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.
Senior IT Program Manager at Microsoft
From an operational standpoint it has increased our efficiency.
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
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.
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HPE StoreOnce
January 2025
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and support?
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.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
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.
How was the initial setup?
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.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Sr. Sys. Server & Storage Egineer / Tech .Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Easy to set up and has an impressive stability
Pros and Cons
- "It is a very scalable solution."
- "Its customer service could be faster."
What is our primary use case?
Our customers use the solution for data backup scenarios.
What is most valuable?
The solution's most valuable feature is the ability to write multiple data backups simultaneously.
What needs improvement?
They should improve the solution's pricing. Also, the customer support service could be faster.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using the solution for thirteen years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution's stability is impressive; I rate it as a ten. We came across disk failure issues only once.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a very scalable solution for SMEs. It is possible to store additional data on the server using it. I rate its scalability as a ten out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
I am satisfied with the solution's customer service, but they should respond faster. The last time we contacted them for some issue, they took around one week to resolve it.
How was the initial setup?
The solution's initial setup is pretty straightforward. I rate the setup process as an eight. The time required for deployment depends on the workload. As far as the integration part is concerned, it takes a day to complete.
What about the implementation team?
It requires two or three engineers to deploy the solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution's cost is above average. I rate its pricing as a seven. We purchase an annual subscription for its on-premises version. It is around 30% of the solution's cost. There are no additional costs apart from the standard license.
What other advice do I have?
The customers can raise the solution's maintenance ticket for three years initially. It requires one executive to complete the process. Apart from it, they can raise tickets for technical support as well.
I recommend the solution to others and rate it as a ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Buyer's Guide
HPE StoreOnce
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about HPE StoreOnce. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Manager Information Technology Operations at a consumer goods company with 51-200 employees
Useful virtual drive, good support, and simple setup
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of HPE StoreOnce is the virtual drive."
- "HPE StoreOnce could improve the capacity support."
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of HPE StoreOnce is the virtual drive.
What needs improvement?
HPE StoreOnce could improve the capacity support.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using HPE StoreOnce for approximately five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
HPE StoreOnce is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and support?
I have used the support from HPE StoreOnce.
I rate the support from HPE StoreOnce a five out of five.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of HPE StoreOnce is simple.
What about the implementation team?
We did the implementation of HPE StoreOnce in-house.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing schemes could improve in HPE StoreOnce and the price is high. They should reduce the price.
What other advice do I have?
I rate HPE StoreOnce an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Sr. Enterprise Solutions Engineer at Palpay
An excellent backup storage solution that's easy to use and offers great stability
Pros and Cons
- "The initial setup is one of the most user-friendly B2B user solutions. It's good, it's easy. Deployment usually takes less than one day. You only need one person for deployment and maintenance."
- "The solution should continue to refine its integration capabilities. I also see they are starting to use cloud integration as well, which is good, but they should do more to integrate with it."
What is our primary use case?
We implement the full data centre - from A-Z. Our clients typically use the solution as a backup data destination.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable aspect of the solution is the catalyst feature. It can integrate with various other backup solutions. also HPE introduced the cloud bank that can provide cloud storage for your data.
What needs improvement?
The solution should continue to refine its integration capabilities. I also see they are starting to use cloud integration as well, which is good, but they should do more to integrate with it.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been selling the solution for five years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
catalyst integration can give you unmatchable performance.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is good. If it's not good we make it good because we, as a partner, offer technical support ourselves.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Most of our customers are switching from other backup solutions. Many have switched, for example, from EMC Data Domain. It was the most popular in our country at one time but many people are moving to StoreOnce.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is one of the most user-friendly B2B user solutions. It's good, it's easy. Deployment usually takes less than one day. You only need one person for deployment and maintenance.
What other advice do I have?
We mainly work with the on-premises deployment model. We're an HPE partner.
I would advise new users to check the integration if they already have a data solution in place.
I would rate the solution ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Tech Support Manager at Trans Union de México S.A. SIC
Speed of backups is the main value for us compared to what we were previously using.
What is most valuable?
For StoreOnce, we are using it in order to backup some databases. It works fine, and I think it's not a production device, but it still works fine. The time to do the backups is great for us because the last backups we used to have took at least 8 - 10 hours and at the moment the backups takes one hour or less.
How has it helped my organization?
It helps us with the backups of our corporate database in order to have the information backed up in case of disaster. It's great for us to take the information in minutes, instead of hours.
What needs improvement?
It's not big, but it could be smaller and take up less space in the data center. I saw some devices here that are smaller with more power, and I think that StoreOnce could be the same.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I think that we've had it for two years and it doesn't have any issue at this moment.
How are customer service and technical support?
I've never had to contact tech support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We had an EMC Data Domain device, but I don't remember the model of it. We switched because HP promised us that it would be easier to manage, easy to implement with the technicals details we use each day.
How was the initial setup?
It was quick and easy to install.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
The time to implement, the time to acquire the solution, integrating with our infrastructure was easy and the price was very good.
What other advice do I have?
You need to work with a partner that knows the solutions deeply in order to implement the services and the solution well. It allowed us to provide the services that our customers needs.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Technical Analyst (Servers & Storage) at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
We brought it in to transfer all of the services that were old and creaky onto a single platform. So we back up all of our VMs and all of our SQL boxes to it.
What is most valuable?
Its catalyst store and deduplication are valuable as it saves disc space. I'm not sure what the ratio is, to be fair, but it's significant. It's something silly like 240 terabytes if they were all expanded and it's occupying something like 20 terabytes, or something like that.
We haven't had the need to use reporting, but we've still got capacity and don't need to dive in. At some point we'll start reaching capacity, and we'll need to start drilling down a bit more into what it's doing.
How has it helped my organization?
We brought it in to transfer all of the services that were old and creaky onto a single platform. So we back up all of our VMs and all of our SQL boxes to it.
What needs improvement?
If it could do scheduling, then perhaps I wouldn't need to have Data Protector as a backup product. Data Protector is a software layer that schedules every night into the VMware layer and says, "Back these VMs up to the StoreOnce device." And it goes through the Catalyst stores and does all the kind of stuff that StoreOnce does. If StoreOnce could initiate the backup itself by a scheduling mechanism, then potentially we wouldn't need to have Data Protector do it, which would take something out of the chain for me. There's no problem with Data Protector, it's just something else. If I can keep it down to hardware and not have to go through a software layer, I think I'd get better performance.
For how long have I used the solution?
We brought it in a part of a whole HP infrastructure about 18 months ago.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We've had no issues deploying it.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've never had an issue with stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We've got four trays of discs, and I think we can add another X number of trays, so it's not going to be endlessly scalable, but it's going to be scalable up to X.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We had blades, 3PAR, and some fabric switches. We looked at a way to consolidate all of our backups. So, we had technology like Tivoli and CSN, and we had other little bits of backup, and we thought we'd go for a single product. As a part of the transformation, we brought in Data Protector, and that basically backs itself off to the StoreOnce.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We consider HP, and the pricing we get is good and reflects that. If it was an open marketplace, we'd look at anything and everything because we'd evaluate the marketplace for cheap D-to-D devices.
What other advice do I have?
We use it to present virtual tape live-link to our NetApp so that we can backup our NetApp for NDMP to our StoreOnce. So virtual tapes are the concepts of a physical set of tapes. Imagine you've virtualized it, and you have to give it a size on disc, which because it's a virtual tape, it doesn't have to have the same constraints as a physical tape of four terabytes. A virtual tape can be X terabytes. We originally put them in and sized them too small. And when I had to go back, and we had something like 400 tapes. I had to edit each tape and increase its capacity so that we got better value out if it. I wish I could have just Shift-Select-Edit and changed it, which I couldn't do. So some level of automating that task cause you can imagine, going through 400 tapes is a lot of work. It can happen, and we didn't know at the time, and lesson learned. If we put another StoreOnce in with more BTLs, we'd know perfectly to set that size to be higher from the start. So, the advice would be if you're using BTLs, set them to your preferred maximum because you might not be able to batch.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We're an HP Partner.
Director of Server Department at IT-Integrator
User-friendly with good deduplication and compression capabilities
Pros and Cons
- "This is a user-friendly solution."
- "I would like to see an emphasis placed on making data deduplication and compression more powerful."
What is our primary use case?
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.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of this solution are deduplication and compression.
This is a user-friendly solution.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see an emphasis placed on making data deduplication and compression more powerful.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have four years of experience with this solution.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The is an easy solution to scale.
How are customer service and technical support?
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.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
One of our engineers performed the deployment of this solution for our customer.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller.
It limits the amount of storage that we have to purchase. My biggest irk is the people who will be managing these things are going to be more your system administrators. They're not Java programmers.
What is most valuable?
Compression of storage. Based on the amount of history that we've got to keep, it limits the amount of storage that we have to purchase.
How has it helped my organization?
It's more of a backup functionality. Backup really doesn't make a business do any better or any worse. It's really just storage of data. It's not a user interactive type process. They all go through and store data fine and they all go through and restore data fine. Is there really any business advantage of StoreOnce over some of the other vendors? Not really. It's just that we chose to work more with one vendor, so we get a better cost when we actually purchase stuff.
What needs improvement?
The beef I have not only with StoreOnce, but also all the Ops Bridge, the people who will be managing these things are going to be more your system administrators. They're not Java programmers. They want to try to do all the API's where people have to know Java to interface with them.
Whereas system administrators, they want to script stuff and so they're starting to turn a lot of their API's into command lines, which are wrappers around the Java API's. Lack of foresight of that is probably one of my biggest irks with HP on that.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have no data on it as it's too soon in our use.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We've used NetBackup, then there's been some home-grown ones that people have done. StoreOnce is a backup solution with Data Protector in DDD and streaming through offsite storage. It works just fine. The big thing again, we come down to, is by having those products primarily with one vendor, we get a much better cost point.
How was the initial setup?
We had no issues deploying it.
What other advice do I have?
It works well with Data Protector. It works well with 3PAR and that's our environment and so it's a vendor specified solution.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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