HPE StoreOnce Reviews

Many clients opt for HPE StoreOnce for local backups in a hybrid cloud setup. Larger customers often handle installations internally, utilizing StoreOnce for local backup and a solution like Veeam or Acronis for their private cloud. Most of them prefer the BIM license for this purpose. 

In my view, using tapes alongside HPE StoreOnce can provide better data protection. While StoreOnce allows for quick data recovery, having tapes as a backup ensures safety in case of StoreOnce issues. I always recommend having both for essential data to minimize downtime.

I think StoreOnce's deduplication technology is crucial for cost efficiency and faster recovery, especially for backup and data protection purposes. Based on my understanding, its impact on data recovery would vary depending on factors like the size of the backup and the scenario in which it's used. For smaller backups or non-production scenarios, the impact may not be significant, but for larger backups or critical production data, there could be a more substantial impact.

In terms of areas for improvement, I believe HPE StoreOnce could learn from competitors like Dell's Data Domain and ExtraHop in refining its architecture. As for rating the initial setup experience on a scale of one to ten, I would rate it as an eight in terms of ease.

I have experience with HPE StoreOnce.

I would rate the stability of HPE StoreOnce as a 7 out of 10.

In terms of scalability, it's satisfactory as we can expand the StoreOnce solution as needed. Our clients range from medium to large enterprises.

I would rate the initial setup of HPE StoreOnce as a 5 because it's not very difficult but also not extremely straightforward. The deployment typically takes from hours to a couple of days, depending on the customer's requirements and configurations. 

I would rate it around 2 or 3 because, compared to others, it tends to be higher priced.

I would recommend it as we are an HPE partner and trust their infrastructure and services. However, I always provide honest feedback and mention areas for improvement when asked. I would rate it around a 7.

The ability to control where the dedupe takes place. StoreOnce allows deduplication in three locations; the client, the backup appliance and designated media servers. This flexibility can come in handy especially in smaller shops/data centers. For example, if network bandwidth is the issue you can dedupe at the client, and that reduces the total amount of data that has to be sent over the wire, or if a backup client doesn’t have the horsepower to dedicate CPU and memory to the dedupe process, you can do it at a designated media server (90% of our backups happen that way). Thirdly, at some of our smaller data clusters, our clients needs all their CPU and memory for running apps, and we don’t have a dedicated media server so we let the StoreOnce appliance do the deduplication.

Also, the ease of replicating between the three types of StoreOnce devices.

Since we went from disk to tape to D2D that’s a huge improvement. We now have faster more reliable backups, easy replication between data centers and smaller credit centers.

• Capacity of the B6200 as the capacity has improved/tripled in the 6500
• It would be nice if it dedupelicated per service set instead of by the store

I've used it for two years including testing, and in production for 16 months.

The B6200 was designed to ingest data from different networks and we had three. Some we had to do some additional VLAN tagging.

We’ve experienced data lost. We’ve had three stores go off-line (which were recoverable) and had a disk become corrupt at the service set/couplet level. The corrupt service set had to be formatted and we lost 40TB of data. Luckily most of it was replicated from another data center.

9/10.

8/10.

We didn't have a previous solution.

It was very complex because our setup included six data centers with three types of StoreOnce devices. Replication between multiple sites, and Oracle, Lotus Notes, VMware, SQL, and Exchange online integrations.

We used a vendor team who were 5/10. HP sent their design team, and they were helpful but the StoreOnce product was very new and they were learning the product. We were given bad information which led to a crash.

We also looked at Data Domain, and another whose name I can't remember.

Don’t get the B6200 get the 6500 even if you have to start small in terms of storage. You can add on as you need it.

HPE should have more options so customers can choose from a wide range of products with small to big capacities. The smallest one is 80 terabytes.

HPE should also improve the performance of the product. The performance is very important. Because when your system has a disaster problem, it's time to restart everything. If you have good performance, your system can restart faster. HPE StoreOnce takes a long time to restore, which is an issue.

They should improve the backup and restore performance. Dell has DD Boost, which is a very good solution. ExaGrid has a landing zone and a cache in the memory so that they can back up from the landing zone very fast. HPE doesn't have any technology they can compare.

I've worked with this solution for almost ten years.

HPE's performance is lower than that of ExaGrid and Data Domain.

It's not scalable. It's the same as Data Domain. When upgrading, it has a limited number you can upgrade by. I recommend it for smaller companies.

Technical support is quite good. HP has been in Vietnam for a long time, so the local team here is strong in experience.

Positive

With the same capacity of Data Domain and ExaGrid, which is 80 terabytes, HPE is the cheapest one.

HP in Vietnam has a big market. People pay attention to backup data right now. Some go to the cloud, but when backing up to the cloud, the performance is slow. People should have a local backup instead of backing up to the cloud.

I don't recommend my customer use HPE StoreOnce. They have a cheaper price but are not advanced with their solutions or technology. I still prefer ExaGrid and Data Domain.

I rate HPE StoreOnce a five out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for a backup. Today, we are using Micro Focus Data Protector, which is a former HPE product, however, we are migrating Convault.

There are a few great features. Obviously, deduplication is a big one. There are the catalyst stores that we are using. It's a feature that does what we need it to do. We've been using the 5100 for quite some time with a lot of success and no issues. However, we were looking, at first, at expanding, however, we couldn't expand them anymore as they were at end of life. Now we are looking at the new generation, the latest, 5260.

It is easy to set up the product.

The solution is stable. 

You can easily scale the solution.

I haven't come across any missing features.

One item I wanted to see is SSD drives as a cache. Data is taken in by the subsystem on SSD drives and as later on offloaded to spinning media. That was a feature that you could already see in primary storage, and that was, for a time, still lacking in StoreOnce, however, they have done it now. It's not available yet, however, it will be shortly.

I, myself, worked for HPE for 34 years. Now, I'm working as an independent consultant. I'm working at a pharmaceutical company and they've been using it for four years.

It is an absolutely stable solution. We haven't had any issues. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. it's reliable. 

The solution is definitely scalable, to the extent that we need it. For our purposes, it is definitely scalable enough. It's modular enough. You can add, with the 5260, 192 terabytes of raw capacity that you can extend one shelf at a time.

Technical support is helpful, however, an advantage that I have is that I know the company inside out. I still have contact with my former colleagues there. They do their job. They are helpful and responsive.

The solution is easy to set up. It's not complex or difficult. I'd rate it nine out of ten in terms of ease of implementation.

I'm not into financials. I'm a technical guy. I just help with planning and designing a solution, and then others decide on pricing and configuration. I'm working as an external consultant, therefore, I don't have any decision-making there. 

I don't have any practical experience with many other solutions. Coming out of HPE, going to work as an independent consultant in a company that is using a lot of HPE products, I'm obviously quite satisfied that they are using StoreOnce, and they will keep on using it. 

In terms of the version we are using, we have the StoreOnce 5100 and now we're looking at the StoreOnce 5260.

I'd recommend the solution to others. It has the features that we require and the features that, are required by a lot of companies that have a lot of data today. It's all about data. Data requirements are booming in the primary storage market and storage subsystems. Obviously, to be protected, you need to back up the data. And there, it does what it needs to do. There are petabytes of user data that you can store on a terabyte type back up to the disk subsystem. 

That said, if you go to medium-sized companies or small-sized companies, probably there will be cheaper and smaller-scale options. For instance, the StoreOnce that we are using, are long connected, so they are accessed through the network, however, they're also connected through a SUMP, so a storage area network. That is something that you find mostly in the bigger companies that have the financial means to buy these types of subsystems. It would be depending on size and requirements. For bigger organizations, therefore, I would definitely advise they go for this product.

I would rate the product nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is Catalyst Copy.

The most valuable part is the Catalyst Copy.

HPE StoreOnce Backup to Disk (BTD) is not a good backup solution for NAS devices. It does not have a dual controller, so if one controller fails, the entire system will go down. This can make it difficult to recover data if there is a problem with the controller. 

Additionally, HPE StoreOnce BTD has problems when used as a backup target for NAS devices.

In future releases, I would like to see more resiliency. It is also dependent on vulnerable conditions. So, the question is whether the map profile can be improved as a net target. We need to investigate that. We also need to conduct tests to see if anything can be done. We can expect to have more information when we are there in thirty minutes.

I have been using this solution for five years now. We use the latest version.

It is a stable solution.

It is scalable for the model number we have acquired and it is still within our requirement. It is used at the enterprise level.

The customer service and support are good.

Positive

We used a different solution; we opted for HPE for minor differences, like HPE offers data de-duplication.

It is very easy to implement.

There is no dedicated person required for the maintenance. It is an application.

ROI is there but in compliance with other standards and in combination with the entire enterprise solution, it suffices our backup needs. 

The pricing is competitive. The licensing costs is capacity-based and come bundled with support. The bundle is an end-to-end thing.

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

The deduplication feature is awesome. The storage space has been cut down by at least 50% and on some instance greater reduction has been achieved. Here is a current example showing the space savings: Actual User Data Store 44.9TB, Actual Size on Disk 4.0TB with an 11.3 dedupe ratio. This was only one of my libraries on the StoreOnce 4430 device.

Please refer to the answer above about valuable features. The space saving on storage of actual user data also has a cost savings attached to it. We do not have to extend the actual storage space as quickly now due to the space savings of the deduplication feature.

The auto load balancing between VTL Libraries has been not as efficient as it should have been. I have manually load balanced between my libraries to maintain a tight control.There have also been bug fixes in the past for their auto load balancing feature. I would like to see this greatly improved so that I feel that it is trustworthy enough to utilize this feature.

I've used it for one and half years in an enterprise environment with HP DataProtector v7.0

No issues during deployment of the 4430 device into the enterprise environment.

Not with this current model 4430, but with a previous model we did have stability issues and these have been resolve with the 4430 model.

No issues with scalability. We purchased an additional 20TB shelf with the 4430 device (which came with a 20TB shelf included in the package we purchased).

HP’s customer service is outstanding. Turnaround time on parts for us is four hours and we also have them in less time than that. The HP service representatives are knowledgeable, friendly and are very easy to speak to. They are people who don't read from a script, but actually have a working knowledge of the equipment.

It's outstanding.

No, and we chose StoreOnce as we are currently an HP enterprise environment.

In most ways it was straightforward, however, you need to be an experienced network administrator to install this device.

It was done as an in-house implementation. However, we currently work with an HP partner in all our enterprise purchases. They're called High Performance Technologies, Inc. in Palm City, Florida, and the IT team at this business are outstanding and they all keep up to date with their HP certifications. They work with HP to obtain the best pricing for the equipment we need to ascertain. With this business relationship, comes years of trust and we know that they understand our enterprise network topology and make recommendations based off that long term knowledge.

The cost savings of not having to continually purchase additional shelf space has been the driving force of staying with this outstanding product.

The original cost was approximately $250,000. Included in that was the device itself and 40TB of storage space.

We did evaluate other options but due to the fact that HP has set the standard, we stayed with them.

I've had little to no issues with either the StoreOnce 4430 device or the DataProtector software. I would highly recommend this type of backup system for enterprise environments.

Read the documentation provided by HP on their website and research the web to avoid any possible issues during implementation.

We primarily use the solution for backup storage.

Nine years ago, we were relying on backup tapes only. Now, since we've moved to StoreOnce, as per the legal and compliance perspective we still have to use tapes, but we have reduced usage a lot. We don't have to transfer the tapes from one side to another side. That task has been reduced because we have StoreOnce in two locations, and we take backup on one appliance, and that appliance is replicated to the other side. The backup and restore speed is very fast, compared to tape. There is less administrative work. 

The speed and deduplication ratio are two of the most valuable features of the solution.

I'm using this product to save some files. It has a feature where I can make it as an SMB share. When I started using it for CIFS, the SMB share, had a limitation of 1,000,005 only. Considering 1,000,000 objects are in one share, it's too limiting.

The appliance doesn't have global deduplication, it has StoreOnce deduplication. It does not deduplicate across the appliance, it will deduplicate in one particular store. With global deduplication, I could store more data.

This appliance currently doesn't have SSD drives. I'm not sure if new models include them, but I believe if they can include NVMe or SSD drives as a cache device, they can increase the backup speed a lot and that can help with the global deduplication.

One of the reasons to not enable global deduplication was to not impact the backup and restore speed, but I believe if they include a cache device like NVMe or SSDs, then the drawback of enabling global deduplication can be removed. 

The solution is very stable. After nine years, I have yet to have a problem.

Scalability is good. When we bought the current model, 6500, we bought around 200 TB of capacity, and we are using more than three TB of data. In terms of scalability, we can go from 200 TB to 400 TB to 600 TB, or more. They also provide cloud banks, but I don't think we will be requiring that amount of storage in the future. Because of deduplication, we don't have to add so much physical capacity. Even if I add 32 TB or whatever the minimum capacity is, it can still hold lots of terabytes of data.

We have 1,300 users and three admin who are maintaining the solution. We use the solution every day to run backups.

Technical support is very good.

We didn't have another solution previously, in terms of backup storage, but in terms of software, I have used some other products like Windows deduplication. This solution, however, offers reliability and stability.

The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment took less than one hour. We have three admins, but I am the primary admin, so you only need one person for maintenance.

An HP consultant came to assist with deployment.  Deployment assistance comes with it when you buy the solution. Our experience with the deployment consultant was good.

The license is part of the hardware. You don't need to buy or renew it separately.

StoreOnce comes in a package: hardware and software. All the licenses come with it. Software licenses for backup solutions like Data Protector you do have to purchase separately, but in terms of the backup appliance, it comes with all the features and the license as part of it. You have to only purchase the application license but that is very cheap.

We did evaluate Data Domain from EMC, but I didn't like it because Data Domain has other limitations. In terms of density per rack, it was using more rack capacity. Also, they were selling three different products, so it was adding too much complexity. I decided to go with StoreOnce.

We are using the private cloud deployment model.

If you purchase the product, you will have peace of mind. You don't have to worry about the product at all. My only advice is, get it installed by an HP consultant, not by a third-party or partner, because the HP team will give you the correct advice before implementing. I strongly recommend going through the HP publishing best practices guide, for each and every hardware they have released as well. StoreOnce also has a best practices guide from HP. It will be a 10-20 page document. Go through it, and it will really help you to architect or design the solution prior to implementing it.

I would rate the solution 8.5 out of ten.

The solution saves a lot of storage capacity. It provides optimization, compression, and deduplication features. It gives me confidence about the security of the environment. It is integrated with Catalyst and SimpliVity. I can use SimpliVity for backup.

The backups are outside the production network. They are not connected. It is easy to recover the information. It is easy to get access to the environment. I have a lot of storage backups. Catalyst is the most valuable function for data deduplication. I have noticed some improvements in our data retention. The product is very efficient. I have very old backups. I do not have to clean out old backups for a long period.

The solution must provide backup options for smaller capacities. We do not need much storage capacity due to compression and deduplication. We do not use all the capacity. My device is half occupied. The solution must provide cloud management features. A lot of HPE devices and technologies are going to the cloud. I do not know if HPE StoreOnce can be managed on the cloud.

I have been using the solution for eight to ten years.

The tool’s stability has been great. I rate the stability a nine or ten out of ten.

Small, medium and large organizations can take advantage of the tool’s capacity and performance.

I am happy with the support team.

Positive

The initial setup is simple. The concepts were easy for us.

I rate the pricing a four out of ten. The solution is pretty expensive. It's not cheap because it's bigger than what we need.

My storage needs are less, so I did not need to scale the tool. I rate the solution’s management and integration a seven or eight out of ten. HPE is better than other products. It provides good integrations and storage. If anyone asks me what I do to store my backups, I tell them about HPE StoreOnce. I’m happy with the product. We also use it for recovery. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.