HPE 3PAR StoreServ is an enterprise storage that is mainly deployed in enterprise scenarios like banking and insurance.
Head of Engineering at Informatics (Private) Limited
An enterprise storage solution that is deployed in banking and insurance companies, but it stability could be improved
Pros and Cons
- "HPE 3PAR StoreServ is an enterprise storage that is mainly deployed in enterprise scenarios like banking and insurance."
- "The solution’s stability could be improved."
What is most valuable?
What needs improvement?
The solution’s stability could be improved.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ an eight out of ten for stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Around 20 customers use the solution extensively in their companies.
I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ a seven out of ten for scalability.
Buyer's Guide
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
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How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward if it is a single server. If there are multiple servers, the initial setup becomes complex.
What about the implementation team?
A single server takes an hour to be deployed.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution has two parts: software and hardware, and you need to buy licenses for some features.
What other advice do I have?
One admin is enough to maintain the solution if it is single storage. A complex environment with a heavy workload will need more people to maintain the solution.
I would recommend HPE 3PAR StoreServ to users based on their use cases.
Overall, I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ a seven out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator
Business Development Manager at IT as a Service Solutions
A stable and performance-oriented product
Pros and Cons
- "I am impressed with the product's online upgrades."
- "The engagement of the tool's vendor is costly."
What is our primary use case?
We use the product for virtualization environment.
What is most valuable?
I am impressed with the product's online upgrades.
What needs improvement?
The engagement of the tool's vendor is costly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the tool for five years.
How are customer service and support?
The product's support is both good and bad.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
The tool's deployment is straightforward due to experience. Initially, it was difficult.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate the product an eight out of ten. A stable and performance-oriented product.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
Buyer's Guide
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Delivery Manager/Program Director at Qvantel
Helps to store data for high-loaded and high-performing systems like business communications systems and telecommunications
Pros and Cons
- "The solution fetches quick responses in milliseconds which can be within 40-50 milliseconds."
- "The tool has low storage and low performance. This can be solved by adding more disco to the solution. The product’s pricing is also suited for enterprise businesses rather than smaller ones.I would like to see better performance, UI, and compatibility with other products in future releases."
What is our primary use case?
This solution helps to store data for high-loaded and high-performing systems like business communications systems and telecommunications.
What is most valuable?
It fetches quick responses in milliseconds which can be within 40-50 milliseconds.
What needs improvement?
The tool has low storage and low performance. This can be solved by adding more disco to the solution. The product’s pricing is also suited for enterprise businesses rather than smaller ones.I would like to see better performance, UI, and compatibility with other products in future releases.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with the solution for ten years.
How are customer service and support?
The solution’s tech support is good. You will get a dedicated account manager.
How was the initial setup?
The solution is easy to deploy.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. You need to properly assess your needs before buying the solution since there are chances of overpaying. The type of configuration that you choose can make the price go higher or lower.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Sr. Manager - IT Systems at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees
Flexible and convenient with good integration capabilities
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is easy to install."
- "While the stability is pretty good, it could always be improved upon."
What is most valuable?
It's a very convenient product. I find it easy to use.
It's very flexible in terms of management.
It's an enterprise tool.
The integration is good. We've integrated it with other UNIX platforms and Windows platforms.
The solution is easy to install.
The pricing is okay.
What needs improvement?
I'm not sure how good the security is.
While the stability is pretty good, it could always be improved upon.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for almost four years at this point. I've used it for a while.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution has been very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable and a company can expand it if they want to.
We only have 100 people that actually use the solution.
How are customer service and technical support?
The support on offer is very good. We don't have any issues with them. They are helpful and responsive and we are satisfied with the support we get when we need it.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did use Hitachi last year.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not overly difficult or complex. it's pretty simple and straightforward.
The deployment is fast and within a day you can have everything up and running.
We have engineers available that can assist with deployment and maintenance.
What about the implementation team?
We had support from HPE directly. They assisted us in the implementation.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We're using it as a SaaS. The pricing is reasonable. It's not cheap, however, I don't consider it to be overpriced.
We have an annual support contract. It will contain a certain percentage of the storage cost.
What other advice do I have?
I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. I've been pretty happy with its capabilities.
I'd recommend the solution to other users and organizations.
We don't have plans to leave this solution any time soon. We'll likely have it for the next two to three years.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
General Manager at Bilgipark Görüntü ve İletişim San. Tic. A.S.
A stable enterprise storage solution
Pros and Cons
- "I like that it's stable. This is the reason why we're using these products. We work in the broadcast market, and stability is very important. HPE has global services, and that's also important. Dell and HPE are some big companies, and their solutions are robust and stable."
- "From an overall perspective, all the latest technologies can improve support and performance. This is very important for us."
What is our primary use case?
We use it on a project basis and based on the customer's requirements. We use the HPE systems in data centers with servers and virtual environments. This is the most common use case.
What is most valuable?
I like that it's stable. This is the reason why we're using these products. We work in the broadcast market, and stability is very important. HPE has global services, and that's also important. Dell and HPE are some big companies, and their solutions are robust and stable.
What needs improvement?
From an overall perspective, all the latest technologies can improve support and performance. This is very important for us.
For how long have I used the solution?
As a company, we have been selling HPE 3PAR StoreServ for more than 24 years. Personally, I've been dealing with it for more than 18 years.
What other advice do I have?
On a scale from one to ten, I would give HPE 3PAR StoreServ a nine.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator
Director, Systems & Architecture at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Needs better support for iSCSI, as it was not designed for it initially
Pros and Cons
- "After being properly configured, it has been a very stable product."
- "We would like to see better support for iSCSI."
What is our primary use case?
We use it as a shared storage solution for a virtualized environment. It is not for complex business needs. It is really just for storage, and not even a very large amount of storage: between 20 to 40 terabytes.
We have used it in three environments. We were not happy with the performance initially, because it turned out the system was initially designed for Fibre Channel, and we needed iSCSI. So, we used the iSCSI configuration option off of 3PAR. This was probably when 3PAR was purchased by HPE, but the performance were extraordinarily bad in terms of I/O capabilities. It took a long time to obtain HPE's help and resolve the issue. This was for iSCSI in the context of VMware for shared storage.
How has it helped my organization?
The product is not for us. We deploy solutions on-premise. We use this product for one of our customers.
What needs improvement?
We would like to see better support for iSCSI.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
After being properly configured, it has been a very stable product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Our systems are fairly static once they have been deployed.
How are customer service and technical support?
Their technical support is bad. I would rate it as a two out of 10.
After we insisted for quite some time, then we did receive good support. However, it was a bother, we would have liked to have known initially that the system was not designed for iSCSI.
In the end, we ended up selecting something else.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were previously using multiple vendors. We switched to 3PAR for more performance, reliability, and we had challenges with MSAs (low-end storage).
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup takes about two days.
What was our ROI?
I have not seen any ROI so far.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Nexsan. However, we wanted to stay with HPE.
What other advice do I have?
Be extremely careful if you want to use the iSCSI feature of the 3PAR. It was not designed for it initially.
We were using low-end storage from HPE. I was hoping to get something a bit midrange in their storage, in terms of price with the reliability. I am still hoping that it will be reliable despite poor initial performance previously. As the problem was fixed, I am hopeful it would be reliable in the long run.
Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We need something stable and reliable in the long run. Our contracts are at least five years, and they can be extended all of the way to seven to 10 years.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Director Technology Infrastructure at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Ease of management has cut our storage administration workload significantly
Pros and Cons
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
It's primarily used as our primary SAN, storage area network. We store all sorts of data and VMs on that particular set of disks. It's for local data center usage. We have three data centers now, one in Atlanta, one in Dallas, one in Provo. We aren't doing any site to site replication. It's really just localized and we're trying to get to a point where we are actually doing site to site replication for DR and things of that nature.
The performance is good. We enjoy it. We like it.
How has it helped my organization?
The ease of management is what changed. Where we had, in simple terms, about an hour's worth of work, it has minimized that to maybe one-tenth, or something to that effect. Instead of us having to do a lot of steps to ensure that our environment is where it needs to be from a storage perspective, because of the ease of management, the UI differences, it has allowed us to manage our environment.
What is most valuable?
- 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
- The automation that is built in
We used to have EMC and we have found that it's a lot easier to manage.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability is very good. No issues thus far.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We haven't really had to scale it yet. We got a pretty large footprint initially. I think we've added some SSDs, some nearline disk. But from that perspective, no issues, no complaints.
How are customer service and technical support?
Most of what we have had to engage support on has been, "Hey, how do we do this?" or, "Hey, I see this, but I don't understand. What can I do?" We've had pretty good experiences so far.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We had a set of vendors come in and do proofs of concept to help us better understand what options and features were available. Based upon what we found with HPE and 3PAR - I wasn't actually a part of the initial assessment, this is all stuff that I heard when I came on board - it just was the best solution for us at the time.
How was the initial setup?
My team was involved in the initial setup and I managed the team. We had three resources that were a part of the setup, so they were onsite with the engineers. They got a week or so of training each. That was pretty much all we were a part of during the initial setup.
It was probably complicated because most of our team were used to EMC and it's a different kind of mindset. Even today, there are a lot of things that we haven't leveraged because we simply don't have the expertise. Over time, though, as we've used the tool, we've become more comfortable with it.
What was our ROI?
I don't know if we've done enough analysis to gauge ROI yet.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
As far as I know, we had three vendors on our short-list: HPE, EMC, and a third vendor I don't recall at the moment.
What other advice do I have?
Definitely learn the features of the product, what it takes to actually administer and manage it, what type of resource load is also required. It's not necessarily a tool that enables anyone who says, "Hey, we bought a SAN, go take it over." It really takes someone who has an understanding of and background in the tool, maybe even a little background with HPE. Just make sure you fully understand what you're getting into.
I would rate it a nine out of 10. We've been fairly satisfied with the product, we haven't had any issues. It's definitely not something that you can easily jump into without that initial set of knowledge to help you understand how to use the tool. From our perspective, the way we went into it was backward. We bought and then learned, instead of learned and then bought. That has been a part of our hurdle but, overall, it has been a good product.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Systems Architect at a university with 10,001+ employees
Provides Veeam integration and the ability to set I/O limits.
What is most valuable?
We went through a whole data center refresh cycle and one of the things is that we needed to look at our disk system. Everything was for spinning disks, so we decided to make the leap to an all SSD data center. We brought in all the competitors, went through an RFP process and 3PAR came ahead. Some of the main things, for us, that we were looking for was the Veeam integration, i.e., the ability to set I/O limits (floors, ceilings, etc). That was the one thing that we were missing and the customer experience was suffering because of it; we were having all these I/O bottlenecks so we were spending more time having the disk manage us, rather than us managing the disk. It was a huge struggle for us.
A little bit of a background about us. UBC is the largest university in Western Canada, we have over 6000 VMs and what we do is Infrastructure as a service for all the higher education in British Columbia. That is around 25 or 26 other institutions, so they look at us for their infrastructure and we provide it. We're not for profit so cost is really important to us because it's publicly funded and it's the tax payer's money.
We wanted to make sure that we found the balance of the experience, cost, supportability for a small team to do this and 3PAR came out ahead with that. It wasn't just the technology, it was, also the relationship that we had with HPE over the years. We don't really have time to fiddle around with things because we're a small team we just want to get to the point and move on and do the next thing. Even though we're not for profit and we're a university, the customers still have the same demands as a bank in all this; they're servicing students and students are young people who just want to click on things, and they just want things instantly as they've been trained with an iPhone (you click, download an app and it just works). They don't have the patience so that trickles down to our team, which then trickles down to the vendors. It's like show us what you can do and go through the list if it doesn't work, then it's out.
The other important thing, in my opinion, is that the relationship is also very important. Technology problems you can be overcome, but relationships issues with the sales teams and resellers really can't. If you have a poor relationship and no matter how well the technology works, that's still going to impact it. HPE has been a partner with us (we do have a lot of partners), but they have been a loyal partner with us and really wanted to know what our problems were and how to resolve them. They get down to the point, such as how do we solve your problems and they understand when we went through it. It doesn't feel like we're being sold, but instead like we're kind of working together.
What needs improvement?
The one thing that we've always struggled with are the file sizes. With our competitor, we have had issues with the file sizes (I'm talking about the VMDK sizes) and how big a drive can be. HPE 3PAR, still, has a limit of 16 terabytes for VMDK limit and I think there is more to do in this aspect. There are ways to go around it but we still want DDUP and the compression functionality, if we want to turn those on we have to stay at 16TB. We're working with them on that and it is our biggest hurdle right now. Five years ago, 16 terabytes was big, but not anymore, i.e., not with current file servers. We don't know what the users are doing on the other end, because it's the Infrastructure as a service so we just get the feedback. I want to make a 64 terabyte drive and we need to work through this right.
For how long have I used the solution?
Actually, we're new with users of the HPE 3PAR solution, this is our first 3PAR and we have just acquired it three months ago.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We're really happy with the stability of the product. Everything's self-service, so our whole cloud-front is fronted by the vCloud Director. The goal with this small team is self-service, so we just publish the new tiers and people start using the tiers. There haven't been any complaints. There are a few technical things with them, we think are to do with the software that we will work through with them, provide feedback, and see how it goes. It has actually exceeded in quite a few spots.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's VMware so they're all data stores, and data store moves are non-descriptive so we can just keep providing more data stores and then, the software figures out where to place the workloads. If the customers aren't happy with the current performance tier that they're on, then they can self-move to a higher tier. SSD's are coming down in price, it's a usable price range now and having an all SSD data center is actually functional.
How is customer service and technical support?
Technical support is good. It's the standard HPE support where you go through the tiers and if you've worked in IT for a while, you know to mention the words as how to move up. For example, you can ask for the duty manager and then you'll get escalated. However, we haven't got to that point yet. It's pretty new, I'm sure that with anything new we seem to push things to the limit, so it will get to that. I can't say anything negative about it.
How was the initial setup?
They sent us a team to work with us for the setup process. They still kind of managed the firmware and upgrades right now. It is pretty new and simple to use, it wasn't hard to figure it out. They sent one of their post-sales SEs to come in and go through the training. In two days, the team kind of got it. It's mostly that one of the goals to go back to a small team is we want something that is set and then to forget about it; we don't want to sit there all day and manage it. We want to put it on the floor, be able to do capacity planning, alert all those pieces but we don't want to manage it.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Traditionally, we were using NetApp. We did look at IBM, Lenovo, Nimble and all of them. Actually, Nimble didn't come to the table, they missed it; so IBM, Lenovo, and Dell are the solutions we looked at.
They missed the thing, it's hard to describe because earlier we used to strongly believe strongly in just using NFS for ESX since it was easier to manage. However, with SSDs, NFS actually puts in a little bit of latency in it because you have to change that protocol thing. When we wrote the IRP, we made sure that everybody could reply and I think they missed it. There was some sort of miscommunication, so basically, everybody was on that chart.
When we are looking at a vendor, it's a mixture of everything. Basically, for our IRP, the feedback from the vendors was good, this is our problem how would you solve it. These are mandatory and minimum requirements whilst selecting a vendor, these are highly desirable, and we broke it all down so that they could fill it all in. The feedback was good, it was easy to fill out but there were somethings that some players could do. Veeam was big and we use them for all our stuff, but not everybody integrates with Veeam. The alerting capacity planning and all those things were a big thing for us too.
What other advice do I have?
We're not fully pushing the envelope on it, but there are no complaints. Everything's good, the team has been good from the support to the setup to the post-support setup, to we've actually opened a ticket to do their firmware upgrade part. They gave us the plan and broke it down as to what they're going to do and when they're going to do it. Things have been good.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Buyer's Guide
Download our free HPE 3PAR StoreServ Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Updated: December 2024
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Download our free HPE 3PAR StoreServ Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
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