Dell PowerFlex vs. HPE SimpliVity

Definitely would recommend this unit or this family of units into most peoples organizations. Especially if you're starting fresh with a whole dedicated SAN and dont have to move a ton of data over to these (though that is possible, it is very messy). If you're moving from existing storage, then you will have to be prepared for some sore spots!

Incentivized

SimpliVity Omnicube is well suited in any environment. Especially if you are not currently using any VMware or Hyper-V products. It is a great gateway into the virtualization of your data center. For environments where VMware is currently being used, SimpliVity will be a great addition. Less cabling is required. Better performance is guaranteed. Two boxes are required as they work as a high availability pair. As the years go by you can simply just add a box or two to grow your environment. You can also get them configured with NVidia Grid cards to bring graphical performance to the VDI environment.

Incentivized

• Dell hardware is built solid and works well
• The interface is smooth and easy to use, also updates are easy
• Much flexibility due to being a Software defined SAN

Incentivized

• HPE SimpliVity has built in incremental backups, and the restores are incredibly fast. I have seen 2TB VMs restored in 20 seconds.
• HPE SimpliVity has also made DR/BC a possibility. We have purchased and off-site DR box at a fraction of what tradition DR would cost.

Incentivized

• Loooooong firmware and software upgrades
• Those long upgrades make your hands sweat when they feel like they've stalled out
• Support can be hit or miss as far as knowledge of the product

Incentivized

• Upgrades are better than they used to be, but still complex.
• Make existing RapidDR product integral, versus a separate licensed component.

Incentivized

It sits nicely ontop of VMWare and is easy enough to use. Some improvements to the UI could be done, such as placing buttons where it is expected to have them not in unusual places, so you have to hunt for them. The backup and restore is intuitive and makes things super easy if you need to do a quick rollback. Space savings on multiple VMs and backups means we are backing up more than we need which gives us confidence in what we do. Updating the system is also fairly easy and their support has always been fantastic. They will contact us if they detect any issues, usually before we notice them!

Incentivized

Support is very good. With proactive support, you are supported by an engineer in North America who answers the phone and immediately begins assisting with your issue. The folks I have dealt with in the last several years have been very skilled and it is rare to have a ticket open for more than a day or two. Issues affecting production are dealt with appropriately and are escalated within the support organization.

Incentivized

There were not many others > 4 years ago that stacked up. Nutanix at the time just was too pricey compared to what HPE SimpliVity offered.

Incentivized

• Money saved in having a bunch of other competing storage units
• All kinds of time saved for our admins that have to deal with storage
• The units look good and give you that futurey data center vibe!

Incentivized

• We have been able to go from spending 53L per annum on backups to 23K with the HPE SimpliVity Solution
• When not needing Servers, Storage, and networking and combining it all into the one we have saved a considerable amount of space and money.
• The DR and backup confidence we have has meant we have been able to reduce risk and meet our cyber objectives and RPO / RTO times.

Incentivized