HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

We use HPE 3PAR StoreServ for data storage. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) had something in the contract because if you can compress data very well, you don't need that much capacity in your systems. If it was not possible to compress to a certain degree, they put some extra capacity in the systems. We bought that borrowed capacity but they separated the one-piece storage boxes added to our environment to get along with that bigger growth in capacity. Despite that, it is a wonderful system with an excellent graphical user interface. Still, new functions are being rolled out.

I've seen a lot of data storage systems. It's the only storage system you can watch over the application time and it keeps measuring it. We have some thresholds on our end on it, a very good graphical user interface and reporting. 

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.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ has limited flexibility in building replication solutions. There are limitations to the number of IOPS the system can do. It's not bad as it is doing its job. However, for the application, if you need a toolbox, you can build everything concerning periodic replication modes of synchronous or asynchronous three-site, four-site, with supported cascading which requires you to buy an IBM product. 

It also takes a few hours to one day to upgrade the system and sometimes; it takes more time because, in some HPE 3PAR StoreServ 20000 Storage, you have an eight-node system. If you do an upgrade, you do it node by node and every node might take more than an hour.

I have been using HPE 3PAR StoreServ for the past seven years.

Last year after summer, HPE had to locate replication groups getting stopped and took a lot of time to find out what's happening, and yet we still don't know what's happening over there. It feels like the message is quite clear after replicating from A to B, and it states that B is not responding very well.

There is a timeout, and it stops the replication group because there is no stability or consistency and is not good at that moment. So that might be negative, but when was the last time? I think in November of last year.

At one point, some remote copy groups stopped working, and we used a disaster recovery plan because, in production, we replicate everything from A to B and then split up into some remote copy groups, gathering together some data source and clusters. If one of those remote copy groups stops, you don't have DFP anymore and you have to restart them. And last year after starting one of those replication groups; we had some performance issues because they're trying to get in sync as soon as possible using all the resources, so we had to plan very well outside the business hours.

We have proactive datacenter care; I call it a storage advocate, and we can send every question to them and we get quick answers. They also help to find out if new releases are available and other services. For now, they have more insights on that. They have better sources sometimes, and I have better sources than them sometimes, but they do a great job and they also assisted us concerning the compression issue we had at the beginning.

It is quite difficult to decide on the cost. At one point, I was the project lead to cover with some people, but the price was important and we had its compression calculated. At that moment, it was fair because that was one of the things moving their product due to the cost of HPE 3PAR StoreServ as they were competing with Hitachi and IBM A9000, which I'm not sure if is still available. 

We have done total cost of ownership calculations over the past five years, and we also ask for some cost prices for the sixth and seventh year so that we can get some insights into what happens after those five years. We have some systems that are five years old and we keep them because it's flash data storage. It's still almost a three terabyte solid-state drive, and the support cost is not that high. We'll have a look after that. I see other things happening on the Hitachi boxes with all those license defeats. This is also positive for HPE 3PAR StoreServ, everything is on the license. When we bought the systems, it was the case and then I've been reading something about it. You can buy the rest of the licenses. If you buy a system, that will not be replicated to another system, then you get a license without replication software.

The job of direct channel support to HPE 3PAR StoreServ is not an end of life or end of support but HPE Primera has now replaced it and I hope they get all the functionality in there like the HPE 3PAR. I remember it seems like HPE 3PAR and HPE Primera have support for volume plugins and that will be a big game if they can implement volumes on their system because that kind of release is much better than the datastore level.

We primarily use the solution for storage.

We are satisfied with the solution. We deployed 3PAR in the national and international markets. It's not bad, the solution.   

It's not a very good solution. We found EMC and other storage solutions can help the client a bit more in terms of reaching their target, having the flexibility they need, and offering better backups and integration.

It's not high-end storage. It's not as strong as it needs to be. You need to have two nodes, or two controls to be able to effectively protect from data loss.

It's not really a complete solution. It has some limitations with software integration as well as backup and restore integration. It does not protect the data stored on 3PAR. Some products should be protected with another brand if there's a level of security required. 

With 3PAR, there is remote copy software which isn't very good. It should be improved also. Many times we have had data issues and we have had to re-initiate the application and reconfigure. 

HPE is not present in Algeria. They manage support through the delivery partner that actually can provide some assistance. Right now, we have spare part problem. It's not present. We have to wait, maybe, a couple of weeks or more than one month to have a replacement get shipped in and we're usually reaching out about that. It is a big issue for the customer if we lose one server, or the blade is down. It means the service can be down for one month, and it's not a good idea to share this information with customers. 

Before 2015, HPE had some sort of setup with DHL or FedEx. It was very good. On top of that, they had an HPE engineer to manage the support. However, since then, they left. They closed the office and they manage everything now indirectly in the country, via other countries. If we try to measure the performance of HPE outside our country, it's very good, however, here, we have had a bad experience with them and so have our customers as well as local customers.

I've also dealt with Dell EMC. We have Huawei OceanStore Dorado, PowerMax, and PowerStore as well. We have all the kind of storage. I can confirm that 3PAR is not a high-end solution. It can be classified as the mid-range, not high-end. PowerStore is likely the best out of all of these. The controller is really high-end.

We don't really handle the setup. It's done at the factory and delivered. It comes with data sheets to help customers with a few things, however, for the most part, it is pre-setup to spec. Once it is delivered it can be configured as necessary.

The pricing is expensive. I'm not sure if it's the region that causes such high prices, however, when we are bidding, we rarely get very good discounts to work with. It's not competitive. 

We are a reseller. 

Whether or not this solution would work for a company is all about the situation. If HPE could improve the level of the support or if the company has a certain level of support available to them (instead of relying on HPE), they can likely manage. It's a good idea to secure some spare parts in advance while making a deal. However, relying on the HPE SLA with the worry of indirect logistics is going to be a problem for a lot of companies when it takes so long to get parts. I

Our company has a contract with the client - not HPE. Therefore, it looks bad on us when we can't deliver on the parts or service when the fault lies on the HPE end. 

Overall, I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. It's not bad, however, there are significant areas that need to be improved upon. 

It's very similar to most of the other arrays, which are available there. 

The auto-tiering is something that we like. The provisioning is quite good. 

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. That's the other important aspect of using 3PAR.

The initial setup is simple.

The solution should have a smaller footprint. It's large compared to, say, something like Pure Storage, which is a lot smaller. 

3PAR is not as fast as Pure Storage. That's something that 3PAR needs to look at.

They need to look at the frequent breakdowns. It's not as lag-free as some of the other HPE Arrays, the enterprise flash arrays. That's something that HPE needs to look at.

The pricing could be lowered. 

In the future, I'd like to see it being controlled more from the cloud itself.  

The solution lacks reliability. This aspect has gone down in the last few years.

I've been working with the solution for many years now. It's been five or more at this point.

Reliability is one area that needs improvement. I cannot afford to have a 4-node storage array suddenly having 2-nodes reboot for no reason. This has never happened on Pure or even on Dell EMC Storage Arrays. However, I've seen that happen on 3PAR on multiple accounts. That's something that HPE needs to work on. They need to work on their codes and make them more reliable. It was reliable to start with, however, somewhere down in the last three or four years, they just slipped.

Technical support has always been quite good. I have no complaints there. They're pretty good, very professional. I'm satisfied with the level of service.

I've been using it for so many years that, for me, the implementation process is quite easy.

The costs can be lowered. They're a little more expensive, especially on the support side of it. Even with us being that kind of partner, and getting discounted prices, it's still a little expensive.

We use it in our company as well as our customer's companies.

We've used all different versions of 3PAR from the smaller arrays to the newest one, which we have, even their 2400, 2800 versions as well.

StoreServ is good storage, which needs to get implemented alongside other products to allow it to be utilized in the way it's supposed to be - especially in a private cloud environment. Some of the other storage arrays, which came after StoreServ didn't really fully feature. For example, Nimble. We thought Nimble would do that, however, that's not the case. Still, StoreServ is quite well-rounded as storage, which we can still work with on multiple traditional environments plus with the new environments - with cloud and DevOps running the show. 

I'd rate the solution at a six out of ten.

I work with customers all over demark, which consists of small to large companies. I normally make dual data centers with one HPE 3PAR StoreServ on each side. Our customers are mainly running with failover/failback mission-critical systems.

There's a lot of good features. HPE 3PAR StoreServ is similar to Dell EMC. It is a high-speed system with automatic failover/failback, integrated with Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware.  These are the main reason for choosing HPE 3PAR StoreServ in Denmark. We have a very good consulting service together with the product. 

HPE 3PAR StoreServ could have better integration into the cloud and converged infrastructure.

I have been using HPE 3PAR StoreServ for approximately 13 years.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is a highly stable solution.

The solution is easy to scale. It is normally used for enterprise companies.

The support from HPE is good but slow. The speed of the resolution could be faster.

We use HP Enterprise, Dell EMC, Hitachi, Fujitsu, IBM, and Lenovo.

A lot of the solutions today are very similar. This was not the case five years ago. If some new functionality comes out with, for example, Dell, other vendors will have the same features in a short time.

The initial installation is complicated. The storage administrator needs to be trained or they need to have a contract with someone who can take control over the system. Mainly in Denmark, the customers prefer someone to take control of the system. There are companies that will take care of their systems.

We can do the implementation of the solution.

There is some maintenance that is required for HPE 3PAR StoreServ, such as upgrading firmware software, upgrading the system to a larger system, increasing the capacity, or increasing the performance of the system.

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

HPE have have made a new system to substitute with 3PAR. It is the HPE Primera solution. It is a product similar to 3PAR, but it's more converged together with the hybrid system. You can implement it on-premise of the cloud. It has cloud connect functionalities and the market is going that way. 

If you want a solution better than HPE 3PAR StoreServ you will be using Primera.

I would advise those wanting to implement this solution to use a partner which has high-scale competencies. They need to be technical experts, both in hardware and software. Customers cannot implement this solution themself. 

In the beginning, it was allowed for customers to do the installation, but after one or two years, HPE decided that it was not allowed. It is not allowed today. You need a certified person to do the installation and configuration.

I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ a nine out of ten.

We've only used this solution for two instances. Most of the time we are using HP MSA fiber channel storage, the 1060 or 2060. We primarily use the solution for virtualization. We're hosting virtual machines on the 3PAR storage.

We're hosting virtual infrastructure on the 3PAR storage and it's been very good for that.

The product is stable.

The product is quite expensive. The costs involved are high.

We would like the product to make it more of a straightforward procedure when we need to configure storage. There were quite a lot of options and parameters that we don't have knowledge of. We used some external company to make the configuration for us, for the 3PAR storage.

We've been using the solution for a few years at this point. 

The stability of the product is good. They offer good performance. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches. 

We haven't attempted to scale the solution yet. Therefore, I can't speak to how easy it would be to expand it. 

That said, from what I've seen, it does appear to be simple to scale. 

We have 100 users on the product right now.

At this point, we do not have plans to increase usage.

We've contacted technical support from HP for 3PAR in the past. We needed to upgrade the firmware of the storage. We needed some support from HP, which was excellent. We are satisfied so far. There have been no issues.

We did not previously use a different solution.

We're aware of a few different storage options. 3PAR, Nimble, and Premier Storage are pretty expensive. This brings the cost up too high for some projects.

I didn't handle the initial setup or the configuration. I can't speak to how the setup went, however, it was my understanding that it was a bit complex.

There was two or three technical personnel that were used to handle the initial setup. They were admins and engineers.

It is my understanding that we had an external company configure the storage. It is not so straightforward, as far as I remember.

It's a very expensive product. Companies need to be aware of that going in.

I cannot recommend 3PAR. Most of the cases can be covered with entry-level storage, which is the HP MSA. 3PAR is needed for some quite big platforms or environments. Most of the time, the entry-level MSA storage is more than enough.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is to store all share market data. It's a depository system and we store the share market data and transactions in the central repository. This solution is deployed on-premises. 

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 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. 

I have been using 3PAR for five years. 

This solution is stable and reliable. It has good performance and we have a team of three to monitor the 3PAR on a daily basis. The required technology is smarter, so in terms of on-site utilization, it's very good. 

This solution is scalable. If I need more storage, they can just plug in to add it. I haven't faced this issue yet, but it seems like an easy process. I believe 3PAR is most suitable for small or medium sized companies. 

HPE's technical support is very good, compared to other vendors. I appreciate their support. 

The initial setup process is simple and straightforward. The HPE team handled most of it, but we take care of the day-to-day monitoring. If I test an issue and communicate with their team, they provide online support. If we need physical hardware, they provide the physical hardware. 

The HPE partner team helped us with deployment. 

I'm not sure on the pricing of this product because a different team handled that. I'm on the engineering team, so I handle the maintenance and those sorts of operations. 

I rate 3PAR a nine out of ten. Maybe there are better storage options, but from my experience 3PAR's performance is better than the other storage solutions I have used. The market has other big storage options, but I don't have experience in those. As of now, we are satisfied with this solution and I would recommend it to others. 

The StorServ is the main storage for our infrastructure. Our ERP system runs on it, as well as 15 other servers including Active Directory, synchronization servers, and more.

The performance is very good. This is a full-flash storage device and it is very quick.

HPE monitors each storage device and if there are any problems, such as an issue with a hard drive, the technical support will quickly and proactively contact us to change the part.

The price of this solution should be lower.

We have been using our current HPE 3PAR for the past year and a half. For the previous six years, we had an older version of 3PAR storage.

3PAR is a stable product. We have used the current device and an older version for more than seven years and although we had accidents with nodes and hard drives, it is high-availability storage. We never had a blackout and we have never been offline.

With respect to the capacity, it is easy to add to. We just have to get more boxes with hard drives. We have quite a small environment so, in terms of scalability, it's okay for us. We have never needed to expand.

There are four of us who administer the 3PAR. I am an IT manager and I have three colleagues in my team.

The technical support is tremendous.

I have worked with other storage products from Dell, although that was more than ten years ago. The reason that we switched to HPE was the comparison between performance and price.

The 3PAR is high-level storage and at the time, it was cheaper than the competitors.

The implementation was done by our partner and it took less than a day to complete. It was deployed within approximately five hours.

The deployment was completed by a gold HPE partner. They delivered the storage devices in addition to the ESXi servers that we ordered.

Any maintenance that needs to be done, such as updating the firmware on the devices, is the responsibility of our external partner. We don't have experience in this field.

This product is quite expensive and in addition, we subscribe to 24/7 support with a four-hour response time.

HPE is a vendor that I recommend in general, and especially for storage solutions.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We have used HPE 3PAR Flash Storage in the past for all our IT data. For example, we have used it for claims, office management, business intelligence, business information. It can be used for a lot of purposes.

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.

I have been using HPE 3PAR Flash Storage for approximately 10 years.

The solution is stable.

HPE 3PAR Flash Storage was scalable in the past but in the current market, it is a four out of ten. You are not able to add more power to the solution, it is not stackable.

We have approximately 6,000 users using this solution.

The technical support is good.

I have used Nimble and Primera.

The installation is not that difficult nowadays. It takes approximately two days.

When we need to do the implementation HPE comes with us and does it together with our maintenance department and an external company.

We have three engineers that do the maintenance of the solution.

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.

I have evaluated NetApp.

HPE 3PAR Flash Storage is old and is obsolete and we are moving to newer versions of the system.

HPE has several storage options, such as Nimble. HPE has a lot of operating systems for their storage, and they all have a different approach. They were all from different companies which HPE bought, for example, Nimble and Primera.

I would not recommend this solution anymore. I would advise others to look for new types of storage solutions.

I rate HPE 3PAR Flash Storage a four out of ten.