HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

This solution provides flash storage for our servers. Our environment contains Linux operating systems, VMware, and some web servers.

The availability of the server has given us increased stability in our environment.

The mission-critical apps and processes that we use are our Oracle database, VMware, and some web services.

The All-flash positions us for growth because of its better performance, which means that our applications are faster.

This solution has improved throughput. It has helped when we deploy non-production servers.

This solution has great availability that works for us.

This solution should be easier to use.

The stability of this solution is good.

We have not yet tried to scale this solution.

I think that technical support is good. We have only had one report.

We implemented this solution when it was time to renew the servers. Prior to this, we used HP EVA, but it had reached end-of-life.

Although I don't recall the details of the initial setup, I think that it was a little complex. The people that normally work with storage had to ask for help.

We used a consultant to assist with our deployment.

The vendors that we evaluated were HPE and IBM.

The All-flash has better performance, which means that our applications are faster. Our performance has increased by twenty to thirty percent.

The biggest lesson that I learned from this solution is to try something before you reject it.

My advice for anybody considering this solution is to test all of the functions that the vendor tells you about. It is important to see how it works in order to see whether it suits your business.

This is a good solution, but it is not perfect.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

VMware and SQL.

In terms of performance, we had an issue with the earlier version, the 7400, an iSCSI issue. They replaced it with one from the 8000 series and it has been doing pretty well so far.

It lets us mix a lot of drive spaces, as well as performance drives, between Fibre Channel, long-term storage, and SSD drives. It performs pretty well as far as moving the data around and not letting a lot of it go to waste.

• Redundancy
• Performance (I/O and stability)
• The tiering

Nothing really comes to mind. We talked to somebody earlier today, here at HPE Discover 2018, about their Docker integration for it, so that's something we'll probably check out next for both the 3PAR and Nimble.

We haven't any issues with scalability. We have added a lot of different shelves to it, we have close to about 400 terabytes. It has done pretty well in that regard.

Technical support is pretty good. We've used it mainly for firmware upgrades and those type of things. We also used them initially for troubleshooting issues on the previous version. They have been helpful.

I was not involved in the initial setup. We did have HPE onsite to help with that. It didn't take too long, maybe two to three days.

I believe it is paying off at this point, but I don't have any numbers for ROI.

We looked at Dell, Tegile, and Pure Storage. We went with HPE in the end because we already have HPE equipment, we're mostly HPE server and software, so we went with that. We're trying out the new Nimble now in our new data center.

When I evaluate vendors the important criteria are 

• redundancy
• scalability
• performance
• metrics for reporting.

My advice would be, make sure you know your workloads going into it and how you will best be able to utilize a solution, especially when deciding what disk structure to get and how to lay it out.

Overall, I would rate 3PAR at eight out of 10. The biggest issues we had were performance issues with the older version, but this one has been doing okay.

We have deployed HPE 3PAR systems on all database-related storage including MSSQL and Oracle. All of the SQL databases are running on VMware, and the database-related storage is mounted as RDM. The Oracle database is mounted directly to HPE 3PAR with remote-copy enabled.

HPE 3PAR provides fast and reliable storage for our critical systems like the database (MSSQL and Oracle). It also improved the availability of the system and at the same time provides a Disaster Recovery solution by using the remote-copy feature.

The adaptive optimization is also a factor in maximizing the capability of the system.

The most valuable features of this solution are Remote-copy and Adaptive Optimization. 

Remote-copy provides high availability and disaster recovery for the connected clients.

The Adaptive Optimization provides tiering and optimizes the storage requirement of the client based on its load from time to time.

The cloud-based monitoring Infosight would be better if users are automatically enrolled in the cloud/group based on the configuration or information gathered or uploaded on the internet.

The auto-discovery of the system is not easy for first-time users.

I have been using this solution for 5 years.

This is one of the best solutions if you want to have a stable and highly reliable system.

This is a highly scalable system.

Technical support assisted us with a smooth and fast installation.

Previously we were using HP EVA but since this is an old solution, we wanted to upgrade. We wanted to try a newer solution with almost the same features, like HPE 3PAR.

The initial setup for this solution is indeed straightforward, although HP will not allow non-HP engineers to do the initial setup.

The implementation was completed by an HP engineer through the vendor.

The cost is reasonable given that the licensing is all included once you purchase it.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution.

The setup is pretty straightforward but HP only allows their engineers to do the setup. This gives us peace of mind for the setup.

The primary use case is production data. The mission-critical app that we run on this solution is SQL.

1. Performance that it gives me.
2. The speed of how we process data on the manufacturing floor.

• Ease of use
• The speed of the performance of the unit.

The solution should have better integration with legacy systems.

We would like memory-driven performance on the storage.

So far, the stability has been good. We have not had any outages.

In theory, the scalability is supposed to be fast, but we don't know until we try.

It does position our organization for growth by making things faster and easier.

The technical support is very good.

We were previously using NetApp.

We needed a new solution because:

1. Our old unit was very old.
2. We had requirements from our production.

The initial setup was complex, due to calculating the amount of performance that we needed for the floor.

We used Compucare for the deployment, which was rocky at the start. Now, it's very stable.

We have not seen ROI yet.

The solutions has increased our performance. We went from 24,000 IOPS to around 70,000 IOPS.

The solution has improved our throughput. We have less downtime.

We didn't have a shortlist. We worked directly with HPE.

The reasons for switching to HPE were:

1. The performance. 
2. The technology that HPE uses had more integration with our servers.

Never go with your first impression regarding 3PAR. They say that hybrid is the best thing anytime, but if you read the small print, it depends on how you use it, etc. So, we went with an all-flash for that reason. So, don't go with your first feeling. Investigate and try it out. Try to get a demo to make sure it works.

I like that the solution's availability gives me: 

• Ease of use
• Performance
• Good support from HPE.

From a management standpoint of the arrays, they work really well. They handle a lot of data and, overall, it lowers the complexity of our storage infrastructure. We've been able to consolidate down to a single platform which meets all of our demands, anywhere from our advanced meter systems to our customer information system.

When we started using 3PAR what we liked was the simplicity of the product. We needed a higher performance storage and, in our support model, we needed to keep the simplicity of the storage architecture, keep it as clean and as manageable as we could.

We have seen one area, where we have highly virtualized Solaris instances, where we're getting into the queue depth, so we probably need to do some work in the queue-depth area in the arrays. I'm not sure if its specific to Solaris, because we haven't encountered it on other platforms but, then again, on some of our largest Solaris frames, we are running several hundred virtual containers and we see the queue-depth issue there.

It has been stable. It has been very reliable. I have no problems around it.

As we transform and we're starting to move data, much more data, we're looking at the scalability. I don't have any indicators that it will not scale, but there is a lot of analysis we have to do. We're doing modeling of that data right now to see what decisions we will make in 2019. I am assuming we will maintain at least some 3PAR, but we may have to compliment it with something else, based on the demands we have around our data.

From my experience, tech support has been good. I'm not directly interacting with support due to my role but the feedback I've received has been good.

This is a question better answered by the guys who actually support it, but it's my understanding that the upgrade process is pretty seamless. They scheduled it over a weekend, they rolled the upgrade through, and it works pretty well. Occasionally, there are glitches they need to work through but, from what I have observed, they're minor.

The process doesn't drag on. It's just planning, scheduling it, change tickets go in, and then they run it. It's a process that pretty much takes under a day. And then, after implementing, it's a matter of watching it to make sure everything is smooth after the upgrade finishes.

3PAR is our main storage solution that we use for anything and everything, mainly Oracle right now. But we also have different db8s as well flute.com on our 3PAR. We have a number of different things on it.

It's outstanding, it works like a champ. We have been using it for about 15 years. We have a T400 sitting in the data center right that I'm trying to get up off of. We've been using 3PAR for quite a while.

We're able to move things around with more agility. I can take it off one server and slap it on another in a couple of minutes, so we're really agile when it comes to that. If we run into server issues, it's a quick jump, we're on a new server, we're off and running again. And then I have time to look at the server. That's a really nice feature. 

And the speed is outstanding, it really works wonderfully.

I really like the new RMC (Recovery Manager Cental) software that was introduced with the 3.0 or 3.1 update. It allows us to use our data protector with our 3PAR and give it a nicer front-end than the SSMC did.

I'd really it to be able to interact with older 3PAR storage, and possibly even non-HPE. I would like to be able to pull stuff off of old things and bring it up to the standard that has been set, simply, quickly, and efficiently. That would be a really nice feature. Right now it is a big pain. It seems to work but we tend to get some latency behind. It seems it could be better.

I've never had it go down unless I wanted it to, ever.

Scalability is easy. We just had HPE come out and put in a whole other shelf for us, for more storage. You can scale it out almost indefinitely. It works amazingly, I'm a huge fan.

Up until this point, technical support has been amazing. I am a little leery because I have heard they are doing more outsourcing with their support. I've run into that with other vendors that we deal with and it has never really worked out that well. We always seem to get less knowledge and then we have to go through three or four people before we get to the person that used to be the number one guy that we talked to. And he was the only guy we talked to. He knew how we use our things and at what capacity they were used, so it was easier for him to help us troubleshoot. Now I have to go through all these different hoops and jumps, and I'm not a fan of that.

I would give 3PAR an eight because, first, I don't think anything is ever a 10. It's still really good - but since 9 is really close to 10, and that's almost perfect - it's about an eight. The reliability is really there. Once it's there, it's there. You don't really have to worry about it, which is really nice because we have enough things to worry about.

It is incredibly easy to manage. We’re getting the performance that we need, and that’s what we need storage to be. We plug it in and it works, and everybody forgets about it, which is what we need. We’re using 3 different RAIDS, and it’s working just fine.

It’s not as complex as EMC, so whenever there’s requirements for allocating storage, it’s very easy to do. The turnaround only takes 48 hours, whereas with EMC it was taking three days to a week to allocate that storage.

I'd like to see the system reporter improve. With the reporting feature, I’d like a little more versatility in how I get my reports. The 3PAR just runs and nobody complains, but I’d like to see what the warnings the reporting gives me actually means. I would like that feature to be enhanced more to get rid of more false positives errors. Also, the drive replacement on the 10800 needs improvement. It’s a magazine that has four drives, and to replace one drive, I wish they would not spin down all of the drives just to replace one. It makes me a bit nervous when they do that to replace a failed drive.

Very stable and performance is great.

We haven’t really scaled. We have a nice sized array right now, as we’ve just started the migration process. But we have the ability to scale if we need it. We have 25 HP 3PAR devices right now, and will get 25 more. We also have 50 EMCs that we’ve been trying to migrate over from.

It’s been okay. With me being a 3PAR person, my struggle with HP is that when I know more about the product they still take me to the level one person, which wastes my time.

It was before my time, but they wanted to diversify from EMC. We are slowly migrating entirely to HP.

Very straightforward. It plays with our Oracle products very well too, which we like.

Just EMC, who were already in place.

I think that the most important criteria when selecting a vendor is the business need and the reliability to make my job easier. I need it to be fast and efficient and be able to get graphs and reports from it. Definitely look at 3PAR as it’s a great piece of hardware.

I primarily use the product for self-storage. 

The most valuable feature for me is the solution's availability.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ's pricing could be cheaper. 

I have been using HPE 3PAR StoreServ for about four years.

I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability an eight out of ten. It has ten users. 

I rate the tool's deployment a five out of ten. It was completed in a few days. You need one resource to handle the deployment. 

A reseller helped us with the deployment. 

We have saved time with the tool's use. 

I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten. It is expensive. 

I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ an eight out of ten.