HPE Alletra Storage Reviews

HPE Alletra Storage is being used for systems for online banking transactions. We have sold this to the main bank that connects with all other banks, and the transactions occur in real-time.

HPE Alletra Storage comes with zero downtime, which is its best feature. It has real-time replication available, so no additional features need to be bought when purchasing the system. It can be cost-effective in this sense, with no extra cost for the customer to own any services. 

HPE Alletra Storage supports up to five petabytes, which is enormous. It simplifies storage operations such as provisioning and day-to-day management. It is a one-window operation, making it easy to manage.

The user interface, configuration, and customization could be improved, though the configuration is currently very easy. Even the migration from one platform to HPE Alletra Storage is very smooth. 

Pricing could be optimized, as it is always a challenge. The competition offers some storage solutions at lower prices, making the cost a significant factor.

We have been working with HPE for approximately 25-26 years.

Some users of HPE Alletra Storage mention that they would prefer higher scalability, although it is generally good.

We have recently sold a lower model of HPE Alletra Storage, but its performance is good. We are in the process of selling them the top-of-the-line HPE Alletra Storage 10000 series, B10000. Once it is installed, we can gather customer feedback, but at the moment, they are satisfied with the lower model as their operational requirements are not as demanding. The next phase project is called a micro payment gateway. For this, they have to perform a tech refresh, and they are opting for a higher model of HPE Alletra Storage B10000. This choice was made because they are satisfied with the lower models they are currently using. They are comfortable with the software as a service that HPE Alletra Storage offers.

HPE technical support is very good, and the customer service is rated 10 out of 10.

Positive

HPE 3PAR is not upgradable anymore, so it is being replaced with the HPE Alletra Storage C40 model. Other solutions, such as Dell PowerStore and Data Domain, have also been sold.

Its price can be optimized. The cost before deployment is significant to customers, but post-deployment cost analysis is not common.

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage a ten out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for virtual machines and hypervisors. We use it mainly in data centers. 

The solution has provided us with a solution that is reliable and cost-effective. 

The reliability is very good. 

It's cost-efficient compared to other competitors. We noted the cost-benefit almost immediately. The reliability and consistency benefits that we appreciate took a few months to appear.

We've also used the solution InfoSight with this product.

The guarantee of data availability is very important to us, and this solution is very good in that regard. We store transactional data on it. 

The capacity efficiency is excellent. 

Its ledger helps us simplify storage operations such as provisioning and day-to-day management. 

The solution provides us with a cloud-like operation model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. We were planning on moving to the cloud. However, this has given us a good alternative. We get to own everything yet keep our data center. It helps mitigate security complications that come with the cloud and also helps with latency issues with networking.

It provides predictable performance and capacity for applications without sacrificing data integrity. It's helped us reduce the time we spend on capacity planning. It's also less complicated to manage than the alternatives. It's also been able to reduce our data management operation expenses by possibly around 10%.

The energy usage could be further improved. Generally speaking, if it uses less energy than the alternatives, it would be great.

I've been using the solution for two years. 

The stability is good; it's better than the industry standard.

While I can't say for sure if the solution provides modular, non-disruptive capabilities to scale up and scale out, my understanding is that it does. 

We've only talked to technical support once. They were very good. 

Positive

We have also used Pure, and offerings from Dell and NetApp. There were some features from Pure that are helpful.

The learning curve on the deployment is a bit high. That said, overall, it was relatively easy. We had three people involved in the setup on the storage side and then on the backroom side, we had about eight people, so we had 11 people in total working on the product. It took a couple of months to fully deploy. While it does require monitoring, there isn't much maintenance needed. 

We generally handled the solution in-house with some help from HP. 

We're a customer and end-user. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

New users should first do their homework and lay out what their needs are before they jump in and make a purchasing choice. 

Our main use cases for HPE Alletra Storage are strictly for block storage, with no SMB, no NFS, no SAN replication, snapshots, or anything; it's strictly block.

One example of how the features of HPE Alletra Storage benefited my organization is the Nimble reliability. We had a single hard drive failure with all the other units we had, and we got a notification saying, 'Hey, we've detected a hard drive failure. Parts coming out.' It arrived the next day, and it was good.

The features of HPE Alletra Storage that I most prefer are its speed, as we were having issues with some of our VMs running into wait time on the older all-flash unit, and moving to the new Alletra's fixed the issue with no tweaking, no tuning, and it's awesome—basically set and forget, as Nimble has always been.

HPE Alletra Storage scales with the growing needs of my organization, eliminating the planning for growth since it tells me, 'You have this amount of capacity, this is your deduplication, we estimate you could throw on this many VMs or this amount of storage.' I just sign into the stats page and see what I can do.

Regarding capacity planning, HPE Alletra Storage has helped us. We used the calculator on the website to figure out what we would need, and when we started moving over the VMs, we were surprised with more caching and deduplication than we had on the other units, so now we don't have to think about capacity.

I would assess HPE Alletra Storage's capacity efficiency as good. It was only half-populated when we purchased it, allowing us to buy additional disks and slide them into place as we've done with the Nimble's in the past.

Our usage of HPE Alletra Storage is unique. We just use it as two standalone units for block storage, without replication or a metro cluster. I wouldn't say HPE Alletra Storage has reduced our data management operations expenses since we spec'd it out with the size we needed and with the projected growth.

HPE Alletra Storage offers a cloud-operational model on-premises for managing data infrastructure through GreenLake, as the web interface provides access to the GUI, which features the same interface as the rest of the HPE website.

To improve HPE Alletra Storage, a couple of things could be addressed. This is more on the support side, as the initial cost is for a very large company. Especially for smaller companies, it would be nice if there were more disk add-ons or incentives, such as 'If you buy our system with our forever warranty, you get new controllers every three years.'

We have been using HPE Alletra Storage since it was still Nimble before HPE bought them, and we went through the CS100, 300, the hybrid flash, the all-flash, and then the Alletra, which we got last year around March.

I assess the stability and reliability of HPE Alletra Storage as good. It works just as the Nimble's have, and we haven't had any issues; it's basically set it and forget it.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support for HPE Alletra Storage as good. We ran into a small issue with some licenses that came through email not working for whatever reason, and we had to get a couple of different technical people involved who were confused and just regenerated new licenses, which fixed the issue.

Prior to adopting HPE Alletra Storage, I was using the Nimbles and we also had some older 3PAR equipment still floating around.

My experience deploying HPE Alletra Storage was pretty simple. I basically unboxed it, put the rails in, slid it in, and turned it on. It couldn't have been any easier, and I was happy, seeing no improvements needed.

I wouldn't say we have seen an ROI with HPE Alletra Storage as we purchased it knowing what we were going to get, so it's just there, and we use it.

Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing for HPE Alletra Storage, we talked about the pricing earlier, so it would be nice if there were incentives to use. 

When we purchased everything, it came with the GreenLake support and add-ons, which seemed okay. It was around $1,000 on the bill, and while that doesn't account for much when you're buying something for $60,000, it could be better with credits or something for the support person running after it—even if it's not monetary, it could be 'Get one of our HPE shirts.'

Before selecting HPE Alletra Storage, I considered Pure heavily. The only reason HPE won over Pure was that HPE had the GreenLake integration and was still rolling out the Gen11s and Gen12s, promising more features to come. Pure was substantially cheaper and significantly faster than HPE Alletra Storage.

My advice to other organizations considering HPE Alletra Storage is to go with it if you have other HPE hardware as it integrates so seamlessly. If you don't, I would suggest Pure, as Pure is still faster when put up against the Nimble; they offer better incentives, but since we have HPE everything, it was just better to stay in the same ecosystem.

I rate HPE Alletra Storage eight out of ten.

Our main use case for the HPE Alletra Storage is VMs.

The feature of the HPE Alletra Storage I appreciate most is the speed. These features have benefited our organization by providing general data for our customers.

The GreenLake AI Ops enables me to get assistance from the senior support engineers without having to go through support escalations.

The solution has reduced our data management operations expenses; however, I could not provide a specific number since we were offline for a few years.

The solution has helped reduce the time I spend on capacity planning by approximately 80%.

I would assess HPE Alletra Storage's capacity efficiency as oversizing everything, so we have never really hit any kind of limit.

HPE Alletra Storage provides a cloud-like operational model on-premises for managing data infrastructure. The cloud-like operational model has affected my operations such as deployment, provisioning, and day-to-day management by making it very easy to navigate and easy to get to everything I need.

There is nothing I can think of offhand to improve HPE Alletra Storage or for additional features that should be included in the next release.

I have been using HPE Alletra Storage for probably eight months now, while we have had Nimbles for years.

I would assess the stability and reliability of HPE Alletra Storage as something we do not want to experience downtime, crashes, or performance issues with.

HPE Alletra Storage scales very with the growing needs of my organization. I have expanded usage, and the process was smooth as we upgraded just to add size.

I would describe my customer service experience with technical support as good. On a scale from one being the worst to ten being the best, I would rate customer service/technical support as a ten. We have a good response time.

Before adopting HPE Alletra Storage, we were replicated, which is what we considered to address similar needs.

My experience with deploying HPE Alletra Storage was that it was an expansion, not a brand new hire, and it was pretty much the exact same.

I have not seen a tangible return on investment with HPE Alletra Storage.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that I see a price, but that is about it.

We have been an HPE shop, so I have not really seen the need to switch from that when considering other solutions before selecting HPE Alletra Storage.

My advice to another organization that would consider HPE Alletra Storage is that Zerto is probably one of the best, as we do SQL servers and everything. 

For using HPE Alletra Storage overall, I would rate it a ten out of ten.

We have two 9K arrays in two different data centers. We primarily use them for VMware and database backends. 

The ease of setup was huge for me, as I'm the only storage admin for our company. The ease of upgrading is great as well. We just recently did an upgrade to it and added a couple of more shelves. 

The simplicity and the ease of having everything in one solution are important for us. With the 9K we run pretty much 90% of our company's data on there. Outside of VDI, VDI, we're using Nimble. We've had the Nimbles for six years now. We're actually looking to replace those here in the next 18 months, and I'm looking at Alletra to do that with. 

With the tie-in through GreenLake, it offers a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. It's helped with deployment and provisioning. With ease of setup and provisioning, it's much simpler than even the 3PAR was. It's helped us speed up.

The guarantee of data availability is important. We have 100% uptime. It was a big deal for us - especially since I'm the only administrator. It seems to imply an ease when it comes to fixing issues, although we haven't had any.

We'd reduced the time spent on storage provisioning. It's 60% to 70% faster than what we're used to. Once we got the base set up, it's easier to go through the provisioning and upgrades. The usability from an administrator standpoint is just so much faster. 

Alletra itself seems really solid. We had a good base with 3PAR, which we're replacing Alletra right now. However, the integration with DCCS could still use some work. It's in its infancy and needs more features. 

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

The stability, so far, has been good. I haven't had any issues or downtime. I've never needed to call support.

It's very user-friendly in terms of scaling. When we added shelves, the install took no time at all. Adding servers or storage to two servers is very easy. It's much easier than the 3PAR was. The interface has just been spectacular. 

Alletra customer support has been really good. They are speedy and really knowledgeable. HPE support overall is fair. I do a lot of calls for compute and storage. In some other areas, it is hit or miss. Alletra support is excellent. 

Neutral

We are replacing 3PAR with Alletra. We knew we wanted to stick with HPE. We also had some older Dells that we replaced with this. 

The deployment is very easy.

We have witnessed an ROI, however I do not have specific KPIs.

I have a great team at HPE that helped me out with sales and engineering. The pricing was very good, especially when we were figuring out bundles. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

The clients' use case for HPE Alletra Storage is mainly for banks and telco companies, which are mostly the sectors who use this solution.

HPE Alletra Storage helps simplify storage operations. One of the strong points of HPE is its friendly UI, which is super easy, and users can have a short tutorial and start working on it.

HPE Alletra Storage provides predictable performance and capacity for applications. This prediction may not be entirely accurate, as it's more about prediction, but it gives insights about the average compression and some statistics on the stored data.

The main benefits people receive from HPE Alletra Storage include saving money, as its price compared to other high-end storage is competitive, and it's easy to manage, with an uptime availability of almost 99.999. While all storage boxes must be available at that level, I haven't encountered any issues with it.

The most valuable features in HPE Alletra Storage that I have found are the compression and deduplication, along with the availability of the storage box. In the last two years, I haven't received any negative feedback about it from customers.

HPE can improve HPE Alletra Storage by adding some features to be available from the offline GUI, especially related to snapshots and taking a snapshot for the whole storage, as some customers need this feature. This feature is available in Dell storage but not in IBM storage and Alletra Storage, and it's available from the Data Lake for snapshotting the whole environment at once.

I have been working with HPE Alletra Storage for almost two years.

It's very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.

It's easy to scale. I have performed many scale-ups and scale-outs successfully. I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability.

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage's technical support a nine out of ten. I don't give the full mark for any vendor or any product, as if you're the best, you don't need to improve. Before I joined HPE, I was a customer, and I raised tickets, which were solved easily, and the support representatives were very helpful. This was one of the reasons I joined this company.

Positive

I have worked with other vendors and products before I joined HPE, including IBM Storage, all-flash FS9000, and A9000, and the efficiency is almost the same. It holds up competitively.

The capacity and efficiency of HPE Alletra Storage are good. I am satisfied with HPE Alletra Storage's capacity efficiency as it performs deduplication and compression with a good ratio.

The initial setup for HPE Alletra Storage is very simple. If you do the prerequisites correctly, you can complete it in a few minutes. It all revolves around the prerequisites, such as ensuring the ports are opened and the account for the Data Lake is created correctly.

The main competitor in the market for HPE Alletra Storage is Dell Storage, as they are selling at a low price. Dell Storage PowerMax VMAX is a competitor, alongside Dell and IBM storage, though IBM storage might be more competitive.

It is helpful to integrate HPE Alletra Storage with HPE GreenLake, but not all customers have integrated it with HPE GreenLake, as there are some regulations here to connect the storage boxes to the cloud. However, a few customers have integrated it to get all the features available on HPE GreenLake and some statistics and insights. 

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage a nine out of ten.

Alletra is used for our SAP environment, strictly. We needed a high level of performance.

We were on our SAP environment on a 3PAR, and we moved over to Alletra. When we got all the data moved over to the Alletra, the deduplication was so much better. Our space usage was so much better on this product, and we actually saw a better performance.

I've always said I love that it's easy to use. At one point in time, we had a 3PAR. And with 3PAR, I always thought it was a little more difficult. There was so much more to maintaining it, setting it up, and everything. With the [HPE] Alletra [Storage], it's just easy. It's easy to provision space to use and to set up.

InfoSight is invaluable to me. With it, I can just quickly go out there and see what is going on.

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

[HPE] Alletra [Storage] is very good for predicting problems and preventing them before they occur. InfoSight has really helped with that. I honestly don't have to look at it much. However, there's the alerting and everything that will tell us what's going on. That said, I check InfoSight every once in a while. 

[HPE Alletra Storage] reduced the time spent on storage provision. It's so much easier than the 3PAR. It's just so much easier. I don't spend time in there at all. 

The product improved our storage performance experience in terms of IOPS. Our end users that use the SAP environment were a little concerned at first. We said we were going to switch over from the 3PAR to the Alletra since they've always been more familiar with the 3PAR. However, when we moved them over, they noticed a performance increase. 

I cannot think of a specific area that needs improvement. 

I've used the solution for probably just a year. That said, I've been with Nimble for many years, so I am very familiar with the product itself. 

Technical support is excellent. If I have an issue like a hard drive failure, and I've only had one or two, or if I just wasn't sure how something was working, I'd call into support. It was always phenomenal.

The deployment experience was really good.

My previous experience was more with the Nimble iSCSI within our VMware environment. This one was just setting up the fiber channel switch for us and doing that stuff.

We worked with a vendor. They came in and set up. We did a fiber channel on this one, and they came in and set everything up for us. We even had a little training session. 

We have seen ROI in time spent and money savings. 3PAR cost more and we had to do more maintenance. We used to have to do more maintenance with the 3PAR and when we would do upgrades, we always had to engage HPE at the time to do the upgrade. I would just sit there and wait while they did it, and it took hours. With With [HPE] Alletra [Storage], it downloads the software, and you just hit the button, and go.

The price is great. If you come from a 3PAR world to an Alletra, it's great. The vendor that we use was phenomenal in getting us great pricing.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. It's just so much easier to use than any of the other storage environments I've had. It's been more dependable. I've had Dell, which was awful. It's not easy to use. With anything that happens, you have to spend so much more time researching. From the get-go, it's been a great product. I've always loved it. 

If anyone was looking into the Alletra I'd tell them to 100% get it since it is so much easier to use.

My main use cases for HPE Alletra Storage are our data center, internal use, and also for our warehouse automation system in our customer warehouses to automate their operations. This is growing as we're at about 40 warehouses today, and we'll be at 100.

One example of how HPE Alletra Storage features benefited our organization is by addressing technical debt. We've only been a startup for about three years and in the process, we replaced older technology, specifically Cisco HyperFlex, and from a cost basis, Synergy has stepped in and been cost-effective.

The features I find most valuable about HPE Alletra Storage are the throughput and the visibility it provides because we have different workloads, and the flexibility we're looking at, being able to operate on a single platform.

I'm going to skip discussing how HPE Alletra Storage can be improved as I'm not in the technology area right now and haven't paid attention to that.

I've been using HPE Alletra Storage for approximately six months.

I would assess the stability and reliability of HPE Alletra Storage as having had no issues so far. It has been stable and we haven't experienced any problems during the last three months since the actual productive load has been on it.

HPE Alletra Storage scales effectively with the growing needs of my organization, and I don't see limitations or complexity for growth at the moment, as it has been selected among the top players.

Regarding customer service and technical support, we haven't had many direct interactions, but we do have calls with HPE, and they have been fairly responsive. I can't speak specifically to customer service and technical support since I haven't engaged with them directly for HPE Alletra Storage, but HPE in general has been responsive and our engagement has been positive.

Before adopting HPE Alletra Storage, I was using Cisco HyperFlex and Pure Storage for similar needs.

I would describe my experience deploying HPE Alletra Storage as seamless.

We have great engineers who handled the analysis and evaluation, making production deployment a straightforward process.

Regarding ROI with HPE Alletra Storage, there is some level of return if more hosts are being hosted on the same platform since it reduces power consumption and the footprint is lower.

I didn't oversee the pricing, setup costs, and licensing for HPE Alletra Storage, however, the HPE partnership has been phenomenal and we appreciated their support during deployment, including evaluating the hardware.

Before selecting HPE Alletra Storage, we considered cloud solutions to put all VMs into the cloud as other hardware options such as Pure and Cisco HyperFlex. We selected HPE Alletra Storage for its benefits, performance, and the partnership with HPE. 

In my considerations for changing solutions, key factors included performance, cost, and HPE's partnership with us, as the persistence of the HPE customer manager ensured our leadership made informed decisions during the evaluation.

For other organizations considering HPE Alletra Storage, a lot is driven by HPE's reliability and the importance of the partnership and people behind the hardware. On a scale of one to ten, I would give HPE Alletra Storage around a seven.