HPE StoreOnce Reviews

• Redundancy
• Ease of use
• Scalability
• Disaster recovery

The greatest benefit to us has been lowering costs.

I'd like to see the following features added in:

• More detailed reporting
• More granular reporting
• More features in the CLI

Excellent.

Excellent.

Excellent. There has been an integrated partnership with the ability to answer any and all questions.

We were using a different solution, but it was too costly so we needed to switch.

The initial setup was straightforward. HP took a hands-off approach, which was good, and they let us do a lot of it on our own. We therefore didn’t have to do cross-training and we were able to do a lot of trial and error, which was good for us as well.

We also looked at EMC.

Most important criteria to look for includes:

• Price
• Features
• Functionality
• Ease of use

Definitely look at this solution as a viable option as it is cost effective and reliable.

We are the system integrators based in Qatar and this is one of the products that we provide to our customers as a backup solution. 

The primary use case is for data backup, mostly for virtualization infrastructure.

The most valuable features are the deduplication and compression capabilities. Also, in terms of performance and recovery, it has good capabilities.

It's a simplified product, more or less with plug-and-play capabilities. It has three flavors of integration being storage, NAS storage, and a backup system. These components are vital and with this product, it's like having three in one box.

It can be paired with the Veeam backup software.

Pricing could be reduced

The GUI and its user-friendliness have some room for improvement.

From a technical point of view, it's a stable solution.

HPE StoreOnce has the highest scalability in the market. It is very good compared to products such as Dell Data Domain.

I am satisfied with the technical support.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

Price-wise, it comes with a high price tag when compared to other products.

HPE has CloudBank capabilities. For example, it has 1.7 petabytes of CloudBank storage. For anyone who is looking for a long-term archive, as well as a backup solution, this is the ideal product. It comes with a three-year warranty and it's stable when it comes to base start-up solutions.

This solution offers both on-premises and public cloud deployments. If the customer needs on-premises backup then it is capable of that, or if the customer requires long-term retention, for example, five years, or for ten years, then they can keep the data in an archive system such as cloud backup or cloud volumes.

Overall, it's a very good product.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

It's an on-premise deployment and can be scalable to public cloud.

Deduplication and replication are both extremely important for storing huge chunks of data.

Secondly, now it has extended support to VMware and MS SQL via EMC.

Well, it has improved the organization in the sense we can back up our data into StoreOnce directly from stores etc., so it's become cheaper for us.

I would like to see it support open stack and also other vendors’ hardware, if possible, via EMC.

I have an existing EMC backup solution and HPE StoreOnce solution.

Typically this happens in case of M&A between two companies when two different companies use two different storage vendors. Now I want to move my data from EMC to StoreOnce, but I don't have a direct way to move this data. I suggest that if it would offer OpenStack support then we will be able to freely move data across.

I have been using it for six months.

I have not really encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues. We haven’t faced any major issues.

HPE technical support is a bit slower compared to EMC, which might have a larger support team that can respond faster.

Its deduplication feature and 3PAR support were the primary reasons we selected it.

I didn’t install it, and I was not there while it was getting installed. However, as far as I’ve heard, they didn't face any major issues.

Just look into the cost factor if you have some other system already in place. Like, say you already have EMC products, then it's probably better to stick with them.

We've only just put it in, so I think for us it's a more efficient way of storage. Time efficient, man power, all of it. We have a very small team, so it just frees up the guys to do other things.

It's only been in for a couple of weeks, so can't really comment too much about what it's done yet.

I'd like it to be quicker.

So far, we've had no issues.

One of my engineers might have called, but I haven't.

We were using EMC, and my engineers put some pressure on me. They said we need to spend some money, so that's how I knew we needed to get something else.

It really came down to relationships. At the time it wasn't just going from EMC, it was also going from Cisco to HPE Networking. We went through a pretty good process, where we talked about our needs and requirements, and also comfort levels of technology change. Some of my engineers were a little reluctant to move away from Cisco. But HPE ecame and sat down and just said "We'll do whatever it takes. What do you need? What are your concerns?" Just worked with us in real detail: able to understand what our concerns were, where we were going, and making sure that the engineers were made comfortable. But also making sure, which was the last part which comes across the line, was that the technology was what we needed, was enough for growth. Whereas Cisco was just a "here's a quote, sent it to us" which I think for me swung me over to HP. The commitment to the customer.

Think about the next 10 years, where are you heading. Personally, I say HPE's a pretty strong organization. They send the right messages, saying the right things. They seem like a very digital company which is all about customer, and that stuff matters to me, whereas some of the competitors, they don't have that mindset. Cisco definitely doesn't have that mindset. I really think long-term about. Sure, Cisco had a lot more features, but we didn't really need them. So, that made the decision easier. For me, when I think about HPE, think about longevity. You want to invest in technology, you're almost investing in the company.

We don't have to go to a separate console to manage StoreOnce and another one for our backup application, one console. It's meeting our requirements now. For us, it's just a question of we've only been running it for about 3 to 6 months now. I'm looking for a full year. We are trying to test out some of the new features like the RMC product which helps integrate the StoreOnce with 3PAR and we're going to be bringing in our 3PAR storage very, very soon. We're looking forward to the ability of StoreOnce to integrate with other HP solutions that we purchased. We've looked at dedup technology for quite sometime, but we're primarily an HP shop. We wanted something that would integrate well into what we currently have.

One of the things we liked about StoreOnce is that it is a technology that scales very well. They have hardware appliances at the high end and they also have a virtual appliance. In our deployment, in our infrastructure, we needed both ends. It's the same interface, the same functionality. That's one of the things that we were really liked about it.

We've had some ongoing challenges in our backup infrastructure being able to complete the job successfully, have good knowledge that our data was secure. We knew we needed to improve upon that. StoreOnce and a dedup technology was where we wanted to go. As far as once we've implemented the StoreOnce, it's achieved what we thought it would do and then some. One of our, it wasn't my primary objective, our secondary objective was to reduce the tape out. By implementing StoreOnce, we've been able to dramatically reduce the number of tapes that we have to keep in our environment.

We've had a real challenge with our resorts in making sure the backups are performed and completed and we're able to do that and bring the dedup images back to our central location. We are a much higher rate of success in our backups. It's built on HP hardware, no problem there.

The virtual appliance, it's virtualized so no problems at all with stability.

Scalability, that's one of the other features that I really like about it, especially in the virtual plans. All you do is if you run out of space, you add another VMDK and it just scales up seamlessly. You don't even have to reboot.

We've had a couple of challenges where we've had to engage them and they're fantastic. I mean they listened, problems get escalated if they need to get escalated. They're extremely helpful and what really impressed me is it's like they're very knowledgeable of the BURA environment. They were well aware of the challenges that I was facing with my users. If we had an outage, they were well aware of that I had to find a different place to store the data, what the risks were. Yeah, they're fantastic. I love the technical services that we get from them. We had some bumps as far as implementation. Part of the challenge that we have is our primary data centers are hosting centers, so they're lights out.

We used HP's technical support for the startup services. They helped us with the implementation.

We don't have staff at our data center. That was a bit of a challenge for scheduling, but then that is agnostic of the product that you're trying to install. Through the startup services that we purchased from HP services help desk because we have to integrate this with our backup product which we were a semantic shop, so we had to integrate that, the StoreOnce technology with that. They were very helpful in getting that done. Yes, it's slips in very well. One of the things we really like about it is that you managed everything from the backup console. Our backup administrator, well he is aware, but he manages it just like it's another store. The deduplication, all that happens in the background.

It's just amazing. No cost. As long as you have the StoreOnce appliance with catalyst, there's no cost for that. It is a nice feature that's going to keep my DBAs happy.

That's not only HP, it's the support. We get pre sales support, we get post sale support. We get it in the implementation, so not just the product, but it's the people behind the product as well. If I had a peer asking me about the StoreOnce, I'm a technical consultant from background so I'd asked him what problem are they trying to solve and make sure they got the right one.

With StoreOnce, it's not a point solution. It has to fit well into your environment. You have to understand what problems are you trying to solve so that you implement it properly. We had to integrate like in our case, we had challenges with remote circuits that we had to make sure the low bandwidth replication. We had to integrate it with semantic. Unless you have the same problem as I am, you wouldn't necessarily implement the same solutions. Through that implementation, I learned a lot about the product and then coming to events like this, HP Discovery you learn more. You learn some trips that you didn't. For example during this trip, I learned about the catalyst plug in that I can use for my database products so that my DBAs can do their backups direct to StoreOnce. I didn't know that was available.

The most valuable features of StoreOnce are ease-of-use and ease-of-configuration when compared to the old IBM Tivoli family solution that we're using.

The benefits compared to the old solution are broad flexibility, ease-of-configuration, and ease-of-maintenance. We use it for part of our backup solution.

For us, nothing is missing at the moment and over time this will probably become clearer. We are going towards the cloud environment at some point or a hybrid cloud, so it could be something on that front, but we are not working with the cloud yet. For our purposes, it's functioning perfectly fine. We get the data we want from it.

However, you need lot of knowledge before you start out. Maybe that could be improved.

We have not had any stability problems.

Scalability is something that we haven't really needed to utilise but that was one key factor when we chose it over the other solutions. We haven't had to do any scaling yet. We have in the range of 10 to 20 TBs.

We have not yet used technical support for StoreOnce, but we have been using it for less than a year.

We were basically upgrading the whole data center and we wanted to stick with one vendor as a provider of all the hardware. It was kind of logical to also look for a solution from HPE.

I was involved in the initial setup. We had a technician from the partner who was providing the solution helping to set it up. It was very straightforward. I'm comparing to the old solution, which was kind of a pain in the neck. To set up the StoreOnce, all that was needed from us was the IP address and some background information on how we would use it. That was about it. From all the things that we set up in our data center at that time, this was probably the simplest.

Everybody wants to see lower cost, but pricing was competitive.

We also looked at Dell. We went with HPE because we want everything to be from one vendor.

My advice is to use trusted advisors. You can only know so much. It's good to discuss things with an advisor.

When looking for a vendor, the cost is, of course, important, but the partnering with HPE or another vendor and the range of products they offer is the most critical factor.

Using virtual tapes, we can accelerate the backup/recovery of our solutions.

The CIFS share service performance is really poor; it is a nightmare. Instead of CIFS we prefer to use NFS.

When presenting CIFS shares to Linux hosts and I tried copying a huge quantity of files, performance was so slow, terribly slow... This was not an issue when I used NFS. Fortunately, I'm not the only one with this problem: http://www.v-strange.de/index.php/hardware/14-cifs-performance-problem-on-hp-storeonce-systems. Fortunately, too, it seems to be a firmware matter. I'll be looking to solve that problem.

I have been using it for 14 months.

I have not encountered any deployment or scalability issues. The product is really stable.

Technical support is great! No problem; fast solutions.

Initial setup was so easy, really easy.

We implemented it through a vendor; it was a smooth deployment.

To be honest, the product is expensive to acquire and costs have been growing since then.

It is at the top of its class, in my experience.

It's a great product but it is really expensive. Expanding its capacities is sometimes more expensive than buying new storage.

The Catalyst Store with Data Protector:

• It is possible to use Ethernet and Fabric at the same time with the same device.
• The configuration of Data Protector is easy.
• The media administration in Data Protector was simplified.
• The recovery of the cell manager in a disaster is more easy.
• It is possible to see the information of backup task in the StoreOnce device; before that, this information was only in the Data Protector database.

We implemented Catalyst with Data Protector in March 2016; after the change, the recovery process time of one or two days was reduced to 30 minutes in most of cases.

I think the integration with Data Protector and virtual environments is an area for improvement.

I have been using it for five months.

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I have not yet encountered any scalability issues.

I think that technical support is a weak point. I feel that technical support does not know the product. The call center is prepared to support a hardware error, but when we have any doubts regarding a new configuration, they have the same doubts. In this case, we need to contact some friends at HPE.

We previously used the same StoreOnce, but without Catalyst. Catalyst is the sum of NFS plus SAN disk in the same backup repository.

Configuration is very simple; the problem was changing the minds of the operators.

For a small configuration, it is expensive, but if you need to backup many servers with a lot of data, I think it is a good price.

I evaluated EMC before choosing this product.