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Dell EqualLogic PS series vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell EqualLogic PS series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
304
Ranking in other categories
NAS (10th), All-Flash Storage (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of Dell EqualLogic PS series is 3.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is 10.2%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE 3PAR StoreServ10.2%
Dell EqualLogic PS series3.9%
Other85.9%
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

Khuram Ayyaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Executive at Virtual University
Has enabled uninterrupted access to educational platforms and simplified storage management
Dell EqualLogic PS series is easily scalable, and we can add extra boxes and storage. It was easy to deploy during COVID. Deploying Dell EqualLogic PS series is straightforward, with no complexity involved. Dell EqualLogic PS series is a good product. We did not experience any failures in the last six to seven years, and it is still running as our storage for offline data. There are snapshot capabilities in data protection available, but we did not use that feature because it consumes much space. We have only 150 terabytes of space and simply use it to create volumes without utilizing it for snapshots. We use thin provisioning in Dell EqualLogic PS series, but I did not explore that feature further.
CO
Information Systems & Security Administrator at a government with 501-1,000 employees
Ease of use in data center boosts resilience and infrastructure efficiency
I find the HPE 3PAR StoreServ valuable for its ease of use and resilience, which is beneficial. The main benefits I have seen from having HPE 3PAR StoreServ include its use at a small branch I managed for about three years with around 60 users. It operates effectively because it is an HPE product we use there. I have not experienced any significant issues besides occasional IT-related ones, such as local database problems. Since handing over the administration of the system to someone else and moving to another department, there have not been any issues. There are many features that exist but I haven't needed to try. Before moving out of that role in my organization, I knew it was a product I enjoyed working with for infrastructure purposes. After completing my new role, I intend to return to infrastructure.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Technical support is great; we have four-hour support from Dell for storage."
"The solution has been working well overall."
"The product is very stable."
"It is extremely reliable."
"The most valuable feature of Dell EqualLogic PS series auto tiering by using this feature, the customer can get higher performance on a valuable budget."
"We were attracted by the flexibility of being able to put in a new shelf whenever we needed to, to expand."
"Technical support, when we had access to it, was very good."
"If you have one datacenter fail, the VMs will start to run inside the other data center."
"The tool is fast and easy to use. You can also configure it easily. The product also has good performance tuning."
"Valuable features include the intuitiveness of the SAN itself, a lot of the built-in logic and functionality, the tiering that it uses to determine what type of disk is best for the various types of workloads, and the automation that is built in. It's also easy to manage."
"​It is a really stable product. We have not had any major issues at the moment."
"For virtualization, the failure rate is much less compared to traditional storage where you need more hard drives"
"If it runs, and you don't know about it, that is the best thing that you can have in IT infrastructure. This is what 3PAR does for us."
"It's reliable and it's fast."
"Previously, we were using EVA from HPE. When we moved to 3PAR, we noticed a reduction in footprint, reduced by more than 30%. We use the Adaptive Optimization, giving us a reduction in cost and with better performance."
"The technical support has been fantastic."
 

Cons

"There is no inline deduplication capability."
"I can't buy any more solutions provided by EqualLogic...Since I can't buy it anymore, I don't receive any updates on the solution. Also, this is the last year in which one can buy support for the solution."
"There is no option for mixing RAID types in one device."
"Why is it not possible for both controllers to be simultaneously active (load balancing)?"
"Individual file recovery would be a nice additional feature."
"We need more space and we can't get any."
"The only challenging part in the tool was related to some site recovery area. In order to exploit the site recovery area, my company had to purchase additional VMware products."
"The solution is out of date and the new version has a lot of advanced features."
"It needs better dedupe. It is hard for all the older generation arrays to put up dedupe because they tend to do the other stuff so much better. They have to keep the stability before any other new feature."
"Setting up 3PAR is somewhat complicated, and it took about a week."
"The setup was complex from the perspective of the employees having to go through five days of training. If they simplified the administrative process of maintaining the unit, that would go a long way."
"Extending is not a problem, scalability is okay. But once you buy additional box of disks, you have to wait for HPE to contact you with their plan for implementation, for connecting, and it can take several weeks. So, you have the box and you have to wait for several weeks to actually implement it."
"We had a minor error when we were configuring this system, which initially detracted from its overall stability."
"We would also like to see improvements to the ease of administration of 3PAR."
"There is a slight difference between what we expected and what was delivered."
"File Persona can be better. I don't use File Persona because it has many problems with my environment. The antivirus that it has is not compatible with File Persona, and that's a big issue with File Persona. 3PAR is not as good as Dell when making a file in the storage. 3PAR for a block is very good, but when comparing row capacity, I get 14% capacity with 3PAR, but with Dell, I get 60% capacity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Initial packages include all upgrades and services."
"There are annual maintenance costs beyond the original licensing period."
"Price-wise, the solution is cheap. I rate it a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"I didn't buy it. It was another person seven years ago. So, I don't really know, but all storage platforms cost a lot of money. It is probably in the mid-range, but you get what you pay for."
"Licensing is pretty straightforward."
"Dell EqualLogic PS series can improve its scale-out feature. Sometimes the customer has a limited budget for storage expansion. When they want to expand their capacity, they need to buy a complete controller plus storage capacity, which sometimes is out of their budget. If Dell EqualLogic PS series support could scale up the environment in which only hard drive extension controllers should be supported, then customers can expand within a lower budget."
"All features are out of the box. The license will be in the virtual, OS, or application layer."
"I don't think I would say that the product is less expensive...The product's price is not an issue for our company, considering the relationship we have with Dell and the customer support we receive."
"You can't get software maintenance from a third party. You have to do it from HPE, which is a letdown."
"This solution is expensive. We pay every year for support. It's a lump sum because we pay for data center support services, and everything is included in one."
"Since the prices of the flash storage has gone down tremendously, I would definitely recommend going for the all-flash storage array or 3PAR. It is a big expensive even now, but it will be the future of all industries."
"You need to properly assess your needs before buying the solution since there are chances of overpaying. The type of configuration that you choose can make the price go higher or lower."
"We do not have any licensing fees."
"It is reasonable. As compared to other solutions, it doesn't seem to be much different."
"It is a little more money, but it is worth it because it does it better."
"The SSD is a little bit expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user182013 - PeerSpot reviewer
Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
May 1, 2015
Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR
Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise74
Large Enterprise170
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell EqualLogic PS series?
The technical support for the solution was really good.
What needs improvement with Dell EqualLogic PS series?
I do not have anything in mind regarding new capabilities for Dell products at this time.
What is your primary use case for Dell EqualLogic PS series?
We are essentially a university, and we have deployed Dell EqualLogic PS series in our data centers to run our production sites, student portals, websites, our on-premises portal, and campus manage...
What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?
HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspective, it is reliable, easy to set up, stable, and offers quality block storage. All...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE 3PAR StoreServ?
It is expensive, however, when we compare it to the features provided by HPE, the price-to-performance ratio is very good.
 

Also Known As

EqualLogic PS series
HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FAW Foundry, AW Engineering, Unimat, eLongNet Information Technology, BDO Brasil, Odyssey Space Research
Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell EqualLogic PS series vs. HPE 3PAR StoreServ and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
883,011 professionals have used our research since 2012.