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HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs VNX [EOL] comparison

Sponsored
 

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
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
304
Ranking in other categories
NAS (8th), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (2nd), All-Flash Storage (11th)
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

"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both, therefore we are NCA compliant."
"It does efficient work of storing data while still delivering the performance that you would normally expect from a higher priced solution."
"In Pure Storage FlashArray, the dedupe and compression are excellent, and performance is good too."
"We experience fast demos and zero downtime; we do not experience any downtime with Pure Storage, thanks to resilience with Safe Mode, integration with backup software, and everything related to cyber resilience."
"This solution has improved the way our organization functions through its reliability and consistent platform for storage and has helped us to simplify storage because the management tools make everything a lot easier."
"Simplicity and reliability are the most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray."
"It simplifies storage."
"It simplifies building out the storage."
"We use all the features, but some of the most valuable are the replication, priority optimization, provisioning, and deduplication. There are a lot of good features in this product."
"The performance is pretty good and the usability is excellent."
"I think the service during post-implementation, and not just pre-implementation, is the most valuable feature."
"The solution has been good since it was installed, we have not had many problems."
"We use 3PAR for storage of all the city's data, everything from videos of sewer lines, to orthophotos for our GIS system, to storage of our databases, data in general; it's performing awesomely."
"Customer Service: We haven’t had any issues; we wanted white-glove treatment and that’s what we got."
"I don't know the financials, but we were able to quadruple the production output by shifting the work to the 3PAR array."
"In a converged environment, 3PAR is a very good product to look at."
"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."
"It is very stable, even during multiple power failures."
"Tiering, because it allows your data to dynamically move among different disk types based on demand in the last 24 hours."
"Good performance for VM environments"
"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."
"EMC storage has the best performance and functions."
"The stability of the hardware, and its ability to manage millions of IOPS, provides great comfort to system administrators, IT managers and CIOs."
"The implementation of both block and file system storage in a single GUI provides is better situated than most other storages."
 

Cons

"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"The internal garbage collection process has been fixed recently in some OS updates so it is more efficient but that could be just a little better."
"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."
"I would rate this solution an eight because we have had outages. The commit times went very high in the database. The whole array went down so our customers were down for around eight hours. This was a very big outage which could have been our fault because we didn't do the upgrade in time."
"CIFS and SMB Shares cannot be mounted directly."
"With scalability, I have run into a little problem with our last upgrade. There were some undocumented limitations to the number of drives that our controller could run on. So, instead of putting in a new data pack as we had anticipated, we had to keep adding and removing to get up to the capacity that we needed to be. What should have been a one day process (or a few hours) turned into a month and a half process."
"The setup needs to be improved the most. They can do a little more with the user interface, but the setup is what I would like to see made a bit easier."
"I would love for them to have a hyper-converged solution."
"Extending is not a problem, scalability is okay. But once you buy additional box of disks, you have to wait for HPE to contact you with their plan for implementation, for connecting, and it can take several weeks. So, you have the box and you have to wait for several weeks to actually implement it."
"I'd like to see just a little bit more virtualization so that as I work on the front end, I can make any necessary disc switches."
"I would like to see NVMe support, not only on the disk side, but also in the NVMe over Fibre Channel."
"In most cases Pure Storage is better. It's better overall, and allows us to scale up faster, the cost of ownership's lower, and the replication across areas is good."
"The only area I would say that could use improvement is communication on what upgrades should be applied."
"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."
"We have had a few issues with it. We had our virtual environment lock up a few times on storage-based things. We think we have it sorted out, but maybe it came down to a configuration issue on it."
"I would like an easier user interface and setup to help with deployment."
"I do not recommend the Gen 1 VNX to anyone in this day and age."
"Over time, VNX has become pricier than its competitors, and we have turned enthusiastically to Unity."
"EMC VNX needs to support bigger SSDs. Next generation EMC Unity will do this."
"If the VNX had embedded encryption, that would be great."
"They may change the disks from NL-SAS to Flash, but it would be costlier for customers."
"So far we haven't had many issues with the VNX. However, the Data Mover (that manages CIFS/NFS) part needs some improvements."
"There is no easy way to defrag a RAID group. It would be nice to be able to reduce the size of a storage pool if the storage is not needed anymore."
"Poor connection to FC."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Dell and Pure Storage offer competitive pricing, but Pure Storage might have a slight advantage."
"There are no licensing fees or other costs."
"Because the price is a bit higher than other products, the data reduction equalizes the price with amount of the data reduction."
"There should be quite a bit of reduction of TCO with just licensing (and stuff) because we run the VM environment off it."
"The price is very reasonable when compared to other solutions."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"As a school, we always have​ low budgets. We are a nonprofit organization. We do not have too much budget, so we care about prices, discounts, and especially about the product quality. The last 16 years, we have been an HPE customer. We are very much happy with HPE products."
"The price of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is reasonable, but buying upgrade licenses are priced very high. There are additional fees."
"We have seen ROI. We are able to see more patients now, bringing more money into the practice."
"It is lower in price as compared to other vendors, such as Dell. As compared to Huawei, all storage solutions are expensive, including this one."
"To be more competitive, as customer, we need a more aggressive price that includes all the licenses available."
"We paid for five years of support when we purchased the product."
"Since the prices of the flash storage has gone down tremendously, I would definitely recommend going for the all-flash storage array or 3PAR. It is a big expensive even now, but it will be the future of all industries."
"Take advantage of what HPE offers as far as professional services, and this will help you make the right decision."
"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."
"The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable. Yearly EMC is more expensive."
"The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable, the yearly EMC is more expensive"
"Over time, VNX has become pricier than its competitors, and we have turned enthusiastically to Unity."
"​Reducing dependency on JavaServer Pages​ (JSP) could improve the administrative overhead.​"
"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."
"Pricing is somewhat higher, especially in Zambia, perhaps due to the low sales volume."
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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
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
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?
I have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
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, NetApp, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: May 2026.
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