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Roshan Dias - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Engineering at Informatics (Private) Limited
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
An enterprise storage solution that is deployed in banking and insurance companies, but it stability could be improved
Pros and Cons
  • "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."

What is most valuable?

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

What needs improvement?

The solution’s stability could be improved.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Around 20 customers use the solution extensively in their companies.

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

Buyer's Guide
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
September 2025
Learn what your peers think about HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.

How was the initial setup?

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

What about the implementation team?

A single server takes an hour to be deployed.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Integrator
PeerSpot user
Security Officer at Videocon Intelligent Security Private Limited
Real User
Reliable with a good user interface and helpful support
Pros and Cons
  • "It's a very popular product for enterprise storage."
  • "This solution is now at end-of-life."

What is our primary use case?

The solution is mostly used for storage.

What is most valuable?

The user interface is very good. It's impressive. I find it very easy to understand. 

It offers good scalability.

The stability is very reliable. 

There is the possibility of using it in a hybrid way.

It's a very popular product for enterprise storage. It's good for medium to enterprise-level companies. 

It's easy to set up the product.

Technical support has been helpful.

What needs improvement?

This solution is now at end-of-life.

We have found the solution to be expensive. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using with the solution for the last six years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is very stable and extremely reliable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable and easily expands. 

We have various customers on the solution. They might have thousands of users overall, however, we have four to five clients using the product in general. 

How are customer service and support?

We have been satisfied with the level of technical support we get. They are helpful and responsive. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We also use Primera and PowerStore.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is very straightforward and simple. We also use Primera and PowerStore and the setup is pretty much the same for all of those. 

How long it takes will be determined by the capacity and the formats. It can take anywhere from six or seven hours up to 24.

We might need two to three staff members to handle deployment and maintenance It depends on the SLA and the organizational structure. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There is a one-time cost once you purchase the solution. There is no perpetual licensing. 

It is an expensive product. 

What other advice do I have?

I'm an end-user and handle storage only. 

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend the product as it is at end-of-life. However, I would rate it ten out of ten. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
September 2025
Learn what your peers think about HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.
RuiAlves - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Proindustrial, Lda.
Real User
Top 5
Easy to add more storage, reasonably-priced, and reliable
Pros and Cons
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

It is for shared storage for virtual machines running VMware.

What is most valuable?

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

What needs improvement?

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. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. You can add storage quite easily.

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

How are customer service and support?

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

How was the initial setup?

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

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
GIDC India - Architecture Design and Engineering Leader at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Easy to set up with good auto-tiering, but needs to be more reliable
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "The solution lacks reliability."

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and support?

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.

How was the initial setup?

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

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. partner
PeerSpot user
reviewer281076 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Technology Services at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
Real User
Secure, stable, scalable, and has good support
Pros and Cons
    • "The interface could be improved to match the system."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use it for our financial system.

    What needs improvement?

    The interface could be improved to match the system.

    The initial setup could be simplified.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using HPE 3PAR StoreServ for three years.

    We are using a 3PAR 8800.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    HPE 3PAR StoreServ is a stable solution. We haven't had it go down.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It's a scalable solution.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Our experience with technical support was good.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We did not use any other solution previously.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup was complex.

    I would suggest that you don't install it on your own, and you get help from an HPE solution provider or an architect to assist you with that.

    What about the implementation team?

    We had help from an HPE solution provider.

    What was our ROI?

    You are not spending that money to truly get ROI on the equipment. You are basically trusting that device to keep you safe.

    We have had it for three years and we haven't had one hiccup. It was money well spent. The $60,000 was well spent.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    We purchased the total package for approximately $60,000. That was purchasing it outright.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We are an HP shop. It was natural for us to go with HPE for the storage solution. When we were looking, there were other solutions out there such as Dell EMC but we opted not to go with them. We decided to stick with an HPE brand solution.

    What other advice do I have?

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

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer969309 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Storage Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    User-friendly graphical user interface and simplifies reporting for easy management
    Pros and Cons
    • "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."

    What is our primary use case?

    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.

    How has it helped my organization?

    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. 

    What is most valuable?

    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.

    What needs improvement?

    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.

    For how long have I used the solution?

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

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    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.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    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.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    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.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    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.

    What other advice do I have?

    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.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer1473348 - PeerSpot reviewer
    SAN Consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
    Consultant
    Robust and easy to use with a simple setup
    Pros and Cons
    • "The product stands on its own in heavy enterprise environments."
    • "HP has several integration elements that work with other vendor storage products. I'd like to see a greater expansion on that so that a customer can do a more seamless migration from other vendor products."

    What is our primary use case?

    Generally, clients use the solution as primary storage or data storage for corporations. They also use it for data replication where they replicate to another site or even on the same site. They're typically replicating the data for a backup situation.

    How has it helped my organization?

    The solution has greatly assisted data performance as far as a VM-ware environment goes. My data performance is much faster.

    What is most valuable?

    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.

    What needs improvement?

    HP has several integration elements that work with other vendor storage products. I'd like to see a greater expansion on that so that a customer can do a more seamless migration from other vendor products. The migration of data to their platform could be better.

    Primarily they don't have a lot. They have several EMC elements that they can migrate data from, however, there are many more controllers out there and it'd be good to see a more seamless integration so that that could occur.

    I'd like to see 3PAR have some integration with Cloud services.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been using the solution for several years. It's been probably around seven years or so. It has definitely been a while.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The stability is pretty decent. The only thing you have to worry about is that you don't overtax the controller. In other words, you don't do that combination of deduping and compression as well as data replication and then also heavily use the controllers where your IO starts, the IO performance. With IOPS and Truepoint, it's important that users do not over-utilize the environment. Then you have performance issues. 

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    You have to be careful about exactly what your usage is. You really need to understand what you want to do with the controller. You need to understand what your total IOP performances will be, before you do any sizing so that you can size appropriately, otherwise, as with any storage, you could have an underutilized controller. That would then cause you frustration and business units would suffer as you would have slower performance than what you expected.

    A lot of times customers get themselves in trouble due to the fact that they make a purchase or size a controller and then later on they undersized it. Sometimes the under-sizing can occur due to the fact that a company starts putting more demand on the new stores where they want to put one more device on the storage product or connect to it, and that wasn't what it was sized for at the time. If you didn't plan on the growth of the utilization of the controllers the product doesn't look like it's performing properly, however, indeed it is. It's just, not big enough to handle the new user profile that you have put on it.

    Microsoft Exchange, VMware, SQL, and Oracle - those are the types of software or devices that are applications that were used within our environment. We have several different departments or groups that get access to that storage.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    There were some older 3PARs that we wanted to replace and there were some Clariion EMC products that we wanted to replace. The reason why was due to the fact that the 3PARs, were four years old and we needed a technology revamp, so to speak. 

    The other reason we switched was that EMC was just too slow. It was getting overwhelmed and we had to go to a stronger or newer technology controller. Therefore we decided to go with the 3PAR as it was a lot easier to use. We also liked the virtualization of the product and we appreciated the ease of being able to make changes without having an overall effect in the environment.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is straightforward. It's not too complex. If you have any SAN experiences pretty easy, as you have to understand some of the terminologies so that you can pre-prep the architectural design that you're looking for. Overall, however, it's pretty easy from a GUI perspective. You can do everything from a GUI. You don't need to play at the CLI level. Of course, if you'd like to do that, you can do that as well.

    What about the implementation team?

    I typically handle implementations for my clients.

    What other advice do I have?

    I'm a consultant and an HPE partner and I have my hands on several different things in terms of products I use.

    Normally I work with all the versions as far as software versions. I've worked with all the different hardware, 3PAR versions as well, and I do a lot of installations.

    The big thing and with 3PAR and with any other storage - and this goes for any kind of storage as you're sizing - is to make sure that you are getting the right size environment for what you currently have and what you expect for future growth. Otherwise, you may run into performance issues.

    On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at a nine. We've been quite happy with the solution so far. It's robust and offers very good performance.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
    PeerSpot user
    Sisir Ghosh - PeerSpot reviewer
    Assistant Manager at a recreational facilities/services company with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Top 10
    Great reliability, stability, scalability, and user interface
    Pros and Cons
    • "Its stability is the most valuable. It has soft alerts. When an alert is raised, we get a call from HP saying that there is this type of alert, and they need to do a remote session to check things. Similarly, for firmware updates, they get in touch to say that a firmware upgrade is required on your storage. They schedule a time and take control remotely to upgrade the firmware. In all such cases, there is no downtime. Everything is done when a full-fledged operation is going on. Its user interface is also quite good. We are quite accustomed to this user interface. We can easily take a look at the current usage or the amount of storage. It is quite easily understandable, and I can present those things to my seniors or other people who are not that tech-savvy, and they can easily understand what we are trying to tell them. We can easily show them that we are using around 87% of the storage, so we need to plan for another tree and things like that."
    • "Its price is a bit high for adding another tree."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use it only for storage.

    What is most valuable?

    Its stability is the most valuable. It has soft alerts. When an alert is raised, we get a call from HP saying that there is this type of alert, and they need to do a remote session to check things. Similarly, for firmware updates, they get in touch to say that a firmware upgrade is required on your storage. They schedule a time and take control remotely to upgrade the firmware. In all such cases, there is no downtime. Everything is done when a full-fledged operation is going on.

    Its user interface is also quite good. We are quite accustomed to this user interface. We can easily take a look at the current usage or the amount of storage. It is quite easily understandable, and I can present those things to my seniors or other people who are not that tech-savvy, and they can easily understand what we are trying to tell them. We can easily show them that we are using around 87% of the storage, so we need to plan for another tree and things like that.

    What needs improvement?

    Its price is a bit high for adding another tree.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using this solution for four years. 

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It is very reliable. In these four years, we have not had any big failure or faced any issue.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Scalability is not an issue. If someone has 3PAR and within one or two years, they find that they need to add more storage, it would not be an issue. It will scale perfectly fine. 

    We have already consumed around 87% of the storage. We may have to add another tree. We had a discussion with HPE, and it was quite good. The only reason for not going forward with it was that the amount of money that we will be spending in just upgrading the storage has a life of only two and a half years now. We are now evaluating whether we should invest this much money for two and a half years, or we should invest more and buy a completely new storage. We can then use this storage for other backups and all those less important steps.

    From the application side, we have 50 users. There are also a lot of other users who are connecting to the applications and the storage because their data resides on the storage. For its maintenance, we don't require any engineers.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    We haven't raised a single ticket with HPE regarding 3PAR, but they always call us if there is any soft alert or any firmware upgrade. The only thing that we have to do is to schedule a remote session during which they will perform the update activities.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    Before HPE 3PAR, we were using Dell EMC. We have used three storages from EMC. The first one was very reliable. It was 300 series that we were using in 2003 or 2004. After that, we replaced it with the 400 series EMC storage, but it was not that reliable. Every three to four months, one of the disks would fail invariably, and we had to raise a ticket. After some time, they will review the ticket. They didn't ask any questions, and they would just replace it and take the faulty one. After that, we moved from the Dell EMC storage to HPE 3PAR, which has been very reliable. We haven't faced any issues in all these years.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is really smooth. 

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Its price is a bit high for adding another tree, but when we purchased it, it was okay with us. We had compared it with EMC and other solutions, and it was okay at that point in time. 

    Our storage has a lifespan of seven to eight years. When you purchase it, you need to keep a headroom of around 40% to 50%. After three to four years, you generally plan for an upgrade. The price is not so bad today for two years or so, and within a year, I might find that I have to upgrade or increase the storage. This usually happens when there is a radical change or a new application has come that is consuming a lot of data, but generally, there is a plan for the amount of data that we generate and the storage upgrade. 

    What other advice do I have?

    3PAR is very much reliable. In these four years, I've not raised a single ticket with HPE regarding 3PAR. 

    I would rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ a nine out of ten. It has good support, good UI, and good reliability.

    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free HPE 3PAR StoreServ Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: September 2025
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free HPE 3PAR StoreServ Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.