HPE StoreOnce Reviews

We use HPE StoreOnce for our backup processes. We're backing up Hyper-V and VMware servers through the Data Protector software integrated with StoreOnce. Following the initial backup, we create a backup copy for StoreOnce, and we also have a tape drive connected to a secondary backup level.

HPE StoreOnce offers storage capacity for backing up many servers, including virtual machines. Such backups require extensive storage capacity. It provides efficient data duplication and compression capabilities, which help optimize storage usage and reduce costs. One might opt for a larger, more expensive storage solution. For instance, an alternative might have been an 88-terabyte or 48-terabyte StoreOnce model without duplication and compression.

The important feature is compression and duplication. It has a good compression ratio and is very stable.

Some high-level cybersecurity features could be achieved with some entities, and their integration could be built into the store.

Backup is a crucial component of any IT setup. Regardless of the products implemented, data safety is compromised without proper backup. Therefore, ensuring the protection of backups is paramount, warranting a high-security zone. While most products claim to be 99.9% secure, no solution can guarantee absolute security. Thus, having a robust backup strategy is essential for achieving near-complete security.

I have been using StoreOnce as a consultant for over 15 years.

I have not faced any issues with the hardware, operating system, software, or virus. It is a very stable product.

The product is stable. I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Scalability is an issue. We cannot scale to a huge setup. We need to add the multiple StoreOnce to scale that.

Six to seven medium and enterprise 

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

They connected us within ten minutes. They fixed the issue and are up and running in no time.

Positive

The initial setup is easy and takes two hours to complete.

There is a straightforward step-by-step guide. Firstly, we must assign an IP address to the HPE Store once the device connects to the network. Then, we create a virtual library within the device. Next, we integrate it with the backup server and software, configuring it as a storage point for the initial level of backups.

The pricing is moderate when you compare it with other products. 

It comes with a warranty when you purchase the product for three years. After three years, they don't have to depend on the model they charge you.

StoreOnce is suitable for environments and types of solutions. It's adaptable.

Backup is a crucial component of any IT setup. Regardless of the products implemented, data safety is compromised without proper backup. Therefore, ensuring the protection of backups is paramount, warranting a high-security zone. While most products claim to be 99.9% secure, no solution can guarantee absolute security. Thus, having a robust backup strategy is essential for achieving near-complete security.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine and a half out of ten.

HPE should have more options so customers can choose from a wide range of products with small to big capacities. The smallest one is 80 terabytes.

HPE should also improve the performance of the product. The performance is very important. Because when your system has a disaster problem, it's time to restart everything. If you have good performance, your system can restart faster. HPE StoreOnce takes a long time to restore, which is an issue.

They should improve the backup and restore performance. Dell has DD Boost, which is a very good solution. ExaGrid has a landing zone and a cache in the memory so that they can back up from the landing zone very fast. HPE doesn't have any technology they can compare.

I've worked with this solution for almost ten years.

HPE's performance is lower than that of ExaGrid and Data Domain.

It's not scalable. It's the same as Data Domain. When upgrading, it has a limited number you can upgrade by. I recommend it for smaller companies.

Technical support is quite good. HP has been in Vietnam for a long time, so the local team here is strong in experience.

Positive

With the same capacity of Data Domain and ExaGrid, which is 80 terabytes, HPE is the cheapest one.

HP in Vietnam has a big market. People pay attention to backup data right now. Some go to the cloud, but when backing up to the cloud, the performance is slow. People should have a local backup instead of backing up to the cloud.

I don't recommend my customer use HPE StoreOnce. They have a cheaper price but are not advanced with their solutions or technology. I still prefer ExaGrid and Data Domain.

I rate HPE StoreOnce a five out of ten.

Our primary use case is Catalyst Copy.

The most valuable part is the Catalyst Copy.

HPE StoreOnce Backup to Disk (BTD) is not a good backup solution for NAS devices. It does not have a dual controller, so if one controller fails, the entire system will go down. This can make it difficult to recover data if there is a problem with the controller. 

Additionally, HPE StoreOnce BTD has problems when used as a backup target for NAS devices.

In future releases, I would like to see more resiliency. It is also dependent on vulnerable conditions. So, the question is whether the map profile can be improved as a net target. We need to investigate that. We also need to conduct tests to see if anything can be done. We can expect to have more information when we are there in thirty minutes.

I have been using this solution for five years now. We use the latest version.

It is a stable solution.

It is scalable for the model number we have acquired and it is still within our requirement. It is used at the enterprise level.

The customer service and support are good.

Positive

We used a different solution; we opted for HPE for minor differences, like HPE offers data de-duplication.

It is very easy to implement.

There is no dedicated person required for the maintenance. It is an application.

ROI is there but in compliance with other standards and in combination with the entire enterprise solution, it suffices our backup needs. 

The pricing is competitive. The licensing costs is capacity-based and come bundled with support. The bundle is an end-to-end thing.

I would recommend using the solution. Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for backup storage.

Nine years ago, we were relying on backup tapes only. Now, since we've moved to StoreOnce, as per the legal and compliance perspective we still have to use tapes, but we have reduced usage a lot. We don't have to transfer the tapes from one side to another side. That task has been reduced because we have StoreOnce in two locations, and we take backup on one appliance, and that appliance is replicated to the other side. The backup and restore speed is very fast, compared to tape. There is less administrative work. 

The speed and deduplication ratio are two of the most valuable features of the solution.

I'm using this product to save some files. It has a feature where I can make it as an SMB share. When I started using it for CIFS, the SMB share, had a limitation of 1,000,005 only. Considering 1,000,000 objects are in one share, it's too limiting.

The appliance doesn't have global deduplication, it has StoreOnce deduplication. It does not deduplicate across the appliance, it will deduplicate in one particular store. With global deduplication, I could store more data.

This appliance currently doesn't have SSD drives. I'm not sure if new models include them, but I believe if they can include NVMe or SSD drives as a cache device, they can increase the backup speed a lot and that can help with the global deduplication.

One of the reasons to not enable global deduplication was to not impact the backup and restore speed, but I believe if they include a cache device like NVMe or SSDs, then the drawback of enabling global deduplication can be removed. 

The solution is very stable. After nine years, I have yet to have a problem.

Scalability is good. When we bought the current model, 6500, we bought around 200 TB of capacity, and we are using more than three TB of data. In terms of scalability, we can go from 200 TB to 400 TB to 600 TB, or more. They also provide cloud banks, but I don't think we will be requiring that amount of storage in the future. Because of deduplication, we don't have to add so much physical capacity. Even if I add 32 TB or whatever the minimum capacity is, it can still hold lots of terabytes of data.

We have 1,300 users and three admin who are maintaining the solution. We use the solution every day to run backups.

Technical support is very good.

We didn't have another solution previously, in terms of backup storage, but in terms of software, I have used some other products like Windows deduplication. This solution, however, offers reliability and stability.

The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment took less than one hour. We have three admins, but I am the primary admin, so you only need one person for maintenance.

An HP consultant came to assist with deployment.  Deployment assistance comes with it when you buy the solution. Our experience with the deployment consultant was good.

The license is part of the hardware. You don't need to buy or renew it separately.

StoreOnce comes in a package: hardware and software. All the licenses come with it. Software licenses for backup solutions like Data Protector you do have to purchase separately, but in terms of the backup appliance, it comes with all the features and the license as part of it. You have to only purchase the application license but that is very cheap.

We did evaluate Data Domain from EMC, but I didn't like it because Data Domain has other limitations. In terms of density per rack, it was using more rack capacity. Also, they were selling three different products, so it was adding too much complexity. I decided to go with StoreOnce.

We are using the private cloud deployment model.

If you purchase the product, you will have peace of mind. You don't have to worry about the product at all. My only advice is, get it installed by an HP consultant, not by a third-party or partner, because the HP team will give you the correct advice before implementing. I strongly recommend going through the HP publishing best practices guide, for each and every hardware they have released as well. StoreOnce also has a best practices guide from HP. It will be a 10-20 page document. Go through it, and it will really help you to architect or design the solution prior to implementing it.

I would rate the solution 8.5 out of ten.

The solution is used for data recovery. We need it when a disaster happens. We need critical applications on it so that we get an immediate uptime.

The product’s data retention is very good. It gives us good storage space for many critical applications without workload issues.

The latency is a bit high. The latency must be improved to help retrieve data quickly. The product must provide features to prioritize the retrieval of critical applications before the normal applications.

I have been using the solution for three years.

The tool is stable.

We have 400 users in our organization. We have only one administrator.

The support team is good.

We used Quantum, but it was very expensive. So we switched to HPE StoreOnce.

The initial setup is easy. It takes one day.

It is an economic product. It is worth my money.

HPE StoreOnce is the best solution for data recovery. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We use HPE StoreOnce for data backup. We take our data backup on a disk-based backup, and we use HPE StoreOnce for that disk-based backup.

The solution's licensing policy is more practical and not confusing.

The solution's technical support should be faster.

I have been using HPE StoreOnce for four to five years.

HPE StoreOnce is a stable solution.

HPE StoreOnce is a scalable solution. HPE StoreOnce is a backup tool, and we have configured it on around 500 nodes for backup. We have plans to increase the solution’s usage over a period of time.

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

We implemented the solution through a partner within one day. Before we ordered, the box was almost preconfigured. The hard disk and the enclosure were already populated. We just connected all the power cables and checked the hardware and rack layout for any damages. Once we powered it on, we configured it as per our requirement and connected it with our software.

The return on investment with HPE StoreOnce is quite good. We have recovered the solution's cost within less than three to four years.

We have not taken a perpetual license for HPE StoreOnce, but you need to buy the license capacity as you increase the capacity. HPE StoreOnce is cheaper compared to other solutions in the market.

I would recommend HPE StoreOnce to other users.

Overall, I rate HPE StoreOnce an eight out of ten.

The deduplication feature is awesome. The storage space has been cut down by at least 50% and on some instance greater reduction has been achieved. Here is a current example showing the space savings: Actual User Data Store 44.9TB, Actual Size on Disk 4.0TB with an 11.3 dedupe ratio. This was only one of my libraries on the StoreOnce 4430 device.

Please refer to the answer above about valuable features. The space saving on storage of actual user data also has a cost savings attached to it. We do not have to extend the actual storage space as quickly now due to the space savings of the deduplication feature.

The auto load balancing between VTL Libraries has been not as efficient as it should have been. I have manually load balanced between my libraries to maintain a tight control.There have also been bug fixes in the past for their auto load balancing feature. I would like to see this greatly improved so that I feel that it is trustworthy enough to utilize this feature.

I've used it for one and half years in an enterprise environment with HP DataProtector v7.0

No issues during deployment of the 4430 device into the enterprise environment.

Not with this current model 4430, but with a previous model we did have stability issues and these have been resolve with the 4430 model.

No issues with scalability. We purchased an additional 20TB shelf with the 4430 device (which came with a 20TB shelf included in the package we purchased).

HP’s customer service is outstanding. Turnaround time on parts for us is four hours and we also have them in less time than that. The HP service representatives are knowledgeable, friendly and are very easy to speak to. They are people who don't read from a script, but actually have a working knowledge of the equipment.

It's outstanding.

No, and we chose StoreOnce as we are currently an HP enterprise environment.

In most ways it was straightforward, however, you need to be an experienced network administrator to install this device.

It was done as an in-house implementation. However, we currently work with an HP partner in all our enterprise purchases. They're called High Performance Technologies, Inc. in Palm City, Florida, and the IT team at this business are outstanding and they all keep up to date with their HP certifications. They work with HP to obtain the best pricing for the equipment we need to ascertain. With this business relationship, comes years of trust and we know that they understand our enterprise network topology and make recommendations based off that long term knowledge.

The cost savings of not having to continually purchase additional shelf space has been the driving force of staying with this outstanding product.

The original cost was approximately $250,000. Included in that was the device itself and 40TB of storage space.

We did evaluate other options but due to the fact that HP has set the standard, we stayed with them.

I've had little to no issues with either the StoreOnce 4430 device or the DataProtector software. I would highly recommend this type of backup system for enterprise environments.

Read the documentation provided by HP on their website and research the web to avoid any possible issues during implementation.

I use the solution in my company, and we design the solution per the customer's requirements.

The most valuable feature of the solution is its UI. The product's UI makes it easy for users to configure the tool.

The product's support is an area with certain shortcomings requiring improvements. Support needs to be faster.

I don't know whether a snapshot is an area that is covered in the tool or not, but if it is there or incorporated in the tool, then it is good.

I have been using HPE StoreOnce for more than ten years. My company may probably be using the latest version of the solution, but I am not into the implementation part.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

In terms of HPE StoreOnce's scalability benefits for our organization's growth, I would say that it is possible to scale up as and when there are requirements coming in from our customers.

I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

The product's installation phase is easy.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution's installation phase takes two to three hours.

The solution's installation phase can be managed by two engineers.

My company has to keep on asking HPE distributors to offer the product at a better price, which is why I cannot disclose it. I don't utilize any licenses, which can be a reason why I have to pay extra money in addition to the standard license fees.

Even though I chose HPE over the other products in the market, I see that some equations have changed, specifically since HPE and Nutanix have started to work together. I did not consider any other tools against HPE StoreOnce.

The tool fits into your data protection and disaster recovery strategies, specifically for SME customers, as it is the most apt solution for them.

Speaking about the features of HPE StoreOnce that are most effective for data replication, I would say that there are DBs in my company for it.

I cannot comment whether I have seen any reductions with the costs because of the tool since it is used by my end customers. I believe that if they are still using it, then there shouldn't be any problem with it.

I have not faced any challenges when integrating HPE StoreOnce into our company's IT environment.

I have not used any AI features in the tool.

I would recommend HPE StoreOnce to other users. For an SMB customer, the budget is a constraint, which is why they can think about using HPE StoreOnce.

I don't do any maintenance of the product with the help of any third party since I take care of it by myself. If only some requirements are there, we scale up the tool.

I rate the tool a six out of ten.