HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

The solution allows us to provide solid capacity.

The team provisions and it has been wonderful for our environment. We manage hundreds of terabytes. It allows us to deliver more storage than other solutions. It allows us to have many files so we can provide better service for our customers.

Right now, we don't use a solid-state disk. We use a historical monitoring platform for a Telco. For the long-term storage, we don't need so much speed. However, now that we are dealing with the main BI and doing big data with that information, we will need to speed up really fast. Right now, we are thinking of adding some solid-state capacity, or even better, get a new, solid-state controller. That is the new initiative that we have been looking into.

We have not experienced any down times since we started 3PAR. For us, it was the right decision. It was the best way to provide a storage solution for our company. It has been running for over two years without any down time.

In terms of scalability, once we made the capacity planning in the very beginning, we did not need increased capacity. Our operation is stable. We manage a certain kind of volume of data. We don't need to increase so frequently. We have been working with the capacity with which we started at the beginning.

We have used technical support. They came most of the time, even if I didn't need it. I called and they sent some drives if I needed them. There were some pre-failure alarms that we needed to replace and they took care of it. Technical support has been working great.

We were using another solution before. We were spread over different locations so it was the most affordable solution we found.

We needed a new solution. We were working with a partner and they showed us options. We discussed price and we got the point between stability, reliability, and price. These were the main factors in choosing this solution.

The setup was straightforward. It was easy. Most of the activities were done remotely. The field engineer did a lot of it. The factory people get in and set up all the equipment.

We talked to Dell and EMC. We decided upon HPE because the partner with whom we worked hand-in-hand had been working with them for many years.

I would highly recommend this solution. The trends in storage solutions have been going through a lot of changes. They are not as centered on basic storage. They are moving to local and multiple nodes of storage. These storage-defined solutions have been evolving a lot over these last couple of years. It will be a harder decision to choose between one or another vendor.

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.

I am a solution architect, solution designer. Depending on the customer requirements and type of setup, some use the latest versions while others use previous versions.

The solution is used in production environments and cloning environments. We have cloned it multiple times to get better optimization of the storage usage in terms of deduplication.

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.

If HPE 3PAR could handle NAS and all things related to NAS, you would not need to have a mixture of different storages, storage boxes, one solution could fit all. 

I have been working with HPE 3PAR StoreServ for 7 years.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is a stable product.

This solution is scalable.

I have compared HPE 3PAR with NetApp, they have a monopoly over the NAS and can handle NAS very well. 

I would rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ an 8 out of 10  as a solution.

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.