HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs IBM XIV comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM are both solutions in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3, while IBM is ranked #10. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 9.4% mindshare in MS, compared to IBM’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of IBM users who would recommend it.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Read 302 HPE 3PAR StoreServ reviews

2,204 Views
724 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

IBM XIV

Read 6 IBM XIV reviews

139 Views
70 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

IBM XIV

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

IBM XIV and HPE 3PAR StoreServ are competing products in enterprise storage solutions. HPE 3PAR StoreServ tends to have the upper hand with its advanced features, although IBM XIV is notable for its cost-effectiveness.

Features: IBM XIV offers easy scalability, robust data protection, and predictable latency which makes it suitable for dynamic environments. HPE 3PAR StoreServ provides advanced virtualization, efficient data storage optimization, and tiered storage to enhance performance and utility. Additionally, its intuitive management and robust architecture support complex enterprise needs.

Room for Improvement: IBM XIV could enhance its initial setup process and expand its feature set to include more advanced data handling options. Improvements in licensing flexibility could also make it more attractive. HPE 3PAR StoreServ, on the other hand, could work on reducing its higher upfront costs. Enhancing user simplicity and optimizing support responsiveness could also benefit users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HPE 3PAR StoreServ offers a streamlined deployment process with proactive customer support, which aids in smoother organizational transitions. In contrast, IBM XIV provides straightforward setup steps but often requires more initial effort. The proactive service model of HPE gives it an edge in deployment efficiency.

Pricing and ROI: IBM XIV is attractive for budget-conscious enterprises with its lower setup costs and favorable ROI due to economical scaling. HPE 3PAR StoreServ, although requiring higher initial investment, offers long-term value from advanced features and data efficiency that justify its cost. The principal financial distinction is HPE's higher initial expenditure offset by potential operational ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. IBM XIV Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. IBM XIV

March 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 844,944 peers since 2012

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)

IBM XIV

Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

10th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

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 IBM XIV is 1.2%, up from 1.0% 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.

Read full review

Ajith Kandaramage

IT Operation Engineer at HNB

Good value for money but issues with modular scaling

IBM XIV's most valuable features are NVME, especially when it comes to de-duplication, compression, and responsiveness I've been using IBM XIV for two and a half years. IBM XIV is stable. IBM XIV's scalability is adequate for our requirements, but because it's modular, you can't scale to larger…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"They are using Ansible to automate the provisioning, so that simplifies the day-to-day operations."

"The InfoSight feature helps us with troubleshooting problems in our environment."

"Thanks to HPE remote IT assistance, they can do the updates with the configuration in best-case scenario."

"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."

"We're using the all-flash arrays and, with the deduplication and compression, it just really fits our virtualization environment very well."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"All-flash has been the most innovative way of using storage based on the 3PAR platform."

"It is very easy to manage. I can provision disks and monitor the performance easily."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pros

"Very easy to produce reporting data (Snaps). Very easy and fast for provisioning devices and Remote mirroring."

"IBM XIV's most valuable features are NVME, especially when it comes to de-duplication, compression, and responsiveness."

"As it spreads, a chuck of 1MB across the board means using all available spindles on the backend."

"Installation is amazingly easy."

"The performance and robustness of the systems are very good."

"Hands down, this is the easiest storage platform on the market to manage."

Cons

"We are using a built-in solution in 3PAR. We are using All-Flash Storage, and there are some difficulties with it. HPE has now developed a new tool system to support All-Flash, and that's why we are changing our investment. They must increase its performance. I want unlimited support, which is very important for performance. I am not interested in spinning disks. HPE is developing new storage systems called Primera, but they must be developed more."

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

"I would like an easier user interface and setup to help with deployment. There were many areas of the setup where I was like, “Why don't we do it this way?” Therefore, some of the things in the user interface could have been more refined, so you don't have to click in 5000 different places to accomplish one goal. Less clicks means more efficiency."

"I would like to have single click upgrades because the process is cumbersome right now."

"The configuration and flexibility should improve."

"The management interface is not intuitive."

"The newer versions have some other characteristics that we are not using. We would like to use them and set them up in our current version."

"The interface to manage it could be improved. I was looking at OneView. Something basic like that should be available with the 3PAR. OneView has all the bells and whistles, all the features, but I think something basic and similar to that should be come with the 3PAR, at least for monitoring managing it."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ cons

"The change form synchronous mirroring to asynchronous (and vice versa) without reconfiguration from scratch would be helpful."

"I would rather have a web GUI served directly from the unit, and a CLI accessible directly through SSH."

"I encountered stability (performance) issues during enclosure or disk rebuild. Also some power supply issues due to malfunctions of circuits. Sometimes "internal" Snap sessions hang and consume pool capacity."

"Until the drive is replaced, the pool_resizing is locked."

"This product was not a good fit for our organization as we have a ton of latency sensitive applications and XIV was not able to keep up with IO + latency demand."

"IBM XIV's scalability is adequate for our requirements, but because it's modular, you can't scale to larger requirements."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Nowadays, from a storage point of view, there are so many vendors in the market. So cost is one of the factors that pushed us to go with HPE 3PAR. Cost-wise they're pretty competitive."

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

"The licensing cost for HPE 3PAR StoreServ is expensive."

"I would like it to be cheaper."

"It is reasonable. As compared to other solutions, it doesn't seem to be much different."

"We are going to buy eight nodes this year and eight nodes next year. Eventually, we are not going to want to buy large storage devices and probably utilize just storage, but in a different manner going forward."

"The main issue with 3PAR right now is its cost problem. Right now, there are some other storage cabinets that can do what 3PAR can do. Now, they can do it as well with a more revised budget."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pricing and cost advice

"No-license-required policy, unlike others where you need a license for everything. Just pay once and forget about licenses."

"Licensing is straightforward."

"We have a five-year total cost of ownership where we pay an initial amount and then annually for maintenance."

"If you are going to use the product behind an SVC, IBM will price the units lower, since you are likely not to use any of the advanced copy services."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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

No data available

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

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

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

HPE MSA vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 5% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 5% of the time

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

March 2025

Download HPE 3PAR StoreServ product report

Buyer's Guide

Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

March 2025

Download IBM XIV product report

Also Known As

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

XIV

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

IBM XIV is a high-end, grid-scale storage system that excels in tuning-free consistent performance, ease of use and exceptional data economics, including inline, and IBM Real-time Compression. IBM XIV is ideal for hybrid cloud, offering predictable service levels for dynamic workloads, simplified scale management, including in multi-tenant environments, flexible consumption models — and robust cloud automation and orchestration through OpenStack, RESTful API and VMware. It offers security and data protection through hot encryption, advanced mirroring and self-healing and investment protection with perpetual licensing.

IBM

Sample Customers

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

Celero, NaviSite, Technische Universit_t Mªnchen, Netflix Inc., Muhr und Bender KG, Pelephone Communications

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. IBM XIV

March 2025

Free Report: HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. IBM XIV

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

DOWNLOAD NOW

844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. IBM XIV report.

See our list of best Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) vendors.

We monitor all Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.