Huawei OceanStor Reviews

We are a system integration company and we are working with Huawei OceanStor products. It is mainly used for virtualization.

The most valuable feature is the flexibility in the rail, as it is hybrid storage. It can be used for many different use cases, depending on what our customer requests.

The administration should be simplified because there are a large number of options that make it too complicated, and the customers can get confused. The V6 has already been improved and is much simpler, but the V3 is not.

I have been working with Huawei OceanStor for a couple of months.

I have not seen any bugs or glitches.

The technical support is okay. It depends on whether you are asking the right questions. If you do then you get the right answers, but when the team is asking something that is not straight, then you won't solve the problem right away.

In the past, I have had lots of experience with different storage vendors. I worked for many of them. I have found that most of them are using the same disks, so it is hard to point to things that differentiate them. For the most part, the functionality is the same but the functions have different names.

The initial setup is okay and there is not much difficulty involved. The deployment can be completed in a couple of hours.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our company has 1000 staff. We have 7 users using OceanStor.

This is a stable storage system.

We experienced a little latency with this solution.

I have been using OceanStor for three years.

OceanStor is a stable solution.

During installation, we did need to ask for help from Huawei's managers and technical partners. They responded very quickly.

Being a Huawei product, initial setup was easy and not difficult at all. The setup only required one engineer from our team.

We pay a monthly licensing fee for this solution. The price could be less expensive.

If you are starting from scratch with no experience with Huawei, I recommend you talk to the people that have the experience.

I would rate Huawei OceanStor an 8 out of 10.

Customers using in production environment

We deployed Huawei OceanStor because we had some problems increasing the number of users on our database and were suffering from slowness and downtime. Then we just thought the All-Flash represented a quick win. We implemented it and now most of our data-intensive transactions are sitting under All-Flash. 

We've gotten quite a good response from our users since we began using All-Flash.

The management is fine. And we get a quick response in case any component defaults. We have seen the benefits mostly.

We've been using this solution for about one year.

At first, we had some component failures - none that were critical because our system has built-in redundancy. We had a number of these failures at a component level, but that was quickly resolved through a firmware upgrade. We had some doubts we were going in the right direction by using the OceanStor solution, but all the problems got resolved through the firmware upgrade. I don't have much to say. Maybe our period of using it is too limited for me to say much about it.

I've had experience with support. In fact, even for this type of solution, hyperconverged, we took the product support that is standard. In fact, the alerts go to us and they also go to Huawei support because it's a critical system for us. We sometimes have Huawei contacting us to say we got something even before we contact them. This is good. Support has been good.

We've used NetApp, HP, and EMC.

The physical installation itself is quite fast, but we had to go through the requirements with the connections and servers, etc. I would say it took about five or six weeks.

Not yet measured

Since Huawei is a Chinese product we've got the tendency to think that it is very cheap. But Huawei is not that cheap. We compared Huawei's price before purchasing. We compared costs per GB to other suppliers, as well. We compared the cost to EMC and NetApp, which are quite nimble solutions. We had to also evaluate the local support that is in our country. We evaluated other criteria, as well. After these evaluations we chose Huawei. It was not only cost. Basically it's not the cheapest but it's in the mid-pricing. We've got the high end, the mid-price, then we've got the low end. Huawei would be in the middle.

I will keep it general and not provide a detailed analysis in terms of storage and the All-Flash requirements. In this case, people, especially application guys, should understand that All-Flash is not for all applications. This is important because of the cost of All-Flash compared to other storage solutions. In fact, you need to emphasize this very well and tell application guys that you're spending a lot of money on All-Flash when it's not really required. In my opinion, this is the main thing. Otherwise, you end up upgrading and upgrading and it's quite a budget for All-Flash compared to other storage.

We evaluated NetApp and EMC.

On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate it at a seven. 

I gave it a score of seven based on my experience with other storage solutions. We've used NetApp, HP, and EMC. We've used quite a number. In fact, I gave this score because of the support. It is quite a high score. But frankly, we're still going through the steps of implementing. We have our main database there. Now we are going to optimize further. It's not only because All-Flash costs money. We should use it optimally. There is a tendency for users to put all their data on the All-Flash. We also have cache solutions whereby a part of the data is on the All-Flash. We are trying to convince users that they don't really need All-Flash for all their data, for all their applications. Maybe in more time, I can compare and give you an idea, but not yet at this stage. I can't tell you which features we need, not yet at this stage.

The replication, both the synchronous and asynchronous are the most valuable features. 

The management is not a good feature in all of Huawei products. It's not easy or simple. Huawei has some problems with management and handling storage information from one interface.

Technical support needs improvement. It would be helpful if there was more support in my country. I'm from Poland and there's no big Huawei support here. We are a country and we have only two technical people from Huawei. Sometimes it's not enough.

Sometimes, we have problems with the storage controller, but after adjusting it works fine. Generally, it's a very good solution.

Technical support could be a problem. We have no big problem with the storage, but we do have problems sometimes. I have Huawei service with my license. In our country, there is no support center and generally, the support center is in China. Sometimes there are language barriers.

The initial setup was straightforward. The time it takes to deploy depends on the configuration. It can take a few hours if you are including mounting the storage and bigger deployments with the many controllers can take longer. It can take up to three days, depending on architectural complexities.

I'm an integrator, so I only sell it and deploy the solution in the customer environment.

The customer should know what he wants and the person who manages the storage should outline the needs. You should be aware of what the seller wants to sell and what he wants to do. But this is relevant to every storage product. As a seller, it's very important to not promise the customer better than what the solution delivers. OceanStor is the best Huawei product for the data center.

I would rate this solution seven out of 10. I've never had a storage solution that I've wanted to give more than an eight to. There is no solution without disadvantages.

I'm the Manager of Infrastructure and Security at our company and we are a customer of Huawei. 

There are several valuable features. Huawei provides excellent and efficient support, and the product is a good price. It's very reasonable for the service they offer compared to their competitors.

The GUI is the only thing I would like to see improved, and the user interface is not so user friendly. 

I've been using this solution for six months. 

Initial setup is very straightforward, very easy. We didn't have any challenges. 

The product is still new for us so we haven't yet come across any technical issues yet. It's possible there will be some problems. 

I would rate this product an eight out of 10. 

• High storage capacity integrated with the core business.
• Possibility to create new virtualized IT services connected to this storage.
• Possibility to share very high quantity of information between high quantity of users.

Stability: The product is designed to have always HA (High Availability) with redundant network and processors.

Scalability: Willing to integrate high quantity of volumes from different protocols for storage/HD (SAS, SCSI, etc.).

Compatibility: Fully compatible with network based storage both TCP/IP for NAS and FC (Fiber Channel) for SAS.

Configuration complexity and the tools available.

No. Very stable, once it has been properly configured.

No. Very scalable.

Could improve. There is a lot of documentation, fairly complete, but the technical assistant in my experience could improve.

No. Just using before an open-source-based solution and not scalable.

The configuration process is very complex, and the proprietary tools/software available for configuration are kind of tricky to install and run.

It's roughly affordable.

Yes. HP and EMC. Those are considerably more expensive than OceanStor.

Check for the new version (V3). It seems to have some interesting features and improvements on the configuration process.

We primarily use the solution for multiple network locations. We use XL servers and EIP software.

The performance of the solution is good.

Technical support could be improved on the solution.

I've been using the solution for three years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is easy to scale as needed.

The technical support has been a let down for us. It's something the company has to work on. We haven't been satisfied with their level of service.

The initial setup isn't complex. It's quite easy and straightforward.

I handled the implementation myself.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I'd recommend the solution. We'd buy the solution again without any hesitation.

I'd rate it eight out of ten.