HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

The data deduplication is one valuable feature. Another thing is the fast storage possibility and the whole clustering mode. Because we have a dual data center set-up and we wanted to have a high availability solution, we chose HPE 3PAR.

This has helped our organization with fast storage and the whole administration which is handled quite automatically. In this way, I can save one full time equivalent (FTE) a year in my team, so that alone is a great benefit.

I would like to see a more stable deduplication because with the deduplication we have right now, the percentage that we can save is not as high as we hoped for. The second thing I’d like to see is a more scalable and faster storage possibility without the main licenses increasing in cost. Now that we are in a full flash set-up, we want to go to a set-up where we can use flash and slower disks. While that set-up possibility exists, there is a whole license step-up that has to be done. It takes too long to do all the licenses. The license and the flexibility towards licensing needs improvement.

The stability, “knock on wood”, is okay. My feeling is that this solution is rock solid stable.

We are on the verge of the next step up. We implemented last year and now we are going to double the capacity. Based on how it’s going so far, it will be an easy step up.

We rely on our partner for technical support. They have a direct connection with HPE for the support. So, at the moment, we have no issues.

Before we were using the EVA solution and HPE LeftHand. We had a large IOPS problems with our ERP system. They weren’t stable enough and they did not have a proven record for us. Our ERP system has a large database, lots of IOPS, and these solutions couldn’t handle it. That was why we changed to HPE 3PAR that has a full SSD solution that could handle the IOPS. The main competitor was NetApp. We chose HPE because of the stability. We know HPE, we have a multi-year contract with them. We looked at several reference cases and those convinced us to choose this solution.

When looking for a vendor, stability and a proven track record are the things to look for. I would absolutely recommend it. When you need fast storage, high capacity, and deduplication, it's a good solution.

We can deploy new servers and new solutions pretty quickly. If systems are stopped while the record picks up that they're starting to fail, we can add more resources to them quite dynamically.

It's a lot more automated and a lot easier, which provides us with a better business continuity solution.

HP has what they call the OSS, operation support site. I hand over all my BAU to HP to manage and fix, but they don't go down to the 3PAR level. We can't afford to fall back on government money to take the time to identify issues. OSS only provides high-level support, and it would be an improvement if they drilled down more.

3PAR deploys just fine for us.

It's stable generally. When we had problems, it was due to an omission in our manual process and not in the automated process. It's quite techy, so you need to make sure you have someone on your staff or an outside expert to provide advice.

It scales just fine.

We pay for proactive support from HP, but I wouldn't rate it 10/10. It's not as proactive as I'd like, though I'm not paying for the highest level of support. Sometimes, it's takes them 4 hours before they start doing things.

The initial setup was a bit complex and took much longer than we anticipated. We have 5,000 users now, but it took us two years to be able to get there.

We implemented it in-house.

Spend as much as you can on HP support for the product. Don't rely on it being all in-house.

Ease-of-use is very high on our list of features, as we are, like everyone else, trying to do more with fewer people.

The reliability is very high, as we have performed multiple firmware updates and some controller replacements all on-line with no downtime and no impact to our users.

Probably the most beneficial aspect from my viewpoint is that it has reduced the amount of time that I spend administering storage requests by at least 50%. This allows us to keep pace with the ever growing amount of storage that our users require.

The newer versions of the hardware have really addressed the minor concerns we had, specifically hard drive replacements which were tedious in earlier models due to shelf design. This is now a quick, easy task.

We have been using 3PAR for the last four years, and have a total of six arrays now.

Not really, as the arrays have performed with no down time or data loss since we first started using them four years ago.

10 out of 10. I've worked with HP support for over seven years in my current job and have always been happy with the level of expertise I have received.

My company has used HP storage arrays since before I joined.

Very straightforward installation and set-up.

HP services did the initial installation and base configuration of each of the storage arrays, and took one day for each array.

We use a reseller to purchase the 3PAR equipment, and we utilize HP professional services for installation and initial set-up.

I don't have an ROI as I am not really involved with the financing/budget side in any detail.

Licensing the features that we use was not overly complex to get worked out, and HP was very helpful in providing details on the features we needed to provide the functions we needed, which was primarily the synchronous replication between our sites.

We have evaluated other vendors over the years, but we have stayed with HP due to the high reliability and ease of use.

Work with your HP pre-sales people to determine which model of array will best satisfy your requirements. I've had very good relationships with all the HP technical and pre-sales that I have worked with over the years.

Excellent support staff and quality equipment.

The 3PAR arrays provide excellent performance for a very reasonable price point.

Their installation and design engineers leave something to be desired.

I've used it for five years.

The only issues we have had are with deployment. Depending on the quality of the installation engineer, one must keep a close eye on them in order to make sure that the equipment is connected and configured properly.

8/10 - most of the support staff are top shelf, but service can be ponderous if the wrong engineer is engaged.

I have used other HP arrays, EMC, Netapp, and Fujitsu. HP 3PAR by far has the best combination of great equipment, very good support, and good implementation staff. We have standardized on HP 3PAR for this reason.

As with most arrays, that is dependent on the system you’re installing. We tend to be “power users” and push the edges of how the equipment is used. In most situations, the setup is straightforward.

We engage HPs installation teams. My advice would be to make sure that future expansion plans are thoroughly discussed at the first installation to make sure that the array is as future proof as possible.

My team isn’t exposed to ROI.

I can say that one can realize very nice discounts if the order is placed towards the end of the calendar year, as that coincides with HPs fiscal end of year. Licensing for some features can be quite expensive, so one should take care to fully vet out which features should be licensed. Don’t let the sales team oversell licensing and make sure that the installation plan is fully understood.

We use it for the production and backup environments. We use it for a service that we deliver directly in our data center for our customers. It's a live environment, directly for the customers.

The stability is what we consider to be the best feature it provides. The stability of this solution is what conquers us, every day.

The deduplication is pretty good too. It does the work.

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

We have already had situations where we had to optimize and put more space on the storage. It has been very simple to get done. We are happy with what we have in place.

Technical support is pretty good. We always have somebody available to support us. We do have a maintenance contract with third-party vendors for HPE but we've been attended to very well in this field.

It was the first solution that we defined, at the beginning of the data center, so it has always been there. Since I joined the team after the data center was already implemented, I don't have a previous scenario to compare it to, what it has improved or not.

The setup was straightforward, because of the partnership that we maintain with Logicalis. They supported us during the whole deployment.

We used a company named Logicalis. They are our partners for everything that we have. Any doubt that we have or any challenges that we face, they are our port of call. We have had a good experience with them.

We are happy with what we have in place. You should consider getting this solution if you are in the process of acquiring or switching. I would suggest giving this a good look.

The biggest lesson we have learned from using the solution is the stability. This is what I always tell people. The stability is what surprises us. It's a stable solution.

In terms of growth, we are planning on going from 35 terabytes to around 50 terabytes in the six months. We will probably keep using 3PAR but we may change to something better. We are here at HPE Discover 2019 looking for other solutions. If we cannot find something better we will continue using the same technology, the 3PAR.

I would rate 3PAR at eight out of ten because we love the stability but sometimes we still lack upgrades for the solution.

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.

The product is not for us. We deploy solutions on-premise. We use this product for one of our customers.

We would like to see better support for iSCSI.

After being properly configured, it has been a very stable product.

Our systems are fairly static once they have been deployed.

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.

We were previously using multiple vendors. We switched to 3PAR for more performance, reliability, and we had challenges with MSAs (low-end storage).

The initial setup takes about two days.

I have not seen any ROI so far.

We evaluated Nexsan. However, we wanted to stay with HPE.

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.

We using it for our core compute (storage).

We have had it for about two years and had zero problems with it.

Less management.

• Dynamic disk pulling
• Ease of storage creation

In two years, I have had no downtime.

Scalability is excellent. It is easy to add drives. When you add drives into it, it automatically recognizes them and spins them up. 

One my engineers used the technical support, and they walked him right through the upgrades on the controllers.

We previously did not use another solution.

The initial setup was simple. It took me a single day to set it up.

We considered NetApp, EMC, and Dell. 3PAR came out on top.

I recommend this system to everybody because it doesn't fail. I am just installing another one now.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Good customer support
• Good technical support
• Price of the product
• Advanced features of the system.

These were all deciding factors.

It is our primary storage array for our virtual environment. We implemented it in the beginning of 2016. It has done well for us. 

We went to an Active-Active data center, set it up to where both data centers are separate, but they act as one. We can have workloads at either side at any given time, and it is all based on the Peer Persistence architecture.

• Remote copy
• Peer Persistence.

We have had a few issues with it. We had our virtual environment lock up a few times on storage-based things. We think we have it sorted out, but maybe it came down to a configuration issue on it.

They have starting to do some integration with the VMware and reporting from that. I think continuing along that path would be pretty good.

We have had some issues in the past, maybe due to configuration issues.

No issues with scalability.

We have used technical support. We have proactive care on it, but we found that the GDC team, which is the primary support team for it, has not been on the ball with everything.

There have been misunderstandings with what we are trying to do and with scheduling. We have two 3PARs, so they scheduled the wrong one for the work when it should have been the other one, or scheduling it on one and not the other one when they should be both in sync. 

We were using HPE EVA before and the solution had been in place for like six years at that point, so it was ageing, we're limited on what we could do with it. So, it was time to switch over to something that was newer, had better features.

The initial setup was straightforward and easy. We did the whole thing, including compute networking, like it was almost a a greenfield type of scenario. If we had not had an issue getting our circuits put into place, it would have been just a few months and we would have had the whole thing done. However, it was not just storage. It was a new virtual environment, we were putting in NSX networking, new networking switches from HPE, etc.

We had a partner that came in and helped us architect the whole thing, but one other guy and I worked through that whole implementation of it.

I can't really comment on it because I was not part of the whole purchase.

We talked with EMC a little bit, but it was decided pretty quickly that we were going with the HPE solution. We looked at the environment holistically, and we weren't just looking at we replacing storage. We thought, "How are we going to do storage, compute, and networking, then what will it look like?" Then, we chose to partner with HPE rather than just go with a one off here and there.

We have fewer limitations, but there are still limitations that we have work though. Overall, it is a good solution.

We set out to do something very specific with this, and that's the stretch metro cluster. A single VMware cluster across two data centers acting as one, not a lot of people do it in the way that we did it. I am not sure I could advise somebody unless they were doing the exact same thing.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Speed, scalability, and the ability to support a metro storage cluster environment.