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HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs IBM System Storage DS5000 Series 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

HPE 3PAR StoreServ
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
303
Ranking in other categories
NAS (10th), All-Flash Storage (15th)
IBM System Storage DS5000 S...
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is 10.3%, up from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM System Storage DS5000 Series is 2.4%, up from 0.7% 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 StoreServ10.3%
IBM System Storage DS5000 Series2.4%
Other87.3%
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Saqib - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Hybrid Tech
Uninterrupted upgrades accelerate performance with good support
I would rate the solution eight out of ten. It should be noted that in Pakistan, some parts are not readily available, and we need to import them from Singapore or other countries. We encountered an issue with a customer where the midplane failed and was not available. We had to wait for several days for a replacement, even in a 24/7 support case. Additionally, we faced motherboard failures in the customer's environment, encountering two motherboard failures simultaneously. We obtained one motherboard immediately, yet had to wait ten days for another. These issues should have been resolved promptly given the 24/7 support level.
Gustavo Rosello - PeerSpot reviewer
Technological Infrastructure Manager at Mercado Argentino de Valores S.A.
Provides solid hardware and ROI to users
Companies or groups of business units are growing fast. We have perhaps between four and five more people than what it was two years ago, so the systems are increasing, and now we are working with RPA in some of our processes for automation, especially wherever it is mandatory in the financial branch, like a common investment fund and the investment in action or where there are other products. Our market is directly related to small business. We are working with companies where data translation is needed or where invoices, specifically credit invoices, the negotiation of cheques, or a doc that shows receipt of money, which you can sell at a future date. We have a sub-warehouse that has a back office in the cloud to use all operations related to creditors so that the company can increase its share in the markets. I think that we may need something on-premises in the future. The trends indicate that users are returning to on-premises systems because of the high cost of public clouds. We are looking for a better data center. In Argentina, hardware costs are high, but now, it is a great investment. We are slowly planning to expand the tool. In the USA, when it comes to object-first devices, there is a cost of 48,000 USD for 128 TB, but in Argentina, the cost is 64,000 USD for 84 TB. In Argentina, we have a lot of taxes, and the government is in the process of reducing these taxes, but now we have a situation associated with our economy. Out of 100 companies, only two are seeking employees. We are waiting for the recovery of the economy, but everything here is expensive apart from the salaries.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Valuable features include the intuitiveness of the SAN itself, a lot of the built-in logic and functionality, the tiering that it uses to determine what type of disk is best for the various types of workloads, and the automation that is built in. It's also easy to manage."
"The solution offers good stability."
"We use all the features, but some of the most valuable are the replication, priority optimization, provisioning, and deduplication. There are a lot of good features in this product."
"HPE 3PAR StoreServ is easy to use and has good performance."
"It provides ​very fast deployment. The performance for our most critical applications is very quick."
"It is a stable solution."
"We use a virtual domain in 3PAR and we can create individual pools where clients are able to manage their own resources, instead of we, as storage admin, getting involved in that."
"The uninterrupted upgrades of 3PAR, the OS, and its RAID-type system are must-have features."
"IBM System Storage DS5000 series enhances clients' data handling capabilities through improved security, fast systems, and added value features."
"The stability is excellent."
"The most valuable feature is compression."
"You can easily virtualize and share the storage."
"The solution offers an excellent price-performance ratio, including SSDs and compression capabilities. This results in faster performance and potential space savings due to compression."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The tool is very stable...The solution's scalability is very good."
"The solution is stable. I rate its stability a nine out of ten."
 

Cons

"We are still waiting for the compression feature to be deployed."
"The solution must be vertically and horizontally expandable."
"Our support in the US has been phenomenal, no issues at all. But the European support was poor initially."
"Scalability and management could be improved."
"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."
"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."
"It's a little bit difficult to figure out where the capacity is used. There is deduplication that, of course, saves space, but it sometimes it's hard to find out where the space is used. If you delete something, do you get it back? So it's not very transparent regarding capacity."
"It needs the addition of InfoSight, which is the most critical, along with predictive analytics and AI."
"If you decide to expand the IBM System Storage DS5000 Series by adding an extension frame to the controller, you won't have the ability to incorporate flash storage models directly. Instead, you'll need to work with SSD which may be slightly slower."
"There are some functions that can only be used in prompt mode."
"IBM talks about integration when we talk about Safeguarded Copy. It integrates with QRadar, but it seems as though IBM still is too separate, that is, the way IBM is measured on software and hardware."
"I don't like the storage now, as it is in the same data center. I want to separate the data center from the backup to another floor of the building or outside the building in a data center of another provider."
"Regarding improvements, there's a common perception, primarily during pre-sales, that IBM storage solutions are expensive, though studies often prove otherwise. As for additional functionality, supporting two to three sites for applications might be a potential enhancement."
"The solution's integration with other tools could be improved."
"IBM is not always as agile as other competitors when it is about cloud integration and user interfaces. They're not renewing themselves very often. They have been slow to evolve from the old GUI. The user interface should be improved, especially regarding performance analysis, which has always been a little bit weak as compared to other solutions. As a global solution, it lacks the feature for containing integration object storage. Even though they have now started to offer this feature, it is quite young and not as developed as some other vendors. There are also no mass possibilities at all. They have a lot of competition in the mid-range segment. They need to have a NAS gateway or something like that. It doesn't specifically need to be integrated into the controllers that are keys to the gateway."
"The amount of storage could be increased."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is reasonable. As compared to other solutions, it doesn't seem to be much different."
"You need to properly assess your needs before buying the solution since there are chances of overpaying. The type of configuration that you choose can make the price go higher or lower."
"The total cost of ownership really is worth every penny."
"We are going to buy eight nodes this year and eight nodes next year. Eventually, we are not going to want to buy large storage devices and probably utilize just storage, but in a different manner going forward."
"The main issue with 3PAR right now is its cost problem. Right now, there are some other storage cabinets that can do what 3PAR can do. Now, they can do it as well with a more revised budget."
"For the entire six node cluster and the two 7200 units plus the Brocade Fibre switches, we financed it through HPE Financial. It was $850,000. We leased that and paid it off in October of 2018."
"The price of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is reasonable, but buying upgrade licenses are priced very high. There are additional fees."
"Making the decisions to buy it can be complex."
"We mounted all the virtualization with less than 1,50,000 USD. We are negotiating to get the tool for 800,000,000 Argentine Pesos. The tool is expensive, but it is worth the money."
"Its price is fair. IBM is quite fair in price when you compare it with others. We also use Hitachi internally, and Hitachi is always a little bit more expensive. NetApp is also a bit more expensive. So, IBM has good positioning in terms of price."
"The basic functionalities of the product are provided within the normal license, but users can opt for some optional features from IBM's licensing model."
"It is a competitively priced solution. The cost can vary depending on whether it is purchased from the hardware or the software departments."
"This product is priced well. The ratio between cost and productivity is very high and we're happy with it."
"It's an expensive solution."
"Compared to other vendors, I think it's expensive."
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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
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business72
Midsize Enterprise74
Large Enterprise170
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM System Storage DS5000 Series?
The price fits well with the proposal of this equipment. Although IBM is not cheap, the cost fits well with the propose.
What needs improvement with IBM System Storage DS5000 Series?
There are some functions that can only be used in prompt mode. If these functions could be shown in the graphical interface, it could be better.
 

Also Known As

HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage
System Storage DS5000 series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC
Engine Informštica
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. IBM System Storage DS5000 Series and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.