HPE Alletra Storage Reviews

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.

Our main use cases for the HPE Alletra Storage are for primary storage; we have four Alletra arrays, using two of them for primary storage and the other two for backup workloads.

The benefits of Alletra for our organization include the ease of detecting when we have a storage or volume that's running low, and being able to allocate space to those is simpler than other management platforms I've used.

The features I appreciate most about the HPE Alletra Storage are its ease of provisioning storage and management. From one console, we can manage all four of our arrays, making management significantly easier than previous software or storage arrays I've managed in the past. 

The solution has reduced our data management operations expenses, although we haven't quantified that yet. We know that expenses have been reduced because we have consolidated storage, managing one set of storage from one vendor instead of having two or three different storage arrays from different vendors.

I can definitely say that the solution has reduced the time I spend on capacity planning. That said, we have not quantified that. I would assess the capacity efficiency of the HPE Alletra Storage as a reduction in time. We no longer have to dig and find out when or actually act, as it alerts us when we can set thresholds for low space or performance issues, allowing us to manage our arrays more proactively.

To improve the HPE Alletra Storage, I would suggest including smart functions and AI capabilities on the Nimble versions of the Alletra arrays since we are not using the MP version at this time.

I have been using the HPE Alletra Storage for about three years.

I would assess the stability and reliability of the HPE Alletra Storage as very good; only the initial rollout had issues, but for the last two years, it has been very reliable.

The HPE Alletra Storage scales with our growing needs, but we haven't expanded usage yet; that's something we are currently considering.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate customer service and technical support a nine. Since our initial rollout where we had issues, HPE worked with us to resolve them, and whenever we needed to talk to a rep with questions, we could reach someone quickly.

Prior to adopting the HPE Alletra Storage, we were using another solution, but I can't recall the name right now. The main reasons we moved were capacity, scalability, cost, and performance.

There were challenges initially, deploying it. I'm not sure there was an issue with compatibility between our ESX host connecting to storage, or something of that nature. However, we would constantly drop storage. We did work with HP and our third-party integrators to get that issue resolved. Since then, we haven't had an issue, even though there were initial onboarding challenges. Once we got those issues resolved, it's been pretty solid.

We haven't seen a return on investment with the HPE Alletra Storage other than the initial purchase price as we have not quantified operational costs.

My experience with the pricing and setup costs of the HPE Alletra Storage was phenomenal, which is one of the reasons our organization decided to go with it, as the setup costs were in some cases half the price of some of the other competitors with even more features.

In evaluating solutions before the HPE Alletra Storage, we considered some other HPE offerings such as the MP, however, the cost was so much more than what we needed at the time. Looking forward, we could leverage some of that MP functionality, but cost remains a factor.

The HPE Alletra Storage has not yet provided a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. We have not fully leveraged the cloud functionality of the Alletra yet, and while I know it integrates with GreenLake, we're here to learn how we can use all the functionality of the Alletra arrays.

My overall rating for the HPE Alletra Storage is a nine out of ten.

My main use case for HPE Alletra Storage is storage.

The storage features benefited my organization since we were able to duplicate our Active Directory and the capacity to do our EDR.

The features of HPE Alletra Storage that I prefer most are storage. 

HPE GreenLake AI ops enables us to get assistance from senior support engineers without having to go through support escalations. I'm the director of IT. So if things go down, I'd like to get it fixed immediately, and storage is a big part of that.

While not definte, since I haven't used it long enough, the solution likely helps reduce the time spent on capacity planning.

It runs fast. It works fine.

The cloud-like operational model for on-prem works fast and I like the GUI interface. 

The solution runs pretty good right now, although I haven't used it for too long. The features are pretty spot on.

I have been using HPE Alletra Storage for less than two months.

I have experienced no downtime, crashes, or performance issues.

The solution scales well.

The issue I faced with technical support was that the power supply they sent was the wrong one since it was a case unit. It was a 240 and we needed a 120.

Once that was resolved, everything went smoothly. I understood that it was basically a supply and demand situation, so there wasn't much they could do. Once they received the part, they delivered it overnight.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate customer service and the technical support line a seven since they didn't have the part that I needed right away. That was one of the main reasons I went with them, expecting they would have parts readily available.

Prior to adopting HPE Alletra Storage, I was using an on-prem storage unit, which was usually Veeam. We wanted to go to all HP. Scalability and the fact we could go all AI were two big factors. 

The biggest challenge was again down on that unit. The power supply was not the correct power supply, and it took forever for them to send me the one that I needed. It took five months to get it.

It's only been a few months; it's hard to measure the ROI.

The vendor gave me the price, and I liked it, so I bought it.

Scalability and AI capabilities were the factors that led me to consider a change. What stood out about the product was our desire to transition completely to HPE to accommodate AI and eventually change the whole infrastructure to HPE.

My advice to other organizations considering HPE Alletra Storage is to ensure they have the correct power supply before proceeding with installation. The deployment model for HPE Alletra Storage is hybrid. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate HPE Alletra Storage a ten.

My main use case for HPE Alletra Storage is currently in our compliance environment, which is a small, protected, air-gapped environment.

HPE Alletra Storage provides a cloud-like operational model on-premises for managing data infrastructure. Since we operate in an air-gapped environment, having an on-premises solution is very important to us; we cannot rely heavily on the cloud. Therefore, having a single pane of glass to manage multiple arrays is incredibly helpful.

HPE Alletra Storage helped reduce the time we spend on capacity planning by approximately 20%.

The feature I appreciate the most about HPE Alletra Storage is that the interface is super simple for my team to use. HPE Alletra Storage has benefited my organization because it was a good transition from the previous manufacturer of storage to the new one, and it wasn't a hard learning curve for my team.

HPE Alletra Storage's capacity efficiency is notable due to the data reduction we get from it. Compared to the previous vendor, we're getting greater data reduction, and the ease of use of the tool has greatly reduced some of the time to support.

It's pretty perfect. I cheer on all of HPE's storage solutions. I appreciate HPE Alletra Storage. A negative aspect would be that I can only get pool utilization from InfoSight, not on the local array. I have to pull metrics every month from InfoSight, and it would be easier if it were just available on the local array.

I have been using HPE Alletra Storage for about a year and a half.

I have not had a single problem. Even their Nimble solution that we had earlier was perfect. I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues on these arrays.

We just installed them, so we haven't needed to scale out. We do have some budgetary items in the next few years, and these are half populated, so we'll easily expand them out.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support for HPE Alletra Storage as excellent. On a scale from one to 10, I would rate customer service as 10 because I always get quick responses, and the answers are comprehensive. We had one support case a couple of years ago that did not go that smoothly, but it was during the holidays, and there were people in and out at my company. That was just one instance; everything else has been smooth.

Positive

Prior to adopting HPE Alletra Storage, we were using Pure Storage to address similar needs, which we replaced with HPE Alletra.

I would describe my experience with deploying HPE Alletra Storage as fabulous. Even in this controlled environment where it's really hard to do anything, the guides and the wizards are easy to deploy.

Because it is an air-gapped environment, we have to do everything locally on it. That was the only challenge, but the guys were perfect at walking us through setting it up from the console connection.

We don't calculate return on investment with HPE Alletra Storage in this environment because it is regulated by the federal government.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for HPE Alletra Storage has been really good because we have a really good partner. We use Pinnacle Business Systems, and they're seamless to work with. We feel we get the best price and value for it, and setup is super simple.

We considered Pure as another solution. While Pure has a great product, it is very expensive. For the environment that we need it for, it was just overkill, and the Nimble just comes in right where we need it. It had both an all-flash option and a hybrid option, which is what we needed.

I would advise other organizations considering HPE Alletra Storage that I would not even hesitate; I would purchase them over all the other solutions we've looked at. 

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage overall as 10 out of 10.

I primarily use the solution for data storage. In the future, we'll use it for VDI and user profiles. 

We came off of the Pure and moved to Alletra. We're in the migration process of that right now. I haven't spent a lot of time on it yet. 

The installation of the agent that you put on each one of the file servers or host or clients, simplifies the process versus having to go through a process of manually configuring like NPIO and stuff like that for an ISCSI connection.

HPE has been great with some of the questions and the concerns we had coming up. We had an issue where we weren't getting the data deduplication and compression that we thought we were going to have, especially when compared to the Pure. They stepped up and gave us more storage.

Alletra provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure.

The guarantee of data availability was an important factor in our decision-making when moving to Alletra. We want to ensure availability is always there. We were able to do an expansion the other day to add extra space, and it went flawlessly without any issues. The data stayed up, with no users complaining.

Alletra has helped reduce time spent with storage provisioning. I could just bring up a new volume and present and format it. It's probably very similar to Pure. 

Alletra improves our storage performance in terms of IOPS.

It has helped reduce the time spent solving storage-related support tickets. The only experience with that so far is during the upgrade to the expansion module, we had an issue where it wouldn't come back up. An automatic ticket was created. It was helpful to have a quick response from somebody higher up, a supervisor, checking in. 

We are a unique case when it comes to data compression. Mostly, everybody has VMware running on it. We're just using it for file storage. While our focus is dealing with compression algorithms, they just haven't focused that much time on that. They are putting their money where their mouth is, however, and helping us with more storage.

Due to their acquisition of Nimble, there are multiple portals. I'm hoping that that gets cleaned up. You still have InfoSight. That's just a traditional place for Nimble, and it was renamed and rebranded for HPE. There's been slow integrations into it, HPE Green Lake, and that web portal. Hopefully, that gets done quickly. It's confusing to know what portal to go to and for what.

There is a weird bug we're seeing. I always end up using the local on-site UI to do everything. As soon as that great one, it takes some time for it to show up in Green Lake or InfoSight. That said, I can see that it will help reduce time spent on storage provisioning.

I've used the solution for three months.

The solution has been rock-solid since we've had it. 

We just added 30TB onto it, and that went smoothly. It sounds like we could even add another if it happened, however, for now, that's enough for us. 

The setup was a little bit funny as we wanted to learn the system and they just wanted to program it. However, the people have been fine and we've been able to resolve issues. For the most part, technical support worked out well. When I get the right guy on the phone, it's great. There is some weird stuff going on with on-site support. They used to farm out on-site to third-party companies. 

Positive

We did previously use Pure. We switched when the contract came due. Everything we have is HPE. Pure was a one-off product. In the grand scheme of products and support, it just didn't make sense to renew.

We bought the solution outright. We aren't leasing the solution or anything. 

The deployment was pretty straightforward. We had scheduled it, and they showed up and helped us rack it. They could have been more clear on their process. They would say that we need a network discovery address, and we'd ask: "in what context?" They wanted an ISCSI discovery address. That probably should've been clarified beforehand and moments like that dragged on a bit. 

We have a TAM through HPE. 

I haven't seen anything faster. Now that we have 3/4 of the company on it, we'll need to start looking at performance metrics. 

I don't have any insights into pricing.

We've always had either Pure or HPE. There really was no other solution to look at.

We've only had the solution for a certain amount of time, and we are not 100% migrated over. I haven't had experience with many of the features just yet.

I'd rate Alletra eight out of ten. The compression may be an issue. I understand the theory of how it works (it compresses in deduplication as it's writing). The one thing I'm not a fan of is that you get compression at write-time, if, in six months, there's a firmware upgrade, and it helps the compression, the only way to get that added benefit of compression would be to write the data again. 

We use it for our primary production storage array as well as its DR capabilities, where we replicate our data over to another Nimble or Alletra.

The resiliency of its array capabilities and the data replication features they have available are the product's most valuable aspects. 

It provides a cloud-like operating model on-prem. It has positively affected operations. The management tools they have available make it easy to provision or add additional space. It's very easy to click through.

It's been a rock-solid system. We've had a couple of drives go down before we're even aware of it and they notify us and send us a replacement.  

It's important to have a data availability guarantee, being a hospital. We need to maintain that patient data. 

The workflows are very automated, for example, if we need something replaced.

We've been able to reduce the time spent on storage provisioning by 30%. It's so easy to provision a data store or a new chunk of disk.

We've improved storage performance. The all-flash system we have is incredibly fast. 

In the perfect world, it would be cheaper. 

I've been using the solution for about five years now. 

The solution is stable and rock-solid. It's been five years. A drive may be going out since it's been so long; however, beyond that, which is expected, we haven't had any issues. 

It's easily scalable. You can build up and out with this kind of storage. 

You can get around five additional shelves, and you're talking hundreds of terabytes of data that you can put on this solution.

Technical support is great. HPE provides some of the best support we've ever dealt with. We do pay for premium support. It's worth every penny. As soon as we have a problem, we open a ticket with them, and they immediately get back to us well within the four hour SLA that we have with them.

Positive

We have a 3PAR that's also an HPE storage array. We also have a Nimble. The 3PAR has been good. However, it's getting older, and it's in need of a change. 

We do use an Azure Cloud. However, it is a very small footprint. 

The experience deploying an Alletra was very good. It was nice and easy. 

We do go through a third party to order the solution; however, my colleague and I were the individuals who actually racked it. 

We have witnessed an ROI in terms of the IOPs. The speed at which we get the data from it is incredibly fast. 

If there was another solution that was evaluated, it would have been before my time at the company.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's rock solid with great support. It's just the price that is the sticking point.

We primarily use the solution for virtualization storage.

We have different use cases and 30 locations around the country. We use it to either replicate back from site to site or keep our footprint small at the edge.

The deduplication is very good. The array replication and V-wall storage are also really useful. 

We've been able to reduce our footprint. We get 4X on each array times 30.

The cost savings are pretty good. It does allow us to store more than we normally would. 

One of the best benefits I can think of is that the support team is top-tier. We've had a lot of good experiences with support, which I can't say for some other vendors.

It's pretty good at predicting and preventing problems. We can receive notifications on most of our problems, and, if not before, very soon after. Most of our problems are just failures such as power failures. We tend to receive notifications just before or right on time. If we didn't get those notifications our environment would be down.

The guarantee of data availability is very important to us. Data runs everything.

It's helped reduce the time spent on provisioning by over 50%. The way that we use it is mainly through the plugin into vCenter. It makes the provisioning of new data storage infinitely faster.

The solution has improved our storage performance in terms of IOPS. When I started, we had some other vendor arrays that were not as great, moving to Alletra, it's improved. We're a big SQL shop, so we're  running all their secret reports and all that faster. That's always a plus for the business.

Alletra helps reduce the time spent resolving storage-related support tickets.

I'd like to see a smaller chassis in the hybrid arrays. The one they have is a legacy chassis and is a lot bigger than it should be.

I've been using the solution for five years. We were originally Nimble customers. We've used a variety of versions, from the C1000s up to the Alletra 530s.

It's a very stable system. We have no complaints. 

The solution is fully scalable. There's no issue adding additional shelving, and we've had zero downtime. 

Alletra suport is excellent. They are always responsive and knowledgeable, and our issues are resolved in a few hours. I don't dread opening support tickets with them. 

Positive

We have used EMC and NetApp. We moved all storage over to Alletra. We wanted continuity. We have a small team and Alletra has made it easier to train people when using one platform.

We deployed the solution ourselves. It's really easy to set up and the documentation is step by step. Getting it from out of the box to up and functional we can do in 30 minutes or less. 

I don't know what the pricing is.

We haven't recently evaluated other solutions. The transition was already in motion when I took things over. We don't have plans to change.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten overall. It's reliable, has good uptime, and nice features. It doesn't cause me problems.