HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

I primarily use the product for self-storage. 

The most valuable feature for me is the solution's availability.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ's pricing could be cheaper. 

I have been using HPE 3PAR StoreServ for about four years.

I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability an eight out of ten. It has ten users. 

I rate the tool's deployment a five out of ten. It was completed in a few days. You need one resource to handle the deployment. 

A reseller helped us with the deployment. 

We have saved time with the tool's use. 

I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten. It is expensive. 

I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ an eight out of ten. 

We use HPE 3PAR StoreServ for storage. We need stable storage solutions for the virtual machines in our organization.

The solution is quite stable and scalable.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ should increase the storage capacity. Also, the setup is complicated.

I have been using the solution for many years.

The solution is quite stable. I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.

The solution is scalable. We plan to increase the number of users in the organization. I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

The support is quite good.

The solution is not easy to set up. It takes many weeks to set up. We need to enter some parameters before we set up the solution. Also, before we put the solution into production, it needs to be tested for almost two months.

We deployed the solution with our technical team. We need four people to maintain the solution.

The solution is worth its money.

Our organization pays a yearly license fee for the solution. The licensing fee is not cheap.

Generally, other storage solutions like EMC are used more than HPE 3PAR StoreServ. However, HPE 3PAR is better when we consider the cost of the product, scalability, and stability. I would recommend the solution to others. I would rate the solution a nine on ten.

We are a telecom company. We are using the tool mainly for processing applications.

The virtualization environment is good. The compression features are good. The tool provides data-tiering features. It is a middle-level storage solution. It is good enough. We do not face any problems with it. The performance and reliability are okay.

If we have two different types of disks, only one data-tiering is possible. The product must accept any type of disk. The solution must be vertically and horizontally expandable. It is not possible currently.

I have been using the solution for the last ten years.

The solution is stable.

Scalability is possible with only the existing drives. The product does not accept the latest drives like the NVMe drives. We have 15 users.

The support is good.

Positive

The solution is easy to deploy. The deployment takes a reasonable amount of time. We need one architect to deploy the tool. It is easy for one person to maintain the tool.

The tool’s price is higher compared to other products. The solution is 20% more expensive than other storage.

We use Dell and HPE. I prefer Hitachi for scalability reasons. Hitachi accepts drives like HDD, NVMe, and SSD. Hitachi is the best tool.

We are partners. After we give the inputs to evaluate and ask the commercial to the presales team, they take a lot of time to respond. Overall, I rate the product an eight 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.

We use HPE 3PAR StoreServ for all the storage needs for the hospital I work at.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ has improved our organization from its ease of use and high availability.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is easy to use, fully featured, and has a great graphical user interface.

The configuration and flexibility should improve.

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

I have found the stability to be very high.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is scalable but it has limits.

We have approximately 5,000 users using this solution across all departments. The solution is being extensively used in our organization.

The vendor support is very helpful.

The configuration is difficult but we had help from HPE 3PAR StoreServ. The whole process of the implementation took approximately one week.

We used vendor support to help us with the implementation of HPE 3PAR StoreServ. The representative was excellent.

We have one administrator that does the maintenance and upgrades of the solution.

The licensing cost for HPE 3PAR StoreServ is expensive.

We have evaluated the IBM FlashSystem solution and we are switching everything over from HPE 3PAR StoreServ.

My advice to those wanting to implement this solution would be to find a good reseller who has expertise in HPE 3PAR StoreServ.

I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ an eight out of ten.

I use 3PAR as the standard storage. The main production is VMware, and it is connected to 3PAR across fabric switch. The fabric switch between them is MDS Switch and Notebook 8. We also have a Hyper-V environment, which is connected to the same storage. The main service is the exchange service. I have a public cloud and a private cloud. I use 3PAR as a private cloud.

In our organization, the storage is not detected from the first day, so I don't have the workload. The workload is run in my environment, and 3PAR is the best solution. If I have a workload from Thursday, I don't make the adaptive optimization on this because 3PAR is collecting all the storage and doing all tiering of the storage. If I have another disk from a new line, 3PAR makes it as tiering and adaptive. When a VM has more rights about the storage, it will make such VM of a higher tier. It can make it a C-tier. If the VM has a need for more IOPs, they need to use the scale command every time. This VM will move to another tier, and after the weekend, I will schedule adaptive optimization to check if this VM needs this tier or not. This way I can make all the storage tiered. If the workload is big and needs more IOPs, it moves the VMs from one tier to another tier. This is the main advantage. 

3PAR is different from other storage solutions because it uses a chunklet when we initiate the storage. Every disk is submitted as a 1 GB chunklet. This chunklet can be RAID 1, 4, 5, or 6. This fabulous feature is very useful for me because I can distribute the RAID for any volume. 

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. Other vendors take this volume as thick provisioning because of which the capacity is reached quickly. It doesn't happen in 3PAR because it detects zeros. It only writes the data, and it doesn't write zeros. There are two processors in 3PAR: the ASIC processor and the main processor. The ASIC processor detects zero writing and doesn't write it, which is a big feature in 3PAR.

File Persona can be better. I don't use File Persona because it has many problems with my environment. The antivirus that it has is not compatible with File Persona, and that's a big issue with File Persona.

3PAR is not as good as Dell when making a file in the storage. 3PAR for a block is very good, but when comparing row capacity, I get 14% capacity with 3PAR, but with Dell, I get 60% capacity.

I have been using this solution for three years.

It is very stable because the controller is active-active. It is more secure if you make the best design and make two fabric switches around that.

3PAR is easy to scale up and scale out. It can serve a production workload without any problem. To scale up, you can have another inclusion in 3PAR. To scale out, you can add another controller. You can also have more IOPs in your production. 

We have 5,000 users of this solution. The main workload is in 3PAR now. I will also implement 3PAR on another site.

Their live technical support is available 24 hours a day. When I open a ticket with them, the support calls me within 30 minutes and schedules a meeting to show the issue.

I have PowerMax from Dell. I also have Dorado from Huawei in my environment, which is all-flash.

It is straightforward. I power on 3PAR and take care of the cabling. 3PAR is managed by two components: a services processor and a server component. The server can be a virtual appliance or a physical appliance. 

For upgrading, I take different configurations from the services processor. I update a package on the servers, which makes it easy to upgrade in production. For initial configuration, I do an upgrade offline, and it is easy.

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.

If you are a new company and you need more capacity, availability, and scalability, you can choose 3PAR. Otherwise, you can choose another storage. When you put 3PAR, you must tell the customers about the usable capacity from the first day, not the row capacity.

I would recommend taking the official course from HP for 3PAR before performing any tasks. This is because 3PAR is not easy to manage in your IT environment. You must know everything about storage and how everything is written in the storage.

I would rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ an eight out of ten.

The tool is fast and easy to use. You can also configure it easily. The product also has good performance tuning. 

The tool needs improvement in the utilization report at the granular level. 

I have been working with the solution for one year. 

The product is stable. 

The tool is scalable. 

The customer support team is good. They give timely responses and if need be they also share screens and provide support.

The initial setup was very easy.

I would recommend this tool to other users, consumers, or customers.

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We're currently running two 3PAR 7200 storage units in high availability. We have three workload tiers. We have Nearline, FAST class, and SSD. Our primary ERP system is an Oracle JD Edwards running on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 that is all on SSD. Then, we have other workloads for our barcode. Our engineering solutions are running on FAST class, and then most of our traditional file and print, storage, and workloads are running on Nearline SATA. Also, have two 4200 LeftHand SANs in the environment. I put very low priority VMs on those two LeftHand SANs. They are minor application servers. They don't need a whole lot of performance. However, the LeftHand SANs are now seven years old. The 3PAR SANs are now five years old, and I have to replace everything in 2020, and I'm looking at HPE SimpliVity, Nimble, and potentially 3PAR as the storage architecture for that environment.

Our JD Edwards, which is our ERP system, that is critical. Also, our barcode scanning, because we do a lot of barcode scanning out in the shipping and manufacturing warehouse. Our accounting system is part of the JD Edwards too. All of that is on the SSD. We're currently evaluating whether we upgrade to JD Edwards 9.2 or if we deploy Microsoft Finance and Operations. If we go with Microsoft Finance and Operations, that'll be totally in the cloud, and I'll be able to carve a third of my storage requirements out because it will no longer be necessary to run an on-premise ERP solution.

My directive when I was hired in 2016 as a direct IT manager versus an outsourced IT manager, as I was when I started in 2014, is anything and everything I can take to the cloud goes to the cloud. If I do that, it reduces the need for all SSD on-premise, and that's actually what I'm trying to get to, because I'd rather utilize Microsoft Cloud, Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365. I want to utilize that cloud for my performance, whereas on-premise traditional file, print, and storage doesn't really need SSD.

In the deployment of virtual servers, I can have a new VM up and running in 15 minutes, run the patches, then done. I routinely fire up base images that I have for my servers: Server 2008 R2, 2012 R2, and 2016. I routinely fire those base images up and do all the updates, then prep them again for cloning. With 3PAR, we definitely have the performance to do that. Those images I do keep on SSD just to have that performance to deploy a new VM.

It has improved our throughput. We went from a 1G backbone on our LeftHand SAN, and also the IBM SAN was not redundant, but we put in a 10G backbone with 10G fiber which truly increased our performance. 

The high availability is awesome. 

The reliability: In five years, I have had one drive that has failed, which is not so much 3PAR as much as it is HPE. I have depended on HPE servers since it was Compaq servers. 

One of the things I like about the Microsoft operating systems are Microsoft's built-in backups. It's not elegant nor real pretty, but it just works for a single server or single VM. What I would really like to see from HPE is backup built-in, not snapshots nor replaying snapshots, but true block or file level backups integrated into an HPE platform program.

Today, I'm using StorageCraft, where I can have a VM recovered in 15 to 20 minutes. I run a continuous restore point on three of my primary domain controllers. I run a continuous restore point against my primary Microsoft SQL server. So, I always have that continuous, but it's taking up so much storage space that I keep running out and having to add. I need something better, as I've been doing this for a long time. Maybe having Arcserve Backup or Seagate Backup Exec more integrated into the hardware solution.

in the last five years, we've only had one drive failure. We have run out of space on our Nearline storage, because our Nearline storage was set up for the Remote Copy groups. I'm actually going to be working with an HPE storage architect next week to redistribute the ARC copy groups. Most of that is low tier that I'm not worried about for high availability, but for our SSD storage and FAST class storage, the high availability is there. I have a six node cluster that we are splitting to two sites on one campus. If I have any failure, everything fails over in a heartbeat, then nobody will hardly notice.

In the past, I've been comfortable running HPE servers for more than 10 years. However, I no longer find that to be cost-effective, especially as a customer, because running something that long obviously induces too much risk. Now, I'm on a three to five-year replacement cycle, and the current environment was installed five years ago. I have to get it replaced next year.

3PAR technical support has been outstanding. When I ran into some issues with my Nearline drives last year, they helped out with that. Every time that I have had to update the OS or firmware, I opened up a case with 3PAR support, and I get somebody right away. Then, we schedule time and are able to do live updates with no downtime. This is huge and critical for me.

I told the company that they needed to invest in 3PAR. They had one IBM DS 5600, a SAN that was huge, but was only eight terabytes, at the time. They were trying to go with the two LeftHand SANs to replace the IBM, but the LeftHand SANs IOPS could never succeed the IOPS from the IBM SAN. Then, the reseller that was helping them was let go and new management was brought in. That management decided to outsource IT to the company that I worked for. I was a huge HPE partner at the time.

3PAR has increased our performance over our old IBM SAN that was put in around 2009, prior to my time, which was 1G fiber and all SAS drives. The performance of the 3PAR, with its SSDs and controller nodes, was vastly superior to that older IBM. The HPE LeftHand SANs were all SAS and SATA, so the 3PAR SSD performance was just off the charts.

Anything new can be complex. There were some things in the initial deployment that I was not happy about. One of my directives was, "However, it's configured, ensure that it can never be overprovisioned." That one key thing was overlooked.

This is why I had to have a support call last year, because it actually became overprovisioned and I had to move some stuff around. We're still sort of in that with the Nearline storage, and that's why I'm having another architect work with me next week, so we can redo some things. I've had to move a lot of what was on the Nearline storage over to the LeftHand SANs. If I hadn't had those LeftHand SANs just sitting there with 20 terabytes, I would've been in serious trouble. That was my one point with the deployment team, everybody thinks, "If you do this, you do this, and do this, you'll never get overprovisioned," but I've been doing this long enough, and going back to Compaq StorageWorks, if you're not careful on how you have Remote Copy groups, your redundancy setup, thin provision, thick provision, lazy zero, and eager zero, then you will get overprovisioned at some point. You will lock up on a SAN tighter than a drum.

I was actually outsourced as the IT manager. Starting in February of 2014, I was selected to lead the management of all the company's nine locations in North America, Europe, and Canada, working with HPE at the time. After we selected to go definitely with 3PAR, HPE helped do the whole design, and I approved the design. It was actually deployed in August of 2014. Everything was deployed to my specifications.

We have seen ROI. 

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.

I have to renew support in October for the existing solution. That will cost me roughly $50,000 this year, which in the grand scheme of things, $50,000 is not that much compared to paying $850,000. However, it will be the last year that I'll be able to get direct support from HPE. Therefore, product has to be replaced in 2020.

I worked with the team from HPE. We looked at their solutions, and selected 3PAR. We also looked at Dell EMC and Nutanix. At the time, when evaluating Dell EMC and other SAN products against 3PAR out-of-the-box, 3PAR just was vastly superior to anything else.

Working with the HPE team back in early 2014, they proposed the design. As it turns out, the SAN that we deployed in 2014 was the largest 3PAR SAN in the state of Wisconsin.

I just have a long history of HPE. I've tried Dell EMC and IBM before. IBM sold its server products to Lenovo. I always come back to HPE, especially the ProLiant brand, just because of the reliability and consistency through all the generations. You can look at a ProLiant 1000, never having seen one before, but if you know a Gen 9 or a Gen 10 today, if you could find a Proliant 1000 that was still operating, then you would know how to go in and configure it.

It is this type of consistency that keeps me with HPE. Dell EMC is all over the place. Lenovo has reliability issues.

Look at HPE's roadmap for 3PAR, SimpliVity, and Nimble. Do your research, then pick the right one that works for you with the future that you envision.

I'm highly interested in using InfoSight going forward. One of the things that I have always tried to do is get to where I had just one dashboard for everything from managing from the desktop up to my Internet perimeter security. I want to look more at Aruba Networks and Cloud services to see how that might be able to help me integrate my WatchGuard perimeter security. I'm looking at Commvault and switching to Commvault for my backups, because eventually I just want one dashboard that shows me everything: servers, storage, switches, access points, and security perimeter points. That is the platform that can get me there.

That's one of the reasons why I'm at the conference is to check out HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity.

Biggest lesson learnt: Don't be absent during the design phase.