HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

IOPS, reliability and the value that it adds to our organization are the most valuable features.

Maybe, there is a need to have an easier interface. They could improve the storage platforms.

There are some things that are missing. We had some initial hardware problems that gave us a bad taste. We did, eventually, fix them but it did take a little bit of time to resolve them. These were either hardware issues, disk drive issues or connectivity issues, we just couldn't figure it out.

So far, the scalability is good.

It is very scalable.

The technical support is pretty good.

We were using a different solution previously, we were using EMC. Since we were hitting the ceiling of the hardware, we decided to switch over to HPE. Cost was the main reason why we moved over to HPE.

We looked at other solutions such as HPE and Hitachi.
The most important criteria while selecting a vendor are if it is user-friendly, the support provided and cost.

This is a great product.

The most valuable feature is being all-flash. We have an all-flash SAN. It has been great having production systems be much faster than they were previously. The UI is nice. It is easy to work with.

It has been easier to provision storage and it has been faster using it.

I would like to see compression and deduplication. I know that future versions of the software will have compression.

Stability got off to a rocky start. It has been much more stable after we went through some best practices guides. We ran into some issues where we had to work with support and high level engineers to get through. It was not something that was readily apparent, but we were able to overcome those issues. Had we followed the best practices guide from the beginning, it might have been avoided.

We have scaled it and the scalability is great. You have to add everything in pairs though, so we're at a point now where a small addition would require some extra overhead. In general, we've been able to double the storage and get better availability out of it. It wasn't too crazy.

Technical support has been helpful when I've been able to reach them. We would try to submit support cases online and that didn't work. I never heard back from them. I finally figured out there was a phone number to call. Everyone likes to do everything online if they can, but the phone number has gotten me through to support.

Our SAN was outdated, so we needed to get something new. We evaluated some different vendors instead of sticking with our typical one. We ended up switching over to 3PAR. We were using EMC VNX. This decision took place before I came on-board, but I believe the short list was HPE was EMC.

When selecting a vendor I look for support. That is ironic, given my previous answer that indicated otherwise. Support is a big deal. If you need help, you want to be able to get it.

I was not involved in the installation. I wish I would have been involved. I inherited it.

Read the best practices guides.

The reliability, scalability, and performance of HPE 3PAR are the most important things for us.

Now we have a reliable solution, divided over two data centers. The peer persistence solution provides us with a viable disaster recovery solution. We can do failover to the other site without interruption; and we can also do upgrades without interruption.

We have only had it for one year. At the moment, I don’t know about areas for improvement. Everything we need is included.

We have it now for more than one year.

It's very stable. We did an OS upgrade three weeks ago. It went very smoothly without any interruptions. It was great.

It is very good on scalability.

The technical support is very good.

We had the HPE EVA solution. We had performance issues with it. We needed another BI solution. Now, we are very happy with the performance. Also, when we needed to upgrade our storage system, we had downtime with EVA. Now with the 3PAR solution, there is no downtime. It goes very smoothly.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. Of course, we had help from the HPE specialists, but it was straightforward.

We were obliged to look into other vendors; but we tried not to leave HPE because we have many years of experience with them.

We have had nothing but a good experience over the last year. I would advise colleagues to go with HPE 3PAR.

The most important criterion when I choose a vendor is reliability. Reliability is very important to me. When there is an issue, I need to be able to count on the vendor.

Most valuable to us is that the 3PAR is very easy to use and has good response times.

It is a very responsive system with no latencies and high performance.

I would really like to see it be more efficient at reclaiming storage when deleting something, instead of just being thin at the start.

There were some bugs, but after the latest update, it is acting more stable.

Technical support is excellent.

We have many different types of solutions. Since HPE is one of our partners, it was natural to evaluate their products and buy from them.

Initial setup was straightforward.

We looked at some of the bigger vendors like Dell EMC and IBM, of course.

This tool is directly attached to the ProLiant server. It has very, very low latency.

The solution hasn’t benefited the entire company. It's a special solution that has provided benefit for part of the company. We have global data instruments around the world. This tool has allowed us to decrease the data import time from nine hours to just one hour.

I would like to see fewer licenses.

This is a stable solution. We have used it for three years.

It is the end of the product. We had to buy all of our 3PAR products in 2012. At the time, it was a new product. It wasn't viable. It is now running out of disk space.

We have used technical support. They are on time and very good. They provide good solutions.

We did not have a previous solution. We had a service provider, which had IBM solutions. I needed a solution for a particular application, and HPE 3PAR was one part of the solution.

I was involved in the installation. We have problems every time. Sometimes there are three parts to one problem.

For example, I had to get help from the engineering team in India. It took a year to solve this issue. There was new documentation in which the installation requirements for the disaster tolerant systems changed. That is one of the installation issues.

We didn’t have an alternative at the time. Our client could only work with 3PAR. There were no other products in the world which could do that in 2012. I don't know about solutions that are available today.

I have experience with HPE since 1996. I'm a member of "Connect". I know HPE better than I know IBM.

Some HPE solutions are very good. In terms of performance and digital equipment, they have very good knowledge in some types of IT.

HPE tries to be visionary, but I don't think they are. Perhaps they have the right products today, but the whole world is changing.

I could help a colleague who is making a decision by showing him our HPE solutions. I could explain what we have done and why.

With our previous EVA system, we couldn't shift data between different tiers online. We have multi-tiered storage and can move them online between SSD and global SAS. With 3PAR, we can quickly move our large volumes and check or test something, and if it's not faster with SSD, we can just move it back.

We have zero downtime with 3PAR. This saves us a lot of money as the business stays up and running.

There is only one thing I would really like to see, but I'm not entirely sure if this is actually 3PAR-related or not. I'd like real-time reporting. We can get reports, but it's difficult to monitor the system in real-time, which is critical, for example, when something is running slowly. It takes us hours to find out what the system is doing.

Also, real-time reporting will tell me who the "top talker" is at any given time. This is something we go to Brocade for to use their fiber channel and open grid. The first thing it shows is the top 5 talkers so you know that one of those is mostly likely causing the problem.

I think that 3PAR will eventually have the fiber channel feature, increasing its cost. I don't see us buying the license for that, though, as we've already spent a lot of money on 3PAR licenses.

We've used it in production for one and a half years.

We haven't had a single problem yet. I'm quite happy with that actually.

It's not good and kind of stressful when you're at the first level. Sometimes we have a hard time explaining what our problem is. We have to escalate the issue to someone who really knows what they're talking about.

The initial setup with different tiers and adaptive optimizations was very easy after seeing the DQE. Migration of our data that first time was also very easy.

The pricing is fair, but you have to pay for every little feature, which is something I really dislike about HP. You buy the software, then the hardware, then the OS license, then if you want more, you have to pay more just to put your data on it.

For example, if you want to replicate data, you have to get the replication license. You can't just replicate data and I can't always get budget approved to do that.

We're really happy with 3PAR as it performs very well despite a few failing discs, which is normal. Upgrades went well and we haven't had any outages. We'd recommend it to others.

The ability for data to be auto-tiered and the flash capabilities.

The ability for the PAR array to thin provision, effectively means that we can buy only what we need for the first year, and then plan and manage the data for future growth. What this means, is better value for money and long term cost savings.

Scalability, in the sense that it would be awesome if the product had the capability to not only scale spindles, but also processing power.

I've been using it for three years.

No major issues were encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered, but to reiterate, it would be nice to scale processing power as well.

It varies, sometimes they are a 9/10, and some days they can be 4/10.

It varies, sometimes they are a 9/10, and some days they can be 2/10.

We previously used an older HP model and switches, and we upgraded as it was a storage refresh.

It was straightforward – it was stood up pretty easily and management is simple enough.

We had team from HP implement is for us and they were easily 9/10.

We also looked at EMC and IBM array’s in the same class, but 3PAR was a better value for money with what they were able to offer.

This is a good, stable product, and management is pretty straightforward. For the price, it is a no brainer.

We primarily use the solution for storage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are a reseller. 

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

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

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