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HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (15th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
302
Ranking in other categories
NAS (6th), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (2nd), All-Flash Storage (9th)
VMware vSAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
230
Ranking in other categories
HCI (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

All-Flash Storage
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
Muhammad Saqib - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Yves Sandfort - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources
Stability can be improved. Adding all these new features is nice, but we are now at the level where most of the features you need in production are there. The stability is not from a day-to-day operations perspective, but more from a supportability perspective, because currently some of the support scenarios require you to completely evacuate hosts or the complete cluster. That sometimes can be a stretch. This would clearly be an improvement if the support teams were given additional tools to make that easier. Upgradability could be a bit easier sometimes. We are now where vSAN can be updated without ESXi, but there is still enough dependency. So that would be good if that actually would be uncoupled even more. Dashboards are there, and we use vROps as well. So, we have all the beauty of capacity planning and everything over there. That's not really something where we need a lot of other things.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"It's reliable and it's fast."
"The solution has increased our performance by about 40 percent."
"We also use dynamic optimization to go between tiers."
"We're using the all-flash arrays and, with the deduplication and compression, it just really fits our virtualization environment very well."
"For virtualization, the failure rate is much less compared to traditional storage where you need more hard drives"
"If there is a problem then the HPE facility will detect it and immediately contact me."
"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."
"HPE 3PAR has all the common storage features like cell provisioning and deduplication. Usually the solution is chosen by the customer as they have a preference, or the setup is already in their environment."
"The most valuable feature is the fast performance."
"It allows us to put our infrastructure in remote locations and still get the same performance we get from our onsite SAN solutions."
"vSAN that has been most effective in streamlining storage operations. For data recovery alerts, it uses tools like snapshots and vMotion."
"I have found that the multi-homing feature is very valuable in VMware vSAN. It is an easy-to-use solution."
"The solution is stable."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is that it is stable."
"The most valuable features of vSAN are its simplicity to deploy and that we can use commodity disks in our servers without complexity or need for external storage arrays or storage specialists on our teams."
"Technical support is good."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"The software layer has to improve."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"We have issues with scalability because 3PAR has limited storage capacity, so we have to invest more after a while."
"I would like to see more virtualization: storage virtualization, data virtualization would be very nice."
"It would also help if they integrate current technologies, newer technologies, and more efficient technologies, as time progresses. For example, integrate the fourth level of NAND devices."
"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."
"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."
"The GUI interface could be improved. I have been having trouble with one issue in particular. If you look at the DC and DR, if there is a communication break and the link went down—so the data is not replicating from DC to DR—there is no way to find out how much data is ready for transmission. Only the size of the data that needs to be transferred after the link comes up. If the firewall link is down, there is no way of seeing how much data is waiting to be transferred. This is a weak point of 3PAR."
"Upgrades could be improved. We would like to see more upgrades."
"I would like to see NVMe support, not only on the disk side, but also in the NVMe over Fibre Channel."
"We would like to see additional backup and recovery options added. In particular, integration with popular applications like databases."
"The pricing model is sometimes a challenge for us because their licenses are very costly."
"I see room for improvement for vSAN just around general hardware compatibility and expanding that sort of matrix."
"This product is very expensive."
"vSAN itself is a great storage platform, but one of the issues with it is that you have to be fully locked into the VMware package to use it. We're going to be deploying 72 Kubernetes nodes, and we're not going to buy VMware licenses for 72 of them, just so they can access vSAN. That's what we're using the Pure for. Opening it up so you could have vSAN as a data store, use it as a data lake, hit it with an NFS, S3 from outside the VMware ecosystem, would be great."
"VMware vSAN could improve by having better integration with other vendors and the storage is limited, I prefer it to the traditional storage."
"vSAN does not have online dedup. When opening the inline dedupe, the performance will be lower than off inline."
"More focus has to be put on deduplication and compression with a hybrid architecture."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."
"The product is expensive."
"Our licensing cost are $32,000 annually."
"We have seen ROI. While the costs were quite high at the time of purchase for our environment, the ease of use and the fact that it hasn't failed all the time, working fine, that makes it worth buying."
"Performance is at least two times, if not three times, what we had previously."
"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 can't get software maintenance from a third party. You have to do it from HPE, which is a letdown."
"If HPE reduced the price of 3PAR StoreServ they would be more attractive to mid-range companies."
"We had to go back and purchase iLO licenses and brocade switches for the flex fabric to have a complete solution."
"I have to renew support in October for the existing solution. That will cost me roughly $50,000 this year, which in the grand scheme of things, $50,000 is not that much compared to paying $850,000. However, it will be the last year that I'll be able to get direct support from HPE. Therefore, product has to be replaced in 2020."
"The price of vSAN could be lower."
"VMware vSAN is an expensive platform. We purchase its yearly license."
"It is an expensive solution. There should be more flexible with licensing to allow small businesses the essentials of the solution's features."
"It could be cheaper."
"It is cheap. It is $0.02 a gig."
"I would rate the licensing model a three out of ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap."
"It is not that expensive, and it is not even cheap. If it is designed in a proper way, it has good pricing, but if you do oversizing, the price will be high. There are different licensing models."
"It is too expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user182013 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
87%
Computer Software Company
2%
Financial Services Firm
1%
Manufacturing Company
1%
Educational Organization
53%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
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 perspectiv...
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 ...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an e...
Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We resea...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC
Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Pure Storage and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.