HPE StoreVirtual Reviews

• Input/Output (I/O) has greatly improved.
• Easy updates without taking down storage and virtual machines (VMs).
• HA is now a real possibility which I could not fully achieve with normal NAS datastores.

• Ease of carving out storage.
• The seamlessness behind the scenes of block management.

I just let it do its thing. I don't worry too much about it.

Licensing is not exactly straightforward, but not the worst I have ever seen.  

While it's a simple system to work with, at the same time it gives a high level of data availability and resilience. We can utilize our existing hardware and save energy in cooling costs.

HP StoreVirtual added the benefits of a shared storage to a highly-virtualized environment:

• Live migration
• High availability
• Data protection (snapshots)
• Better performance

I would like to have the option to configure and get detailed alerts from the Centralized Management Console.

We have used this product since 2010.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

We have had no stability issues.

When it was deployed, we were just building our VM environment, and it's scaled out as our needs grew. We've had no issues with being unable to scale.

Customer service is brilliant.

Technical support is brilliant. HP technical support is great for sorting out the little issues as they arise.

We did not use a different solution. We chose StoreVirtual as it ticked many boxes in regards to our needs.

The initial setup is straightforward. As long as you have some experience with storage systems, you should be fine.

The implementation was all completed in-house with some input from an HP partner.

I would estimate our ROI to be somewhere around 600%.

It’s a good, solid product. Make sure you get the HP care pack as you need it to access updates. If you can’t fit in your budget a hardware SAN, this is a good alternative.

Primary usage is just to operate our daily business.

Performance, so far so good. No problems at all yet.

The stability and flexibility are the greatest improvements to our organization.

• Stability
• Flexibility

I can't say at the moment. I'm happy with it right now. There is always room to improve.

Using our current license we have just a 5TB limit. If we acquire a new license we can upgrade to the bigger storage. It can definitely scale to our needs.

Technical support comes from our partner. We have never had any issues with them. We haven't had any large-scale issues.

Before this we were just using a physical service and then moved to the virtual environment using VSA.

Our partner recommended this solution. We took a deep look, analyzed, and decided we can go with this solution.

It was straightforward, I would say. We did it with our partner.

We had a few options like Lenovo, Fugitsu. We went with HPE because it had the best price to performance ratio, and service as well. 

It's been a good experience, so far.

When deciding on a vendor to go with we look at 

• service
• stability
• performance.

Explore it yourself. Talk to your colleagues, talk to the technicians, the experts.

We've found that the ability to repurpose existing hardware is the most valuable feature for us.

It has allowed us to create a SAN from existing hardware without having to purchase any other hardware.

Using multiple bonded network interfaces needs work.

We've used it for five years.

We've had no issues with deployment.

There have been no issues with the stability.

They need to improve its ability to scale with bonded network interfaces.

Technical support has been excellent.

Make sure you license according to your total storage requirements for the foreseeable future.

We didn't look at other options.

Most of our clients are actually educational or academic institutions. The solution is primarily required for their data centers, where they already have a SAN. Also, they may want to upgrade or add a specific amount of capacity.

There are two types of requirements where StoreVirtual comes in handy. One is if you were to use the software as a service (SAAS), rather than going for an expensive SAN solution. The StoreVirtual software can actually convert our client's server into a storage box. It's like a virtual storage array.

The solution's most valuable aspect is that it is hardware independent. 

The scalability is very good and does not cause it to lose any of its performance.

I'm not sure if HP is integrating various platforms and coming out with newer options on this solution. It needs to be upgraded from time to time. There are some upgrades which are due to take in new features. 

The solution needs to ensure it is on par with the industry in terms of availability of features and various other options.

We've been dealing with HP storage for more than a decade now.

The solution is stable. Whatever implementation we've done, we've been very satisfied with the solution and haven't experienced any bugs or glitches.

The solution is highly scalable and does not lose any of its performance as it expands.

In the installations we've performed there aren't more than 1,000 or so users.

I've been in touch with HP technical support directly. We've been quite satisfied with the level of service we've been given.

The solution is not complex to implement as well. It's very straightforward. I found it to be quite simple.

We are an IT systems integrator. We have worked with Check Point and Sophos in the past. We are also evaluating Palo Alto for our customers. We are not just dealing with StoreVirtual on its own. 

This used to be a LeftHand Networks product, which HP acquired.

I would definitely recommend the solution to other organizations. I would suggest that they have to remember to benchmark it with respect to their infrastructure. It's not necessarily useful for everybody.

There are various acquisitions that HP has done in the storage space. One would have to see how the consolidation happens in the coming months or years.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

StoreVirtual's High Availability and redundancy are the most valuable features for us.

It has removed the single point of failure. The resiliency was improved due to features like snapshotting at hardware level. It gives us better uptime and improved HA time, which means less downtime in the event of a failure.

Communication of HP firmware and BIOS updates need work. Also, the directives relating to the products need to be improved.

We've used it for one and a half years.

We had no issues with the deployment.

There was an issue with one CPU overheating and causing fans to rev up. The CPU had to be reseated and firmware updates applied.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

Technical support is good, but it could be better.

There was no solution in place previously.

It was straightforward by using the HP CMC software.

The pricing and licensing are fair.

There were no other solutions looked at.

This is a good SAN solution.

High Availability is the most valuable feature for us.

It allows us to provide simple High Availability SAN solutions that are scalable with both speed and storage by just adding extra nodes.

The stability isn’t as good as a traditional SAN as the nodes run an operating system and act like a storage server.

We've been using it for five years.

We've had no issues with deployment.

Things like a hard power off can cause OS corruption and booting issues. This isn’t too much of an issue because of the High Availability design.

We've had no issues with the scalability. We chose this because, in part, it's easily scalable.

8/10 - HP support are quite knowledgeable when there are internal software bugs.

The initial setup is straightforward if you have SAN knowledge.

We did it in-house. Just make sure you configure and plan your failover manager correctly and all best practices are followed on the welcome status page.

Their licensing is excellent as it's included in the package. Items such as site-to-site replication, High Availability, and clustering are all included at no additional cost.

We also looked at EMC. We chose this product because of the ease of scalability and ease of support.

The most valuable feature is the clustering. To be honest, this storage isn’t a particularly a good storage, but it offers basic storage services and easy clustering. I would say that if this storage were a school kid, many other storage solutions would bully it.

It needs support for clustering different disk nodes - nodes of different sizes.

We've used it for seven months.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

The failover is pretty slow, especially if you are using VMware storage.

It has scaled to our needs.

8-9/10

8-9/10

This was already in the company when I joined.

It’s kind of a primitive storage with limited options, so if someone has already worked with a proper storage solution, this won’t cause any headaches during the implementation. It's an easy click-click process after you have downloaded the management tool.

We did it in-house.

You shouldn't buy it, and get HP MSA or something similar.