HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

It is our primary storage. The entire company runs off 3PAR. Right now, we are in a VMware environment. All of our virtual machines are stored on 3PAR, along with all of our EMR applications, practice management solutions, and email. All of our virtual machines are running off of 3PAR. Our file server is on there too.

The product has heavily improved the way our organizations functions. Before we got the 3PAR, we were running an HPE Generation 6 server as our storage server. It was slow, and we were getting low on space, so we weren't able to expand capacity that easily. Since we went to 3PAR, it has fiber connections connecting all the cabinets together. Therefore, data access has been tremendously better, especially when we have to constantly recall, all day long everyday, patients charts or when we are doing scheduling. We see over 2000 patients on a daily basis, so we have to have speed and reliability. By implementing 3PAR over the old, regular file storage server that we had before, it has drastically improved our patient care.

Reliability is its most valuable feature. We have multiple cabinets with multiple failure points, so if there is one failure then we don't have worry about it. It is easy to replace a part of the cabinet when we are up and running. We can replicate back over, then we are good to go. Our uptime has to be there, so we can continue seeing patients. That is the biggest part of the reliability that I am looking for.

I would like an easier user interface and setup to help with deployment. There were many areas of the setup where I was like, “Why don't we do it this way?” Therefore, some of the things in the user interface could have been more refined, so you don't have to click in 5000 different places to accomplish one goal. Less clicks means more efficiency.  

I feel like there is a big training gap. Obviously, the HPE engineers know all about the product and can come in and do the setup with ease. However, once they hand off the product to the in-house IT group, there might be a learning gap there. E.g,, I have to call them now every time I have a problem. 

I feel like they should've spent more time with us. They were only onsite for two days, and I feel like there should be more outside training to explain how to use the product.

It has been pretty stable. We have only had one major issue. It was because of a redundancy that we had set up. HPE sent us a new part, then we swapped it in and were back up and running.

So far, I'm pretty satisfied with the solution's availability.

So far, we have not had to scale up. However, that day may be coming, and we actually provisioned our 3PAR to be scalable in the future. So, I think the scalability is pretty good considering HPE helped us design and implement it in a way where we can scale up when needed.

So far, the technical support has been good. We had one major failure and the technical support team sent us a part within four hours. Then, we had the new part, and it was everything was back up and running. We were able to talk to a 3PAR specialist to walk us through how to get everything reconfigured. So, there was virtually no down time.

The previous solution that we had was about 10 years old. It was an HPE Generation 6 server. We had some management changes, and it was time for a refresh which we hadn't done in many years.

The initial setup was pretty complex. There were a lot of different things that had to happen which was the reason why they had to send out the HPE engineers to help us. 

My philosophy is if you have to send out an engineer to do it, then it is probably more complicated for the end user.

Softchoice helped us procure the equipment, and HPE sent out 3PAR specialists to help us configure and deploy the product. Our experience with Softchoice was great.

It was pretty easy to deploy the product to begin with because HPE helped us do it. They sent product specialists in. So, deployment of this particular product was definitely easy-breezy.

We have seen ROI. We are able to see more patients now, bringing more money into the practice.

3PAR has increased our performance.

The product has definitely improved throughput. We are able to more efficiently see patients because all of our medical records and practice management software seems to run faster. Uploading images and charts is a lot faster. Recalling information in the exam rooms is faster. The overall throughput of data, going back and forth, is so we can more efficiently see patients, and it also helps increase our patient flow. We can see patients a lot faster, getting them in and out a lot more quickly.

Spend your time doing the research on the product and learn the system.

So far, it has been pretty reliable. It has been a set it and forget it type product, which has been great, except for when there are some minor issues. However, the issues that we have had were resolved fairly quickly.

We are flash and standard disk combo, or hybrid. Having flash though does not mean that we have faster performance. What it does helps us with is being able to see more patients, because we're not having to wait as long for applications to load or waiting for the data to get sent to where it needs to be.

Biggest lesson learnt: Why didn't we do it a long time ago?

We use 3PAR for everything. There is not much we don't use it for. Most of our storage is on 3PAR at this point. We run SAP, VDIs, and all of our server infrastructure on it for the most part as mission-critical applications.

• Reliability
• Speed
• Stability
• Easy to expand
• Easy to maintain

The solution’s deduplication functionality works great. We are getting about a 16:1 dedupe ratio on our VM workloads.

It is good and stable.

The availability has been great. We haven't had any outages from the 3PAR itself. Although, we have had two or three outages from the techs coming onsite and working on it, then causing an outage.

The scalability is good. Our storage is small. We don't have petabytes. We have an 8200 right now and only have 16 drives on it. Therefore, we have a lot of room for growth.

All-flash positions our organization for growth. Currently, we are using all-flash, and with the dedupe, it makes it cheaper for us to deploy than other systems.

The call-in support is fine. 

The onsite techs have caused outages. However, this issue has been fixed as HPE is now outsourcing this.

We were running out of capacity on our 3PAR 7200, so we bought a new one.

The initial setup was straightforward. The seller came and installed it, setting it up. We had just enough money. It wasn't that big of a deal to start creating LUNs at that point.

We used a reseller, High Performance Technologies, for the deployment. Our experience with them was okay. 

They are not a good fit for what we need now. So, we have moved onto another provider.

The solution has increased our performance.

The solution has improved our throughput, as jobs and servers run faster.

Our licensing costs are all lumped together with everything else, so I don't know the breakout.

We looked at 3PAR, Nimble, and Pure storage.

Look at both the 3PAR and Nimble, then see which one is best for your needs. They are both reliable systems which work great. They just run.

We have had 3PAR for a while. So, it has reduced time to deployment by about 10 percent, which is the same as our older platform.

We use the product for virtualization environment. 

I am impressed with the product's online upgrades. 

The engagement of the tool's vendor is costly. 

I have been using the tool for five years. 

The product's support is both good and bad. 

Neutral

The tool's deployment is straightforward due to experience. Initially, it was difficult. 

I would rate the product an eight out of ten. A stable and performance-oriented product. 

This solution helps to store data for high-loaded and high-performing systems like business communications systems and telecommunications.

It 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.

I have been working with the solution for ten years.

The solution’s tech support is good. You will get a dedicated account manager.

The solution is easy to deploy.

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.

We primarily use the solution for storage.

We are satisfied with the solution. We deployed 3PAR in the national and international markets. It's not bad, the solution.   

It's not a very good solution. We found EMC and other storage solutions can help the client a bit more in terms of reaching their target, having the flexibility they need, and offering better backups and integration.

It's not high-end storage. It's not as strong as it needs to be. You need to have two nodes, or two controls to be able to effectively protect from data loss.

It's not really a complete solution. It has some limitations with software integration as well as backup and restore integration. It does not protect the data stored on 3PAR. Some products should be protected with another brand if there's a level of security required. 

With 3PAR, there is remote copy software which isn't very good. It should be improved also. Many times we have had data issues and we have had to re-initiate the application and reconfigure. 

HPE is not present in Algeria. They manage support through the delivery partner that actually can provide some assistance. Right now, we have spare part problem. It's not present. We have to wait, maybe, a couple of weeks or more than one month to have a replacement get shipped in and we're usually reaching out about that. It is a big issue for the customer if we lose one server, or the blade is down. It means the service can be down for one month, and it's not a good idea to share this information with customers. 

Before 2015, HPE had some sort of setup with DHL or FedEx. It was very good. On top of that, they had an HPE engineer to manage the support. However, since then, they left. They closed the office and they manage everything now indirectly in the country, via other countries. If we try to measure the performance of HPE outside our country, it's very good, however, here, we have had a bad experience with them and so have our customers as well as local customers.

I've also dealt with Dell EMC. We have Huawei OceanStore Dorado, PowerMax, and PowerStore as well. We have all the kind of storage. I can confirm that 3PAR is not a high-end solution. It can be classified as the mid-range, not high-end. PowerStore is likely the best out of all of these. The controller is really high-end.

We don't really handle the setup. It's done at the factory and delivered. It comes with data sheets to help customers with a few things, however, for the most part, it is pre-setup to spec. Once it is delivered it can be configured as necessary.

The pricing is expensive. I'm not sure if it's the region that causes such high prices, however, when we are bidding, we rarely get very good discounts to work with. It's not competitive. 

We are a reseller. 

Whether or not this solution would work for a company is all about the situation. If HPE could improve the level of the support or if the company has a certain level of support available to them (instead of relying on HPE), they can likely manage. It's a good idea to secure some spare parts in advance while making a deal. However, relying on the HPE SLA with the worry of indirect logistics is going to be a problem for a lot of companies when it takes so long to get parts. I

Our company has a contract with the client - not HPE. Therefore, it looks bad on us when we can't deliver on the parts or service when the fault lies on the HPE end. 

Overall, I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. It's not bad, however, there are significant areas that need to be improved upon. 

We host and store everything we have in HPE 3PAR StoreServ. We created the laws and connected them to our servers, and on those servers, we have VMware as a hypervisor. We make backups of all the data from the servers.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ has a good interface, it is user-friendly and easy to use.

I have used HPE 3PAR StoreServ within the past 12 months.

The solution has been working perfectly, we have not had any issues since we purchased it. HPE 3PAR StoreServ is highly reliable.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is scalable.

Here in Algeria, we are facing a lot of trouble finding partners and getting support from HPE. There should be better support here in our country.

Recently we had an issue because we added some hard drives to HPE 3PAR StoreServ and we needed to upgrade the VMware to allow support by HPE 3PAR StoreServ hard drives.

We were discussing with our IT manager if we were going to stay with this solution or are we going to use another solution for a disaster recovery plan because we need a disaster recovery plan.

I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ a nine out of ten.

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.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is used as a flash storage system.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is easy to use and has good performance.

The solution could improve by being more secure.

I have been using HPE 3PAR StoreServ for approximately six years.

I have not contacted the support from HPE.

The installation is straightforward.

We have a technical team of approximately 20 engineers and administrators that supports HPE 3PAR StoreServ. 

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ a nine out of ten.