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Dell EqualLogic PS series vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell EqualLogic PS series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
304
Ranking in other categories
NAS (8th), All-Flash Storage (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of Dell EqualLogic PS series is 4.3%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is 10.2%, up from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HPE 3PAR StoreServ10.2%
Dell EqualLogic PS series4.3%
Other85.5%
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

Khuram Ayyaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Executive at Virtual University
Has enabled uninterrupted access to educational platforms and simplified storage management
Dell EqualLogic PS series is easily scalable, and we can add extra boxes and storage. It was easy to deploy during COVID. Deploying Dell EqualLogic PS series is straightforward, with no complexity involved. Dell EqualLogic PS series is a good product. We did not experience any failures in the last six to seven years, and it is still running as our storage for offline data. There are snapshot capabilities in data protection available, but we did not use that feature because it consumes much space. We have only 150 terabytes of space and simply use it to create volumes without utilizing it for snapshots. We use thin provisioning in Dell EqualLogic PS series, but I did not explore that feature further.
CO
Information Systems & Security Administrator at a government with 501-1,000 employees
Ease of use in data center boosts resilience and infrastructure efficiency
I find the HPE 3PAR StoreServ valuable for its ease of use and resilience, which is beneficial. The main benefits I have seen from having HPE 3PAR StoreServ include its use at a small branch I managed for about three years with around 60 users. It operates effectively because it is an HPE product we use there. I have not experienced any significant issues besides occasional IT-related ones, such as local database problems. Since handing over the administration of the system to someone else and moving to another department, there have not been any issues. There are many features that exist but I haven't needed to try. Before moving out of that role in my organization, I knew it was a product I enjoyed working with for infrastructure purposes. After completing my new role, I intend to return to infrastructure.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It has been extremely reliable and very easy to upgrade and expand."
"Enterprise features for snapshot management and replication benefited us greatly."
"Equallogic PS series arrays are the best suited storage platform for mid to high level enterprises."
"Technical support is great; we have four-hour support from Dell for storage."
"Its high availability. It has a lot of redundancy and good management software as well as good alerting."
"​It has contributed to the implementation of virtualization and all its benefits.​"
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"You can always trust it. It is stable."
"When we started using 3PAR what we liked was the simplicity of the product. We needed a higher performance storage and, in our support model, we needed to keep the simplicity of the storage architecture, keep it as clean and as manageable as we could."
"Valuable features include the intuitiveness of the SAN itself, a lot of the built-in logic and functionality, the tiering that it uses to determine what type of disk is best for the various types of workloads, and the automation that is built in. It's also easy to manage."
"The most valuable features are the functions and the flash disks, which make our storage system much faster than previous systems."
"The most valuable features are the reporting and replication, as reporting gives us needed information about how much and where we're consuming storage and also shows our replication as we replicate between volumes."
"It is a great solution; there are others out there, but we have always been using 3PAR and we are pretty happy with it."
"From a comparison of bang for the buck, what you get for the money, I'd have to say they are one of the market leaders."
"In our limited experience so far, it has been excellent, support has been fantastic, the setup process was smooth."
"Switching from HDDs to SSDs, because of better performance (IOPS) and, hopefully, reliability."
 

Cons

"Do not go for EQL. It will be out of production in a few years."
"If I need to have more space or more capacity, I need to replace the product. It would be ideal if we could scale without replacing the box itself."
"The product is reaching the end-of-lifecycle."
"Individual file recovery would be a nice additional feature."
"Why is it not possible for both controllers to be simultaneously active (load balancing)?"
"Three of the four devices have been rock solid, and one of them had a string of issues that we eventually resolved."
"Synchronous replication uses space inefficiently."
"One problem with this solution is that synchronous replication requires lots of duplicated space."
"We had a minor error when we were configuring this system, which initially detracted from its overall stability."
"It wasn't the most straightforward setup. It would be better with an easier setup."
"I would like to be able to deploy and manage 3PAR within OneView Global Dashboard so we do not have to use the interface for 3PAR."
"We would like to see deduplication and hybrid in the next release of the solution."
"Data de-duplication is something that's lacking in 3PAR."
"I would like to see a little bit more integration from a cloud perspective. In this way, I would have some more flexibility to do more with data, how to store it, and where I have it."
"The thing that we're a little bit bummed about is they're not so quick to get it with the latest version of VMware and we're also using an older version of OneView; so to get to the newer/later releases, it seems like it's a two week process for two different data centers."
"The GUI interface could be improved. I have been having trouble with one issue in particular. If you look at the DC and DR, if there is a communication break and the link went down—so the data is not replicating from DC to DR—there is no way to find out how much data is ready for transmission. Only the size of the data that needs to be transferred after the link comes up. If the firewall link is down, there is no way of seeing how much data is waiting to be transferred. This is a weak point of 3PAR."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I didn't buy it. It was another person seven years ago. So, I don't really know, but all storage platforms cost a lot of money. It is probably in the mid-range, but you get what you pay for."
"Price-wise, the solution is cheap. I rate it a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"Initial packages include all upgrades and services."
"It seemed expensive at first, but the durability lowered the cost of ownership dramatically over time."
"All features are out of the box. The license will be in the virtual, OS, or application layer."
"There are annual maintenance costs beyond the original licensing period."
"Dell EqualLogic PS series can improve its scale-out feature. Sometimes the customer has a limited budget for storage expansion. When they want to expand their capacity, they need to buy a complete controller plus storage capacity, which sometimes is out of their budget. If Dell EqualLogic PS series support could scale up the environment in which only hard drive extension controllers should be supported, then customers can expand within a lower budget."
"Licensing is pretty straightforward."
"I would like it to be cheaper."
"The solution has two parts: software and hardware, and you need to buy licenses for some features."
"They have added features, such as the compression and duplication, which have further increased our ROI."
"The SSD is a little bit expensive."
"This is not an expensive product but every time you add capacity to it, you need to pay for re-balancing."
"We went with 3PAR because we have HP-UX systems. Since we already knew HP-UX, they offered us a significantly cheaper solution than the one that we had for storage."
"Budget wise, 3PAR is a lot of money compared to other solutions, but what is in the 3PAR integration that customers are getting now from the Nimble and InfoSight acquisitions, it is worthwhile."
"You need to properly assess your needs before buying the solution since there are chances of overpaying. The type of configuration that you choose can make the price go higher or lower."
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Comparison Review

it_user182013 - PeerSpot reviewer
Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
May 1, 2015
Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR
Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise74
Large Enterprise170
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell EqualLogic PS series?
The technical support for the solution was really good.
What needs improvement with Dell EqualLogic PS series?
I do not have anything in mind regarding new capabilities for Dell products at this time.
What is your primary use case for Dell EqualLogic PS series?
We are essentially a university, and we have deployed Dell EqualLogic PS series in our data centers to run our production sites, student portals, websites, our on-premises portal, and campus manage...
What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?
HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspective, it is reliable, easy to set up, stable, and offers quality block storage. All...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE 3PAR StoreServ?
As a customer, I always prefer to have a lower price. Any customer will always ask for the cheaper price.
 

Also Known As

EqualLogic PS series
HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FAW Foundry, AW Engineering, Unimat, eLongNet Information Technology, BDO Brasil, Odyssey Space Research
Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell EqualLogic PS series vs. HPE 3PAR StoreServ and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.