Simplivity - anyone use them?
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They have some neat offerings, that they have applications folded into the solution is at least interesting. My understanding, though, is that they were priced and feature-focused on the larger medium to enterprise market only and had nothing for the SMB. This isn't an SMB-only community, but it does have a strong SMB membership and I doubt many of us are at the scale where Simplivity would be a real player. But I've not spent a lot of time with their solution.
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@Nic said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller They said they work with Dell now.
They should really get that up on their site. If I didn't know to look at them, glancing at their current offerings would be enough to turn me away.
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@scottalanmiller Yeah maybe their marketing copy isn't up to date yet. They did emphasize that they're coming down market and that you can get good use out of them as an SMB with even just one node or two. In the case of one node you'd want to replicate off site to a cloud provider.
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So they have one and two node solutions already? That's interesting. Any idea what their individual node specs are?
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@scottalanmiller not sure, they didn't delve into that level of detail. Their idea of having a hardware accelerator card is interesting though. Basically a combo of RAID, dedupe and their own custom file system under the covers.
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@Nic said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller not sure, they didn't delve into that level of detail. Their idea of having a hardware accelerator card is interesting though. Basically a combo of RAID, dedupe and their own custom file system under the covers.
It's an ASIC, I believe. An interesting approach to be sure.
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@scottalanmiller said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@Nic said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller not sure, they didn't delve into that level of detail. Their idea of having a hardware accelerator card is interesting though. Basically a combo of RAID, dedupe and their own custom file system under the covers.
It's an ASIC, I believe. An interesting approach to be sure.
I was there also. It was an interesting concept but they refused to tell a room of over 30 SpiceHeads even a basic MSRP when directly asked.
I f[moderated]ing hate that.
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@JaredBusch said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@Nic said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller not sure, they didn't delve into that level of detail. Their idea of having a hardware accelerator card is interesting though. Basically a combo of RAID, dedupe and their own custom file system under the covers.
It's an ASIC, I believe. An interesting approach to be sure.
I was there also. It was an interesting concept but they refused to tell a room of over 30 SpiceHeads even a basic MSRP when directly asked.
I f[moderated]ing hate that.
They refused, that's weak. That kinda says that pursuing any further information isn't worth the effort.
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@scottalanmiller said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@JaredBusch said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@Nic said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller not sure, they didn't delve into that level of detail. Their idea of having a hardware accelerator card is interesting though. Basically a combo of RAID, dedupe and their own custom file system under the covers.
It's an ASIC, I believe. An interesting approach to be sure.
I was there also. It was an interesting concept but they refused to tell a room of over 30 SpiceHeads even a basic MSRP when directly asked.
I f[noderated]ing hate that.
They refused, that's weak. That kinda says that pursuing any further information isn't worth the effort.
"Everything is custom configured." and "Our partners handle work to make sure yu have the right specs."
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@scottalanmiller said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@Nic said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller not sure, they didn't delve into that level of detail. Their idea of having a hardware accelerator card is interesting though. Basically a combo of RAID, dedupe and their own custom file system under the covers.
It's an ASIC, I believe. An interesting approach to be sure.
The card is super caps, a processor and NVRAM to my understanding.
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@JaredBusch said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@Nic said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller not sure, they didn't delve into that level of detail. Their idea of having a hardware accelerator card is interesting though. Basically a combo of RAID, dedupe and their own custom file system under the covers.
It's an ASIC, I believe. An interesting approach to be sure.
I was there also. It was an interesting concept but they refused to tell a room of over 30 SpiceHeads even a basic MSRP when directly asked.
I f[moderated]ing hate that.
Good grief. Not even an average price for their "Custom" configs?
If they won't tell you in a situation like that, then they're too expensive. -
@nadnerB yeah it would have been nice if they could have given us a ballpark.
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@Nic said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@nadnerB yeah it would have been nice if they could have given us a ballpark.
I think a lot of sales people really forget how tremendously important it is for us to have some idea what things will cost. If something is "you know, round about $5,000" we might be looking to rip and replace everything, today. But if is "somewhere north of $500K" we can write it off and never think about it again. If they won't tell us, we are forced to assume the later.
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@scottalanmiller said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@Nic said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@nadnerB yeah it would have been nice if they could have given us a ballpark.
I think a lot of sales people really forget how tremendously important it is for us to have some idea what things will cost. If something is "you know, round about $5,000" we might be looking to rip and replace everything, today. But if is "somewhere north of $500K" we can write it off and never think about it again. If they won't tell us, we are forced to assume the later.
They should take a page out of the housing market. They put up signs that say "new homes from the $300s". We all know that when all is said and done, your house is going to be $375k with all the extras and options, but at least you know to the nearest $100k.
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@Nic said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@Nic said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@nadnerB yeah it would have been nice if they could have given us a ballpark.
I think a lot of sales people really forget how tremendously important it is for us to have some idea what things will cost. If something is "you know, round about $5,000" we might be looking to rip and replace everything, today. But if is "somewhere north of $500K" we can write it off and never think about it again. If they won't tell us, we are forced to assume the later.
They should take a page out of the housing market. They put up signs that say "new homes from the $300s". We all know that when all is said and done, your house is going to be $375k with all the extras and options, but at least you know to the nearest $100k.
Exactly. We have to know "to whom this applies" or the answer is always "someone else."
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And... I got junk mail from them.
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@scottalanmiller said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
And... I got junk mail from them.
Ask them how much their starter kits are for us?
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I see this as a relic from companies that come down market. In the enterprise space there's a lot of negotiation. Big companies are paying not so much for the service, as for being the #1 priority when it comes to support and development. The fact that two companies can pay vastly different amounts for what is essentially the same kit, means that one of them is going to get a lot more attention when the rubber hits the road. When vendors who are used to that model try to come down into the SMB space where things are more commoditized, then they don't realize the damage they are doing.
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Guys,
I am an SA for SimpliVity in the Chicago area and I'm sorry to see the unhappiness around the presentation. I was unable to attend, but I would be happy to answer some of these items.
Dell was actually the first platform, we added Cisco and Lenovo.
The nodes run from the mid 20k to 150k,
We have a higher density per node than most. One node is the minimum, 2 provides full HA for both the compute and storage.We actually started with an SMB focus and began moving up channel. Again, very unfortunate that the messaging felt off.
Feel free to email me and I'm happy to jump on a webex to deep dive the tech and clear up anything else.
Cheers,
Rick
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@virtualrick said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
Dell was actually the first platform, we added Cisco and Lenovo.
That's great, you should have the website show that Dell is an option. Currently only Lenovo (not acceptable to many for ethical reasons, they are often a show stopper from the beginning) and Cisco (questionable quality) are shown as options on the site. A lot of potential customers would stop there and not take the time to ask why there aren't any enterprise options available. If none were shown it would be fine, or if all were, but only those two is quite problematic.
