HPE StoreOnce Reviews

The most valuable features for us are the very high-performance deduplication and high deduplication rates. These features make it quite cost-effective.

We previously used a tape-based backup system with a tape library and off-site storage of tapes, which was very expensive to run. It also wasn't terribly reliable and we had constant issues with capacity. 

We migrated to StoreOnce and we're using the copy feature of StoreOnce to copy to another unit in a different location. We have the primary unit that we do backups to, and then we have another unit in our disaster-recovery site, and all the backups are copied over the WAN to the disaster-recovery site. It uses deduplication to do that too, so the bandwidth requirements are quite low. 

So we have a completely tapeless backup flow that is very low impact on our network and has very high reliability.

StoreOnce actually does pretty much everything we need. There are  quite a lot of features that we don't use at the moment such as virtual tape library and NAS. 

But the initial network setup is not intuitive, and this could be improved.

I've used it for 18 months.

We've had no issues with deploying it.

StoreOnce has been 100% stable in the eighteen months that we've been using it. We actually purchased an additional unit for a third location after the initial purchase of two units on the basis of the performance and reliability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

StoreOnce is not really complicated to set up. It's probably something that can be done by a typically-skilled systems administrator in a day or a half-day.

I think as long as you have a clear understanding of what it does and you're quite sure that that's what you need, then there isn't a better product. Certainly, in terms of the ease-of-use and reliability, we haven't had any issues with StoreOnce. It's definitely one of the products that I would recommend to anyone.

StoreOnce gives us full-system backups, meaning we need less storage capacity. This is very important to us because less storage capacity means we buy less hardware and have less overall costs.

Not only do we need less storage capacity, but it also performs backups a lot quicker. We save money this way as well because it saves us time which can be better spent elsewhere.

Although we're very happy with it right now, the encryption could be better. Security of our backups, of course, is very important.

We have no issues with deployment.

It's very stable. We've only had one small problem since the implementation.

We're not using anywhere close to what we have. We've designed it to allow for our five-year growth. We're not there yet.

We try to avoid technical support because it's "entertaining", though I'd use different words to describe it.

The initial setup was straightforward.

HP implemented the solution, but it's fine if you go at it on your own. The thing is, if you run into problems, then you have to deal with HP support, which is something I wouldn't advise anyone to do.

We are a BAU house, so our focus is on keeping the business running. We don't have the skill set of an American architect who scoped out the project. We've partnered with an HP partner who does have the skill set once we purchased StoreOnce.

Make sure you run a proper POC. It's a pretty straightforward solution so long as it's configured right from the start.

It's a solution that "datafies" backups so that only data is stored. Because we're sensitive to the amount of storage our backups take, "datafication" is the most valuable feature for us.

It saves storage space and the cost of investments in additional storage capacity. Data in other solutions is stored with other backup information. But with StoreOnce, only the data is stored, "datafying" the backup. This allows us to have a lot of backups within a small space, ultimately saving us money.

It needs to handle different kinds of media better. The system will fault sometimes when combining media with forms. It would be best if it could handle both at the same time.

StoreOnce deploys without any issues.

We had a stability issue once because of development, but it's since been resolved.

We haven't had scalability issues. Again, we're able to store more data in a smaller space.

Technical support is responsive, but since we're installers, I expect it to be quicker.

The initial setup is difficult for the normal user.

Think about your timelines, how you plan to use the load and read data, and how you will set up your system.

We just put two StoreOnce appliances in our data center. They provide me with everything in one box and I don't need to worry about other equipment.

We can focus on things more important than performing backups. It has everything we need and I think we've made a good decision.

We want to be able to use Resource Monitoring and Control (RMC), but that won't come until the next version of the StoreOnce software. Now we're using Data Protector.

It's been up and running now for four months and we haven't had any issues.

I just say I need X terabytes and I'm done. At the moment, we have around 150TB and we expect to grow because we're going more and more to video. We have four newspapers and an online presence with videos embedded in our stories.

We were using a very old backup platform with tapes and an older version of Data Protector. We upgraded Data Protector and bought StoreOnce.

I think you just have to experience it. You'll see that companies that use it have a good experience with it.

Its catalyst store and deduplication are valuable as it saves disc space. I'm not sure what the ratio is, to be fair, but it's significant. It's something silly like 240 terabytes if they were all expanded and it's occupying something like 20 terabytes, or something like that.

We haven't had the need to use reporting, but we've still got capacity and don't need to dive in. At some point we'll start reaching capacity, and we'll need to start drilling down a bit more into what it's doing.

We brought it in to transfer all of the services that were old and creaky onto a single platform. So we back up all of our VMs and all of our SQL boxes to it.

If it could do scheduling, then perhaps I wouldn't need to have Data Protector as a backup product. Data Protector is a software layer that schedules every night into the VMware layer and says, "Back these VMs up to the StoreOnce device." And it goes through the Catalyst stores and does all the kind of stuff that StoreOnce does. If StoreOnce could initiate the backup itself by a scheduling mechanism, then potentially we wouldn't need to have Data Protector do it, which would take something out of the chain for me. There's no problem with Data Protector, it's just something else. If I can keep it down to hardware and not have to go through a software layer, I think I'd get better performance.

We brought it in a part of a whole HP infrastructure about 18 months ago.

We've had no issues deploying it.

We've never had an issue with stability.

We've got four trays of discs, and I think we can add another X number of trays, so it's not going to be endlessly scalable, but it's going to be scalable up to X.

We had blades, 3PAR, and some fabric switches. We looked at a way to consolidate all of our backups. So, we had technology like Tivoli and CSN, and we had other little bits of backup, and we thought we'd go for a single product. As a part of the transformation, we brought in Data Protector, and that basically backs itself off to the StoreOnce.

We consider HP, and the pricing we get is good and reflects that. If it was an open marketplace, we'd look at anything and everything because we'd evaluate the marketplace for cheap D-to-D devices.

We use it to present virtual tape live-link to our NetApp so that we can backup our NetApp for NDMP to our StoreOnce. So virtual tapes are the concepts of a physical set of tapes. Imagine you've virtualized it, and you have to give it a size on disc, which because it's a virtual tape, it doesn't have to have the same constraints as a physical tape of four terabytes. A virtual tape can be X terabytes. We originally put them in and sized them too small. And when I had to go back, and we had something like 400 tapes. I had to edit each tape and increase its capacity so that we got better value out if it. I wish I could have just Shift-Select-Edit and changed it, which I couldn't do. So some level of automating that task cause you can imagine, going through 400 tapes is a lot of work. It can happen, and we didn't know at the time, and lesson learned. If we put another StoreOnce in with more BTLs, we'd know perfectly to set that size to be higher from the start. So, the advice would be if you're using BTLs, set them to your preferred maximum because you might not be able to batch.

The use of the OST product for NetBackup AIR has been the most valuable feature as this allows seamless Disaster Recovery options.

The B6200 allows us to complete daily backup and restore tasks quicker than from physical tape. Also, we can use the replication of deduplicated backups to our offsite facility rather than sending lots of tapes

Further integration with NetBackup to allow the use of catalyst storage as well as AIR would be an improvement.

I have been using this product for approximately five years.

When we first obtained the B6200 we did fill the disks due to our lack of understanding of how the the storage sets worked, which caused us an issue as the system at the time shutdown the F/C connections to stop any further data being sent to it. HP had to become involved in restoring the system, but this problem has now been addressed with new firmware.

With the older firmware we did have problems with the B6200 crashing with kernel problems, though this has now been addressed with the firmware updates.

We have not had any problems with the scalability of the B6200.

I have used HP services on a few occasions when setting up new functions and for problem resolutions and have found the service to be very good.

The technical support has been very good and the specialists know the product and can resolve the issues that were presented to them.

We switched from the HP VLS12000 system to the B6200 as the we wanted to use a full disk based backup solution rather than a Virtual Library. Also, the B6200 provides the support for NetBackup AIR.

We had a three-day onsite training course, so we found it fairly straightforward, I have since changed the configuration to accommodate NetBackup AIR and followed the HP documentation, which was easy to navigate and implement.

The set-up was completed by HP services.

The HP StoreOnce range is great if you are running NetBackup as it integrates well with the backup product, the deduplication rates are very favorable, and it also allows the use of the DR option using AIR.

Deduplication and many integration options ie. NAS, VTL, Catalyst.

It's reduced costs for storage based on the previous deduplication hardware we were using.

We've been using it for two years alongside HP Data Protector.

Scalability can become an issue once you grow past the capacity of a single cluster pair. This will mean additional controllers and licensing and can be fairly costly.

Very good support for the hardware.

We moved from the previous solution due to the support cost of the old product.

Initial setup of the hardware was fairly straightforward.

Implemented through a third party vendor. There were some complications with delivery of the units and site surveys not being completed. After those issues things were fine.

We evaluated this against other products and based (mainly) on cost we selected the HP solution.

While we have been very happy with StoreOnce, HP Data Protector leaves a lot to be desired.

Federated Catalyst Replication allows us to centrally control and store all backup data with minimal effort and administration, and also removes relying on onsite staff at remote locations to change tapes.

Not every office has skilled IT staff, so changing backup tapes was always a challenge. A person was typically “burdened” with the task of changing tapes daily or weekly and would often be neglected for other priorities or be completely forgotten if the staff member was away or on leave. Now, there is no requirement for any staff member at remote sites to be involved in any task related to data backup and recovery.

We averaged at least three missed backups a month due to issues with the right backup tapes not being in the drive at the time of a backup. This has been completely eliminated since moving to StoreOnce and using Catalyst Stores and Catalyst Replications since all data moves are automated and bandwidth friendly, so they complete well within our nightly backup windows, and tapes are only used at the Datacentre which is controlled by trained IT professionals. We now have no one to blame but ourselves

1. Other products are able to read and write directly to/from StoreOnce Catalyst Stores (Symantec NetBackup and Backup Exec, Microsoft SQL Server, SAP, Oracle and soon Veeam Backup & Replication). However, they cannot integrate with StoreOnce Catalyst Replication. The replication must be triggered by software such as HP Data Protector, which must first know about the data that exists on the Catalyst Store. Unfortunately, data written to a Catalyst Store by one of the other products is not visible to Data Protector, so automating actions to occur based on new data being written to a Catalyst Store is not available. This really limits the ability to integrate all backups in to the Catalyst Store using their own native tools (MSSQL Maintenance Plans for example) and leverage the Federated Catalyst Replication capabilities. All backups must be written by Data Protector use Federated Catalyst.
2. The performance of NAS/CIFS Shares on a StoreOnce is acceptable for a standard write operation, but performance during restores (such as Virtual Machine Restores from Veeam Backup and Replication) is unacceptable. This is being improved as more products natively support StoreOnce Catalyst but is not widely adopted as yet.

We have been using StoreOnce for approximately two years, and couldn't be happier. It's used across two main datacentres and over 15 remote sites that use a combination of the 4430, 4220, and 2620 systems. All StoreOnce systems run the same OS Version, currently 3.12.1. We do not use the VSA, as we strive to maintain physical hardware separation between our production data and disk backups. We backup data at all remote sites to a local StoreOnce device, then replicate it to Datacentre A, then again to Datacentre B, and then finally copy to tape for secure storage.

Also in-use, is HP Data Protector 9.03 which controls backup of data into StoreOnce Catalyst Stores and automated object copy operations which utilise the HP StoreOnce Federated Catalyst to replicate backed up objects between StoreOnce Backup Systems. All data backups at remote sites follows the same routine:

• Single Data Protector Backup Specification for all clients in the site.
• Data Protector Disk Agents back up data to a single HP StoreOnce Gateway (we use one of the same disk agents being backed up to also serve as the gateway).
• Data is written to a StoreOnce Catalyst Store at the local site.
• Data Protector Post-Backup Object Copy Job with the “Use Replication” checkbox enabled is triggered automatically upon completion of the backup to replicate data to Datacentre A.
• The StoreOnce Gateways at both sites trigger a Catalyst Replication where the StoreOnce's replicate the Data Protector Backup Objects from one StoreOnce to the other utilising source-side deduplication has dramatically reduce WAN usage (only blocks that do not exist are transferred).
• Once completed, another Post-Backup Object Copy Job copies the data from the StoreOnce at Datacentre A to a similar StoreOnce at Datacentre B.
• A final Post-Backup Object Copy Job then copies the data from Datacentre B on to LTO6 Tape.

Using this process results in many restore options, and the entire process is automated. We can restore from:

1. StoreOnce at the remote site
2. StoreOnce at Datacentre A
3. StoreOnce at Datacentre B
4. LTO6 Tape at Datacentre B

No real issues other than the change in mindset for our backup administrators and the increase in the number of jobs that are now configured. For a typical remote site the following seven jobs exist:

1. Daily Differential Backup (Monday to Thursday) to local StoreOnce
2. Daily Post-Backup Object Copy to Datacentre A
3. Daily Post-Backup Object Copy from Datacentre A to Datacentre B
4. Weekly Full Backup (Friday) to local StoreOnce
5. Weekly Post-Backup Object Copy to Datacentre A
6. Weekly Post-Backup Object Copy from Datacentre A to Datacentre B
7. Weekly Post-Backup Object Copy from Datacentre B to LTO Tape

There is also now the requirement to upgrade HP Data Protector to provide certified support for newer StoreOnce OS releases. HP Data Protector upgrades typically bring with them enough problems on their own.

We did experience an issue for many months where Post-Backup Object Copy jobs would remain stuck “In Progress” and never report any data movements even though the two StoreOnce devices successfully replicated data. The jobs had to be aborted and manually re-run. We experienced approximately five of these a week out of over 200 jobs that would run. This was eventually fixed in Data Protector 9.03, and a post-hotfix.

The HP StoreOnce support team are very responsive and quick to react to problems and offer ongoing support and guidance. However, StoreOnce really shines when integrated with a backup product that utilises the StoreOnce capabilities to better protect your data. This is where the HP Technical Support breaks down. It is often difficult to have a team take ownership of a problem or admit there is a fault, the blame is often directed to someone else. Typically, we have found this to be more of an issue with the Data Protector Support than with StoreOnce, but being the same company it is quite jarring at times how little cross-communication and teamwork there is despite Data Protector and StoreOnce being so heavily dependent on each other.

We previously used Symantec Backup Exec at remote sites to back up data locally to tape, and HP Data Protector at the Datacentres. Managing two separate products was difficult, particularly with staff trying to remain current on both products that have very different lifecycles. Since we already used Data Protector at the datacentres and HP StoreOnce is the most tightly integrated with Data Protector the choice to use StoreOnce was very easy. We did not evaluate any other disk backup products.

The initial setup was complex, at least compared our previous backup solution of each site being their own installation of Symantec Backup Exec, and only a couple of small jobs to maintain. We have a much larger number of backup jobs to maintain now, and must be very careful when running jobs during business hours as most jobs now have other jobs that chain off them, so you run one job and it could trigger many others.

However, all configuration is done from a central location, all replications are triggered automatically, and we have full tracking of where every piece of backed up data is and where all of its copies also reside. A sore head upfront to have automated backups of every location and centrally replicated and multiple restore locations is well worth it.

We leverage the HP Level Two StoreOnce Startup Service which gave us access to the HP StoreOnce engineers for a few days. We were able to workshop our requirements and vision and come up with a solution that would technically achieve what we wanted. Unfortunately, HP Federated Catalyst depends heavily on HP Data Protector and there doesn’t seem to be much cross-skill of engineers between Data Protector and StoreOnce.

Thankfully we have over eight years of in-house technical experience with Data Protector so we were able to leverage what we learnt during the StoreOnce Startup Service to expand upon the solution and deliver above and beyond what we thought was possible. To make use of Federated Catalyst I strongly recommend a deep understanding of HP Data Protector (it’s not as scary as it first appears to be).

It is not abundantly clear, but the HP Catalyst License also includes the Catalyst Replication capability, so no other license is required if Catalyst Stores are the only backup target being used. StoreOnce devices cannot replicate Catalyst Stores automatically for you, the replication must be triggered by other software such as HP Data Protector.

Depending on the backup product being used with HP StoreOnce, there may be disk backup capacity licenses also required. HP Data Protector requires Advanced Disk Backup Licenses for the usable capacity of the StoreOnce Systems (this is the native usable capacity, regardless of how much data you can actually store thanks to deduplication benefits).

You can use a StoreOnce as a NAS/CIFS Target and also as a Virtual Tape Library. These backup targets can be replicated to other StoreOnce Backup Systems, however these require additional licenses.

We do not have much experience with other disk backup solutions. The Federated Catalyst Replication and the deduplication ratios obtained are amazing. As an example, we only keep two weeks of daily backups and six weeks of weekly backups on disk, and have over 470 backups from around the country stored at Datacentre A which equates to over 140TB of data that consumes less than 13TB on disk. The dedupe ratio is 10.7:1. This ratio grows even larger as retention periods are increased. We are still fine-tuning our retention periods and will likely be doubling them within the next six months.

The StoreOnce VSA is a great place to start as it is 100% functionally the same as a StoreOnce physical device, and you can use a free trial. Definitely the best place to start. The same goes for HP Data Protector.