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.

It serves as our centralized storage for three tiers of storage, and we have half a petabyte.

It performs very, very well.

We've had an overall improvement of performance in terms of actually doing transaction data, and we have a lot more capacity than we once had.

The most valuable feature for me is the support, three tiers of support. Storage is storage. The reality is, is it available and functional? Service and support are more important than capacity.

I would like to see compatibility with NVMe.

Resilience and reliability, unmatched. They take good care of us.

The scalability is far beyond what we'll ever need.

The service and support are far better than any other service and support I've had. They are very proactive and very sensitive to any kind of disruption of functionality.

Our data center was compromised and I had to replace the entire data center. Our previous solution was HPE LeftHand.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor are

• cost
• reliability
• support.

The setup was complex from the perspective of the employees having to go through five days of training. If they simplified the administrative process of maintaining the unit, that would go a long way.

We have seen value when it comes to ROI but I can't elaborate.

Nimble. We went with 3PAR because we got a special deal on pricing.

I rate this solution an eight out of 10 because administrative functionality requires five days of training.

Our use case is Oracle, VMware, and Citrix. Performance is good, but our main scope is to have high availability.

We have 24 hour production, so it is working.

High availability features are the most important for us.

Maybe someone can add the suite of features into the Synergy enclosures. That would be a great feature for us.

I would like them to improve it so I can do firmware upgrades without downtime.

It is very stable. That is why we bought it.

Sometimes when we do firmware upgrades, then we must have downtime, but this is plant maintenance.

Scalability is very good. We now use only 50% of controllers, so we can scale up from 50% to 100%, when we need it. We also have additional space in the enclosures for additional disks, so we can scale up without any downtime. 

We have automatic technical support.

We have called technical support. They are helpful and do not give you the runaround.

We have compared a lot of vendors and this was the best solution for us. We were running it when it was originally 3PAR and was not merged with HPE. 

We are very happy with the solution.

I would recommend this solution.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Support is very important for us and the reaction time when we have a problem.

Cost per disk storage, uptime, and ease of upgrade.

It runs all the time. I've never had a problem with it. Upgrades have been flawless. We've had controllers die in the middle of the day, and it was no big deal. We've had shelves die in the middle of the day with no impact to our end users whatsoever.

I think they just released Flash Cache. It is the new SSD where you write all your caching information to flash disk, and then it writes it down to your nearline or your flash disk. We just bought all new flash cache for that purpose. So that was one of the features we were looking for.

I don't know that you could improve on the 3PAR very much, other than maybe the 3PAR management console. It's kind of an old school console, it's not web- based. It's a fat client that you have to install. It would be nice to have a web- based version that I could go anywhere to, versus having to go back to the 3PAR management console.

Stability is top-notch.

Scalability has been really good. We've constantly added shelves and disk space to it from the beginning. I think we started out with a 12 to 13 terabyte system, and now we're up to a 60 terabyte system. It has grown exponentially with us over the last few years.

I have used tech support and it’s good. You get some people who are more knowledgeable than others, but for the most part, we've never had a problem. We've always gotten the answer that we needed to sort the problem out.

We knew that we needed a new solution. We had to move from some old EMC equipment. We had looked at what they had, their price offering versus what we could get at HPE for the same dollar, and this solution was exponentially better.

I was involved in the initial setup, and it was very straightforward. The HPE engineer came on site, sat down, showed us how to do things as he built and designed it. It was very good.

We had looked at Pure Storage , Hitachi , and a couple others. However, 3PAR gave us the best bang for the buck.

Go with it. It's a beast of a storage system. We love ours.

When looking for a vendor, the most important thing is support.

To me, the deduplication features and compression are really helpful. The all-flash integration is valuable. It's high-density storage, so the total cost of ownership of the solution is good for a company.

It's easy to manage. There is less need to manage the storage and we are more able to focus on the business.

Product improvement is a matter of the orientation of storage solutions in the market. Product improvement will follow the market trend and HPE will follow market trend about storage solutions.

It's I think a five-9s (99.999%) solution, so it's very stable.

It can be scaled to more than enough capacity. So, it's okay.

Technical support is useful and helpful.

We did use previous solutions, but it's a matter of quality and it's a matter of economics and that was the choice.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

We looked at Dell EMC and HPE. We chose HPE because of the product portfolio that they keep alive and evaluate and improve. The one we chose includes all the features and capabilities that the company makes.

I suggest to sometimes be disruptive in the choice of storage solution and don't always focus on the continuity. Sometimes discontinuity may help. When picking a vendor, reliability is important. Stability is important as well, but in the matter of looking at the future.

Flexibility, in regards to the different disk tiers in the 3PAR, is the most valuable feature.I can manually move data between the different tiers (NL, FC or SSD) or I can let AO do it for me. Thus I do not need 100% precise planning in advance.

I can play with it real time, all day. There's no need for a very dedicated planning for the future because I always can change it.

Stability could be better. We have had it 3 years and we had three down times.

We scaled up in the past and we will scale up again next month. The last time the previous system engineer did this. I don't have experience with scalability.

The quality of technical support was inconsistent. I did not always find that they dealt with our issues on time.

There were HPE EVAs before and they were at the end of their life.

When looking at vendors, the most important aspect is openness; that they really talk open and are not just marketing.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup.

I don't know if other vendors were evaluated. It was before my time. But, there are still better products. I would like to have an HPE XP7.

Go and play. We have a lot of offices and backup sites so they can really get hands on. That's the benefit.

It's dynamic and easy to manage. It really meets our requirements.

We are in healthcare and we do a lot of imaging with huge amounts of data. If and when we need more storage space, extending 3PAR is easy. It has made everything more simple.

There aren’t many things to improve, but better monitoring would help us get a better look at everything we are doing. I would like to see more monitoring and graphs. It's not easy to pick up the correct numbers. Graphs would make it easier to measure performance. It could be that we don't know everything yet. There is a learning curve. I don't think we have seen the whole potential yet. Maybe I would give it a 10 rating soon.

We have had the solution for approximately 5 years.

It's stable. There haven’t been any problems. If something goes wrong, HPE support helps us.

Technical support is easily 9 out of 10. It's really good.

We weren’t using a previous solution, but we did upgrade from HP EVA. Once we starting using this solution, there were some problems with the performance. We tried to see what the reason was. The system was slow. It has been fixed, but at the time, it was difficult to get an idea of where the problem was. This problem was resolved.

I was involved with the installation, but I didn’t do too much. We had HP EVA and we upgraded to 3PAR. It went smoothly. There was a lot of old data that had to be moved to the new tool, and there were no problems at all.

Our shortlist of vendors including Fujitsu. We have something from them. However, I think it benefits us the most when we stick with one vendor, which is HPE. We try to stick with HPE and HPE tools.

All of the products with every vendor have their strong points. The strong point for HPE was that we had used HPE before. We were able to transform from the old system (EVA) to 3PAR, and that was the main reason at that time we switched. Now that we've been using it, we know a lot more.