HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

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.

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.

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

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.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

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.

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

We would say two to three years.

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.

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

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.

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.

We use it for our financial system.

The interface could be improved to match the system.

The initial setup could be simplified.

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

We are using a 3PAR 8800.

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

It's a scalable solution.

Our experience with technical support was good.

We did not use any other solution previously.

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.

We had help from an HPE solution provider.

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.

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

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.

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

The main use for this solution is for storing large data in the backend. It is used in many companies, such as financial institutions. Unfortunately, it has come to the end of service life, companies are going to other solutions because there are cheaper products, it cost too much to maintain the 3PAR.

HPE could improve by making an old flash system in order to compete with the current market. For the solution to be more competitive in the mid-range market they could increase the performance.

I have been using HPE 3PAR StoreServ for approximately 10 years.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is scalable and we have approximately 10 customers using this solution.

The technical support is very good.

The time it takes for the installation depends on the number of enclosures. However, the average time is approximately six hours. The most time-consuming part is doing the scaling.

Most of the installation is done by the HPE because at the time of the installation there were not any engineers trained. We had approximately two engineers that were new to the product and we did the installation with the help of the HPE engineers remotely.

We have three engineers doing the maintenance of the solution.

If HPE reduced the price of 3PAR StoreServ they would be more attractive to mid-range companies.

At this time I would not recommend this solution because it is at the end of its service life.

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

Primarily, we use it for SAP storage. At this moment, we are running an ERP system on it. 

SAP is our mission-critical app.

All-flash is positioning our company for growth. We need to improve our systems with better hardware and systems. That will happen in the next three to six months.

It is easy to use and understand. It is also very stable.

I would like the documentation easy to find. There is a lot of documentation, but sometimes it is hard to find. You have to do a lot of searching to find it.

Before you could go on the HPE website, and download every driver that you wanted. Now, you need to have a service contract, or something else, to be able to get the drivers. Sometimes, you just need a simple driver, because your machine needs to restart and reinstall. If the machine is not under warranty anymore, it's hard to get the driver. That is a setback when compared to other solutions.

We are in the Caribbean, but we are Sint Maarten. Sint Maarten is French and Dutch. We are on the Dutch side. We speak Dutch and English, but because we are in the Caribbean, the way the system is set up with HPE in Latin America, a lot of times when we contact support, we get a Spanish-speaking people instead of an English-speaking people. I find that is a problem. When we are dealing with support to send somebody over, for example, we make sure to always put the emphasis on, "Make sure you send somebody who is English-speaking to us."

The product is really stable. The main thing is the solution is easy to use, and my administrators don't spend a lot of time on maintaining or troubleshooting issues because of it.

We never have a problem. The system runs. One of the main things is that we are in the Caribbean. The amount of power outages that we have compared to the US is more than 60 percent higher. The 3PAR can handle that. A lot of systems, when power goes out and it come back, they just don't work. We never had that. The 3PAR was one thing that always used to backup. I had problem with other servers, but not with the 3PAR.

It is very scalable and simple. The moment that you understand the product, it is straightforward to use. That is one of the most important things when it comes to our administrators. They don't like complex things.

Because we are in the Caribbean, sometimes our waiting time for a problem is a bit longer than when you are in United States.

For the solution that we were looking at an ERP system, and what we need to do with it, 3PAR was one of the best. On top of that, the company used to use another product called, LeftHand. After LeftHand, we moved over to 3PAR. When I saw the performance from LeftHand compared to 3PAR, it was a very good improvement and the way to go.

Speed is what we are all looking for right now. Before, people could wait for data, but now, the moment they wait five minutes, and are not typing, that's the minute they say the system is down. In the past, we used to have a different way of storing data. Since we moved over to the 3PAR, where we have two different sizes, the replication and accessibility are much faster.

The initial setup is straightforward. The moment that you are ordering a product, you pay for your support. When they come, there is communication going on between you and them. They check what is available for you. They send a person over, and that's it. After that, once the engineer has left, you have a working product.

We used HPE support, who are special for implementation and installation. When we order a product, we have good support from them. They come and install it for us. Then, we pay for the support after that. We use external support too.

I can't complain about the support. Usually, they send somebody over because we are in the Caribbean. When we install a new product, they have to send a person over, and they are with us a week sorting the system. The fact that we're doing it together is always a very nice experience, because it is hands-on. I find it really good. I'd give them a 10 out of 10 for that. For the last, I will say six to 10 years, we have had three different engineers from HPE, and they were all awesome.

We used to get somebody from Houston, but now, they switched us to somebody from Barbados.

We have seen ROI. We have less of maintenance. Our administration has been cut down by a lot. The people who used to administrate other databases are not buy improving the system. 

3PAR has increased our performance by at least 40 percent.

The solution has reduced our time to deployment by at least 60 percent, because there is less maintenance and time to spend on the storage.

Our licensing cost are $32,000 annually.

We are a fully HPE shop since 2000. Since then, we never really went over to a different vendor. We were approached by Dell EMC back then. They wanted to change up our whole server room and data center with their product. However, we are happy with HPE.

I don't really know the other products out there, but I love this product.

We are not running SSDs drive yet. When we move to SSDs, I think it will be much faster.

We are not yet using the HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity offering.

Biggest lesson learnt: if you have a good product, you have less maintenance.

It is for our IT. It is our kitchen sink; we use it for everything.

Our applications are now at least two to four times faster. It was a night and day change.

People walk up to us going, "This is just good. Thank you." It is nice for storage people to receive thanks instead of people saying, "Your stuff is slow."

Comparatively to everything else, the value proposition, the TCO, and the price make a big difference from all the other players who are in the same realm.

Better dedupe. It is hard for all the older generation arrays to put up dedupe because they tend to do the other stuff so much better. They have to keep the stability before any other new feature. They have to get it right all the time, not just the first time.

It is stable as heck. That is 3PAR's main name.

We upgraded scalability-wise, and it just hummed along. It was easy.

I have used support a lot. Even in the beginning, it was easy to call somebody, and people say, "Other vendors when they talk to the support guys, they actually collaborate." 

This was 3PAR five or six years ago until now. When we have an issue, they will call VMware for us instead of us needing to go back and forth.

We previously used EMC VMAX.

When I was at Level 3 Communications eight years ago, we were one of the first customers of 3PAR before HPE bought them. We did a PoC, and it literally made the others in the race look bad. It was that good.

It was so easy. When you make a volume, it takes seconds instead of minutes, if not tens of minutes. It took me less than an hour to set up the array.

I was the one who did all the PoCs. I set up everything and tried to automate everything I could.

Performance is at least two times, if not three times, what we had previously. Even now, it is still two to three times in performance what everything else is by price comparison.

The value is not just in price, there is the time that the administrators administer the array: It is two times, if not four times the difference. Something that they would take task-wise an hour, it will take (at the most) 15 minutes with a 3PAR. It goes the same way with the Nimble.

Back then, it was HPE versus EMC.

Just try it out. Do a PoC side-by-side. It wins.

Most important criteria when evaluating a vendor: 

• The technical aspects of the price
• The return on investment
• The support. 

You are not making a decision based on just one or two things. If you are, you are not doing a good service for your company or your stakeholders

In a word, performance. It was primarily brought in to replace our EVA with something that was more capable from a performance perspective. We did not order solid state in our original configuration and we were looking for something which could grow with us, that could handle unpredictable VMware workloads better, and that didn't have the bottlenecks of a traditional monolithic array. Since that time, we have added solid state to accelerate the performance further.

My 3PAR array is too old to support File Persona, and I would love to be able to do that, but that's something that we would need more powerful controllers. We've got the first generation, so at some point we will get it, but we've got to wait for a refresh cycle.

3PAR stability has been there since day one. It's one of the platforms that has just been a joy to work with, because it changed the way that we are able to protect our entire environment. Being a telecom, we've got really good high speed links between our two data centers and we are able to do with 3PAR in a Peer Persistence configuration, and that's a feature where it clusters the two 3PAR rays together with seamless failover for LUNs from one array to another.

Now I've got disaster avoidance, rather than disaster recovery of a traditional replication technology. So Peer Persistence for us is kind of nirvana. It's been a great solution for us.

It started out just with VMware, then they added support for our Windows clusters. Most of the things we run on the blades are things that we can do this with. So if we have a blade fail, the great thing about a blade is the server profiles, move that to another blade, spare, in the enclosure, it comes back up in the same server running again, and if we have a storage failure, it automatically switches over in the backend, and our users never know.

We've got plenty of room to grow. We're about three or four years into our 3PARs and we've still got more than at least about 50% of our drive shelves open, so we have a lot more room to grow. With each generation of drive that comes out, we can install bigger and more capable drives in it, so we haven't hit any scale issues there.

7/10 - it can be hit or miss. We get better luck with our premium support levels. We have a named TAM for some of our systems, that works out well. Escalation managers are always good. There is good technical talent, it's just sometimes hidden by first level support. That can be difficult and frustrating at times, but over ten years working with them, I would say today it's probably a little better than when I first started. Actually, I would say it's probably improved a good bit since I first started working with them, but it's still got some room to go.

We were using HP EVA, and before that we were HP HSG. So when I first started we had two small HSG arrays that were primarily behind DMS and maybe a couple of other systems, but we had a very small amount of data on a san. VMware changed all of that. So we had all of this data running on EVA and we were staring to hit some limits, and the EVA didn't have good telemetry to let us know where the edge of the cliff actually was, so we were teetering right on the edge and about to fall off when we got the 3PARs in. So that kind of saved our bacon.

When we were evaluating potential replacements for our HP EVA storage array, we looked at Tintri and Tegile. We ended up doing evaluations for both of them.

Our company purchased Tegile for another project. Internally, my security officer didn't like the NFS of Tegile. That was kind of a no-go for internal use. Otherwise it has really great features for virtualization. That was really appealing to me as a VMWare administrator. We talked with them after a VMUG meeting and brought it in, did a proof of concept on it. It didn't perform as expected in our environment and we found out after the fact why. We would have needed a second active controller and a second disk shelf to get the full IOPS we were expecting out of it. That kind of killed our evaluation. It had good features, it had good reporting, which was one of our big criteria moving from the EVA. We wanted something that was going to let us know how it was performing. That was really strong, in Tintri. It's also been three and a half years since then, so that product has changed a lot also.

3PAR installation was an easy one. We had really good consulting services that came in and walked us through that process. We've done a couple of field upgrades and those have gone smoothly also, so 9/10.

From a storage perspective we've looked at some other vendors, but once the 3PAR 7000 series was announced with its capabilities, it made the most sense, being mostly an HPE shop.

I really love that platform. It's rocked for us. It's, like I said before, it's near nirvana for our environment, because we are trying to do something where we want to avoid disasters and have seamless fail-over, and I don't know of another solution that can accomplish that in our environment.