What needs improvement with HPE 3PAR StoreServ?

3PAR has been reliable. We've had some issues with batteries and power supply, but those are manageable. Most of our problems stem from older equipment. I have to contact them for any inquiries about storage or compatibility with new systems. This slows down our ability to make quick decisions. The process would be sped up if there were a direct line to HP for inquiries. Our funding can change monthly, which affects our ability to upgrade or scale.

It is expensive. It is an older system, and since then, many new technologies have emerged. Initially, it had a steep learning curve, and understanding its workings was challenging. We had to open multiple support tickets and escalate issues through various levels of support—level one, level two, and level three. Even then, some problems remained unresolved. One specific area of difficulty was understanding the RAID configurations and the concept of chunks, which were unique to 3PAR. HP has moved away from this approach in its newer systems. In general, we might prefer simpler, more straightforward systems over the specialized complexity of 3PAR.

If we have two different types of disks, only one data-tiering is possible. The product must accept any type of disk. The solution must be vertically and horizontally expandable. It is not possible currently.

The solution’s stability could be improved.

We are planning to change the storage soon. The tool is old. We are looking for enterprise-grade storage with NVMe capabilities, low latency, and higher responses.

The tool needs improvement in the utilization report at the granular level.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ should increase the storage capacity. Also, the setup is complicated.

This solution is now at end-of-life. We have found the solution to be expensive.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is at its end of life and they are forcing us to purchase new hardware. They will no longer support this solution. They should provide support for a longer time. For example, 10 years instead of five years.

HPE could improve by raising awareness when a new product is launched. They must think of ways to better serve and engage with their enterprise customers. HPE is selling enterprise products and mission-critical support. This is not a one-time sale, and then it's over. They need to maintain a relationship with their customer over the life of the product, which is typically four or five years.

It's not a very good solution. We found EMC and other storage solutions can help the client a bit more in terms of reaching their target, having the flexibility they need, and offering better backups and integration. It's not high-end storage. It's not as strong as it needs to be. You need to have two nodes, or two controls to be able to effectively protect from data loss. It's not really a complete solution. It has some limitations with software integration as well as backup and restore integration. It does not protect the data stored on 3PAR. Some products should be protected with another brand if there's a level of security required. With 3PAR, there is remote copy software which isn't very good. It should be improved also. Many times we have had data issues and we have had to re-initiate the application and reconfigure.

The solution should have a smaller footprint. It's large compared to, say, something like Pure Storage, which is a lot smaller. 3PAR is not as fast as Pure Storage. That's something that 3PAR needs to look at. They need to look at the frequent breakdowns. It's not as lag-free as some of the other HPE Arrays, the enterprise flash arrays. That's something that HPE needs to look at. The pricing could be lowered. In the future, I'd like to see it being controlled more from the cloud itself. The solution lacks reliability. This aspect has gone down in the last few years.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ could have better integration into the cloud and converged infrastructure.

The solution could improve by being more secure.

The GUI interface could be improved. I have been having trouble with one issue in particular. If you look at the DC and DR, if there is a communication break and the link went down—so the data is not replicating from DC to DR—there is no way to find out how much data is ready for transmission. Only the size of the data that needs to be transferred after the link comes up. If the firewall link is down, there is no way of seeing how much data is waiting to be transferred. This is a weak point of 3PAR.

The configuration and flexibility should improve.

I'm not sure how good the security is. While the stability is pretty good, it could always be improved upon.

The interface could be improved to match the system. The initial setup could be simplified.

We use the old disk and we can't make a VMO in HPE 3PAR without getting an upgrade. We activated a new disk but it failed, it's hard to manipulate and format it. The disk might be okay but when we put it in the storage array, it failed.

From an overall perspective, all the latest technologies can improve support and performance. This is very important for us.

There is a slight difference between what we expected and what was delivered.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ has limited flexibility in building replication solutions. There are limitations to the number of IOPS the system can do. It's not bad as it is doing its job. However, for the application, if you need a toolbox, you can build everything concerning periodic replication modes of synchronous or asynchronous three-site, four-site, with supported cascading which requires you to buy an IBM product. It also takes a few hours to one day to upgrade the system and sometimes; it takes more time because, in some HPE 3PAR StoreServ 20000 Storage, you have an eight-node system. If you do an upgrade, you do it node by node and every node might take more than an hour.

The scalability could be improved plus management. Currently, you can only identify what's connected to it through the system names and the like and it would be helpful to have an overview of everything that comes to it. It's easy to upsize but you can't downsize.

We do see room for improvement, especially in regard to expanding the defined storage areas. The alerting system could also be improved. If there are issues with the system, it's supposed to send emails and SMS alerts — this could be improved.

This solution only provides active-passive replication, as opposed to active-active. Competing products also provide active-active replication. Adding support for Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) would be an improvement.

HP has several integration elements that work with other vendor storage products. I'd like to see a greater expansion on that so that a customer can do a more seamless migration from other vendor products. The migration of data to their platform could be better. Primarily they don't have a lot. They have several EMC elements that they can migrate data from, however, there are many more controllers out there and it'd be good to see a more seamless integration so that that could occur. I'd like to see 3PAR have some integration with Cloud services.

We are using a built-in solution in 3PAR. We are using All-Flash Storage, and there are some difficulties with it. HPE has now developed a new tool system to support All-Flash, and that's why we are changing our investment. They must increase its performance. I want unlimited support, which is very important for performance. I am not interested in spinning disks. HPE is developing new storage systems called Primera, but they must be developed more.

It is suitable for medium-sized businesses and data centers with less number of users and less important data. It is not really an enterprise-level solution. It needs more capacity. It is also not really stable. It should be more stable. It should also support any server model. It is really weak in this area.

File Persona can be better. I don't use File Persona because it has many problems with my environment. The antivirus that it has is not compatible with File Persona, and that's a big issue with File Persona. 3PAR is not as good as Dell when making a file in the storage. 3PAR for a block is very good, but when comparing row capacity, I get 14% capacity with 3PAR, but with Dell, I get 60% capacity.

An area of improvement for this solution is an increase in the bandwidth as well as an upgrade of the storage functionality and capabilities. The storage needs to be expandable for future-proofing. An additional feature I would like to see in the next release is for the management interface not to depend on Java.

Its price is a bit high for adding another tree.

We had an issue a few months ago where we experienced a degradation in performance. Every time you scale by adding more capacity, you need to pay for re-balancing services that cannot be performed in-house. I would like to see an automatic re-balancing system or functionality for adaptive optimization.

This product has come to the end of its lifecycle. We could keep it for many years but we are following the recommendation from HPE and are looking to either the Nimble or the Primera. This is an expensive product, so the price could be reduced.

As long as they can keep the solution stable, it will be good. Stability is very important to us.

The replicating software is pretty complicated. I probably would have put it on a sequence.

The price is a little bit high.

I would like to have support for On-The-fly reallocation Data when using VVoL.For further explanation I must say When using vvol , you can have 3 tier in Storage .This tiers different in IO an Capacity feature.Usually tier 0 can support maximum IO and minimum Capacity and use SSD in this tier, Tier 1 between Tier 0 and 2 for Support IO and Capacity This layer is known as FC (Fast Class) nad Finally in tier 2 you Have only capacity and usually used NL disk for capacity .from that side in vmware Cluster equivalent this tier have a concept called Gold,Silver,Bronze that define in Storage Policy.You may want to first move a virtual machine to the silver group with disks; and then move it to another group, such as gold or bronze.This feature is based on the feature that the storage device provides and This feature is not yet available on the storage device, according to the documentation of HPE company will be presented in an update called T05

The cloud-based monitoring Infosight would be better if users are automatically enrolled in the cloud/group based on the configuration or information gathered or uploaded on the internet. The auto-discovery of the system is not easy for first-time users.

The Unified Multiprotocol Access to the storage array needs to be improved.

Upgrades could be improved. We would like to see more upgrades.

As it is, it does its job very well, so it's very difficult for me to say what we should be looking for in the next platform. I think cloud integration would probably be the biggest part because that's where everyone is going and the seamless integration between on-premise and cloud is an important part of any IT strategy today.

This solution is becoming dated.

We've started to see an issue with the older models that we have. We've had issues where facilities would have unscheduled power outages or scheduled power outages and the 3PARs weren't able to come up successfully. We actually had an incident recently where it wiped data that we didn't anticipate would be wiped. We will be having sidebar conversations with them later today, here at HPE Discover 2019, to talk about some of the possibilities that we're looking at. Going forward, we're looking for bigger capacity and drives, which I know they're looking at. We want them to ensure the speed and reliability because keeping those systems up and running, 24/7, is important to us.

We had a minor error when we were configuring this system, which initially detracted from its overall stability.

There is always the case where there are the little things that bother you, but you live with them. There are features that we would like to deep dive into more, but that is where the consultants would come in and help.

I want artificial intelligence. I don't want anybody from my team to touch it anymore. I want the AI to do everything. I see this as a piece of hardware, which I don't want see and don't want to care about. I want some AI over it, not because I want to fire all my team, but what I want my team working on is definitely not to take care of our hardware.

We would like to see full virtual. We would also like to see improvements to the ease of administration of 3PAR.

One of the things I like about the Microsoft operating systems are Microsoft's built-in backups. It's not elegant nor real pretty, but it just works for a single server or single VM. What I would really like to see from HPE is backup built-in, not snapshots nor replaying snapshots, but true block or file level backups integrated into an HPE platform program. Today, I'm using StorageCraft, where I can have a VM recovered in 15 to 20 minutes. I run a continuous restore point on three of my primary domain controllers. I run a continuous restore point against my primary Microsoft SQL server. So, I always have that continuous, but it's taking up so much storage space that I keep running out and having to add. I need something better, as I've been doing this for a long time. Maybe having Arcserve Backup or Seagate Backup Exec more integrated into the hardware solution.

We would like to see deduplication and hybrid in the next release of the solution. The integration has room for improvement.

I would like an easier user interface and setup to help with deployment. There were many areas of the setup where I was like, “Why don't we do it this way?” Therefore, some of the things in the user interface could have been more refined, so you don't have to click in 5000 different places to accomplish one goal. Less clicks means more efficiency. I feel like there is a big training gap. Obviously, the HPE engineers know all about the product and can come in and do the setup with ease. However, once they hand off the product to the in-house IT group, there might be a learning gap there. E.g,, I have to call them now every time I have a problem. I feel like they should've spent more time with us. They were only onsite for two days, and I feel like there should be more outside training to explain how to use the product.

It has latency issues.

We do not use Memory-Driven Flash in the old 3PAR. Perhaps we will use it in the new 3PAR. That is part of the reason why we are upgrading. We aren't using HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity yet. We are looking into it. The old 3PAR didn't support it, but the new 3PAR does.

I would like to have more details on alerting. It is not real granular right now. What It gives you is sort of basic, and we can't do a lot of tweaking on our own. We would like to be able to tweak some of the alerts for our team.

I would like the documentation easy to find. There is a lot of documentation, but sometimes it is hard to find. You have to do a lot of searching to find it. Before you could go on the HPE website, and download every driver that you wanted. Now, you need to have a service contract, or something else, to be able to get the drivers. Sometimes, you just need a simple driver, because your machine needs to restart and reinstall. If the machine is not under warranty anymore, it's hard to get the driver. That is a setback when compared to other solutions. We are in the Caribbean, but we are Sint Maarten. Sint Maarten is French and Dutch. We are on the Dutch side. We speak Dutch and English, but because we are in the Caribbean, the way the system is set up with HPE in Latin America, a lot of times when we contact support, we get a Spanish-speaking people instead of an English-speaking people. I find that is a problem. When we are dealing with support to send somebody over, for example, we make sure to always put the emphasis on, "Make sure you send somebody who is English-speaking to us."

if it were easier for us to manage the product ourselves without having to get HPE to connect, because it sometimes it does take a bit to get the scheduling worked out with the HPE support. If it were simpler, then it might be easier for us to handle it ourselves.

The GUI was a little hard to figure out how to use.

We would like to see a bigger integration with the Nimble Storage solution, so we can take our smaller regional companies and be able to send them into our bigger data centers and have everything work seamlessly. The upgrade in the firmware and software need improvement. The user interface is still a little kludgy.

I would like to have single click upgrades because the process is cumbersome right now. The upgrade process is very tedious. It takes a lot of time and effort, in addition to coordination with HPE. We are looking for something which is more user-friendly and easy to deploy. Fixing the upgrade process is very critical.

I would like to see more visibility regarding issues - active alerting. I know that InfoSight is currently trying to do what Nimble did for its storage. If it were proactively alerting regarding maintenance or something that's going to go bust, it could be very useful for us.

I would like to see improvement in the product's scalability. As a partner, I had serious problems because of the competition from Dell EMC and Pure. It's definitely problematic. It needs to scale out better.

The solution should have better integration with legacy systems. We would like memory-driven performance on the storage.

This solution should be easier to use.

We would like to see dedupe and compression allowed on all drive types.

* Made on three times a price comparison, and only on one occurrence, the largest enterprise infrastructure of all three was HPE able to compete with its competitors. * It's way too expensive for the SMB market. * HPE care packs like datacenter/enterprise provide highly automated reports and reviews. * I liked the periodic SAN performance reviews which are highly detailed reports in about 100 pages and provide recommendations and a final score. However, the price is outrageous!