HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs Pure Storage FlashArray comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and Pure Storage FlashArray based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. Pure Storage FlashArray Report (Updated: May 2023).
710,326 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone.""FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle.""The solution is very straightforward to set up.""The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use.""Technical support has been helpful and responsive.""The solution is scalable.""It has good, reliable, fast storage."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Pros →

"This is a stable solution.""The solution is stable.""The most valuable feature of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is its storage capabilities.""We deployed 3PAR in the national and international markets. It's not bad, the solution.""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.""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.""The solution is quite stable and scalable.""HPE 3PAR StoreServ has been stable."

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"NVMe data storage platform that's easy to set up and easy to use. It's stable, with a lower response time, and quick technical support.""The most valuable feature is replication.""The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides.""It worked flawlessly.""The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are management and administration user-friendliness, provisioning, and performance.""I like FlashArray's ActiveCluster as well as its snapshot and cloning capabilities.""The solution is very reliable.""Provides fast access and is user-friendly."

More Pure Storage FlashArray Pros →

Cons
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me.""We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly.""They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage.""Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient.""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.""We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI.""It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Cons →

"The performance of the solution is not good anymore and the software is different from all the other types and is not compatible. There are more negative things at this moment than positive. This is why we are removing them all from our organization this year.""HPE 3PAR StoreServ should increase the storage capacity.""HPE could improve by making an old flash system in order to compete with the current market. For the solution to be more competitive in the mid-range market they could increase the performance.""They should add AI-enabled dashboards to the solution.""The configuration and flexibility should improve.""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.""Here in Algeria, we are facing a lot of trouble finding partners and getting support from HPE. There should be better support here in our country.""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."

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"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve some aspects. There are certain features that are good and there are some features that I see some issues with at the technical level. Those issues are related to replication. They need to resolve those issues, which I have already highlighted to the Pure team. Additionally, there are some issues in the active cluster that could improve.""The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in.""This product has only two active controllers, whereas other solutions can have more. This is something that needs to improve.""From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable.""The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release.""We would like to be able to connect to data tape for backup, specifically to the LTO backups.""The price could be better.""Pure Storage FlashArray could improve in the area of cryptographic information in the consoles. The user-friendliness could improve. The Pure Storage FlashArray team should come and log into the system with their maintenance credentials and then pull out the information as evidence of cryptography."

More Pure Storage FlashArray Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "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 support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
  • More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The price of the solution could be reduced for the license and for support."
  • "If HPE reduced the price of 3PAR StoreServ they would be more attractive to mid-range companies."
  • "We purchased the total package for approximately $60,000."
  • "The licensing cost for HPE 3PAR StoreServ is expensive."
  • "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."
  • "The price of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is reasonable, but buying upgrade licenses are priced very high. There are additional fees."
  • "It is reasonable. As compared to other solutions, it doesn't seem to be much different."
  • "This product is quite expensive and in addition, we subscribe to 24/7 support with a four-hour response time."
  • More HPE 3PAR StoreServ Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "My organization has a yearly license, but I believe that Pure Storage FlashArray has capacity-based licenses as well. I'm definitely happy with the pricing."
  • "There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
  • "Pure is typically more expensive than everyone else. You get what you pay for, but I have lost deals to similar solutions because of pricing. They include everything, and that's another positive about Pure Storage. They aren't trying to nickel and dime their customers for different features. It is all included in one price. The license is by capacity, and the price depends on the capacity and the discount we're getting from the vendor. You get the SKU of the physical appliance, support, and maintenance, and that's it. You're licensed for whatever feature they offer. It is all rolled up into the price of the appliance."
  • "The pricing is reasonable."
  • "When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
  • "We consume it as a service, and that's actually something we really like, or at least I really like from the technical perspective. That's because it means there is no hassle when we need to upgrade arrays to add capacity. We just interact directly with technical counterparts, and we say, "Hey, we're filling up," and they say, "All right, here's another data pack." They ship it in, and we install it. So, the as-a-service model has worked very well. Given the outstanding data reduction rates, it has improved our profitability because we're selling allocated volumes as part of the cloud service or recovering those costs from our tenants. It is very efficient, but that has offset the premium price. It started out that way, but over time, as we've added capacity, the price per gig has gone down a lot because we have a lot of it."
  • "There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
  • "I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."
  • More Pure Storage FlashArray Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well… more »
    Top Answer:We don't have any issues with the pricing. It's not too expensive.
    Top Answer:Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers… more »
    Top Answer:HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspective… more »
    Top Answer:The tool is fast and easy to use. You can also configure it easily. The product also has good performance tuning.
    Top Answer:Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure… more »
    Top Answer:Data deduplication is one feature I found to be the most valuable in the tool...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a… more »
    Comparisons
    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
    Learn More
    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.

    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.”

    Pure Storage FlashArray is the world’s first enterprise-class storage array that runs exclusively on the nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) protocol for memory access and storage. It represents a totally state-of-the-art type of storage technology. It offers users shared accelerated storage that delivers cutting-edge features in the realms of performance, simplicity, and consolidation. Pure Storage is fresh and modern today and will be for the next decade. Without forklift upgrades or planned downtime, Pure Storage takes the work out of storage ownership and delivers unprecedented customer satisfaction.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is built with simplicity and reliability in mind. The solution can be implemented and optimized in hours, as opposed to other similar solutions that can take days. It has no moving parts, which removes areas where it could potentially be vulnerable to suffering errors. It is highly stable and gives users the ability to manage system shutdowns in a way that  prevents data loss.

    Benefits of Pure Storage FlashArray

    Some of the benefits of using Pure Storage FlashArray include:

    • A much higher level of speed than similar pieces of technology. Pure Storage FlashArray maximizes the speed at which data can be transferred while at the same time minimizing system latencies that might slow the transfer down. Additionally, it offers users quick memory read and data access speeds.

    • A higher bang for your buck in terms of the storage capabilities you get for the money you pay. They are smaller in size than more standard storage technologies, but they offer flash memory, which enables users to store larger amounts of data than the current standard.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Pure Storage FlashArray is a highly effective piece of storage technology which stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its overall robustness and the value that it offers by way of its reliability and ease of use. It provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with this solution. Pure Storage FlashArray’s reliability and ease of use make it a highly valuable solution. 

    PeerSpot user Prabakaran K., a technical consultant at Injazat Data Systems, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."

    PeerSpot user Jason D., a cloud solutions architect at a tech services company, notes three features that make this solution valuable when he writes, "We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."

    Offer
    Learn more about Pure FlashArray X NVMe
    Learn more about HPE 3PAR StoreServ
    Learn more about Pure Storage FlashArray
    Sample Customers
    Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
    Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC
    Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company25%
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Government7%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Healthcare Company9%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Energy/Utilities Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization61%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Government4%
    Comms Service Provider3%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization22%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise33%
    Large Enterprise33%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise61%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business10%
    Midsize Enterprise68%
    Large Enterprise23%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise31%
    Large Enterprise50%
    Buyer's Guide
    HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. Pure Storage FlashArray
    May 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. Pure Storage FlashArray and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
    710,326 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    HPE 3PAR StoreServ is ranked 8th in All-Flash Storage with 27 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 44 reviews. HPE 3PAR StoreServ is rated 8.4, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of HPE 3PAR StoreServ writes "Good mid-range storage and delivered to clients pre-setup but is rather expensive". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Provides protection against ransomware threats with immutable snapshots, and it is well known for its scalability, ease of use, and non-disruptive upgrades". HPE 3PAR StoreServ is most compared with HPE Primera, Dell Unity XT, HPE Nimble Storage, NetApp AFF and HPE StorageWorks MSA, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, VMware vSAN, HPE Nimble Storage and Huawei OceanStor Dorado. See our HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. Pure Storage FlashArray report.

    See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.

    We monitor all All-Flash Storage 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.