HPE SimpliVity

One node is supported (RAID protection only, not recommended). HPE recommends a 2+1 minimum (two nodes plus Arbiter) for HA and remote backup.

Up to 16 nodes per cluster and 96 nodes per federation (one vCenter with the Management Virtual Appliance); up to 48 two-node clusters per federation for ROBO.

Supported for small sites; data is protected by local RAID only and can be backed up to another cluster.

Two-node clusters are a core design point; the HPE SimpliVity Arbiter (software on a Windows system outside the cluster) is required for 2-node and stretched clusters.

Stretched clusters of up to 8+8 nodes with synchronous writes to both sites (RPO 0) and vSphere HA restart; needs 10 Gbps+ low-latency links and the Arbiter. Listed for both VMware and VM Essentials in the Gen12 QuickSpecs.

VMware deployments can add non-HCI compute nodes (HPE, Dell, Cisco, Lenovo and others) that consume SimpliVity storage; storage-only nodes are not offered.

External SAN/NAS can be attached through the hypervisor (vSphere datastores, or NFS/iSCSI/FC in VM Essentials) but is not managed or protected by SimpliVity.

All-flash only, using SAS or SATA SSDs (Gen12: 1.92-7.68 TB SAS RI/MU); no all-NVMe data tier. NVMe boot controller (NS204i) on newer models.

Global inline deduplication and compression, always on in every licence, across primary data, backups and replication. HPE guarantees 10:1 data efficiency (HyperGuarantee terms).

No erasure coding across nodes; local RAID in each node plus a full mirror copy on a second node (RAIN).

RAID + RAIN: tolerates a node failure plus disk failures; Gen12 nodes support single-disk resiliency (FTT1), Gen11 offers dual-disk options on some configs. Single-replica datastores for apps with their own HA.

Policy-based VM backups are metadata-only and near-instant; VM clones are instant and space-efficient through deduplication.

Gen11 and later support local data-at-rest encryption, but it can only be enabled before deployment. VM-level encryption relies on the hypervisor.

No per-VM storage QoS in SimpliVity; bandwidth throttling exists for remote replication. Hypervisor features (e.g. vSphere SIOC) apply where licensed.

No native SMB/NFS file services for clients.

No native S3 object storage; backups can be copied to object/cloud targets through HPE StoreOnce and Cloud Bank Storage.

Not supported; SimpliVity storage is presented only to its own hosts (and attached compute nodes in VMware).

Built-in, policy-based VM backup/replication to a remote SimpliVity cluster; remote backup RPOs as short as 10 minutes, deduplicated over the WAN.

Synchronous only within a stretched cluster (RPO 0); no sync replication between separate clusters.

HPE SimpliVity RapidDR (separately licensed in 25- or 100-VM packs) automates failover, failback and test failover with network bubble; VMware only. REST API for scripted DR.

Built-in VM-centric backup and restore (local, remote cluster, HPE StoreOnce, HPE Cloud Bank Storage) at no extra licence cost; backup reports for audit.

Immutable copies via HPE StoreOnce data immutability (governance mode, dual authorisation); SimpliVity native backups themselves are not immutable.

Standard vSphere backup APIs apply on VMware (Veeam, Commvault and others); VM Essentials integrates Commvault, Rubrik and Veeam. HPE-first integration is StoreOnce.

Backups can be copied to AWS S3, Azure or Scality via HPE Cloud Bank Storage (StoreOnce) for retention; no run-in-cloud recovery of SimpliVity VMs.

None in SimpliVity; VMware NSX (separate Broadcom licence) or VM Essentials Open vSwitch networking. Morpheus Enterprise adds an SDN plug-in.

Not native; via VMware vDefend/NSX, or HPE Aruba CX 10000 switches with VM Essentials.

SimpliVity RBAC with Administrator and Backup User roles (VMware), plus vCenter SSO or VM Essentials Manager RBAC and identity providers.

UEFI Secure Boot for ESXi hosts and VMs with TPM 2.0 (SimpliVity 5.2.0+); HPE ProLiant security with iLO 7 on Gen12 nodes.

No SimpliVity-specific FIPS or Common Criteria listing found on the pages reviewed; HPE ProLiant platform and VMware certifications apply.

Federation of up to 96 nodes under one vCenter; HPE InfoSight fleet view; GreenLake Private Cloud PC3000 console for global dashboards. A federation cannot mix VMware and VM Essentials clusters.

HPE SimpliVity Upgrade Manager does rolling upgrades of SimpliVity, ESXi and firmware (decoupled since 4.1.1, driven by the Interop Catalog); streamlined HVM upgrades on Gen12.

REST API (via the Management Virtual Appliance) and CLI; VMware PowerCLI or VM Essentials API/automation tasks for the hypervisor layer.

HPE InfoSight for SimpliVity (free): capacity trends and time-to-full prediction, wellness alerts with automatic case creation, VM noisy-neighbour views.

No self-service portal in SimpliVity itself; available through HPE Private Cloud PC3000 or HPE Morpheus Enterprise.

vMotion, HA and DRS (with SimpliVity Intelligent Workload Optimizer rules) on VMware; live migration, HA and placement on VM Essentials.

HPE SimpliVity CSI plug-in for Kubernetes on VMware; no bundled Kubernetes. HKS Kubernetes requires HPE Morpheus Advanced or Enterprise.

Managed from GreenLake via HPE Private Cloud PC3000 (provision VMs on SimpliVity and public cloud); backup copies to cloud object storage. No SimpliVity in public cloud.

HPE positions SimpliVity for VDI; linked-clone VDI supported in stretched clusters and single-replica datastores for non-persistent desktops. Broker validation is per hypervisor.

GPU options: 380 Gen11 NVIDIA L40, L4, A16 and Intel Max 1100; 325 Gen11 NVIDIA A2. GPU licences bought separately; no packaged AI stack.

No database service.

Customer racks and cables; HPE Services or a certified partner must deploy (installation service mandatory) using Deployment Manager, with a pre-check utility. Typically a day for a small cluster.

HPE SimpliVity 380 (2U, Intel) and 325 (1U, AMD) appliances only, Gen11 and Gen12; heterogeneous federation and mixing generations with similar capacity.

1U 325 nodes, 2-node HA with a remote Arbiter, deduplicated remote backups and up to 48 two-node clusters per federation make it an established ROBO/edge option.

Runs without internet (vCenter or VM Essentials Manager are local); InfoSight and GreenLake need connectivity. Updates are downloaded and staged manually.

VM Essentials includes built-in VMware-to-HVM conversion; HPE describes a guided in-place migration path from ESXi to HVM on SimpliVity. HPE Zerto (from $1 for a year under the 2026 migration programme) for live migration.

No free edition.

Licences are tied to HPE SimpliVity nodes; not portable to other hardware or clouds.

HPE supports hardware, SimpliVity and VM Essentials under one contract; VMware software support comes from Broadcom unless bought through HPE.

Tech Care Essential: 15-minute response 24x7 for most enterprise customers; Critical adds 6-hour repair commitment and outage management.

Large HPE partner channel (channel-only for new business since July 2026), HPE StoreOnce, InfoSight and Zerto integrations; VMware ecosystem on vSphere.

Hardware and licence locked to HPE appliances; VM formats are standard (VMDK or KVM qcow2/raw) so VMs can be migrated off.