HPE StoreOnce Reviews

The solution is used for data recovery. We need it when a disaster happens. We need critical applications on it so that we get an immediate uptime.

The product’s data retention is very good. It gives us good storage space for many critical applications without workload issues.

The latency is a bit high. The latency must be improved to help retrieve data quickly. The product must provide features to prioritize the retrieval of critical applications before the normal applications.

I have been using the solution for three years.

The tool is stable.

We have 400 users in our organization. We have only one administrator.

The support team is good.

We used Quantum, but it was very expensive. So we switched to HPE StoreOnce.

The initial setup is easy. It takes one day.

It is an economic product. It is worth my money.

HPE StoreOnce is the best solution for data recovery. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We use HPE StoreOnce for data backup. We take our data backup on a disk-based backup, and we use HPE StoreOnce for that disk-based backup.

The solution's licensing policy is more practical and not confusing.

The solution's technical support should be faster.

I have been using HPE StoreOnce for four to five years.

HPE StoreOnce is a stable solution.

HPE StoreOnce is a scalable solution. HPE StoreOnce is a backup tool, and we have configured it on around 500 nodes for backup. We have plans to increase the solution’s usage over a period of time.

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

We implemented the solution through a partner within one day. Before we ordered, the box was almost preconfigured. The hard disk and the enclosure were already populated. We just connected all the power cables and checked the hardware and rack layout for any damages. Once we powered it on, we configured it as per our requirement and connected it with our software.

The return on investment with HPE StoreOnce is quite good. We have recovered the solution's cost within less than three to four years.

We have not taken a perpetual license for HPE StoreOnce, but you need to buy the license capacity as you increase the capacity. HPE StoreOnce is cheaper compared to other solutions in the market.

I would recommend HPE StoreOnce to other users.

Overall, I rate HPE StoreOnce an eight out of ten.

I use the solution in my company, and we design the solution per the customer's requirements.

The most valuable feature of the solution is its UI. The product's UI makes it easy for users to configure the tool.

The product's support is an area with certain shortcomings requiring improvements. Support needs to be faster.

I don't know whether a snapshot is an area that is covered in the tool or not, but if it is there or incorporated in the tool, then it is good.

I have been using HPE StoreOnce for more than ten years. My company may probably be using the latest version of the solution, but I am not into the implementation part.

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

In terms of HPE StoreOnce's scalability benefits for our organization's growth, I would say that it is possible to scale up as and when there are requirements coming in from our customers.

I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

The product's installation phase is easy.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution's installation phase takes two to three hours.

The solution's installation phase can be managed by two engineers.

My company has to keep on asking HPE distributors to offer the product at a better price, which is why I cannot disclose it. I don't utilize any licenses, which can be a reason why I have to pay extra money in addition to the standard license fees.

Even though I chose HPE over the other products in the market, I see that some equations have changed, specifically since HPE and Nutanix have started to work together. I did not consider any other tools against HPE StoreOnce.

The tool fits into your data protection and disaster recovery strategies, specifically for SME customers, as it is the most apt solution for them.

Speaking about the features of HPE StoreOnce that are most effective for data replication, I would say that there are DBs in my company for it.

I cannot comment whether I have seen any reductions with the costs because of the tool since it is used by my end customers. I believe that if they are still using it, then there shouldn't be any problem with it.

I have not faced any challenges when integrating HPE StoreOnce into our company's IT environment.

I have not used any AI features in the tool.

I would recommend HPE StoreOnce to other users. For an SMB customer, the budget is a constraint, which is why they can think about using HPE StoreOnce.

I don't do any maintenance of the product with the help of any third party since I take care of it by myself. If only some requirements are there, we scale up the tool.

I rate the tool a six out of ten.

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.

Federated Catalyst Replication allows us to centrally control and store all backup data with minimal effort and administration, and also removes relying on onsite staff at remote locations to change tapes.

Not every office has skilled IT staff, so changing backup tapes was always a challenge. A person was typically “burdened” with the task of changing tapes daily or weekly and would often be neglected for other priorities or be completely forgotten if the staff member was away or on leave. Now, there is no requirement for any staff member at remote sites to be involved in any task related to data backup and recovery.

We averaged at least three missed backups a month due to issues with the right backup tapes not being in the drive at the time of a backup. This has been completely eliminated since moving to StoreOnce and using Catalyst Stores and Catalyst Replications since all data moves are automated and bandwidth friendly, so they complete well within our nightly backup windows, and tapes are only used at the Datacentre which is controlled by trained IT professionals. We now have no one to blame but ourselves

1. Other products are able to read and write directly to/from StoreOnce Catalyst Stores (Symantec NetBackup and Backup Exec, Microsoft SQL Server, SAP, Oracle and soon Veeam Backup & Replication). However, they cannot integrate with StoreOnce Catalyst Replication. The replication must be triggered by software such as HP Data Protector, which must first know about the data that exists on the Catalyst Store. Unfortunately, data written to a Catalyst Store by one of the other products is not visible to Data Protector, so automating actions to occur based on new data being written to a Catalyst Store is not available. This really limits the ability to integrate all backups in to the Catalyst Store using their own native tools (MSSQL Maintenance Plans for example) and leverage the Federated Catalyst Replication capabilities. All backups must be written by Data Protector use Federated Catalyst.
2. The performance of NAS/CIFS Shares on a StoreOnce is acceptable for a standard write operation, but performance during restores (such as Virtual Machine Restores from Veeam Backup and Replication) is unacceptable. This is being improved as more products natively support StoreOnce Catalyst but is not widely adopted as yet.

We have been using StoreOnce for approximately two years, and couldn't be happier. It's used across two main datacentres and over 15 remote sites that use a combination of the 4430, 4220, and 2620 systems. All StoreOnce systems run the same OS Version, currently 3.12.1. We do not use the VSA, as we strive to maintain physical hardware separation between our production data and disk backups. We backup data at all remote sites to a local StoreOnce device, then replicate it to Datacentre A, then again to Datacentre B, and then finally copy to tape for secure storage.

Also in-use, is HP Data Protector 9.03 which controls backup of data into StoreOnce Catalyst Stores and automated object copy operations which utilise the HP StoreOnce Federated Catalyst to replicate backed up objects between StoreOnce Backup Systems. All data backups at remote sites follows the same routine:

• Single Data Protector Backup Specification for all clients in the site.
• Data Protector Disk Agents back up data to a single HP StoreOnce Gateway (we use one of the same disk agents being backed up to also serve as the gateway).
• Data is written to a StoreOnce Catalyst Store at the local site.
• Data Protector Post-Backup Object Copy Job with the “Use Replication” checkbox enabled is triggered automatically upon completion of the backup to replicate data to Datacentre A.
• The StoreOnce Gateways at both sites trigger a Catalyst Replication where the StoreOnce's replicate the Data Protector Backup Objects from one StoreOnce to the other utilising source-side deduplication has dramatically reduce WAN usage (only blocks that do not exist are transferred).
• Once completed, another Post-Backup Object Copy Job copies the data from the StoreOnce at Datacentre A to a similar StoreOnce at Datacentre B.
• A final Post-Backup Object Copy Job then copies the data from Datacentre B on to LTO6 Tape.

Using this process results in many restore options, and the entire process is automated. We can restore from:

1. StoreOnce at the remote site
2. StoreOnce at Datacentre A
3. StoreOnce at Datacentre B
4. LTO6 Tape at Datacentre B

No real issues other than the change in mindset for our backup administrators and the increase in the number of jobs that are now configured. For a typical remote site the following seven jobs exist:

1. Daily Differential Backup (Monday to Thursday) to local StoreOnce
2. Daily Post-Backup Object Copy to Datacentre A
3. Daily Post-Backup Object Copy from Datacentre A to Datacentre B
4. Weekly Full Backup (Friday) to local StoreOnce
5. Weekly Post-Backup Object Copy to Datacentre A
6. Weekly Post-Backup Object Copy from Datacentre A to Datacentre B
7. Weekly Post-Backup Object Copy from Datacentre B to LTO Tape

There is also now the requirement to upgrade HP Data Protector to provide certified support for newer StoreOnce OS releases. HP Data Protector upgrades typically bring with them enough problems on their own.

We did experience an issue for many months where Post-Backup Object Copy jobs would remain stuck “In Progress” and never report any data movements even though the two StoreOnce devices successfully replicated data. The jobs had to be aborted and manually re-run. We experienced approximately five of these a week out of over 200 jobs that would run. This was eventually fixed in Data Protector 9.03, and a post-hotfix.

The HP StoreOnce support team are very responsive and quick to react to problems and offer ongoing support and guidance. However, StoreOnce really shines when integrated with a backup product that utilises the StoreOnce capabilities to better protect your data. This is where the HP Technical Support breaks down. It is often difficult to have a team take ownership of a problem or admit there is a fault, the blame is often directed to someone else. Typically, we have found this to be more of an issue with the Data Protector Support than with StoreOnce, but being the same company it is quite jarring at times how little cross-communication and teamwork there is despite Data Protector and StoreOnce being so heavily dependent on each other.

We previously used Symantec Backup Exec at remote sites to back up data locally to tape, and HP Data Protector at the Datacentres. Managing two separate products was difficult, particularly with staff trying to remain current on both products that have very different lifecycles. Since we already used Data Protector at the datacentres and HP StoreOnce is the most tightly integrated with Data Protector the choice to use StoreOnce was very easy. We did not evaluate any other disk backup products.

The initial setup was complex, at least compared our previous backup solution of each site being their own installation of Symantec Backup Exec, and only a couple of small jobs to maintain. We have a much larger number of backup jobs to maintain now, and must be very careful when running jobs during business hours as most jobs now have other jobs that chain off them, so you run one job and it could trigger many others.

However, all configuration is done from a central location, all replications are triggered automatically, and we have full tracking of where every piece of backed up data is and where all of its copies also reside. A sore head upfront to have automated backups of every location and centrally replicated and multiple restore locations is well worth it.

We leverage the HP Level Two StoreOnce Startup Service which gave us access to the HP StoreOnce engineers for a few days. We were able to workshop our requirements and vision and come up with a solution that would technically achieve what we wanted. Unfortunately, HP Federated Catalyst depends heavily on HP Data Protector and there doesn’t seem to be much cross-skill of engineers between Data Protector and StoreOnce.

Thankfully we have over eight years of in-house technical experience with Data Protector so we were able to leverage what we learnt during the StoreOnce Startup Service to expand upon the solution and deliver above and beyond what we thought was possible. To make use of Federated Catalyst I strongly recommend a deep understanding of HP Data Protector (it’s not as scary as it first appears to be).

It is not abundantly clear, but the HP Catalyst License also includes the Catalyst Replication capability, so no other license is required if Catalyst Stores are the only backup target being used. StoreOnce devices cannot replicate Catalyst Stores automatically for you, the replication must be triggered by other software such as HP Data Protector.

Depending on the backup product being used with HP StoreOnce, there may be disk backup capacity licenses also required. HP Data Protector requires Advanced Disk Backup Licenses for the usable capacity of the StoreOnce Systems (this is the native usable capacity, regardless of how much data you can actually store thanks to deduplication benefits).

You can use a StoreOnce as a NAS/CIFS Target and also as a Virtual Tape Library. These backup targets can be replicated to other StoreOnce Backup Systems, however these require additional licenses.

We do not have much experience with other disk backup solutions. The Federated Catalyst Replication and the deduplication ratios obtained are amazing. As an example, we only keep two weeks of daily backups and six weeks of weekly backups on disk, and have over 470 backups from around the country stored at Datacentre A which equates to over 140TB of data that consumes less than 13TB on disk. The dedupe ratio is 10.7:1. This ratio grows even larger as retention periods are increased. We are still fine-tuning our retention periods and will likely be doubling them within the next six months.

The StoreOnce VSA is a great place to start as it is 100% functionally the same as a StoreOnce physical device, and you can use a free trial. Definitely the best place to start. The same goes for HP Data Protector.

So I’m not the technician, I don’t look at all the different bells and all the things it does but for me the space that it uses is a valuable feature. The compression ratio has been much better than our past solution. Our SQL database backups are getting 56:1 compression ratio and to me that’s incredible. Some of the other stuff is a little less but we’ve got an average of 25:1 and that definitely beats what we had before.

Well benefits that I’m seeing on the StoreOnce are definitely the speed to recover. I can trust the data is there. When we had the quantums in the replication it was taking up to a month, the data would be partial. I trust the data so the benefit is that the data is there. If somebody calls me and needs data recovered, I know I have it.

New features, I don’t know. I expect HP to know that stuff and they’re asking the questions and other people smarter than me know what they need. It does what I need right now. There’s nothing that I could think of that it’s missing.

I don’t like to talk about these things but so far stability on the system has been perfect, no issues. So I have two 4300’s and that came with Catalyst which was new to that platform. So when we had the systems put in the technician that came out actually hadn’t seem them before. So that was maybe the only hiccup but they did a great job installing them. I didn’t have to do anything with it and it’s been running ever since.

My impressions of scalability would be- I’ll never need to much add more space. They did a great deal with me, they doubled the space I asked for. I have enough room for years, but it also is very easily scalable. If I need to put in more trays I can.

We have not used technical support. Now HP as a whole, I have on other servers and things like that but for 3PAR I actually haven’t had to use support yet and, like I said it’s been going on two years. I’m happy with that, I’m sure if I had to call them they’d be right there.

The solution that we had for backups was Quantum for the software NetBackup. We still use NetBackup today, we like it but the quantums were aging. The maintenance agreement on the quantums were costing us a fortune and it was actually cheaper to get something new than keep the old one running. The quantums had gotten to a state where replication between them was no longer working. It would take about a month to replicate.

Hardware was starting to fail on a regular basis and we knew we needed something. We’re a primary storage with EMC so we did look at Data Domain, but I buy a lot of stuff from HP. I knew their storage was great so let’s go look at the backup solution and HP just came in with a good price, I thought it was a good product. We bought the StoreOnce, so it’s two years ago now today and you know they’re running good ever since.

It was extremely straightforward and I think this is typical for any of the vendors. I mean I don’t have all this experience but what you’re talking about is just a storage platform. It’s just disk so all they need to do is put it in, present it so that the backup can see it and that was done and it was done by the tech in just a couple of days, and we had it up and running in a week with a whole new backup catalog and it was very easy.

We did look at NetBackup, they had an appliance but it was about twice the cost. I didn’t look at Quantum because we didn’t have a lot of success with them in the past. I probably could’ve looked at them but it didn’t feel like a partnership with me with them.

With everything that I buy from HP, I just don’t feel like a customer all the time, I kind of feel like a partner, and at Shields Health Care we like to collaborate and partner with people.

And it’s tough to say, what I wanted to look at was the data has to be accurate. And so if we’re backing up patient data, it’s critical. I mean everybody says their data is critical, in healthcare it’s critical. If I need to restore something I need to know it’s there, I need to know where it is, I need to know I can get it fast.

With the quantums we also had a tape solution in place and those tapes were offsite, sometimes it would take a couple of days to get the data back. So what the StoreOnce allowed us to do was to also get off a tape, which was important to me. I don’t trust tape, a lot of people do. With StoreOnce, I know this data is there and I can get it quickly. The speed that we can recover files now is incredible. Even if it’s something small it’s not critical. Say a user loses an email and we backed it up the night before, you can get that email back in seconds. It used to take us a long time.

We’d restore the entire mail store. You’re looking at the entire afternoon just to get some files back. We’re happy and with this upgrade we also upgraded NetBackup. So it’s not to say that the stuff that we had before wasn’t capable, it was time to get a new solution.

I did a panel this week on going into backup solutions. One customer was still using tape, recommendations for them was to go to StoreOnce. For me the maintenance has been cheaper, the implementation was easy, it's small product that doesn’t take up much space in my data center, and it’s been reliable and out-performed what I had used previously.

Peer reviews, anytime I pick up any new solution I like to know that a customer has already done, so I did reach out and talk to other folks that had been in the same situation. It’s tough to get the same exact situation but they had me call a couple hospitals in Boston. They all had great experiences, same ease of deployment that I saw, so those are very important to me. I like to know that someone else has done the same thing and had some results.

Some of the valuable features are that we’re able to regain ROI off of our tier one environment, so we’re able to take archive data, legacy data, put that on, give it retention tagging, and retention timelines, and then it’ll be able to be purged at a later date. Instead of using up our Tier 1 storage, which is about a $1.45 a gigabyte, we’re able to leverage tier two storage with dedupe and compression, at 35 - 45 cents a gigabyte, so that to us just made sense.

In terms of benefits that we’re seeing, we’re definitely seeing improved backup times. We went from two and a half hours to four hours for backups -- down to under ten minutes. So, the amount of recouped administration time that we’re gaining is astronomical. From a stability perspective I think StoreOnce has definitely been extremely stable for us.

We didn’t really have a D-R-D-P solution and I think it really compliments our blade environment in taking a lot of the data that we have around the organization that’s legacy, and looking at that, looking at last touched date, things of that nature, we’re able to really leverage archiving now, and that’s something we weren’t able to do before, because we were keeping all of our backups in our Tier 1 storage. We really didn’t have a location to have an enterprise data recovery, and data protection strategy and now we do.

In terms of the way that we feel, or the way that I feel about StoreOnce, I think it definitely provided us with the opportunity to give the business something it never had before, and that is a true guarantee to the data that we have. So we’re able to really protect and fortify our archive data, instead of not being able to restore in times when we actually need to have the data available.

From a feature functionality perspective I think overall having some more mobility tied into it, having the ability to have applications that you can use on the go, that can give you kind of an overlay of the overall health and welfare of your data protection and data recovery strategy, being able to do simple things, like having run books. I think those are some of the things that we definitely want to get into. I’d like to see that develop a lot more.

From a scalability perspective, some of the things that are intriguing to me are we have the ability to scale as the business needs and we can also contract, so we can be fluid. We can move when the business needs us to move, we can back up, we can make sure that we have all the pertinent data that the organization needs, and also have the ability to restore it quickly, and not tie up production systems and production storage while doing that.

I think HP, by far has some of the best technical support I’ve ever encountered. I was just telling a story in regards to how we started doing business with HP. HP came out and serviced us, and we weren’t even under contract. The same day, same night, and made sure our organization was whole come the next day, and for an eight billion dollar company that really resonated with us. That was the precursor to our decision to move forward with HP and we’ve been really happy ever since.

In looking at criteria from a tier two storage perspective in terms of data protection and data recovery, I think cost was definitely one of the factors that we looked at. We looked at response time, we looked at integration ability, and I think coupling that with the environment that we had, we’re a 98 percent virtualized organization, from a virtual server perspective, and I think tying that in to our already HP environment, really weighed on the decision for us to move in the StoreOnce direction.

From a solutions perspective, in terms of what we’re doing from data protection and data recovery, we knew that we needed to have a tier two solution in terms of storage. We looked at many different avenues within the market, and we really felt that from an ROI perspective and a total cost of ownership perspective, that HP StoreOnce was really the way we needed to go, so we built our data protection and data recovery strategy around that using HP and Veeam. That actually helped us to build RTOs, RPOs, and real SLAs and OLAs from a restoration perspective to the business.

There were other vendors on the short list, and to be completely honest, they paled in comparison. We were actually considering an EMC product, DataDomain, and Exagrid and they just didn’t have the compute power or the price point that we really wanted to be in, so we just leveraged the HP relationship that we already had and went complete StoreOnce, and we’ve been extremely happy with it so far.

Researching advice I’d give to my peers: I would definitely say do your homework. Do a true comparison between everybody in the market. That way you will actually be able to see the benefit that HP provides at the cost point, at the total cost of ownership, ROI, and also from a performance perspective as well. Depending on who you’re using from a backup solution perspective, StoreOnce, is gonna work with anyone.

Getting a full understanding of who the players are in the market, you’re gonna see that HP is definitely a major player in that space. Really understand your business, really understand what your strategic goals are, really understand where you’re going from an organizational perspective. That will give you insight into how you build your data protection and data recovery strategy. Some of the things that we did were we sat down with operations, we sat down with legal, we sat down with finance, and we defined what that was as an organization before we ever started looking, so definitely do your homework. Make sure you understand where your business is going before you go get a solution

In researching solutions I think peer reviews are definitely important. I think knowing for yourself is also important, but definitely do your research, definitely listen to what the market is saying, and above all else, go see it for yourself. Take a demo, look at it, look at what they’re saying, help them prove it to you, really understand what your requirements are and how the solution maps back to your requirements. It’s really all about that. If it’s a map, and it maps back, you got to be able to prove what in the solution maps back to what your requirement is.

Leveraging data from your peers is definitely important, but making sure that you truly understand what your requirements are, and what in the solution maps back to your requirements is key for success.

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.