Huawei OceanStor Reviews

It's an intelligent solution.

Huawei OceanStor utilizes a proprietary technology known as RAID 2.0. This technology sets it apart from conventional storage solutions. RAID 2.0 offers advantages over traditional configurations. OceanStor's user interface is very simple and easy to use, featuring a graphical interface that enables quick and error-free setup of the storage system. This interface ensures that users can configure the storage efficiently and without mistakes.

They should introduce a feature to Huawei OceanStor similar to a storage controller, allowing for seamless integration of additional storage modules. If you want to scale up or scale out, you can easily incorporate new storage modules into the OceanStor solution without incurring significant additional costs, unlike the initial investment required for the primary storage solution. Similar to HP's solution, where you can simply add disk drives, you would be able to connect new storage modules to the existing system without having to spend as much as you did on the original storage solution, which includes the controller. 

I have been using Huawei OceanStor for four years.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

If you are not generating a substantial amount of data, the available storage space might suffice, making scalability less of a concern. However, if your data generation increases and you require more storage, Huawei OceanStor offers solutions to expand your storage capacity.

Expanding storage resources can involve additional costs and configuration efforts. Acquiring more storage solutions and ensuring their integration with your existing setup might require a significant investment of time and resources. While this process can be complex, it allows for seamless scalability as your data storage needs grow.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

I have worked with HP.

The initial setup is straightforward and takes 10-15 minutes to complete. It will have some graphics for the configuration and setup. It's quite easy and straightforward to use. An engineer can assist you in the process. 

When you acquire the certification on Huawei storage, you should be able to do the deployment by yourself except for the other more advanced technologies. 

Huawei solutions are expensive. It provides them with a fixed cost and access to modern storage technology with advanced durability and software capabilities like Apache.

If you can afford it, there is a benefit. However, for a startup company entering the business, breaking the bank to acquire Huawei OceanStor solutions might not be necessary. There are more affordable alternatives available. It provides an impressive amount of storage resources, with capacities up to 40 terabytes or even more, depending on your requirements. It offers a range of form factors and uses all SSDs, which enables it to provide substantial storage capacity. 

It allows for scalability, so if you start to run out of space over time, you can easily scale up according to your needs. This flexibility makes it a viable option for businesses expecting to grow their storage requirements. We design and implement solutions for them.

If you compare the amount of money they would need to spend to scale out their original storage solution versus the cost of acquiring the value assurance tool, you will see that acquiring the value assurance tool is actually more cost-effective. This approach reduces capital expenditure compared to procuring additional storage to keep scaling up the original solution.

This support has been highly beneficial for our clients. If you consider the costs associated with scaling out their original storage solutions, you'll find that acquiring our value assurance tool is more cost-effective than continuously investing in additional storage. In the long run, our clients spend less capital while gaining access to ample storage resources through Huawei OceanStor. This solution offers fixed costs and provides them with modern storage technology, including advanced software capabilities.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Huawei OceanStor is mainly used as a SAN in our organization's data management process.

Huawei OceanStor offers good IOPS and is reliable and energy-efficient. It provides a decent device for data scalability.

Based on what we were quoted, the stated capacity was not a true reflection of the actual capacity. The data store ran out of space, and Huawei had to send a new unit. I would like to see improvements similar to what VMware is doing for SRM.

We have been using Huawei OceanStor for a few years.

I would give Huawei OceanStor an eight or nine out of ten. Other than the data store running out of space, I haven't had any issues with the technology.

In terms of expanding and adding additional units, I would rate scalability as eight.

I have dealt with Dell support as well, and I would say Huawei support is a six out of ten compared to Dell. Huawei took longer to respond and send a new device when something critical happened.

Neutral

We have only used Dell before Huawei, and the switch was made based on pricing.

The initial setup was difficult, taking about 48 hours for installation and a week for configuration.

Three engineers from our internal team were involved in the implementation process.

Huawei is much cheaper compared to Dell, offering a competitive price that makes companies consider their options.

The pricing is brilliant. Other technologies are often overpriced. Huawei is priced competitively, encouraging companies to consider it over other products.

We also get competitive quotes from Dell for equivalent storage space.

I would recommend Huawei OceanStor since it offers decent quality at a good price. I would rate the product an eight out of ten.

One of my customers, a car manufacturing company, uses Huawei OceanStor specifically as a backup target. The backup software they use is compatible and they utilize the storage capacity, which is about three hundred to five hundred units. 

Another use case is for cloud-native applications. The developers use the public store app as their main storage app via the REST API, allowing them to create storage without interacting with the product admin.

The main selling point of Huawei OceanStor is its ability to handle all storage protocols, including block, file, and object. It offers flexibility, allowing you to store all types of data on the machine.

Huawei currently lacks a solution for high-performance AI, unlike other companies like DDN, WekaIO, or IBM BlueStore. From a political perspective, there are issues selling Chinese brands to Western companies, as some may not be permitted to use them.

It has been two years since I managed Huawei OceanStor in 2022.

Huawei OceanStor is stable and reliable for storage solutions.

Huawei OceanStor is capable of scaling up to a few megabytes and is equipped to handle varied network protocols.

Huawei OceanStor's pricing is very aggressive, making it highly competitive.

Companies such as DDN, WekaIO, and IBM BlueStore were considered for AI solutions.

The main advantage of Huawei OceanStor is its aggressive pricing, but there may be potential issues with integration, especially with NVIDIA. This could be due to political restrictions or embargoes.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Mostly, it is used for unified storage where high performance is needed for imaging, for file services, and things like that.

The technology seems to be good, especially the performance on their all-flash storage. The competitive pricing and specific features like FlashLink and SmartMetrics algorithms are unique in the market.

In terms of marketing, they need to improve by putting more effort into making people aware of their products, especially in our region. Additionally, they need to push more, increase their partner network, and improve their installation process.

I've been working with OceanStor for about three to four months.

It's too early to say now because stability over a long number of years is yet to be seen. But so far, so good.

It is highly scalable and flexible compared to other products, and you can scale up with controllers, which is a great feature.

Support can be improved. Their centralized support system being based out in China means language can be a bottleneck, especially at L3 and engineering support levels.

Positive

Installations are relatively easy but not super easy either. There is room for improvement, especially in ease of setup for scale-out storage systems. However, it is generally easy to set up.

The number of technicians needed depends on the number of equipment and the capacity. That said, generally, a couple of people should be good enough.

There is a cost-saving advantage of around 10% to 15%.

For the same offerings, they are slightly pricier than Huawei.

Other vendors that are similar include NetApp, EMC, and Dell EMC.

The installation has some marginal room for improvement. The product can be integrated with AI tools and they are coming up with AI tools for data analysis.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I can recommend the product for companies where there is a need for ERPs or if it needs to be used in the retail sector, departmental stores, the banking sector, big government organizations, and in the defense sector.

The solution's most valuable features are the active gateway and OceanStor Dorado All-Flash Storage, which can manage seven out of eight controllers and latency.

In the storage part, OceanStor Dorado All-Flash Storage is the best in Pakistan since all of the major banks, big government organizations, big defense organizations, and all others are satisfied with its performance. OceanStor Dorado All-Flash Storage is the best among all the other storage regarding NetApp, Dell, and EMC.

When it comes to the technical support team, I feel that the response time is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.

I have been using Huawei OceanStor for seven to eight years. I operate as a distributor for Huawei.

The technical support for the solution is very good. Huawei, in our region, has more than 2,000 employees in the office, and they mostly have post-sales engineers for storage, servers, and networks. Huawei also trains its partner engineers on the storage it offers. If a customer faces any problem, then a partner engineer will first resolve it. If an issue is not resolved in the tool, then Huawei engineers get involved, and the case gets lodged with Huawei's tech team, after whom a Huawei engineer will come. The partner, a tech team, and then a Huawei engineer get involved in the support process. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have already worked with Oracle's storages, specifically small ones that are DAS-like storages, EMC VNX 300GB, Dell EMC VNXe 3200, and EMC CX4 and AX4 storages, and at that time, I was doing the post-sales work. Now, I am on the presales and business development side.

My distributor deals with Dell, Lenovo, and Juniper. In the storage part, my company deals with Dell, Lenovo, and Huawei. I deal with Huawei's unified storage, Huawei All-Flash Storage, Huawei OceanStor Pacific, and Huwaei OceanProtect.

Speaking about Dell PowerStore, I would say that my recommendations for a particular product always depend on the requirements of the customer. If a customer wants Dell, then such a customer will always choose Dell-based tools. You can suggest which brand you want to a customer, but they will only choose a tool after they are convinced that the solution can be useful for them.

It is easy to implement or install the tool.

Frankly speaking, I am not into the post-sales side. I manage the pre-sales area. I have heard from my colleagues in the post-sales department that the tool is easy to implement.

Huawei's prices are very good compared to those of its competitors. NetApp offers tools, but my company has faced some challenges in terms of pricing. Huawei's price is better than that of Dell EMC and all the other major brands. The product offers voltages meant for European and American brands. The tool has similar technology to that of every other product. In Pakistan, most customers are moving from Dell EMC to Huawei because of the difference in costs and the features that both provide.

I would recommend the product to my customers based on their requirements. Huawei OceanStor has different models under its portfolio.

If any department store wants to implement the database or ERP solution, then OceanStor Dorado 2000 or OceanStor Dorado 3000 can be suggested to such people depending on their requirements related to the storage. If there is a banking sector, where there are huge transactions, we recommend OceanStor Dorado 5000, OceanStor Dorado 6000 or OceanStor Dorado 8000.

I believe that in terms of the feature that needs to be added to the product, anti-ransomware functionality has already been added to the solution's storage part.

The product is good.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

We are the end-user customers. We use the solution for storage purposes and run VMware over it. Additionally, we use it for Kubernetes clusters, Microsoft servers, and Linux.

Huawei OceanStor is a good product. Its interface is very simple. The complexities we encounter with recovery points are gone. We just attach to remote storage, click the application, and it starts. The compression isn't like a recovery point, though.

There are new features like LAN snapshots, which EMC also has. But Huawei introduced some new ones, like block-level storage snapshots. This minimizes our dependency on backup solutions. So, it maintains point-in-time backups of the storage volume.

The solution needs to improve the compression side of their application.

Also, they don't offer any virtual machine-based features, which Unity has built-in. But I haven't seen it in OceanStor.

In fact, the Recovery Point is not required in Dell EMC Unity if you are using a native VMware application with Unity. But here in OceanStor, we need the site Recovery Manager, SRM. So, SRM is required when we are using the OceanStor. That DR capability has not been built in OceanStor as yet.

I have been using this solution for four months now. Currently, we are using Huawei OceanStor 5600.

The solution is highly stable. Since deployment, I haven't encountered any problems—no warnings, alerts, snapshot issues, or complications with logical unit numbers. It is completely flash storage, delivering consistently high performance, with transfer rates reaching up to 2.5 gigabytes per second. While there may be limits on the operating system side, the performance achieved so far has been exceptional.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

The product is scalable. I rate it an eight out of ten because the number of DREs supported in Unity Box, the version I used, is much higher than the V5000 or V5600 series. I've seen up to 68 in its configuration, while I haven't encountered that limit in ENCs. They're much more scalable.

Up to now, I haven't needed to check any tickets. It was a one-time installation, and we haven't encountered any issues since then. Consequently, I haven't had any experience with the support.

We have worked with Dell EMC. The Dell EMC storage with comparable specifications was presented to us at double the cost. This is the primary reason we opted for OceanStor. While our initial preference was Dell EMC, their pricing was significantly high.

On the other hand, a direct comparison with Dell EMC might be unfair, as Huawei OceanStor wasn't even born during Dell EMC's production. The maturity level of EMC is much higher. 

In comparison between Dell EMC and Huawei OceanStor, I would assign a rating of ten to Dell EMC and five to OceanStor. However, it's worth acknowledging that OceanStore has improved a lot in performance.

The initial setup is very easy. Even the number of hosts directly connectable to the OceanStor is an eight out of ten. In comparison, my experience with the Dell EMC Unity 400 restricted connectivity to only four ports for the entire rack. 

On the other hand, with OceanStor, we can connect eight hosts per storage unit. It also eliminates the need to invest in additional switches, which is almost half the overall solution's cost. The provisioning aspect is both simple and efficient. 

It takes around three hours to deploy.

This product is fairly priced. EMC storage with similar specifications was offered to us at double the cost. This was around 20 million local currency, while Dell EMC was 40 million. Almost double the price. 

That's why we went with Huawei, even though Dell EMC was our initial preference due to their high cost.

OceanStor is much cheaper. 

OceanStor is a good product, but I can't compare it directly to Dell EMC. OceanStor wasn't even born when EMC was already established, so their maturity level is much higher. Comparing EMC and Huawei, I'd give EMC a 10 and OceanStor a 5, but OceanStor has improved a lot in performance and offers competitive solutions.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten because it fulfills all my requirements. Even if I want to add a DR box, it's so simple. I will just add a location within, like, 400 kilometers. And just in two to three steps, my application will start working.

There are multiple use cases for this solution, as it offers robust storage solutions and centralized management capabilities with intuitive interfaces.

We have implemented two distinct sets of features in our system. The first one is called Smart Features and it is slightly better to operate. We are using it for various applications such as virtualization, database migration, and cloud computing. The second group is called Hyper Features and it includes rapid hyper replication, hyper snapshot, and data encryption. The use of specific features depends on the client's demands and needs. Sometimes it is required to delete all of the data or to run big data analytics.

The main concern is regarding the usability of the data storage. It would be beneficial if they would enhance the option to utilize the remaining space if it's left.

We have been using this solution for over four years. 

Huawei OceanStor is designed with built-in high availability features, such as fault tolerance, ensuring consistent data access and minimizing downtime. 

This solution provides high scalability, allowing companies to easily expand their data storage capacity as their data requirements grow. I deployed it many times for different kinds of clients and businesses, such as the private sector, government requirements, and the army. So the diversity in usage is very significant and if there is a clear operational plan, it is simple to execute it. 

Our experience with customer support has been really good. Whenever we faced any issue or challenge, their service team handled it very well and promptly. It is beneficial that the support team is available at all times. 

Positive

We have been working with many different vendors such as Hitachi and NetApp, but I found Huawei OceanStor to be a better choice compared to others. They provide efficient performance with advanced data protection features that ensure data integrity and protect critical business information. 

When I first started working with this solution, I found it hard to implement it but with experience, it became much easier. The complexity of the initial setup depends on the skills and expertise of the technicians. 

The deployment of the solution involves a structured process that includes initial planning, hardware installation, software configuration, and network integration. It is a project where everyone has their role. It can take up to fourteen hours if it requires a certain level of complexity, but usually, it takes six hours to deploy it. Additionally, Huawei offers professional services and technical experts to assist if needed. 

Huawei OceanStor is a cost-effective storage solution. It allows its users to optimize their storage infrastructure and achieve enhanced resource utilization. 

We are highly satisfied with the effectiveness and performance of this solution. It is a great choice that caters to the storage needs of enterprise-level companies. I rate it nine out of ten. 

We are using Snapshot switches, which capture all our databases and help us take data backups. We use these snapshots in our development environment, troubleshooting, and R&D. Additionally, the application feature allows us to replicate data efficiently, which greatly enhances performance.

I have been using Huawei OceanStor for three years. We are using the latest version of the solution.

I rate the solution’s stability a ten out of ten.

It is scalable.

I rate the solution’s scalability a nine out of ten.

Support is good.

Positive

It is very easy because we have to hire professional services. They locate us for data science and any other patching and firmware activities, and their engineers do these activities. Complete deployment takes a month in total.

Deployment was done by a third party.

There is a 50% code reduction.

It is not expensive. The storage is not expensive, like IBM storage. As soon as the support of your Optus Storage is very low, there's a financial benefit for us.

I rate the product’s pricing a ten out of ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I work in pre-sales. I have certification for these solutions. In my use case, I work for a reseller company for OceanStor. Every day, I use the configuration tools to create proposals for our customers.

My favorite feature is network replication. The data reduction feature is also good. Most importantly, OceanStor can be used as NAS and SAN storage at the same time, with both file and block features in the same box.

The price could be better. It's not good for the Brazilian market. I think it would be better suited for enterprise markets, not for small businesses.

We do not have good software for hands-on protection or cloud interconnect for migration. OceanStor is not so good to integrate with the cloud directly, like NetApp and others. Huawei is not so good for these features.

I have been using it for four years now. 

It is a very stable product. 

We had no problems like crashes. It is very stable. 

It is very good to scale because the solution works like a scale-out and is scalable in the same box.

I didn't need support because it's a new box. We have had it for less than a year.

The main competitor for OceanStor is IBM with FlashSystem. It has a better price, but OceanStor has more features. However, IBM has a good price because it is produced here in Brazil.

The initial setup was easy. We have OceanStor in our environment and it was very easy to deploy. OceanStor is very quick to deploy.

One hour is enough to deploy. It's not very hard. But if you need to integrate with a lot of other systems, creating a full environment takes time. For the storage itself, it's easy to set up.

We had a lot of support from Huawei. Just one person is enough for deployment. 

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. It is pretty high. 

New users may need some training before they buy OceanStor because it's different from other vendors like EMC, Dell, NetApp, etc. The user interface is very simple, but I recommend new users acquire training.

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

I use OceanStor for my organization.

I find the scalability features of OceanStor valuable. Additionally, installation is easy, and it only requires one person to install it. Maintenance is also easy and not a big issue.

A concern with OceanStor is pricing. However, apart from that, there are no significant limitations or technical issues.

I have been using OceanStor for three years.

Overall, the solution is stable.

The scalability features of OceanStor are good.

I would rate the technical support eight out of ten. It is quite good.

Positive

The initial setup is easy, only requiring one person for installation.

I have seen some return on investment, including time savings and cost savings of about twenty percent.

The pricing is a concern, as it is seen as expensive.