Sr. Storage Architect at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Peer Motion makes data migration easy
Pros and Cons
    • "I would like to see more cloud-based integrations and more file storage capabilities."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use about 40 percent of our workload in 3PAR. We have 3PAR 7400, V-Class series. We use dynamic tiering, so we have a mixed workload, SSD Fibre Channel and Nearline storage.

    In terms of performance, it has been a little bit up and down, but overall there isn't much to complain about. It's because we have the Nearline storage, so that doesn't perform well. That is the reason we have SSD and Fibre Channel tiering. We use Adaptive Optimization and that helps us to improve certain applications using those high-performance tiers.

    What is most valuable?

    The next step for us is refreshing, likely with another 3PAR. Migrating the workload from one 3PAR, to another 3PAR is pretty easy using Peer Motion.

    In terms of multiple business needs, we have multiple applications running and I don't have complaints. I think 3PAR runs multiple applications well. They're easy to manage.

    Overall it performs well.

    What needs improvement?

    I would like to see more cloud-based integrations and more file storage capabilities. They do have that now, but we haven't started using it.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    Three to five years.
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    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    We haven't had any major issues on 3PAR. We have pretty much had 100 percent uptime; we haven't had any outage. We run a lot of production workload on it with no issues.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Regarding scalability, we are maxed out right now on all our 3PARs, so we can not add more storage. So we just order a new one and it's fine.

    How are customer service and support?

    Support is good, overall. 

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

    We had HPE EVA storage. We switched because all of it was legacy storage. We migrated from legacy storage to the new 3PAR. The main reason we went with HPE was the migration from the old legacy to the new 3PAR was very seamless. They have Peer Motion integration so the data migration was easy. If we had gone with another vendor we would have had to do an offline migration.

    When it comes to selecting a vendor, HPE is our business partner so we use their products.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup was not that complex. We work with HPE to take care of all the implementations. It took less than one day.

    What was our ROI?

    Our ROI has been pretty good. I can't share how much we invested, but it has been almost five years and we migrated something like 40 or 50 HPE EVAs to two 3PARs. We consolidated it quite a bit.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We did consider other vendors. That's the reason we did a proof of concept and 3PAR was the winner. The other vendors on our short-list were EMC and NetApp.

    What other advice do I have?

    I rate it a nine out of 10 because the product just works; we haven't had a lot of problems. I'm satisfied with the product.

    3PAR is a proven, more reliable and stable SAN solution. Go with it.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Virtualization Systems Administrator at a university with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    We do not have to take the whole system down to do upgrades
    Pros and Cons
    • "We do not have to take the whole system down to do upgrades."
    • "With the support that our organization has, I can talk to someone right away if I have an issue. It has been very good."
    • "During the initial setup, it was a bit complex in the wiring of the cages."

    What is our primary use case?

    It hosts our virtualization platform. It works really well.

    How has it helped my organization?

    We do not have to take the whole system down now to do upgrades.

    What is most valuable?

    It is very easy to use. That is its best feature.

    What needs improvement?

    What I would like to see the SSMC management interface and the regular, Microsoft Management Console (MMC) interface. I would have to use both, because one of them has features, the other one does not, and vice versa.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    Three to five years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It is very stable.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Scalability is improving. We have some 7400s, 8200s, and 8400s. So, we can scale pretty well.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    With the support that our organization has, I can talk to someone right away if I have an issue. It has been very good.

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

    We were using HPE EVA. We had a lot of issues with it to begin with. Anytime you wanted to do an upgrade, you had to take systems offline. That just would not work for us.

    We switched when our warranties were up.

    How was the initial setup?

    It was a bit complex in the wiring of the cages. Other than that, it was pretty straightforward.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We also evaluated Dell. We chose 3PAR because of price and functionality.

    There are some things out there now, such as HPE SimpliVity that do more things, and maybe we would like to go in that direction. Right now, we are doing a PoC with HPE SimpliVity. It seems to be working well, especially the backup solution that it has with it, where you can do snapshots. We really like that since 3PAR does not have this.

    What other advice do I have?

    I am not on the latest release yet. We are still trying to get there. The people that I work with at HPE have recommended where we should be in our version. We are not to the 3.3 version yet. I am looking forward to upgrading, because you can do them yourself. You do not have to have HPE do them. Also, it will integrate with InfoSight, which I am looking forward to.

    Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: In our case, price is usually the biggest factor, because we are a university and have no money. Price is always big when we make a decision.

    Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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    RuiAlves - PeerSpot reviewer
    Director at Proindustrial, Lda.
    Real User
    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: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Infrastructure and Networks at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Flexible, stable, scalable, no licensing fees, and good support
    Pros and Cons
    • "It works well and we don't have any issues with this solution."
    • "I would like to see more storage, a better interface, and to move from mechanical disks."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use this solution for everything. We have server files and we have SQL's.

    What is most valuable?

    It's a flexible solution.

    What needs improvement?

    Currently, we are finishing the possible quotation to upgrade the 3PAR we have here in Portugal. 

    It's a case of obsolescence. Since we have had the machine for four years we must remove the old one to put in the new one.

    I would like to see more storage, a better interface, and to move from mechanical disks.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using this solution for four years.

    We have had the solution for four years and the software has been updated.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It's a stable solution.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    This is a scalable product. We have approximately 1,000 users in our organization.

    We are considering the possibility of a move to Primera or PowerMax.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    We have contacted technical support and it's pretty good.

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

    We purchased VMAX three years ago.

    We also used the NetApp Series but decided to go with 3PAR.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is straightforward with the help of the technicians from the company.

    The deployment was completed in one week.

    What about the implementation team?

    We had help from a consulting integration company for the deployment.

    We also have a production team of 34 admins and engineers to deploy and maintain this solution.

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

    We don't pay for any licensing fees.

    What other advice do I have?

    We would recommend this solution to others.

    It works well and we don't have any issues with it.

    I would rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ a ten out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Systems Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Allows us to mix drive spaces; the redundancy and tiering are also key for us

    What is our primary use case?

    VMware and SQL.

    In terms of performance, we had an issue with the earlier version, the 7400, an iSCSI issue. They replaced it with one from the 8000 series and it has been doing pretty well so far.

    How has it helped my organization?

    It lets us mix a lot of drive spaces, as well as performance drives, between Fibre Channel, long-term storage, and SSD drives. It performs pretty well as far as moving the data around and not letting a lot of it go to waste.

    What is most valuable?

    • Redundancy
    • Performance (I/O and stability)
    • The tiering

    What needs improvement?

    Nothing really comes to mind. We talked to somebody earlier today, here at HPE Discover 2018, about their Docker integration for it, so that's something we'll probably check out next for both the 3PAR and Nimble.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    More than five years.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We haven't any issues with scalability. We have added a lot of different shelves to it, we have close to about 400 terabytes. It has done pretty well in that regard.

    How is customer service and technical support?

    Technical support is pretty good. We've used it mainly for firmware upgrades and those type of things. We also used them initially for troubleshooting issues on the previous version. They have been helpful.

    How was the initial setup?

    I was not involved in the initial setup. We did have HPE onsite to help with that. It didn't take too long, maybe two to three days.

    What was our ROI?

    I believe it is paying off at this point, but I don't have any numbers for ROI.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We looked at Dell, Tegile, and Pure Storage. We went with HPE in the end because we already have HPE equipment, we're mostly HPE server and software, so we went with that. We're trying out the new Nimble now in our new data center.

    When I evaluate vendors the important criteria are 

    • redundancy
    • scalability
    • performance
    • metrics for reporting.

    What other advice do I have?

    My advice would be, make sure you know your workloads going into it and how you will best be able to utilize a solution, especially when deciding what disk structure to get and how to lay it out.

    Overall, I would rate 3PAR at eight out of 10. The biggest issues we had were performance issues with the older version, but this one has been doing okay.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    IT Architect at Oncor Electric Delivery
    Real User
    Enabled us to consolidate down to a single platform which meets all of our needs
    Pros and Cons
    • "When we started using 3PAR what we liked was the simplicity of the product. We needed a higher performance storage and, in our support model, we needed to keep the simplicity of the storage architecture, keep it as clean and as manageable as we could."

      How has it helped my organization?

      From a management standpoint of the arrays, they work really well. They handle a lot of data and, overall, it lowers the complexity of our storage infrastructure. We've been able to consolidate down to a single platform which meets all of our demands, anywhere from our advanced meter systems to our customer information system.

      What is most valuable?

      When we started using 3PAR what we liked was the simplicity of the product. We needed a higher performance storage and, in our support model, we needed to keep the simplicity of the storage architecture, keep it as clean and as manageable as we could.

      What needs improvement?

      We have seen one area, where we have highly virtualized Solaris instances, where we're getting into the queue depth, so we probably need to do some work in the queue-depth area in the arrays. I'm not sure if its specific to Solaris, because we haven't encountered it on other platforms but, then again, on some of our largest Solaris frames, we are running several hundred virtual containers and we see the queue-depth issue there.

      For how long have I used the solution?

      More than five years.

      What do I think about the stability of the solution?

      It has been stable. It has been very reliable. I have no problems around it.

      What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

      As we transform and we're starting to move data, much more data, we're looking at the scalability. I don't have any indicators that it will not scale, but there is a lot of analysis we have to do. We're doing modeling of that data right now to see what decisions we will make in 2019. I am assuming we will maintain at least some 3PAR, but we may have to compliment it with something else, based on the demands we have around our data.

      How is customer service and technical support?

      From my experience, tech support has been good. I'm not directly interacting with support due to my role but the feedback I've received has been good.

      How was the initial setup?

      This is a question better answered by the guys who actually support it, but it's my understanding that the upgrade process is pretty seamless. They scheduled it over a weekend, they rolled the upgrade through, and it works pretty well. Occasionally, there are glitches they need to work through but, from what I have observed, they're minor.

      The process doesn't drag on. It's just planning, scheduling it, change tickets go in, and then they run it. It's a process that pretty much takes under a day. And then, after implementing, it's a matter of watching it to make sure everything is smooth after the upgrade finishes.

      Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
      PeerSpot user
      PeerSpot user
      Storage and Backup Engineer at Fidelity Investments
      Real User
      All the disk drives in the system are used for data, since parity and spares are at the chunklet level. I'd like, however, a unified system with the same controller serving both SAN and NAS solutions.

      What is most valuable?

      • Scaleable from two to eight controller nodes for High Availability
      • Persistent fabric array ports
      • Performance tuning
      • Dynamic and adaptive optimizations
      • Highly granular storage
      • One gigabyte miniature disk concept called "chunklets"
      • Striping of data across all disks available - wide striping
      • Highly intelligent Gen3 and Gen 4 ASICs which acts as the brain of the 3PAR storage systems. This is not a regular CPU
      • Very quick redistribution of data if there's a disk failure
      • All the disk drives in the system are used for data, since parity and spares are at the chunklet level.

      How has it helped my organization?

      I cannot share the information on how it improved our storage estates, but in general, it has very good SAN performance compared to EMC Clariion, IBM XIV, IBM Storwize V7000 and its other competitors.

      What needs improvement?

      They have released a unified version of HP 3PAR, with a separate NAS server unit in the enclosure/rack. I would like to see a proper unified system (same controller serving both SAN and NAS solutions) such as NetApp offers.

      For how long have I used the solution?

      We've been using it for three years. We currently have a 7400 (mix of disk drives), and a 7450 (full flash array, only SSD disks),

      What do I think about the stability of the solution?

      The performance is optimal, if we have planned everything properly well in advance.

      What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

      These are mid-range storage solutions that can be scaled up to 700TB of space depending on the type of disks we use. It does have enterprise solutions that can scale up to eight controller nodes with 1.8PB of usable capacity. However, we have a 7400 and a 7450 with lot of provisioning done to ESX systems with thousands of VMs.


      How are customer service and technical support?

      Customer Service:

      HP customer support, especially for 3PAR is excellent.

      Technical Support:

      They have highly skilled technical support team. I would rate them 8/10.

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

      We chose 3PAR because it has the best price compared to its competitors, and delivers the performance expected.

      What about the implementation team?

      The initial setup/installation was done by the vendor. We needed to provide them with the necessary hardware and network information, (DNS, NIS etc). Their experience was very good, I have no complaints.

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

      Pricing and licensing depend on the customer/partner deals and negotiations/agreements.

      What other advice do I have?

      It has met our performance and stability expectations. 3PAR is one of the best in the market and it is evident that its sales have raised to 10x since it was acquired by HP. All cloud solutions from HP and many other companies use HP 3PAR storage on their backend for their cloud solutions.

      Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are a platinum customer.
      PeerSpot user
      it_user331335 - PeerSpot reviewer
      Database & Hosting Team leader at a media company with 5,001-10,000 employees
      Real User
      It is designed around the ASIC which eliminates the CPU bottleneck, although a better user interface compared to the current PC-installed client would be an improvement.

      Valuable Features:

      The ability the use all available disks for different RAID requirements and also the replication is available out of the box. The ability to tune the volumes to spread across newly allocated drives.

      Improvements to My Organization:

      Previously, we were with another vendor, and we suffered performance issues due to architecture limitation. With 3PAR, we were able to provide the business an acceptance level of performance which directly has an impact on user experience. We are able to keep up with application and user demands as response times are vital for the business to function competitively.

      Room for Improvement:

      Better user interface compared to the current PC installed client. A browser based solution was introduced recently and improvements were noticeable.

      Use of Solution:

      I've used it for two and a half years. We initially did an evaluation with the 7200 unit. Having tested and being pleased with the outcome, we purchased a 7400 with two nodes, and subsequently upgraded to four nodes. The 7200 was moved to be used for disaster recovery.

      Deployment Issues:

      No issues encountered.

      Stability Issues:

      No issues encountered.

      Scalability Issues:

      No issues encountered.

      Initial Setup:

      It is quite straightforward, it is a completely different architecture as 3par is licensed based on the number of drives and after a point it’s capped, i.e. you only pay for the drives and support.

      Implementation Team:

      In-house, good knowledge of SAN architecture is required. All zones activity needs to be done by yourselves.

      ROI:

      We would say two to three years.

      Cost and Licensing Advice:

      Always purchase at the financial year end of the vendor to obtain the best pricing, and also purchase the maintenance in advance. I purchased it with five years maintenance included.

      Other Solutions Considered:

      I did evaluate five other vendors, one example Nimble, however, at that time they only had iSCSI model available.

      Other Advice:

      3PAR is designed around the ASIC which eliminates the CPU bottleneck and RAID limitation in other vendors.

      We would say 2-3 years. Always purchase at the year end of the vendor to obtain the best pricing and also purchase the maintenance in advance, for example I purchase with 5 years maintenance included.

      HP regularly organizes events which are good to go to as they announce new innovations and share other customer experiences.

      Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
      PeerSpot user
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      Download our free All-Flash Storage Report and find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell Technologies, NetApp, and more!
      Updated: March 2024
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      Download our free All-Flash Storage Report and find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell Technologies, NetApp, and more!