HPE StoreVirtual Reviews

Running a SAN without having to invest in additional expensive hardware so this means we have a cost saving. It also means that less support is needed as there is less hardware to maintain. Also, it has Adaptive Optimization which means it is using fast storage (SSD) only for active data.

In the past we didn’t have a shared storage solution in small offices; with StoreVirtual, we can benefit from the advantages of a SAN (vMotion, HA, DRS etc.) without investing big money.

Features like data deduplication would be great because in the end, this solution requires a lot of raw disk space because of the use of RAID5 on the hardware and RAID1 on the network.

We've been using it for six months. It's installed on a VMware vSphere instance (v12.6.00.01155.0) with two storages nodes that each have a 10TB license and a failover manager for quorum.

We had some stability issues in the beginning. They were easily resolved by dedicating a NIC for symmetric replication.

We haven't yet had to contact tech support.

It's very straightforward and the basic setup only took a couple of hours. The GUI is very user friendly and the documentation and white papers provided us all the required info.

We did it using an an in-house team. If you have already some storage knowledge, this install is very easy.

We also considered VMware VSAN because of its integration with the hypervisor/console. We decided to go for the HP solution because of the stability of the product as the OS, LeftHand, is already fairly old and well established, so HP have more experience there.

Before implementing it and using it you should read the best practice documents as well as white papers upfront.

That my team can manage it. The server guys can actually manage the storage on their own. It was easy for them to learn to use the console and provision the storage quickly.

It was a long, painful process to get storage from the storage team and having to go through a lot of paperwork and processes, where now we can do it on our own quickly and as needed.

It's easy to set up, easy for my team to manage, the tools are pretty easy to learn, and it's important for us to be able to provision storage quickly in my environment, so as soon as we get a new node in, we can get it up and running very quickly, provision it, immediately use the storage.

The only issue that we have, occasionally, is bonding the NICs sometimes is problematic. It could be our environment. We have the Cisco Nexus infrastructure, and sometimes the nodes just don't want to bind. We have all kinds of problems with it, and we have to call a ticket in, and the product guys to help us figure out what's going on. It happens occasionally, it's not like, every time, it's just every once in a while.

The only thing that comes to mind was we had some issues with once we used up storage and then moved it out and had empty, white space areas, but getting that storage back is a long, painful process. You actually have to run a manual command line on each LUN individually to reclaim the storage.

Making it easier, automated, or being able to do it right from the console would be a great benefit because right now, again, we have to go to a command line and issue that for LUN, there's hundreds of LUNs, so it takes a very long time to go through that process.

Latency is one of the things that our vROPs all the time, complains about the latency for that environment. We don't have good visibility to find out what's really causing it, what's underneath the problem. That's kind of been a sticking point that we're going to look into, but definitely vROPs are always complaining about latency from the StoreVirtual LUNs.

Scalability is one of the reasons why we got it. Now, there is a limitation on how many nodes you can have on each measurement cluster, so we have to kind of figure that out - what the best number is to have on each one.

We've had challenges, especially with opening tickets. Waiting for someone to get back to us can be a huge amount of time. We do have proactive services, so sometimes I have to pull those guys in to help escalate a ticket just to get some attention to it.

I would say it is medium complex. I know I had one guy that understood it, he left the company, and didn't leave good documentation. We got a new node in and it took my guys a little bit to figure out how to get it set up. It's not like it's intuitive, but it's a process. It's not super complex, but once you do it and document it properly, then it's fairly straightforward.

We did go through an evaluation process. It was quite a few years ago. There was definitely competitors to StoreVirtual, actually, it was LeftHand at the time, when we made the decision to go with the product. We've stuck with it since and nothing has come up that has challenged that to make us rethink yet. There was definitely Dell, and as it was a number of years ago, I can't think of any other.

It wasn't EMC, but I think it was a NetApp product, because they do iSCSI as well, but again, then that would fall back onto the storage team and we want it to kind of stay away from that.

I would say, number one spend time to understand the product, to get the proper training or the people involved when you bring it in. Make sure it's the right product for what you're trying to solve. It's not a take care of any type of storage problem, there's no specific use cases that you want that it's good for.

Like I said, for the virtual environment, it does great for VMware, Hyper-V, whatever you want to use that type of storage for. Then it's just quick, easy storage if you need it for a file server, it would be good for that. You wouldn't want to use it for a cluster or a high I/O thing, but for the virtual environment and storage that's not dependent on high I/O, it would be a good fit.

Easy and cheap High Availability is most valuable for us. Also, the VSA (virtual appliance) version enables us to reuse already installed hardware. You do not need to worry about RAID and components anymore, because even a whole chassis loss does not stop this product.

We are able to build server clusters without external storage and still provide high availability. We are able to run the VSA version inside the actual servers, thus converging server and storage in same units.

The new Quorum Witness function is promising for easier deployment but needs better reliability.

We have been using StoreVirtual solutions since 2010 when it was known as LeftHand.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

We have had no issues scaling it.

Customer service is outstanding.

Technical support is excellent.

We have used many monolithic and traditional storage systems and all proved to not be highly available with single units. However, StoreVirtual can be split into two, providing you the benefit of redundant active data centers without doubling the cost.

Initial setup is easy, but the differences from traditional storage requires some learning curve. You need to know about managers concept of StoreVirtual. Fortunately newer versions of centralized management console (CMC) provides warnings when you have configurations that would result in reduced availability.

HPE Installation Services are recommended. Since we are an integrator, we provide this.

ROI usually takes about a year.

If you think about high availability the product is very cheap because it is an all inclusive offering. You need to buy licenses and two of traditional products compared to StoreVirtual.

The VSA version is free for every brand server up to 1TB/node up to three nodes. There is also a 60 day trial for more than 1TB storage. You just need the license key to continue managing the product without reinstalling if you purchase it.

It is the only product that provides High Availability without depending on OS multipath I/O. It looks like a single unit from the outside, thus there is no need for failover/failback because all nodes are active. It is like a metro train compared to a classic diesel train, meaning it has an engine in every car. Adding capacity means adding performance because you are adding controllers, too. We can’t say it is the fastest product on the planet, but it is definitely not slow. High Availability means synchronized replication over the network, adding a little latency but providing High Availability.

Since it is IP-based, it is important to make sure a network problem does not result in the collapse of storage network. It is best to have redundant switches that do not share the same network as applications. VLANS are definitely recommended.

Pay attention to the managers running and make sure your failover manager is not bound to any nodes. A failover manager needs to be alive for smaller clusters to survive complete hardware/network failures. Make sure there is no single point of failure that would result in multiple nodes going down.

StoreVirtual has been real good for us. We started with the original P4300 LeftHand SANs before they became StoreVirtual. What I love about those is the two nodes and the mirroring back and forth, and you can't lose anything. It's very solid, and we haven't really had any trouble with those either. We have a newer StoreVirtual that we've connected to one of the C3000 Blade Enclosures and it runs well. We lost a system board once and we lost a couple of servers, but we were able to bring everything back. Equipment-wise, it allows us to do all our work. We're real happy with that.

The things we like best about it is just that it's safe, it's reliable, it's easy to transfer data back and forth, it's easy to replicate elsewhere. We've been very happy with them.

Outside of the one incident on the StoreVirtual where we lost the system board which was a little tough. If the guy who came out to replace it knew what he was doing and put the right firmware on, then we wouldn't have lost any virtual servers. But beyond that, the other ones have been very good and we've been really happy there.

It's been hit and miss. I guess there's some guys in Texas or Houston that we've been able to get a hold of who know their stuff and it's like a different group, the LeftHand people. They know their things inside and out, and usually are able to steer us right to what we need, so we've been real happy there.

We'd seen a couple of lunch and learns and meetings and talked to some of the LeftHand people, and decided it made sense cost-wise and function-wise. We were using some Dell EqualLogics, actually we were using EqualLogic before Dell bought them. So we were still using those in conjunction with the LeftHands that then became StoreVirtuals. Then when we put in one of the C3000 BladeEnclosures, we bought an actual StoreVirtual and that gave us the space to run the servers that we need.

The setup has been really easy. I did it three or four times after the system board failed. It was easy to run through the system, but the tech support guys kind of walked me through what we needed to do, and actually I set it up in the first place, so that's been real good too.

I had a guy from EMC call me once and his whole sales pitch was, "Well, we've got the biggest marketshare." And I told him, "That's a load of crap." Our deal is, we can't afford that stuff, and we don't want it. Even if Dell's got them now, we still don't want it. One of the things that we really love about HPE in all phases is the ability to continue maintenance, to continue coverage. Where we got the word from Dell that five years after the day you bought your EquaLogic you're out of luck. We won't sell you anything, we won't sell you parts, we won't sell you ... and we're like, "Okay, we won't buy your stuff." And we haven't. We got real close on 3PARs, we may still do that again, but we went a different direction. But, you know, "Treat us fair and we'll buy." That's what we love about HP, we really have no complaints.

It was a recommendation from the vendor that we said, "This is solid." When we first bought them, we'd actually gone two or three HP events and listened to the whole talk of, "Here's how, what it's put together, here's how it works." So, that's kind of what lead to it, was that we pretty much just said, "Okay, we'll trust you. Let's go with it." And we've been happy.

I don't think we'd have any good reasons to go elsewhere. In fact we have done that. We were talking to a guy from city of Carson City, and he was having some server issues and so we hooked him up with our vendor, and they took him out of the Dells he had, and gave him some HPs and he's been very happy ever since.

• Hardware stability
• Support
• Four-hour response support
• Performance

Using this platform, we were able to provide virtual desktops (VDI) to our end users across WAN, to help alleviate some of the problems that we’ve had with bandwidth.

We are experiencing some latency that we’re resolving with HP.

The product has been in place for four months.

No issues with deployment.

No, the hardware has been good, and the system runs at a pretty low-temperature. We have ordered additional RAM as we need more.

Not yet. We haven’t made that jump yet, but in a few months we may add additional nodes. It seems simple enough to add additional nodes.

10/10.

10/10. They have experienced technical staff and work through the problems. They're very helpful.

This was our first HyperConverged solution.

It was a very smooth setup. We were given a small check-list, we prepared, and then HP came in, set it up, and trained us.

HP came on-site to help set up and train. They were hands on, and the training was good, as the interface is easy enough to be very understandable. The training we had is enough for us to scale out and add additional nodes in the future on our own.

It takes about two years.

The initial install cost is expensive, but eventually the cost per user is quite reasonable. The more you scale out, the faster it drops. The original cost per user was $971 for 500 users. The cost goes down to $594, and after 3,000 users, it goes down to $401.

Three of the four solutions we researched were HyperConverged solutions, and there wasn’t the same support and cost as we had from HP. HP was the best for cost savings per performance, year over year. We looked at three other solutions though for our RFP, and we selected HP. We evaluated the cost per user once you scale out.

On the software side of things, we’ve had issues with printers. We have a complicated situation on the user side of things too. We were able to get through the issues and limitations by using PowerShell scripting. Having IT resources in-house is a must for more complicated cases.

While it's a simple system to work with, at the same time it gives a high level of data availability and resilience. We can utilize our existing hardware and save energy in cooling costs.

HP StoreVirtual added the benefits of a shared storage to a highly-virtualized environment:

• Live migration
• High availability
• Data protection (snapshots)
• Better performance

I would like to have the option to configure and get detailed alerts from the Centralized Management Console.

We have used this product since 2010.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

We have had no stability issues.

When it was deployed, we were just building our VM environment, and it's scaled out as our needs grew. We've had no issues with being unable to scale.

Customer service is brilliant.

Technical support is brilliant. HP technical support is great for sorting out the little issues as they arise.

We did not use a different solution. We chose StoreVirtual as it ticked many boxes in regards to our needs.

The initial setup is straightforward. As long as you have some experience with storage systems, you should be fine.

The implementation was all completed in-house with some input from an HP partner.

I would estimate our ROI to be somewhere around 600%.

It’s a good, solid product. Make sure you get the HP care pack as you need it to access updates. If you can’t fit in your budget a hardware SAN, this is a good alternative.

It allows the direct-attached storage of our existing servers to be used for clustered Virtual SAN.

We implemented it into a development environment, but we found that it was not reliable enough to put it into production.

Management of the system is tedious. Stability needs improvement. The system would work fine for weeks and then one of the VSA virtual machines would hang, taking down the clustered volume. This was very confusing, because I had four nodes, which should have allowed fault-tolerance.

I've been using it for six months.

I had no issues deploying it.

There were stability issues. See the Areas for Improvement section.

We didn't scale it beyond four nodes as it never went into production.

Support was not helpful, instead advising me to upgrade to a paid version which includes support.

I have tried StarWind’s VSAN solution, but decided to go with HP VSA because it was included in the purchase price of my HP DL360 G9, approximately $20,000.

The installation and creation of the ‘cluster’ was fairly straightforward. Volume creation and additional required configuration was a bit more complex.

I implemented it myself. I would suggest deploying in a dev environment first, to ensure thorough understanding. It is not exactly intuitive.

I stopped using the product when the VSA volume took itself offline for the second time.

I used the free 1TB license that is included with all newer HP servers.

Make sure you have more than enough VSA nodes (at least enough to handle a loss of one node and preferably two). Ensure the license supports distributed volumes, rather than single-host volumes.

The network RAID is the key feature of the system which, with StoreVirtual, is a build-out of HP servers with software on it. The system creates volumes over multiple “servers”. With network RAID 10, you have two synchronous copies of your data. With network RAID 10+1, you’ve get three copies of the data, and with network RAID 10+2 there are four copies.

Of course, you invest a lot of space in redundancy, but you can chose by volume which network RAID to use. For lower performance volumes, you can even use network RAID five.

We’ve created two data centers. This allows us to keep working when there are power outages on one of the two sites. The data centers are about 150 meters apart in different buildings.

The way iSCSI sessions are handled could be improved. But if your system is designed right, this isn’t an issue. I’m quite curious to see the improvements in the next version because this already is a very mature and complete product.

I've been using it for five years. I spent four years setting it up, and one as an administrator.

The greatest problem for installation is choosing a place for the “Fail Over Manager” (FOM). This is a third system that allows the systems to avoid a split-brain scenario. It’s not a requirement, but when this is placed well, your system will fail over automatically from one site to the other and back.

This is a very reliable product. I’ve never known one of the dozen systems I’ve installed to fail.

The system is quite scalable, but extra storage means an extra box and, depending on your architecture, two boxes at once.

In Belgium, I’ve had difficulties getting the right engineer on site. Storage engineers see it as a server box, and server engineers are not always aware of the storage implications. Phone support is, however, very accessible and accurate.

I also used P2000, Dell EquaLogic and DataCore. P2000 is a lower-end product. EquaLogic didn’t have online replication and automated fail over at the time. DataCore is storage software, and I found it difficult to maintain due to the large hardware base they need to support.

The difficult part about the setup is the network part. You need to configure flow control, jumbo frames, LACP trunks, and, in some cases, spanning tree correctly. Once the network setup is correct, the configuration is very straight forward.

I was part of the vendor team.