HPE Alletra Storage Reviews

Its use case primarily is VDI. We are working with models 6050 and 6070.

Price, performance, efficiency, and reliability are its benefits. Those customers who used to be on 3PAR and Primera and are now on [HPE] Alletra [Storage] probably have two times performance improvement. The most important benefit has been the increase in efficiency. The efficiency has improved at least three or four times. Its pricing per gigabyte is also lower than what they used to pay for the older solutions.

It provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. Most of my customers who are on VDI are using VHCI and Private Cloud Business Edition or PCBE, and they love it.

It helps with day-to-day management. Especially when customers have multiple sites, they are able to view all their sites and manage all their sites from a single pane.

It can predict problems and prevent them before they occur. The main feature of Alletra is the inheritance of Nimble InfoSight. It is a big plus.

There is a guarantee of data availability, but that was not the only reason for going for this solution. They have availability of six nines on other platforms as well, but with Alletra, you have the whole package. There is efficiency, reliability, and proactive support with InfoSight. It is the whole package.

It has improved our storage performance in terms of IOPs, but I do not have the metrics.

The performance is valuable. The NVMe performance with VDI plays a big role. There is efficiency of the array and replication between two sites. A lot of customers use Alletra for production and DR and do replication.

They are definitely going to start pushing more on MP for files. This was an area where HPE was not very strong, but now, with Alletra MP, it is going to be very strong. Most importantly, there is going to be the flexibility of moving compute and storage on Alletra MP. This flexibility will be very good.

We have been using HPE Alletra Storage for the past two to three years.

So far, so good.

On regular Alletra, you can only add two shelves. That may be a limitation because you need to plan ahead of time about how you are going to grow. You might want to conserve the type of disk. It is a little limiting in terms of capacity. This is why MP is better.

We do work with HPE support. It is a little slow sometimes, but in the case of Alletra, that has not been the case. With Alletra, the level 3 engineering support has been more than okay. For Alletra, I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We have not done its deployment. We do help some customers with monitoring, managing, and patching the environment. It is fairly new. Alletra has been there for about two years.

Overall, it was a good ROI for customers.

Overall, it was good. It had a good price per gigabyte.

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for our block storage for VDI and VMware.

Speed-wise, we went all flash, so it's really reduced our user issues with VDI and some other things we're using.

The usability is very good. It's really easy to use, especially with the DHCI. It's very easy to upgrade and maintain.

There's unlimited lifetime on their arrays where you can keep upgrading.

It provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. 

Day to day, we really don't have to touch it as it runs. As far as operations, it's made it a lot easier to manage and set things up and delegate those tasks to junior engineers now instead of having to do it all myself.

It has helped reduce the time spent on storage provisioning.

The product has helped use time spent resolving storage-related support tickets.

The licensing could always be cheaper. 

I've been using the solution for probably ten years. 

The solution is stable. I'd rate it ten out of ten.

The solution is scalable to a degree.

Technical support and customer support are excellent.

Positive

We did look at Nutanix. We had previous experience with this solution, and we already had existing arrays. I also liked the DHCI stack with the conversion infrastructure.

The support team is excellent. They take ownership of tickets and save us a lot of hassle. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It offers good usability and support. It's been a good product overall. 

This is for NVMe faster performance.

It is cost-cutting. It saves costs.

HPE Alletra Storage provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. HPE GreenLake is doing everything.

HPE Alletra Storage helps predict problems and prevent them before they occur. This is all happening through HPE GreenLake. It works well, and I hope it continues to work well in the future.

The guarantee of data availability is most important. The data is most important. We cannot lose any data. I hope that HPE Alletra Storage will help us in this matter.

HPE Alletra Storage has helped reduce the time spent on storage provisioning. It has reduced the time by half.

HPE Alletra Storage has improved our storage performance in terms of IOPs, but it is not much. When it starts working with the NVMe protocol in VMware, it will improve by 10%.

HPE Alletra Storage has not yet helped reduce the time spent resolving storage-related support tickets. So far, I have not faced any support tickets, but I hope it will reduce the time spent.

More deduplication and compression are valuable because capacity matters.

I need the protocol expected. I want them to include NVMe protocol in VMware compatibilities.

I have been using HPE Alletra Storage for almost one year. 

Its stability is fine. It is stable.

It is easy.

The basic support is good, but when it comes to L2 and L3, it takes ages. The basic support is excellent, but the high-tier support takes ages.

Neutral

We have used other HPE solutions before. We have used 3PAR, Primera, StoreOnce, and MSA. HPE Alletra Storage is better because it has NVMe and the latest GUI. It is easier than others.

We have VMware. We are mostly on a private cloud.

It is easy to deploy. You just plug in and connect.

HPE helped us implement it. They were pretty experienced. 

We are still waiting for that.

So far, so good.

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage a ten out of ten. It is new for HPE. They need to work hard on it.

We primarily use the solution for workloads in healthcare. 

The sizing is very good. We have new applications and new workloads and we have found the performance is very good.

The ability to use different workloads and different data is useful. It offers a good way to treat our data while guaranteeing high performance. We have 1 PB of data.

It offers a cloud-like operational model on-prem. Healthcare data is complicated, especially for data in the cloud. 

It's good at predicting and preventing problems. 

Guaranteed data availability is very important for us in health care. Having that guarantee of availability to us was integral to choosing this solution.

Alletra has helped us reduce time spent on storage. We've witnessed a 120X improvement in performance.

It's improved storage performance in terms of IOPS. It depends. If we compare it with other solutions, the performance is 2X better.

Alletra has helped us reduce storage-related tickets by 2X.

We have more than traditional use cases. If they could explore new configurations for data storage, it would be ideal. 

I've been using the solution for one year.

The stability is very good. It's better than other solutions. 

We have just started a project to scale the solution as we need more capacity. For the moment, the scalability is good. What you need to do in order to expand is very clear. 

HPE support is very good. We have a decent relationship with them. All of our questions get answered in a short time and the communication is very good. 

Positive

We previously used some solutions from IBM. We needed to change solutions and we decided to go with Alletra. 

The deployment was very easy. All of the documentation and instructions are very clear. 

We did have the help of an integrator. 

We have witnessed an ROI. In healthcare, people use a lot of Alletra. For us, it's easy to share the application. 

Licensing is expensive at the moment. Maybe they will lower it as more and more people begin to use Alletra. 

We did evaluate other vendors, including Pure Storage. Alletra was good for integration. Also, people who have worked with applications in healthcare know Alletra and have confidence in the product.

We are customers and end users.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

HPE Alletra 6000 that we are using used to be Nimble. We have warehouses. We have 100 employees or something like that. We have 3 servers and about 50 VMs. For that, it is a perfect fit.

They are stable systems. HPE Alletra 6000 is reasonably priced. It is a perfect fit for our organization.

There is a Call Home feature. If there are any issues, it connects directly to the remote support. That is helpful for me. I get alerted by HPE before I connect and get my alerts.

The guarantee of data availability is very important for any organization. If your storage system dies, the whole company shuts down.

It has helped reduce the time spent on storage provisioning. You plug it in, and with a few clicks, it is all configured within a few minutes. I do not have the metrics, but it does not take that long to configure.

It is very simple. It does not take much time to troubleshoot.

It has improved our storage performance in terms of IOPs. I cannot really compare it, but I do not have to worry about IOPs anymore.

It has not helped reduce the time spent resolving storage-related support tickets. It is the same as Nimble. 

Ease of utilization and ease of backup are valuable. You just plug it in, run a few commands, and set it up. It is done.

Lately, I had trouble with the configuration. They have GreenLake, and you have to have the serial number connected to GreenLake. You have to connect to the cloud. When you configure it, the system has to be connected to the Internet. Otherwise, you cannot configure it. That is the most difficult part. They need to have something that does not require a connection to the Internet. Once you have configured it, then it should connect to the Internet or GreenLake, and that is fine. The problem for me is that I configure at a remote location where I do not have access to the Internet, but this requires the Internet.

I used HPE Alletra 9000 about two and a half years ago, and I have been using HPE Alletra 6000 for about a year or so.

It is very stable. I do not have any issues at all.

It is pretty scalable. I have added more disks.

It is hit-and-miss. Most of the time, I get good service, but sometimes, I get stuck. Occasionally, you run into a situation where people do not know what they are doing, and then you are stuck. When that happens, I get my reps, and they help me out. Overall, the service is great. It has improved.

Positive

I was using HPE. It was Nimble, and now it is Alletra, so we migrated from Nimble to Alletra.

We have 5000 series. We are using a private cloud.

Its deployment is very simple. You just plug it in, click a few times, give an IP address, and you are all set up. It is no trouble at all.

I deployed it myself.

It is reasonably priced.

HPE Alletra Storage provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. I have seen that, but it is not at all useful for me because my applications are very simple.

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage a ten out of ten. It is perfect for me in terms of the price range and utilization. It is easy to set up and easy to manage, and it gets the job done. There is only one issue. It requires GreenLake for configuration. They need to change that because sometimes, the end user is at a remote location without Internet access. It should not have anything to do with configuring the storage, but unfortunately, they are linked, and you are stuck.

I primarily use the solution for data storage. In the future, we'll use it for VDI and user profiles. 

We came off of the Pure and moved to Alletra. We're in the migration process of that right now. I haven't spent a lot of time on it yet. 

The installation of the agent that you put on each one of the file servers or host or clients, simplifies the process versus having to go through a process of manually configuring like NPIO and stuff like that for an ISCSI connection.

HPE has been great with some of the questions and the concerns we had coming up. We had an issue where we weren't getting the data deduplication and compression that we thought we were going to have, especially when compared to the Pure. They stepped up and gave us more storage.

Alletra provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure.

The guarantee of data availability was an important factor in our decision-making when moving to Alletra. We want to ensure availability is always there. We were able to do an expansion the other day to add extra space, and it went flawlessly without any issues. The data stayed up, with no users complaining.

Alletra has helped reduce time spent with storage provisioning. I could just bring up a new volume and present and format it. It's probably very similar to Pure. 

Alletra improves our storage performance in terms of IOPS.

It has helped reduce the time spent solving storage-related support tickets. The only experience with that so far is during the upgrade to the expansion module, we had an issue where it wouldn't come back up. An automatic ticket was created. It was helpful to have a quick response from somebody higher up, a supervisor, checking in. 

We are a unique case when it comes to data compression. Mostly, everybody has VMware running on it. We're just using it for file storage. While our focus is dealing with compression algorithms, they just haven't focused that much time on that. They are putting their money where their mouth is, however, and helping us with more storage.

Due to their acquisition of Nimble, there are multiple portals. I'm hoping that that gets cleaned up. You still have InfoSight. That's just a traditional place for Nimble, and it was renamed and rebranded for HPE. There's been slow integrations into it, HPE Green Lake, and that web portal. Hopefully, that gets done quickly. It's confusing to know what portal to go to and for what.

There is a weird bug we're seeing. I always end up using the local on-site UI to do everything. As soon as that great one, it takes some time for it to show up in Green Lake or InfoSight. That said, I can see that it will help reduce time spent on storage provisioning.

I've used the solution for three months.

The solution has been rock-solid since we've had it. 

We just added 30TB onto it, and that went smoothly. It sounds like we could even add another if it happened, however, for now, that's enough for us. 

The setup was a little bit funny as we wanted to learn the system and they just wanted to program it. However, the people have been fine and we've been able to resolve issues. For the most part, technical support worked out well. When I get the right guy on the phone, it's great. There is some weird stuff going on with on-site support. They used to farm out on-site to third-party companies. 

Positive

We did previously use Pure. We switched when the contract came due. Everything we have is HPE. Pure was a one-off product. In the grand scheme of products and support, it just didn't make sense to renew.

We bought the solution outright. We aren't leasing the solution or anything. 

The deployment was pretty straightforward. We had scheduled it, and they showed up and helped us rack it. They could have been more clear on their process. They would say that we need a network discovery address, and we'd ask: "in what context?" They wanted an ISCSI discovery address. That probably should've been clarified beforehand and moments like that dragged on a bit. 

We have a TAM through HPE. 

I haven't seen anything faster. Now that we have 3/4 of the company on it, we'll need to start looking at performance metrics. 

I don't have any insights into pricing.

We've always had either Pure or HPE. There really was no other solution to look at.

We've only had the solution for a certain amount of time, and we are not 100% migrated over. I haven't had experience with many of the features just yet.

I'd rate Alletra eight out of ten. The compression may be an issue. I understand the theory of how it works (it compresses in deduplication as it's writing). The one thing I'm not a fan of is that you get compression at write-time, if, in six months, there's a firmware upgrade, and it helps the compression, the only way to get that added benefit of compression would be to write the data again. 

We use it for our primary production storage array as well as its DR capabilities, where we replicate our data over to another Nimble or Alletra.

The resiliency of its array capabilities and the data replication features they have available are the product's most valuable aspects. 

It provides a cloud-like operating model on-prem. It has positively affected operations. The management tools they have available make it easy to provision or add additional space. It's very easy to click through.

It's been a rock-solid system. We've had a couple of drives go down before we're even aware of it and they notify us and send us a replacement.  

It's important to have a data availability guarantee, being a hospital. We need to maintain that patient data. 

The workflows are very automated, for example, if we need something replaced.

We've been able to reduce the time spent on storage provisioning by 30%. It's so easy to provision a data store or a new chunk of disk.

We've improved storage performance. The all-flash system we have is incredibly fast. 

In the perfect world, it would be cheaper. 

I've been using the solution for about five years now. 

The solution is stable and rock-solid. It's been five years. A drive may be going out since it's been so long; however, beyond that, which is expected, we haven't had any issues. 

It's easily scalable. You can build up and out with this kind of storage. 

You can get around five additional shelves, and you're talking hundreds of terabytes of data that you can put on this solution.

Technical support is great. HPE provides some of the best support we've ever dealt with. We do pay for premium support. It's worth every penny. As soon as we have a problem, we open a ticket with them, and they immediately get back to us well within the four hour SLA that we have with them.

Positive

We have a 3PAR that's also an HPE storage array. We also have a Nimble. The 3PAR has been good. However, it's getting older, and it's in need of a change. 

We do use an Azure Cloud. However, it is a very small footprint. 

The experience deploying an Alletra was very good. It was nice and easy. 

We do go through a third party to order the solution; however, my colleague and I were the individuals who actually racked it. 

We have witnessed an ROI in terms of the IOPs. The speed at which we get the data from it is incredibly fast. 

If there was another solution that was evaluated, it would have been before my time at the company.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's rock solid with great support. It's just the price that is the sticking point.

We run our VDI systems off of it as well as a lot of VMs, SQL databases, and things like that. We use it for a little bit of file storage as well. 

Moving on to the platform is fairly simple. Upgrades are easy. We just put it in a new shelf, and that didn't cause any downtime. We really appreciate that. We're running 1,000 VDIs on a single Alletra. I don't know if we could have done that on any of our last storage systems.

The deduplication feature is great. It's a pretty standard feature at this point. However, it's really important for the workloads we run to keep the storage cost down. The speed and reliability are excellent. 

It has all of the technologies in place to make sure our data is still there when things go bad. 

Predicting and preventing issues before they happen seems great on Alletra. All of our failures have been very predictive. We haven't had any downtime. We had some controllers throwing early warnings, and Alletra caught that before anything went bad. We know the stuff goes bad; however, the way that Alletra treats it, we've never had any downtime from hardware issues. It always disables itself and pulls a bad drive out of the pool before any data corruption occurs. 

Alletra has improved the storage performance in terms of IOPS. We don't have any issues. Our infrastructure is a little bit different on the back end, so some of our stuff has a little trouble getting to it. That said, we already know that that's a back-end issue for us and we are going to be resolving that by the end of the year. 

It's helped reduce time spent resolving storage-related tickets. We don't have a lot since it's so reliable, and setting it up is fairly easy and hassle-free. If you need something new, you get it, attach it to the storage, it hooks up and sets up the VMware using the connector software really easily. I don't have to think about it anymore after that. 

Moving from Nimble to Alletra was a little difficult. The process involved adding new cards - which was quite a bit more of a headache for us. Having to console in and turn off the controllers to add the new card for the storage shelf itself was a hassle compared to a Nimble, which was almost plug-and-play. They're very similar, the downtime was zero, and the instructions were great. It was just a lot more work than we were used to with Nimble.

I've been using Alletra for three years.

The support is great. It's easy to just call them and have somebody pick up the phone and easily talk to them about issues. Support is amazing - and that's one of the primary reasons that we use it. 

I previously used Nimble. 

The deployment and installation are generally fairly easy. It's technical so it takes a bit of time. The last time we put in a fresh Alletra, after we racked it, it only took a few hours to get it up and running. More often than that we've done shelf deployments. The new Alletras are a bit more difficult, however, it doesn't take long. 

The ROI is in the reliability and ease of use. The uptime is ROI. We're in the public sector, and uptime is of primary importance. We have a hard time getting a Windows update downtime. Having uptime from our storage, when we never have to worry about it at all is ideal.  

It's expensive. That said, we know what we're buying and we're okay with it. We're generally okay with what we're paying.

I'd rate Alletra nine out of ten. We really enjoy the product. We don't have a lot of issues. And the support keeps us there. We wouldn't consider anything else due to the phenomenal Alletra support that migrated along with Nimble. They are proactive and that's why we love it.