HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

Scalability is the most valuable feature for us. It also has a great price point for cutting edge technology.

Because we buy so much storage, we have a lot of headroom that we may not use for six-12 months. So what we'd like to see is the booked-capacity piece which has recently been introduced at HP Discovery London.

We'd also want tighter integration between NetApp and HP.

We also had stability issues with older versions.

It has deployed without issue for us.

We've had no issues with instability.

It scales just fine.

We get great support with self-logging directly so that HP contacts us for quick fixes. But we get disc failures frequently, although there's no interruption to business because that's the way storage arrays are designed to work.

At my prior employer, we used EMC and NetApp, which were stable platforms and environments. A lot of it comes down to how you deploy. 3PAR is also a great product, but you can still deploy it incorrectly.

We used HP best practice and we consulted HP. We got it right and it works well for us because of that.

• EMC
• NetApp
• Whiptail

The storage team tech lead chose HP over these.

We need performance and this provides it. We also need affordable prices -- both at sales and post-sales -- and maintenance.

In terms of technical support, our local HP team supports my requests and I know we can turn to them to understand our issues.

In terms of the technology itself, it's not much different from other technologies. But what sets it apart if what happens after the sale -- maintenance and support.

We also need speed, and this provides it. We have strict SLAs, and 3PAR allows me to put the right people together very quickly.

I'd like their technical support to be better. If we need to go to level three, there isn't always someone locally and it can be time consuming to get someone with the right skills.

We installed it 12 years ago, moved to NetApp, then back to HP because of the maintenance costs.

It works 24/7. Our core business are our hospitals and clinics, which means we can't waste time on data center or service issues. So the real value is the 24/7, constant stability.

We've been able to implement it in both small clinics and big hospitals. It's scalable so we can manage it from the same data center with protected investments.

They support my team. We get second-level support from our local partner and third-level support from HP directly.

It was a straightforward migration.

If it is a first time investment, it's no problem. If it's a migration, then you need to take care of the migration risks as well. There should be no data loss because migration is risky.

The most valuable features are the reporting and replication. With the reporting, we get needed information about how much and where we're consuming storage. Reporting also shows us our replication as we replicate between volumes.

It's helped us with data redundancy, which makes our system run more efficiently. Also, the interface is user friendly, but it requires a little training to know all the different functionalities and options.

It could improve in the virtualization of the storage. Also, it needs better reporting on other vendors' technologies, such as VMware.

We don't have problems with deployment.

It's stable.

It scales without issues for us.

There are several valuable features, including the easy-to-use application and straightforward end-user tools. That's been helpful for me and there's nothing complicated to learn. The reporting and charting are also actually quite good. I use the reports when I want to see performance, like how the discs are performing and how the AL is moving data to and from tiers.

I think it leverages our investments of using this multi-tiered storage approach. We have SSDs, we have SAS, and we have inline SAS, so we're able to have a lot more teams running in one environment rather than having to build separate environments, and understand which applications need high performance and which don't need high performance. 3PAR does that thinking for us using it's adaptive optimization. It's been successful for us. The technology is sound, they used 3PAR quite heavily in our organization. It's been a quite good experience.

It needs better statistics and configuration. The system allows too much human input. It's automated enough, but it wants you to determine some of the settings. If you do them wrong, you can make a very good system perform badly. If you do it well, you can make an under-permissioned system perform very well. There should be more best practices that they suggest, not "okay, what do you want."

I'd also like to see better real time performance rather than charts and graphs you've got to go in all the time. It'd be nice to have something running all the time, like a real tool from which you can actually see performance of what's actually happening rather than having to go in all the time and generate them. Real-time notifications, real-time performance statistics. They have those, but they're all command line and I can't keep the session running all day on some screen. You have to go in to get them and you can't really provide a thumb display for customers to see.

Deployments haven't been an issue.

It's been quite stable. There's been things that have broken for us, like discs and some other ports, but the system still works.

It's been quite scalable. Since we bought this one in the summer, we've expanded twice, so it's quite scalable. Now it's over 200 terabytes and 176 discs, I think. The maximum is 250 on this one. It's not the biggest 3PAR, but it's quite powerful actually.

Technical support has been very good. The guys on the line are knowledgeable even at level one.

The initial setup was straightforward. I don't think it was too complex. We've used other technology that's much more difficult to use. I haven't had 3PAR experience before, mostly Dell and Hitachi and some other EMC.

We evaluated Hitachi and we chose HP because of the price and ease-of-use.

Plan what the I/O needs are. You need better statistics before you buy something. Really plan to see what the loads are.

It handles the structure of our system easily and provides us with really good performance. We have the older systems and not the new ones with the 7400. They all mesh together well and we've been able to move data from the old to new easily. It's also easy to code.

We use all of HP's services, so HP is a big partner of ours. Staying with HP for storage means we don't need to switch partners.

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'd also like to see expanded correspondence systems.

We had no issues with deployment.

We've had no problems with firmware, so all of this is really done smoothly without interruptions.

We've always been able to upgrade easily and now have three or four kinds of upgraded systems.

We switched because HP is stable and reliable.

We needed HP specialists to help stand up the 3PAR systems. It was a little tricky. After that, things were straightforward.

The most valuable features for us are the flexibility and expandability of the platform itself. Also, there are regular updates with the software which bring out new features. The licensing policy is such that it brings us some additional revenue if we ever needed it. It's quite clear what kind of license we're purchasing.

It's simplified our management and increased the speed of our applications. We're able to use different solutions on 3PAR. It's become easier and faster to do.

We'd like to remove some of the barriers to integration with Microsoft. Having the same level of integration with Microsoft as with other applications would be an improvement.

We went with it quite recently.

We are fortunate that they haven't had any incidences yet. It just works.

We are not too big in terms of scalability. But we're quite scalable in case we need to scale, but we haven't had to yet.

They were quite professional and were able to fix some issues that we had before. We also have service contracts with partners, which provides us some assurance in case something happens.

Ease-of-use is very high on our list of features, as we are, like everyone else, trying to do more with fewer people.

The reliability is very high, as we have performed multiple firmware updates and some controller replacements all on-line with no downtime and no impact to our users.

Probably the most beneficial aspect from my viewpoint is that it has reduced the amount of time that I spend administering storage requests by at least 50%. This allows us to keep pace with the ever growing amount of storage that our users require.

The newer versions of the hardware have really addressed the minor concerns we had, specifically hard drive replacements which were tedious in earlier models due to shelf design. This is now a quick, easy task.

We have been using 3PAR for the last four years, and have a total of six arrays now.

Not really, as the arrays have performed with no down time or data loss since we first started using them four years ago.

10 out of 10. I've worked with HP support for over seven years in my current job and have always been happy with the level of expertise I have received.

My company has used HP storage arrays since before I joined.

Very straightforward installation and set-up.

HP services did the initial installation and base configuration of each of the storage arrays, and took one day for each array.

We use a reseller to purchase the 3PAR equipment, and we utilize HP professional services for installation and initial set-up.

I don't have an ROI as I am not really involved with the financing/budget side in any detail.

Licensing the features that we use was not overly complex to get worked out, and HP was very helpful in providing details on the features we needed to provide the functions we needed, which was primarily the synchronous replication between our sites.

We have evaluated other vendors over the years, but we have stayed with HP due to the high reliability and ease of use.

Work with your HP pre-sales people to determine which model of array will best satisfy your requirements. I've had very good relationships with all the HP technical and pre-sales that I have worked with over the years.

Excellent support staff and quality equipment.

The 3PAR arrays provide excellent performance for a very reasonable price point.

Their installation and design engineers leave something to be desired.

I've used it for five years.

The only issues we have had are with deployment. Depending on the quality of the installation engineer, one must keep a close eye on them in order to make sure that the equipment is connected and configured properly.

8/10 - most of the support staff are top shelf, but service can be ponderous if the wrong engineer is engaged.

I have used other HP arrays, EMC, Netapp, and Fujitsu. HP 3PAR by far has the best combination of great equipment, very good support, and good implementation staff. We have standardized on HP 3PAR for this reason.

As with most arrays, that is dependent on the system you’re installing. We tend to be “power users” and push the edges of how the equipment is used. In most situations, the setup is straightforward.

We engage HPs installation teams. My advice would be to make sure that future expansion plans are thoroughly discussed at the first installation to make sure that the array is as future proof as possible.

My team isn’t exposed to ROI.

I can say that one can realize very nice discounts if the order is placed towards the end of the calendar year, as that coincides with HPs fiscal end of year. Licensing for some features can be quite expensive, so one should take care to fully vet out which features should be licensed. Don’t let the sales team oversell licensing and make sure that the installation plan is fully understood.

• Scaleable from two to eight controller nodes for High Availability
• Persistent fabric array ports
• Performance tuning
• Dynamic and adaptive optimizations
• Highly granular storage
• One gigabyte miniature disk concept called "chunklets"
• Striping of data across all disks available - wide striping
• Highly intelligent Gen3 and Gen 4 ASICs which acts as the brain of the 3PAR storage systems. This is not a regular CPU
• Very quick redistribution of data if there's a disk failure
• All the disk drives in the system are used for data, since parity and spares are at the chunklet level.

I cannot share the information on how it improved our storage estates, but in general, it has very good SAN performance compared to EMC Clariion, IBM XIV, IBM Storwize V7000 and its other competitors.

They have released a unified version of HP 3PAR, with a separate NAS server unit in the enclosure/rack. I would like to see a proper unified system (same controller serving both SAN and NAS solutions) such as NetApp offers.

We've been using it for three years. We currently have a 7400 (mix of disk drives), and a 7450 (full flash array, only SSD disks),

The performance is optimal, if we have planned everything properly well in advance.

These are mid-range storage solutions that can be scaled up to 700TB of space depending on the type of disks we use. It does have enterprise solutions that can scale up to eight controller nodes with 1.8PB of usable capacity. However, we have a 7400 and a 7450 with lot of provisioning done to ESX systems with thousands of VMs.

HP customer support, especially for 3PAR is excellent.

They have highly skilled technical support team. I would rate them 8/10.

We chose 3PAR because it has the best price compared to its competitors, and delivers the performance expected.

The initial setup/installation was done by the vendor. We needed to provide them with the necessary hardware and network information, (DNS, NIS etc). Their experience was very good, I have no complaints.

Pricing and licensing depend on the customer/partner deals and negotiations/agreements.

It has met our performance and stability expectations. 3PAR is one of the best in the market and it is evident that its sales have raised to 10x since it was acquired by HP. All cloud solutions from HP and many other companies use HP 3PAR storage on their backend for their cloud solutions.

The ability the use all available disks for different RAID requirements and also the replication is available out of the box. The ability to tune the volumes to spread across newly allocated drives.

Previously, we were with another vendor, and we suffered performance issues due to architecture limitation. With 3PAR, we were able to provide the business an acceptance level of performance which directly has an impact on user experience. We are able to keep up with application and user demands as response times are vital for the business to function competitively.

Better user interface compared to the current PC installed client. A browser based solution was introduced recently and improvements were noticeable.

I've used it for two and a half years. We initially did an evaluation with the 7200 unit. Having tested and being pleased with the outcome, we purchased a 7400 with two nodes, and subsequently upgraded to four nodes. The 7200 was moved to be used for disaster recovery.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

It is quite straightforward, it is a completely different architecture as 3par is licensed based on the number of drives and after a point it’s capped, i.e. you only pay for the drives and support.

In-house, good knowledge of SAN architecture is required. All zones activity needs to be done by yourselves.

We would say two to three years.

Always purchase at the financial year end of the vendor to obtain the best pricing, and also purchase the maintenance in advance. I purchased it with five years maintenance included.

I did evaluate five other vendors, one example Nimble, however, at that time they only had iSCSI model available.

3PAR is designed around the ASIC which eliminates the CPU bottleneck and RAID limitation in other vendors.

We would say 2-3 years. Always purchase at the year end of the vendor to obtain the best pricing and also purchase the maintenance in advance, for example I purchase with 5 years maintenance included.

HP regularly organizes events which are good to go to as they announce new innovations and share other customer experiences.