HPE StoreOnce Reviews

The most valuable features of HPE StoreOnce are the single storage, disaster recovery, and configuration. Additionally, the feature to connect two stages together is useful.

I have been using HPE StoreOnce for approximately 10 years.

HPE StoreOnce works well, it is stable.

The scalability of HPE StoreOnce is excellent.

I am the only one using this solution in my organization. 

It is difficult to solve issues with this solution remotely. I prefer to use the knowledge base platforms. The response time could improve.

I have not used other solutions prior to HPE StoreOnce.

The initial setup of HPE StoreOnce is easy and the configuration is quick. It took 30 minutes to implement.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate HPE StoreOnce a nine out of ten.

We use the product for data backup purposes.

The platform's most valuable feature is Catalyst software. It helps with efficient source deduplication.

They could provide more options for storage capacity. At the moment, they only have an 80-terabyte storage facility. There should be availability of lesser capacities at lower prices. Additionally, they should integrate it with cybersecurity products.

We have been using HPE StoreOnce for ten years.

I rate the platform's stability a nine out of ten.

The platform is suitable for enterprise companies. I rate the scalability a seven out of ten.

They could improve the technical support services in terms of quality.

Positive

We have used Dell EMC Data Domain before. In comparison, HPE StoreOnce has an excellent support service.

The initial setup process is simple.

I rate the platform's pricing a seven out of ten.

HPE StoreOnce optimizes the backup and recovery process through its efficient software, notably the Catalyst software, in terms of speed. The integration of StoreOnce with external software, such as Veeam, further contributes to optimizing backup and recovery.

It is a scalable platform. We can add extensive units and storage capacity. However, it is quite expensive. I rate the ease of management and integration of HPE StoreOnce an eight out of ten.

Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten. It could be compatible with different systems.

Excellent deduplication ratios.

It did not improve the way my organization functions: It was just an alternative method to accomplish what was being done a different way.

The UI is rather dated and not intuitive. Also, the setup is rather complex and you need to understand the product to best leverage it.

The GUI has a look from the traditional HP interfaces of 10 years ago. The layout is confusing as it is designed for someone that really understands the underpinnings of StoreOnce. The P6500 is basically a pair of DL380 servers running a Linux distribution clustered with all the necessary hardware and then is presented as a single StoreOnce appliance. Many of the menus in the GUI provide drill down capabilities that can get you deep into the inner workings of the appliance but, unless you know what you are doing, it is more there for support to utilize. While the appliance is a single cluster you are really working with each node individually further complicating management of the device. You need to put some thought into how you will distribute the workload across the nodes because the appliance does not provide any mechanisms for load balancing. While HPE claims StoreOnce will work with CommVault, our experience was that the use case was very narrow. While the P6500 has some beefy hardware the software is the Achilles heel. We found that as the dataset grows the P6500 becomes bogged down in housecleaning tasks that conflict with the incoming workload.

3 months.

The product did not scale well and had several issues where it bogged down under load. When used with a non HPE backup product, you really need to optimize the StoreOnce and your backup product to work well together.

Support was good, better than average, but left a little room for improvement.

We were using native backup (Commvault), which was unreliable. We selected this as a method to improve and better scale our backup deduplication, but it turned out StoreOnce introduced enough inconsistencies and incompatibilities, we actually went back to Commvault’s native deduplication.

You need vendor assistance to get the product properly set up and configured.

Vendors supplied resources for install and initial configuration assistance.

Make sure you understand your use case very well, go over it in detail with the vendor and get commitments that it is compatible with your use case.

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.

We use StoreOnce for backup storage, copying all backup data to it. We are customers of HPE. 

The main benefit for me is from the deduplication and encryption features. StoreOnce provides an efficient and solid storage-saving destination for backup. It has a catalyst feature supported by most backup solutions that provides duplication even before copying the data. It saves bandwidth on the fly and saves storage space. It does a good job. 

Hardware maintenance involves some downtime for backup destination storage. It could be a problem for some people. I'd like to see some improvement in terms of the high availability of computer resources required. In addition, extra security is always welcome. 

I've been using this solution for two years. 

The solution is very stable. 

The scalability depends on the module. They have a lot of modules for the product and some are expandable while others come with a specific maximum capacity.

We receive good customer support. 

In my previous job the company used Dell EMC Data Domain. It's also a good solution, but a little more complex in terms of configuration and installation. But it's a good working solution. 

I find the initial setup straightforward. It helps to know something about infrastructure and network connectivity. It takes about half an hour to get it up and running and integrated with your backup solution. 

We've seen a return in that StoreOnce saves money by dedicating the data and saving storage.

Licensing costs are reasonable when you consider the benefits. We have a permanent license.

I recommend this solution and rate it nine out of 10. 

We are a financial organization and HPE StoreOnce backs up our data on a daily basis. Our entire infrastructure is running on HPE's main server and this backup solution was implemented as part of it.

In the financial industry, we have to retain backups for certain types of information for different periods of time. Some data is retained for three months, whereas other types of data are retained for five years.

The size of the backup data is very small, which is one of the features that we really like. Our data center grows between 20% and 30% each year and it is currently at 70 terabytes in size. We are now running a 40 terabyte backup, which is between 80% and 90% capacity. This size of the backup is really attractive.

The deduplication feature works well.

We did not find the accompanying software, Data Protector, very useful. Instead, we purchased a separate backup utility called Arcserve Backup.

One of the drawbacks of this product is that you cannot add another disk array when you reach capacity. Scaling is very costly because you have to buy a new box.

In the future, I would like to see built-in, hardware-level protection against ransomware attacks.

We have been working with HPE StoreOnce for between six and seven years.

We have not encountered any issues with it and I would say that it is quite stable. I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.

We have just reached capacity and we are now trying to get a new box.

The support is quite good. If we have any issues then they will connect remotely to assist us. I would rate them an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The licensing fees are based on how much storage space is required.

This is a good product and I recommend it. However, I think that it is important to consider which backup software to use. If it does not support the capacity that the StoreOnce has then you will run into a problem.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Deduplication. As well, having Catalyst backups that are supported by HPE StoreOnce 6600 is very good for BURA.

It reduced larger backup windows where we have had to wait for days to complete one full backup of a larger database.

Catalyst backup is used to back up Oracle databases, and provides very good throughput during backups.

We are looking for Federated VTLs just like Federated Catalyst Store. Currently, VTLs can only be created on individual service sets and cannot be used to share the resources of other nodes. 

The good feature about StoreOnce is, its speed. It's integration with 3PAR, so you can do express backups. You can take your snapshots from your 3PAR and you can back it up directly to your StoreOnce. The other nice feature about that is, you can then take your data, and if you wanted to, you can replicate it to another StoreOnce. Even from there, you can have that ... Then you can also offload it Tape. With 3PAR and with StoreOnce, we kind of have an end to end solution for the customer. The other nice thing about StoreOnce is, it supports VTL. You can do a VTL type configuration on your StoreOnce, you can do Catalyst stores, and then you can also do NAS stores.

This is just a personal thing for me as it comes down to documentation and giving clear information. If you want to do express backup from 3PAR to StoreOnce, you need the RMC license, you need Virtual Copy on 3PAR, and then you need the Catalyst license. I've been to a bunch of tech talks, and they never really say this specifically. It's in the quick specs, but I remember my boss asking "What are you adding that license for," and I said, "It's required. Here's the documentation, but I don't think the message is clear enough." You know what I mean? I understand people need to understand the technology, but when it comes down to it, if you're creating a parts list, a build that's supposed to go into a customer's site and work, if you don't know all the parts and pieces, then you've got a failed implementation. That's just my personal view.

It doesn't replace traditional backup, but if you want a solution that can back up your snapshots quickly and reliably, then StoreOnce is good.