HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

It is our primary storage. We use it with our VMware environment and all of our high performance applications are stored on it.

I work for an equipment distributor, but we have various business lines: everything from earth moving to electric power generation. These are very different needs. Then, we have our accounting system which is on there, plus business intelligence. All these are different types of workloads.

We purchase the 3PAR that has flash tier and we can migrate between the spinning disk and flash. It seems to work very well. It self-optimizes. I do not need to worry about it. It does its job. It is the self-driving car. You let it do its thing and it gets you where you need to go.

It has improved the ability of the executives to get proper insights, because our old storage was not fast enough. 

It is worry-free. I do not have to sit there and tend it, because I have a lot of other things that I have to do. Once you set it, you can forget it until you need to go and add more storage. It does its thing and you can go do your work.

3PAR has StoreOnce and replication. I would like it if they worked together. Or, if I had Nimble and put that either in DR or a primary cohesive management, but still use the cool features of 3PAR, that would be awesome.

We have never had a problem.

It is good.

I have done two different upgrades with them. That is all I have done because the stuff is all working. 

Technical support was very helpful. They scheduled around me, then when it was time, we just met in a HPE room, they did the upgrade, and I saw everything they did. Then when they were done, we left the room and I was done. I had my stuff back.

We are using Tableau, and it is a heavy thing, especially when you start calling in a lot of data sources. At our old storage, it was iSCSI connected and not adequately responsive. Therefore, they had to trim down the searches, and as a result, they were getting less insight. Now, they get everything they want and in a timely manner. 

We were using Dell EqualLogic. The load from our VMware (when we first put it in was fine) had gone from approximately 20 virtual machines to 150 virtual machines on the same storage. The storage load had increased so drastically that we just could not keep up with it, so we looked at different things. I mentioned 3PAR is an excellent enterprise cost product. 

We switched because noticed there was a lag in our previous storage, then went ahead and got 3PAR. 

We certainly have seen value and everybody is happy, including our executives. They are very glad that things are working smoothly and they can get good insights and information from Tableau.

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

We looked at Dell's competing product. This is prior to them buying EMC. We looked at Compellent. We also looked at EMC and Pure Storage. 

We bought EqualLogic before Dell bought it. After Dell bought it, some things changed. Now I am afraid of buying a small player that might get purchased and the story changes. Therefore, we thought HPE is a very stable partner. Nobody will buy HPE. We can go ahead and trust that it will be a stable, supported product for the foreseeable future.

It does a great job and I do not have to worry about it. It worries about itself. It tells me if there is something wrong.

Go to Houston, the executive briefing center, if you can. It is very good because you get a very deep dive and you can ask questions to obtain information. I did it and thought it was helpful.

The reason why we chose 3PAR is because it was future proof. It had some features that the cabinets we were looking for at at the moment when we bought the 3PAR storage, that were not available in the market, like theme provisioning and the movement of blocks, which are really fast and are not so fast. In this way, we can put the hot data where it should be. It also has a really powerful tool to measure data, how it is working, the performance, and if we have any bottlenecks.

Also, it does not have any spare disks, so we did not have to use this as a spare. We even had the spare space. So, we had a lot of features which were not not available for all the cabinets in the market, at the time, when we bought this storage.

For me, 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; what 3PAR used to do a long time ago. Now, they can do it as well with a more revised budget. So, the main problem for 3PAR right now is cost.

It is a really stable product. We have not had any major issues at the moment. For us, it is a really stable product.

For us, scalability is fine.

We have a contract where we have field engineer. He is working for more customers, but is allocated for us. So, we do not have any issues at all.

It was straightforward.

We used our support field engineer. They helped us on the setup. For us, it was not a big deal because of that.

HPE is changing on the licensing way, because in the past, you had to apply for a license for everything. Now, they have made a combo for all the licenses, which is more helpful, but there are a few things which are not completely included in the product. Talking from a license point of view, to be more competitive, as customer, we need a more aggressive price that includes all the licenses available. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We look for reputation. Also, we want to have confidence in the product. We want to know a product has been deployed for a lot of customers. So, we are looking for a mature product as well.

We find the adaptive optimization and dynamic optimization to be the most valuable features.

This has not improved my organization at all. It has had a direct effect on how we see our storage solution and how critical it really is and how availability is a priority. This product ran great for 6 months until we had our 1st drive failure. After that, it started falling apart and we have had nothing but issues ever since.

We did oversubscribe our drives in regards to IOPS capacity with no alerts of such. This caused us to lose another drive a couple months later, which brought a HUGE performance hit to our business until the drive was rebuilt. Shortly after it was replaced and rebuilt, another drive failed, which completely crippled our business until it was resolved. We were down most of a day because of this.

Since then, I have had too many tickets open to count. I still currently have a ticket open with them that they do not have a resolution. They know the issue. It is 3rd-party firmware on the HBA card in the controllers, which is going to be released in some unknown future release.

We have just received another unit as a PoC to set up Peer Motion so that we can try and update our current production array for a completely different reason, which we have been waiting several months for. We have no confidence in HPE technical support or engineering to update our current production array without any type of outage.

We have replaced FC drives, NL drives, SSD drives, HBAs in controller nodes, and SFP connectors. The onsite CE’s that came out to service the unit have been great, but I find it ridiculous that I can’t run for 1 year without an issue.

Only room for improvement would be to just abandon this product line and start with another.

We have been using this product for 1 year.

Suprisingly, we had no issues with initial deployment.

We have not had problems with scalability.

They will dedicate resources to help resolve issues. That part was impressive, although to actually get a resolution at times we had to really push.

Technical support is hard to understand at times and we always had to escalate to level 2 or 3 or engineering. I have even had escalations to Lab still with no real resolution.

Previously, we used Dell EqualLogic and switched because of some minor instability issues that we had, which, looking back now, were pretty petty. We actually pulled them from storage and powered them up to resolve stability issues with the 3PAR array.

The setup was fairly straightforward, once given the proper documentation and we had knowledgeable people onsite. Our initial HPE people that we had out to help show us best practices and usage were ridiculous. The HPE person we had out that did the physical installation, unboxing, racking, and initialization of the array was good.

We have experienced absolutely no ROI. We have lost money due to these arrays.

STAY AWAY. They will give you a book for an invoicing quote.

We evaluated several other products and we were over sold on these arrays. At the time, we looked at EMC, Dell Compellent, Nimble, and IBM. At the time, HPE sales sold us what appeared to be a superior product, but that was really not the case and was a mistake.

It's quite fast, easy to manage, and easy to extend. Adding new shelves or new platforms is easy.

In our case, 3PARs were easier to implement into our existing environment. Also, we had problem with storage space so it was the easiest way to expand.

I'm happy for the moment. But I would like to see them implement the new types of RAM; the NVRAM that is being used in the server environment. This would make storage quite a bit faster. It's not slow, but it could always be faster. Maybe this can also be available partially in a storage environment.

For example, if you have a DSQL server or something similar. Most companies have the lock database on the local server. In our case, we have everything on the 3PAR and it would make sense to have faster storage. We would like to see some innovation. There's room for improvement.

We have been using 3PARs for a year.

We have never had any stability problems.

Scalability is always a matter of price of course, but you can put in new disks with no problem at all.

We used technical support to do updates. They're good and very fast. They were very helpful.

We used EMC before but it was quite old, about 7 years, and it was time to change. There wasn't a good solution from them at that time. The ability to scale to size was important to us when choosing a vendor, as well as the speed. We want our solution to be future-proof to an extent.

I was partially involved in the initial setup. It was complex because of our environment. We have 10 or 15 different systems in the background so it wasn't easy. We thought it would be easy, but in the end it was quite complex.

There isn’t only one solution on the market. We already had the EMC systems. We were not limited to flash providers, so we also looked at Nimble and Hitachi and others.

At the end of the day, 3PAR was the most valuable. It was the most valuable solution. It was quite fast and it wasn't too expensive. Additionally, we could have an active-active scenario. That was for us the most important thing.

I would say go for it. You should at least give it a chance.

It is storage for our SAP environment. SAP is the mission-critical application that we run on the solution.

The snapshotting capability allows us to do a database replication very quickly. As a result, we have some applications which need a fresh copy of the production database everyday, and we are able to give that to them by eight o'clock in the morning.

Its snapshot capability is the most valuable feature, because replicate our databases from production to nonproduction for development. This allows us to do it very quickly.

The deduplication is pretty impressive because it will shrink. We also do some clones in addition to the snapshots, where we can have multiple clones. These reduce the actual written storage by as much as 50 percent.

It has latency issues.

It seems pretty stable. Once we got over the birthing pains, it has been pretty reliable.

As long as the array is not full, it is available. We filled it up.

It is very scalable. We can grow it up to the size that it will contain. Then, we have to move to another array, a bigger one, if we have to. However, my understanding is that is a pretty seamless process.

We moved to 3PAR from a different array, which was a smaller array with fewer controller cards in it. So, 3PAR did not increase our performance, and it has increased our latency by at least double.

We went with 3PAR because we have HP-UX systems. Since we already knew HP-UX, they offered us a significantly cheaper solution than the one that we had for storage.

The first array that they sent us was in some type of a factory mode. We didn't find that out until we loaded a bunch of data onto it, then we had to back it all off. We had to replace the array, which was sort of painful.

We are actually a federal customer, so we get the HPE Federal direct team helping us. Our experience was good, except for that one problem with the first array.

We evaluated Dell EMC, HPE, and some other competitors. We went with HPE because of the price point.

The biggest lesson that I learned from using 3PAR is the snapshot capability.

It's our primary storage and we are using it within two of our datacenters with replication between them. Actually, that part is currently being implemented.

Overall, performance is great. Personally, I'm fully satisfied, even when we had some problems, failed disks or some bug in a software version, HPE would always be fully proactive. They would actually tell us of the problem, even before we were aware of it.

For me, personally, I think the most important value is really the way HPE is treating us as a customer.

I would say that now that we even have flash storage on the 8200 models, it would be the deduplication. We were hoping to use the automated tiering much more, but it's not a good fit for us. Although the technology works great, due to our workload, it's really not an option for us. So, I would definitely say the deduplication on flash drives.

Downtime, never. I have heard of other customers having some serious issues. I personally am not the type of person that would say, "they are now the bad guys," because it can happen. It's technology. 

Overall, in my experience, maybe one of the worst was when we suddenly got a lot of different alerts. It caused some stress within our team, but later on it proved to be a bug in the firmware version. I think in two-weeks' time we received an update that resolved the issue. So, I really think it's stable. It's a good choice for the price.

I can say it is scalable because initially, when we bought our first 3PAR, we extended it up to its maximum over the years. That is the part, maybe, where I see room for improving for HPE. 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.

In terms of reaching the right person, actually, the way it goes is that they call us.

Of course they contact us via the partner, but they contact us, and the response is great. Everything is within SLA.

We had different storage. For instance, we used IBM storage. When the time for replacement came due to age of the old storage, we actually performed a tender. So, we didn't start with, "Okay. We are buying 3PAR." But, through the entire tendering process, we reached the place where it proved to be a good decision to buy HPE 3PAR.

I think storage implementation is never so straightforward, but I would say it's among the simplest to implement.

IBM. We went with HPE because the decision was, in the end, based on price. 

We had a list of required specifications, invited several vendors, they offered what they could. But in the end, when you get all of this matched, then the price decides.

For me, when we last did a purchase, last year or so, at that time flash drives and the deduplication were really important. Actually all of the vendors have it, offer it, but then we had some discussions looking at overall performance, resistance to disk failures and the like. I would say that HPE is the leader here.

In terms of the most important criteria when selecting a vendor - I'm saying with a small disclaimer, I'm saying this personally, so it's not the company - for me, the most important is always vendor support. We have, of course, contracts with partners that implemented the solutions, but I think that vendor support is mandatory in the way they are supporting you through the lifecycle of the product. It can overcome any problem the technology may deal with.

I give it an eight out of 10 overall. Whenever I rate something, I'm immediately going subtract one because I'm really reluctant to give a maximum grade, so say, "Okay, now it's nine." Well, there is room for improvement, and the way that the implementation of extensions goes is one of the examples. But, overall, I would say we are fully satisfied.

I actually do recommend HPE 3PAR because, for me, it proved to make my life easier.

We use the 3PAR as a centralized storage system where all of our data for production, mission critical data, are consolidated on that storage.

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. So, we are achieving the goal of performance with less cost.

It increases our availability and service provision. We provide service to many customers at the same time. Sharing of the resources is a good target we have achieved using 3PAR.

With the thin provisioning we have been able to satisfy a lot of the requests which before we could not. Our customers are requesting more space just to make sure they have it. So, with the thin provisioning, we gave them what they need, but we maintain some spare for the others.

We have used the Remote Copy from datacenter to datacenter, as well. It is efficient, and working as expected.

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

Also, the features that we are seeing in Simplivity, if integrated with the 3PAR, would be much better.

It is stable, above average. There were some obstacles, but support managed, in the end, to fix it. It wasn't the product itself, it was a configuration issue.

It is easy and efficient. It should meet our future needs when we need to scale.

I've used technical support, and the architecture support was efficient for us as well.

The importance of having thin provisioning was a key factor. And when we found out that 3PAR had been acquired by HPE, since we have good relations with HPE, it was a very efficient and easy decision to take. We have good support, and the functions that we are looking for come in one product.

It was straightforward, comparatively easier than EVA. We had an HPE support person helping us throughout.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor, or what we appreciate most about a vendor, are

• support
• easy to reach
• trust.

If you want a cost-effective solution, go for 3PAR. We did a PoC and found it effective.

• The most valuable feature to me is its reliability. After that, it is the architecture, and the rest of the HPE sort of products, like the blades and the storage.
• You've got the best of breed from a storage perspective, and a proven solution that integrates well with the HPE c7000 or the BladeSystem infrastructure. You have a solution that has been tried and tested by HPE as an overall solution.
• It enables us to use a virtualized layer. Until we deployed our 3PAR, we had pretty much everything as physical servers. With 3PAR, we are in the process of completing the virtualization of our services.

Small companies are interested in simplicity and a very granular licensing model is something that poses a number of challenges.
From the cost perspective, (usually this licensing model is geared towards revenue generating…) it makes it expensive but also from the admin point of view it ends up being cumbersome and difficult to manage. We had a number of issues when ordering an upgrade to existing array due to this licensing model.
Using a small number of bundles or just a single licensing model (like Nimble for example) will make the product more appealing and simplify the process of organizing an upgrade.

Stability-wise, I think it's very good. Support-wise, I think it’s debatable based on some issues that we had with it.

I think the scalability is one of the factors that caused us to select 3PAR.

Technical support was average, and bad handling some incidents.

We were using direct attached storage. We moved to Sun; and then we decided to implement 3PAR.

The initial setup was complex. I would say it was flawed because we had issues.

For the storage, we looked at Talent, which is now Dell. We also looked at Nutanix and Tintri. The main reason we chose HPE was that we already had an HPE infrastructure; and it felt like it was the best solution for our needs. The product met our requirements at the time.

Reliability is very important in a vendor. We also look at the breadth of offerings because we like to keep things simple. Rather than choosing a varied mix from a multitude of vendors, we like to go with a small number. I have a small team and it's easier from a management perspective, as well as understanding and supporting the product in the best way possible.

It all depends on what you need, and how you can justify the cost. It is not a cheap solution. It depends on what you have. If it's a brand new setup, then there are other paths you can take, and it's worth researching them. If you already have HPE deployments in-house on the server side, not the storage, I think 3PAR will definitely make a very great addition to your portfolio.