HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

We use 3PAR as a shared platform for services, applications, and databases.

For the past three years, all-flash has been the most innovative way of using storage, based on the 3PAR platform.

It is scalable.

I am hoping to see some snapshot functionalities: Oracle snapshots, snapshots for VMware, and hypervisor snapshots.

We have had some bad issues on stability. Also, the new feature sets, like deduplication and compression, are complex to work with. I hope when I view the roadmap that they will be less complex.

We have a bad track record on the 3PAR system. We also have some Virtual Fibre Channel (VFC) storage platforms. However, we had a bad start on 3PAR. It is going better now.

We are managing more than 50 3PAR arrays worldwide. In our test centers, we are managing 15 HP all-flash arrays. The use of it is to be able to scale the platform. This is the most flexible way and one of the requirements for use in our environment.

Our administrator uses the support every day. So far, I hear that it is working okay. The Call-Hall function is what we are putting our value on. This is also the primary reason for using their support.

We were using EMC VMAX, EMC VNX, and NetApp. We switched due to price.

HPE has always done the initial hardware setup of the solution. It is straightforward, because we have good local engineers.

The performance compared to other products. Over time having the product and using it for six years, the performance has been a tremendous and bought about positive things.

We always channel all our vendors whether it is HPE or some others. Price is one of the most important features, but functionalities, availability, and the scalability of the systems is also very important.

Do some benchmarks on it and compare the requirements for whoever will be installing this product.

Our primary use case is SAN for VMware hosts for hosted VMs for a K-12 education environment. Also, some space that we provisioned for security camera storage and backup targets.

We upgraded from HPE EVA and it was much easier to manage and provision LUNs, when necessary. Our EVA was maxed and was end of life. 

The 3PAR tool is cheaper to maintain with more storage available. 

The optimization features move chunklets or hot spots to faster drives. This way data which was getting hit most frequently was always on drives that could best handle the data, whether it was SQL data on SSD or rarely accessed file shares on the 7200 RPM drives.

The management interface is not intuitive. It is much better than EVA, but took some time to learn.

It's our primary storage and we are using it within two of our datacenters with replication between them. Actually, that part is currently being implemented.

Overall, performance is great. Personally, I'm fully satisfied, even when we had some problems, failed disks or some bug in a software version, HPE would always be fully proactive. They would actually tell us of the problem, even before we were aware of it.

For me, personally, I think the most important value is really the way HPE is treating us as a customer.

I would say that now that we even have flash storage on the 8200 models, it would be the deduplication. We were hoping to use the automated tiering much more, but it's not a good fit for us. Although the technology works great, due to our workload, it's really not an option for us. So, I would definitely say the deduplication on flash drives.

Downtime, never. I have heard of other customers having some serious issues. I personally am not the type of person that would say, "they are now the bad guys," because it can happen. It's technology. 

Overall, in my experience, maybe one of the worst was when we suddenly got a lot of different alerts. It caused some stress within our team, but later on it proved to be a bug in the firmware version. I think in two-weeks' time we received an update that resolved the issue. So, I really think it's stable. It's a good choice for the price.

I can say it is scalable because initially, when we bought our first 3PAR, we extended it up to its maximum over the years. That is the part, maybe, where I see room for improving for HPE. Extending is not a problem, scalability is okay. But once you buy additional box of disks, you have to wait for HPE to contact you with their plan for implementation, for connecting, and it can take several weeks. So, you have the box and you have to wait for several weeks to actually implement it.

In terms of reaching the right person, actually, the way it goes is that they call us.

Of course they contact us via the partner, but they contact us, and the response is great. Everything is within SLA.

We had different storage. For instance, we used IBM storage. When the time for replacement came due to age of the old storage, we actually performed a tender. So, we didn't start with, "Okay. We are buying 3PAR." But, through the entire tendering process, we reached the place where it proved to be a good decision to buy HPE 3PAR.

I think storage implementation is never so straightforward, but I would say it's among the simplest to implement.

IBM. We went with HPE because the decision was, in the end, based on price. 

We had a list of required specifications, invited several vendors, they offered what they could. But in the end, when you get all of this matched, then the price decides.

For me, when we last did a purchase, last year or so, at that time flash drives and the deduplication were really important. Actually all of the vendors have it, offer it, but then we had some discussions looking at overall performance, resistance to disk failures and the like. I would say that HPE is the leader here.

In terms of the most important criteria when selecting a vendor - I'm saying with a small disclaimer, I'm saying this personally, so it's not the company - for me, the most important is always vendor support. We have, of course, contracts with partners that implemented the solutions, but I think that vendor support is mandatory in the way they are supporting you through the lifecycle of the product. It can overcome any problem the technology may deal with.

I give it an eight out of 10 overall. Whenever I rate something, I'm immediately going subtract one because I'm really reluctant to give a maximum grade, so say, "Okay, now it's nine." Well, there is room for improvement, and the way that the implementation of extensions goes is one of the examples. But, overall, I would say we are fully satisfied.

I actually do recommend HPE 3PAR because, for me, it proved to make my life easier.

We use the 3PAR as a centralized storage system where all of our data for production, mission critical data, are consolidated on that storage.

Previously, we were using EVA from HPE. When we moved to 3PAR, we noticed a reduction in footprint, reduced by more than 30%. We use the Adaptive Optimization giving us a reduction in cost and with better performance. So, we are achieving the goal of performance with less cost.

It increases our availability and service provision. We provide service to many customers at the same time. Sharing of the resources is a good target we have achieved using 3PAR.

With the thin provisioning we have been able to satisfy a lot of the requests which before we could not. Our customers are requesting more space just to make sure they have it. So, with the thin provisioning, we gave them what they need, but we maintain some spare for the others.

We have used the Remote Copy from datacenter to datacenter, as well. It is efficient, and working as expected.

I would like to see more virtualization: storage virtualization, data virtualization would be very nice.

Also, the features that we are seeing in Simplivity, if integrated with the 3PAR, would be much better.

It is stable, above average. There were some obstacles, but support managed, in the end, to fix it. It wasn't the product itself, it was a configuration issue.

It is easy and efficient. It should meet our future needs when we need to scale.

I've used technical support, and the architecture support was efficient for us as well.

The importance of having thin provisioning was a key factor. And when we found out that 3PAR had been acquired by HPE, since we have good relations with HPE, it was a very efficient and easy decision to take. We have good support, and the functions that we are looking for come in one product.

It was straightforward, comparatively easier than EVA. We had an HPE support person helping us throughout.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor, or what we appreciate most about a vendor, are

• support
• easy to reach
• trust.

If you want a cost-effective solution, go for 3PAR. We did a PoC and found it effective.

Right now, we are finishing the proof of concept stage. We're using it as a data store for a virtual infrastructure for telephoning applications.

Thus far, it's met all of our expectations and has actually has exceeded them a bit. Once we got it up and running, it seems like it runs pretty rock-solid. There have been a couple hiccups here or there related to how some of the fault tolerance features work. But overall, it's performed very well.

The hope is right now it's going to empower us to lower mean time to resolutions. Since it's being used to support a virtual infrastructure, that gives us access to all of the benefits of a virtual infrastructure. So, instead of spending hours trying to rebuild or to fix a broken server, we can instead wipe it out and throw up a new one and we're up and running again.

I like the speed capabilities that it provides. The deduplication features definitely have some huge potential. The latest firmware, where they've enabled compression for workloads that aren't very good for deduplication, I can definitely see huge potential there. It's just going to be a matter of how much time we have in the lab to test all of them.

Automated reporting, real-time reporting would be excellent. Right now, most of the reports are ad hoc, so I have to say, "I want this report." I believe you can schedule them and have them go out to an email address, but it would be nice to have an actual dashboard where I can see in real time, "Ok, this is what everything looks like." It may be there and we haven't seen it yet. It hasn't been the primary focus. We're still in the process of engineering a solution.

The "hiccups" I mentioned above did not cause downtime in any environment of consequence. It went down when we were trying to break things. When we tried to break it, it broke. But thus far, otherwise, it's been pretty darn solid.

I can't really comment too much on the scalability. Most of what we're using right now is still a relatively small deployment. I don't see anything that would cause a problem with scaling outwards, and the system is made to scale. We're probably going to be doing our first augment next year, but we haven't really focused on it yet.

We've been working directly with our product management group to work through any issues that we've encountered. There has been some stuff, but it's mostly related to it being a proof of concept, or the gear being proof of concept.

For the most part, whomever we've been dealing with, they've been knowledgeable and helpful. 

There were one or two small issues where it would have been more helpful to talk directly to a subject matter expert. We're an engineering organization, so sometimes it's very difficult and we're asking for a very specific thing, and sometimes not talking to a subject matter expert right away can be frustrating, it feels like you're getting deflected a little bit.

But as of today, most of those issues have gone away, and we've gotten answers to all the questions we've had, eventually, so overall it's been a very good experience.

We worked hand in hand with our product management team to try and determine what the best fit was. In the past, we worked with HPE MSAs and HPE P2000s.

This was a logical step forward without going into any really crazy high-ends like Hitachi or EMC type of SAN which has all of its own problems that you get when you go in that direction.

The initial setup, when we first got the gear, was actually done in coordination with HPE. They had installers on site. We didn't have that much to do. The next parts of the setup went very smoothly, integrating with Synergy.

We didn't so much evaluate other vendors. For different types of workloads we're looking at some open source solutions like Gluster, Ceph. There are a couple of other options we've looked at.

Our most important criterion when selecting a vendor is support. We're in the telephone sector, or carrier sector. If we have an outage it's going to impact millions of people. So sitting on hold for 15 minutes isn't acceptable, especially when it could mean 911 calls aren't being made. That's really key, we need to be able to get to someone who knows what they're talking about immediately. So far, we haven't had that huge of an issue with HPE hardware.

I give it an eight out of 10. Still extremely good. Way better than most. A couple rough edges that could be buffed out. We're about 90% of the way to where we want the solution to be. When we're there 100%, and we have it working exactly how we want it to, I think my score would be a little bit higher. 

I would tell a colleague who is looking at similar solutions that this is a worthwhile investment to look at, so long as you have the ability to test it appropriately and make sure that it works for your workload. Read through all the best practices, make sure that it will work for you before you try and do it, so you can actually give it a fair shot. But overall, give it a shot. I would recommend a proof of concept.

The primary uses are for the server environment and for the file share system. This how we store our files. This is what we mostly use the system for.

Performance is amazing. The downtime is almost none. It is easy to manage, even for their new software updates, the integration with the server, and with all the HPE environment.

It provides very fast deployment. The performance for our most critical applications is very quick. Even the support is 24/7.

• Security for encryption
• Performance
• The support, because we have the online support directly with HPE. Any error or any incidents, they are directly involved and solve it. It makes our life much easier, even as IT. 

HPE has a product that I am very interested in, but it lacks of integration with 3PAR - HPE SimpliVity. If it could be integrate with 3PAR, it would be amazing. This is what I am looking for going forward.

We have not had any downtime in two and a half years.

It is scalable. The model we have, we scaled it last year. We bought another rack mount, and we extended it to 12TB. It is easy to scale, easy to manage, and easy to configure. 

Thanks to HPE remote IT assistance, they can do the updates with the configuration in best-case scenario.

Even for a future of big environment, if we wanted to go bigger, we can migrate easily to other bigger projects or bigger versions.

The support is easy. It is either by phone or by email. Mostly by email. They are supportive and they answer any question. It is perfect.

Yes, HPE EVA, the older one. It is at end of life. They are no longer updating it or supporting it, so we needed to switch.

The initial setup was straightforward.

HPE helped us with the configuration, so it took us approximately one week to set up. 

We thought about EMC. But as I mentioned, in terms of integration and compatibility, 3PAR was better because we have EVA. To migrate from EVA to 3PAR with 3PAR is zero downtime migration, and with EMC, it was little bit complex. That is why, we did not want to risk it.

If he has HPE servers, I would totally tell him go with HPE 3PAR. If he has another company's servers, I am not 100% sure about the compatibility with other products, but for management and for configuration, I would recommend 3PAR.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

1. The integration with systems that we are going to use. For example, our server environment is HPE. The first that we think about is something compatible with this and easy to manage. That is why we choose HPE. 
2. The performance and even their views. When you check those consultations, reports, HPE is ahead in leadership, in terms of storage.

Our use case is Oracle, VMware, and Citrix. Performance is good, but our main scope is to have high availability.

We have 24 hour production, so it is working.

High availability features are the most important for us.

Maybe someone can add the suite of features into the Synergy enclosures. That would be a great feature for us.

I would like them to improve it so I can do firmware upgrades without downtime.

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

Sometimes when we do firmware upgrades, then we must have downtime, but this is plant maintenance.

Scalability is very good. We now use only 50% of controllers, so we can scale up from 50% to 100%, when we need it. We also have additional space in the enclosures for additional disks, so we can scale up without any downtime. 

We have automatic technical support.

We have called technical support. They are helpful and do not give you the runaround.

We have compared a lot of vendors and this was the best solution for us. We were running it when it was originally 3PAR and was not merged with HPE. 

We are very happy with the solution.

I would recommend this solution.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Support is very important for us and the reaction time when we have a problem.

3PAR 8200 is performing good with our environment. I have a lot of applications that need higher IOPS, and 3PAR achieves this operation normally without any issues for the management. 

It is working well. IT achieves our targets. We have been running faster and more efficiently since 3PAR was installed.

It has a friendly interface using the console. I have been working with it for one year and four months, and I have not found any issues. 

I benefit from the HPE Call Home feature. It tells me about any issue once I have it.

Some management functions through a web interface.

It is very stable. We have not experienced any stability issues with the 3PAR Storage. We have other vendors' storage solutions (three of them) and we have experienced issues with their storage solutions.

It is scalable, but I do not need to scale it for the future.

I have used the technical support for Call Home, when there is an issue in network, not in 3PAR. It is in network.

The technical support is knowledgeable and I have never had an issue with them.

I would recommend this solution.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

1. Support
2. Widely used in the market.