We performed a comparison between HPE 3par Storeserv and HPE Primera based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, the two solutions are very similar. However, HPE Primera seems to be more reliable and flexible than HPE 3par Storeserv, and less expensive as well.
"We have been able to consolidate storage into Pavilion. Pavilions are our only SANs because it is a bring your own disk solution. When new drives come out, we are able to take out half of the drives in the system, put in new drives, move our VMs over to the new drives, take the other drives out, and populate those with new drives. Then, we are suddenly twice as dense as we were before. NVMe flash is only going to get denser and cheaper so we can make use of that every couple of years by just throwing newer disks into it at a fraction of the cost of a new SAN."
"The high performance is very valuable, as well as the enterprise reliability features."
"There's lots of flexibility in how we use the resources while also maintaining a small footprint."
"3PAR is different from other storage solutions because it uses a chunklet when we initiate the storage. Every disk is submitted as a 1 GB chunklet. This chunklet can be RAID 1, 4, 5, or 6. This fabulous feature is very useful for me because I can distribute the RAID for any volume. The adaptive optimization is the biggest feature in 3PAR. 3PAR is very usable with thin volume because it detects zeros while writing. Every time I tell the hypervisor to make the full provisioning, it makes the volume as simple provisioning in 3PAR, not full provisioning. Other vendors take this volume as thick provisioning because of which the capacity is reached quickly. It doesn't happen in 3PAR because it detects zeros. It only writes the data, and it doesn't write zeros. There are two processors in 3PAR: the ASIC processor and the main processor. The ASIC processor detects zero writing and doesn't write it, which is a big feature in 3PAR."
"This is a very robust product and it offers everything that we are looking for."
"HPE 3PAR StoreServ has a good interface, it is user-friendly and easy to use."
"We never had a blackout and we have never been offline."
"HPE 3PAR StoreServ is easy to use and has good performance."
"Its stability is the most valuable. It has soft alerts. When an alert is raised, we get a call from HP saying that there is this type of alert, and they need to do a remote session to check things. Similarly, for firmware updates, they get in touch to say that a firmware upgrade is required on your storage. They schedule a time and take control remotely to upgrade the firmware. In all such cases, there is no downtime. Everything is done when a full-fledged operation is going on. Its user interface is also quite good. We are quite accustomed to this user interface. We can easily take a look at the current usage or the amount of storage. It is quite easily understandable, and I can present those things to my seniors or other people who are not that tech-savvy, and they can easily understand what we are trying to tell them. We can easily show them that we are using around 87% of the storage, so we need to plan for another tree and things like that."
"The speed is very good."
"HPE 3PAR has all the common storage features like cell provisioning and deduplication. Usually the solution is chosen by the customer as they have a preference, or the setup is already in their environment."
"It is a stable and scalable solution with quick and efficient storage capability."
"We sold Primera to a public university, and they're happy with it. They have been using it for about four months with no significant problems."
"There has been a lot of changes in HPE Primera OS, and most of the time any package related to it is simple to upgrade. It does not require any support for the operation. The customer can easily deploy any code directly from the GUI which is very good. Additionally, we have individual storage we can allocate and easily manage."
"When taking into account the price, maintenance required, and performance of HPE Primera, it is an effective solution."
"The high availability was most valuable because they come with what's called 100% data availability. With special terms, they license and guarantee 100% data availability. That was probably one of the key features or components that HPE was offering with that model."
"All of the capabilities of the hardware such as replication, snapshot, and the specific features are all included from the start as opposed to being on another license."
"The performance of the solution is good."
"In my opinion, HPE is making good progress and moving ahead with InfoSight, which is predictive analytics and artificial intelligence."
"I would like to see the management layer improved."
"The rail system that Pavilion uses to mount up into a standard Dell or APC cabinet extends further back than normal rails, and they cover up the zero PDU slot. So, I don't like the rail system that comes with the device. That is my biggest complaint."
"In our current configuration, we can only run the line controllers in high availability, active-standby mode, whereas we would like to see active-active implemented."
"Setting up 3PAR is somewhat complicated, and it took about a week."
"There is a slight difference between what we expected and what was delivered."
"The speed of the hard disk could be better. The performance is the main issue for us. The performance of the VMs is not comparable to desktop machines, for instance, and we might need another solution to improve the performance. Other than that, we don't have any issues. We already have a great part of storage with SSDs, and the performance is not as good as I expected."
"Its price is a bit high for adding another tree."
"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."
"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 replicating software is pretty complicated. I probably would have put it on a sequence."
"There are issues formulating the upgraded disk."
"On the hardware side, you should have the ability to expand capacity to larger numbers."
"We cannot use this storage for critical applications and data."
"We used to receive hardware errors a lot of times. The ambient temperatures rise rate was approximately 35 to 55 degrees, but when it was approximately 27 or 28, we used to get errors a lot."
"The reporting console can be improved with out of the box reports."
"There are certain features that require engineering-level access, which should be accessible to storage admins as well."
"One of the drawbacks of the model we purchased is that it is not running NVMe drives. Even though they say that it is NVMe-ready, it is still on the SSD drives. The model that we purchased has only eight hard drives, and only the ones on the top could work on NVMe. The rest of them are still on the SSD. Its competitors, such as EMC and Pure Storage, are moving or have already moved to NVMe. HPE should improve this solution for NVMe. HPE should also improve IOs in this solution. IOs in HPE are weaker than Hitachi and Pure Storage."
"Increasing the IOPS and throughput values would make the product even better. Improving the scalability of HPE Primera is also recommended."
"They could work to make scalability easier."
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HPE 3PAR StoreServ is ranked 5th in All-Flash Storage Arrays with 41 reviews while HPE Primera is ranked 9th in All-Flash Storage Arrays with 19 reviews. HPE 3PAR StoreServ is rated 8.4, while HPE Primera is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of HPE 3PAR StoreServ writes "Robust and easy to use with a simple setup ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of HPE Primera writes "A rock-solid, enterprise-class product that provides 100% availability and is backed by an excellent company". HPE 3PAR StoreServ is most compared with Dell Unity XT, HPE Nimble Storage, NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS), Pure Storage FlashArray and HPE StorageWorks MSA, whereas HPE Primera is most compared with HPE Nimble Storage, Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS), IBM FlashSystem and Dell Unity XT. See our HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. HPE Primera report.
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@Janet Staver great summary, couldn't have said it better.
However, please note that HPE 3PAR has file support while Primera doesn't.
So, weigh that with your use case and requirements.
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 of the capabilities of the hardware (including snapshot, replication, and other specific features) come with it, so there is no need for an additional license. In addition, the AI advantages and analytics with InfoSight are definitely powerful. With HPE Primera you are guaranteed great performance with excellent low latency. The AI driven interface is for hybrid cloud, and it also provides insights into any virtualized infrastructure such as proactive recommendations, performance issues, etc. Whatsmore, the dashboards are also great and user-friendly. And the customization capabilities HPE Primera gives you are excellent. From my experience using HPE Primera, there isn’t any real aspect of the solution that needs to be improved other than its high price point.
HPE 3par Storeserv is also easy to use and set up. The solution is robust and makes data performance much faster. The data replication feature of HPE 3par does a good job of replicating data cleanly over to a second site. HPE 3par Storeserv also makes it easy to make changes without it affecting your environment. In addition, it comes with a lot of screens with adjustable settings, which makes management easier. Moreover, it is easy to scale, it is very stable, has a very good interface, is reliable, and also allows you to have tiered storage. However, HPE 3par has limitations when it comes to the number of IOPS the system can do and has limited flexibility in regards to building replication solutions.
Conclusion: Ultimately, I chose HPE Primera because 3par Storeserv does not have integration with cloud services, which is something I need.