HPE StoreOnce Reviews

I would say the reliability, the ease of use, and the simple upgrades are the most valuable features. We did quite a bit of capacity upgrades in the past because it wasn't our primary storage platform for backups in the beginning. So we kind of sized it small, and then we went through several upgrade paths to get to where we are today. And all the upgrades were really simple; no issues.

It allowed us to stop using physical tapes, so we saved money on the tape storage. It allows us to have better DR capabilities because everything we back up with StoreOnce, gets replicated up to our DR site.

We had some growing pains, which was due to our internal issues. We were rushed to get it installed, and didn't necessarily do all the proper training on it. Even though we had HPE resources onsite, again we were just trying to get it up and going quickly. I think in the future, if we switch platforms, we would probably address the training better than we did this time. But the product performed well out of the box with very few support calls probably.

The stability's been great. We haven't had any issues with it. We had a few growing pains in the beginning, but a lot of it was just getting used to the platform. We haven't had any data loss with it. It stayed up. Even through all the upgrades, we haven't had issues.

We started small and it's grown exponentially since then. I'm not sure how much bigger we're going to get, but it is scaled greatly and performance hasn't decreased.

Technical support are knowledgeable. Fortunately, we have a pretty much dedicated support person that we deal with. By HPE giving us just one resource, it's helped us because they are familiar with our environment. They're familiar with our systems. Support's been painless.

We were running legacy virtual tape libraries through HPE and stuff a ton, and we needed the ability to replace those older systems. The latest and greatest technology at the time was StoreOnce, so we did an evaluation with it, set it up in our lab. Again, it was super easy to use. It did everything as promised. It was sized appropriately for what we needed at the time. And the price was competitive.

Initial setup was straightforward. I mean we pretty much rolled it into the data center, cabled it up, and we were backing up data the first day with it.

Nothing's perfect, but the speed we get from the system, the deduplication we get from the system, the replication, it all works as designed. We haven't really had any complaints with the product. Again, nothing's perfect, so we can't give it a perfect rating, but it's very good, and it is way better than what we used before.

We don't have to deal with physical tapes anymore. We don't have to deal with all those headaches because they are fragile. And support costs are tremendous for physical tapes when we were storing tens of thousands of them off-site. It let us saves costs on that. We run a pretty thin shop, so our two existing backup people were able to step in and start using the system, no issues. It's just been great so far.

I'd say don't be afraid of going tapeless. Have some faith in the HPE sales team when they tell you, because they will come in with deduplication estimates of how much space you'll save with the product. Our experiences was pretty accurate. You may be shocked at how they size the platform, but we didn't have any big issues with that.

The most valuable features of StoreOnce are ease-of-use and ease-of-configuration when compared to the old IBM Tivoli family solution that we're using.

The benefits compared to the old solution are broad flexibility, ease-of-configuration, and ease-of-maintenance. We use it for part of our backup solution.

For us, nothing is missing at the moment and over time this will probably become clearer. We are going towards the cloud environment at some point or a hybrid cloud, so it could be something on that front, but we are not working with the cloud yet. For our purposes, it's functioning perfectly fine. We get the data we want from it.

However, you need lot of knowledge before you start out. Maybe that could be improved.

We have not had any stability problems.

Scalability is something that we haven't really needed to utilise but that was one key factor when we chose it over the other solutions. We haven't had to do any scaling yet. We have in the range of 10 to 20 TBs.

We have not yet used technical support for StoreOnce, but we have been using it for less than a year.

We were basically upgrading the whole data center and we wanted to stick with one vendor as a provider of all the hardware. It was kind of logical to also look for a solution from HPE.

I was involved in the initial setup. We had a technician from the partner who was providing the solution helping to set it up. It was very straightforward. I'm comparing to the old solution, which was kind of a pain in the neck. To set up the StoreOnce, all that was needed from us was the IP address and some background information on how we would use it. That was about it. From all the things that we set up in our data center at that time, this was probably the simplest.

Everybody wants to see lower cost, but pricing was competitive.

We also looked at Dell. We went with HPE because we want everything to be from one vendor.

My advice is to use trusted advisors. You can only know so much. It's good to discuss things with an advisor.

When looking for a vendor, the cost is, of course, important, but the partnering with HPE or another vendor and the range of products they offer is the most critical factor.

The most valuable features for us are the very high-performance deduplication and high deduplication rates. These features make it quite cost-effective.

We previously used a tape-based backup system with a tape library and off-site storage of tapes, which was very expensive to run. It also wasn't terribly reliable and we had constant issues with capacity. 

We migrated to StoreOnce and we're using the copy feature of StoreOnce to copy to another unit in a different location. We have the primary unit that we do backups to, and then we have another unit in our disaster-recovery site, and all the backups are copied over the WAN to the disaster-recovery site. It uses deduplication to do that too, so the bandwidth requirements are quite low. 

So we have a completely tapeless backup flow that is very low impact on our network and has very high reliability.

StoreOnce actually does pretty much everything we need. There are  quite a lot of features that we don't use at the moment such as virtual tape library and NAS. 

But the initial network setup is not intuitive, and this could be improved.

I've used it for 18 months.

We've had no issues with deploying it.

StoreOnce has been 100% stable in the eighteen months that we've been using it. We actually purchased an additional unit for a third location after the initial purchase of two units on the basis of the performance and reliability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

StoreOnce is not really complicated to set up. It's probably something that can be done by a typically-skilled systems administrator in a day or a half-day.

I think as long as you have a clear understanding of what it does and you're quite sure that that's what you need, then there isn't a better product. Certainly, in terms of the ease-of-use and reliability, we haven't had any issues with StoreOnce. It's definitely one of the products that I would recommend to anyone.

Our client is a government office. They use StoreOnce to store information about the weather as they specialize in meteorology data.

Most of our clients are medium-sized enterprises.

I think it's a good solution. The hardware is strong and all the equipment has a good infrastructure. Personally, I think it's the best storage product in HPE for small to medium-sized businesses.

HPE StoreOnce should come with a detailed installation guide. 

I have been using HPE StoreOnce for two weeks.

With StoreOnce, there are many different options for increasing the storage. I believe it's a good solution if a company needs more space for a reasonable price — it's easy to scale this solution.

The technical support is good. I used their technical support for assistance when I was trying to download the console management software — they resolved that problem in an hour or so. 

StoreOnce is very easy to install. No specialized software is required in the installation process. Deployment is also very easy.

The initial setup is not complex but it really depends on the type of server. For example, when you use a normal server, it requires a unique process to install the complete solution. With the StoreOnce server, you have to use another method to install the solution because it's very different. This server has its own software pre-installed in the equipment, so it's different than a normal server.

Overall, deployment took two days. One day to install the hardware, and another day to deploy the software.

Our client evaluated Dell, Lenovo, and Synology. Synology is a cheaper solution for storing data. However, our client was looking for reliable equipment with full-support — Synology doesn't come with support. With Dell and Lenovo, it was also complicated to obtain support in Ecuador. HPE provides the best support in Ecuador.

I would absolutely recommend HPE StoreOnce — it's a good product. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give HPE StoreOnce a rating of ten.

The valuable feature is the ability to work with the Veeam software to reduce the backup windows.

The benefits are more capacity in the backup server and the ability to retain backups.

I would like to see better integration with Veeam software.

It demonstrates high stability and it can integrative with Veeam and other HPE products such as 3PAR.

The scalability is very high and you can get more space if you need to grow.

I have not used technical support.

We knew we needed to invest in this solution because we needed to fine-tune our backup windows.

We are not evaluating other companies.

When selecting a vendor, we look for reliability in the market, the capacity for growth, and how the company integrates their products.

I recommend this product because of the easy integration with Veeam and other backup products.

We've only just put it in, so I think for us it's a more efficient way of storage. Time efficient, man power, all of it. We have a very small team, so it just frees up the guys to do other things.

It's only been in for a couple of weeks, so can't really comment too much about what it's done yet.

I'd like it to be quicker.

So far, we've had no issues.

One of my engineers might have called, but I haven't.

We were using EMC, and my engineers put some pressure on me. They said we need to spend some money, so that's how I knew we needed to get something else.

It really came down to relationships. At the time it wasn't just going from EMC, it was also going from Cisco to HPE Networking. We went through a pretty good process, where we talked about our needs and requirements, and also comfort levels of technology change. Some of my engineers were a little reluctant to move away from Cisco. But HPE ecame and sat down and just said "We'll do whatever it takes. What do you need? What are your concerns?" Just worked with us in real detail: able to understand what our concerns were, where we were going, and making sure that the engineers were made comfortable. But also making sure, which was the last part which comes across the line, was that the technology was what we needed, was enough for growth. Whereas Cisco was just a "here's a quote, sent it to us" which I think for me swung me over to HP. The commitment to the customer.

Think about the next 10 years, where are you heading. Personally, I say HPE's a pretty strong organization. They send the right messages, saying the right things. They seem like a very digital company which is all about customer, and that stuff matters to me, whereas some of the competitors, they don't have that mindset. Cisco definitely doesn't have that mindset. I really think long-term about. Sure, Cisco had a lot more features, but we didn't really need them. So, that made the decision easier. For me, when I think about HPE, think about longevity. You want to invest in technology, you're almost investing in the company.