages that solution. I was waiting for something, especially in the application layer that I would use, but that is all over VMware, and it doesn't have an integrated module that I can use to manage the server and all the instances. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? HPE SimpliVity could be more scalable. How was the initial setup? I think the initial setup was easy. It was really fast. What about the implementation team? The technicians assigned by HPE implemented this solution in a very short time. At most, it took about two or three days. It was really amazing. It was very simple, and they helped us migrate the materials and the digital machine. What other advice do I have? On a scale from one to ten, I would give HPE SimpliVity an eight. I trust HPE a lot because it's an excellent product. I think SimpliVity is a better solution than other basic HPE solutions. Maybe not the best, but it's a good solution. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-01-07T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Phenomenal deduplication and compression, good support, and works on its own What is our primary use case? We purchased it about five years ago to replace our existing traditional SAN server VM environment. At that time, SimpliVity was the only platform that could house an enterprise-level SQL database. Nobody else had a platform that could handle SQL transactions without imploding. Everybody has got that figured out by now, and it is understandable. We are using an older version because we purchased SimpliVity before it was owned by HPE. After about six to eight months of its implementation, it was purchased by HPE. When we purchased it, it was on the Cisco UCS server platform. What is most valuable? SimpliVity is integrated with the hypervisor, and you have a single pane of glass. It is really hands-off. Once you set your backup schedules, you're done. I'm not creating and tearing down virtual servers a lot. Our environment is fairly static, so unless I get an alert on something being wrong, and there is any predictive failure on a hard drive, I don't have to touch it. It is just on cruise control. It doesn't take long to mount the entire VM somewhere and then copy it. That's one of the things that I like about SimpliVity's deduplication and compression. I can literally stand up a backup in minutes. It is like no time at all. They've got pretty phenomenal deduplication and compression. Within SimpliVity, one of the things that they do is deduplication and compression on ingestion. So, on the front side, everything is deduplicated and compressed, which, of course, adds some overhead to their solution. For instance, in my environment today, I've got roughly 30 terabytes of raw storage, and with their deduplication and compression, I'm over the 300 terabyte threshold with my active servers and all my backups. What needs improvement? There is a file size limitation when you want to do an individual file restore, but they might have resolved this in newer versions. As I'm taking backups at the VM server level, I can restore a file from any one of those without standing up the VM, and I can restore it to any mounted VM that I want. The problem is that there is a file size limitation. It becomes problematic when I'm trying to restore. When I want to restore a backup of a SQL database, my backups are considerably larger than 10 gigs. So, the only way to restore that backup file is to mount the entire VM somewhere and then copy it, which doesn't take long at all. Every now and then, we would have an instance where the replication of a backup wouldn't complete in a timely manner, and that would get it all wigged out in terms of how it maintained the files in the background, the way it knows whether a file has changed or not, and whether it is backed up and replicated. We would basically just suspend that backup for a little bit, do a manual backup of that server, and completely replicate it to other sites. We would then turn the regular backup routine back on, and then it would be fine. So, that's all dependent on the bandwidth. For how long have I used the solution? It has probably been five years. We have been using it before it was owned by HPE. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Its stability is great. When we put our servers in, solid-state arrays were not a thing. The performance five years ago was exponentially high. So, we went with 24 servers, and four of them were solid state. The other 20 were large spinning disks, and obviously, performance is way better today because solid state is more price effective now. So, you get the speed of that, but we're getting ready to replace it with something because SimpliVity has completely stopped supporting their solution on Cisco hardware. I'm now running it without a maintenance contract. How are customer service and support? Their support is good. HPE is a big organization, and they handled keeping that support group together very well. You call the same 800 number that everybody else does, but once they identify it as a SimpliVity issue, you get transferred over to that group right away. Instead of trying to disseminate that knowledge amongst their existing engineers, they appeared to have kept the little nucleus of those knowledge-based guys. So, when I called, I had people who knew exactly what was going on. How was the initial setup? It was almost hands-off to me. SimpliVity did it, but it was just about migrating over the VMs. You temporarily mount your existing VM environment in your new cluster or show it as a separate cluster, and then you just migrate them over. It is all done through the utilities that are built into the VM. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? We spent $250,000 back in the day, and that was for two servers in my data center for that cluster. We then ran what they call an arbiter, and that took the place of a third server or the third node in the cluster. My DR site was one standalone server, and its horsepower was more than the two at my main site. It included my Cisco Switches that I needed to re-upgrade. It was comparable to what we were paying a year in VM. What other advice do I have? I don't know if it's my HPE reseller or if it's an actual HPE initiative, but they're not pushing me to go with SimpliVity. They don't want me to go with their other storage solution with which they are leading more. In the research that I've done, I've found out that I can run SimpliVity on top of that storage solution. If I wanted to do that, HPE does offer that configuration. While sizing your storage, knowing how a solution or a vendor does compression and deduplication is important. For example, Scale doesn't do compression and deduplication on the front side. So, you've got to make sure that you've got that accounted for, especially when you start doing backups. They were definitely a 10 five years ago when we implemented them. What they were doing was incredible. The rest of the market and all other technology providers have caught up with what they're doing. I don't know how they stack up and compare to everybody now because I've been out of the loop long enough to know that. It is probably a level playing field as it boils down to today's market. I would still give them a nine out of 10 because they do have good service. My hardware is five years old, and it is not HPE hardware. I get it that it is time to renew. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-01-06T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Supports VDI implementation What is our primary use case? We implemented SimpliVity last year to attend to two client projects. Since the pandemic, we chose this solution to improve the VDI, the virtual desktop for staff. How has it helped my organization? It's a good solution because they implement the PCX cards differently to improve speed. SimpliVity worked well in supporting the implementation of VDI. For how long have I used the solution? We've been using this solution since last year. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? Dell EMC puts the direct application in the store, like MySQL or Oracle databases. The equipment is all-flash. How was the initial setup? We had minor problems with the initial setup but it was with our internal infrastructure. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We also tried VMware, but HPE Simplivity was a better soluiton. What other advice do I have? I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-01-04T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Deduplication works really well What is our primary use case? My primary use case is virtualization and data storage. How has it helped my organization? SimpliVity helps us to manage and has made deduplication work really well. What needs improvement? An area for improvement would be the flexibility of server configuration. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using this solution for around five months. What do I think about the stability of the solution? SimpliVity works well, we have no problems with its stability. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? This product is easy to scale, but it's not cheap to do so. How are customer service and support? The technical support team responds very quickly. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was simple - we had two nodes connected to each other with direct connection to the ports, and that was all. What about the implementation team? I implemented this solution myself. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Full bundle licenses are available on a three-yearly basis with no additional costs. What other advice do I have? Plan your deployment, and then implementation will be easy. I would give this solution a score of nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-01-05T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Everything in one place, but it is an ageing solution What is most valuable? 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. What needs improvement? 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. For how long have I used the solution? I've been working with the solution for five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Once you've taken the right course of action, the solution is quite stable, but it should be in the proper hands to maintain. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Scalability is very good in SimpliVity. Up scaling is very possible, and at any time it is scalable. How are customer service and support? 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. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is complex. You need experts on that to kick start it, or it would be screwed up. What about the implementation team? You need to go with a vendor, or find a niche experts, and there are only a handful of people available in the market. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? 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. What other advice do I have? 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. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-12-08T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Great data compression ratio but could be more compatible and more secure What is our primary use case? One of the use cases was that a customer had around 10 servers, which stopped working. The customer wanted to replace all those servers with new ones. I proposed that they should use the SimpliVity solution in place of 10 servers with around 100TB of data in a discrete environment. SimpliVity is an on-premise solution. It's not cloud-based. We have four customers who deal with HP SimpliVity. What is most valuable? What I like about SimpliVity is the brand value of HP. I also like the data compression ratio, which is around more than 75% data compression ratio. HP's support and the ease of working with SimpliVity are also valuable features. What needs improvement? Once I am into the SimpliVity environment, I always have to go with HP because I am somewhat blocked, like Apple. Secondly, if I want to increase only storage, I need to buy an entire computing node for that, an entire HCI node. However, there are certain other providers, like Hitachi and AirDeck, that provide solutions. You can go with any of the hardware infrastructure, and they can provide you with their solutions for HCI itself. HCI is a simple software layer, a hypervisor layer for them. So, they can add computing, storage, and networking to it that is vendor agnostic. In HP, Dell, VxRail, or Cisco, there is a drawback. I have to go with that brand again, and I have to add a simple load of HCI in place if I want to increase computing, networking, or storage. SimpliVity is also compatible with all HP appliances, though it is not compatible with other brands or vendors. It could be more compatible and more secure. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using SimpliVity for a couple of years. My core extent is cybersecurity. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? HP is renowned for scalability. They're using Nimble and three-part technology for storage and backup. What about the implementation team? We have four engineers on our technical team. Which other solutions did I evaluate? There are plenty of hyperconverged solutions in the market like Nutanix, Dell, VxRail, etc. What other advice do I have? I would rate this solution 6 out of 10. I would recommend HP SimpliVity for people who want to start using it. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2021-12-02T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Full-fledged HCI brings stability and scalability What is our primary use case? We are using the SimpliVity HCI servers to work as a VDI solution. Mainly it's a VDI solution that is using the HCI nodes. How has it helped my organization? HPE simplivity makes the computer technogy as simple and enjoyable to use as possible, HPE Simplivity design efficient, effective and satisfying. What is most valuable? The HCI concept by itself is the most valuable feature of the solution. It is a full-fledged HCI. It is the main component. I think this is what makes the project valuable What needs improvement? I think our LAN and branches started to use the VDI. We are hitting the point of a bottleneck with the end users and are complaining to support about this. Now, after using the SimpliVity with these nodes, we solve all the problems to cut the support cases for the end users. Also, the applications that they are running over the SimpliVity and HCI solutions are running better than the normal traditional solution. Bottleneck is the main issue. For how long have I used the solution? Our connection with HPE is not a new relationship. It's 15 or 20 years old. It's such a long history with HPE that they were just HP when we started. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I think the stability is perfect. We deployed the first part one and half years ago, or more. I think we had only one or two cases that needed support, otherwise it's stable and very convenient. In terms of maintenance for SimpliVity, we have a three year support with the vendor through SMS partner for HPE that covers us until the end of the period. After that, we usually do a reassessment and ask for an estimate for maintenance for the coming years. So at the moment maintenance is handled by HPE and HPE partner (SMS) . What do I think about the scalability of the solution? In terms of scalability, our expansion depends on how many end users I want to be using it because the sizing of the HCI depend on the number of end users that will connect to the HCI node. I think that we have witnessed improvement in the performance between the HCI solution and traditional servers. We have 600 users now, and next year we will have an additional 400. This brings us to 1000 users. Then we'll look for an expansion. How are customer service and support? The quality of customer service depends on the cases. At the beginning of the projects, every environment has customized procedures. Our environment needed a little bit of customization that made some headache for HPE and SMS partner. But after that, it worked perfectly. And their responses are quite good with all the cases that we brought to them. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive How was the initial setup? The initial setup was simple because it has a wizard GUI interface that helped to set up the project and set the needed configuration. Additionally, SMS partner was already connected step by step with a vendor. So it was quite easy and simple. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The licensing depends on the servers that it is going to run on. But SimpliVity didn't have a license to run on their devices. I think the license will be on the VMware or Citrix or the environment that you want to run on it. With SimpliVity, it is just a one time purchase and not actually any license. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We started using SimpliVity after we made several POCs with many vendors. We did a POC for Dell EMC, for Fujitsu, for Nutanix, and also for HPE SimpliVity. They all succeeded with the POC projects, but HPE won the competition and got the tender. I think the reason that HPE was chosen in our tender was the technical level. Our tender was for a technical and financial proposal. 70% of our proposal depended on the technical offer and 30% on the financial offer. What other advice do I have? SimpliVity was the first HCI solution we deployed in our organization. It was a good experiment to start with. Now we are planning to start with a new HCI deployment next year. I recommend SimpliVity to other organizations because it is quite easy to deal with, quite easy to start the configuration, and it is easy to manipulate if you want to track anything. On a scale of one to ten, I would give SimpliVity a 9. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-11-18T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Good performance, availability, and support What is our primary use case? We are using it for SAP HANA. It is a hybrid solution. We updated to the latest version two months back. What is most valuable? Its performance and availability are most valuable. What needs improvement? Technologies are going ahead with new patches and updates, and HPE has to find out a solution to make it more reliable and secure. Its deployment should be easier. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using HPE SimpliVity for a few years. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We have around 200 users. How are customer service and support? Their support is good. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We didn't use any other solution. How was the initial setup? It was very difficult. If you want to implement this, you have to hire the most technical consultants. It took us six to seven months for the entire portfolio, including SAP HANA. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Its licensing is yearly. What other advice do I have? I would definitely recommend this solution. It is a good solution, but it needs some improvements. I would rate it an eight out of 10. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-11-12T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Easy and fast application hosting but problems with stability and support What is our primary use case? My main use case is hosting in-house applications as well as public applications over the cloud. How has it helped my organization? With HPE SimpliVity, hosting applications has become very easy and fast. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature is that the product has an inborn backup, which gives a copy of my primary and secondary copies. What needs improvement? 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. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using HPE SimpliVity for around three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? 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. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability is good, but there can be problems with integration and compatibility when patching or updating the product. How are customer service and support? 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. How was the initial setup? The setup was complex, as it has multiple integrations with multiple orients. Deployment took around fifteen minutes to half an hour. What about the implementation team? I used a consultant from VMWare to implement the product. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Licensing is available on a yearly basis, with no mandatory additional costs. What other advice do I have? 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. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-11-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Makes it easy to manage virtual machines and different workloads and is very easy to implement What is our primary use case? We have sold about three SimpliVity solutions. They are very small implementations. The use cases are mostly related to virtualization in terms of getting rid of SAN for virtualization and making management easier. How has it helped my organization? It makes it easy for our customers to manage all virtual machines and different workloads and be agile. What is most valuable? The backup feature is valuable, and replication is also valuable. It is very quick and easy to use. What needs improvement? I'm not a technical guy, and I am pretty much okay with the way it is, but it would help if it was closest to Nutanix in Gartner's Magic Quadrants. Nutanix very often beats us. Nutanix provides Acropolis for free. It probably would be great if we have a virtualization layer. It is something that might be lacking in our solution. We depend on VMware, and it is very expensive. It is lacking the software that allows us to install it with HPE and not depend on a third party. For how long have I used the solution? We were a partner for HPE for 16 years. So, when they bought SimpliVity, we just started selling the product. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is very stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It is scalable. How are customer service and support? I'm not sure about that because I'm not an end-user, but I suppose it is great as other products. How was the initial setup? Its initial setup is very easy. For its deployment and maintenance, all three customers have only one engineer. What other advice do I have? I'm not a technical guy, but it is very easy. I've heard a few stories that some of the other solutions are not that easy, but our engineers have implemented it very quickly. So, I would advise others to go for it because it is a very easy solution. The backup feature is built into the application. So, you don't need to spend money on the licenses for backup. I would rate it an eight out of 10. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2021-12-01T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Reasonably priced, user-friendly, and stable What is our primary use case? The main reason for the selection was that SimpliVity ensures high availability, and, with the static cluster configuration, we are reasonably protected as we have two nodes with synchronous replication. That's why we feel comfortable enough to use this technology. What is most valuable? The simplicity of the solution is its most valuable aspect. It's much more simple than Nutanix and other hyper-converged solutions, at least from our point of view. It's easy to use. The pricing is reasonable. I've found the solution to be stable. What needs improvement? We haven't had any issues. Recently, we purchased new SimpliVity nodes. We are pretty confident with the platform. We are using it more than in the beginning. The installation was a bit complicated. There may be issues around scaling. Technical support could be better. SimpliVity has to evolve into a solution that is more integrated with the public cloud. At the moment, this is not the case. It's not our case, however, if we wanted to make some kind of hybrid integration between private cloud and public cloud, SimpliVity is not well prepared for this. For how long have I used the solution? I started using the solution nearly three years ago. The first installation was before the pandemic, that's for sure. It was likely in the spring of 2019. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability has been good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Scaling is problematic. It's not as scalable as other solutions, such as Nutanix. In our scenario, it's not a big point for us as we have a medium enterprise. Therefore, we don't need to scale straight to tens of nodes. We only have four nodes at this time. For us it's not a problem, however, maybe for larger organizations, it can become a problem. How are customer service and support? We've had some issues, such as typical disc faults, however, on the same day, we open a ticket in the super-portal and we receive the new piece. It's very, very useful and affordable. However, for more technical issues, it's a little bit difficult to find the right person. Eventually, finally, you will find him. How was the initial setup? The product is a little bit more complicated. That said, SimpliVity always is installed with certified personnel from the HPE, so it's a question of time. You always have to give them space in the racks for the servers. That's all. What about the implementation team? We have certified HPE personnel install the solution on our behalf. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The cost of the solution is pretty good. It's not too expensive. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Before choosing this solution, we looked into Nutanix which was the competitor at that moment. The main reason for our decision in 2019 was the price. Nutanix was a higher cost - much higher than SimpliVity. Nowadays, I think the price has reduced. Maybe, nowadays, we would decide on something else. However, at that moment, it was very, very clear for us. What other advice do I have? I'm a customer and an end-user. I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. I would recommend the solution to others, however, it depends on the environment. For a company of our size, it's a very good solution. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? Private Cloud Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-12-10T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Stable and quick to install What needs improvement? The product's installation process could be made easier. For how long have I used the solution? I have been working with this solution for two to three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? This is a stable solution. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? This product doesn't scale - it's for small environments with two or three nodes, no more. How are customer service and support? Tech support is ok. How was the initial setup? Installation doesn't take a long time, one or two days. Deployment and maintenance can be done by one person. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The cost of this product is high, so some customers may be better off building their own system or buying their own servers and set of devices. What other advice do I have? This solution is best for companies just starting out or who are working with a small environment and are looking for a small infrastructure. Those intending to install SimpliVity should have vCenter integrated somewhere beforehand. I would give this solution a score of eight out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2021-12-10T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from A great solution for seamless experience and ease of use What is our primary use case? We are a solution provider. We don't usually use it for our own workload or for ourselves. We are partners of both Dell EMC and HPE. We sell their products and provide solutions based on their products to our end customers. It is being used in a mining company. I'm currently working with it to upgrade the storage capacity for the load that was sold. What is most valuable? Its ease of use is valuable. It is being used in a mining company. They wanted their working nodes to be seamless, and they wanted ease of use. That's why they opted for SimpliVity. They are running VMware virtual machines on it. What needs improvement? They can bring more awareness about this product. In this part of the world or this region, people normally don't know about SimpliVity and its capabilities. The company we have it sold to hasn't been able to fully utilize all the features or understand the features. So, product awareness should be improved. Its scalability should be improved. We should be able to add drives without disrupting the services. For how long have I used the solution? We have known this product for the last three years or more, but we first sold it to a customer in 2020 or 2021. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I don't have first-hand experience in managing it day to day. So, I don't know if there are any lapses somewhere. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We are currently working on upgrading the storage capacity for a customer from medium to large. The solution is scalable, but they have to work more on the scalability part. That's because you can scale out and scale up, but based on my experience with this customer, scaling up is going to be disruptive. It's going to disrupt their service because the storage has got into a place where they cannot just add the storage node to it without disrupting the service. They have to look at that angle. When you're adding drives, it should be able to just load the drives, do the recalculation, and just work without disrupting your service. How are customer service and support? I would rate them an eight out of 10. How was the initial setup? Its setup is straightforward. What other advice do I have? It is a great solution coming from a pioneer in technology. If you want to go for it, you can go for it, but you have to be sure that this is what you want. I would rate it an eight out of 10. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2022-02-22T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Easy to operate with good technical support and great performance What is most valuable? The cache functionality is great. Technical support is helpful and very knowledgeable of the product. The initial setup is pretty simple. The performance is good. It's stable and easy to operate. The scalability is very good. What needs improvement? The price can be dropped a little bit. The product should be competitive with other brands. The technical support around the world can be a lot more open as you cannot search all the KBs or the community for support. Most of the time, you need to call HPE directly. The solution really just lacks documentation. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. The performance is very good. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We have found the solution to be scalable and simple to expand as necessary. However, you need to do the sizing properly at the outset. How are customer service and support? Technical support could be better as the documentation doesn't help you avoid calling them. You often need to reach out. While their technical support is good and the staff is skillful, every time you could avoid the need to process a phone call if you could just Google it. We'd like the answer to just be available and easy to find online. How was the initial setup? The setup process is simple and straightforward. it's not overly complex or difficult. I'd rate the process of four out of five for the general ease of deployment. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? It's a pretty expensive solution. Technical support is included in the pricing. What other advice do I have? I'd advise potential new users to ask a lot of the standard questions. For example: what are you going to use within the solution? You need to check the expandability as you need to use the same capacity that you are purchasing. You need to understand if you need a small, medium, or large capacity. There are different sizes of hardware. If you want to do an expansion, you need to think about if are you going to expand and where and what you will need, and whether that's in the near future, or maybe three or five years later. That is the consideration you need to keep in mind from the outset. Overall, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-02-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Performs well and comes with an integrated solution for backup, but we would like patches in time and better scalability What is our primary use case? Most of the installations are for branch offices that need an integrated solution for backup. How has it helped my organization? It helps branch offices in having an integrated solution for backup. That's the greatest benefit of SimpliVity. What is most valuable? Its performance is quite good, and it is also easy to use. One of the biggest benefits is the included backup solution. What needs improvement? 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. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? 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. How are customer service and support? 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. How was the initial setup? 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. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? 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. What other advice do I have? I would recommend this solution. I would rate it a seven out of 10. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2022-02-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Easy to set up and configure with good disaster recovery capabilities What is our primary use case? We primarily use the solution for disaster recovery. What is most valuable? 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. What needs improvement? 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. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using the solution for two years at this point. How are customer service and support? Technical support has been great. they are helpful and responsive. How was the initial setup? 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. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The pricing, for the most part, is pretty good. However, it could always be a bit less expensive. What other advice do I have? We are an HPE partner. I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-02-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It can be adapted for any size business, and the price isn't too expensive for small clients What is most valuable? I like SimpliVity because it can be adapted for small clients or the biggest ones. It's flexible. What needs improvement? 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. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using SimpliVity for about two years. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? SimpliVity's scalability is good, but you definitely need to opt for two processors if you want scalability. It's limited otherwise. How are customer service and support? HPE's technical team helped us implement and support SimpliVity. Sometimes they took too long to respond. How was the initial setup? 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. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? 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. What other advice do I have? 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. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-02-18T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Simple to manage and simple to implement What is our primary use case? We are an SIEM integrator. We are working with a lot of products that our clients have, and we are studying products in our clients' production. It is mostly used for remote sites. It is sometimes also used for production. Its version depends on the customer. How has it helped my organization? SimpliVity is integrated into the virtual center, so there is no additional management software or management interface. It's quite simple to manage because there is only one interface. It is all in one, which makes it different from other solutions. What is most valuable? Its simplicity is most valuable. The management is easy, and you don't have to have a lot of knowledge about storage, network, etc. It is simple to manage and simple to implement, and that's its key feature. What needs improvement? Its scalability can be improved. When we put a lot of nodes, sometimes, its performance decreases. Its price can also be improved. I would like some reporting about backup and replication. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using this solution for about four years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is quite good. It is really stable. We have no issue with performance. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Its performance decreases when we have a lot of nodes. It is suitable for small, medium, and large companies. It can be used in almost all companies. How are customer service and support? It is pretty good. Their support and maintenance are really good, but the installation services that HPE provides for SimpliVity are sometimes not so good. How was the initial setup? It was quite straightforward. Now that I know how to deploy it, it takes less than 30 minutes. What about the implementation team? Our company provides the implementation services. The maintenance of hardware and software is done by the vendor. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Its price is pretty good as compared to the other solutions, but it is quite expensive if we compare it with non-HCI solutions. What other advice do I have? I would advise others to give it a try. We did a lot of proof of concepts where we just put a node, and the client tried it. I would rate it a nine out of 10. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2022-02-18T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Beneficial data compression, excellent support, and highly reliable What is our primary use case? We are using HPE SimpliVity in a water distribution facility and for computer administration backups. What is most valuable? The HPE SimpliVity disc compression is very valuable. What needs improvement? In the next release of the solution, they should make updating the solution easier. Currently, we have HPE doing it for us but I would like to be able to do it. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately What do I think about the stability of the solution? HPE SimpliVity has been stable for us in the two years we have been using it. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is scalable. If we want to expand then we only need to purchase new nodes and set them up. We have approximately 100 users using this solution. How are customer service and support? The technical support and support, in general, are very good. When I had discs that stopped working, they sent the disc to be on the same day. They are very good. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We are using VMware and HPE SimpliVity together. The backup and the decompression of the files are very useful. Previously the updating was not easy when I only used my servers alone. However, with the HPE SimpliVity, it's updating the firmware and VMware in one step. I have used Nutanix and updating the system was simple, HPE SimpliVity could improve in this area. How was the initial setup? The installation with VMware was fine. We are using VMware on this solution, and there are a couple of new features. What about the implementation team? We used HPE for the implementation of the solution because they were able to provide us with a guarantee. I could not do the process myself. It took approximately two weeks. We have one engineer that does the maintenance of the solution. What was our ROI? It did not take me long to see a return on investment when using HPE SimpliVity. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? There is a one-time purchase needed for the license for HPE SimpliVity. The solution is expensive, but it is worth the money. What other advice do I have? I rate HPE SimpliVity an eight out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-01-21T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The right choice for hyperconverged environments What is our primary use case? We are a large enterprise and are partners of HPE. We use the solution for hyperconverged simple usage scenarios. What is most valuable? HPE SimpliVity is simple, it's very friendly. Our customers like to use this product. What needs improvement? The solution could have an optimization site and provide assistance at that site. HPE SimpliVity would also benefit if it installed bigger products like having a Blade solution. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using SimpliVity for over five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? HPE SimpliVity is stable enough for our business. We never have a problem. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is scalable if you size the requirement of your client at the first stage, otherwise scalability is difficult. How was the initial setup? SimpliVity is really easy to setup. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The pricing of HPE SimpliVity is comparable with other solutions so the price is good. What other advice do I have? For hyperconverged, HPE SimpliVity is the right choice. I would rate this solution a 9 out of 10. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? Private Cloud Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:partner
Date published: 2022-01-20T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Hyper-converged infrastructure that simplifies daily use What is our primary use case? The main use cases for this solution are consolidation and virtualization. How has it helped my organization? The main way the solution improves an organization is it simplifies daily use, and it cuts costs for the customer, because they often come from a silo-based storage and computer environment. That equals a lot more components, and you have to be more knowledgeable to be able to administer a traditional storage and computer-based solution. With SimpliVity, you have a hyper-converged infrastructure, which means everything is server-based and storage is software-based. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature is the ease of use and the storage virtualization layer, together with the built-in backups. That's what makes SimpliVity really useful, and how you can replicate data between different sites without paying an extra license for that feature. All the features are built into the product. What needs improvement? I would like more extensive deployment orchestration where the vCenter is deployed initially without being a separate thing. I feel that the deployment process of the vCenter should be included in the initial deployment to make it easier. Also, there are some issues when it comes to VMware's attaching and upgrades because HPE doesn't support all versions of VMware, and it can take some time before they have tested the latest versions. So the lifecycle management can be improved, and also the initial deployment to include vCenter. For how long have I used the solution? I've been working with SimpliVity ever since HPE acquired the company. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I think the solution is very stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability of the solution is very good. It's quite scalable, but one problem with all HCI solutions is that maybe the customer is just growing on storage and not on compute or memory. Then you have to add more nodes although you don't need more compute or memory. But with SimpliVity, you can actually upgrade your storage in the nodes, so you can go from a medium-sized SimpliVity node to a large or an extra-large. In that case, you don't have to buy more nodes, because more nodes requires more VMware licenses, and that's a big cost for a customer. How are customer service and support? I've had a good experience so far with the technical support. There can be days where you don't feel you get support, but mostly it works fine. How was the initial setup? The initial setup for the solution is more complex than setting up hyper-converged VxRail or vSAN solution in VMware. Dell VxRail is built on VMware technology; the software-based storage is built in VMware, so VxRail is really VMware on Dell hardware. What I feel is simpler with VxRail is setting it up, but also the life-cycle management, upgrades, and things like that. But SimpliVity has been improved over the years, and they also released a new version on SimpliVity now in December. They have really simplified both the upgrades and the installation. I wouldn't say it's very complex if you know what you're doing, but that's almost always the thing. If you've never done it, of course it could be complicated, but one big problem is that you always need to have a pre-deployed vCenter to set up a SimpliVity solution. What about the implementation team? I do everything for the implementation myself, because I'm a certified SimpliVity consultant. What was our ROI? Return on investment could be quite good if you look at the five-year investment compared to other HCI solutions, because other HCI solutions don't include backup built in. If you take into account that you can consolidate even your backup solution, you have a solid TCO case. Backup is a quite big part of the cost of a data center, and if you can have that built in without any extra costs. SimpliVity backups are very efficient. Because you don't store backup, you don't need extra capacity in the same way as in a traditional backup solution. But if you can't include the backups in SimpliVity, it's much harder to motivate the solution. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? One big advantage with SimpliVity is that you don't need the higher license cost or VMware to put together a simple SimpliVity solution. You can run it as VMware essentials plus licensing. For the small customers, that's really quite affordable. But on top of that, you pay for SimpliVity licensing, so depending on how large your solution is, that could be quite a big part of the solution when it comes to cost. You can start very small. You can have one node as the smallest, but the recommendation is to have at least two nodes to get some redundancy when it comes to upgrades and things like that. What other advice do I have? There are certain things to take into consideration regarding whether to buy SimpliVity: that everything is compressed and deducted, and not every application is deductible or compressible, which could lead to you not getting the efficiency you first wanted. One thing that separates SimpliVity from VxRail is the InfoSight portal. That's a cloud-based management tool, which you hook up to your SimpliVity solution, and this sends telemetry data to InfoSight. You can use your portal to maintain your solution and to monitor it for growth. And you also have the SimpliVity support team. They get the support data all the time, so if you have a problem with your solution and you are unaware of it yourself, HPE SimpliVity team will contact you and tell you that you have a problem. I'd rate the solution a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-01-26T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It makes daily operations easier for our customers, but they complain about the lack of file services What is our primary use case? The use case depends on what our customers need. We don't have SimpliVity on our infrastructure, but we deploy it at the customers' sites. Generally speaking, SimpliVity is for prediction, SAP, and VDI. What is most valuable? There is no single feature that's the most valuable. All of SimpliVity's components work together to make daily operations easier for our customers. What needs improvement? SimpliVity has no file server services. That's one of the solution's biggest shortcomings. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using HPE SimpliVity for five years now. What do I think about the stability of the solution? SimpliVity is pretty stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? SimpliVity is a good fit for small to medium-sized companies, but it's not scalable enough for large enterprises. How are customer service and support? HPE support is good. How was the initial setup? Our customers usually have VMware infrastructure already, so we can easily migrate everything with the VMware technologies. It typically takes about two to three days maximum. One systems engineer can handle the whole deployment. What other advice do I have? I rate SimpliVity seven out of 10. I would rate it higher if HPE added file services. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-01-13T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The console is helpful, but it doesn't perform as well as other solutions, and it's not as user-friendly What is our primary use case? Our main use case for SimpliVity is VDI for Citrix and VMware. What is most valuable? SimpliVity's console is useful What needs improvement? SimpliVity's data management could be better. Nutanix's interface is a bit more user-friendly. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using HPE SimpliVity for about three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? SimpliVity's performance could be better. It could be more stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? SimpliVity is as scalable as all the other solutions. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? There are additional costs for storage. What other advice do I have? I would rate SimpliVity six or seven out of 10. It doesn't stack up well against other solutions like Nutanix. The main difference is the hardware rating. HPE is planning to introduce Integration with other products in the future. It's on their roadmap for SimpliVity. Many use cases require this. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Integrator
Date published: 2022-01-13T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from User-friendly, stable, and scalable What is our primary use case? We are using HPE SimpliVity for our organization's backup and recovery solution. What is most valuable? The solution is user-friendly. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? HPE SimpliVity is stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is scalable. We have approximately 80 people in my organization in France and we work together with 2,000 other regions that all use the solution. How are customer service and technical support? The technical, commercial, and marketing support is not at the level that it should be. They are not structured well. Other vendors provide better support, such as Dell. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We were previously using the HPE MSA solution. How was the initial setup? The installation is easy and the basic installation takes two days. What about the implementation team? We have the certifications to do the implementation ourselves, but it has to be checked by HPE. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? There is not a license required for the solution. Which other solutions did I evaluate? I have evaluated other solutions from Dell. What other advice do I have? I rate HPE SimpliVity a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Distributor
Date published: 2021-09-10T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Effective backup and replication, highly stable, and helpful support What is our primary use case? 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. What is most valuable? 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. What needs improvement? The interface is good but takes some time to get used to. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately two years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is highly stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? 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. How are customer service and technical support? The technical support is good. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? 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. How was the initial setup? 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. What about the implementation team? HPE did parts of the implementation with us. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price of the solution is reasonable. We have purchased a five-year license with all the support and upgrades. What other advice do I have? 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. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-09-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Good scalability and excellent technical support What is our primary use case? We sell SimpliVity to our customers along with all products that can be categorized as hyper-converged infrastructure. I'm a consultant in pre-sales, and we are resellers and distributors. How has it helped my organization? We find the solution exciting and rewarding. When we first began with the product, we realized that it wasn't for larger markets. It was meant for only small business enterprises. But with time, the product expanded to incorporate larger markets and became more appropriate for our market. So it's more of an exciting experience these days. What is most valuable? SimpliVity's ability to scale a product like Vmware to the cloud is one feature we found most valuable. SimpliVity is great for small companies. It's a nice product, and our customers are really happy with it. HPE focuses on VMware, and it really shines as a VMware. It's a very good design, and they've put some serious thought into the infrastructure. What needs improvement? The solution has a complex configuration. So I think they should simplify the con. They should go back to having special hardware for the compression with T2, so you don't need to have a big processor if you use just one processor. For how long have I used the solution? We've been using it for about five to six years. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability of this solution is great but could be better. How are customer service and technical support? The technical support was excellent. How was the initial setup? The configuration was a bit complex. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The pricing is fair. However, there's no need to base the pricing on the number of processors you have. The pricing goes up if you are trying to use two CPU configurations. What other advice do I have? It's a great choice for people who run small businesses, and their storage capacity doesn't expand more than the number of their virtual machines. The solution doesn't support storage-only nodes. It only supports compute-only nodes, so you have to buy a new license when you increase storage by buying a new node. I'll rate it an eight or nine out of ten, I think it is one of the best in the market. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? Public Cloud Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:reseller
Date published: 2021-09-19T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Useful multi-platform support, highly scalable, and reliable What is our primary use case? We are using BHPE SimpliVity for hosting infrastructure. What is most valuable? The features I have found most valuable are the convergence of the infrastructure and multi-platform support, for example, VMware and Hyper-V. What needs improvement? The solution could improve by adding better support of the VMware add-ons and a more intuitive user interface for administrators. In a future release, all the management features should be able to access from one location. For example, management of networking and system resources on the server should be in one place to view and manage. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately two years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is stable with many high availability features. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? HPE SimpliVity is easy to scale. You can simply add resources, for instance, ram, or storage. Additionally, adding another node is possible. It is very easy and straightforward. We have more than 5,000 people using the solution. How are customer service and technical support? We needed help to integrate some of our older systems to use with HPE SimpliVity and we contacted support. We opened a ticket and they responded within five business days. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We have used Check Point. How was the initial setup? The installation difficulty level depends on whose perspective. From a beginner's perspective, it is complex, but for advanced administrators, it is straightforward and not so complicated. The infrastructure is easy to deploy. What about the implementation team? We used integrators to do the implementation of the solution. We do not have special servers, only regular ones, the maintenance of the solution is simple. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? If we compare the price of HPE SimpliVity with other vendors that are selling the hyper-converged infrastructure, all of them are not cheap and are priced similarly. However, the price we pay and what we receive makes it a good price. What other advice do I have? I would recommend this solution to others. I rate HPE SimpliVity an eight out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-09-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Great back up and disaster recovery capabilities with very helpful technical support What is our primary use case? The solution is used for server consolidation and, with SimpliVity and other hyper-converged solutions, we can reduce the footprint and we can give them added benefits, like backup, DR, compression, and deduplication. The main use case for SimpliVity is for backup and cloning, and rapid DR. If you take vSAN, we can say the selling point is server consolidation, and then you can start your STDC journey. What is most valuable? The backup is the main and most valuable aspect, followed by the rapid DR (Disaster Recovery). With a traditional network, we have to have some WAN optimizers, however, with SimpliVity, we can go with their Omni and the rapid DR software. Technical support is great. The solution is quite stable. We can scale the solution easily. The initial setup is simple. What needs improvement? When we failed it, there was a hardware accelerator card, however, now HP is saying the hardware is no longer available, and it will be the end of life. Now, we have only the software. That is a shock for us. When someone is using a hardware accelerator, then he needs some upgrades. Now, we have to say there is no hardware card. Now you have to use the software. There will be a mismatch. The Omni Card consumes a lot of memory and CPU. On the HP selling site, it says Omni Card can offload your CPU and memory, however, in reality, it consumes more memory and CPU. For how long have I used the solution? We have been working with HP SimpliVity for three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is quite scalable. We closed six deals. The largest one is a 4-node cluster, and another is a 2-node cluster and 3-node cluster. Very recently, we closed a deal with the largest private sector insurance company which is about four nodes. They are going to expand the environment. We have another five HPE SimpliVity references in Sri Lanka. Currently, we are working with a few customers on some upgrades. How are customer service and support? Technical support has been great. We get direct HP support and have had no issues with the HP support. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is easy. Nowadays, it is all very straightforward. There is no rocket science involved. We can do a simple installation. What about the implementation team? We are able to handle the implementation process for our clients. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We deal with a variety of products. It's case by case. We are not selling any product. We are selling solutions. If a customer prefers Nutanix, then we can go with Nutanix, however, we can tell them the features and advantages. As a product, SimpliVity is better than others due to the fact that it has its own WAN optimizer optimization technologies then dedupe and compression ratios are high, and we can get support from a single vendor. SimpliVity is the leader. What other advice do I have? We are an enterprise partner for HPE and we are dealing with HPE SimpliVity. We are also new Nutanix partners, so we are working with a couple of hyper-converged solutions. In addition to that, we are an advanced partner for VMware. At the moment we don't have any vSAN references, however, we are a certified VMware partner. We might work with an older version. I'm not familiar with the latest one. Mainly, I'm a part of the pre-sales team. Our implementation guys handle the deployment. They are dealing with the versions and upgrades. I'm involved in pre-sales. I'd advise potential new users that, if you have large volumes on backups and if you have any plans to go for DR, so you can start with SimpliVity. I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2022-02-03T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from A stable and scalable hyperconverged infrastructure solution What is our primary use case? We are selling SimpliVity based on customer requirements which include HCI solutions with a lot of applications. What is most valuable? HPE SimpliVity is a very valuable and effective solution. It's also a scalable solution. As the customer requirements and application requirements increase, it can scale to accommodate them. What needs improvement? It would be better if it could integrate more easily with other vendors. For how long have I used the solution? I have been working with HPE SimpliVity for about three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? HPE SimpliVity is a stable solution. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? HPE SimpliVity is a scalable solution. How are customer service and support? HPE local and global technical support is very good. Customers can reach them easily. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was straightforward. There were no complications. Which other solutions did I evaluate? SimpliVity is an HPE brand, and it comes with the advantage of easily using Hyper-V and VMware solutions. Hyper-V customers can move to VMware or use both solutions. HyperFlex for this isn't so easy. What other advice do I have? I would recommend HPE and the processing of HPE SimpliVity to potential users. On a scale from one to ten, I would give HPE SimpliVity an eight. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-10-11T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Stable, cost-effective and easy to set up What is our primary use case? I work with medium-sized clients who have around 200 users. SimpliVity is a general-purpose solution for all kinds of VMs. With SimpliVity, because we can own the VMware, you can have all VMs of any type of VDI. What is most valuable? What I like about the solution, is that SimpliVity is easy to deploy and maintain. It's really performing very well. The ratio of price to performance is really good. We just renewed and will receive new equipment in November. So even the price is really attractive compared to other solutions. What needs improvement? It could integrate better with other platforms. It's a proprietary solution of HPE, so you are stuck. Before I was running SimpliVity as an independent solution. it wasn't a card and software, so you could put in whatever server, IBM, Dell, etc. Now it's a proprietary solution for HPE, but it's difficult for them to improve because they have both solutions. But it's the same with Nutanix, I will say. For how long have I used the solution? I'm a consultant I've been I'm using SimpliVity for many years, about five. With my current client, I've been using it for two years now. What do I think about the stability of the solution? SimpliVity is definitely stable. I'm running infrastructure with six nodes, so it's always the same. It's small but all six are running very well. Maybe if you have 60 or 100, you might have a different point of view, but for me, it's absolutely stable. How are customer service and support? SimpliVity's support is great. I was doing some experimenting last December and I had a strange problem, so got in touch with a woman from tech support and it was solved. So I only had one problem based on one experiment. Of course, if I had more than that, maybe I would experience some disappointment. But for me, I had only one problem. How was the initial setup? Setting up SimpliVity is straightforward. In one day, you can have a complete solution up and running. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I think it's a complete package. We buy the license with support for five years. It's a subscription, I will say, but it's included when you buy the SimpliVity solution from HPE. You have a contract with the software warranty and upgrades. You can choose a license for one, three, or five years, and it's all included. What other advice do I have? For me, SimpliVity is a 10 out of 10. I would recommend it, but also you have to follow the best practices. Like a lot of things, I can imagine that if you think you know what you're doing but you don't know, you can have some trouble. But if you follow the best practices and the rules, you will have no issues. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2021-10-03T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Stable, with quick backups and responsive technical support What is our primary use case? We run our 50+ virtual servers on SimpliVity and also use it for backups. How has it helped my organization? 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. What is most valuable? 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. What needs improvement? 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. For how long have I used the solution? We've used the solution for three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? 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. How are customer service and support? 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. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? 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. How was the initial setup? 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. What about the implementation team? 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. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? 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. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We evaluated Dell VxRail, VMware vSAN, and Nutanix. What other advice do I have? 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. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-10-23T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from A reliable and stable solution with easy installation and good tech support What is our primary use case? We are using the latest update. Our main use case involves the applying of core applications. What is most valuable? Most valuable features include the data resiliency, backup and ability to capture full VM without the need for additional software, as well as the transfer from Side A to Side B, at a lower bandwidth. What needs improvement? When it comes to upgrading and additional features, it would be nice if the solution had the ability to fully archive data in an external storage solution other than HPE Simplivity. I wish to see an improved compute node selection, to allow us to select something other than merely the two socket system. It can go through four sockets, such as the DL580. I would like to see the ability to do the integration between HCI and dHCI. I understand that there is a roadmap for these, but I have yet to see the release. Hopefully, this will occur soon. Other than this, so far so good. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using HPE Simplivity for five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The overall stability and performance is good. We find it to be simple. From a technical standpoint, we would say that the product is reliable. As of now, we have experienced only one hard drive failure. The solution is quite stable and we have not experienced issues in this regard. Considering the time we run, we have had zero downtime. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is scalable, although one occasionally will wish to have a four socket processor. As we do not possess this, we have had multiple systems running. How are customer service and support? We have occasionally contacted technical support concerning the update or when problems arise. We arrange the support. Mostly, problems happen during the hardware failure as the result of normal wear and tear. The support has been okay thus far. For the last couple of years, so far so good, without problems, although the transition from Simplivity to HP did involve a big hiccup. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was straightforward. What about the implementation team? We handled the installation entirely on our own. The solution only requires normal basic housekeeping, such as with data retention time. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price is comparatively okay. The solution is affordable and quite reasonably priced in terms of the product one gets. The licensing cost is all inclusive. What other advice do I have? There are around 100 people in my company working with the solution. The solution simplifies IT life. In terms of resources such as OT and data backup, one can save a lot in cost. Around the clock one need not worry about having comprehensive backup. The entire system remains up and running during office hours and there is no need to wait for anything. Overall, one is assured that all the data is backed up and can be restored. Prior to running HCL, we had to do testing, much more planning and sometimes remain overnight beyond office hours. Nobody wishes to do this nowadays. All is good with the solution. As we are satisfied with HPE Simplivity so far, I rate it as a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-10-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Simple to administer. What is our primary use case? Disaster recovery to a secondary datacenter. In order to do that, all of our server infrastructure runs on Simplivity. How has it helped my organization? We now have much lower RPOs, from hours to seconds. It is now much simpler for us to deploy additional workloads, since we do not have to take care anymore of storage provisioning. The Simplivity datastores are so efficient that the never seem to fill up, or at least not that fast anymore. What is most valuable? Data replication, backup and recovery of VMs and disks. Data replication happens in the background once the policy is set and takes few seconds. The fact that the data is deduped inline makes this possible, as only the changes not already replicated blocks are written, which is extremely efficient. 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. This is the reason why we did choose Omnicubes. We are able to replicate our data in a very simple manner (as this happens in the background) and comply to our business needs. Simplivity Omnicube is able to replicate data in a simple and reliable manner. There is nothing to be done for the IT Admins and very few to control, as the technology is very stable. The replication is way faster than expected, due to the advantages of the deduplication and compression. Currently we see 3.4 dedup ration 1nd 1.5 compression. When we manually backup (or automatically replicate by policy) one VM to the remote location, the job is completed within seconds or few minutes in the worst case. The storage footprint is minimal. There are no ‘vmware snapshots’ involved in this technology (which could be left over and create issues, as it could happen with other Backup Technologies). As a plus of using Omnicubes, we have discovered that we now can perform almost instantaneous recovery of VMs. Cloning a VM is done in few seconds (also across sites), same applies to recovery of VMS or single drives (Vmdk). In one occasion we needed to recover a 2-TB partition of a file server. We completed the recovery in about 5 seconds, the data was recovered from the remote location. We could basically move our whole workloads across datacenters in few minutes, if needed. What needs improvement? 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. While this is responsibility of Vmware (having killed the c-client), the question is legitimate, because the client is what you need to restore your data in the end, and in such situation you do not have time to waste. What do I think about the stability of the solution? No. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No. When scaling you need to consider that scaling an hyperconverged infrstructure is different from a traditional server stacks, because basically you are tied to adding one building block which adds server, cpu, ram, disk all at once. in a traditional stack you will look at each component constantly and scale them up indipendently. Another aspect is that the indicator which will tell you when it is time to scale might be different from your expectations. In my experience we did in the past scale traditional stacks when the storage was getting full. After implementing Simplivity, my indicator is now the disk latency. The storage itself will almost never get full, but after adding additional workloads for 2 years I have learned that although the disk is not full, you want to look at certain thresholds in your disk latency, or in certain cases at RAM availability on the appliances. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: The level has been very good until now, I know that after HPe taking over some users have encountered delay in being services. This did not happen to me. Update: it's a pity, that no email support anymore is available. Now we have to dial in and create a support case. Before the acquisition, creating a support case was a breeze. I hope HPe will fix this. Technical Support: Excellent. Update: Well, good to very good. there is room for improvement. Which solutions did we use previously? we did not have disaster recovery in place before. How was the initial setup? not at all. Set up takes a couple of hours, and then it's important to have a guideline about which data replication (data protection) policies you want to have in place. Once they are defined (in a matter of minutes), it's done. What about the implementation team? Good. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? All-in license, simple and fair. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Nutanix, and other traditional storage/server architecture options. What other advice do I have? Focus on the right sizing for your application tier. The solution is very simple to administer. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-27T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Valuable features include ease of use, disaster recovery, and reliability What is our primary use case? At FDF Energy Services, IT is an important differentiator. It allows us to maintain a significant competitive advantage in the market. OmniCube is a perfect fit for our infrastructure because it allows us to simultaneously improve our levels of data protection and disaster recovery capabilities, while significantly reducing our costs. The simplification of our IT environment, coupled with the cost savings, allows us to further invest in the applications running our business. How has it helped my organization? SimpliVity allowed us to radically simplify our infrastructure. The solution provides superior value and innovation in a converged solution. We chose SimpliVity over Nutanix because OmniCube is architected with inline dedupe and compression. This includes simple backup and data protection for all our VMs, and can be managed centrally from one login and interface through VMware vCenter. When SimpliVity announced the availability of its solution with Cisco, we jumped at the opportunity. Now, we are running all of our core applications on the SimpliVity/Cisco platform. The technology is a game changer. It represents the future of convergence. I love the "data center-in-a-box" concept, and it is backed by solid hardware and all the functionality needed, including data deduplication, replication, and WAN optimization. What is most valuable? * Ease of Use * Disaster recovery * Reliability IT is the lifeline of the company. Early on, management aligned business strategy with IT strategy, ranging from sales to product delivery. Weekly manager meetings ensured that business strategy is aligned with IT, allowing us to develop processes without bringing IT in later. For how long have I used the solution? Three to five years. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It was inconceivable that we could deploy a 2U solution and gain all the server, storage, and data protection functionality that we needed. Scalability was a huge factor, along with ease of use, and management, which was all integrated from within vCenter. How is customer service and technical support? Support has been top notch, both responsive and knowledgeable. What was our ROI? As an early adopter of SimpliVity’s hyper-converged infrastructure, we have seen significant benefits to the solution. SimpliVity reduced our data center footprint from 20U to 4U, increasing our application delivery performance by 75 percent. It lowered our operational costs in a major way. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We looked at a lot of other converged infrastructure solutions. To be honest, many of them are ‘one-trick ponies’ which didn’t deliver the inline deduplication, scalability, built-in data protection capabilities or superior architecture that SimpliVity’s OmniCube did. What other advice do I have? I have a lot of confidence in the SimpliVity OmniCube product. It has enabled us to streamline our data center and improve our ability to rapidly recover from a disaster. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-07-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It is a simple, self-managed product which makes my job simple What is our primary use case? We use it for hosting stuff for clients. How has it helped my organization? It easily backs up our systems, allowing us to recover them. It makes my job simple. What is most valuable? * It comes all in one box. * It is simple and easy to use. * Everything works as advertised. What needs improvement? HPE could give us more options for server models to chose when using the product. Right now, we can only use the DL380. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability is self-managed. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability may be a little limited. It depends on what we select with it. How are customer service and technical support? We haven't had any issues or problems with the technical support. They help us by setting up a demo and making sure everything functions correctly with the product before we ship it to the client. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? Our previous solution was hardware, not a one box solution. It had multiple servers. It was time to upgrade the client's solution. We chose to go with this solution because it was a small market client. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was straightforward. It was simple to set up. After setting it up, it was easy to manage. What about the implementation team? We used HPE for the deployment. Our experience with them was great. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We are an HPE shop. Most of the stuff that we have is HPE, so there was only one choice for us. What other advice do I have? I would recommend buying this product. It is a simple, self-managed product. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-07T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Helped us create our regional data centers without a huge investment What is our primary use case? We use it in our original data centers and large sites. How has it helped my organization? It let us create our regional data centers without a huge investment. We didn't have to have a lot of VL servers or an entire chassis to build out an ESX farm or attach storage. What is most valuable? * The data deduplication * The integration with our VMware was pretty sweet. What needs improvement? I would like to see an option to add external storage that can be seen by all of the nodes in a stack. For example, if I need to build a file share, or something, where there is not enough data than needs to be accessed quickly, but there is a lot of data, putting a large file share or user file share on SimpliVity currently doesn't makes sense. We had failures out-of-the-box of our new technology along with a few bugs during the initial setup. Our initial five nodes had three power failures during setup. The OmniStack module needs improvement, because from what I have read, the newer versions use even more memory. So, as we upgrade, we lose resources available for systems. What do I think about the stability of the solution? After initial setup, it is okay. We have had some failures out-of-the-box. We have had some failures with the OmniStack module. One thing that we didn't fully understand was how much of the internal memory was used up by the OmniStack piece, which basically makes up SimpliVity. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Scaling is piece of cake. We have been able to scale up in our Asia-Pac region. We even are doing site-to-site replication of certain systems that we need to have high availability on. How are customer service and technical support? I haven't any problems with the technical support. The teams are usually pretty good at what they do. Getting them in certain regions is harder than actual fixing the problems, e.g., getting somebody onsite if there are not that many technicians, like in Europe or Asia, who are trained. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? We have a very dispersed environment and were looking to centralize. We were using traditional VMware farms, standalone servers, etc. With new technology as the next thing, when we are replacing our environment, we try to go with not only what fits from a cost perspective, but we also try to stay on the edge of technology since we tend to keep our environments past their usual lives. So, it's better to start new and work out the bugs. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It is pretty much out-of-the-box. Once Pointnext got the initial connection between all the nodes set, it was pretty straightforward from there. Then, building the ESX farm was a pretty standard build. What about the implementation team? Everything in our organization is outsourced, so we use consultants. They are embedded vendors, so our experience with them is good. We paid for installation services from Pointnext, What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The only thing that I think we are paying for is the VMware licenses, but we are enterprise, so it is not horrible. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We are primarily an HPE shop with most of our storage, networking equipment, and servers. We did a review on Dell EMC and Lenovo. However, it would have been a bigger stretch for us to switch than to stick with HPE. What other advice do I have? Definitely consider the product. Once it is up and running, it is pretty rock solid. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-10T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The remote backup functionality is valuable. What is most valuable? * Inline deduplication and compression * Rapid cloning and provisioning of VMs * Remote backup functionality * Easy handling within vSphere client due to the Simplivity plugin How has it helped my organization? * Standardization of ROBOs For how long have I used the solution? I have used it for two years. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? There were minor bugs that were fixed. What do I think about the stability of the solution? There were minor bugs that were fixed. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? So far, we have not encountered any issues with scalability. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Customer service is very good; fast reaction time. Technical Support: Technical support is very good; always solid statements. Which solutions did we use previously? We didn't previously use a different solution. How was the initial setup? Setup was easy. What about the implementation team? A technical engineer from Simplivity implemented it. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Price-performance is good. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Before choosing, we evaluated Nutanix, but didn't like the 3 nodes concept at that time. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-02-09T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Greatly reduced the amount of administration for our site What is our primary use case? 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. What is most valuable? 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. What needs improvement? 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. What do I think about the stability of the solution? 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. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? 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. How are customer service and technical support? 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. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? 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. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe that we bought the solution through some reseller in Brazil. Which other solutions did I evaluate? I feel like all the other companies gave up. What other advice do I have? 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. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-04T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Having a private cloud for my organization is valuable. How has it helped my organization? The inline dedupe and compression has allowed me to run all my servers and appliances (total 60) in an HA configuration while taking up just 8U of rack space (4x2U nodes). There is incredibly fast I/O and with the OmniCubes, my users are spoiled with the super-fast reads and writes. Did I mention that we truly enjoy our 99.999% up time? What is most valuable? The ease of managing this system! Recently added the All Flash CN3400F and oh my goodness are these nodes fast as lighting! I love having a private cloud for my organization. Public cloud will never care for my organizations data more than I do. What needs improvement? I gave it an excellent rating, thus I think it's well excellent! If there was anything I would like to see, it would be indexed backups. You have to hunt a bit if you have to restore a file. Index the backups and it would be perfect! What do I think about the stability of the solution? It's been a little dodgy this year on my CN3000s at Prod when they have lost HA Sync. This has only happened when we've lost Internet connection to our DR site. I'm still trying to understand why this happens. It's quite a pain when this occurs. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Slight inconvenience with scaling out with the All Flash nodes. We had to put them into their own datacenter because of compatibility issues with the CN3000s (seriously?). While it's not the end of the world, I unfortunately am not able to do inline vmotion of servers between the datacenters. Instead I have to do a cold storage vmotion with a powered off guest server. Not the end of the world, but is inconvenient to me because it makes for some late nights. A larger server takes many hours to move over my 1GB network. This may just be an issue with my configuration and lack of a 10GB switch. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: Customer service has been slightly impacted since HP purchased Simplvity. The support is still excellent, it just takes them a bit more time to get back to you when you open even a critical ticket. I'll give HP some time to adjust and update this part of the review later. Technical Support: Technical support is excellent +++. The HP purchase of Simplvity has not impacted the skill level of the engineers I have worked with. They are still great. Which solutions did we use previously? We had an aging Compellent SAN which was critically close to running out of disk space. Dell would not sell me an additional disk enclosure, thus forcing me to do a forklift upgrade. Moving to the Simplivity HCI allowed me considerably more resources and we came in under budget. How was the initial setup? Initial setup was very straightforward. It's almost plug and play! Adding the All Flash node needed a little more effort. What about the implementation team? A vendor team implemented it. Expertise was excellent. I couldn't have asked for better. What was our ROI? I'm not in finance, so I don't know the numbers, but I do know that I've since added 10 additional VMs and appliances, and can still add more without having to buy anything. I've saved on VM licensing because I was able to get rid of SRM. I couldn't even imagine how much it would cost to host all these servers in the public cloud! What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? This solution, while costly as all these solutions are, was in fact less expensive than upgrading my old SAN. Licensing is easily maintained. Keep in mind that you still have to license VMware per processor. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Before choosing this product, we also evaluated Nutanix and Dell Compellent. What other advice do I have? Having my private cloud within my Simplivity infrastructure has given me so much more than I could have ever expected. I love the ability to fire off a full, application-aware backup of a VM and have it complete in just under four seconds. Also, I can now fail my entire data center over to my DR site and have everything up an running in well under 30 minutes, with my mission-critical servers up in under 10 minutes (the servers do have to power on!). It's awesome. You do need EZ-DR by VM20/20 to accomplish this, but it is a fraction of the cost of VMware Site Recovery Manager. In the world of traditional backups using backup software which writes to either tape or disk, the backup software will index the files to match exactly to how they appear on the server. When performing a native Simplivity backup which allows for file level restoration , the folders, subfolders and files are not indexed but rather are listed in a somewhat, but not totally, random order. More often than not, when I am asked to restore something from backup, it will be a single file that someone has either accidentally deleted or overwritten. I have very large file servers which contain thousands of folders and subfolders. Without the benefit of indexing, it sometimes takes a bit of searching to find the correct folder/file that needs to be restored. It is occasionally easier to just restore the entire file server (renamed of course), which only takes about 10 seconds, and copy the file from the restored VM than it is to find the single file in the backup. This is just an inconvenience, definitely not a deal breaker. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-02-15T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Our developers are seeing faster response times in executing codes. I would like to see more storage in the next version. How has it helped my organization? It frees up time for the other system administrators. We've found better performance. Even our developers are seeing faster response times in executing codes, so they can get their code done more quickly. It has just increased the overall time. What is most valuable? Its ease of use is the most valuable feature. It is just a one-stop shop, a single appliance that I can control through my virtual center. I can manage my storage, my backups, and my disaster recovery. So, its ease to use is the most important feature. What needs improvement? I would like to see more, more, more, more, more storage in the next version. Let us populate the entire node; right now, there are 24 slots in a server and you're only allowed to populate 14. So, give us those other 10 slots, it is going to increase our density, which allows us to scale out further. What do I think about the stability of the solution? So far, it has been very stable. I've not had any issues as such. I did have some issues with getting the installations to work, but once up and running, it has been stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I'd like to see better scalability. For SimpliVity, it's hyper-converged and is limited. It doesn't scale to, maybe, where we would like to see it. However, now the fact that HPE has purchased SimpliVity and it's now HPE SimpliVity, we will start to see that it scales out across other platforms, or at least, hopefully, we will see it scale. How is customer service and technical support? The technical support was great, i.e., prior to HPE purchasing them and not so good, once HPE has purchased them. Also to be fair, it is at a transition point. At least, we have had good meetings with HPE, so hopefully they've heard our needs and will respond accordingly. They've been willing to listen to us, however, whether we see action come out of that is another story. Which solutions did we use previously? I saw SimpliVity about two or two and a half years ago, at a VMR user group in New England and it just appealed to me. The very first time I saw VMware I said, "Oh my God, I can't believe you can do that." Later on, I saw SimpliVity and I said, "Oh my God, I can't believe you can do that. That's really cool." We've always used different solutions, we've been an HPE shop, now, for a long time. We have used more traditional solutions, like HPE c7000 Blade Chassis, 3PAR, big storage in the backend not necessarily the hyper-converged. How was the initial setup? The setup was complex, networking is not as straightforward. The deployment manager for SimpliVity was, maybe, not in full production, i.e., maybe a step above beta, for at least the version we used. I understand that this is getting addressed with HPE OneView, but I've not seen a OneView product deploy yet. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We have done PoCs with a number of the other competitors. Ease of use, support, price, and durability are the factors that we look for while selecting a vendor. That was a big check for us, as far as moving further with HPE SimpliVity; the fact that we can buy it on HPE. Being an HPE shop, we like that we can now purchase the product, a HPE product, and an HPE hardware. What other advice do I have? I would advise to go for the All-Flash option, to look at its ease of use. Some of the other competitors have multiple administration consoles where you have to get into this one console to do this one thing and get into that console to do another piece. Really for us, it's having my entire team at one place, i.e., one single-pane-of-glass that they can work out of and it enables all of us to do the same job. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-13T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from I am backing up all my data in seconds How has it helped my organization? 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. What is most valuable? 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. What needs improvement? I think first we should make a hardware upgrade. What do I think about the stability of the solution? No, it's stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No, it works well. How is customer service and technical support? I haven't needed technical support yet. Which solutions did we use previously? I was using classical storage, server technology, because it's not easy to manage all hardware capacity. How was the initial setup? It was straightforward. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price should be cheaper. Which other solutions did I evaluate? I only looked at Nutanix and VMware vSAN, but SimpliVity is convenient for our systems. What other advice do I have? Anyone looking to implement it should do so without losing any time. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-09-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Restores that used to take us days can now be done almost instantly What is our primary use case? We use SimpliVity in our retail stores as a backup solution. How has it helped my organization? 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. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature is the quick restore. What needs improvement? 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. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It seems pretty stable in regard to the way it's working with the Federation and in the local copies. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability is good. It's scalable to what we need it for. How are customer service and technical support? The technical support is amazing. It's really good. We've gotten the white-glove treatment from HPE and CDW. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? 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. How was the initial setup? 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. What about the implementation team? 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. What was our ROI? We haven't really seen ROI yet because we're still fairly new to the product. Which other solutions did I evaluate? 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. What other advice do I have? 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. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-07-09T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The flexibility needs improvement and it needs an alerting system, yet it is stable and easy to install What is our primary use case? SimpliVity is used when a customer is looking to build a private cloud environment. What is most valuable? SimpliVity works well in a UAT environment. What needs improvement? They have made several technology changes. Compared to the previous version, SimpliVity was acquired by HPE and now the product has totally changed. Initially, the response was great with SimpliVity. After the technology changed the feedback from customers was not good. As a result, we no longer focus on Simplivity. Our focus is more on Nutanix Hyperconverged. SimpliVity has very limited options for the virtualization layer. They may have to with VMware or something similar. The flexibility should be present. It should be the customer's choice of what virtualization layer they will choose, and not mandated from the solution that you have to use VMware. VMware is not cheap. It comes with its own cost. If the customer has the option to go with the Microsoft Hyper-V then customers should get the flexibility to have Hyper-V in place of the hypervisor. Ultimately, the hypervisor functionality by default when you go for the data center becomes more cost-effective. It should have the intelligence, to alert you that a failure of the cache is about to happen. It should be able to give you the predictive alarm and it should create its own backup. It should have some provision where the cache is being copied to another location. So when one copy has been deleted or a copy has been corrupted, we should be able to recover it from the other site to ensure the office data is secure. It should have some provision wherein the cache is being copied to some other location so that even if one copy has been deleted or one copy has been corrupted, we are able to recover it from the other location which will keep the office data secure. From a product perspective, it should be more flexible. It should allow users to have more data control in areas such as the cache. It should allow the user to have more data reduction flexibility. Data reduction is something that is completely missing in the current solution, once SimpliVity was bought by HPE. It was the primary reason customers were interested in it. SimpliVity handles the data. HCI is about how RAID is maintained over the network, and how many duplicate copies have been stored, or whether you are going for RF2 or RF3. Those things have to be taken into consideration. With VMware,vSAN, and SimpliVity they are more dependent on the cache. If the cache fails then I have to recover the data. It's complete downtown for me. Anytime the data is not recovered, it's business downtime. For how long have I used the solution? We have been providing this solution to our customers over the last year, but overall, we have been working with it for between four and five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Now that the technology has been changed, the product stability will always be in doubt. The more they are integrating and trying to match the flexibility that Nutanix has been providing, and it has become more complex. The hypervisor is becoming the heart of the solution. It is controlling the complete solution. It is providing you the contour, the storage, and the configuration of the virtual infrastructure. This can be problematic when it comes to SimpliVity. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? SimpliVity offers built-in scalability but there is an override with the data protection policy that they are providing, what kind of flexibility when it comes to managing the complete virtual machines. The cluster has its own limitation. You cannot go beyond 32 or 64 nodes. You can have multiple clusters and you can share your application across the clusters, but, yes, there are limitations. Though the limitation is not small it allows you to have 32 or 64 nodes in a cluster. When it comes to managing it, the more you add, the more complex it becomes to manage. We have given it to many customers. Few of the customers are running it for the highest number of possible nodes in the clusters. How are customer service and technical support? They provide good technical support. If the solution has any fundamental challenges then it is not something that anyone can address. How was the initial setup? It will take less than one day to start with a basic three-node cluster. It is simple to install but it is hard to maintain. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? In terms of the licenses, customers do not actually get any benefit. They have to purchase the VMware vCloud Suite as a bundled solution. There is no flexibility in terms of choosing what license the customer wants to use. Irrespective of the features that the customer needs, they have to pay more for fewer features they want to use. Which other solutions did I evaluate? The difference between the HCI and the basic traditional environment is that it mitigates the bottleneck of the traditional solution. Customers are looking to have an environment that is completely scalable. HCI is a platform that you can always choose. That is the flexibility that is in demand when it comes to the private cloud. Whenever building a private cloud, scalability should be a built-in feature. SimpliVity does offer it but there is an override in terms of the data reduction policy they are providing. What kind of flexibility in terms of managing the complete virtual machines. Now when it comes to SimpliVity, they have very limited options for the virtualization layer. They may have to go with VMware and that is something that I'll say not all the customers will be keen to consider. What other advice do I have? If someone asks me today which product to implement, I'll say that if you have a UAT environment, then you try to put it on SimpliVity. But when it comes to the production, or when it comes to a critical application or critical business need, you put it on the Nutanix Hyperconverged Infrastructure. I only recommend this solution in a UAT environment, but not for production or critical environment. SimpliVity cannot be deployed on the cloud. The technical team is good because it is being managed by the HPE team only. The HPE technical team is always good. It has various limitations and over time, rather than improvising, they have diluted the real essence of the product. I would rate HPE SimpliVity a five out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2021-03-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Beneficial build-in backup, helpful technical support, and stable What is our primary use case? HPE SimpliVity is mainly used for virtualized environments. What is most valuable? The most valuable features of SimpliVity are the built-in backup and immunity to ransomware. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately four years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? When it comes to virtualization, SimpliVity is based on VMware, and VMware is more stable than other solutions, such as Hyper-V. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I would recommend this solution to others. We have approximately 10 customers using this solution. How are customer service and technical support? The technical support has been good. They know a lot of information and are helpful. How was the initial setup? 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. What about the implementation team? We have approximately five engineers that do the implementation and maintenance of the solution. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? 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. What other advice do I have? 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. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2021-07-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Single management of the complete stack, fast creation of VM systems, and very good support What is our primary use case? I am not an end-user. I am a Solutions Architect, and I design solutions based on SimpliVity. Our F&B clients use it in their companies. What is most valuable? Our clients are very comfortable with the single management of the complete stack. The creation of VM systems is also very fast. What needs improvement? Its price can be improved. Customers always look for better prices. It is more expensive as compared to other products available in the market. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is stable. How are customer service and technical support? Technical support is very good for HPE. As compared to other vendors, HPE provides better support for all products, not only for hyper-converged solutions. 90% of our business constitutes HPE solutions. Customers who have a certain set of protocols from their other sub-regions or head offices go with other vendors. We don't have any choice on that. How was the initial setup? Its initial setup is a little bit tricky. The actual setup itself takes less time, but it is the planning that takes more time. As HPE claims, an organization can reduce the time drastically and set it up within 30 minutes, but that is a theoretical duration. Practically, it takes longer. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Customers always complain that SimpliVity is a little bit higher in price point as compared to other solutions available in the market. What other advice do I have? If an organization's IT team does a complete planned implementation, then that process will be very easy and very quick. If you plan properly before implementing it, you would feel the value of the product. If there is something wrong with the planning, then definitely your expectations from the product would not be met. In my opinion, most of the time, organizations invest in solutions, but they don't invest in the proper resources and implementation. It would be good if people can use HPE's expertise so that they have a greater experience when they invest in these solutions, and they are able to see the value of the solutions implemented by the experts. I would rate HPE SimpliVity an eight out of 10. I would like to see improvements in terms of the setup and the price. No customer will have 100% satisfaction, but we can raise the bar of satisfaction when we overcome these hiccups. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:partner
Date published: 2021-07-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Helpful technical support, good virtualization, and helps save on management costs What is our primary use case? I am primarily using the product in order to create our open banking solution. How has it helped my organization? Although it is still early, we are optimistic that it will decrease our management costs and many resource costs due to the fact that everything is included in one box in SimpliVity. That includes the storage network, CPU, memory, et cetera. If everything is in one box, it will likely reduce our managed services cost. What is most valuable? We really enjoy the virtualization that the solution offers. It's an aspect of the product we use a lot. Technical support is quite helpful and responsive. It looks like the solution will help us decrease management costs. It seems to be providing us with good value. What needs improvement? The product is expensive. We are in Turkey and the Turkish Lira currency is higher than in other countries. $1 is about 9 Turkish Lira now. If you buy something in US dollars, and if you calculate it in our currency, that means we need to multiply the total by nine. It's costly. The initial configuration is complicated. HPE had to help us. HPE is complex. HPE SimpliVity uses some additional memory inside in order to do site infrastructure work. However, you need to calculate this. You need to make sure you have enough memory and CPU for your purposes now and in the future. However, they don't explain that you might lose, for example, 10% of memory during configuration. Knowing that might affect what you actually need in the long run. They really have to lay out for their customers at the outset what is used and how much space is taken up, et cetera. That way, you can calculate that into your capacity. For how long have I used the solution? I've only really been using the solution for less than a month. It hasn't been too long just yet. What do I think about the stability of the solution? We haven't yet had a chance to do any benchmark tests on the product. We still have to go through this process. Therefore, it's difficult to gauge stability at this time. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We recently started using the product, and therefore not everyone was on the solution. We're at about 60% uptake now. While we may expand in the future, we have not yet tried to scale the solution. It may be something we consider down the line. How are customer service and technical support? We've been in touch with technical support, especially at the outset. We found them to be very helpful and responsive overall. We have been quite satisfied with the level of service they have provided to us. They are quite knowledgeable. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We previously used Intel services and products previously. We decided to switch, and, due to Turkish regulations, we couldn't use a public cloud product. That's why we chose HPE. How was the initial setup? The initial setup can be pretty complex, especially in relation to the configuration. It was different from what we used and managed before. As it was a new system and a new way of doing things, we needed help. What about the implementation team? We had to get HPE to help us with the initial configuration. We couldn't handle it ourselves. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The pricing is expensive, and even more so due to the fact that we have an unfavorable exchange rate between the Turkish Lira and the American dollar. I have not seen any other costs over and above the licensing fee itself. What other advice do I have? We're just customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with HPE. I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-05-20T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Quick to backup and transfer, and it is easy to scale What is our primary use case? We are resellers. We provide HPE products to our customers. This solution is used with UDI, HCI, the hybrid cloud, Microsoft Azure, and other Microsoft products. What is most valuable? The most valuable features of this solution are the backup rate and the backup transfer. You don't have to purchase any other licenses other than Microsoft or for VMware, everything is included in your box. Your backup and transfer time is less. You can move one TB of VM data in one minute, which is one of SimpliVity's benefits. What needs improvement? In my experience, the only improvement that can be made is the price. It is much more costly than other solutions such as VxRail. We would like to provide our customers with a virtual demo and have not been able to find this available. We don't have access to show the demo virtually to our customers or partners. This is lacking in this sector. We are not able to provide hands-on experience. The centric management could be simplified or more user-friendly. Customers require an easier way to handle any product. For how long have I used the solution? I have been selling this solution for two years. We always register our clients with the newest versions. What do I think about the stability of the solution? For stability, our customers prefer on-premises solutions, but they can also deploy the hybrid cloud, which allows them to instantly transfer from on-premises to the cloud. This solution is quite stable. We have not found any issues with stability to remote to our customers. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? HPE SimpliVity is easy to scale. How are customer service and technical support? We have been in contact with technical support when we have had some issues. We have always received answers in a timely fashion. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? VxRail is the only competitor, no other product comes near HPE SimpliVity. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is straightforward. It's simple. Maintenance is required because it is complex. You are getting your storage, the server, and the networking protocol in one box. It requires a few technical engineers, otherwise, you can manage this product after the installation. What about the implementation team? We provide our customers with a demo in our data center and an hour per day. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? It's a costly solution and is more expensive than VxRail. When you compare with other competitors, such as Cisco HyperFlex, it is much more expensive than SimpliVity. In the rankings, Cisco is seventh and SimpliVity comes in fifth. What other advice do I have? Many customers are using this solution and have said that it comes down to the price. Otherwise, it's a good product. This product is not suitable for small companies as they don't require this much. Unless they have 20 to 30 lakhs (two to three million), it would be better suited for medium to large companies. I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it. I would rate HPE SimpliVity a ten out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? Hybrid Cloud Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2021-05-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Easy to configure and simple to work with but technical support could be better What is our primary use case? We primarily use the solution for hyper-converged purposes. What is most valuable? It's quite simple to work with. I don't have to configure any other storage system. The solution is scalable. What needs improvement? The initial configuration could be improved. The way that it handles the memory could be better. The initial setup can be quite difficult. Technical support needs to be more responsive. For how long have I used the solution? I've used the solution for a while. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The product is very scalable. We use the solution for 15 people. We are increasing usage. We already bought some systems that are the same as HPE. However, that's due to the fact that our company has a standard of using HPE. If I could, might choose another solution. How are customer service and support? Technical support is not so good. We have some issues with the memory and we still don't have answers for that problem. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? This was the first hyper-converged system we used, however, we do have some experience with VMware now. How was the initial setup? The initial is quite difficult for me. That's mostly due to the configuration as it is difficult to understand the configuration. The deployment process took quite a long time. I cannot remember exactly how many days or weeks, however. We only need two engineers for deployment and maintenance. What about the implementation team? We handled the solution with the help of a partner. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I can't speak to the licensing costs. I don't have access to that information. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We did look at some other options. I can't speak to the exact brands, however. What other advice do I have? I'm a customer. This is an overall good product. However, they do need to work a little bit on the support. I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-01-10T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Responsive support, integrated backup features, and simple node expansion What is our primary use case? I use HPE SimpliVity for the virtual infrastructure of my servers. What is most valuable? The solution has integrated backup features that are useful. What needs improvement? There are some small changes that can be made to the interface to improve it but it typically works well. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using HPE SimpliVity for approximately one year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is highly stable. I'm using the cluster deployment, site A and site B as if it was only one site and it is very good for zero downtime. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is scalable, I only need to add new nodes to expand. How are customer service and support? The support from HPE is very good, they are helpful. How was the initial setup? HPE SimpliVity is easy to implement. What other advice do I have? My advice to others wanting to use HPE SimpliVity is for them to try it out. It's really good if you compare it with different solutions. I would suggest trying other solutions to see which one suits their business better. In this case, HPE SimpliVity brought a lot of things to the table, such as the backup is already integrated with this solution, which is very helpful. There are a lot of advantages to HPE SimpliVity. I rate HPE SimpliVity a nine out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-01-14T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Very robust technology with great restore features What is our primary use case? We use this product when our customers need software protection, built-in backup, and an NDR solution. I'm a solutions specialist. What is most valuable? The built-in backup and quick restore are good features. In general, the technology is very robust. What needs improvement? If I want to upgrade any hardware components or make any changes to the hardware configuration, there are a lot of parameters I need to consider with respect to HP security. If I want to upgrade, I sometimes have to replace the box or add a new server to the environment or setup. It's a limitation of HP connectivity. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using this solution for three years. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? For small and medium-sized businesses the scalability is fine. There are likely to be issues in large environments and it requires extra planning. How are customer service and support? The technical support is good. They take on end-to-end responsibility for our Hypervisor as well as HPE components and security software. It's a good combination because both the hardware and software are supported by a single entity. How was the initial setup? We sometimes face challenges during the initial setup. Once the setup is completed everything is stable. HP has its own customization and deployment process. In theory, it's pretty simple. It's essential to have a properly configured network for successful completion of the deployment. Including the network configuration, implementation can be completed in less than two days. It just requires a certified engineer to complete the installation. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Licensing is slightly more expensive in comparison to the competition but I think SimpliVity provides very good value. Which other solutions did I evaluate? I think SimpliVity has an edge over other solutions when it comes to the package as a whole. What other advice do I have? I recommend Simplivity. It helps organizations implement their business applications and it provides a robust infrastructure to run a business. I rate this solution 10 out of 10. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Integrator
Date published: 2023-05-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Provides a unified management interface that allows administrators to manage all aspects of the infrastructure What is most valuable? What I appreciate most about HPE SimpliVity is its seamless integration of hardware. The flexibility to use any hypervisor adds an extra layer of convenience, making it a standout solution for streamlined and adaptable infrastructure management. What needs improvement? In terms of improvement, integration with external solutions outside the HPE posed challenges. It might be a combination of experience gaps and communication issues. For improvement, there is the need for better integration support and consideration of cost implications, particularly for smaller setups with budget constraints looking to leverage HCI advantages. For how long have I used the solution? I have been working with HPE SimpliVity for seven months. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I would rate the stability of the solution as an eight out of ten. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? HPE SimpliVity is scalable within certain limits. Adding nodes to a cluster is straightforward, but there's a constraint on the number of nodes you can add. If you need extensive scalability, you might want to compare it with solutions like Nutanix or Dell, which support a larger number of nodes. I work with a diverse range of clients, including small, medium, and large enterprises. HPE SimpliVity is suitable for all of them. How are customer service and support? HPE support has been generally good but has room for improvement. There were instances where internal coordination seemed lacking, making it challenging to connect with the right person promptly. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate it an eight. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? HPE SimpliVity compares well with other HCI solutions, but its reliance on VMware ESXi as the primary hypervisor might limit flexibility. In the hypervisor landscape, VMware holds a strong position, followed by Nutanix, Dell VxRail, and then SimpliVity. HPE may need to consider diversifying hypervisor options for broader compatibility. How was the initial setup? I would rate the easiness of the initial setup as a nine out of ten. In my experience, deployment time for HPE SimpliVity varies. With the right setup and proper configurations, it can be done in a day. However, if there are complex integrations with insufficient documentation, it can take several days to sort out the intricacies. I believe implementing an "integration as a service" model, where common integrations are pre-configured as consumable plugins, could significantly streamline the process and add considerable value. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? HPE SimpliVity offers competitive pricing, generally lower than some alternatives. However, I believe there is room for further price adjustments, where there might be opportunities for more competitive pricing. What other advice do I have? I would definitely recommend HPE SimpliVity to others. Overall, I would rate it as an eight out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2023-12-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Offers good expandability and stability What is our primary use case? With SimpliVity, we can easily deploy multiple solutions, including storage, and allocate servers as needed. It's quite versatile. What is most valuable? I like the expandability of the solution. We can effortlessly grow the storage and resources without downtime. What needs improvement? The installation process could be simplified. It's a bit technical for non-IT users. So, the deployment could be simpler. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using it for one and a half years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I faced no issues with stability. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. There are around nine end users in our company using this solution. How are customer service and support? 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. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? 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. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was complicated for me. It took me a couple of weeks to deploy the solution. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? 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. Which other solutions did I evaluate? I evaluated VxRail. What other advice do I have? Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? Hybrid Cloud Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2023-12-22T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Though there is a need to improve the installation process, it offers good support What is our primary use case? I use the solution in my company to run approximately ten virtual machines in one region. HPE stated that my company could use SimpliVity without making any changes in our environment, especially the VMware environment. After installing HPE SimpliVity, my company saw that we could not update our central server without its permission. HPE SimpliVity must approve vCenter update, but it was not something that HPE had mentioned to our company. My company also learned that HPE SimpliVity does not support vCenter and VMware vSphere AK. HPE should have told us about the aforementioned details before we purchased HPE SimpliVity in our company, owing to which we are a bit disappointed with the tool. What needs improvement? From an improvement perspective, the setup phase needs to be made easier. The deployment process must be made easy because currently it is complex and based on Java platform. It gives out many Java errors, and the errors are not understandable, so it is very difficult to find the error point. The stability and scalability of the product are areas of concern where improvements are required. My company experienced a situation where the product was not responsive, and afterward, we learned that three days prior, one of the disks broke, due to which the system became unresponsive. For how long have I used the solution? My company installed the product last week. I have been using the solution for a week. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Stability-wise, I rate the solution a five out of ten. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a five out of ten. Approximately 50 people in my company use the product. The product is used on a regular and daily basis for operations. How are customer service and support? The solution's technical support is good. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? I have experience with servers and storage units from IBM and Lenovo. How was the initial setup? The product's installation is a very complex, difficult, and software-based process. What about the implementation team? My organization does not have any experience installing the product, so we usually get support for it from a different company. What was our ROI? My company expects to experience a return on investment from the use of the product after five years. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? HPE said that my company could use SimpliVity with VMware licenses, but HPE recommends that we separate it from the vCenter server. HPE wanted my company to purchase a few additional licenses. The licenses from the product are expensive compared to the other solutions in the market. What other advice do I have? HPE SimpliVity does not support vCenter HA and vCenter's update, which is a negative point attached to the tool. I don't recommend that any company buy HPE SimpliVity. I recommend companies buy traditional solutions, servers, and storage. I don't recommend HPE SimpliVity to any company. Though I have no experience with the product's data protection capabilities, HPE stated that its backup schedule works perfectly. I think the tool is worthy enough to be used in a company, but I won't recommend it to others. I rate the tool a five out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2024-04-26T00:00:00-04:00

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