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HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs VNX [EOL] comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
304
Ranking in other categories
NAS (7th), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (1st), All-Flash Storage (9th)
VNX [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Q&A Highlights

Julia Miller - PeerSpot reviewer
Community Director at PeerSpot
Jul 31, 2018
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Muhammad Saqib - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Hybrid Tech
Uninterrupted upgrades accelerate performance with good support
I would rate the solution eight out of ten. It should be noted that in Pakistan, some parts are not readily available, and we need to import them from Singapore or other countries. We encountered an issue with a customer where the midplane failed and was not available. We had to wait for several days for a replacement, even in a 24/7 support case. Additionally, we faced motherboard failures in the customer's environment, encountering two motherboard failures simultaneously. We obtained one motherboard immediately, yet had to wait ten days for another. These issues should have been resolved promptly given the 24/7 support level.
AZ
Works at AIT
The Nimble CS-Series has proven to be reliable with 100% uptime
When we started the process of looking for a SAN vendor I had four primary criteria: reliability, performance, cost, and simplicity. We were really looking for a unicorn and were fully expected to have to make compromises in one of those areas. The Nimble CS-Series was recommended by our solutions provider, and we were blown away. Not only was it the most affordable option, but it was the easiest to deploy, had the best performance, and has proven to be reliable with 100% uptime.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is very good."
"The job of support for the storage engineers dramatically changed. We know more quickly the automation of the provisioning. We can now focus on things that bring more value to the company than just managing storage."
"The amount of data that I have moved to it from legacy storage has enabled us to retire units that are three or four times the physical size."
"Running SAP on Pure Storage helps a lot without doing any further tuning to improve application performance. Our internal clients are happy."
"The stability is very good. I've done destructive testing on it and never had any type of storage outages from it."
"The tool has reduced our power consumption."
"We have integrated the solution with VMware, and the process was seamless."
"Even if they weren't one of the fastest arrays in the entire industry, I would use them for their support model and ease of use."
"The tech support is great, and if we have a problem, we literally will have boots on the ground with senior sales people, as well as the people to fix the problem, to help make sure we are taken care of."
"It handles the structure of our system easily and provides us with really good performance."
"HPE 3PAR StoreServ is easy to use and has good performance."
"It allows us to cohost as needed, we are able to put more systems on one data storage system, and it is still able to deliver the availability and speed that we need it to deliver."
"This is a good, stable product, and management is pretty straightforward."
"The product lasts a very long time without having to be replaced. It's had a very long life."
"It is a rugged, performance system; it is trouble-free and a workhorse."
"Customer Service: It's excellent."
"FAST (auto-tiering): Doesn't require configuration and is managed by the array itself."
"If you are looking for a stable, powerful and effective entry level SAN that you can provision on your own for a small environment or a small office/remote office situation - this is definitely the product for you."
"If you have a banking and finance domain, then go for EMC products as they offer better performance and scalability."
"We moved from CX with FC/SATA to VNX with SSD, SAS, NL-SAS and using SSD as Fast Cache we have seen huge performance gains in certain operations."
"From my point of view, the configuration that I can sell is restricted to the EMC best practices. It is hard to make a mistake in a solution. It means the configuration has good performance and scalability options."
"In a banking environment, on which we required a very high throughput for our database, we have used this product and our desired response was received."
"I have worked on CLARiiON and all series of VNX."
"Integration with VMware"
 

Cons

"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution."
"The only minor issues that come to mind are that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad. Also, the solution should be cheaper."
"Pure Storage can improve FlashArray by providing more logging visibility to customers. Currently, there is no log visibility."
"The pricing needs to be improved as they offer very high budgeting prices. Searching is a big challenge in Pure Storage FlashArrays, especially when trying to restore a VM."
"One thing I'd like to see in a future release is integration between their main storage array and what they call their FlashBlade product; to be able to snapshot directly from the primary array into multiple different backup copies on FlashBlade."
"Based on my experience with various technologies like EMC, NetApp, and Pure Storage, one area for improvement is compliance certifications. NetApp excels in this area, particularly in the American Army or defense sector, where NetApp has approval, whereas others are striving to achieve the same. NetApp also delivers security, ransomware protection, and scale-up capabilities more effectively."
"Many high-end platforms from other vendors like Dell EMC or Hitachi, their backend has Active/Active architecture, unlike Pure Storage FlashArray which doesn't utilize an Active/Active architecture on the backend."
"It would be nice to have it as a core feature included in the product initially at no extra cost."
"The solution must be vertically and horizontally expandable."
"Yes, we have had a few issues with stability."
"HPE could improve by making an old flash system in order to compete with the current market. For the solution to be more competitive in the mid-range market they could increase the performance."
"Anything new can be complex. There were some things in the initial deployment that I was not happy about."
"As long as they can keep the solution stable, it will be good. Stability is very important to us."
"This solution only provides active-passive replication, as opposed to active-active."
"In new releases, I'd really like to see it more targeted towards hyper-converged. They are working that way with Greenlake and integrating their own "build your own" expansion environment within 3PAR."
"Based on our workloads, we see repeatedly in performance reports that the built-in controller (SP) cache of our VNX model is not sufficiently large, resulting in forced cache flushing."
"VNX can improve by offering flexible upgrade options."
"You need a lot of licenses in order to use this product, which makes the product expensive; the maintenance contract price also increases significantly every year."
"They don’t quite provide enough security in the data centre."
"Due to very complex structure and sophisticated architecture, it needs experts for trivial troubleshooting also."
"Customer Service: I don't like the way EMC's Powerlink support is behind a wall."
"The migration process was very complex."
"We encountered scalability as it is limited by backend slots, and NAS performance is significantly reduced when scaling."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When I last looked, the prices were reasonable, and we could get an excellent array for about $60,000."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could always improve. They are still more expensive than some alternative offerings. Cost is always a concern and when there is a battle they tend to be more expensive."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"The pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray is reasonable."
"Pure Storage has not helped to reduce our HANA licensing costs."
"The price is very reasonable when compared to other solutions."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)."
"Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive."
"I would like it to be cheaper."
"Making the decisions to buy it can be complex."
"We don't pay for any licensing fees."
"Take advantage of what HPE offers as far as professional services, and this will help you make the right decision."
"They have added features, such as the compression and duplication, which have further increased our ROI."
"It's a good price."
"I have to renew support in October for the existing solution. That will cost me roughly $50,000 this year, which in the grand scheme of things, $50,000 is not that much compared to paying $850,000. However, it will be the last year that I'll be able to get direct support from HPE. Therefore, product has to be replaced in 2020."
"We purchased the total package for approximately $60,000."
"While EMC tends to be on the expensive side, the stability and support of their products are top-notch and I feel are worth the cost."
"Make sure you understand how the licensing works and that you are getting the right set of licenses if you need array-to-array replication."
"Over time, VNX has become pricier than its competitors, and we have turned enthusiastically to Unity."
"The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable, the yearly EMC is more expensive"
"Pricing is somewhat higher, especially in Zambia, perhaps due to the low sales volume."
"​Reducing dependency on JavaServer Pages​ (JSP) could improve the administrative overhead.​"
"The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable. Yearly EMC is more expensive."
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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…
 

Answers from the Community

Julia Miller - PeerSpot reviewer
Community Director at PeerSpot
Jul 31, 2018
Jul 31, 2018
Pros EMC VNX Multi-tiering positively affects the efficiency of the storage space. The replication feature provides another functionality to protect your data. The implementation of both block and file system storage in a single GUI provides is better situated than most other storages. From my point of view, the configuration that I can sell is restricted to the EMC best practices. It is ha...
2 out of 19 answers
reviewer325866 - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder and General Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
May 29, 2018
As far as I know, VNX line is no longer available, therefore I think that the real comparison has to be with the Dell EMC Unity family systems
it_user551106 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Solution Architect - HPE MASE - Storage with 5,001-10,000 employees
May 29, 2018
One user says about HPE 3PAR, "The optimization features move chunklets or hot spots to faster drives." The moving of Chunklets is to maintain performance. What kind of CPG or level of protection you choose for 3PAR volumes will determine your availability and protection level? Although Chunklets can be moved to higher levels of protection, that is not the stated purpose above. Another user says about EMC VNX, "The replication feature provides another functionality to protect your data." The replication feature mentioned is for protection and not performance. VNX performance can be enhanced by FAST Cache. Availability is determined by the Virtual Provisioning of the VNX and by choosing a Storage Pool in which the proper RAID level is chosen.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
16%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise74
Large Enterprise170
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
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 perspectiv...
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.
What needs improvement with HPE 3PAR StoreServ?
I have no specific ideas for improvement at present. We just need to verify whether our current virtual server setup ...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage
VNX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC
Samsonite, Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Kindred Healthcare
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage), Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: October 2026.
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