HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

Most valuable to us are the capacity, the scalability, and also the reliability.

The benefit of HPE 3PAR flash storage is the scalability. It generally has good reliability.

The SSD disks mainly did well performance-wise. Now that the cost of the system is reduced, it's more financially viable as well. We did have firmware problems with them over the years, but generally we're fairly happy with it.

We've been with HPE for about ten years.

Stability is pretty good, but we had a fiber channel previously, and we found that was a bit more reasonable than the HPE.

Scalability is very good. The 3PAR is very modular, so we can just install more modules as we need.

I give technical support a 9/10. If we have a problem, we log a call and they come back to us within half an hour. It is pretty good.

We were previously using HPE SAN, but we then went to the P4000, and now we're looking to upgrade our data centre again. So we're quite happy with their solutions and the help. We think it's one of the best ones out there.

The initial setup was complex. We had the HPE consultants in to work with us, and we had a few issues initially. But we managed to get them resolved.

We looked at IBM, Dell, and HPE. We went with HPE because we have used HPE storage solutions before. We have also used HPE network server equipment and we found them to be good quality equipment. Additionally, we found that working with them was quite a good experience.

We currently use the P4000, which is iSCSI. We will go for the fiber channel next time, which we have been comparing with the 3PAR.

When choosing a vendor, their reputation, and obviously the quality of the products, are important. HPE is pretty consistent with these.

The most valuable features are the scalability and the support, because you need to keep the business running.

I am not sure that there are benefits over other solutions. It's just that we've always used HPE. I think it comes down again to be more about support and the scalability.

I would like to see a lot more monitoring and reporting out of the box.

It is very stable.

We've scaled it up quite a bit. It doesn’t have any problems.

Technical support is getting better.

I used to use HPE EVA. We needed to switch because we couldn't expand anymore.

The initial setup was complex. I was one of the first customers to get their StoreServ 7400. It wasn't a good experience at all. The guy who set it up didn't really understand the technology that he was building. He didn't have build documents. The solution that I was initially sold wasn't correct so the workloads failed. It was a nightmare.

I looked at things like Tintri and another company that I forget the name of now. They didn't have the support model that I needed at the time.

I think that it's a more mature product now, so you’ll probably have a better experience; but certainly do your homework on your actual workloads and what you need. We initially got a solution which died all the time because we were trying to get too much output.

Most valuable to us is that the 3PAR is very easy to use and has good response times.

It is a very responsive system with no latencies and high performance.

I would really like to see it be more efficient at reclaiming storage when deleting something, instead of just being thin at the start.

There were some bugs, but after the latest update, it is acting more stable.

Technical support is excellent.

We have many different types of solutions. Since HPE is one of our partners, it was natural to evaluate their products and buy from them.

Initial setup was straightforward.

We looked at some of the bigger vendors like Dell EMC and IBM, of course.

This tool is directly attached to the ProLiant server. It has very, very low latency.

The solution hasn’t benefited the entire company. It's a special solution that has provided benefit for part of the company. We have global data instruments around the world. This tool has allowed us to decrease the data import time from nine hours to just one hour.

I would like to see fewer licenses.

This is a stable solution. We have used it for three years.

It is the end of the product. We had to buy all of our 3PAR products in 2012. At the time, it was a new product. It wasn't viable. It is now running out of disk space.

We have used technical support. They are on time and very good. They provide good solutions.

We did not have a previous solution. We had a service provider, which had IBM solutions. I needed a solution for a particular application, and HPE 3PAR was one part of the solution.

I was involved in the installation. We have problems every time. Sometimes there are three parts to one problem.

For example, I had to get help from the engineering team in India. It took a year to solve this issue. There was new documentation in which the installation requirements for the disaster tolerant systems changed. That is one of the installation issues.

We didn’t have an alternative at the time. Our client could only work with 3PAR. There were no other products in the world which could do that in 2012. I don't know about solutions that are available today.

I have experience with HPE since 1996. I'm a member of "Connect". I know HPE better than I know IBM.

Some HPE solutions are very good. In terms of performance and digital equipment, they have very good knowledge in some types of IT.

HPE tries to be visionary, but I don't think they are. Perhaps they have the right products today, but the whole world is changing.

I could help a colleague who is making a decision by showing him our HPE solutions. I could explain what we have done and why.

• The most valuable feature to me is its reliability. After that, it is the architecture, and the rest of the HPE sort of products, like the blades and the storage.
• You've got the best of breed from a storage perspective, and a proven solution that integrates well with the HPE c7000 or the BladeSystem infrastructure. You have a solution that has been tried and tested by HPE as an overall solution.
• It enables us to use a virtualized layer. Until we deployed our 3PAR, we had pretty much everything as physical servers. With 3PAR, we are in the process of completing the virtualization of our services.

Small companies are interested in simplicity and a very granular licensing model is something that poses a number of challenges.
From the cost perspective, (usually this licensing model is geared towards revenue generating…) it makes it expensive but also from the admin point of view it ends up being cumbersome and difficult to manage. We had a number of issues when ordering an upgrade to existing array due to this licensing model.
Using a small number of bundles or just a single licensing model (like Nimble for example) will make the product more appealing and simplify the process of organizing an upgrade.

Stability-wise, I think it's very good. Support-wise, I think it’s debatable based on some issues that we had with it.

I think the scalability is one of the factors that caused us to select 3PAR.

Technical support was average, and bad handling some incidents.

We were using direct attached storage. We moved to Sun; and then we decided to implement 3PAR.

The initial setup was complex. I would say it was flawed because we had issues.

For the storage, we looked at Talent, which is now Dell. We also looked at Nutanix and Tintri. The main reason we chose HPE was that we already had an HPE infrastructure; and it felt like it was the best solution for our needs. The product met our requirements at the time.

Reliability is very important in a vendor. We also look at the breadth of offerings because we like to keep things simple. Rather than choosing a varied mix from a multitude of vendors, we like to go with a small number. I have a small team and it's easier from a management perspective, as well as understanding and supporting the product in the best way possible.

It all depends on what you need, and how you can justify the cost. It is not a cheap solution. It depends on what you have. If it's a brand new setup, then there are other paths you can take, and it's worth researching them. If you already have HPE deployments in-house on the server side, not the storage, I think 3PAR will definitely make a very great addition to your portfolio.

The speed and the storage optimization are the best features. I realized that instead of mixing with the traditional hard drives and flash, we could go with flash. We made an RFP, and found that for more or less the same cost, we could get an all-flash solution.

• We removed a lot of the restrictions of our old storage solution so we would have better performing applications.
• We didn’t have to worry about storage anymore.

We are waiting for the compression to use on a daily basis. We have some deep ticket issues that I know about related to this. Otherwise, we are fairly happy with the solution.

We have some issues with it, but HPE has been very good. Their partners have been very good in working with us and slowly inching us out of the curb.

We are fairly small. We are at the moment 800 virtual services. For us, it has very good scalability; but we are very, very small.

It's not me personally, but some of the technicians are pleased with the support. They have pulled back what have been problems. We are comfortable with their support.

The previous solution was getting old. It was getting harder to replace with lifecycle handling, so we knew that we needed a new storage system.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. We migrated since we are totally virtualized on VMware. We changed all the storage to the 3PAR within a few weeks. Without any downtime or anything. It was very, very good.

We made an RFP that was open to everyone. We evaluated an old flash solution that was better than the traditional solution; but you can't buy an old flash solution if you're going to buy as big as a traditional solution. So you have to have the optimizations that 3PAR has. Otherwise, you're not in business. It gets too expensive.

We had offers from EMC and from IBM, but our HPE partner came up with the best offer, so they won the RFP.

If you want Sun or old fashioned good storage optimization technology, then 3PAR is very, very good.

It's quite fast, easy to manage, and easy to extend. Adding new shelves or new platforms is easy.

In our case, 3PARs were easier to implement into our existing environment. Also, we had problem with storage space so it was the easiest way to expand.

I'm happy for the moment. But I would like to see them implement the new types of RAM; the NVRAM that is being used in the server environment. This would make storage quite a bit faster. It's not slow, but it could always be faster. Maybe this can also be available partially in a storage environment.

For example, if you have a DSQL server or something similar. Most companies have the lock database on the local server. In our case, we have everything on the 3PAR and it would make sense to have faster storage. We would like to see some innovation. There's room for improvement.

We have been using 3PARs for a year.

We have never had any stability problems.

Scalability is always a matter of price of course, but you can put in new disks with no problem at all.

We used technical support to do updates. They're good and very fast. They were very helpful.

We used EMC before but it was quite old, about 7 years, and it was time to change. There wasn't a good solution from them at that time. The ability to scale to size was important to us when choosing a vendor, as well as the speed. We want our solution to be future-proof to an extent.

I was partially involved in the initial setup. It was complex because of our environment. We have 10 or 15 different systems in the background so it wasn't easy. We thought it would be easy, but in the end it was quite complex.

There isn’t only one solution on the market. We already had the EMC systems. We were not limited to flash providers, so we also looked at Nimble and Hitachi and others.

At the end of the day, 3PAR was the most valuable. It was the most valuable solution. It was quite fast and it wasn't too expensive. Additionally, we could have an active-active scenario. That was for us the most important thing.

I would say go for it. You should at least give it a chance.

It is affordable and trustworthy with high availability. It has never been down since I’ve been using it.

Everything I need is in already, but we could maybe use a bit more monitoring to get more insight into performance and where the bottlenecks are.

It is very good in terms of stability.

The scalability is nice. I need to expand the system by 70 TBs this year, so I just added more shelves. That's pretty easy.

I'm doing it all by myself.

We were using a slower solution, and then it went down a few times. So we were looking for something more stable.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We tried Fujitsu and NetApp.

Support is the most important factor to us when selecting a vendor.

I would recommend this.

Flexibility, in regards to the different disk tiers in the 3PAR, is the most valuable feature.I can manually move data between the different tiers (NL, FC or SSD) or I can let AO do it for me. Thus I do not need 100% precise planning in advance.

I can play with it real time, all day. There's no need for a very dedicated planning for the future because I always can change it.

Stability could be better. We have had it 3 years and we had three down times.

We scaled up in the past and we will scale up again next month. The last time the previous system engineer did this. I don't have experience with scalability.

The quality of technical support was inconsistent. I did not always find that they dealt with our issues on time.

There were HPE EVAs before and they were at the end of their life.

When looking at vendors, the most important aspect is openness; that they really talk open and are not just marketing.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup.

I don't know if other vendors were evaluated. It was before my time. But, there are still better products. I would like to have an HPE XP7.

Go and play. We have a lot of offices and backup sites so they can really get hands on. That's the benefit.

The most valuable feature is its tiered approach to data structuring. We can quickly move data that's stored on slow disks to faster disks if the demand arises. That's good value for our company.

We've recently embarked on a large-scale convergence project where we've consolidated about 250 physical servers to virtual servers. Those virtual servers are hosted onto 3PARs 7400 systems, which are located in two data centers. They give us high availability and real-time access to data in both locations. In terms of the value for business and the value for us, it's given us the facility to have a business continuity plan, which we never had before.

Data de-duplication is something that's lacking in 3PAR. We use HPE StoreOnce systems as part of a backup solution. StoreOnce systems, they use a SAS disks, which are spin disks. They have about 80% de-duplication ratio, which from a backup perspective, that gives us tremendous capacity to back up to disk; not to take to disk for 12, 24 months. When you compare that to 3PAR, 3PAR doesn't have de-duplication and this causes storage issues.

Technically that's not true. 3PAR has de-duplication on the SSD drives, but because it's a mixed drive chassis, the large proportion of data that we have comes in the first class of the SAS disks, which will equate to maybe about 70 or 80% for top data. They're not de-duplicated. I think that's a feature that HPE need to work on quickly.

3PARs are very stable. We've been using 3PARs both in the UK and our headquarters in France for maybe four years now and we've not had any issues with the system, so they're a quite a reliable system.

Scalability depends on the situation. Whenever you try and provision these converged platforms, you've got to have an element of planning in terms of where your business is going grow for the next two or three years. It's interesting. We planned for 20% data growth on a 3PAR infrastructure over three years. What we found was we had closer to 20% data growth per year.

So if you look it from a data scaling perspective, we've reached the limits of our 3PAR 7200s in Europe. Thankfully for us, we've got 7400s, which gives you a lot more scalability in terms of storage. From a memory and processing prospective, they're perfect. So we have no issues with scalability.

Technical support is very good for the 3PARs you get. We've bought a 5-year support plan and we get to speak to the 3PAR technical support team in Houston, Tx. They're quite responsive. The 3PAR support plan, as well, is a reactive support plan, so we've got people from Houston who are looking at our systems and they inform us whenever a disk is filled. They send disks to be swapped out. They can be swapped out by our team or they can be swapped out by an HP person that turns up and does the job for you.

We're a large company of many, many small companies and we've realized through global projects that have an autonomous approach to IT departments, for example, where it doesn't work. That's exactly the same when it comes to the architecture behind your IT environment. We had to look at centralizing all of our systems, all of our platforms, so that we could offer a meaningful level of service to business. Without centralization, we couldn't guarantee the service of any of our platforms around the key business applications that the business expected us to deploy. That's how we knew to centralize all of our systems and platforms and host them on converged systems.

Initial setup was very complex. These systems are very complex, but if you buy a converged system from HPE, the converged system is part of the package and HPE provides you with the technical expertise to come out and build the converged systems for you. They're built and tested at the manufacturing plant. You can go and visit the manufacturing plant and see them if you want. Some people can. Then they're sent to your site and HPE sends experts to build the 3PARs on site and assist you with the build.

We have a global HPE agreement and it depends on the sort of size of projects and whether or not we issue and RFP when we got to other suppliers. If we do issue an RFP, then we're not tied internally to working with HPE. We can work with whoever we think's best for the requirement. But because we have such a good close working relationship with HPE and because they attend industry events, I'm always key to recommend to some of our peers and our colleagues around the world that they should be looking at this or that particular product.

3PAR's good from a medium-sized to large-sized enterprises. We're probably a large-sized enterprise company, but we have also small companies around the world where we wouldn't recommend the 3PAR for those sort of situations. We'd recommend applying a platform converged systems solution.