HPE StoreOnce Reviews

• Redundancy
• Ease of use
• Scalability
• Disaster recovery

The greatest benefit to us has been lowering costs.

I'd like to see the following features added in:

• More detailed reporting
• More granular reporting
• More features in the CLI

Excellent.

Excellent.

Excellent. There has been an integrated partnership with the ability to answer any and all questions.

We were using a different solution, but it was too costly so we needed to switch.

The initial setup was straightforward. HP took a hands-off approach, which was good, and they let us do a lot of it on our own. We therefore didn’t have to do cross-training and we were able to do a lot of trial and error, which was good for us as well.

We also looked at EMC.

Most important criteria to look for includes:

• Price
• Features
• Functionality
• Ease of use

Definitely look at this solution as a viable option as it is cost effective and reliable.

Our primary use case of this solution is for deduplication of the backup. We have a professional partnership with HPE and I'm a technical consultant. 

I am already well-versed with the solution and configuration of the product - it's been simplified over time which is great. I find the deduplication feature the most valuable. 

I'd like to see the cloud integration simplified. It would also be good if they could reduce the cost of the product. 

I've been using this solution for the past 10 years. 

It's a stable solution. 

The solution is scalable. 

The technical support of HPE is very, very, very good.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Everybody would like the cost to be minimized.

I would highly recommend this product. 

I rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

We don't have to go to a separate console to manage StoreOnce and another one for our backup application, one console. It's meeting our requirements now. For us, it's just a question of we've only been running it for about 3 to 6 months now. I'm looking for a full year. We are trying to test out some of the new features like the RMC product which helps integrate the StoreOnce with 3PAR and we're going to be bringing in our 3PAR storage very, very soon. We're looking forward to the ability of StoreOnce to integrate with other HP solutions that we purchased. We've looked at dedup technology for quite sometime, but we're primarily an HP shop. We wanted something that would integrate well into what we currently have.

One of the things we liked about StoreOnce is that it is a technology that scales very well. They have hardware appliances at the high end and they also have a virtual appliance. In our deployment, in our infrastructure, we needed both ends. It's the same interface, the same functionality. That's one of the things that we were really liked about it.

We've had some ongoing challenges in our backup infrastructure being able to complete the job successfully, have good knowledge that our data was secure. We knew we needed to improve upon that. StoreOnce and a dedup technology was where we wanted to go. As far as once we've implemented the StoreOnce, it's achieved what we thought it would do and then some. One of our, it wasn't my primary objective, our secondary objective was to reduce the tape out. By implementing StoreOnce, we've been able to dramatically reduce the number of tapes that we have to keep in our environment.

We've had a real challenge with our resorts in making sure the backups are performed and completed and we're able to do that and bring the dedup images back to our central location. We are a much higher rate of success in our backups. It's built on HP hardware, no problem there.

The virtual appliance, it's virtualized so no problems at all with stability.

Scalability, that's one of the other features that I really like about it, especially in the virtual plans. All you do is if you run out of space, you add another VMDK and it just scales up seamlessly. You don't even have to reboot.

We've had a couple of challenges where we've had to engage them and they're fantastic. I mean they listened, problems get escalated if they need to get escalated. They're extremely helpful and what really impressed me is it's like they're very knowledgeable of the BURA environment. They were well aware of the challenges that I was facing with my users. If we had an outage, they were well aware of that I had to find a different place to store the data, what the risks were. Yeah, they're fantastic. I love the technical services that we get from them. We had some bumps as far as implementation. Part of the challenge that we have is our primary data centers are hosting centers, so they're lights out.

We used HP's technical support for the startup services. They helped us with the implementation.

We don't have staff at our data center. That was a bit of a challenge for scheduling, but then that is agnostic of the product that you're trying to install. Through the startup services that we purchased from HP services help desk because we have to integrate this with our backup product which we were a semantic shop, so we had to integrate that, the StoreOnce technology with that. They were very helpful in getting that done. Yes, it's slips in very well. One of the things we really like about it is that you managed everything from the backup console. Our backup administrator, well he is aware, but he manages it just like it's another store. The deduplication, all that happens in the background.

It's just amazing. No cost. As long as you have the StoreOnce appliance with catalyst, there's no cost for that. It is a nice feature that's going to keep my DBAs happy.

That's not only HP, it's the support. We get pre sales support, we get post sale support. We get it in the implementation, so not just the product, but it's the people behind the product as well. If I had a peer asking me about the StoreOnce, I'm a technical consultant from background so I'd asked him what problem are they trying to solve and make sure they got the right one.

With StoreOnce, it's not a point solution. It has to fit well into your environment. You have to understand what problems are you trying to solve so that you implement it properly. We had to integrate like in our case, we had challenges with remote circuits that we had to make sure the low bandwidth replication. We had to integrate it with semantic. Unless you have the same problem as I am, you wouldn't necessarily implement the same solutions. Through that implementation, I learned a lot about the product and then coming to events like this, HP Discovery you learn more. You learn some trips that you didn't. For example during this trip, I learned about the catalyst plug in that I can use for my database products so that my DBAs can do their backups direct to StoreOnce. I didn't know that was available.

The dedupe benefit, the granularity of specifying different retention and different policies for dedupe, you can go without dedupe, too. Sometimes you have applications that are doing compression and don't need the dedupe benefit. You have all that versatility in this scalable product, for sure.

I'm a storage supervisor in the media and entertainment industry. We use the StoreOnce and the 3PAR, as well. Our previous solution was tape only solution. We looked at the StoreOnce as a valuable stepping stone to get a lot of our backups done without the use of tape, so it was sort of an intermediary device to accomplish that goal. We're partnered with HP. We came alongside HP and they offered this solution as a viable alternative.

The stability has been rock solid. We have not had issues. There have been other platforms we've seen problems with. Other than sheer capacity in terms of size, the throughput has been adequate, so we haven't had really any issues to speak of. It's a scalable solution that gives us a lot of versatility. We're able to put these devices in remote locations if we need them, to help offload the tape infrastructure, and really meet the requirements of the site, whether it be the retention or the off-siting capability. Then, as those sites grow, we can expand them. It does give us a lot of versatility. The upgrade process, my understanding is, I haven't been directly involved, but it has been hitless. There really has not been downtime to do these.

The technical support is fantastic. Yeah, we've had a great experience with the StoreOnce device. We've even gotten folks on site when we've needed them to do firmware upgrades and those sorts of things where our technical abilities don't quite cut the mustard, so to speak. You know, we're pretty satisfied with where things are at right now. I can't speak to what we truly need in the coming weeks, months, years, from the StoreOnce platform, but I think what I've seen here so far, some of the solutions being offered as far as integration with the 3PAR would be an area that would be really interesting to see.

On the short list was to continue with IBM. We were in a TSM environment, and we had been with TSM for years and years. The HP Data Protector solution with the StoreOnce on the backend seemed like a logical next step for us, because we have other HP products in-house, including the 3PAR, for some of our tier one storage needs. I would give it at least an eight or a nine. Yeah, it's a rock solid platform for us. It's got a very direct application, and purpose. It's not trying to meet many, many needs like some of the file services platforms do. It's a backup and it does its job.

I think it was mostly a price win, really, between the two. The pricing that was offered in conjunction with a lot of other purchases we've made with HP made it a very attractive offer, and the technology behind it was solid and passed all of our testing needs. It just seemed like a logical fit for us. Sure, with StoreOnce we were actually seeing quite a bit of dedupe benefit where we weren't getting any dedupe before, so we're actually getting reports generated where we can see the dedupe ratios for various datasets that we're actually backing up. Basically the net effect is that we're using a lot less space to do our backups, and it gives us the versatility to spin off certain backups to tape, or to replicate off-site or to just let age out in the system and get overwritten.

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.

It's fast and reliable when compared to tape solutions.

Over 51TB of data is backed up and replicated off-site every week quickly and reliably, compared to the laborious tape archiving solution we had in the past.

The web-GUI is not intuitive enough for basic users and offers fairly limited functionality compared to a backup solution such as Veeam or Backup-Exec.

I've used it for 15 months.

No issues encountered.

Rarely have issues with stability.

No issues when you need to scale up. It's as simple as 'chucking more disks' into the array when the space needs expanding.

Good from HP, as usual (on a contract).

Good from HP, as usual (on a contract).

We previously used Symantec Backup-Exec to LTO-4 tape. We switched because we needed a more scalable solution that was faster and allowed replication off-site nightly at a much quicker rate.

Simple, it was handled by HP.

We had HP do the implementation, with a third party consultancy firm called System Professional. They had exceptional understanding of the entire platform.

I cannot put a price on this investment. Suffice it to say that the countless number of man-hours saved not having to deal with tapes every day/week/month is invaluable.

£100,000 including installation, support and maintenance contracts. This also includes two StoreOnce devices - one at our datacentre, and one replica at another campus.

No, we have an extensive support contract with HP and were given a heavily discounted educational agreement as opposed to what other vendors such as EMC were offering.

If you work for an educational institution (as I do), the potential long-term savings will easily add up compared to the short-term initial investment. Do your homework and look elsewhere and you will find it difficult to beat the product/service in terms of cost and performance

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 Catalyst Store with Data Protector:

• It is possible to use Ethernet and Fabric at the same time with the same device.
• The configuration of Data Protector is easy.
• The media administration in Data Protector was simplified.
• The recovery of the cell manager in a disaster is more easy.
• It is possible to see the information of backup task in the StoreOnce device; before that, this information was only in the Data Protector database.

We implemented Catalyst with Data Protector in March 2016; after the change, the recovery process time of one or two days was reduced to 30 minutes in most of cases.

I think the integration with Data Protector and virtual environments is an area for improvement.

I have been using it for five months.

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I have not yet encountered any scalability issues.

I think that technical support is a weak point. I feel that technical support does not know the product. The call center is prepared to support a hardware error, but when we have any doubts regarding a new configuration, they have the same doubts. In this case, we need to contact some friends at HPE.

We previously used the same StoreOnce, but without Catalyst. Catalyst is the sum of NFS plus SAN disk in the same backup repository.

Configuration is very simple; the problem was changing the minds of the operators.

For a small configuration, it is expensive, but if you need to backup many servers with a lot of data, I think it is a good price.

I evaluated EMC before choosing this product.