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Dell EqualLogic PS series vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell EqualLogic PS series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
304
Ranking in other categories
NAS (10th), All-Flash Storage (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of Dell EqualLogic PS series is 3.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is 10.2%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE 3PAR StoreServ10.2%
Dell EqualLogic PS series3.9%
Other85.9%
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

Khuram Ayyaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Executive at Virtual University
Has enabled uninterrupted access to educational platforms and simplified storage management
Dell EqualLogic PS series is easily scalable, and we can add extra boxes and storage. It was easy to deploy during COVID. Deploying Dell EqualLogic PS series is straightforward, with no complexity involved. Dell EqualLogic PS series is a good product. We did not experience any failures in the last six to seven years, and it is still running as our storage for offline data. There are snapshot capabilities in data protection available, but we did not use that feature because it consumes much space. We have only 150 terabytes of space and simply use it to create volumes without utilizing it for snapshots. We use thin provisioning in Dell EqualLogic PS series, but I did not explore that feature further.
CO
Information Systems & Security Administrator at a government with 501-1,000 employees
Ease of use in data center boosts resilience and infrastructure efficiency
I find the HPE 3PAR StoreServ valuable for its ease of use and resilience, which is beneficial. The main benefits I have seen from having HPE 3PAR StoreServ include its use at a small branch I managed for about three years with around 60 users. It operates effectively because it is an HPE product we use there. I have not experienced any significant issues besides occasional IT-related ones, such as local database problems. Since handing over the administration of the system to someone else and moving to another department, there have not been any issues. There are many features that exist but I haven't needed to try. Before moving out of that role in my organization, I knew it was a product I enjoyed working with for infrastructure purposes. After completing my new role, I intend to return to infrastructure.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The technical support is very good."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It is extremely reliable."
"Before deploying it, we used public clouds for our services, facing latency and other issues with other vendors; after deploying this cluster, we were very satisfied and relieved."
"Dell EqualLogic PS series is a highly stable solution."
"​It has contributed to the implementation of virtualization and all its benefits.​"
"The product is very stable."
"Its high availability. It has a lot of redundancy and good management software as well as good alerting."
"I must say the uninterrupted upgrades of 3PAR, the OS, and its RAID-type system are must-have features."
"Very recently, we are able to do a lot of data center automation by being able to script some of the 3PAR actions for our private cloud."
"The optimization features move chunklets or hot spots to faster drives."
"We're using the all-flash arrays and, with the deduplication and compression, it just really fits our virtualization environment very well."
"The uninterrupted upgrades of 3PAR, the OS, and its RAID-type system are must-have features."
"In the deployment of virtual servers, I can have a new VM up and running in 15 minutes, run the patches, then done. I routinely fire up base images that I have for my servers: Server 2008 R2, 2012 R2, and 2016. I routinely fire those base images up and do all the updates, then prep them again for cloning. With 3PAR, we definitely have the performance to do that. Those images I do keep on SSD just to have that performance to deploy a new VM."
"We have additional space in the enclosures for additional disks, so we can scale up without any downtime."
"From a single panel, I can see the performance of my service, my network, and my storage."
 

Cons

"The performance isn't as good as, for example, Nimble."
"Synchronous replication uses space inefficiently."
"Individual file recovery would be a nice additional feature."
"The solution is out of date and the new version has a lot of advanced features."
"The only challenging part in the tool was related to some site recovery area. In order to exploit the site recovery area, my company had to purchase additional VMware products."
"It is at the end of support and no longer supported. We have to move our VMware to another storage platform, and we have decided to use Dell PowerStore. We like Dell's products, and it is a new platform with a lot of features."
"I can't buy any more solutions provided by EqualLogic...Since I can't buy it anymore, I don't receive any updates on the solution. Also, this is the last year in which one can buy support for the solution."
"When they deployed our cluster, they did not provide any documentation or low-level or high-level diagrams. They simply came, mounted the servers, and started installation without documentation, which is a negative point on the vendor side."
"With 3PAR, there is remote copy software which isn't very good."
"The GUI was a little hard to figure out how to use."
"As a management tool, it would help us to have more customer reports."
"The hard part with the initial setup was that we were on EMC VNX and trying to get those converted over into the HPE 3PAR, that process took awhile, along with scheduling downtime to get some of the physical stuff migrated over to the new device."
"In the next release, I would like to see faster upgrades, where it's really transparent to our host and our end-users."
"In new releases, I'd really like to see it more targeted towards hyper-converged. They are working that way with Greenlake and integrating their own "build your own" expansion environment within 3PAR."
"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."
"I would like to see an automatic re-balancing system or functionality for adaptive optimization."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, the solution is cheap. I rate it a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"I don't think I would say that the product is less expensive...The product's price is not an issue for our company, considering the relationship we have with Dell and the customer support we receive."
"There are annual maintenance costs beyond the original licensing period."
"Dell EqualLogic PS series can improve its scale-out feature. Sometimes the customer has a limited budget for storage expansion. When they want to expand their capacity, they need to buy a complete controller plus storage capacity, which sometimes is out of their budget. If Dell EqualLogic PS series support could scale up the environment in which only hard drive extension controllers should be supported, then customers can expand within a lower budget."
"Initial packages include all upgrades and services."
"I didn't buy it. It was another person seven years ago. So, I don't really know, but all storage platforms cost a lot of money. It is probably in the mid-range, but you get what you pay for."
"Licensing is pretty straightforward."
"All features are out of the box. The license will be in the virtual, OS, or application layer."
"It is reasonable. As compared to other solutions, it doesn't seem to be much different."
"The price of the license depends. Some people expect more from the hardware. Some expect more from the licensing, and that is because you can receive several licenses nowadays, such as the terabyte license. You buy the storage, and you pay extra for the terabyte license for the software. There is a one-time purchase for the license and you pay annually for the maintenance."
"If HPE reduced the price of 3PAR StoreServ they would be more attractive to mid-range companies."
"It's very reliable and it was cost competitive with other arrays at the time that we purchased it."
"The price of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is reasonable, but buying upgrade licenses are priced very high. There are additional fees."
"The price of the solution could be reduced for the license and for support."
"Making the decisions to buy it can be complex."
"This solution is expensive. We pay every year for support. It's a lump sum because we pay for data center support services, and everything is included in one."
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Comparison Review

it_user182013 - PeerSpot reviewer
Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
May 1, 2015
Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR
Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise74
Large Enterprise170
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell EqualLogic PS series?
The technical support for the solution was really good.
What needs improvement with Dell EqualLogic PS series?
I do not have anything in mind regarding new capabilities for Dell products at this time.
What is your primary use case for Dell EqualLogic PS series?
We are essentially a university, and we have deployed Dell EqualLogic PS series in our data centers to run our production sites, student portals, websites, our on-premises portal, and campus manage...
What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?
HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspective, it is reliable, easy to set up, stable, and offers quality block storage. All...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE 3PAR StoreServ?
It is expensive, however, when we compare it to the features provided by HPE, the price-to-performance ratio is very good.
 

Also Known As

EqualLogic PS series
HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FAW Foundry, AW Engineering, Unimat, eLongNet Information Technology, BDO Brasil, Odyssey Space Research
Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell EqualLogic PS series vs. HPE 3PAR StoreServ and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,886 professionals have used our research since 2012.