HPE Alletra Storage Reviews

My main use cases for HPE Alletra Storage involve production storage and production data.

The compression is good. I have a huge dataset from other legacy storage, and Alletra helps compress that.

The feature I appreciate most about HPE Alletra Storage is compression. With compression, if I have a huge dataset from legacy storage and I move to HPE Alletra Storage, it takes little storage because of the compression.

The solution has reduced my data management operation expenses by approximately 20%. 

The solution has helped reduce the time I spend on capacity planning by 20-25%.

I would assess HPE Alletra's capacity efficiency as faster and good, with better performance. 

HPE Alletra provides a cloud-like operational model on-premises for managing data infrastructure. The cloud-operational model has affected operations such as deployment, provisioning, and day-to-day management by making the deployment model very quick.

We have access to senior support engineers, although we haven't faced any problems.

I would like to see more compression and more scalability in the next release of HPE Alletra Storage.

I have been using HPE Alletra Storage for one year, or about 12 months.

I would assess the stability and reliability of HPE Alletra Storage as very positive until now. I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues.

HPE Alletra Storage scales with the growing needs of my organization. I have not expanded usage yet.

HPE Alletra Storage enables me to get assistance from senior support engineers without having to go through support escalations. Direct access to senior support engineers is important. Until now, we haven't faced any problems, but if issues arise, there will be examples of why direct access is important.

I would evaluate customer service or technical support as very good. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate customer service a seven. Sometimes we have to go via a partner, which adds some delay.

We were using HPE before adopting HPE Alletra Storage, however, with a different model. The model we were using was 3PAR. The factor that led me to consider the change was the end of life of the previous model.

The deployment model is very quick. We had no mahor challenge.

I have not seen a return on investment with HPE Alletra Storage yet. We are very new to this.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that pricing is on the higher side; this is a disadvantage that has to be reduced.

I considered no other solutions before adopting HPE Alletra Storage.

What stood out to me about HPE Alletra Storage is HPE itself. I have not encountered anything negative. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate HPE Alletra Storage overall a nine and would advise other organizations to use it.

We use it to connect to our Synergy chassis as Storage. On the chassis, there are 12 blades running Hyper V. We put those in failover clusters - two clusters per Synergy chassis. Alletra is the storage where the virtual machines are stored in those failover clusters, Hyper V clusters.

It's simple to use and deploy, unlike its predecessor, which was a 3PAR system. I like 3PAR, but it is overkill and extremely complicated to manage.

The simplicity of use is great. You define the storage size and space that you need, the volumes, and then you give access to the clusters or to the host, the Hyper V blade servers. From there, I can build all the virtual machines that I need on Alletra.

Alletra provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managed use data infrastructure. Although we use everything on-prem, we do have some cloud-based storage with Microsoft Azure. We are doing a lot of stuff in Azure, although personally, I stay away from that. I'm the hardware guy, and prefer on-prem solutions.

Cloud-based is so much more expensive.  The on-prem stuff is cheaper; Microsoft charges us through the nose for Azure.

We have redundancy built into our products and Alletra through the Hyper V clusters. There is a lot of redundancy built in, so we never have downtime. \

It's easy to configure and provision. 

It's helped us reduce the time spent resolving storage by 50%. The cost vs convenience is very good.

Previously, the 3PAR gave us the ability to build on SSC or spindles. The Alletra doesn't allow for this. You can put spindles and you can put SSDs, but the operating system decides what goes where. If I could build a volume that was SSD only for some of the things like our databases, our Microsoft databases, which require a lot of IO and a lot of speed, that would be ideal. The 3PAR was better at that.

I've been using the solution for as long as it's been available - for about two years now. We used to use Nimble.

We've got several of these products running with no issues. 

Scalability is pretty good. 

We run them with the main head unit, which has 24 or so drives on it, and then we add the subunit, a secondary chassis, which has one more drive. The top one has 24 drives and the bottom one has 25. We get to choose whether they're SSD or spindles, and we use a mixture of both.

We carry five-year extended contracts with HP on all of our equipment. Support is pretty good.I dial their number and go through things with them, and overall, it works out well. 

Positive

The installation is straightforward. I help our reseller manage the deployment. 

Our reseller physically does the installation. I'm always present, giving them the IP addresses and access to our data center. 

I'm a field engineer. I install what is given to me. I know little about the cost. That said, my understanding is that it is considerably cheaper to go with Alletra. The pricing is cheaper, the setup is easier, and the licensing is likely the same

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It does what we need it to do, and it is more than enough. Plus, it's easy to set up and maintain. 

Currently, it is employed to serve our primary billing platform, supporting several Oracle databases ranging from 30 to 40 terabytes in size, integrated with HPe Synergy compute. These financial systems leverage its high throughput capabilities and low-latency performance.

The rapid speed has proven highly beneficial. Integrating low latency into our billing systems and mobile app enriches our application ecosystem, enhancing daily user interactions. The combination of low latency and high-speed storage has significantly bolstered our operations, particularly in billing processes.

The management and provisioning of data have been significantly streamlined.

As a GreenLake customer, we are collaborating with HPE to support us up the stack. They are overseeing the implementation of state-of-the-art storage services on our behalf, which promises to deliver substantial improvements to our business upon completion.

The SSCM micro solution for predictive issue detection and prevention holds great promise. We have experienced a trouble-free year, which is reassuring. Should there be any disk failures or other issues, rapid detection and resolution are assured. With GreenLake, telemetry data flows directly to HPE, enabling proactive maintenance without our direct involvement, which is highly beneficial.

The 100% availability guarantee is of paramount importance to us. Following a major outage 12 to 14 months ago, which lasted four days, we engaged Alletra from HP to assist. Having such a guarantee backed by a company like HP adds significant value to our operations.

This solution has not only reduced storage management time but will continue to do so moving forward. It has simplified our zoning practices, extending from computing to third-party products. With GreenLake, HPE handles much of this complexity on our behalf. Aligning new fabric installations with our Synergy infrastructure has greatly streamlined operations post VMware platform integration, resulting in performance gains of 30% to 50% over our previous systems.

The incorporation of InfoSight and telemetry, bolstered by AI, ensures ongoing support and efficiency enhancements for our users. As we prepare to deploy four new Alletra systems within the next six to 12 months, we anticipate further operational improvements.

To date, notable improvements have been somewhat limited in our experience. Currently, we are in the process of commissioning an additional four systems to handle our significant workloads. Given the cutting-edge nature of this technology, extensive setup of new fabric and infrastructure has been necessary. It's important for stakeholders to ensure thorough preparation upfront to facilitate a smooth and expedient implementation process.

I haven't particularly used it to its full extent yet. That will probably come in the next 12 to 18 months.

We have been using HPe Alletra storage for coming up 12 months.

We have not experienced any stability issues. 

The scalability capabilities are exceptional, having encountered no issues thus far. We conducted a thorough assessment of scalability, particularly with the impending addition of four new units. This expansion will facilitate substantial growth over the next two to three years.

The technical support provided is exceptional, characterized by a highly skilled team of engineers, service delivery managers, and other support personnel. Our experience has been seamless, with their integration into our teams proving particularly effective. Collaborating with them has been a positive and enjoyable experience.

Positive

We've had Nimble, Primera, EMC, Pure and NetApp. So many different storage arrays depending on the workload and requirements. 

We are modernizing our datacenter and deploying new fabric to simplify our footprint. 

We have established paired data centers, each equipped with two Alletra units, creating a metro cluster and standard storage infrastructure.

While the project has been extensive, it represents a pivotal step in replacing our existing storage infrastructure. Designing the desired level of resiliency for business continuity has been a priority throughout this process. Although the timeline of approximately one year may have seemed lengthy, we are nearing the final stages of implementation and are poised to commence utilization.

Spark has used HPe professional services to design and implement this solution, along with our own in-house experts. The team at HPe have been fantastic to work with.

While we haven't witnessed ROI quite yet, we will probably see it within the next six to 12 months.

The pricing and licensing are very simple, especially with GreenLake.

We evaluated IBM Storage and EMC storage solutions but ultimately opted to remain with Alletra. The decision was driven by Alletra's superior technology and speed, which we found to offer a highly cost-effective solution.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I use the HPE Alletra Storage for Kafka at my store.

The ease of use of the HPE Alletra Storage benefits my organization since it's simple.

The features of the HPE Alletra Storage I appreciate the most are one SKU and the speed of the resources. 

The solution has reduced my data management operation costs and time. The solution helps reduce the time I spend on capacity planning by one-third. 

The HPE Alletra Storage has improved IT efficiency by one-third. 

Alletra provides me with a cloud-like operational model for managing data infrastructure.

We can get support from Senior engineers fairly easily.

We've reduced time spent.

I would not like to see any additional features included in the new release of the HPE Alletra Storage. We're still new to the solution. So far, it's fine. 

I've been using the solution for six months.

We are still new with the cloud-like operational model of the HPE Alletra Storage as we just got it up and running two weeks ago.

I would assess the stability and the reliability of the HPE Alletra Storage as good. I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues yet.

The HPE Alletra Storage scales effectively with my growing organizational needs.

The HPE GreenLake AI Ops enables me to get assistance from a senior support engineer without having to go through support tiers and escalations. 

My evaluation of customer service for the B2B is based on the number of instances we have. The service has been good. 

I would rate my customer service technical support a nine out of ten. When I made a call, they came to our site and helped us configure it.

The deployment was a little rocky.

I have seen a return on investment from the HPE Alletra Storage.

The licensing has been fine.

Before selecting the HPE Alletra Storage, I considered Dell as another solution. What stood out during my evaluation process when comparing these options was that I wanted an on-premise solution that we could get up and running.

The main challenge I faced was that it basically supports one of our solutions, which is our travel solution. My advice to another organization considering the HPE Alletra Storage is that I would still want to get some case studies. 

I rate this solution nine out of ten.

We deploy HPE Alletra for enteprise clients requiring extreme number of IOs and fast low latency, on-demand storage. The customers who opt for this usually have a larger budget and are not cost-sensitive, in a nutshell.

Alletra has elevated our ability to deliver on our 99.99% uptime for clients, aligning with my experience managing enterprice infrastructure at iOCO especially with the response time during heavy workloads. Seamless Replication, Snapshot Management and data encryption align with my certifications in Veeam and VMware, enabling us to implement disaster recovery and compliance. The management capabilites reduce operation overheads, even surprassing my HPE Synergy and 3PAR Deployments.

From my perspective, the management and upgradeability of the product are valuable. The technology uses NVME for increased storage, latency, high bandwidth, and sub-millisecond response times. Even under stringent usage, customers opt for Alletra for its high performance. We find the way we can replicate, use snapshots, secure data, and manage it very beneficial. The ability for independent management is another advantage.

I would say that maybe the user interface and experience could be improved. There are a few areas where enhancements can be made. One can find everything, but sometimes it requires time to navigate. Over time, I am sure engineers will provide input to categorize customizable features better. Maybe that's the only area that needs a few adjustments. Drawing from my CompTIA and ITIL certification, a more intuitive workflow design would benefit less technical users. 

I have used the solution for four months, but I have been had prior HPE training on it for a bit longer than that.

It runs for five years without fail, and even if a component is not changed immediately, it would still continue running. Obviously, it will give the red light and send alerts, but it remains operational. So, I can say it is extremely resilient.

Effortless scaling due to non-disruptive storage expansion which is a great demonstratable selling point. Evidence for this is the ability to add components and upgrade storage while the storage array is still running. I can just add it to particular groups, RAID groups, or others - similar to HPE Synergly blade deployments i've previously managed.

The customer service has improved dramatically. They are extremely quick to respond. When the problem reaches level one before escalation, logs and XML logs have already been taken and sent over. Within three hours, HPE is calling and providing a call to action or escalating to level two if necessary. The service has improved significantly, especially with the Alletra division of HPE.

Positive

I have worked a lot with HPE 3PAR. My first company of employmnet spearheaded HPE 3PAR deployments as they were the first to bring it into Africa before HP's acquisition, so I was well-versed with 3PAR from the time they used spinning disks to when they offered all-flash storage arrays. 3PAR set the bar on a top level, but Alletra's cloud native acrchitecture and GreenLake's integration have surpassed 3PAR's capabilites, particularly in hybrid cloud flexibility.

I find it straightforward because I have been working with HPE hardware and software since 2011. I have seen how HPE works and the expectations for deployment, and it has been fluid. This has been simple, nothing complicated. Rack and stack are easier over the years. It is extremely easy to install, get your IP addresses and details, and get everything up and running. My previous HPE FlexNetwork and SimpliVity based certifications and knowledge all put together helped gain knowledge to streamlined deployments at this point..

All in-house and Two engineer suffies. I would always deploy solutions with just my other colleague in my team, if need be. We work extremely well together, especially when giving the customer confidence. No more than two engineers are needed on site, to help carry the equipment safely - mirroring my iOCO projects where teamwork ensured rapid, risk-free installations.

It is still too soon to tell as I haven't run the solution for long enough.

Scheduling a Proof of Concept to demonstrate ROI - Will be a well documented way to portray Alletra's performance, justifying its premium cost. My AWS hybrid cloud projects (example: Multi-Region Disaster Recovery) can showcase how Alletra complements modern infrastructures.

I am further certifiying in Pure Storage (FlashArray/FlashBlade) and have deployed Nutanix Hyperconvered Solutions. I have also worked with Dell Products but I find Alletra's performance and the HPE ecosystem integration superior for enterprise-scale environments and i'm not just saying this as I have years of experience with seeing HPE's enterprise product range develop.

I would give them a presentation on the essentials they need to be aware of, and tell them to ask all the questions in detail. I would demonstrate the performance in an actual use-case. If needed, I’d suggest scheduling a proof of concept to justify aligning a budget for this product. I would rate it a nine out of ten because nothing can ever be perfect due to its balance of performance and manageability.

We primarily use the solution as block storage for VMware.

For us, the benefits that translate to the organization include less cost, maintenance, and management.

The simplicity of the platform is its most valuable asset. The management is very simple and it's straightforward to use. 

Alletra's performance has been very good. 

The solution provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem for data management. It has improved our operations. As things progressed, we've been able to bring more of the HPE stack into GreenLake for management and monitoring. That's been very beneficial. It provides a single point of management. 

Alletra helps prevent and predict issues before they arise. We've had a few cases where, based on the data that they're collecting, we've been able to upgrade based on bugs that exist in our installation.

The guarantee of data availability was important to decision-making. We wanted 100% uptime and availability. Uptime is integral to our 24/7 manufacturing operation. It also minimized the need for standby hardware or data copies without having to accommodate a different solution that doesn't have the same uptime. 

We've increased uptime with Alletra to close to 100%. Although we have had issues previously, we have yet to have any problems with this solution. 

It's helped reduce time spent on storage provisioning by probably at least 75%.

We really haven't had to spend time fine-tuning storage in any way. We just provision and forget about it. The plugins for VMware are also great as we are provisioning VMs. We rarely have to go to the area itself to manage provisioning. 

It has improved storage performance in terms of IOPs by 60% to 70% compared to what we were running on previously.

Alletra has reduced the time spent on storage tickets. We haven't had any issues, performance-wise, and rarely have tickets. 

Technical support from HPE can be hit and miss.

I've been using the solution for about a year and a half. 

The solution is stable, performance-wise. 

The scalability is there. With the models we're using, we have not had to scale up. We are on the small side. Most of our Alletras are anywhere from 42 TB up to 240 TB.

Technical support has been very good. It can be hit and miss. I'm not sure if it is hit or miss or if it is just HPE. It depends on who you get.

Positive

We previously used Nimble. We also used to be on 3PAR.

The initial setup was simple and straightforward. We did not have any issues with deployment. 

We had some help with the initial setup via our reseller. 

While I haven't calculated ROI, we have witnessed a positive impact. 

The pricing and licensing are good. Alletra's pricing model and configuration options are very straightforward. 

We did evaluate other storage vendors, including Pure Storage and one of Dell's newest offerings. However, we've always been an HPE storage customer, and it's always worked well for us. We wanted a platform and company that we were familiar with. We chose to stick with HPE. We didn't want different vendors for different applications. 

I'm an HPE customer.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. I've been very happy with the solution.

We are using HPE Alletra Storage as our storage for our VM environment, a storage area network for us. All of our VMs that we put on are on it, approximately 20 or 30 VMs. We provide storage for that. We also use it for our backups with Veeam.

It keeps it simple. It makes it easy for my team. It doesn't necessarily make it easy for us to figure out stuff; however, it makes it easy for us to get to what we need to get to after we figure out stuff. It makes it easier for my team than to have conversations around terminology, around what we're doing, how we're doing it. And that for us is worth its weight in gold for us. We're a small team, so I need that when person a is doing something and person b is doing something, if they're doing the same things that they can speak to each other and see what the other is doing and understand what they're doing.

My experience with the deployment of HPE Alletra Storage has been good. 

I like the single pane of glass approach. I like the fact that when I log in, I can get access to all of my different infrastructure components, and I can manage them through the web portal, and that makes things very easy as opposed to having to jump through different management interfaces or administration consoles.

These systems are intelligent enough that when an issue is detected, before we're even aware of it, tickets are automatically opened and closed. I receive copies of these tickets, and instead of things breaking and impacting the business, issues are handled proactively, which is fantastic.

It provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem. We have a pretty small dev environment and it hasn't impacted our dem environment as well. The team is freed up; we can be anywhere and log in and do something. We like that we have a stable platform that is more mature and allows us to do some amazing things.

Reducing the price for HPE Alletra Storage would be fantastic. However, we need better education that is specifically geared toward our sector and industry.

In our specific case, we are very labor sensitive. As we examine AI opportunities with our vendors, we are very conscious about which AI opportunities we pursue due to the sensitivity of our team and staff, as the adoption of AI could impact their jobs. During a recent session, there was discussion about level one and level two engineering roles being replaced by generative AI, which was concerning for a labor union where staff are worried about job security.

We would appreciate more education that's geared toward our sector and is sensitive to these concerns. The conversations should focus on how AI can augment what people are already doing, allowing them to move to higher-value tasks rather than replacing their positions entirely.

I've been using the solution for a year. 

I assess the stability and reliability of HPE Alletra Storage as top-class.

We're still old school and over-provision. We purchase more than we need. We expect not to have to scale for a little while. However, we have a good partner that can bring forward new capabilities for scaling and right-sizing. 

I evaluate the support I received from HPE as excellent. The engineers who helped us during pre-sales have continued their support after implementation. They've followed up on features we weren't initially ready for and have maintained open communication. Now that we have a better understanding of HPE, we're able to advance to the next level. It has been a very good experience.

We were with Cisco, and prior to that, we were running with IBM. It's been better than expected thanks to the breadth and depth of HP.

The deployment has been good. We didn't just do Alletra. We're doing Aruba as well, and OpsRamp. So far, our experience has been good. 

We have not noted an ROI beyond the stability we get day to day, which is quite valuable. 

The pricing is high. It's a fairly significant investment in us. 

We're implementing more than just HPE Alletra Storage; we're also implementing Aruba. The experience has been positive, and I would recommend it to others.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

My main use cases for HPE Alletra Storage are dHCI and virtualization.

The benefits of using Alletra for my organization are that the amount of time it takes for my team to define storage and allocate storage for projects has reduced, and there's less training, too. It's just easy to teach the team how to do it.

The feature I appreciate the most about HPE Alletra Storage is how easy it is to provision storage. 

We've reduced time spent on capacity planning by 25%.

The capacity efficiency is good. The deduplication and compression seem to be getting high in terms of ratios.

We use it through GreenLake. It's simplified management.

To improve HPE Alletra Storage, it would help us if CIFS is included in one of the later versions, especially since they recently released NFS.

We struggle to gain access to senior support engineers. Typically, we need to escalate via sales.

I have been using HPE Alletra Storage for nine months.

We have had one failed drive, however, we didn't have any downtime. Knock on wood, we haven't had any issues. 

HPE Alletra Storage scales with the growing needs of my organization.

We had some support engineers who were not qualified to do the work, and we had to wait until we could get some qualified people to come out to fix it, which was a low point from support. It was our first experience with HPE in years. We'd used HPE in the past, became Dell EMC customers, then transitioned back to HPE, so that was not a great experience. Since that has been resolved, however, support has been really good. 

Prior to adopting HPE Alletra Storage, we were using Dell Unity and VxRail to address similar needs. Alletra gave us more flexibility to expand and the pricing was better.

Initially, we had some struggle points. The Array that came out was new and there was some technical issues. However, sine then, it's been great. 

The implementation process was smooth. We had professional services come out to help us.

We have seen an ROI with HPE Alletra Storage since the maintenance costs of our previous solution were higher.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the licensing was that it was fairly simple, and the cost was better for us than a Dell solution.

Before selecting HPE Alletra Storage, we considered using our Alletra deployment as part of a dHCI solution for hyper-converged. However, we were looking at the competitor Dell VxRail solution.

My advice to other organizations considering HPE Alletra Storage is to ensure that when you deploy it, you have all the necessary components in place that the teams that will install it need.

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage overall as a nine on a scale of one to ten.