HPE Alletra Storage Reviews

We use the solution for our data center compute. We have three HP ProLiant servers that use it for storage and 40 virtual servers. 

We now have much more storage and the uptime is very good.

The performance is very good. We expanded our storage four-fold over the previous product and managed it within a reasonable price range. 

It's increased performance and uptime. 

Uptime, to us, is very important.

It's helped us reduce the time spent on storage provisioning. There's less management that's necessary overall.

We have lessened the number of storage-related tickets. We don't really have any since we implemented Alletra.

They could be a little more intuitive and user-friendly in terms of management, and it could be easier to find technical documentation. 

I'd like the solution to offer more free training.

I've used the solution for two years.

I've had no issues with stability. It's very good. 

I'm not sure if we'll need to scale. I'm not an expert on scaling; however, we do have the ability to upgrade our system should there be a need. 

Support is good. I had to get a password reset and they were very quick about it. It's better than general HP support. I've had a bad support experience, for example, with Aruba. There were language barriers, and I needed to redo tasks. Alletra's support, however, is very good.

Positive

We used to use Pure Storage. I didn't have to spend too much time managing storage availability. However, I did have to manage it more. With Alletra, I barely have to manage it at all. We switched to Alletra based on cost. The cost to replace Pure Storage would have been similarly-priced to the Alletra 6000-series. It made sense to go with a newer, better product if the price was the same. 

It was very easy, especially with the help of a third-party party. They did most of the setup and some on-site training, which was helpful. We had everything set up with minimal to no downtime. 

We had a third party help set it up. The experience was good. The main problem we had was getting a long time to get the product after purchase based on post-COVID supply chain issues. 

We have witnessed an ROI. It's a cost we have to have regardless of our data center. However, we have additional ROI since we could reuse our Pure Storage as a sandbox/DR solution. 

The pricing is decent. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. The only improvements would have been more on training and getting more out of my existing system.

The tool's notable feature is that we don't need to log a case directly with the vendor. The tool has access to all the logs on-premises. This is an on-premises solution. Additionally, we can provision data as thick or thin provisioned. Moreover, it includes data grid duplication and compression features.

We allocate volumes to various clients based on their requirements and requests. This has resolved the problem of bottlenecks for applications requiring a high number of I/O operations, as the storage was previously unable to deliver the necessary throughput due to SAS, NL-SAS, and SATA drives. However, with NVMe drives, a single drive can provide up to thirty thousand IOPS. We can configure rate levels and disk drives according to the client's needs, ensuring no bottlenecks in IOPS.

The cloud-integrated feature allows users to HPE Alletra access from any location, eliminating the need for VPN connections or on-premises access.
It offers high-intensity IOPS for data operations and delivers extremely low latency for disk operations, often within sub-millisecond response times. This ensures minimal latency experienced by databases or applications, resulting in significantly faster read and write operations than other solutions. This is particularly beneficial for scenarios with many users accessing applications simultaneously. For instance, for many users checking results concurrently, the tool ensures optimal performance without latency or slowdown in the application portal.

The cloud-native connectivity feature allows you to deploy your private cloud infrastructure. However, it's important to note that integration with public cloud services is unsupported due to its hybrid channel-based solution, primarily designed for on-premises deployment. It will not give you any bottlenecks and offers the best performance on storage. 

It would be better if there were an option to incorporate the NVMe feature alongside other storage tiers. Currently, the system operates on Autotier but can manually peer and mix different types of drives, such as SAS and SATA drives. 

I have been using the product for 12 years. 

The tool's stability is excellent, providing a hundred percent uptime.

The product is scalable. Approximately 10-15 major customers are utilizing the product, with almost 400 plus servers.

The product's support is good. It is better than Dell EMC. 

The tool is very easy to deploy. It's like a plug-and-play system. You need to plug it in, and it's ready to go. There's no need for extensive configuration or setup. When the engineers from the HPE vendors arrive, they connect the HPE Alletra system, which requires Internet connectivity. After that, the person who registers will receive a signing code. This code must be input during the installation process, along with configuring the management IP.

The solution is expensive and can cost around five lakhs. 

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.I advise those considering implementing HPE Alletra to thoroughly evaluate your requirements and workload. It is a top choice in the market if you primarily need block-level database storage. However, it's worth considering other options if you have a mix of workloads and require unified storage.

It is for dHCI, which is the hyper-converged infrastructure for HPE. It is replacing the tradition where when you have node storage, you have to purchase a model of switches. It combines the compute and storage.

Its benefits vary because I have used many models. I see it now handling VDI. Previously, when I had VDI and I put HPE for it, I would always go for Simplivity, whereas now, with the new model and GreenLake, they have attached Alletra to the cloud. It is serving people working from home a lot. They do not need to log in to do VPN anymore, create volumes, and manage their backups. If they have a full system for virtual storage, and they have Zerto for application replication, they can manage everything on the cloud. Zerto can also be managed on the cloud. If you have a stack, it does not matter how many systems you have. They all are going to show up in one interface. This is a huge benefit. Anything living in the storage can be monitored through the cloud.

HPE Alletra Storage has different models to cover SMBs, midsize companies, and enterprises. Enterprise companies with modern compute, CPU, and memory can have more virtual machines. It is easy for Alletra to grow and expand with the shelves. Customers are happy with it. Only one time I upgraded Alletra from 6010 to 6030 to add more storage and change the controllers. Customers are happy with Alletra. They do not complain. I never see them complain.

It is the simplicity of the deployment. They have unified all the features they have. For example, the creation and management of the storage was previously done through the plugins but with limited features. It was slow and had some challenges, whereas now, they have modern plug-ins that have more features and simulate the interface for the storage. Customers love it. The thing that they love the most about the plug-in is the one-click upgrade. They do not need to go to each device.

There can be more visibility and statistics for the customers to see. The customers would love to see AI. Even if it is not AI, there can be more visibility and real-time statistics that IT people can monitor and show to their bosses and impress them. To monitor things, they have reports, but the report system is old. Reports are by email. If they can show monthly growth and advise on the usage, it will make the lives of customers and IT people easy. They are going to love it. They would like to have one tool that can take them everywhere. There should be a single pane of glass. If they sit in a meeting, they should be able to answer questions related to whether they need more storage. They should not have had to go to different portals to get results, which creates confusion. If they have one place where they can see everything in graphics, it will be great.

We have been using HPE Alletra Storage for three years.

I have been working with HPE for six years. When I do an upgrade, I can see the Nimble that I installed for the customer five years ago as it is. No one touched it.

They continue to do a good job. I did not reach the max for anything. Every time I add a shelf for the customer, it takes 15 minutes. You just add a shelf, put the SaaS, and you are good to go.

Their support works very well. You can just grab the phone and reach out to their support. Their support answers you immediately. This is a big deal for the customers. 

I do deployment as well. Every time I get stuck at something or something goes wrong because something is missing or the customers do not have a proper configuration, I can reach out to their support immediately. I just pick up the phone, and they answer. We talk for ten minutes, and their support engineer understands the case. I open a secure channel for him to access or I give him a CLI with remote access. He applies his magic and reset the things.

I would rate them a ten out of ten because they get my issues solved. If the support engineer can not resolve an issue, he just escalates it. Being a technical person, I understand that the response can take longer. There could be some bugs, and their support team cannot give you the answer immediately.

Positive

I am HPE ASE certified. I do not bring any other customers to the game. I always present HPE. It has been six years since I have been doing this work for my company. We are beating Cisco. We are beating anyone with Dell PowerVault. We beat all of those models.

All the other companies have the same solution, but it comes down to knowing the expectations of the customer and putting things together for them from the switch to the compute to the storage. When you present them together, the result is going to be a yes. The price also plays a role, but HPE is what customers like to go for most of the time. About 70% of customers decide in advance where they will go, but some customers are surprised with the combination that we bring. We put Zerto, and we put the cloud for them. We provide them visibility and make the deployment easy for them. We give them administrator training. All these things that we add on top make customers comfortable to go with HPE even if they do not know HPE.

About 60% to 70% of customers go with the cheapest price, but they also need to see the performance and other things. We have a lot of customers. We took them to HPE Headquarters in Houston. We bring customers to events like HPE Discover. Last year, we brought a customer here and sold four sites to him with dHCI. We finished the Dallas one or the last one three months ago.

Our clients mostly use it on-prem, but they also use it for the DR site and HQ. 

The deployment is simple.

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage a nine out of ten. There should be 99% uptime. There are no issues with dHCI when it comes to upgrades, but with Alletra, they need to have the ESXi upgraded to the latest version. They need to use the correct or compatible plug-ins for it. Every time you go up with the storage, you need to look at your environment. Customers are probably not aware of all this because they do not create volumes every year or every day. There are certain things they need to keep in mind to upgrade. I do not blame the device. They need to initiate a call with the support for compatibility to ensure that everything will work.

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.

HPE Alletra Storage is mainly used as a database.

The solution's most valuable features are reliable storage, speed, and performance.

HPE Alletra Storage’s hard disk change makes it good for predicting problems and preventing them before they occur.

We faced many problems with HPE Alletra 6000, and we did not understand whether it was because of some issue with the controllers or the disk. However, we changed it, and we don't use it anymore.

I have been using HPE Alletra Storage for five years.

I think the solution's scalability is enough for us because we cannot use one storage for all. We get a lot of storage and share data.

We previously used HPE MSA, HPE 3PAR, and HPE EVA.

The solution’s initial setup is smooth.

We use the HPE Alletra 9060, HPE Alletra 9080, and HPE Alletra 6000 versions of the solution. We may consider using other vendors, such as Pure Storage or Dell Storage, in the future because we want to know which one offers the best price.

We chose HPE Alletra Storage because we have the best HPE partner to help us whenever we have a problem. He's one of the best vendors in our country. This is very important for us because some vendors or partners are not so efficient. Since we use the solution in banking, we cannot stop the systems. We call our vendor for support and to understand the problem, and they always help us.

We have around 50 to 60 terabytes in one storage.

Overall, I 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.

Right now, we're using DHCI cloud infrastructure. It's primarily going to be the backbone for our ESX environment between stretched between two data centers.

It's been a cost-reduction and space-reduction asset for us. It uses less storage rack space and therefore, less power. It has less physical connectivity. So far, it's working fine.

The replication between the two sites, the presentation to the ESX environment, and the plugin that allows us to go directly into ESX and not have to manage the storage itself directly are all valuable aspects. It's easy for anybody to use. With 3PAR or any of the others, you have to go into the storage directly.

Right now, it's offered both cost reduction and space reduction. It uses less Storage rack space. Therefore, less power. Less physical connectivity. And so far, it's working fine.

The solution does offer a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. However, I don't use it that way.

It's helped with predicting and preventing problems before they occur. So far, that's been working well.

The plug-in with vCenter and integration into vCenter is spotty at best. The last three upgrades that we've had have been absolute nightmares. That said, we found if we did an upgrade outside of the DHCI infrastructure that it is part of and just did the Alletra upgrade itself, it's better.

For me, the solution has not helped reduce the time spent resolving storage-related support tickets. I've had more tickets open for this than any other system I've ever had.

I've been using the solution since November 2023.

The storage itself has been stable. It's just working. 

The scalability looks pretty good. It's all connected through switches and ICSCI. 

The support guys are on-point. They are next-level. You can talk to them like somebody you've known for years. You don't talk to them tech to tech. It's like talking to a normal human being. 

We previously used 3PAR. The purchase of Alletra was made while I was away.

The deployment has been a challenge. I've had more open tickets with this solution than any other that I've done. The software coding between Nimble and HPE has been a challenge. The backend Python script wasn't as fleshed out as it should have been. 

The ROI will end up being pretty good as we did get a good deal and it is replacing two racks of storage for six years. 

The pricing so far has been pretty good. 

I was looking at Pure Storage and the upgraded version of 3PAR, Primera, and one other option.

I'd rate the solution six out of ten. I'm coming from fiber channel. I feel it's a downgrade from ICSCI. Plus, with the backend, they tried to shoehorn Nimble Storage into an HPE product. Transitioning from one company to another is where they are having a problem. However, they are getting better about it. That's where I see the main problem - the transition.