HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 Reviews

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is a SAN block storage solution designed for massive iSCSI workloads backing VMware infrastructure. It serves as the main storage for our VMware infrastructure, currently managing approximately 750 TB of data, which is slightly less than one petabyte.

We do not move workloads to the cloud. We only move workloads from on-premises to on-premises. We do not migrate between on-premises and cloud environments, as that is not our goal.

As a governmental IT organization, we do not have a traditional line of business or manufacture products. We manage millions of emails across inboxes and mailboxes, manage thousands of IP addresses, and handle security for a large number of users, but we do not have a business line in the commercial sense.

Synchronized replication is the most valuable feature we have found in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. The distributed IO functionality is another important feature. Our clients and hypervisors read data from the exact location where it resides, and IO is distributed between the two SANs for writes. Reads are always performed in real-time and from the correct location, making it very comfortable for massive read operations with high IOPS. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 can manage 1 million IOPS with a small block, which is excellent.

The stretched cluster and replication between two sites are very important for us because we use it in our continuity plan.

Availability is critical for our users, though they are not customers in the traditional sense but researchers who require authentication and mailbox access. We cannot assign a monetary value to their productivity, as if the block storage goes down, there is no price that can compensate for the loss. If we experience even one minute of downtime, it could take a year to recover. A one-minute outage could result in one million days of lost work across our user base. For this reason, 100% availability is important, though even 99.99999999% availability would be acceptable. We evaluated other solutions, and PowerMax offered 100% availability while PowerStore and Pure Storage offered 99.999999% availability, but this was not the main differentiator. Performance and the ability to continue working instantly without downtime or data loss were the main criteria. After testing HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 in production and deliberately crashing the entire SAN to verify it functioned correctly, we confirmed it was the right choice for our needs.

It is difficult to provide specific areas for improvement at this time. We may realize approximately 20% gains in the future, but the previous SAN we used was not very time-consuming, so the improvement is not very significant. We anticipate gains of approximately 10 to 20%.

The management interface could be simplified. The cloud console contains two main sections: one for hardware and one for logical volumes on the LUNs being managed. This split is understandable because the hardware console contains HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 for block storage and HPE Alletra for backup, both accessible in the same console. The separation of the SAN hardware console and the backup console is logical and understandable.

We have four compute nodes, and the system was not designed to shut down gracefully with only two compute nodes remaining. Running with just one compute node functions properly, and the system continues to operate at reduced capacity. However, when we experienced a crash involving half of the system, HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 failed completely. This behavior is documented as normal in the documentation, but we hoped the block storage could manage to run with half the power. This capability will be available in a future release but is not included in the current version. Our testing before moving to production was not entirely successful, but this aligns with the documented specifications. When we perform failover and data center crash tests, the system performs very well. We have deliberately crashed all four compute nodes, and the secondary storage site manages the workload without any virtual machines malfunctioning. This level of reliability is excellent, and it demonstrates why we selected HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. Improvements in this area would make the solution even stronger.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is very new, having been in use for only three months.

We can scale easily because three drawers are not full, allowing us to easily expand to one petabyte or more. We have not yet migrated all workloads to the storage, so we have not achieved the final compression and deduplication factors. We hope the compression will be sufficient for our needs. We have migrated approximately 400 virtual machines out of 1,200 total machines, representing one-third of our workload.

Scalability appears to be strong, with a rating of 9 out of 10 due to the large number of available drawers. However, there are only four compute nodes, whereas PowerMax can have eight compute nodes. If the compute nodes could scale to eight, scalability could be further enhanced. For block storage, the amount of data and performance IOPS are not directly proportional. Some users or customers with large data volumes require very fast access with few writes, while others like us perform massive writes throughout the day and experience read bursts on weekends. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 must be efficient for sustained writes throughout the day and rapid reading during burst periods, which may last approximately six hours. During these six-hour periods, we currently experience approximately 200,000 IOPS, and we expect this to reach approximately 400,000 IOPS within a few months. The storage can manage 1 million IOPS, which is sufficient. Pure Storage was only capable of approximately 600,000 IOPS, which is significantly lower compared to our actual requirements. Our goal is to multiply our capacity by at least two or three times. Currently, we have 100,000 users on the platform, and we plan to expand to 1 million users by the end of the year.

Support management is not straightforward. With Dell, we had direct access to phone support, but with HPE, access is not as simple and support is not always available in French. Although we may not have the correct contact information or links to support, the process was not easy. Currently, we primarily contact the commercial team and work with pre-sales representatives rather than utilizing the formal support process. This is the actual process we follow. Currently, it is difficult to evaluate support effectiveness, as we will be better positioned to assess it in a few months or years. Since we are in production and making adjustments during the integration phase, it is not straightforward to fully evaluate at this time. A rating of 8 seems appropriate.

We previously used Compellent from Dell.

Compellent is no longer available, and the alternatives were much more expensive. PowerMax could not manage the millions of small IOs we required for read operations, as it had a cap. We verified the documentation for Pure Storage and confirmed that Pure was unable to match the IOPS performance of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 can achieve this performance because it has four compute nodes. With only two compute nodes, HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 can close the performance gap between itself and PowerMax, but four compute nodes are required to exceed PowerMax performance. Of course, HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 cannot compete with very high-end block storage solutions because they operate in a different price range.

We completed the initial setup with the HPE customer engineer. We were in the same data center and worked together on-site, sitting on the floor with a laptop to complete the setup. The initial setup for block storage was easier compared to HPE Alletra backup, which was very complicated. The connection between the HPE cloud console and HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 was not easy to establish. Documentation for this process was not comprehensive. We were sometimes asked to open specific TCP ports to establish communication between the cloud platform and HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. Once the communication was established, everything functioned properly. We could then manage the system through the cloud console, CLI, or the GUI of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

At this time, a rating of 8 seems appropriate because we have not tested the system under real production conditions with a large mass of users. The workload we have migrated includes 400 virtual machines, but we have not yet moved the main workload. In one or two years, we hope to confirm that HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is performing perfectly, at which point we could assign a rating of 9 or 10. For now, 8 is the appropriate rating. Management capabilities may evolve in the future, but at this time, 8 is the appropriate rating. My overall review rating for HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is 8 out of 10.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 offers two types of storage solutions. One is MPX, which is object-based storage, and another one is MP B10000. B stands for block storage, and X is for object-based storage environments.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is the new 10000 series, whereas earlier versions were the 5000 and 6000 series, which are now out of sale. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 comes in two forms. One is 10000 B, which is pure SAN block storage, while another is MP 10000 X, the object-based storage. For AI purposes, X is the best fit if the data is related to that environment, while for virtualizations or databases, I recommend B, which is meant for structured data.

Regarding time-saving aspects, I can integrate HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 with a total HPE environment. I can use the HPE VMware Essential option, which is side integrated and allows me to save money on VMware solutions. Earlier, since VMware was acquired by Dell, licenses became costlier based on previous licensing policies, but HP released a VMware solution to run different ERP applications. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 always provides better IOPS than others, allowing me to achieve the hypervisor layer on Alletra and storage and the servers, creating multiple VMs in that environment.

I have already deployed this in an IT company where I set up AI for classes by deploying HP servers and HP storage. On top of that, I installed the VMware hypervisor and then created the VMs, putting in multiple GPUs within the systems and connecting HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 through the SAN switches only.

I deployed HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 into a hybrid architecture with the help of VMware, allowing couple of VMs to move to the public cloud and come back from public cloud to on-premises.

In using HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, the deployment depends totally on the workload. If the workload is hybrid for AI and for virtualizations or pure block-based architecture, it is easy to scale, which is one benefit of using HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is meant for structured data, specifically for SAP, ERP, and Oracle databases, where high transactional structured data is needed. If the environment relates to PFS or AI, then I should use X instead of B.

I deployed an 18-node cluster, setting up two HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 nodes over the SAN switches. Initially, for nine of the nodes, I ran VMware, and for eight nodes, I ran the Proxmox virtualization solution to create the cluster. It is easier and not complex, allowing me to migrate data running in the existing environment with the help of a third-party tool or, if the environment runs on VMware or Nutanix, I can migrate through the proprietary Move application of Nutanix.

Regarding HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, its best feature is scalability. I can scale up to petabytes, and the data footprint size is lesser than others.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is easy to scale, available in both horizontal and vertical formats, and is always dependent on the controller level. I have to put it in the controller and then easily scale, allowing me to increase compute as well as disk simultaneously. In that environment, the IOPS will always increase in comparison to horizontally scaled.

From a maintenance and management perspective, HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 has helped to reduce the amount of time I spend on storage management.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is basically a high throughput, high bandwidth solution that provides millions of IOPS. If the IOPS is high, then obviously the latency is very low, allowing me to run multiple VMs on that particular storage without any downtime. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 provides a guarantee of 100% availability.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 provides 100% data availability. Earlier, this was only available with the Hitachi system, and now Alletra offers 100% data availability.

With the help of QoS functionality, I can assign limitations for dedicated IOPS-hungry applications. I can enable QoS to achieve the required IOPS for that particular application, and I do not think there is a challenge related to IOPS or performance.

The reason behind this is that HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is providing 100% data availability. If one controller fails, then data is accessible through the second controller.

I think there are some issues to enhance in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. In HP, there is no NAS as of now. Earlier, there was a NAS, but they stopped the unified boxes, creating challenges with customers. For enterprise customers, it is better to keep the environment separate, but for SMB customers, they should introduce unified boxes so that customers can easily use SAN/NAS functionality.

That function is not available in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. It is available in Dell PowerStore and NetApp. If the customer's requirement is pure NAS, in that environment, I cannot suggest HP solutions. If the customer asks for a unified box in an RFP, I have to go to alternative OEMs like NetApp.

As I mentioned, NetApp is known for the unified feature. In HP, there is no option to provide a unified box. If the requirement is for object storage or pure SAN, HP will best fit that environment. In NetApp, there are limitations on the SMB customer side due to the need for iSCSI switches between servers and storage. In contrast, with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, I can connect directly to the switches.

I have not received any performance issues with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. It is stable.

I have never called HPE technical support, as most issues can be resolved through publicly available articles. For hardware issues, I raised a ticket, and since Alletra is a critical appliance, I have critical appliance support, which ensures that faulty hardware is replaced within a four-hour timeline.

In HP, I would rate the tech support a nine, as sometimes the queue length is lengthy, requiring me to hold the call for clarifications.

Overall, I would rate the tech support a nine.

I have experience on other competitors like HP, so I worked on HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, which is basically a competitor of StoreOnce appliances.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 deployment experience is not difficult. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is much easier to deploy, and there is no challenge with the deployment of Alletra solutions.

ROI with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 depends on the use case, number of VMs, and infrastructure type. It cannot be justified solely on the number of nodes; it always depends on the use case.

Licensing in NetApp has two types: basic and advanced. The basic does not include functionalities such as snapshots, immutability, or ransomware protections, while advanced licensing supports data protection against ransomware.

I do not have that option on this for managing and monitoring the global block storage environment from HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000's single cloud console.

I do not think I have an answer regarding whether HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 enables line of business or DB admins to self-provision storage.

I do not have such data or examples on how much this ability has helped in lowering storage costs.

RPO/RTO should be minimal, and for that, I always have a DR solution to achieve that RPO/RTO.

If I require RPO/RTO zero with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, I have to synchronize, requiring two boxes with synchronized replication. Both storage units must confirm each other's status, and to mitigate RPO/RTO, I need to use synchronous and have both boxes available on dark fiber.

I would rate this review a 10.

My use cases mainly involve VMware and database.

The biggest advantage of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is that the setup is very easy.

I appreciate several features, including management and replication that are easy to configure, faster storage, and more. Managing and monitoring my global block storage environment with the single cloud console is very simple. I can use the HP portal to manage the storage, or I can manage from the local environment. I have a dashboard that displays capacity, errors, performance, and other metrics. It is very easy to manage and understand what happens with my storage, whether I have a problem, need an upgrade, or need a new version.

Because my customers do not accept downtime, the product's 100% data availability guarantee is very important for my business and operations.

I generally agree that HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is very stable at around 99%.

I would appreciate improvements in performance monitoring to create custom reports. I think this is a great tool, and other storages have features to create reports. Since I manage this storage from the cloud, I think HPE could create additional tools for that.

I am working with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 today.

I am not able to move workloads from on-premise to the cloud and back with this tool. We need another storage for the cloud to check the environment and configure. If I need to move a workload to another workload, we need replication to another storage. I cannot move to Google or Azure or something similar.

HP has a product to predict some things. I think it is important, but it is another product and not included in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. They have another feature to connect to HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 to analyze things.

I think HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is stable and I have no additional concerns. If HPE can keep the storage at the same level for one, two, three, or four years, that is good for me. I do not need better performance, but I do not want them to downgrade the product either. The product is stable.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is very scalable.

The technical service is very good. When I open a case, the team is very quick to respond.

The setup for HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is quite easy and very straightforward. For other products, the setup is more complex.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 reduces the time I spend on storage provisioning and management. It saves about 50% of my time because by default, I configure the host groups and host volumes, and if I need to add one more storage to the VMware environment, I put it in the group and it automatically presents to all of the hosts. It is very simple to manage.

It saves about 20% in other areas; I am not sure exactly about this value, but I think 20% is possible.

In general, the price of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is quite affordable and falls in the middle range.

You can compare HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 with Huawei for the storages I am using.

When I scale capacity and performance, it saves storage costs for me, and it is safe and very simple.

I work with no negative aspects of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000; it is very great. It has many features such as immutability in snapshots and multi-factor authentication to log in. There are many features, and I appreciate them.

Disaster recovery is flexible in terms of Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). I can configure these metrics when I create a replication. I can choose what my RTO and RPO will be and configure them continuously. I can configure the replication to replicate one hour by one hour. It is flexible, and I can choose what I want and what I can do.

I give HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 series a general rating of 10.

I started using HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 almost two years ago in the Alletra product portfolio. I work as a service provider and system integrator for HPE GreenLake solutions.

With this tool, I am able to move workloads from on-premises to the cloud and back because this solution itself has native hybrid cloud integration. It provides seamless integration with AWS, Azure, and HPE GreenLake, which are the most common deployment scenarios I have completed for the HPE GreenLake platform. At the same time, customers who have huge amounts of data on their AWS or Azure cloud platforms and want an on-premises or hybrid solution can obviously choose HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

I have deployed HPE products on AWS cloud and have completed a couple of HPE products on AWS. For example, I implemented this for a financial firm that is one of the top banks. At that organization, cyber resilience and data recovery are the two unique selling propositions, and after all critical analysis, HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 has met these requirements.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is actually an on-premises cloud platform. Customers who are looking for a cloud solution with native on-premises capabilities will find that the HPE Alletra GreenLake solution will be more effective for them.

The biggest advantage of the product is that it is designed for mission-critical workloads including high IOPS, low latency, and 100% data availability. It is simple to manage from a single dashboard.

Regarding storage provisioning and management, it provides line of business and database administrators the ability to self-provision storage, especially in enterprise customers such as core banking that handle a large amount of data in Oracle, SAP, or PLM systems. These customers will gain more advantage at the data availability and performance level, experiencing an extreme level of performance using this platform.

The ability to scale capacity and performance independently impacts operations and lowers storage costs. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is built for enterprise customers and is not targeted at small or mid-sized businesses. It aims at large enterprise service providers and banking customers. Expansion means that based on customer use case, they can choose and expand up to 2,000 virtual machines.

Data security and availability are major concerns for most firms that are investing in this kind of infrastructure, whether on cloud or on-premises. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 has cyber resilience and rapid recovery options to help customers resist cyber attacks and ensure rapid recovery if an incident occurs.

HPE InfoSight is the platform from HPE for AI-powered predictive analytics and autonomous operation that helps perform predictive analytics. It continuously monitors the storage infrastructure and analyzes telemetry, providing sophisticated reports to customers using machine learning capabilities.

Anti-recovery options are available built into HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, which is a powerful tool for recovery. Their immutable snapshot recovery capabilities are excellent, and HPE has its own software ecosystem to implement these features.

I do see a negative aspect in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 because this platform is focused on enterprise customers and has been built for scalability of 500 or more virtual instance environments. That is a disadvantage since the starting cost itself would be substantial and the capacity requirement would be high.

I would like to see features that address the initial cost, as it is not suitable for SMB or budget-constrained projects due to the higher capacity and capital investment requirements. Additionally, advanced features may require an additional license or subscription, which should be made more transparent to customers.

For region-specific support such as APG or India, I am currently receiving good support from HPE, and I am overall happy with their customer service. I would give them a nine for support on a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 is the best.

It is not straightforward because HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 has enterprise-class architecture requiring an experienced engineer's support to complete the deployment. It is not easy to deploy HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 in the way that other Alletra series products are deployed.

I have something to compare HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 with, as I have implemented Hitachi solutions. This comparison depends on the customer use case. At the architectural level, HPE provides more independent scaling and computing capabilities. While both offer 100% data availability, I prefer HPE InfoSight when compared with Hitachi Ops Center, as I think it provides more input to the user.

I would subjectively give HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 a nine on a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 is the best. The overall review rating for this product is 9.

As a consultant, I am doing the implementation and consulting in the area of implementing and advising customers in this area.

The features I find most valuable in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 include the Peer Motion and Peer Persistence capabilities, allowing fully redundant storage across two sites. Peer Persistence enables migrating without any downtime from old storage to new storage by using the Peer Motion feature, which is quite smart. I have used it several times in customer projects, implementing a new generation at the customer's location via hardware refresh without any downtime.

Managing and monitoring the global block storage environment from HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000's single cloud console is simple, and this applies to file storage as well. I cover any kind of storage: block, file, and object.

The solution's 100% data availability guarantee is, at the end of the day, a marketing statement. A technical product cannot ever have 100% availability. For example, with an aircraft, you can do many things in terms of preventing incidents or crashes, but you cannot 100% avoid them. At the end of the day, they state that if you have any downtime, they will pay the customer a pre-calculated amount of money. In the rare case where this occurs, they guarantee you receive some compensation if this occurs. This is already calculated in the price.

The features I find most valuable in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 include the Peer Motion and Peer Persistence capabilities, allowing fully redundant storage across two sites. Peer Persistence enables migrating without any downtime from old storage to new storage by using the Peer Motion feature, which is quite smart. I have used it several times in customer projects, implementing a new generation at the customer's location via hardware refresh without any downtime.

Managing and monitoring the global block storage environment from HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000's single cloud console is simple, and this applies to file storage as well. I cover any kind of storage: block, file, and object.

The ability to scale capacity and performance independently impacts my customer's operations by adding additional nodes and shelves. This can be done without downtime.

I would like to improve the situation, as I have heard many complaints about price. Prices are dramatically increasing and I have heard complaints from end customers.

In the next release of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, I would like to see mixed vendor Peer Motion features. For instance, the ability to migrate from HPE to Dell and vice versa would be a useful feature. The feature to HPE storage is already available, but the ability to migrate away from HPE would be helpful for customers who want to change vendors. However, I do not think HPE is ever going to provide such a feature because it makes it too easy for customers to move away from their product. Regardless, this would be helpful for some vendors to move away from.

I would not assess the solution's AI-driven predictive analytics and performance reporting as particularly effective. Using AI for system predictions, you are monitoring parameters, and if any kind of threshold occurs, you have to react to it. This is not AI. AI is writing a book or programming something that really needs creativity. Monitoring a system is monitoring a system. You can automate it, but this is not intelligence.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is the successor product of Primera, and Primera again is the successor product of 3PAR. I have been working with 3PAR and the other products for 15 to 16 years, but not continuously. I work in the storage area in general, and for a couple of years I work for this product. When the next product is going to be phased, it is driven by customer requests. I have used this for several years but not continuously.

In my opinion, the technical support by HPE is working, but unfortunately, they are quite focused on a break and fix level. When a disk is down or power supply is down, they will reply. However, as soon as you have issues with configuration, quite often you have to escalate it to sales resources because support always says they only do break and fix work. This is not enough in a complex environment at all. If you have problems getting the system running and support is just saying they will help you if you have a problem with hardware, disk, power supply, or something similar, otherwise they will not help. It was quite often annoying and always caused an escalation in the direction of sales. I have purchased several millions of equipment for you and you are not going to help me with simple questions.

Regarding the configuration, the initial setup for HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is reasonable if you know what to do. However, if you are not familiar with it, you need to know what to do in simple words.

The difficulties you might face include knowing what to do in order to get a system up and running. What commands and what steps are required. It is comparable to driving or controlling an aircraft. You have to think about many parameters, and so you need to be aware of it.

They do not provide documentation of high quality. The question is just knowing what to do.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 has helped lower storage costs slightly. However, cost is not the driving factor for implementing it. The requirement is that customers need more capacity and more performance due to a growing environment. Cost is a matter of fact, and you have to accept it, whatever it is.

Currently, I think their pricing is unreasonable, as prices are increasing dramatically due to the shortage on the market. Many AI providers are buying anything with hardware: CPUs, servers, RAM. The price has been three to four times higher than one year ago. There is a real crisis in the market for IT equipment.

I see good competition to HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 in the market, as Dell and Dell EMC storage are quite comparable to them.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 does not enable you to move workloads from on-premises to the cloud and back. Most customers are on-premise storage. Even if it is named cloud in terms of ECS or HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 which is hosted on-premise at the customer's site.

The solution does not enable line of business or database admins to self-provision storage, as this is always a data center task and infrastructure responsibility. Independent of what kind of application is used, the data center in a company is providing the storage services.

I rate this review an 8 out of 10.

On HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, we create new LUNs and provide them to the Windows team and Linux team for their usage. They store the data as needed. During network activity, we bring nodes down and keep them down for safety. Since I am new to HPE, these are the two tasks I will be working on.

The most valuable feature of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is that it is very easy to understand compared to other storage solutions, and the commands are also straightforward. I have mostly worked on CLI, which is the command line interface, more than the GUI. It was easy for me to find the commands, and if I need help, the system will show me which commands I can use. The interface is good and useful for newcomers as well.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 reduced the time required for my work. I have worked on other technologies where LUN creation or similar tasks on CLI would take two to three hours, but with HPE, it takes only 30 minutes to 45 minutes. Compared to other storage solutions, it gave me significantly less time to work.

Regarding how HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 helps reduce the time required for storage provisioning, it depends on the size. If it is a TB, it will take two to three hours. If it is smaller, such as GB or MB, it will be completed in one hour. The speed is good, and it is a background operation, so there will be no interruption for other activities. We can have safe time.

Managing and monitoring my global block storage environment from HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000's single cloud console is somewhat complex. If one node is down, we cannot bring the other node down without bringing the first node up. I encountered difficulties because there was network activity, and we needed to bring both nodes down so it would not affect network activity. I brought one node down, and when I tried bringing the second one down, it gave me an alert. When the first one is down, we cannot bring the other one down. Instead, we need to bring both of them down at the same time. I felt difficulties in this scenario because it did not show me that we need to bring both of them down. When I was bringing controller one down, it did not indicate that we need to bring both of them down. This was a difficulty I found.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 does not enable self-provisioning for me.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 can improve in the GUI. When I worked on it, I was unable to find where I needed to go to find something. There was not much help available. If I needed to check the controller status or volume status, I was unable to find that information. I needed to go into something and only there was I able to find that. I could find the volumes or LUNs only inside the node. The interface could be improved or changed.

I have been working with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 for ten months.

In terms of the ability to scale capacity and performance independently on HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 and its impact on my operations and storage cost reduction, we did not have much impact because we have only less storage in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 compared to others. We have only five devices in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. On the performance level, we would get link errors, such as some PCI link errors, which would create an impact, but it would be resolved in two to three minutes, or mostly it would take ten minutes and resolve on its own. There is not much impact or performance issue we have faced in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

My experience with technical support for HPE has been that we have raised cases only for the upgrades we received. If we received any alerts which were false alerts, we had a discussion with the vendor by raising a case and resolved it. The most received incident was a PCI link canister issue, which is a node canister issue. For that, we had a case with the vendor and resolved it. For upgrades, we depend on the vendor to get the correct version and the compatibility version. We had a discussion with the vendor regarding this. I would rate them a seven because most of the time, after raising a case, we will get the update from them after twenty-four hours. They are not available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If we send an email, they will reply a few hours late. There will be a delay, so I am rating them a seven. Other than that, the work will be done, but it will get delayed.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000's AI-driven predictive analytics and performance reporting has not been implemented. We have not done any automation for that. We receive the alerts and handle them ourselves with a human touch.

For disaster recovery with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, I have not found any issue because we had only a few devices. We had a plan for the DR activity with a proactive plan in which we can get it resolved within two hours based on the other team members' contribution. Based on the Windows and Linux teams, they would complete their part, and after that, it would come to our part, the storage part. In the storage part, we need only one hour to resolve that. It is because our storage is not high priority or low priority, and it is not dependent on them. It is dependent on the users who are using it because it depends on the Windows and Linux servers they are using and the users who are accessing this storage. Even if it is low priority or high priority, it depends on the users. It matters in this situation. We need that flexibility.

I would rate this solution an eight overall.

The central use case for our clients using HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is very wide because, in the partner space, the use case for BFSI is different from that of healthcare. Basically, this is to boost the IT ecosystem.

The biggest advantage of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 for me is its integration with HPE GreenLake because most of the things are moving towards AI workload, and HPE has performed well when it comes to heavy workloads.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 saves time on storage management. It is very simple to manage and monitor the global block storage environment with the single cloud console because whether you are using private cloud or public cloud with HPE, it becomes very easy. HPE has made it easy for the end user to manage the HPE ecosystem, even providing an on-premises experience almost like that in the cloud.

It is very easy to move workloads from on-premises to the cloud and back. The ability to scale capacity and performance independently with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 does not impact operations minimally and actually helps lower costs for the end user.

Most of our clients are usually in AWS, but you might also find them in other environments or even private cloud environments.

I find AI, including predictive analytics and performance reporting, to be very beneficial within HPE solutions. With AI and automation, it is easier to diagnose problems as it can even detect and resolve issues automatically. This seamless operation allows processes to continue while problems are addressed without impacting operations.

A hundred percent data availability guarantee is important for our clients' operations and business, especially in the age of data where assurance that data is safeguarded is beneficial to both the technical team and the executives.

There are areas for improvement in support, and they still have potential to be better.

The two problems I distinguished are support, which has potential to improve, and hard disk failures, which have been my main encounters with the product.

I have been in the HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 space for a while now. I have been selling it from twenty twenty, which is roughly five to six years.

Whether HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is 99.9% stable depends on the design you have in your environment.

I recall an issue with hard disk failures, but HPE has a business NBD support system in place, making it simple to get support in case of technical hardware failures.

I would rate the stability of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 a 9.999.

Scalability is very easy with the product, as there are no limitations on scaling.

It is very easy to scale up or scale out for the client. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 does have several flexible options for scalability, and HPE has a new product coming up that minimizes recovery points.

I do not have any complaints regarding customer service or tech support.

I would rate the support a 7.8. The 7.8 rating comes from the fact that sometimes the sales aspect inhibits the delivery of support, although generally, we are okay with it.

I find the integration, interface, and deployment of HPE products to be very seamless. It is one of the products that I find operates up to date with technology, and licensing is also straightforward.

We follow the HPE recommended process for deployment, which makes it very seamless. We also have local support, so in case we face challenges, we are able to get support quickly. I would not say deployment is very difficult, although sometimes you do experience challenges, which is normal not only for HPE but even for other vendors.

Currently, apart from now being the trainer, I am using the products for my trainings as a learner. I moved from the training part, and right now, I am in a partner reseller space for the IT OEM.

We are selling both HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 and other IT storage products including compute storage and backups. We are reselling HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 series.

I do not have any disadvantages of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 in mind unless I think about it and figure something out. Our clients usually have a hybrid model with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, and we position those particular solutions based on the end user requirements and needs.

The RPO and RTO are very low, sometimes even less than five minutes. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is cheaper when it comes to the cost of acquisition.

I would rate this review a 9 overall.

The usual use cases for HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 are virtualization with Hyper-V or VMware. Many customers who have Nimble systems transition to HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 when needed.

The features and capabilities of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 that I have found most valuable include very good and fast hardware controllers and CPUs. The new systems have features similar to the old Nimble, such as virtual lock or ransomware snapshots to save the data.

Regarding the predictive analytics feature of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, you can analyze information over the DSCC, the Data Center Cloud Console, where you can see a lot of information to indicate whether the system has had problems or not

In my opinion, it helps optimize data management for the customers fairly well, though I have no definitive assessment.

When the system first came out, it had some problems with the Data Center Cloud Console, which made implementation difficult. However, I have implemented it over the last four months, and it works very easily. The implementation in the Data Center Cloud Console and the startup and configuration is very easy, working similarly to the old Nimble OS systems.

Since last year, I have been working with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 as my new storage systems are an alternative to the Nimble Storage systems, while the Nimble Storage systems are set to be out of sold next year, and the support ends in 2027.

The stability and reliability level of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is very good. We have had no support calls with the systems that we have sold to our customers, and the hardware is very stable. We have no problems.

Regarding my experience with the scalability of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, it has been very good. It is very easy to adapt more storage on the system for additional resources. Upgrading from a smaller controller to a more powerful one is straightforward for enhancing speed, or you can extend the network ports. Scalability is very good and accommodating for resource management.

I do not often communicate with the technical support of HPE. Normally, with the Nimble systems and with HPE Alletra MPs or HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 with Nimble OS, we have not had many support cases in the last years. The systems work very well and easily, and we have no major issues. It is usually a disk failure or a firmware update issue, which can be resolved with an email to Nimble support.

Neutral

My usual experience with the initial setup and deployment of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is that it is very easy. You have a small app to connect the system to the internet, and before you implement the serial number and activation key in the DSCC, you assign the IP addresses in the app, and they connect to the cloud console, allowing the system to be up and running. It is very easy to name and set the IP addresses.

I am an integrator with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. We are a system house and we have customers. We integrate the systems and provide them to the customer.

The pricing of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, in my opinion, is acceptable. The normal prices are very high, but in projects, it is manageable. We win projects with this system, and I find it acceptable. Our customers pay the price, and I think it is a bit more reasonable compared to the older Nimble systems. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is not so expensive.

The usual price of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is suitable for all users, including different sizes of users. When we have projects, we look at what the system or what the people really need. Many people who buy from us have VMware systems, so we need to consider VMware's high pricing, but typically, the storage price is not the problem. Software prices are actually the bottleneck in projects.

I do not know much about the intelligent data management system of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 as we are still implementing the system and providing it to the customer, but we are not deeply engaged with the system for analytics or other things. While we implement and provide it to the customer, it works well.

I do not have any experience with autonomous resource optimization of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

The performance of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 with high-performance workloads is very good. The new controllers with the system and the software are very fast, and we have no performance issues when we change to it from other hardware.

My customers prefer a hybrid deployment of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. Many customers start with hybrid systems, having a portion on-premises and a portion in the cloud, such as Azure or AWS. They consider the prices to determine the best approach. Many move from on-premises Exchange to Office 365, reducing the need for on-premises resources, and similarly with SAP, they host SAP in the cloud instead of on-premises.

I would rate this review as a nine out of ten.

I'm working with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 and Alletra MP, and I have hands-on experience working with the MP. As a Solutions Manager for HPE solutions, I have already proposed Alletra MP for many solutions as it is multipurpose.

I use it for many situations including SAP HANA and virtualization infrastructures, as well as with mission-critical solutions such as Oracle database.

The management and operation of Alletra MP is straightforward, and it already has a protected system to optimize the performance and configuration. The storage management aspect is excellent.

The availability for hardware in the MP storage is great, so I can scale the storage at any time. The controllers for blocks are the same controllers for files, which makes it a good hardware availability for both.

It is simple to manage the storage from the cloud with one dashboard to see all my storage system. The solution enables me to move workloads from on-premises to the cloud and back. In some cases, the business does not have a big team on IT staff or specific IT for the storage system, and only the management for storage is handled by an IT manager or IT infrastructure manager. It is simple to manage the storage and fast in operation.

The solution enables line of business or database admins to self-provision storage. Creating or editing any volume requires simple steps. It is also simple to scale or to add hard disks for capacity, which positively impacts my operations. I feel that it is cost-effective and helps to lower the storage costs. The main best feature of Alletra MP is that I can scale from mid-range storage to high end easily.

The 100% availability guarantee is important to my clients, for sure. Some customers are looking for 100% availability to run their mission-critical applications. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 takes advantage of Nimble DNA, which is a super feature and provides the best experience in the world. For the performance, it is wonderful and provides maximum performance that gives the user experience with virtualization or many applications such as databases or ERP systems. Regarding effective capacity or usable capacity, it is really the best effective with RAID 6 and the spare.

Maybe they need to create a new line or basic line such as MSA for a small business. I have no idea at this time for a missing feature or something that needs to be added in the future.

For MP, I have worked with it for two years, but for Alletra, maybe four or five years for Alletra products.

Until now, I have not had an incident for any failure on the MP.

I find it scalable with options to scale up and scale out, which is awesome.

I think HPE tech support is good and fair enough, but there is a need to enhance it or to provide more engineering support at the Egypt service center because HPE might not have many resources, and they look for authorized partners to solve customer problems, which can depend on the partner engineer's capability. I rate tech support as 8 out of 10.

Positive

For the deployment of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, it is easy and not complex, and it does not need much time or a long time. It is simple and needs a small amount of time. The initial startup or installation is straightforward with no complexities. For the Alletra, I think within two hours including the hardware installation is needed for the initial setup. I think it takes within 20 minutes for the initial configuration or startup of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

I think Dell EMC PowerStore is also a competitor to the MP, but in the small range such as PowerStore 500T, it is hard to compete with Alletra because of the price differentiation between the two vendors. The features provided focus on unified storage; however, when we talk about MP, we must have controllers for block and block controllers for object and controllers for file, which makes us have a competitive advantage against Dell EMC.

In Egypt, sometimes the vendor has to give the customer maximum discount and aggressive discount to win the deal and grab many logos and references, but I think the account managers and sales team in HPE Egypt are not looking for this point as aggressively as Dell EMC account managers. When we evaluate if the MP storage is cost-effective or not, we look at many factors because every customer has a limited budget, and perhaps sometimes they go to the smallest range because of financial constraints.

The sustainability goals in Egypt focus on electricity and low power usage. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is a good choice for customers looking for IT sustainability certification or wanting to see this in their product choices. Perhaps they are looking for large capacity with the best IOPS or highest IOPS.

With enterprise customers or mission-critical applications such as banking, we definitely need to recover everything without any losses, and sometimes we have to propose Zerto to the customer. It is a wonderful product, but it needs enhancements to be compatible with many systems. I do not know if it is compatible with Nutanix or not to replicate between HPE and Nutanix or VMware and Nutanix. It definitely needs more research and development in Zerto to improve compatibility with various vendors.

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 as 8 out of 10 because the feature for unified storage will be awesome for generating a new generation of unified controllers in the MP.

For my use cases with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, I am trying to replace the existing 3PAR, so a primary use case would be to configure it as block storage for application servers and other enterprise-class applications. I configure it as block storage and provide the space, which is the current use case for HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

Apart from this, I do not have any other use cases yet.

For my one year of experience with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, one positive aspect is that it is very similar to the 3PAR array, which means I am already familiar with all the commands and functionalities. It is not a brand new model that requires me to learn everything from scratch; it feels almost like the latest 3PAR model, and it includes a cloud portal through which I can manage multiple arrays from the internet without needing to log into each individual array for allocation or other tasks.

Regarding the time saved on storage management with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, it has significantly reduced my time because previously, I needed to log into each storage for allocations, but now I have a central console that allows me to access all storage systems without logging in separately. If I calculate the time saved in percentage terms, it has reduced by around 30%.

One area that has potential for improvement is the replication side, as Alletra Direct GUI does not provide options to view replication details. While the DSCC portal offers this information, it is not available in the integrated GUI.

I have been using HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 for the last one year.

I do not see any glitches, bugs, or hardware problems with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000; everything has been functioning well over the past year without any required downtime.

I believe HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is a scalable tool, though there are some limitations on how much I can extend capacity. However, for the projects I have worked on, it has met my requirements thus far in terms of capacity.

Technical support from HP is excellent, as I can open cases directly through the portal or by calling in, which has been a problem-free experience. From my perspective, I would rate the support at nine out of ten points.

Positive

I have not worked with any other storage products similar to HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 from other vendors.

My experience with deploying HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is straightforward, with no complexity involved.

I am working for a client as a customer, and I am a service provider, not just a partner of HP.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 enables line-of-business users and database administrators to self-provision storage easily. The solution definitely helps to reduce the time required for storage provisioning and management. The reduction in time for storage provisioning and management is also around 30%.

Regarding scalability and its impact on operations and storage costs, there is a dual-controller model in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, allowing me to touch one loop at a time without any impact. HP claims that upgrades can be done online without downtime. Currently, I do not see any area for improvement in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, as I believe it is a good product without any bugs or problems.

Regarding disaster recovery, I do have flexible options for the recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO). This flexibility is important because it allows for easy configurations, and I can set up replication between arrays or make other adjustments quickly through the cloud portal, enhancing efficiency.

Regarding my sustainability goals, HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 supports these goals effectively. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 makes achieving sustainability goals possible because it is compact compared to the 3PAR, eliminating the need for a complete 4U rack, and it also enables deduplication and compression, reducing power and cooling needs, as well as space in the rack.

I would rate this solution nine out of ten points.