HPE Alletra Storage Reviews

I added two shelves to the two Cisco systems and it's running well.

The management costs are very low. That's a big benefit for us.

They've been great. I have no issues with them.

Provisioning works and is very simple. It's easy to use. 

Setting up snapshots is very easy, and replication between the two systems is easy as well.

The solution provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem. I just use it for day-to-day management tasks. Other than that, I don't do provisioning or anything like that. I use the native interface for that.

I keep it pretty up-to-date so I don't have to really worry about any issues. I had a couple of failed drives and they went as planned. It was no big deal.

The solution helped to reduce the time spent on storage for messaging. That said, I don't have too much to compare it to.

Its performance is very good - especially when I added a second shelf to the system. It spreads the data out over more spindles and also more solid-state drives.

They have a new update coming out that I'm going to be using as far as lack of snapshots. I'm going to put that into place as soon as I upgrade to the new version.

I've been using the solution for probably 12 months now. 

It's stable. I've had no issues so far.

It's easy to scale. I just added two new shelves to the systems, and it was straightforward. 

I've never had to call technical support. I've had two failed drives, and they had automated tickets set up with the driver arriving four hours later. 

I've been an HP customer for a long time. I've been happy with their support and reliability.

I've previously used Trinti. However, it is no longer a company.

The deployment was pretty simple. I figured out how to provide or provision the storage and set up replication, and I was done quickly.

The pricing and licensing are streamlined. I didn't have any issues. 

I did look at NetApp, among other solutions. I decided on Alletra based on its interface, ease of use, and the time I didn't need to spend worrying about it.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. It's simple to use and we haven't had any technical issues.

We primarily use the solution for our data warehouse. We had a latency problem with data warehouse services. We had 3PAR and we migrated everything to [HPE] Alletra [Storage]. The latency that Alletra gives us is much lower than that given by 3PAR and it has managed to support the number of IOPs generated by the service.

The execution response times of data warehouse tasks have improved, and the reports have been produced on time as required by the Bank.

The configuration capacity it has to create a cluster for replication is excellent. 

The latency it gives me is incredible.

Alletra provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. In terms of administration, we can do stuff from anywhere; we do not need to be on the local management network. That is one of the best benefits. So is the whole subject of team status reports through "GreenLake.

The guarantee of data availability to our organization is important. I work in a financial area, so protecting data is the most valuable task the bank has and we feel safe with Alletra.

Alletra helped reduce the time in storage provisioning. We have reduced it by two hours. Before switching solutions, it used to take us two to three hours, and we have reduced it to about 15 minutes with Alletra.

Alletra improved our storage performance in terms of IOPs. It has been reduced, however, I couldn't say by how much right now. I do know that with the storage we had before, we were already saturated with 30,000 IOPs, whereas with Alletra we have put 50,000 IOPs in it and it has worked well.

I haven't found anything that could be improved. It's a good product overall. We didn't buy it for production purposes. We wanted to use it for development. That said, due to the efficiency it has, the company is already thinking about putting it into production.

Maybe they could just reduce the number of racks and the amount of rack space.

I've used the solution for two years. 

To date, we have not generated any cases for Alletra, which means it has given us 100% stability. In these past two years, Alletra has never generated any cases for us in terms of stability issues - which is a very good sign.

We have not had the opportunity to require more resources at the moment.

Support is excellent. It is easy to ask for help, and the response we receive is very specific. We do not give the situation much thought or go back and forth about it.

Positive

We used 3PAR. We changed to a new technology due to obsolescence more than any other reason.

The initial setup was relatively simple. After installation, there were not many configurations. We were quickly up and running. The support was very good. 

We used the help of a third-party vendor and received good attention.

The issue of price and cost is handled by another area; I am from the technical side.

We evaluated Dell and Pure Storage. With Pure Storage the difference was the price. With Dell, the difference was mostly in the number of IOPs supported by Alletra and the type of rack they used.

I give Alletra a ten out of ten. I have no complaints about Alletra at this time as it exceeded our expectations.

We use the solution for infrastructure for one of our global financial customers to allow them to scale up and out.

The distributed hyper-converged infrastructure is great. Just having the ability to scale independently storage compute is useful. 

The extended capacity offers a small footprint that's still meeting a large customer demand. 

The cloud-like model will be helpful. I can see it will make things much more efficient once we get to that point.

For predicting and preventing problems, it looks like it will be a very useful feature. It will simplify operations and Day Zero and Day One operations.

Its guarantee of data availability is important. It will be one of the key aspects for the customer. 

It will help save time around storage provisioning once implemented fully.

The simplified provisioning of storage compared to other solutions in and of itself will make it more efficient.

Customers have an existing solution they can compare the performance of IOPs to. This product looks to be as good or even better. However, that's yet to be determined. 

Alletra should effectively reduce the time dealing with support tickets once it is fully implemented. It likely will improve by a factor of two to three, although we aren't at that point yet.

From what I've seen so far it's definitely checking the boxes of what the customer's looking for.

I'd like to see larger cluster sizes beyond four nodes. 

I've been using the solution for four months. 

It seems to be robust, and since it's based on the Nimbe product line, it will be mature. that stability will be fine. 

Going up to four nodes is not as scalable as I'd like for horizontal scaling. Vertical scaling is huge. That said, the ability to go beyond four nodes would be of interest to customers in the future.

I haven't dealt with technical support yet. However, I'm sure it will be fine. I've seen a lot of focus on support. HPE will definitely bring its A-game. 

Positive

We use Dell. They are looking at the smaller footprint and simplicity as far as managing the product which is why Allertra is so attractive. 

We haven't deployed the solution yet. That said, just talking to the HPE deployment team and watching the demo, the process seems like it will be very simple. We'll be able to do it in hours instead of days or weeks. 

I'm an integrator. I'll help my clients handle the implementation. 

With a smaller footprint, there will be less power consumption. There will be more effective capacity as well, and less rack space used. 

I've heard the licensing is going to be much, much more streamlined than what they're used to currently. 

The customer is also looking at Hitachi, although it's more complex. Plus, the customer already has a significant HPE footprint. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. From an effective capacity, power, and footprint standpoint, it edges out the incumbent.

I use the solution for cheap and deep tier-two VMware storage. I use it for smaller SQL databases as well. 

Since we've implemented the solution, we've had zero downtime on the arrays. We get high-quality replication and a quality product overall. 

I like InfoSight and now the new GreenLake management platform to help me manage all my arrays in one location. 

The product provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. While I haven't used the on-prem cloud model myself, I've heard it's good. 

It's good at preventing problems. The support is really good. They actually fix 90% of errors and remotely fix them. They get there first and log in and I am told before I know there's a failed drive.

It has reduced time spent on storage provisioning. I give VMware admins access to provision their own data storage. 

Alletra has improved storage performance for IOPs. I've been using the hybrids and get really good IOPs performance out of the hybrid models. It's even comparable to the Pure X50 systems.

It's helped us reduce the time spent on storage-related support tickets. We rarely have tickets now. We've reduced them by 70% or so.

It could use improvement in correctly identifying and naming the systems. The solution keeps changing the names of everything. It's been hard to track.

I've been using the solution for five years. 

The stability is very good. It's very stable. I'd like to have a more of a hands-off support solution - an HP technician replace option. 

Customer support is very good. 

We were a Nimble customer previously.

The deployment and implementation were very easy. It went really fast.

We have witnessed an ROI. Our ROI is down to two years on the purchase.

The pricing is okay. There's not really a smaller-scale model for mid-tier and upper capacities. That said, the pricing is comparable to everyone else.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It would be a ten out of ten if they could do block and file on the same system.

We are using HPE Alletra Storage as a block storage to our virtualization environment, in the central data center and in the hospital data centers too.

It is much easier to manage HPE Alletra Storage systems compared to the storages before, such as the 3PAR storage. Previously, virtual machines needed to be running to manage this. With HPE Alletra Storage, it's cloud integrated, so it's easier to make it up and running. In the healthcare sector, we have just a few engineers, so the human capacity is under the normal or wanted level, and with these automated technologies, these integrated features of HPE Alletra Storage help us to integrate the new systems to our systems.

HPE Alletra Storage has made it much easier to operate this system compared to before, which has reduced our data management operation expenses. HPE Alletra Storage has helped reduce the time spent on capacity planning, but we often use system integrators to help us with the capacity planning and the newest technologies make it easier. We have a lot of data in healthcare, so HPE Alletra Storage helps us to reduce the cost by facilitating the management of duplications.

HPE Alletra Storage provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data operations, such as deployment, provisioning, and data management. I'm currently planning to deploy private cloud-like operations to the hospitals because they don't have engineers, storage engineers, compute engineers, virtualization engineers, and with this cloud technology, the operational aspects could be much easier.

HPE Alletra Storage is absolutely stable and reliable.

HPE Alletra Storage does scale with our growing needs. Currently, there is no plan to expand the usage of HPE Alletra Storage; it's enough for the current deployment.

We have no problems with the customer support for HPE Alletra Storage. We always can reach the Hungarian support team, and if needed, they can ask for help from other engineers, so it's fast and effective.

When we adopted HPE Alletra Storage, we were using another solution similar. We were using 3PAR, and we are changing our 3PAR storages to HPE Alletra Storage.

In hospitals, we're using Dell solutions for storage, and we have HPE solutions. If a hospital is using Dell infrastructures, we try to upgrade it to a homogeneous platform, so we're planning with Dell. But in our central data centers, we are using HPE solutions, and there were no other solutions we found that could be better for us, so we are thinking about HPE technologies.

The management capabilities of the storage system might be the most preferred feature of HPE Alletra Storage. We have not used the AI features of HPE GreenLake AIOps yet, but we are planning to use it and implement it in the operational part. I don't have the numbers to quantify how much HPE Alletra Storage has reduced our data management operation expenses. I'm not up to date with topics regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing for HPE Alletra Storage. However, I have no problems with it, as our HPE contact can answer all of the questions we have. On a scale of 1-10, I rate HPE Alletra Storage a 10.

It is for dHCI, which is the hyper-converged infrastructure for HPE. It is replacing the tradition where when you have node storage, you have to purchase a model of switches. It combines the compute and storage.

Its benefits vary because I have used many models. I see it now handling VDI. Previously, when I had VDI and I put HPE for it, I would always go for Simplivity, whereas now, with the new model and GreenLake, they have attached Alletra to the cloud. It is serving people working from home a lot. They do not need to log in to do VPN anymore, create volumes, and manage their backups. If they have a full system for virtual storage, and they have Zerto for application replication, they can manage everything on the cloud. Zerto can also be managed on the cloud. If you have a stack, it does not matter how many systems you have. They all are going to show up in one interface. This is a huge benefit. Anything living in the storage can be monitored through the cloud.

HPE Alletra Storage has different models to cover SMBs, midsize companies, and enterprises. Enterprise companies with modern compute, CPU, and memory can have more virtual machines. It is easy for Alletra to grow and expand with the shelves. Customers are happy with it. Only one time I upgraded Alletra from 6010 to 6030 to add more storage and change the controllers. Customers are happy with Alletra. They do not complain. I never see them complain.

It is the simplicity of the deployment. They have unified all the features they have. For example, the creation and management of the storage was previously done through the plugins but with limited features. It was slow and had some challenges, whereas now, they have modern plug-ins that have more features and simulate the interface for the storage. Customers love it. The thing that they love the most about the plug-in is the one-click upgrade. They do not need to go to each device.

There can be more visibility and statistics for the customers to see. The customers would love to see AI. Even if it is not AI, there can be more visibility and real-time statistics that IT people can monitor and show to their bosses and impress them. To monitor things, they have reports, but the report system is old. Reports are by email. If they can show monthly growth and advise on the usage, it will make the lives of customers and IT people easy. They are going to love it. They would like to have one tool that can take them everywhere. There should be a single pane of glass. If they sit in a meeting, they should be able to answer questions related to whether they need more storage. They should not have had to go to different portals to get results, which creates confusion. If they have one place where they can see everything in graphics, it will be great.

We have been using HPE Alletra Storage for three years.

I have been working with HPE for six years. When I do an upgrade, I can see the Nimble that I installed for the customer five years ago as it is. No one touched it.

They continue to do a good job. I did not reach the max for anything. Every time I add a shelf for the customer, it takes 15 minutes. You just add a shelf, put the SaaS, and you are good to go.

Their support works very well. You can just grab the phone and reach out to their support. Their support answers you immediately. This is a big deal for the customers. 

I do deployment as well. Every time I get stuck at something or something goes wrong because something is missing or the customers do not have a proper configuration, I can reach out to their support immediately. I just pick up the phone, and they answer. We talk for ten minutes, and their support engineer understands the case. I open a secure channel for him to access or I give him a CLI with remote access. He applies his magic and reset the things.

I would rate them a ten out of ten because they get my issues solved. If the support engineer can not resolve an issue, he just escalates it. Being a technical person, I understand that the response can take longer. There could be some bugs, and their support team cannot give you the answer immediately.

Positive

I am HPE ASE certified. I do not bring any other customers to the game. I always present HPE. It has been six years since I have been doing this work for my company. We are beating Cisco. We are beating anyone with Dell PowerVault. We beat all of those models.

All the other companies have the same solution, but it comes down to knowing the expectations of the customer and putting things together for them from the switch to the compute to the storage. When you present them together, the result is going to be a yes. The price also plays a role, but HPE is what customers like to go for most of the time. About 70% of customers decide in advance where they will go, but some customers are surprised with the combination that we bring. We put Zerto, and we put the cloud for them. We provide them visibility and make the deployment easy for them. We give them administrator training. All these things that we add on top make customers comfortable to go with HPE even if they do not know HPE.

About 60% to 70% of customers go with the cheapest price, but they also need to see the performance and other things. We have a lot of customers. We took them to HPE Headquarters in Houston. We bring customers to events like HPE Discover. Last year, we brought a customer here and sold four sites to him with dHCI. We finished the Dallas one or the last one three months ago.

Our clients mostly use it on-prem, but they also use it for the DR site and HQ. 

The deployment is simple.

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage a nine out of ten. There should be 99% uptime. There are no issues with dHCI when it comes to upgrades, but with Alletra, they need to have the ESXi upgraded to the latest version. They need to use the correct or compatible plug-ins for it. Every time you go up with the storage, you need to look at your environment. Customers are probably not aware of all this because they do not create volumes every year or every day. There are certain things they need to keep in mind to upgrade. I do not blame the device. They need to initiate a call with the support for compatibility to ensure that everything will work.

We run our VDI systems off of it as well as a lot of VMs, SQL databases, and things like that. We use it for a little bit of file storage as well. 

Moving on to the platform is fairly simple. Upgrades are easy. We just put it in a new shelf, and that didn't cause any downtime. We really appreciate that. We're running 1,000 VDIs on a single Alletra. I don't know if we could have done that on any of our last storage systems.

The deduplication feature is great. It's a pretty standard feature at this point. However, it's really important for the workloads we run to keep the storage cost down. The speed and reliability are excellent. 

It has all of the technologies in place to make sure our data is still there when things go bad. 

Predicting and preventing issues before they happen seems great on Alletra. All of our failures have been very predictive. We haven't had any downtime. We had some controllers throwing early warnings, and Alletra caught that before anything went bad. We know the stuff goes bad; however, the way that Alletra treats it, we've never had any downtime from hardware issues. It always disables itself and pulls a bad drive out of the pool before any data corruption occurs. 

Alletra has improved the storage performance in terms of IOPS. We don't have any issues. Our infrastructure is a little bit different on the back end, so some of our stuff has a little trouble getting to it. That said, we already know that that's a back-end issue for us and we are going to be resolving that by the end of the year. 

It's helped reduce time spent resolving storage-related tickets. We don't have a lot since it's so reliable, and setting it up is fairly easy and hassle-free. If you need something new, you get it, attach it to the storage, it hooks up and sets up the VMware using the connector software really easily. I don't have to think about it anymore after that. 

Moving from Nimble to Alletra was a little difficult. The process involved adding new cards - which was quite a bit more of a headache for us. Having to console in and turn off the controllers to add the new card for the storage shelf itself was a hassle compared to a Nimble, which was almost plug-and-play. They're very similar, the downtime was zero, and the instructions were great. It was just a lot more work than we were used to with Nimble.

I've been using Alletra for three years.

The support is great. It's easy to just call them and have somebody pick up the phone and easily talk to them about issues. Support is amazing - and that's one of the primary reasons that we use it. 

I previously used Nimble. 

The deployment and installation are generally fairly easy. It's technical so it takes a bit of time. The last time we put in a fresh Alletra, after we racked it, it only took a few hours to get it up and running. More often than that we've done shelf deployments. The new Alletras are a bit more difficult, however, it doesn't take long. 

The ROI is in the reliability and ease of use. The uptime is ROI. We're in the public sector, and uptime is of primary importance. We have a hard time getting a Windows update downtime. Having uptime from our storage, when we never have to worry about it at all is ideal.  

It's expensive. That said, we know what we're buying and we're okay with it. We're generally okay with what we're paying.

I'd rate Alletra nine out of ten. We really enjoy the product. We don't have a lot of issues. And the support keeps us there. We wouldn't consider anything else due to the phenomenal Alletra support that migrated along with Nimble. They are proactive and that's why we love it.  

We sell the system to our call center in Brazil.

The workload consolidation is very simple to manage. Previously, the customer had four Nimble storage solutions, and we were able to consolidate them into one Alletra. 

InfoSight reduces downtime.

Customers are happy with the speed and management of the storage. 

The DSCC is good.

It offers good density on the rack. It's a very dense storage. 

The solution offers a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data. The management is easier. The DSCC helps a lot. It simplifies the storage process. The customer has GreenLake and they can easily see the costs of Alletra storage by workload. 

Alletra is good at predicting and preventing problems. InfoSight, via the portal, helps with this. We don't need to access the equipment. InfoSight will automatically generate a ticket, and the engineer will call us if there are issues. The process is automatic, and it prevents downtime.

The data availability guarantee is helpful for us, as resellers. It helps us convince the customers the product is very good and well-built. 

The solution helps prevent time spent on storage provisioning. It's simple to deploy. Compared to 3PAR, we spend 80% less time on storage provisioning. In 3PAR, you need to provision the CPGs, select rate levels, and manage the free space, which is very complex. Alletra simplifies all of that with a single console.

It's improved our storage performance. We have a 3PAR hybrid. Alletra is new equipment with more speed and all-flash. We've improved our IOPS from 10,000 to 8,000.

The solution could improve the upgrades. In Brazil, it's difficult. The price is very high and it is not an easy process. 

I've used the solution for two to three years. 

The stability is excellent. It's 100% stable. 

For some projects, we need to put in two or three systems. They could improve the scalability in terms of space. 

In Brazil, the SLAs are not being met. Tickets are delayed a lot. It's not so good. We call support, mail them, et cetera, and they do not answer. Last week, a ticket that needed to be solved in six hours took one week.

Positive

Our clients previously used Nimble. We're also familiar with 3PAR.

We use fiber channels. The deployment process is fairly straightforward. 

HPE managed the deployment process. As resellers, we assisted our clients with setup.

I have not witnessed an ROI as our customers would have more visibility on that. However, I have heard the performance is one area customers are impressed with. The speed improves the customer experience and they can build out their strategy faster and change strategies as needed. 

The pricing and licensing are not my area of expertise. I'm an architect. However, the pricing is a bit more complex in Brazil and there are a lot of taxes. It's not cheap. 

We're a reseller of HPE, so we only deal with HPE solutions. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. If they had 50% more scalability in a single system, it would be ideal.