HPE StoreOnce Reviews

We are an IT integration company and this is a solution that we sell to our customers.

This solution is used for backing up data related to both central customers and branch customers.

Our experience is with an on-premises deployment model.

The most valuable features of this solution are deduplication and compression.

This is a user-friendly solution.

I would like to see an emphasis placed on making data deduplication and compression more powerful.

This is a stable solution.

The is an easy solution to scale.

We have had experience with technical support for this solution. Normally, we will contact them to discuss compatibility with a customer's environment. The support for this solution is the best in our country.

The initial setup of this solution was complex because our customer's solution was complex. It consisted of a backup solution, a server, and storage, which together made for complex infrastructure. 

The deployment took approximately one month.

Two people are required to perform maintenance.

One of our engineers performed the deployment of this solution for our customer.

The solution that we suggest to our customers depends on their infrastructure. For example, if they have HP infrastructure then we propose HPE StoreOnce, but if they have a Dell Infrastructure then we might propose Dell EMC Data Domain. Normally, if they have a Microsoft Infrastructure then we propose this solution. These two solutions are similar in terms of pricing.

HPE does not have a backup solution because they sold it to Micro Focus. It would be better if they had all of the components including the server, storage, and backup.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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.

It's very usable with the interface for the administration. It works with a lot of different applications so it is very scalable for other applications. You don't have to just backup the entire system but you can back up specific applications if you want.

From an operational standpoint it has increased our efficiency and we're able to save a lot of manpower and resources for mundane backup stuff that we've done in the past so that other people can focus on more strategic initiatives in our business.

One of the things that I think that's on the docket for implementation with StoreOnce is Azure and Cloud incorporation. Currently we are doing object copies with StoreOnce to take our backups and copy them to the cloud. But I know that the feature is actually going to be integrated even further in the near future with StoreOnce and Data Protector so that's one thing that we're looking forward to.

The product is great. I've been a 3PAR and StoreOnce customer for many years now and I am now a very strong backing of HPE's storage and backup infrastructures. It's been a really good experience for the past couple of years.

I think that what other products or other competitors are lacking is the use and the adaptation for other applications within Microsoft. If you wanted to backup SharePoint or SQL or clusters or other kind of features within Microsoft products with other backup companies or other partners they don't necessarily have that compatibility. If you have a large environment with a lot of diverse applications and systems and configurations, Data Protector definitely covers that and obviously StoreOnce is backing that.

They're excellent. Everything from pre-sales to post-sales and then just more on the sustainment model. They're eager to be engaged and they definitely take the extra to make sure that we're meeting our needs because obviously backups are important stuff. I would say they're leading the edge as far as customer engagement.

We were using other solutions previously. We initially started using 3PAR as our storage provider. As we went along that road we saw that 3PAR and their storage solution was really solid. We had a great experience with that so we kind of grew our footprint with HPE and we just added our StoreOnce. It's been a great experience.

It's actually very straightforward. A lot of the times when you're dealing with storage and architecture it can be very complex with other vendors. With 3PAR and StoreOnce, those setups are very easy and then you can hand it over to lower skilled admins to manage the systems because it doesn't take an architect to manage the system.

Veeam obviously does a lot of virtualization but it is only virtualization so we have a very diverse set of applications in our environment. You have NetBackup and Symantec that have their backups as well. They've been around for a long time but I think that the maturity of Data Protector at StoreOnce has really surpassed their technology and just usability and support. That's why we went ahead with StoreOnce.

StoreOnce is fairly new. Even this week, they're announcing a lot of new features for reporting and management. I think there's a lot of room for them to grow and it's exciting to see what they're going to come out with in the near future. I think it's a great product now and I think it's going to get even better in the next couple months.

I think the best thing to do is to get a demo. Try it out. Obviously its looking and feeling is more important than looking at a bunch of slides or a bunch of white papers so actually looking at and seeing how it works and see if it meets your requirements. Everyone has their specific environments and their unique criteria so that's really what we did and we're really happy with it.a

The use of the OST product for NetBackup AIR has been the most valuable feature as this allows seamless Disaster Recovery options.

The B6200 allows us to complete daily backup and restore tasks quicker than from physical tape. Also, we can use the replication of deduplicated backups to our offsite facility rather than sending lots of tapes

Further integration with NetBackup to allow the use of catalyst storage as well as AIR would be an improvement.

I have been using this product for approximately five years.

When we first obtained the B6200 we did fill the disks due to our lack of understanding of how the the storage sets worked, which caused us an issue as the system at the time shutdown the F/C connections to stop any further data being sent to it. HP had to become involved in restoring the system, but this problem has now been addressed with new firmware.

With the older firmware we did have problems with the B6200 crashing with kernel problems, though this has now been addressed with the firmware updates.

We have not had any problems with the scalability of the B6200.

I have used HP services on a few occasions when setting up new functions and for problem resolutions and have found the service to be very good.

The technical support has been very good and the specialists know the product and can resolve the issues that were presented to them.

We switched from the HP VLS12000 system to the B6200 as the we wanted to use a full disk based backup solution rather than a Virtual Library. Also, the B6200 provides the support for NetBackup AIR.

We had a three-day onsite training course, so we found it fairly straightforward, I have since changed the configuration to accommodate NetBackup AIR and followed the HP documentation, which was easy to navigate and implement.

The set-up was completed by HP services.

The HP StoreOnce range is great if you are running NetBackup as it integrates well with the backup product, the deduplication rates are very favorable, and it also allows the use of the DR option using AIR.

The ease of use and configuration once implemented and the deduplication features.

Before the StoreOnce solution was implemented all kinds of backup solutions and software were being used in this international company, making it very difficult to manage, keep control over the backups, losing data left and right, very unprofessional.

Also a lot of tapes needed to be kept offside, using one of these companies that comes and collects tapes to store in a secure location, this costs the company a lot of money.

Now several StoreOnce appliances sync with each other to take care of the disaster recovery compliancy, remote offices stream deduplicated backup data to the StoreOnce and use the same backup software as all other locations.

The initial installation and configuration into the network and the integration into the infrastructure needs some improvement, but it's not too difficult if you plan right.

For well over 1 year now.

The deployment of the solution is done by HP, they insisted on it, the initial planning was the task of the client, there were some bumps along the road, but in the end it was deployed rather quickly.

No issues during initial config, can't say there were any stability issues.

The scalability is something you need to plan for ahead, the amount of TB you're looking to backup now and how much it would grow in the future. Depending on the outcome of your calculation you need to choose the model accordingly (the higher models allow for more scalability - read higher amount of TB that can be stored).

No issues with customer service, quick and correct.

They could answer all our questions and helped us to get going without too much time and effort.

Previously it was a bunch of solutions (backup to disk, to tape, etc) and all kinds of different backup software dispersed over different locations, very unmanageable and lots of issues with backup. It needed to be consolidated and in the meantime it needed to provide the necessary Disaster Recovery abilities. That's why this solution was chosen.

Initial setup was done along with HP, it wasn't overly complex if you know something about backup and the software solution to go along with it, if you have to start from scratch it can be quite the task, it isn't plug and play, there is quite some configuration to be done, you also need to know your backup environments in and out, plan ahead. You need to know what goes where and how it will be replicated.

As mentioned earlier, the solution was implemented along with HP, their level of expertise was above par.

Too soon to tell, but initial reports tell us it definitely will save us a lot of money, on tapes and tape handling alone.

Yes, some other solutions came across our desk, but I can't remember which ones though. Pretty early on we chose to go with HP StoreOnce.

Read up on the solution, there are a lot of advantages in this product, all depends on your environment, if you are one of those companies that has a lot of tapes and different locations, it could definitely be something for you. The deduplication is great on this solution, no more TB's of wasted space, send deduplicated backup data over those expensive leased lines saving bandwidth, and so on...

The most valuable feature of HPE StoreOnce is the virtual drive.

HPE StoreOnce could improve the capacity support.

I have been using HPE StoreOnce for approximately five years.

HPE StoreOnce is stable.

HPE StoreOnce is scalable in general, but it all depends on your requirement. If this solution was to be used in a large environment with many queries it would have difficulties.

I have used the support from HPE StoreOnce.

I rate the support from HPE StoreOnce a five out of five.

The initial setup of HPE StoreOnce is simple.

We did the implementation of HPE StoreOnce in-house.

The licensing schemes could improve in HPE StoreOnce and the price is high. They should reduce the price.

I rate HPE StoreOnce an eight out of ten.

The feature we were looking for was deduplication. Now, thanks to Catalyst containers, we have federated deduplication across all our remote sites.

We wanted something that would easily fit in our infrastructure. As we were familiar with HP products, it was very convenient for us to use tools we were used to such as iLO, Insight Manager, and so on.

Before we used HP StoreOnce, the backup was stored on DAS, which was fine until you have a problem in a disk and lose all your data.

So, we needed to consolidate this particular aspect of storage but we also wanted to store more data and increase the retention time.

The native replication feature allowed us to take it to the next level of consolidation with automated off-site replication. We now have site-level recovery as opposed to the disk-level recovery we had 3 years ago.

The product is doing just fine as it is now. An improvement would be an improved deduplication algorithm.

We've been using the solution for 3 years now. We added a StoreOnce 4700 unit last year so that we can replicate all the data in our datacenter.

It is something we were thinking about for a long time. The support of Catalyst container by Veeam Backup was the thing that was lacking until last year.

Due to the huge number of sites we have, we needed something easy to deploy. Configuring a new unit is a matter of minutes.

I was wondering at the time if we would have to deal with some hardware failure somewhere every other week and it turns out it's a solid solution, we encountered very few problem regarding hardware.

We have a 7/1 deduplication rate, which in our environment is pretty descent.

We're currently using StoreOnce 2620 & 2700 on our 175 remote sites which are replicated on a Storeonce 4700 in our datacenter. The thing that I was afraid of when we chose StoreVirtual was the huge number of sites and therefore the number of StoreOnce units.

When it comes to scalability, expansion shelves are available for all models and HP provides a VSA version of StoreOnce, which is free of charge up to 1TB, so it is satisfying for us.

Upgrade first, talk next. If you happen to be out of date regarding FW or patches, then you are the problem and not the unit. Basically, that's how it works at HP.

That being said, we have h+4 SLA on these units and the customer service never failed us so far.

Before we started using StoreOnce, every site had its own backup solution and its own storage for it, so we wanted to harmonize all of that. We were looking for a solution which would provide features like deduplication, native replication, ease of use and available on VSA as well.

It turns out StoreOnce was the only solution at the time. We had proposals reflecting different approaches, with different products bundled all together, or single products with a workaround for the one missing feature.

So we evaluated an Avamar grid, as well both physical and VSA. The deduplication rate was higher with Avamar and the replication worked out of the box, but if we wanted to stay in our budget range, we needed to go with a central Avamar grid and VSA on DAS on the remote site.

We went for StoreOnce because we didn't want our backup to rely on the remote site WAN connection and because the local VSA on DAS was not really an improvement.

It was straightforward. The very first unit was configured in 15 minutes and was ready to go.

We have a staff dedicated for that, so that was an in-house job. The StoreOnce unit runs on Linux. We have Linux admins, and it is frustrating for them to see that the product works out of the box and there's no need to log in using SSH.

Therefore, I recommend in-house implementation. It's easy, and the iLO UI is very user-friendly.

We don't have financial ROI. Our goal was to consolidate the infrastructure at all cost.

There's a VSA version free of charge up to 1TB, so just try it.

It performs pretty well with minimal to no issues.

It has allowed us greater storage with a reduced footprint. It also works well with our servers – including our Dell servers. It was important that we have an integrated environment.

We had some initial driver issues, but I think the newer release has changed all that. The one issue I have is the maintenance package – it's very expensive. If I were to renew it, it would remain expensive and not cost effective. The initial proposal was inconsistent with what I found in terms of maintenance and renewal costs. A break/fix-type package would be better.

I've used it for four years.

It is pretty stable; excellent, in fact. I had one very minimal hard-drive failure.

We recently added more and it went very well. It's easy to add to this product.

8/10 for both. Issues were dealt with quickly and efficiently.

We were previously using a different solution but our storage needs grew and we decided we needed a new solution.

It was straightforward.

We had an HP engineer come in for implementation. He was excellent.

Dell and IBM. We chose HP because of the price and the vendor support.

The two things that we looked at were performance and cost.

This particular product is stable, and the support has been good. If you want a reliable and reasonably-priced product, I would recommend it.