HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NetApp are both solutions in the NAS category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3, while NetApp is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.8. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 2024

HPE 3PAR StoreServ and NetApp FAS Series compete in the enterprise storage solutions market. Based on a feature comparison, HPE 3PAR StoreServ appears to hold the upper hand due to its advanced multi-tier management and fault tolerance capabilities, whereas NetApp FAS Series shines with integrated data protection and protocol flexibility.

Features: HPE 3PAR StoreServ is notable for thin provisioning, wide striping, and adaptive optimization. It excels in multi-tier storage management and includes robust fault tolerance through Peer Persistence. NetApp FAS Series offers integrated data protection with SnapManager Suite and supports multiple protocols, enhancing its flexibility. Its strengths lie in superior data replication and space efficiency via deduplication and compression, tailored for hybrid cloud setups.

Room for Improvement: HPE 3PAR StoreServ users suggest improvements in storage migration, deduplication on FC disks, and GUI intuitiveness. They also seek better cloud compatibility. NetApp FAS Series users desire better integration with all-flash and converged infrastructures, smoother upgrades, more competitive pricing, cluster-mode ubiquity, and improved monitoring tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both HPE 3PAR StoreServ and NetApp FAS Series are primarily deployed on-premises, with NetApp also offering hybrid cloud options. Customer service for both is highly rated, often above 8/10. HPE is commended for proactive support and technical help, while NetApp is praised for strong technical knowledge. Users noted that HPE could improve support responsiveness in certain regions, and NetApp could enhance integration tools.

Pricing and ROI: HPE 3PAR StoreServ's pricing is high but justified by its features and reliability, often delivering a significant ROI through reduced downtime and enhanced throughput. Users value bundled license options but criticize additional licensing costs. NetApp FAS Series is considered more expensive, but its performance and bundled offerings justify the cost over time. Users acknowledge its high initial pricing but note it offers competitive solutions, especially when all-flash upgrades are essential.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. NetApp FAS Series Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. NetApp FAS Series

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 849,686 peers since 2012

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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

Read full review

Muhammad Saqib

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.

Read full review

Paweł Jabłoński

IT Infrastructure Manager at Bricoman Wilanów

Used for VMs with replication a feature, but need upgraded SSDs

We use this solution. I configured and updated it. Of course, I was also a user of applications that store data on that storage. We already have an SSD solution. So, rather than planning to go with an SSD solution, we are focusing on expanding it. If a company wants to deploy something new, it should choose a product with SSD, and NVMe disks. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."

"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The technical support is very good."

"From my perspective, it's really easy for me to be able to get in and do any troubleshooting with it and it's very consistent."

"It is very stable. That is why we bought it."

"I am a system integrator, so we sell a lot of 3PAR storage to our customers. Our business has increased compared to previous days."

"I am impressed with the product's online upgrades."

"We went to an Active-Active data center, set it up to where both data centers are separate, but they act as one. We can have workloads at either side at any given time, and it is all based on the Peer Persistence architecture."

"If you can handle the IOPS, throughput is a natural byproduct. Usually, IOPS is where you are capped. HPE has done a great job in making sure that our IOP-intensive EMRs stay up and running. We have really good performance on them."

"I like that 3PAR can remake the disk online. That's one of the best features because when we first started, that was the best. The team provisioning feature was also a good one. Those features are the best for me, provisioning and online optimization, and the tier you can have for storage."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pros

"It offers data compression and people management."

"Most valuable features are its ease of use, robust Snapshot functionality, and that you can use it in two datacenters with SnapMirror-ing."

"I would definitely recommend NetApp FAS Series to other users because it's stable and really handy for IT personnel who manage it."

"The solution is stable."

"The support is very good."

"Saves space with deduplication"

"The biggest advantage that makes NetApp FAS Series better is that we can use RAID technology on the storage."

"This solution provides us with easy management and great vendor support."

More NetApp FAS Series pros

Cons

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

"We need better data deduplication."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"We need longer names for our volumes. Now it's only 28 characters. It should be 64, or at least more than 32 characters."

"This solution only provides active-passive replication, as opposed to active-active."

"It needs the addition of InfoSight, which is the most critical, along with predictive analytics and AI."

"It needs better dedupe. It is hard for all the older generation arrays to put up dedupe because they tend to do the other stuff so much better. They have to keep the stability before any other new feature."

"3PAR needs to keep on increasing its capacity."

"We have issues with scalability because 3PAR has limited storage capacity, so we have to invest more after a while."

"3PAR has StoreOnce and replication. I would like it if they worked together. Or, if I had Nimble and put that either in DR or a primary cohesive management, but still use the cool features of 3PAR, that would be awesome."

"We are still waiting for the compression feature to be deployed."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ cons

"The WAFL is slow."

"Installation of the additional switches and ETP could be improved."

"There is room for improvement in deployment and configuration processes."

"It's not a cheap system. It is very expensive. The pricing has been ridiculous every time that we had to renew the support."

"When getting new hardware, always tell the account manager that you are also considering other brands. They will be forced to adjust the price lower."

"I would like to see less latency and higher IOPS."

"Dedicated storage efficiency accelerators could improve the overall performance of the system."

"The user interface could be improved."

More NetApp FAS Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

"The product is expensive."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"I would like it to be cheaper."

"The price of the solution could be reduced for the license and for support."

"The price of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is reasonable, but buying upgrade licenses are priced very high. There are additional fees."

"We purchased the solution as CapEx and we only pay support now. I find the pricing fantastic."

"Cost-wise, it is a little bit on the higher side, but it is an awesome product."

"It is lower in price as compared to other vendors, such as Dell. As compared to Huawei, all storage solutions are expensive, including this one."

"Making the decisions to buy it can be complex."

"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."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pricing and cost advice

"If we want a ransomware solution with the product or other extended features, we need to pay an extra cost."

"The licensing cost is on yearly basis."

"The NetApp FAS series price is very competitive compared to other solutions on the market it is a good choice."

"The price it not low, but comparing features to other vendors, the price can be balanced."

"The process for going to cluster mode is expensive."

"The tool is expensive."

"In general, I find NetApp to be very expensive. That's the main issue I have with them. So it's a drawback in terms of pricing."

"Most storage vendors also have software, or licensing bundles, which may offer the required licenses considerably cheaper, but do also maybe offer licenses, which are not needed."

More NetApp FAS Series pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which NAS solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user182013

Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at Rubrik

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Educational Organization

85%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

55%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

See all answers

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 perspectiv...

See all answers

What do you like most about HPE 3PAR StoreServ?

The compression features are good.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?

Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp FAS Series?

Flexibility in data replication.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?

The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable be...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 30% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 22% of the time

HPE Primera vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 21% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 7% of the time

HPE MSA vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 5% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 2% of the time

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ Competitors

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 22% of the time

HPE MSA vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 8% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 6% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 6% of the time

More NetApp FAS Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

April 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

April 2025

Download HPE 3PAR StoreServ product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp FAS Series

April 2025

Download NetApp FAS Series product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage

No data available

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is an AI-driven storage solution that prevents issues before they occur by learning and adjusting in real time. The solution offers a tier-1 all-flash foundation for mission-critical workloads. HPE 3PAR StoreServ was designed with more than 3M IOPS and consistent sub-ms latency. It aims to transform midrange and enterprise deployments with solutions that scale from a few TBs to more than 20PBs. In addition, the solution is built to modernize data centers and is made to handle unpredictable workloads effortlessly. By implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you gain automated and rapid provisioning, hardware-accelerated deduplication and compression, and a multi-tenant design.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Features

HPE 3PAR StoreServ has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Flexibility: With HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you can easily deploy highly configurable, scale-out storage for multi-tenant workloads.

Always-on availability for your data: HPE 3PAR StoreServ includes an always-on resilient storage infrastructure for your hypervisors and applications. In addition, with Peer Persistence, your virtual machines (VMs), hosts, and data can move freely across data centers rather than being constrained by their physical boundaries.

Fast, scalable performance: HPE 3PAR StoreServ enables you to accelerate consistent mixed-workload performance and also provides necessary QoS levels that are optimized for your highest priority applications.

Performance insights: HPE 3PAR StoreServ helps you gain performance insights in real time, and anticipate as well as prevent issues across the infrastructure stack by utilizing cross-stack analytics.

Flash optimized data protection: With tier-1 data services, multi-tenant security, and copy data management, you can avoid downtime.

Seamless data mobility: HPE 3PAR StoreServ makes it possible for you to not only experience converged data protection, but also experience seamless data mobility services, at flash speed, from the edge to the cloud.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Easy to manage. The web interface to manage the units is a great asset and one that makes managing storage easy.

User-friendly GUI

Exceptionally fast and well-managed replication
Low latency

Hybrid storage gives you the ability to assign different roles to different types of storage arrays inside one enclosure

Both file-level and block-level replication

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the HPE 3PAR StoreServ solution.

A SAN Consultant at a tech services company says, “One of the features that I like the most is the data replication element. The reason I like it is due to the fact that it's pretty clean on replicating data over to a second site. The product stands on its own in heavy enterprise environments. It's easy to make changes without affecting the environment. The solution is very easy to use. The product is very robust and offers very good performance.”

A Storage Manager at a financial services firm mentions, "There are a lot of screens for easy management where you can change some settings. But after a few years, the important settings were better after an upgrade, and all the vendors have other ways to upgrade their systems."

A Senior IT Infrastructure & Data Center Operation Engineer at Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) comments, “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.”

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

NetApp FAS series is an enterprise-level storage system that provides a wide variety of data management services, including data protection, block and file storage, and data management.

NetApp FAS is designed to be highly scalable, allowing your organization to grow storage capacity on demand. NetApp FAS also supports multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel, as well as various storage architectures, including SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network-Attached Storage).

The FAS series has multiple data protection and data management features, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication, to help secure your data and manage it more efficiently. The system integrates with other NetApp products and solutions, to create a unified data management platform. The system can be deployed on-premise, on multi-cloud environments, or hybrid.

NetApp FAS Series Benefits and Features

NetApp FAS series provides its users with several key benefits and features, including:

Scalability: NetApp FAS series is easy to scale, allowing organizations to rapidly grow their storage capacity according to demand.

Security: Protect and manage your data with various data protection and data management tools, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication.

Seamless integration: Integrate with other NetApp products and solutions to ensure a unified data management platform across on-premise, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.

Reduced costs: Consolidation of multiple storage boxes greatly reduces the data center footprint. From a management point of view, with NetApp FAS you manage a single storage box instead of multiple storage boxes.
Compatibility: Forward and backward compatibility ensures that you don’t have to trade in existing controllers. New controllers can always integrate with previously released controllers.

Multi-protocol support: Support for multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel.

High performance and availability: The solution has high input and output per second performance and ensures that critical data remains accessible in the event of a hardware failure.
Intuitive interface: The FAS series has a user-friendly interface and management dashboard, making it easy to manage your storage systems. With unified management, you can quickly run a single protocol on your entire system
Data cloning and replication: Easily clone databases of any size. Clones occupy a very, very small footprint on the storage until they are severed from the main database. Replications carried out by the system are fast and require very little bandwidth.

Reviews from Real Users

NetApp FAS Series stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its speed, reliability, and a wide variety of features.

Adriano S., IT project and infrastructure service manager, writes, “The replication feature is noteworthy because it's faster than most and it uses little bandwidth. Then there's the friendly interface that the equipment offers. With this interface, it is very easy to manage.”

Temitope O., a NetApp product manager at Hiperdist Ltd, says, “I like the unified management feature because sometimes you end up running a single protocol on the entire system. You rather have a system for a particular protocol and another system for other protocols, especially in a big environment like mine.”

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC

Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. NetApp FAS Series

April 2025

Free Report: HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. NetApp FAS Series

Find out what your peers are saying about HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. NetApp FAS Series report.

See our list of best NAS vendors, best Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) vendors, and best All-Flash Storage vendors.

We monitor all NAS reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.