HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs HPE MSA comparison

HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE MSA are both solutions in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category. HPE 3PAR StoreServ is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.5, while HPE MSA is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.0. HPE 3PAR StoreServ holds a 10.0% mindshare in MS, compared to HPE MSA’s 18.5% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of HPE 3PAR StoreServ users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of HPE MSA users who would recommend it.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Read 302 HPE 3PAR StoreServ reviews

2,346 Views
799 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

HPE MSA

Read 23 HPE MSA reviews

1,483 Views
1,213 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

HPE MSA

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE MSA compete in the enterprise storage category. HPE 3PAR StoreServ appears to have the upper hand with its advanced features and performance capabilities tailored for mid-range enterprises, while HPE MSA is a cost-effective choice suitable for small businesses.

Features: HPE 3PAR StoreServ supports SSD, SAS, and SATA in one unified solution, features transparent failover for enhanced reliability, and delivers impressive performance through adaptive optimization and thin provisioning. HPE MSA is appreciated for its affordability, providing stable performance and essential storage functions for smaller setups.

Room for Improvement: Users suggest that HPE 3PAR StoreServ could improve its monitoring, reporting, and GUI management interfaces, as well as offer more flexible licensing options. HPE MSA could benefit from enhanced scalability, better cloud integration, and more streamlined licensing models.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE MSA are mainly used in on-premises environments. HPE MSA is designed with hybrid cloud adaptability. Both products receive high praise for customer service and technical support, although HPE 3PAR may involve more complex support interactions.

Pricing and ROI: HPE 3PAR StoreServ is considered a more expensive solution, suitable for enterprises requiring high performance and scalability, with value returned through significant operational efficiencies. HPE MSA stands out for its cost-effectiveness, particularly for small to medium-sized businesses, although costs can rise with additional features.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. HPE MSA Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. HPE MSA

January 2025

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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

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

302

Ranking in other categories

NAS (7th), All-Flash Storage (8th)

HPE MSA

Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

5th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is 10.0%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE MSA is 18.5%, up from 17.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Saqib

System Engineer at Hybrid Tech

Uninterrupted upgrades accelerate performance with good support

I would rate the solution eight out of ten. It should be noted that in Pakistan, some parts are not readily available, and we need to import them from Singapore or other countries. We encountered an issue with a customer where the midplane failed and was not available. We had to wait for several days for a replacement, even in a 24/7 support case. Additionally, we faced motherboard failures in the customer's environment, encountering two motherboard failures simultaneously. We obtained one motherboard immediately, yet had to wait ten days for another. These issues should have been resolved promptly given the 24/7 support level.

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Pragnesh Sachania

Deputy Manager IT at La Gajjar

Scalable, easy to manage, and used for virtualization environments

We didn't face any issues with the technical functionality. However, we faced a lot of challenges with our custom configuration. The HPE support person who did the installation was very technical. He answered all the queries, and we resolved the entire setup. We set up the storage as per our requirements. We previously used a physical server instead of virtualization. With the help of an HPE engineer and partners, we prepared a strategy for migrating the entire physical servers to our virtualization infrastructure. It took two days to deploy the solution. Six people were involved in the solution's deployment, including two from HPE and four from our IT team.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There's a lot of good features. HPE 3PAR StoreServ is similar to Dell EMC. It is a high-speed system with automatic failover/failback, integrated with Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware. These are the main reason for choosing HPE 3PAR StoreServ in Denmark. We have a very good consulting service together with the product."

"The tech support is great. If we have a problem, we literally will have boots on the ground with senior sales people, as well as the people to fix the problem, to help make sure we are taken care of."

"I do not have to worry about cross systems talking to each other or multiple systems trying to interact with each other. Our entire vCenter infrastructure is one large stack, which is nice."

"This is a very robust product and it offers everything that we are looking for."

"This solution has allowed for massive performance acceleration of all workloads and massively increased availability (with peer persistence/transparent failover feature)."

"The ease of management is its most valuable feature. It is so much easier to manage storage on a 3PAR array than anything that we have had before."

"The product stands on its own in heavy enterprise environments."

"The technical support is very good."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pros

"The solution is very easy to use, it is not really complex for any user, such as non-technical individuals."

"The most valuable features were the dual controllers and being able to expand it."

"The most valuable feature for customers is the autonomic tiering, which enhances their storage scalability as easily as possible."

"The product is very easy to deploy."

"HPE StorageWorks MSA is an entry-level, cost-effective solution for SMB customers."

"The most valuable features are data deduplication and snapshot replication."

"It has notably provided scalability benefits."

"The solution is pretty transparent and works well."

More HPE MSA pros

Cons

"We would like to see a bigger integration with the Nimble Storage solution, so we can take our smaller regional companies and be able to send them into our bigger data centers and have everything work seamlessly."

"The solution must be vertically and horizontally expandable."

"HPE 3PAR StoreServ has limited flexibility in building replication solutions. There are limitations to the number of IOPS the system can do. It's not bad as it is doing its job. However, for the application, if you need a toolbox, you can build everything concerning periodic replication modes of synchronous or asynchronous three-site, four-site, with supported cascading which requires you to buy an IBM product. It also takes a few hours to one day to upgrade the system and sometimes; it takes more time because, in some HPE 3PAR StoreServ 20000 Storage, you have an eight-node system. If you do an upgrade, you do it node by node and every node might take more than an hour."

"An area of improvement for this solution is an increase in the bandwidth as well as an upgrade of the storage functionality and capabilities. The storage needs to be expandable for future-proofing."

"The interface could be improved to match the system."

"I would rate the solution eight out of ten. It should be noted that in Pakistan, some parts are not readily available, and we need to import them from Singapore or other countries."

"Setting up 3PAR is somewhat complicated, and it took about a week."

"I would like to see a little better integration with OneView and provisioning ESX Hosts."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ cons

"We faced a lot of challenges with our custom configuration during installation."

"It would be beneficial to have an add-on feature to improve analytics or insight capabilities inside the app."

"This product is getting a little bit older, so new features like deduplication are not included."

"There is room for improvement in terms of scalability. There are times when we need to upgrade the device and the firmware. Sometimes, that can be a struggle."

"The solution's license should be integrated and not separate."

"Some clients have suggested room for improvement in expanding storage capacity beyond the base traces."

"It would be ideal if there was a better management interface."

"I rate HPE support four out of 10. I'm not happy with them. We purchased mission-critical support, and we're supposed to get a response in four hours. Instead, I'm waiting days for them to replace the drive. They asked me to send back the failed one, and I don't know the address. After I sent it back, they told me they haven't received it. It's a nightmare."

More HPE MSA cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a little more money, but it is worth it because it does it better."

"For the entire six node cluster and the two 7200 units plus the Brocade Fibre switches, we financed it through HPE Financial. It was $850,000. We leased that and paid it off in October of 2018."

"Performance is at least two times, if not three times, what we had previously."

"This product is quite expensive and in addition, we subscribe to 24/7 support with a four-hour response time."

"If HPE reduced the price of 3PAR StoreServ they would be more attractive to mid-range companies."

"This licensing fees for this solution are merged with all of our HP annual costs, which in total are a couple hundred thousand dollars."

"There was a one-time cost when we procured this product and there are no monthly or yearly licensing fees."

"It's very reliable and it was cost competitive with other arrays at the time that we purchased it."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pricing and cost advice

"HPE StorageWorks MSA's licensing is perpetual and not integrated."

"The solution can be a bit expensive."

"I would rate the pricing as nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."

"This solution involves a one-time CapEx payment, followed by warranty extensions."

"When we bought this solution it was very reasonably priced and they were willing to deal."

"The price of the solution is a little high and they should provide more competitive pricing. If you want to increases the storage size there are additional fees."

"This solution is quite expensive; they should lower the cost."

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Comparison Review

it_user182013

Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at Rubrik

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

86%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

19%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Government

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about HPE 3PAR StoreServ?

The compression features are good.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about HPE StorageWorks MSA?

The most valuable feature of HPE StorageWorks MSA is its flexibility.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE StorageWorks MSA?

I am not satisfied with the licensing model and pricing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with HPE StorageWorks MSA?

It needs more details on how to integrate with the cloud for backup scenarios. It should show more options for cloud backup support.

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE Primera vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 21% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 20% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 7% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 6% of the time

NetApp AFF vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 4% of the time

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ Competitors

NetApp FAS Series vs HPE MSA

Compared 49% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs HPE MSA

Compared 29% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs HPE MSA

Compared 6% of the time

More HPE MSA Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

February 2025

Download HPE 3PAR StoreServ product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE MSA

February 2025

Download HPE MSA product report

Also Known As

HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage

HP StorageWorks MSA

Overview

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is an AI-driven storage solution that prevents issues before they occur by learning and adjusting in real time. The solution offers a tier-1 all-flash foundation for mission-critical workloads. HPE 3PAR StoreServ was designed with more than 3M IOPS and consistent sub-ms latency. It aims to transform midrange and enterprise deployments with solutions that scale from a few TBs to more than 20PBs. In addition, the solution is built to modernize data centers and is made to handle unpredictable workloads effortlessly. By implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you gain automated and rapid provisioning, hardware-accelerated deduplication and compression, and a multi-tenant design.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Features

HPE 3PAR StoreServ has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Flexibility: With HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you can easily deploy highly configurable, scale-out storage for multi-tenant workloads.

Always-on availability for your data: HPE 3PAR StoreServ includes an always-on resilient storage infrastructure for your hypervisors and applications. In addition, with Peer Persistence, your virtual machines (VMs), hosts, and data can move freely across data centers rather than being constrained by their physical boundaries.

Fast, scalable performance: HPE 3PAR StoreServ enables you to accelerate consistent mixed-workload performance and also provides necessary QoS levels that are optimized for your highest priority applications.

Performance insights: HPE 3PAR StoreServ helps you gain performance insights in real time, and anticipate as well as prevent issues across the infrastructure stack by utilizing cross-stack analytics.

Flash optimized data protection: With tier-1 data services, multi-tenant security, and copy data management, you can avoid downtime.

Seamless data mobility: HPE 3PAR StoreServ makes it possible for you to not only experience converged data protection, but also experience seamless data mobility services, at flash speed, from the edge to the cloud.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Easy to manage. The web interface to manage the units is a great asset and one that makes managing storage easy.

User-friendly GUI

Exceptionally fast and well-managed replication
Low latency

Hybrid storage gives you the ability to assign different roles to different types of storage arrays inside one enclosure

Both file-level and block-level replication

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the HPE 3PAR StoreServ solution.

A SAN Consultant at a tech services company says, “One of the features that I like the most is the data replication element. The reason I like it is due to the fact that it's pretty clean on replicating data over to a second site. The product stands on its own in heavy enterprise environments. It's easy to make changes without affecting the environment. The solution is very easy to use. The product is very robust and offers very good performance.”

A Storage Manager at a financial services firm mentions, "There are a lot of screens for easy management where you can change some settings. But after a few years, the important settings were better after an upgrade, and all the vendors have other ways to upgrade their systems."

A Senior IT Infrastructure & Data Center Operation Engineer at Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) comments, “The adaptive optimization is the biggest feature in 3PAR. 3PAR is very usable with thin volume because it detects zeros while writing. Every time I tell the hypervisor to make the full provisioning, it makes the volume as simple provisioning in 3PAR, not full provisioning.”

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Whether you need best-in-class performance or are looking to get the most capacity for your investment, MSA has a fast, affordable solution for you. And every MSA comes with an intuitive setup and management interface anyone can master.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC

Femsa CSC, TTX, Rabobank

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. HPE MSA

January 2025

Free Report: HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. HPE MSA

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