HPE Primera Reviews

HPE Primera was in use by our company for one of our customers when we were using only the SAN environment.

The most valuable features of the solution depend on the users' infrastructures. If the people use only the SAN environment and there are no replication, TR-069, or NAS requirements, then HPE will try to fit in for such requirements.

The features I like in HPE Primera are similar to the ones offered by NetApp. I prefer to use the features I like and want in NetApp and not in HPE 3PAR or Primera. If people use only the SAN environment in their company, they can go with the NetApp HPE 3PAR or Primera.

HPE Primera needs to improve its command-line interface so that all its users or administrators can work on CLI Command Modes. HPE needs to improve its NAS solutions because it doesn't offer any NAS products.

There are certain shortcomings in the technical support offered by HPE where improvements are required. There is a lot of lag or delay from the end of technical support. In general, HPE's support team should improve on response time as it can be better.

HPE Primera needs to offer NAS solutions because it doesn't offer them currently. The CLI Command Modes need to be improved.

I have been using HPE Primera for two to three years. My company has a partnership with HPE.

It is a stable solution, and I haven't seen any hardware failure in it.

It is a scalable solution as it allows its users to use its scalability options.

I rate the technical support a six out of ten.

Neutral

The product's initial setup phase was easy. If you speak about device management, it's a bit difficult, though not extremely complex. I rate the area concerning device management a six or seven out of ten. The device management is difficult because the CLI is a bit complicated, especially when compared to NetApp.

The product's installation and deployment may take three to five hours.

One person is enough to take care of the solution's deployment phase.

Multiple vendors are available in the market, so choosing a product depends on a user's requirements. Compared to HPE Primera, there are products under Dell EMC. The final decision to choose a product depends on the commercial perspective of the potential buyers in the market.

The solution's maintenance is not difficult.

Those who operate in a SAN environment can go with HPE Primera, especially if they don't have any requirements related to DR or NAS tools.

Considering the lack of features in the product, I rate the overall tool a six out of ten.

I use the solution in my company as a cloud infrastructure where we run VMs. My company uses VMware ESXi and HPE Primera as storage. HPE Primera is also useful to run and allocate machines to VMs.

The price of the product is an area of concern. From an improvement perspective, the solution should be made more affordable in terms of price. Though I work for a big enterprise-sized business where the cost shouldn't matter much, I feel that HPE Primera is a bit costly.

I have been using HPE Primera for a year. My company is an end user of HPE Primera.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Around 100 employees in our company use the solution.

The product has been only used in our company for a year. The application for which my company has purchased HPE Primera is still being developed, so we need to have more uses for the tool.

I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

My company uses HPE 3PAR.

I rate the product's initial setup phase a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is a difficult setup process, and ten is an easy setup process.

The product's initial setup phase is a bit complicated since it can only be done by someone who is experienced. The tool has certain delicate settings to deal with during the setup phase.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

Considering the whole infrastructure, the solution can be deployed in a week's time.

A team must take care of the product's deployment process since there are many areas, like the storage, network, and server parts.

The tool is expensive. I can say that HPE Primera is one of the costliest tools in the market.

HPE Primera has improved our company's data-intensive application performance. In our company, HPE Primera provides me with centralized access to all the data while allowing me to manage the storage and allocate different machines to VMs, making it a reliable and good tool.

My company hasn't used the product in a way that allows me to describe a scenario where the tool's capability was beneficial for our business. My company has not tried to use the tool's scalability features, considering that it has only been a year since it was installed in our company. I believe that the need to use the scalability feature of the product will come into the picture in a few years. Right now, the product's size and capacity are enough for our company to continue with it in our environment.

HPE Primera's most beneficial features for storage management tasks stem from the fact that my company can have online access to the health and all the other parameters of the product through HPE's website, which helps a lot. My company can get critical information about the storage from any place, and it also generates alerts, making it a very good solution.

My company is satisfied with HPE Primera's data protection capabilities since we can take snapshots of the VMs, which helps us ensure that the VMs are always protected.

My company has integrated HPE Primera into a whole new infrastructure, so we have never tried integrating it with the old infrastructure in our organization.

Though we know about HPE Primera's AI-driven operations, my company has not used it extensively.

As the IT landscape has been changing lately, users need to think of software-defined storage because it gives flexibility for expansion and is cheaper than HPE Primera. If you have money, you can go for HPE Primera.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

I used it purely from an OEM perspective. I used it as a solutions architect working on behalf of our customers. They've got several different versions of Primera. Specifically, it was a Primera 650. They've also got Nimble Storage, GreenLake.

The use case was basically application data that was made available for OLTP online transactions. It was designed to have quick access to typical legacy data for online systems and to have high availability.

They standardized on the HPE Primera so that they weren't running multiple different storage vendors' products. Because of the higher availability, they could set up the environment so that it could work with pretty much whatever data they had. HPE offers pay-as-you-go pricing that allowed them to put a sizable footprint in.

The high availability was most valuable because they come with what's called 100% data availability. With special terms, they license and guarantee 100% data availability. That was probably one of the key features or components that HPE was offering with that model.

Like most storage, we want to see flash become more and more stable. Like any flash that uses MLC or TLC techniques, over time, the more writes you have, the less usable the storage becomes. They try to plan for this and have a lot of extra space in the arrays, but over time, their performance does degrade. This is true for any flash storage.

It probably would be advantageous to make the storage solutions from HPE more inclusive with the add-on software. A lot of people say, "Well, we don't really need that extra software to do this or that." In most of the cases, if it's done right and they use it right, there is a value-add in these additional software tools that are optional.

Their support should be improved. Currently, it depends on who you get on the phone.

I have been using this solution for about a year and a half. I last used it about six months ago in my previous company.

It is very stable and rock solid. It has got the clause for 100% availability in it.

Its scalability is outstanding. You can add more chassis with more drives pretty easily. It scales out pretty large. I don't remember exactly how much it scales out to, but it's quite large.

With the online transaction system, they potentially had more than 1,000 users using the system. So, there were a lot of transactions. They've purchased it based on their project and sized it for three years. At the end of those three years, based upon the functionality, how well it is, and the technology, they might just simply purchase more storage for it to increase its size. Depending upon the dated growth of those applications, they might turn around and double its size in three years.

It is hit or miss. It depends on who you get on the phone. One day they're great on the phone, and the next day, you get somebody who is just not capable. I don't want to be too rough on them, but I'd give them a six out of 10.

They were using Dell, and they were just tired of the cost and the maintenance cost as well. The initial cost was good from Dell, but to re-up on maintenance after three years was not worth it. It was cheaper to buy new storage, and that was the main reason why they replaced it with HPE.

It was very simple and straightforward. It was very easy. We could configure it in an hour.

The implementation strategy was really about having a landing zone for new data. So, we just set it up and configured it for the appropriate block type data, and then they just started writing new data to it. It was pretty easy.

We sold it to them and then installed it for them as a service. It was basically a project that the customer was working on, and we basically won their favor as a value-added reseller (VAR), and then we basically deployed it for them.

The staff required for maintenance purposes was minimal. They were able to use their existing team to manage it.

Based upon what they were doing, a return on investment is hard to calculate when you're basing it on an OpEx model because it's an operating expense. It's a cost center. Because of the way it's being used, you're not making money with it. To get into true return on investment, you'd have to understand what exactly the data is providing, what the value is of that data, and how does it compare to what you were doing before? You would need more of a data scientist to do the analysis and understand what the return on investment really is.

Because it has high availability, the cost is above average. The cost depends upon the sizing, and every customer has a different size.

It is slightly above average in terms of cost compared to its competitors, but the value add was that they could know what their maintenance cost was going to be going forward. They knew what their renewal or expansion costs would be.

There are no additional costs for this model. There are additional software components that provide additional analytics that HPE offers. It really comes down to whether or not the customer decides to purchase those or not. You can use it out of the box with the base pricing, but if you want advanced analytics and insights, you'll need to purchase additional software.

It's an excellent solution. HPE definitely stands behind it. I would put it up against most of the storage arrays that are out there because it is enterprise-class.

I'd give it high marks. I would rate it an eight out of 10. I don't give anybody a perfect score. Eight is very good in my opinion. My rating is because of the high availability of the storage and the fact that it's based on very solid technology. It has been around for a long time, and it's backed by an excellent company. In other words, they're not going anywhere.

We are using the solution for critical applications. It's used for multiple telecom services. 

The data protection is great.

The compression capabilities are quite useful. 

It is pretty easy to set up the product.

It is stable and reliable.

The support and warranty on the hardware is very good.

It is scalable.

Everything is up to par. We are happy with the product and do not need extra features. 

The pricing is very high. There are other products at much lower pricing.

I've used the solution for the past two years.

The solution is stable. I'd rate it nine out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is scalable. It's up to 2 petabytes. Right now, we are using 300 to 400 terabytes. We have a lot of room. We also use a variety of other storage devices. We're able to handle all of the storage and what we use depends on the storage needs.

We have a few customers using the solution and how many users they have under them varies widely according to what is stored.  

The solution is under a good warranty. If we have any issues, we can contact them and get warranty support. If we have issues with the hardware, it would be covered under the warranty.

We only contact support if there is a hardware issue. They have been very good overall. 

We use various HP solutions as well. 

The initial setup is simple and straightforward. It is not complex.

The deployment process only takes an hour or two. The new servers came to the organization and we have a chain of management procedures in place and followed the policies to get everything up and running. 

We have 20 to 30 staff members handling any necessary maintenance. 

The OEM also provided support during setup. We had a standard engineer and the engineer came for setup. 

The solution is paid for at the time of procurement. There is no ongoing licensing. I can't speak to the exact pricing as I don't deal with that aspect.

I'd recommend the solution to other companies.

I'd rate it nine out of ten. We are happy with its capabilities. 

Primera is a storage system that lets you mix and match All-Flash drives plus NVM drives. Most of the servers are hosted on Primera, so about 100 users are using this.

Primera's main advantage is its support for NVM drives and normal flash drives. It has some sort of AI analysis that automatically tells us how to optimize the performance.

The IOPS and throughput could be better. That's the only drawback compared to other vendors.

I've been using Primera for about six months.

Primera has been highly reliable so far, and HPE is offering a 100 percent availability.

You can add enclosures to Primera, so it's really scalable to any extent.

We used EMC Unity and HPE 3PAR in the past. 

Setting up Primera was straightforward and took about two days. Once it's set up, you need only one storage specialist to manage the solution. 

You need support from a vendor or at least an HP reseller.

I rate HPE Primera eight out of 10. I would recommend Primera if price is an issue. However, if you have the budget, you might consider a new HPE storage product called Alletra. That has better IOPS, and it's entirely NVM, which performs better, especially for database loads.

We deploy all our application services on the Primera Storages. In addition, we consolidate all of our environment on Primera Storage, a full flash system.

The interface is simplified and easy to integrate with other solutions.

The most important thing for us is the IOPS. It's produced because a full flash system is a requirement for us. Last year we used a three-part hybrid solution in our environment and needed some IOPS on our site. HPE Primera met this requirement for us entirely.

It seems sufficient for our environment, but if our requirement increases in two years, then we can plan. So there's no need to make any improvements right now.

Some application solutions can be more acceptable on the HPE Primera site because the size is important and costly.

We have been using this solution for approximately one year, deployed on private cloud. Our cloud provider is Turkcell in Turkey.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. I do not know the exact number of people using the solution, and only the Active Directory team has those details.

HPE Primera's support is right because we've worked with HPE for years. So, there's no problem with the support.

I don't have details about the initial setup.

The pricing is reasonable. It is GreenLake Services, and we pay monthly. Unfortunately, I cannot share details of our licensing costs.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. I suggest full flash solutions in the environment to speed up the application process. Before Primera Storage, we also used some hyperconverged systems, but in the hyperconverged systems, we had to tackle IOPS requirements. Due to this, HPE Primera is the right solution for the IOPS requirement environment.

This product is used for all of the backend, core storage infrastructure. We migrated from spinning-disk, so it has the same type of workloads. It is 80% virtual machines, and then file services, and database workloads.

One of the most valuable features is the ease of deployment.

Integration with the compute capacity is good, as this is just the storage component.

Orchestration and management are good.

The performance and capacity-based costs are also good.

Another advantage is that HPE sells everything. This includes all of the capabilities of the hardware, like replication, snapshot, and other specific features. They are all included from the get-go, as opposed to everything being separate and in another budget. When you buy it, you can do whatever you have to be able to do with it out of the box.

On the software side, in terms of integration, everything gets aligned with the software-defined data center concept, which means that everything needs to be done programmatically. There is room for improvement in this regard.

On the hardware side, you should have the ability to expand capacity to larger numbers.

I would like to have the ability to do direct file services. This is a block-based solution, so if you need to do file services with it, you need to put servers around it.

From the controller side, if we could have NAS capabilities then that would be great.

Between Primara and it's predecessor, 3PAR, I have used this product for about five years.

This is a rock-solid product.

This is the product that is running the data centers for the shop, so everybody in the organization will be affected one way or another by what is there. Currently, we have 6,000 people.

The technical support is very well organized. There is a feature called Home, where the hardware calls to their NOC and reports and alerts or events. Then they have a pretty standard protocol to call back. They're quite insistent; they'll send you emails and if you don't acknowledge then they start calling.

The mechanics of the support is very well put in place. 

We use the HPE 3PAR in addition to Primera.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Professional Services installation is embedded in the cost. The setup can be done by the customer but it's a pretty sophisticated solution, so we use the vendor Professional Services. It was not a third-party on top of the cost. Rather, it was included in the options that we chose.

The price to capacity ratio is good.

We had a selection process with all the major vendors, and we ended up with this solution in part because of stability. One of the primary reasons we selected it is because we can buy storage and compute from the same vendor and everything gets optimized. Obviously, everything is designed to work with one another.

I will definitely recommend this product. I'd say that anybody looking to implement it should do their cost analysis very carefully. There's a multitude of solutions, but some of them are more software-oriented. The math can become fuzzy, but once they figure out the financial aspect of it, I think from a purely technical perspective, I highly recommend it.

In terms of quality for block storage, it is one of the best on the planet, if not the best, in my view. If they had block storage, NAS, and iSCSI out of the box then I could rate it as perfect.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We are using HPE Primera for a virtual environment. My virtual machine is residing on it.

HPE Primera is quite a stable storage system that provides good provisioning and allows for the changing of partition sizes.

The solution's compression ratio feature could be improved.

I am quite satisfied with the solution’s performance.

Currently, I don't find any difficulty expanding or scaling up the storage.

We have a tier-one support partner available to support HPE Primera storage, and we are satisfied with them.

Positive

The solution’s initial setup is very straightforward. It takes around four to five days to deploy the solution.

The solution is quite cost-effective. HPE Primera is about a couple of thousand dollars cheaper than Dell NVMe.

Almost all storage has the same capabilities. HPE Primera has password protection and hybrid storage, and we can connect it to the fiber. It is not difficult to integrate HPE Primera with other third-party tools.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.