HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

Disk-utilization tier-ing (3PAR Adaptive Optimization)

The organization was able to consolidate disparate storage environments into a single chassis with multiple connection types, utilize the different disk tiers across all software/hardware connected platforms, all the time providing the fastest disk to the most utilized portions of storage as determined by the controllers.

While there is direct module integration with different Hyper Visors on the market, the actual software of those integrations do leave some feature integration off requiring both management interfaces. The greater this integration becomes the easier to manage the environment it will be.

I used it for three years.

All the issues we encountered were due to human error.

All the issues we encountered were due to human error.

All the issues we encountered were due to human error.

HP technical support for 3PAR is excellent once you have navigated the call tree.

I utilized HP Lefthand devices and EVA SAN’s (Models 5000 and 4400)

The initial setup was complex in that requirements were not communicated well through the VAR and some parts needed to be sent back (PDU’s were of the wrong type) and the VAR assumed a Virtual Storage manager would be used, but a physical manager was both requested and required, which created an installation delay while the correct equipment was shipped.

It was implemented through a vendor team, originally out-sourced by HP, then followed up by HP in-house technicians.

The implementation did not have an ROI to calculate as the products being migrated off of were end of life.

• Dell Compellant
• EMC VMX

I like the adaptive optimization and that it functions as virtual storage and I don’t have to go in and carve things across spindles.

The biggest benefit is the ease of administration, since we only have one administrator – me. If I’m not there and others need to be able to allocate storage, I can give a step-by-step guide for my company to follow to do that; whereas if I had an EMC product, for example, we’d need two administrators. We’re an agricultural co-op so we have to run a very lean IT shop.

In future versions, I would like to see Peer Motion become bi-directional, and also able to function over the normal data ports and not require extra ports. I thought I was going to like storage v-motion, but I’m running into problems where Peer Motion doesn’t do what it was advertised to do.

It works as if we have a disk on that is currently our destination, and we wanted to put that on our source 3PAR. We have to tear down our Peer Motion and rezone a bunch of stuff, changing how courts are acting on the 3PARs, and rebuild a new Peer Motion configuration. Because of this, it’s a lot more cumbersome than what we thought it would be.

None. It's an easy system to get installed and up and running.

It’s very stable; rock solid.

It meets our needs. I don’t foresee a point where we won’t be able to meet our needs with 3PAR.

Excellent. We do have critical support, but for us, the cost of critical support is well worth it.

Two pieces. First, the 3PAR people (backend support) are kind of hit and miss, and it depends on who you get. I’ve had some great people and I’ve had others who seem to think it was their mission in life to frustrate me. As I understand it, most are based in Colorado but others are based in India, and it’s really hard to communicate with them at times.

We have what’s considered a secure site, and 3PAR can’t just remote into our SANs, and their technicians seem to take issue with that sometimes. However, the hardware people, meaning the field service engineers, are excellent.

Well, we had an EVA, which is another HP product, and our storage usage was growing so fast that we weren’t going to be able to expand that to cover what we needed.

It was very easy to set up.

We looked at Dell, HP, NetApp, and EMC. There are two big reasons why we chose HP:

1. The 3PAR product is a lot easier to administer because it’s a virtual storage that aggregates all the disks together; and
2. There were two virtual products for what we were looking for, but we liked what it did in terms of optimization better than Dell.

Support and service is a big one for us, we needed good support. Also, we had to make sure pricing was good. For our purposes, it’s the best SAN that we have found. The things that keep it from being 10/10 are things like Peer Motion and the back end service.

Unless you have a very specific kind of load that requires a super high-end array, which 3PAR is not designed to be, I would recommend you look at HP, as there’s a very wide range of what HP can cover.

• Ease of Use
• Performance
• Stability
• Tiering

Stability has been the greatest benefit of the solution.

Stability is great.

Scalability is good as we have grown the area several times without an issue.

Initial setup was straightforward.

I would recommend the solution to anyone, but check into your environment.

The biggest pro is the overall performance. Provisioning is easy and fast. With NetApp, we needed to run scripts, which was a much slower process.

In general, it’s been such a good fit for us, as it's fast, easy, and flexible.

Our biggest one was the overall performance. Our SQL servers are performing better now, and because it’s easy to provision, more team members can provision who weren’t comfortable doing so before hand.

It’s been very stable. In comparison to what we had before, it’s a 10/10 -- incredibly stable.

It’s very scalable.

Pretty good. Up there with a 10/10 so far. The few issues we had were resolved quickly.

We were using NetApp. We were seeing overall poor performance.

Straightforward. Wasn’t overly complex.

Major players, such as EMC. We felt HP was a better fit. We weighed it out and HP fit our needs better than EMC.

We were looking mainly for IOPS. We have a lot of SQL, so IOPS was important to us. We also wanted tiering to move things in-between tiers easily.

Come to the shows and get demos. Get your hands on it.

It is incredibly easy to manage. We’re getting the performance that we need, and that’s what we need storage to be. We plug it in and it works, and everybody forgets about it, which is what we need. We’re using 3 different RAIDS, and it’s working just fine.

It’s not as complex as EMC, so whenever there’s requirements for allocating storage, it’s very easy to do. The turnaround only takes 48 hours, whereas with EMC it was taking three days to a week to allocate that storage.

I'd like to see the system reporter improve. With the reporting feature, I’d like a little more versatility in how I get my reports. The 3PAR just runs and nobody complains, but I’d like to see what the warnings the reporting gives me actually means. I would like that feature to be enhanced more to get rid of more false positives errors. Also, the drive replacement on the 10800 needs improvement. It’s a magazine that has four drives, and to replace one drive, I wish they would not spin down all of the drives just to replace one. It makes me a bit nervous when they do that to replace a failed drive.

Very stable and performance is great.

We haven’t really scaled. We have a nice sized array right now, as we’ve just started the migration process. But we have the ability to scale if we need it. We have 25 HP 3PAR devices right now, and will get 25 more. We also have 50 EMCs that we’ve been trying to migrate over from.

It’s been okay. With me being a 3PAR person, my struggle with HP is that when I know more about the product they still take me to the level one person, which wastes my time.

It was before my time, but they wanted to diversify from EMC. We are slowly migrating entirely to HP.

Very straightforward. It plays with our Oracle products very well too, which we like.

Just EMC, who were already in place.

I think that the most important criteria when selecting a vendor is the business need and the reliability to make my job easier. I need it to be fast and efficient and be able to get graphs and reports from it. Definitely look at 3PAR as it’s a great piece of hardware.

Easy manageability, and the speed is very quick.

Less downtime, unlike our previous solution.

That’s hard to say because it’s pretty good for us. The areas that we would suggest for improvement, HP is already looking at.

It’s excellent; no complaints. I’m very impressed with it.

I’ve already scaled it twice and will scale it again.

It’s also great. We’ve not really had a problem with it in over a year of use.

We chose HP to improve on the latency because we knew we needed something that could solve our new needs. Our last system, Dell Ecologic, was very bad and was down a lot.

Setup was straightforward.

We looked at EMC and HP. 3PAR is using some very high quality software, so we chose HP. Dreamworks uses HP, so we figured it would do us just fine.

Look for something that is expandable and reliable. 3PAR is great.

Reliability. It’s a good, solid product with ease-of-management.

Before switching over from HP’s old storage, we just needed to upgrade our aging infrastructure, which was pretty easy.

3PAR has everything that I’m interested in. I come from a storage background, and everything that I want to see is there. I don’t really have anything pressing to suggest, but nothing is perfect.

Stability is rock solid.

If my company doubled in size, I could scale it well.

Everything has been very positive with no issues. Working at a nuclear power plant, it’s mostly on our end when issues come up. Otherwise, HP’s been perfect.

It was mostly just aging storage. We used HP AVA before, and so we just switched over to a new product.

It was purchased prior to me being there, so I’m not sure what else was considered.

We always look for ease of use, and 3PAR is very easy to use.

From my experience with other storage platforms, if you want something where underlying hardware is designed with a goal and you rely on pre-existing hardware around which you build your product, you’re setting yourself up for failure from the beginning. It seems to me that something like 3PAR, where it’s designed around a specific product, just makes life so much more easier. You’re essentially setting yourself up for success with a product like 3PAR.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor for Flash Storage is partnership. Additionally, we value this solution for its performance and manageability.

During the migration process, we have had to troubleshoot less than in the past.

The stability is fine. We put disks in the system a couple of weeks ago, which went off without a hitch.

We haven’t had any issues with scalability

We haven’t had any issues. We wanted white-glove treatment and that’s what we got.

We haven’t had any issues. We wanted white-glove treatment and that’s what we got.

We ran on NetApp and had maintenance, performance, and troubleshooting issues.

The initial setup of 3PAR was straightforward.

We also looked at BMC.

The solution is great and I haven’t had an issue.

One single rack with the ability to expand and grow as needed. We are not currently using flash, but probably will in the future for some database solutions.

We now have the ability to expand storage on-demand as needed. The application won’t run out of space as it's really easy to add a disk and continue without any interruption.

The management console could be improved, but the newest release already seems much better than the previous version.

We haven’t had any issues or downtime.

Everything was fine when we needed support. So far so good.

We had aging equipment with capacity limitations.

We also looked at EMC.

We look at cost and scalability. We’ve had room to grow as needed based on demand or business needs. We now have 1500 global users.

You should look at 3PAR as it's flexible, stable, and provides the growth and stability you need from a storage solution.

Scalability is the most valuable feature.

We had unexpected capacity growth. We informed the integrator what was going on and they were able to work with HP, forecast what we needed, and install it overnight without any downtime.

I'd like to see future versions have improved protection and optimization, such as whether we're using the right disks properly for the assigned workload.

No problems or issues with stability. We get notified from HP when the updates come out--really simple, quick, and easy with no downtime.

3PAR has been extremely scalable.

Customer support is excellent.

I think we’ve only had to call once for understanding the update process, but I've never personally had to call.

We didn’t have a solution in place, so we went through an integrator and got a recommendation.

Initial setup was complex because we didn’t have any previous knowledge. It's been two years since, and I think it’s essentially a simple setup and we just didn’t have any prior experience.

When deciding on a storage vendor you need to look at IOPs and scalability.

I would recommend 3PAR; we tell everyone everyday. It beats Hitachi and EMC (Clarion) hands down. We would recommend them over all those solutions.