HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

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.

The primary uses are for the server environment and for the file share system. This how we store our files. This is what we mostly use the system for.

Performance is amazing. The downtime is almost none. It is easy to manage, even for their new software updates, the integration with the server, and with all the HPE environment.

It provides very fast deployment. The performance for our most critical applications is very quick. Even the support is 24/7.

• Security for encryption
• Performance
• The support, because we have the online support directly with HPE. Any error or any incidents, they are directly involved and solve it. It makes our life much easier, even as IT. 

HPE has a product that I am very interested in, but it lacks of integration with 3PAR - HPE SimpliVity. If it could be integrate with 3PAR, it would be amazing. This is what I am looking for going forward.

We have not had any downtime in two and a half years.

It is scalable. The model we have, we scaled it last year. We bought another rack mount, and we extended it to 12TB. It is easy to scale, easy to manage, and easy to configure. 

Thanks to HPE remote IT assistance, they can do the updates with the configuration in best-case scenario.

Even for a future of big environment, if we wanted to go bigger, we can migrate easily to other bigger projects or bigger versions.

The support is easy. It is either by phone or by email. Mostly by email. They are supportive and they answer any question. It is perfect.

Yes, HPE EVA, the older one. It is at end of life. They are no longer updating it or supporting it, so we needed to switch.

The initial setup was straightforward.

HPE helped us with the configuration, so it took us approximately one week to set up. 

We thought about EMC. But as I mentioned, in terms of integration and compatibility, 3PAR was better because we have EVA. To migrate from EVA to 3PAR with 3PAR is zero downtime migration, and with EMC, it was little bit complex. That is why, we did not want to risk it.

If he has HPE servers, I would totally tell him go with HPE 3PAR. If he has another company's servers, I am not 100% sure about the compatibility with other products, but for management and for configuration, I would recommend 3PAR.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

1. The integration with systems that we are going to use. For example, our server environment is HPE. The first that we think about is something compatible with this and easy to manage. That is why we choose HPE. 
2. The performance and even their views. When you check those consultations, reports, HPE is ahead in leadership, in terms of storage.

It's advantageous in terms of the cost, in terms of the performance, and taking up less space. We are exploring more with this storage.

It has features which are really giving advantages to our company, because we as a service provider are providing the services, infrastructure, and applications - or software as a service - to other entities. In that case, a virtual domain has been introduced in 3PAR and we can create their own pool where they are able to manage their own resources, instead of we, as storage admin, getting involved in that.

The features we need to provide to the different entities, it's meeting our criteria. That is the reason we went ahead with 3PAR, and we implemented it in the environment. So far, so good. People are asking for the services and, yes, we do provide the services through the 3PAR. 

And IOPs which has been gravely needed in terms of the back end and in terms of the front end, to meet application needs, I'm glad it's meeting up. So we are not encountering any risk at all.

So far, no disaster has happened, so I can't comment any more than that on the stability.

Since it's going to expand to a 240 disk maximum, in terms of scalability I have to go for another controller with the nodes and stuff. But based on the model, if you go ahead with a good different model, it supports more disk space in your enclosure areas.

So far I've only opened one case, in the beginning when I implemented a 3PAR in my environment, and I can say I'm satisfied.

It is straightforward. It's user friendly.

We did an evaluation comparing it with the EMC, and we determined that it's better to go ahead with this.

We are using many products from HPE. We are using storage savers and 3PAR, and even the private cloud. We are happy with the service, the products, the support. This is what we like most. It is only not about buying something. The support and the services you get after buying is the most important thing in IT.

Anything that will make the datacenter more scalable, more available, that would be great. Also, easier to operate or monitor, that would be good.

I haven't had any reports about any incident or problem, so I assume it's stable and working fine. It's good.

In general what HPE can provide, it can meet my needs.

Usually the support is through partners, a contract after the sale, and they are always available. Kuwait is a small country so they are onsite. We don't have a problem contacting tech support.

When it comes to upgrades, if they're complex, they're complex from our side. We need to identify what we need exactly, and most of the time this is done with a consultant or in cooperation with HPE and their partners. Once we know exactly what we need and what we're missing, then it's straightforward.

Because we are a university, it may be that our IT is more sensitive because the whole learning process depends on the IT services. So any problem, even for a short duration, would cause a big headache.

I give 3PAR an eight out of 10. I'm happy. We are happy. We cannot give it a perfect score because they need to improve more. We always we need to push them.

Switching from HDDs to SSDs, because of better performance (IOPS) and, hopefully, reliability.

No improvement for the organization, it's "only" storage, but due to moving from one system to two systems, we are now able to use fail-over and load-balancing functions on different locations.

• OS/patch/firmware installation can only be done by a division of HPE Support, which must be coordinated.
• Error reporting and alarming needs additional VMs per node (SPOCK) and cannot be integrated in HPE Remote Support, which is used for all the other HPE devices (FC Switches, Proliant Servers, etc.).

Approximately nine months, and still in the migration process, so a total assessment of the whole product and it's functionality is still not possible.

So far, no issues with stability.

So far, no issues with scalability.

The level of technical support which we have used up to now has been good, but luckily there have been no major issues. I cannot rate how such issues would be solved.

It's not a different solution, same vendor with the follow-up product, with newer technology and more space.

The setup of the storage itself was OK and not too complex, but there are additional VMs (or appliances) needed for remote support, reporting, etc., which can only be set up by HPE or a partner technician.

The new licensing model includes every function for the same price, and in terms of price, everything is possible if HPE is interested in getting the contract.

Yes, Tintri T850, but at the time of the PoC the solutions provided by Tintri were not scalable enough for future demands.

Everything works as expected but, as stated above, we are still in the process of migrating our data from our old storage.

We use a lot of different products by HPE, with 3PAR being one of the biggest. When we look at Synergy, we see how we can integrate. We have our 3PAR SAN. We see how we have our physical servers and how we can remove them and bring everything together. 3PAR will always be our back-end and it will always be our storage back-end.

If we can start leveraging some of this cool, new technology into how we deploy servers and how we give our DEV teams and our production teams exactly what they need in the shortest time possible, then that will define our business.

It is easy to use. The OS and the UI are straightforward. It's all manageable inside HPE OneView and it is attached to HPE Synergy. It's a unified experience. It really sucks going through 10 different systems and trying to fit all of them in. It takes too long and it is confusing. In fact, being unified is what it is all about. Being unified is the biggest win and the biggest draw.

We would like to see more Nimble integration, now that HPE owns Nimble. We would like to see how they come up with solutions to integrate Nimble storage and all-flash storage into our existing 3PAR traditional spinning disk. We would like to see what kinds of benefits that would give us. Perhaps we could add more cache.

It is extremely stable. We don't really have any problems. They release updates pretty frequently if there are any major issues. We've never suffered a catastrophic failure. It's been pretty enterprise grade, rock-solid for us.

The scalability is awesome. We just recently upgraded to a new system, and we now have the capacity to scale up. Essentially, the sky is the limit. We'll never get that big because our company is not that big. However, if we wanted to, we could easily scale.

We have used technical support. Usually, they're pretty good, but there's some room for improvement there. Typically, if we have a SevOne, Class A, super high-priority issue, production-down issue, they're pretty good. There are a lot of different cooks in that kitchen. There are a lot of different people and a lot of different, moving pieces. If they can get that integrated a little tighter, that would be even better. But overall, technical support is pretty good.

We were using BlueArc. It is not as resilient and not as robust. It is not as enterprise-grade as an actual HPE 3PAR system is.

When selecting a vendor, you want name recognition. You want to know that you're getting the best of breed. You want hardware services because it's not just about the hardware. The hardware can be awesome, but if you don't have the service to support it, manage it, and maintain it, then it's kind of pointless. HPE brings all of that together: Hardware, service, and support. It's all there.

The installation was actually pretty straightforward. Everything is well-documented, which is another big plus. HPE has always been there for us through each step.

We've looked at Dell, but we've always been an HPE shop. We don't really have any plans of changing that.

I say try it out. There are a lot of test drives of all their solutions. Look at the UI. See how well you can integrate with your existing systems and talk to the HPE guys. They are willing to show off all their technology and all their solutions.

We are very interested to see what HPE starts to offer in terms of integrated Nimble all-flash storage solutions. We’re also curious if HPE are going to introduce anything to augment an existing 3PAR system (ie; are they pluggable modules or expansion hardware that can take advantage of new Nimble-powered low latency, fast access flash storage?). And if they do have these types of solutions roadmapped, we are very interested in seeing what the average and peak theoretical transfer speed/access time improvements are!

The most valuable features are the scalability and the support, because you need to keep the business running.

I am not sure that there are benefits over other solutions. It's just that we've always used HPE. I think it comes down again to be more about support and the scalability.

I would like to see a lot more monitoring and reporting out of the box.

It is very stable.

We've scaled it up quite a bit. It doesn’t have any problems.

Technical support is getting better.

I used to use HPE EVA. We needed to switch because we couldn't expand anymore.

The initial setup was complex. I was one of the first customers to get their StoreServ 7400. It wasn't a good experience at all. The guy who set it up didn't really understand the technology that he was building. He didn't have build documents. The solution that I was initially sold wasn't correct so the workloads failed. It was a nightmare.

I looked at things like Tintri and another company that I forget the name of now. They didn't have the support model that I needed at the time.

I think that it's a more mature product now, so you’ll probably have a better experience; but certainly do your homework on your actual workloads and what you need. We initially got a solution which died all the time because we were trying to get too much output.