HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NetApp are both solutions in the NAS category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3, while NetApp is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.8. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 2024

HPE 3PAR StoreServ and NetApp FAS Series compete in the enterprise storage solutions market. Based on a feature comparison, HPE 3PAR StoreServ appears to hold the upper hand due to its advanced multi-tier management and fault tolerance capabilities, whereas NetApp FAS Series shines with integrated data protection and protocol flexibility.

Features: HPE 3PAR StoreServ is notable for thin provisioning, wide striping, and adaptive optimization. It excels in multi-tier storage management and includes robust fault tolerance through Peer Persistence. NetApp FAS Series offers integrated data protection with SnapManager Suite and supports multiple protocols, enhancing its flexibility. Its strengths lie in superior data replication and space efficiency via deduplication and compression, tailored for hybrid cloud setups.

Room for Improvement: HPE 3PAR StoreServ users suggest improvements in storage migration, deduplication on FC disks, and GUI intuitiveness. They also seek better cloud compatibility. NetApp FAS Series users desire better integration with all-flash and converged infrastructures, smoother upgrades, more competitive pricing, cluster-mode ubiquity, and improved monitoring tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both HPE 3PAR StoreServ and NetApp FAS Series are primarily deployed on-premises, with NetApp also offering hybrid cloud options. Customer service for both is highly rated, often above 8/10. HPE is commended for proactive support and technical help, while NetApp is praised for strong technical knowledge. Users noted that HPE could improve support responsiveness in certain regions, and NetApp could enhance integration tools.

Pricing and ROI: HPE 3PAR StoreServ's pricing is high but justified by its features and reliability, often delivering a significant ROI through reduced downtime and enhanced throughput. Users value bundled license options but criticize additional licensing costs. NetApp FAS Series is considered more expensive, but its performance and bundled offerings justify the cost over time. Users acknowledge its high initial pricing but note it offers competitive solutions, especially when all-flash upgrades are essential.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. NetApp FAS Series Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. NetApp FAS Series

February 2025

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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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

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Muhammad Saqib

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.

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Paweł Jabłoński

IT Infrastructure Manager at Bricoman Wilanów

Used for VMs with replication a feature, but need upgraded SSDs

We use this solution. I configured and updated it. Of course, I was also a user of applications that store data on that storage. We already have an SSD solution. So, rather than planning to go with an SSD solution, we are focusing on expanding it. If a company wants to deploy something new, it should choose a product with SSD, and NVMe disks. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

"The latency is good."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"It is easy to manage and performs very well."

"We saved a ton of power just turning off our old one when we went to the new one."

"If you can handle the IOPS, throughput is a natural byproduct. Usually, IOPS is where you are capped. HPE has done a great job in making sure that our IOP-intensive EMRs stay up and running. We have really good performance on them."

"HPE 3PAR StoreServ has a good interface, it is user-friendly and easy to use."

"The InfoSight feature helps us with troubleshooting problems in our environment."

"HPE 3PAR StoreServ is an enterprise storage that is mainly deployed in enterprise scenarios like banking and insurance."

"It is very easy to manage. I can provision disks and monitor the performance easily."

"Any action we want to do with a Dell EMC product needs a license. But with 3PAR's converged solution, at least there is no need to purchase more licenses to get the all the features that we need. We can get basic and mid-range features without licenses."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pros

"Adaptive balancing is a valuable feature."

"Good for NAS and unified solutions."

"The replication feature is noteworthy because it's faster than most and it uses little bandwidth. Then there's the friendly interface that the equipment offers. With this interface, it is very easy to manage."

"It is very flexible. It integrates well with the public cloud and other components, so everything can be API driven. Therefore, it is very easy to automate it."

"This solution provides us with easy management and great vendor support."

"The solution is easy to use."

"The strong point is that our clients like this are RadLV (Radiology Low-Value). They also use SnapMirror and MetroCluster."

"The most valuable feature of the NetApp FAS Series is the snapshot and the FlexClone for Oracle and Microsoft SQL environments. Additionally, the integration can be done with most all on-premise and cloud providers."

More NetApp FAS Series pros

Cons

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"We do not use Memory-Driven Flash in the old 3PAR. Perhaps we will use it in the new 3PAR. That is part of the reason why we are upgrading."

"I would like the documentation easy to find. There is a lot of documentation, but sometimes it is hard to find. You have to do a lot of searching to find it."

"It is suitable for medium-sized businesses and data centers with less number of users and less important data. It is not really an enterprise-level solution. It needs more capacity. It is also not really stable. It should be more stable. It should also support any server model. It is really weak in this area."

"We are still waiting for the compression feature to be deployed."

"We are using a built-in solution in 3PAR. We are using All-Flash Storage, and there are some difficulties with it. HPE has now developed a new tool system to support All-Flash, and that's why we are changing our investment. They must increase its performance. I want unlimited support, which is very important for performance. I am not interested in spinning disks. HPE is developing new storage systems called Primera, but they must be developed more."

"Security is a mandatory feature because our customer needs to protect delicate information."

"There are issues formulating the upgraded disk."

"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."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ cons

"It may need more flexibility to fight with other competing arrays."

"NetApp FAS Series should improve its price, which is expensive."

"Needs to add wizards for newer, inexperienced users."

"NetApp FAS Series should introduce an FTP application for the broadcast and post-production market."

"The plan is to go with all SSDs and use MDM, rather than sticking with traditional disk drives. The goal is to have all SSDs for better maintenance speed, which is essential for applications that need to work."

"I would like to see NetApp add incident support."

"Currently, the newest release is not HCI friendly."

"We are not able to connect to the support of NetApp from Sudan. We have to go through many agents for support, which makes it difficult."

More NetApp FAS Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The licensing fee is not cheap."

"The price of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is reasonable, but buying upgrade licenses are priced very high. There are additional fees."

"If HPE reduced the price of 3PAR StoreServ they would be more attractive to mid-range companies."

"It's very reliable and it was cost competitive with other arrays at the time that we purchased it."

"For the price that we were able to acquire it, we have seen it give us the performance and stability that we require to run our enterprise."

"It is quite difficult to decide on the cost. At one point, I was the project lead to cover with some people, but the price was important and we had its compression calculated. At that moment, it was fair because that was one of the things moving their product due to the cost of HPE 3PAR StoreServ as they were competing with Hitachi and IBM A9000, which I'm not sure if is still available."

"This is not an expensive product but every time you add capacity to it, you need to pay for re-balancing."

"To be more competitive, as customer, we need a more aggressive price that includes all the licenses available."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pricing and cost advice

"The only area that could be improved is to lower prices for their All Flash FAS."

"The solution is more expensive than other vendors."

"The product's pricing is reasonable."

"Most storage vendors also have software, or licensing bundles, which may offer the required licenses considerably cheaper, but do also maybe offer licenses, which are not needed."

"The solution’s cost is reasonable."

"We have considered upgrading to an All-Flash solution but when we evaluated the cost-benefit we discovered that we don't have enough money to invest in it. To maintain the same technology with All-Flash would be too expensive for us."

"The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is reasonable for its performance."

"We purchased it for four years, and it wasn't expensive. It was reasonable. Every company has a different agreement with NetApp. We got everything we wanted with all the bells and whistles and all the features and functionalities."

More NetApp FAS Series pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user182013

Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at Rubrik

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Educational Organization

87%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

61%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

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What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

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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...

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What do you like most about HPE 3PAR StoreServ?

The compression features are good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE 3PAR StoreServ?

It is expensive, however, when we compare it to the features provided by HPE, the price-to-performance ratio is very ...

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Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?

Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.

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What do you like most about NetApp FAS Series?

Flexibility in data replication.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?

Cost is a big factor in our decision-making process. When we're buying storage, the first thing we look at is how muc...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 32% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

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HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 22% of the time

HPE Primera vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 21% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 7% of the time

HPE MSA vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 5% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 2% of the time

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ Competitors

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 23% of the time

HPE MSA vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 8% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 6% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 6% of the time

More NetApp FAS Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

March 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

March 2025

Download HPE 3PAR StoreServ product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp FAS Series

March 2025

Download NetApp FAS Series product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage

No data available

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is an AI-driven storage solution that prevents issues before they occur by learning and adjusting in real time. The solution offers a tier-1 all-flash foundation for mission-critical workloads. HPE 3PAR StoreServ was designed with more than 3M IOPS and consistent sub-ms latency. It aims to transform midrange and enterprise deployments with solutions that scale from a few TBs to more than 20PBs. In addition, the solution is built to modernize data centers and is made to handle unpredictable workloads effortlessly. By implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you gain automated and rapid provisioning, hardware-accelerated deduplication and compression, and a multi-tenant design.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Features

HPE 3PAR StoreServ has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Flexibility: With HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you can easily deploy highly configurable, scale-out storage for multi-tenant workloads.

Always-on availability for your data: HPE 3PAR StoreServ includes an always-on resilient storage infrastructure for your hypervisors and applications. In addition, with Peer Persistence, your virtual machines (VMs), hosts, and data can move freely across data centers rather than being constrained by their physical boundaries.

Fast, scalable performance: HPE 3PAR StoreServ enables you to accelerate consistent mixed-workload performance and also provides necessary QoS levels that are optimized for your highest priority applications.

Performance insights: HPE 3PAR StoreServ helps you gain performance insights in real time, and anticipate as well as prevent issues across the infrastructure stack by utilizing cross-stack analytics.

Flash optimized data protection: With tier-1 data services, multi-tenant security, and copy data management, you can avoid downtime.

Seamless data mobility: HPE 3PAR StoreServ makes it possible for you to not only experience converged data protection, but also experience seamless data mobility services, at flash speed, from the edge to the cloud.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Easy to manage. The web interface to manage the units is a great asset and one that makes managing storage easy.

User-friendly GUI

Exceptionally fast and well-managed replication
Low latency

Hybrid storage gives you the ability to assign different roles to different types of storage arrays inside one enclosure

Both file-level and block-level replication

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the HPE 3PAR StoreServ solution.

A SAN Consultant at a tech services company says, “One of the features that I like the most is the data replication element. The reason I like it is due to the fact that it's pretty clean on replicating data over to a second site. The product stands on its own in heavy enterprise environments. It's easy to make changes without affecting the environment. The solution is very easy to use. The product is very robust and offers very good performance.”

A Storage Manager at a financial services firm mentions, "There are a lot of screens for easy management where you can change some settings. But after a few years, the important settings were better after an upgrade, and all the vendors have other ways to upgrade their systems."

A Senior IT Infrastructure & Data Center Operation Engineer at Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) comments, “The adaptive optimization is the biggest feature in 3PAR. 3PAR is very usable with thin volume because it detects zeros while writing. Every time I tell the hypervisor to make the full provisioning, it makes the volume as simple provisioning in 3PAR, not full provisioning.”

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

NetApp FAS series is an enterprise-level storage system that provides a wide variety of data management services, including data protection, block and file storage, and data management.

NetApp FAS is designed to be highly scalable, allowing your organization to grow storage capacity on demand. NetApp FAS also supports multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel, as well as various storage architectures, including SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network-Attached Storage).

The FAS series has multiple data protection and data management features, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication, to help secure your data and manage it more efficiently. The system integrates with other NetApp products and solutions, to create a unified data management platform. The system can be deployed on-premise, on multi-cloud environments, or hybrid.

NetApp FAS Series Benefits and Features

NetApp FAS series provides its users with several key benefits and features, including:

Scalability: NetApp FAS series is easy to scale, allowing organizations to rapidly grow their storage capacity according to demand.

Security: Protect and manage your data with various data protection and data management tools, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication.

Seamless integration: Integrate with other NetApp products and solutions to ensure a unified data management platform across on-premise, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.

Reduced costs: Consolidation of multiple storage boxes greatly reduces the data center footprint. From a management point of view, with NetApp FAS you manage a single storage box instead of multiple storage boxes.
Compatibility: Forward and backward compatibility ensures that you don’t have to trade in existing controllers. New controllers can always integrate with previously released controllers.

Multi-protocol support: Support for multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel.

High performance and availability: The solution has high input and output per second performance and ensures that critical data remains accessible in the event of a hardware failure.
Intuitive interface: The FAS series has a user-friendly interface and management dashboard, making it easy to manage your storage systems. With unified management, you can quickly run a single protocol on your entire system
Data cloning and replication: Easily clone databases of any size. Clones occupy a very, very small footprint on the storage until they are severed from the main database. Replications carried out by the system are fast and require very little bandwidth.

Reviews from Real Users

NetApp FAS Series stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its speed, reliability, and a wide variety of features.

Adriano S., IT project and infrastructure service manager, writes, “The replication feature is noteworthy because it's faster than most and it uses little bandwidth. Then there's the friendly interface that the equipment offers. With this interface, it is very easy to manage.”

Temitope O., a NetApp product manager at Hiperdist Ltd, says, “I like the unified management feature because sometimes you end up running a single protocol on the entire system. You rather have a system for a particular protocol and another system for other protocols, especially in a big environment like mine.”

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC

Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. NetApp FAS Series

February 2025

Free Report: HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. NetApp FAS Series

Find out what your peers are saying about HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.

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