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 8.3, while HPE MSA is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.0. HPE 3PAR StoreServ holds a 9.4% mindshare in MS, compared to HPE MSA’s 19.9% 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

2,204 Views
724 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

HPE MSA

Read 23 HPE MSA reviews

1,417 Views
1,141 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: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. HPE MSA

March 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 (6th), All-Flash Storage (9th)

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 April 2025, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is 9.4%, down from 12.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE MSA is 19.9%, up from 17.1% 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

"The solution has improved our throughput by helping us keep up with the demand and acquisitions that we have been going through."

"The solution is easy to install."

"It all works in concert using Recovery Manager Central (RMC). HPE coordinates it all, so it is more of a solution instead of products trying to do things together."

"I like the speed capabilities that it provides. The deduplication features definitely have some huge potential. The latest firmware, where they've enabled compression for workloads that aren't very good for deduplication, I can definitely see huge potential there."

"It provides very fast deployment. The performance for our most critical applications is very quick."

"It's reliable and it's fast."

"Whatever failures you have, there is no single point of failure. So, any failure, you get an alert, you have time, you plan the fix, the replacement, and so on. So your operations are intact."

"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."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pros

"The simple configuration feature is great. It is very simple, allowing you to set up MSA very easily."

"MSA performs exceptionally well, particularly in regions with frequent power outages."

"The cost to performance for HPE StorageWorks MSA is good."

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

"I like StorageWorks' snapshots for our backup system. We had a pool of SSD and traditional drives. StorageWorks has a feature that transfers the hot data to high-performing drives."

"Monitoring is a very big thing. Other great features include block storage; volume creation and the data reliability scalability, which makes the solution really good."

"The solution is scalable and easy to manage."

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

More HPE MSA pros

Cons

"The onsite techs have caused outages."

"A lot of tasks, you have to manually set up. They need to already have them set up and working. Then, you can just go in and tweak them if you need to."

"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."

"I would like to see the reliability improve. While it has been a good product, the QA of the product could be done a little more thoroughly."

"I would like to see more virtualization: storage virtualization, data virtualization would be very nice."

"Upgrades could be improved. We would like to see more upgrades."

"We have had some bad issues on stability."

"In the next release, I would like them to make it a little easier to find where everything is in the new console. It now has the OneView look and sometimes I don't think the OneView look is enough. It's too different from the original console that was a separate system."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ cons

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

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

"Synchronized replication is very important for MSA; however, HPE StorageWorks MSA doesn't provide synchronized replication."

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

"HPE StorageWorks MSA could maybe include a pay-top of texture feature or something like job replication."

"The solution requires hardware."

"The solution could improve by adding configuration tools."

"It should show more options for cloud backup support."

More HPE MSA cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten. It is expensive."

"You can't get software maintenance from a third party. You have to do it from HPE, which is a letdown."

"3PAR was quite a bit less money than EMC, and that was one of the deciding factors."

"We have seen ROI. We are able to see more patients now, bringing more money into the practice."

"The support for the solution is free for three years, then it is an additional cost. It is approximately $30,000 annually. The price includes a lot of equipment we have not only HPE 3PAR StoreServ."

"The total cost of ownership really is worth every penny."

"It is fairly inexpensive to scale."

"Making the decisions to buy it can be complex."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pricing and cost advice

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

"The solution can be a bit expensive."

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

"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."

"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."

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

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

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

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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

87%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Government

Construction 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 Alletra Storage vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 22% of the time

HPE Primera vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 21% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 7% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 5% 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 27% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs HPE MSA

Compared 8% of the time

More HPE MSA Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

March 2025

Download HPE 3PAR StoreServ product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE MSA

March 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

March 2025

Free Report: HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. HPE MSA

Find out what your peers are saying about HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. HPE MSA and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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