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.

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.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is an enterprise storage that is mainly deployed in enterprise scenarios like banking and insurance.

The solution’s stability could be improved.

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

Around 20 customers use the solution extensively in their companies.

I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ a seven out of ten for scalability.

The initial setup is straightforward if it is a single server. If there are multiple servers, the initial setup becomes complex.

A single server takes an hour to be deployed.

The solution has two parts: software and hardware, and you need to buy licenses for some features.

One admin is enough to maintain the solution if it is single storage. A complex environment with a heavy workload will need more people to maintain the solution.

I would recommend HPE 3PAR StoreServ to users based on their use cases.

Overall, I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ a seven out of ten.

We are using the solution for capacity storage.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

We are planning to change the storage soon. The tool is old. We are looking for enterprise-grade storage with NVMe capabilities, low latency, and higher responses.

We have been using the solution since 2018.

I rate the product’s stability an eight out of ten.

The tool’s scalability is good. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. The product is not for users. It is used by an application. We are using 70% of the total capacity of the tool. We are looking to change the solution.

The support team has good capabilities. The team has people with good experience.

Positive

I rate the ease of setup an eight out of ten. The deployment took three to four months.

We have an on-site team. One or two people are required for implementation and deployment.

We choose the solution because HPE is a long-term partner. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The solution provides streamlined deployment compared to other products. It has a smooth interface and configuration. Also, it is easier to do pre-requested checks as well.

They should add AI-enabled dashboards to the solution.

I have been using the solution for around three years.

It's a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. We have around 500 customers using it.

The solution's initial setup process is easy. If there are no hardware issues during initial configuration checks, the process takes two and a half hours to complete. It requires two executives for maintenance.

The solution's price is reasonable.

I advise others to test the feasibility of the solution's compatibility checks feature when moving from source to target. Apart from that, it is easy to use. I rate it as a nine.

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'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.

It is for shared storage for virtual machines running VMware.

It is reliable, and it seems like a solid product. It has been working well so far. 

The speed of the hard disk could be better. The performance is the main issue for us. The performance of the VMs is not comparable to desktop machines, for instance, and we might need another solution to improve the performance. Other than that, we don't have any issues. We already have a great part of storage with SSDs, and the performance is not as good as I expected. 

I have been using this solution for about three years.

It is stable. I didn't have any issues.

It is scalable. You can add storage quite easily.

We have only 10 users. It is a small system.

I never contacted HPE support because I have a selling partner,  but we didn't have many issues. So, we rarely needed any support.

Its initial setup was done by our partner, who has previous experience. So, it was relatively easy. 

It is reasonable. As compared to other solutions, it doesn't seem to be much different.

I tried to look, but it was more about the products that our IT partner had available than me choosing. They had previous experience with HPE and 3PAR, and they recommended it to us, and we followed their advice.

I can't compare it with other brands because we only have this system. 

I would advise having some reference implementation that you can test and see if it's good for your needs. In my case, I would have liked to have the opportunity to test it first to see if it's good for our use case, but I couldn't.

I would rate it an eight out of 10. Performance is the only thing that I would like them to improve.