HPE 3PAR StoreServ Reviews

All Flash Only

• Designed as only flash with the xx50 designation. This array was never intended for spinning disk or hybrid use.
• We have never seen a disk or other hardware failure in over two years.
• Average latency is less than one millisecond.
• 3PAR ASIC is the heart of the processing power built into 3PAR arrays and it is built specifically for its role.

Common Provisioning Groups (CPGs)

• CPGs allow for versatile, yet powerful configuration and use of disks that help us to define both disk performance and availability.
• There is no need to pre-carve space. It auto-grows and distributes as it is defined. Factor in wide striping, the fact that this is all flash, and the performance and reliability are even better than the other models of 3PAR.

Data Reduction Services

• The 3PAR and the ASIC really help the CPG to leverage an increase in performance as well as data efficiency.
• Dedupe is applied to all items inside a CPG. There is no need to manually configure per volume.
• Features are all inline and there is no post-processing window. The ASIC really shines on faster write speeds with the Zero Detect Algorithm. All zeros are ignored, resulting in much faster writes, not just space savings for blank data.
• Thin provisioning
• Thin clones

Native Veeam Support: Provides ease of use for backing up and restoring with the additional integration with Veeam.

VMWare 6.x Vol Support

VMWare Fibre Channel: Reference platform for v6.

Scale up, or out: It does both on demand unlike other arrays that leave you stuck with a single alternative. 3PAR Active Mesh Architecture is quite robust.

We were quite hesitant on the array size when it was pitched as our replacement of an aged SAN.

We were guaranteed we would get much more space than the physical capacity. (Make sure you get it in writing.)

In reality, their safe numbers were extremely safe.

We were expecting 2:1 as a rule of thumb, but in reality, we ended up sitting at greater than 8:1 across the entire array with all compaction/reduction features factored in.

I would really love to see HPE add some cloud analytics. So many other Tier 1 SAN vendors have enhanced cloud analytics and flashy visuals. While HPE has the StoreFront and it is better than nothing whatsoever, other competition offered “shiny” reporting and analytics engines.

I have used the product for over two years.

We have not encountered any stability issues. Its performance and capacity have been even better than expected.

The code updates have been exceptionally smooth compared to our previous SAN vendor. This includes no outage windows and really short upgrade durations.

We have not encountered any scalability issues. This device can scale both up and out. It is exceptionally versatile.

I recommend that you always procure the higher support offering with an enterprise product. It will pay for itself.

We went with Proactive Care Advanced, before HPE was offering Datacenter care.

The Advanced Care provides proactive interoperability reports from a dedicated technical account manager. They provide further recommendations on your current configuration if it is not compliant with HPE best practices.

Our previous solution was retired due to capacity and performance issues.

HPE really addressed our issues with their recommendation of the 3PAR 7450 for our specific needs.

It’s actually less expensive per Gigabyte than a conventional array when looking at the true cost of ownership. Not to mention the performance is six times greater than the competitor’s device.

The entire setup, from rack and stack, to configuring the array, was shockingly expeditious.

It took longer to rezone my fibre switches than it did to get the Common Provisioning Group (CPG) configured and begin storage with vMotion VMs.

Remember, you are charged per disk with a 3PAR array for licensing. Make note of this when considering future capacity. A smaller number of higher capacity SSDs can be less expensive than multiple smaller capacity disks.

We evaluated EMC, Nimble, IBM, NetApp, and Pure Storage.

• Make sure that you are trained on the nuances of 3PAR technology if you select this Storage Area Network.
• There are many useful features and you need to leverage them to lower the total ownership cost while easing the management of the device.

It's quite fast, easy to manage, and easy to extend. Adding new shelves or new platforms is easy.

In our case, 3PARs were easier to implement into our existing environment. Also, we had problem with storage space so it was the easiest way to expand.

I'm happy for the moment. But I would like to see them implement the new types of RAM; the NVRAM that is being used in the server environment. This would make storage quite a bit faster. It's not slow, but it could always be faster. Maybe this can also be available partially in a storage environment.

For example, if you have a DSQL server or something similar. Most companies have the lock database on the local server. In our case, we have everything on the 3PAR and it would make sense to have faster storage. We would like to see some innovation. There's room for improvement.

We have been using 3PARs for a year.

We have never had any stability problems.

Scalability is always a matter of price of course, but you can put in new disks with no problem at all.

We used technical support to do updates. They're good and very fast. They were very helpful.

We used EMC before but it was quite old, about 7 years, and it was time to change. There wasn't a good solution from them at that time. The ability to scale to size was important to us when choosing a vendor, as well as the speed. We want our solution to be future-proof to an extent.

I was partially involved in the initial setup. It was complex because of our environment. We have 10 or 15 different systems in the background so it wasn't easy. We thought it would be easy, but in the end it was quite complex.

There isn’t only one solution on the market. We already had the EMC systems. We were not limited to flash providers, so we also looked at Nimble and Hitachi and others.

At the end of the day, 3PAR was the most valuable. It was the most valuable solution. It was quite fast and it wasn't too expensive. Additionally, we could have an active-active scenario. That was for us the most important thing.

I would say go for it. You should at least give it a chance.

Easy management is huge as is the scalability and the performance.

We're using deduplication a lot so getting a return on our investment there is a great. We're getting a lot of performance through that, so we're running probably a 1000 VMs on a 7440 that has done pretty well for us.

It would be nice to see reporting around percent of utilization on the performance side. It tells you what you're doing in the reporting but I would like to know what my array's capable of, versus what I'm using.

It's very stable.

I don't know if you can really fix this but to upgrade from 2 nodes to 4 can be a hassle because you have to re-balance everything. So you have to either do a lot of work or duplicate what you've got which can be expensive. I don't know if there's a good way to fix that though, other than start with 4 nodes.

I think we're getting towards the upper end of what we have and with what HPE would consider our array is capable of and what percentage of that would be helpful, so we don't have to try and guess. Because you know you ask how many IOPS an SSD can get and they'll say, "Yeah, 2000 to 3000," something like that. Who knows what you're actually going to be able to get out of it. Based on your IO size and things like that, being able to see a clear picture would be cool.

With 3PAR WE haven't had to use technical support.

We came from using Hitachi, so provisioning and that sort of thing is way easier with a small team. It's a lot easier to use, the SSMC and management tools for 3PAR than it was for any of the Hitachi tools that we used.

I'd like to be able to license different tiers of disks for different features. We have arrays that we could use for different purposes really. And so if I'm using near line drives for camera backup, I don't want to have to license them for things like dynamic optimization that I'm not using them for. If they're in the machine, now you have to license everything. So I'd like to see that. It might make things more expensive but I do like the model that Pure uses where it's just everything's included.

Get 4 nodes at the start. I would say that's important. Plan more long term rather than what you need now. Get the licensing and nodes you need upfront, makes it easier to expand later.

Reliability. It’s a good, solid product with ease-of-management.

Before switching over from HP’s old storage, we just needed to upgrade our aging infrastructure, which was pretty easy.

3PAR has everything that I’m interested in. I come from a storage background, and everything that I want to see is there. I don’t really have anything pressing to suggest, but nothing is perfect.

Stability is rock solid.

If my company doubled in size, I could scale it well.

Everything has been very positive with no issues. Working at a nuclear power plant, it’s mostly on our end when issues come up. Otherwise, HP’s been perfect.

It was mostly just aging storage. We used HP AVA before, and so we just switched over to a new product.

It was purchased prior to me being there, so I’m not sure what else was considered.

We always look for ease of use, and 3PAR is very easy to use.

From my experience with other storage platforms, if you want something where underlying hardware is designed with a goal and you rely on pre-existing hardware around which you build your product, you’re setting yourself up for failure from the beginning. It seems to me that something like 3PAR, where it’s designed around a specific product, just makes life so much more easier. You’re essentially setting yourself up for success with a product like 3PAR.

We use this product as our primary storage. 

We are in the manufacturing industry and we use the HPE 3PAR StoreServ to store our company data and then we can retrieve it as required.

All of the features this storage product has, work well.

This is a very robust product and it offers everything that we are looking for.

There is a slight difference between what we expected and what was delivered.

I have been working with HPE 3PAR StoreServ for the past three years.

This is a very stable storage solution and we plan to continue using it.

This product is scalable and we have more than 100 users. We are planning to increase the amount of storage space.

We are satisfied with the HP Enterprise technical support.

The initial setup is straightforward.

HPE installed it for us and we did not hire a third-party consultant to assist with it.

This product is a little bit costly, although this is because it is a high-quality product.

There was a one-time cost when we procured this product and there are no monthly or yearly licensing fees.

We purchased this solution with an open tender and we invited several vendors to present their products.

In general, this product works well. That said, it is not perfect because there is always a difference between what we expect and what is delivered. There has to be a gap.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use this product for our server storage. Our systems are primarily used for ERP.

The most valuable feature is the proactive technical support. If there is a problem then the HPE facility will detect it and immediately contact me.

It achieves very high performance.

The price is a little bit high.

We have been using the HPE 3PAR StoreServ for the past five months.

In terms of stability, our experience has only been good. We have not had any problems in five months.

I think that its scalability is good. You can have up to eight storage units and you can vary the storage rate. For example, we need quick database storage so we rate that high, compared to some other applications of lower importance.

Prior to this, we used the HPE3PAR StorServ 7200 series. With that version, sometimes the hard drive was broken. It's not about storage, but rather, it is about how the hard drive operates.

The deployment took about two weeks to complete.

One of the HPE partners deployed this solution for us.

We paid for five years of support when we purchased the product.

We evaluated a solution based on NetApp and ultimately, we decided to implement HPE.

There is a storage replication feature that I think is nice, although we don't use it right now.

For us, this product is a very good, full-flash storage. The suitability of this product depends on the organization. It comes down to a combination of the performance and the price.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Our primary use case for 3PAR is our EMR application. We're in healthcare. We also use it for virtualization. The performance is excellent.

Backups were huge. We take a lot of SAN-level Snapshots and it has been phenomenal in that aspect.

When we bought it, the big sell for us was what they called "wide striping," how they striped the data and could get performance on a cheaper disk. Nowadays, the newer models that are out, which we are going to in the next couple of years, the most valuable feature is mainly being able to achieve such high IOPS in such a small chassis.

In new releases, I'd really like to see it more targeted towards hyperconverged. They are working that way with Greenlake and integrating their own "build your own" expansion environment within 3PAR.

I would like to see some of the InfoSight integration. In the speech today, here at HPE Discover 2018, it was pretty clear that that is where it's heading.

I think it's on track, on the whole, as far as where we're going. I'm probably two years away, maybe less, from a 3PAR purchase. LIkely, by the time I'm ready to buy, it's going to be in there.

We have had one major hardware failure in the last seven years and nothing went down because of it. It was a controller failure. It's a four-node cluster so end-users didn't even notice an impact in performance. Nobody was in a panic besides me. In the end it worked out, they just replaced it.

We're at right around 700 or 750 terabytes raw, and we're about maxed out for the version we're in, without a wholesale swap-out of our drives and drive architecture. From a scalability standpoint, we can add to it but we have to add more controllers. But we're in an older version. The newer versions have gotten better, faster, stronger. Probably the next step is going to be Greenlake and that avenue.

We went from an old XP24k, a long time ago, to an EMC VNX. The EMC storage was cheap on the front-end but expensive on the back-end for maintaining it. It was cheaper for us to jump into another 3PAR than it was to maintain support on the VNX. We quickly moved to 3PAR and we haven't looked back since.

In terms of important criteria in selecting a vendor besides price, we're primarily an HPE shop. I can count on one hand how many other pieces of hardware we have other than HPE: a Palo Alto firewall and maybe a couple of vendor-supplied Dell boxes. I always look to HPE first. If they can't do it, I call and complain to my regional sales VP and he tries his best. Sometimes he can pull one out and get something going for me, but if not then I start looking at others.

I was involved in the initial setup but we did have Professional Services come in and set it up because we didn't have any training at the time. The setup was a while ago, but it took longer to unbox it because our reseller messed up and sold us all the individual boxes for every single drive. So the implementation guy wasn't very happy: four pallets of itty bitty boxes for every single hard drive. But soup to nuts, with that problem in play, the setup took about a week. If he didn't have all that, it probably could have been done in a day.

Overall the setup is very straightforward. It's just like any other enterprise storage. If you set up one you've set them all up, as it were. They're the same idea, different architecture.

From a comparison of bang for the buck, what you get for the money, I'd have to say they are one of the market leaders. Are there solutions that do it faster? Sure, but you're going to pay for it. 3PAR isn't the cheapest, it isn't the most expensive, but in my opinion, it's the best.

We've looked at Pure Storage, we've looked at Kaminario. We've looked at EMC's new VMAX. From a price standpoint, what you get - and with us moving towards VDI and having Synergy frames and SimpliVity on the market - it doesn't really make sense to switch. Do you really want to pull away now after you have invested so much? 

It's a matter of: "They're going down the right path so just keep following it." The reason we jumped ship for VNX back when we did was that, at the time, HPE stepped away from SAN and storage. Those were their bad years of MSA versus EVA and dropping away. They didn't really have an offering that fit that mid-tier storage that we were at. We had to do something. "Once bitten, twice shy", so now we'll look at EMC, we'll look at other vendors, but I always have a feeling we're going to come back to 3PAR.

My current 3PAR, three years ago I would have rated it a 10 out of 10. Today, just because it's aged, I'd give it a solid seven. It's because the drive architecture has changed over the years. Comparing it to the new ones that are out... it comes back to "better, faster, stronger." Without me spending another six figures to swap out hundreds of terabytes of storage, I can't get the added performance. It comes down to me making a critical decision of, "Okay, how do I balance my current IOPS, deliver what I need to deliver to my customer, and still meet the budget?"

• The most valuable feature to me is its reliability. After that, it is the architecture, and the rest of the HPE sort of products, like the blades and the storage.
• You've got the best of breed from a storage perspective, and a proven solution that integrates well with the HPE c7000 or the BladeSystem infrastructure. You have a solution that has been tried and tested by HPE as an overall solution.
• It enables us to use a virtualized layer. Until we deployed our 3PAR, we had pretty much everything as physical servers. With 3PAR, we are in the process of completing the virtualization of our services.

Small companies are interested in simplicity and a very granular licensing model is something that poses a number of challenges.
From the cost perspective, (usually this licensing model is geared towards revenue generating…) it makes it expensive but also from the admin point of view it ends up being cumbersome and difficult to manage. We had a number of issues when ordering an upgrade to existing array due to this licensing model.
Using a small number of bundles or just a single licensing model (like Nimble for example) will make the product more appealing and simplify the process of organizing an upgrade.

Stability-wise, I think it's very good. Support-wise, I think it’s debatable based on some issues that we had with it.

I think the scalability is one of the factors that caused us to select 3PAR.

Technical support was average, and bad handling some incidents.

We were using direct attached storage. We moved to Sun; and then we decided to implement 3PAR.

The initial setup was complex. I would say it was flawed because we had issues.

For the storage, we looked at Talent, which is now Dell. We also looked at Nutanix and Tintri. The main reason we chose HPE was that we already had an HPE infrastructure; and it felt like it was the best solution for our needs. The product met our requirements at the time.

Reliability is very important in a vendor. We also look at the breadth of offerings because we like to keep things simple. Rather than choosing a varied mix from a multitude of vendors, we like to go with a small number. I have a small team and it's easier from a management perspective, as well as understanding and supporting the product in the best way possible.

It all depends on what you need, and how you can justify the cost. It is not a cheap solution. It depends on what you have. If it's a brand new setup, then there are other paths you can take, and it's worth researching them. If you already have HPE deployments in-house on the server side, not the storage, I think 3PAR will definitely make a very great addition to your portfolio.