HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 Reviews

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is a SAN block storage solution designed for massive iSCSI workloads backing VMware infrastructure. It serves as the main storage for our VMware infrastructure, currently managing approximately 750 TB of data, which is slightly less than one petabyte.

We do not move workloads to the cloud. We only move workloads from on-premises to on-premises. We do not migrate between on-premises and cloud environments, as that is not our goal.

As a governmental IT organization, we do not have a traditional line of business or manufacture products. We manage millions of emails across inboxes and mailboxes, manage thousands of IP addresses, and handle security for a large number of users, but we do not have a business line in the commercial sense.

Synchronized replication is the most valuable feature we have found in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. The distributed IO functionality is another important feature. Our clients and hypervisors read data from the exact location where it resides, and IO is distributed between the two SANs for writes. Reads are always performed in real-time and from the correct location, making it very comfortable for massive read operations with high IOPS. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 can manage 1 million IOPS with a small block, which is excellent.

The stretched cluster and replication between two sites are very important for us because we use it in our continuity plan.

Availability is critical for our users, though they are not customers in the traditional sense but researchers who require authentication and mailbox access. We cannot assign a monetary value to their productivity, as if the block storage goes down, there is no price that can compensate for the loss. If we experience even one minute of downtime, it could take a year to recover. A one-minute outage could result in one million days of lost work across our user base. For this reason, 100% availability is important, though even 99.99999999% availability would be acceptable. We evaluated other solutions, and PowerMax offered 100% availability while PowerStore and Pure Storage offered 99.999999% availability, but this was not the main differentiator. Performance and the ability to continue working instantly without downtime or data loss were the main criteria. After testing HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 in production and deliberately crashing the entire SAN to verify it functioned correctly, we confirmed it was the right choice for our needs.

It is difficult to provide specific areas for improvement at this time. We may realize approximately 20% gains in the future, but the previous SAN we used was not very time-consuming, so the improvement is not very significant. We anticipate gains of approximately 10 to 20%.

The management interface could be simplified. The cloud console contains two main sections: one for hardware and one for logical volumes on the LUNs being managed. This split is understandable because the hardware console contains HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 for block storage and HPE Alletra for backup, both accessible in the same console. The separation of the SAN hardware console and the backup console is logical and understandable.

We have four compute nodes, and the system was not designed to shut down gracefully with only two compute nodes remaining. Running with just one compute node functions properly, and the system continues to operate at reduced capacity. However, when we experienced a crash involving half of the system, HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 failed completely. This behavior is documented as normal in the documentation, but we hoped the block storage could manage to run with half the power. This capability will be available in a future release but is not included in the current version. Our testing before moving to production was not entirely successful, but this aligns with the documented specifications. When we perform failover and data center crash tests, the system performs very well. We have deliberately crashed all four compute nodes, and the secondary storage site manages the workload without any virtual machines malfunctioning. This level of reliability is excellent, and it demonstrates why we selected HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. Improvements in this area would make the solution even stronger.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is very new, having been in use for only three months.

We can scale easily because three drawers are not full, allowing us to easily expand to one petabyte or more. We have not yet migrated all workloads to the storage, so we have not achieved the final compression and deduplication factors. We hope the compression will be sufficient for our needs. We have migrated approximately 400 virtual machines out of 1,200 total machines, representing one-third of our workload.

Scalability appears to be strong, with a rating of 9 out of 10 due to the large number of available drawers. However, there are only four compute nodes, whereas PowerMax can have eight compute nodes. If the compute nodes could scale to eight, scalability could be further enhanced. For block storage, the amount of data and performance IOPS are not directly proportional. Some users or customers with large data volumes require very fast access with few writes, while others like us perform massive writes throughout the day and experience read bursts on weekends. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 must be efficient for sustained writes throughout the day and rapid reading during burst periods, which may last approximately six hours. During these six-hour periods, we currently experience approximately 200,000 IOPS, and we expect this to reach approximately 400,000 IOPS within a few months. The storage can manage 1 million IOPS, which is sufficient. Pure Storage was only capable of approximately 600,000 IOPS, which is significantly lower compared to our actual requirements. Our goal is to multiply our capacity by at least two or three times. Currently, we have 100,000 users on the platform, and we plan to expand to 1 million users by the end of the year.

Support management is not straightforward. With Dell, we had direct access to phone support, but with HPE, access is not as simple and support is not always available in French. Although we may not have the correct contact information or links to support, the process was not easy. Currently, we primarily contact the commercial team and work with pre-sales representatives rather than utilizing the formal support process. This is the actual process we follow. Currently, it is difficult to evaluate support effectiveness, as we will be better positioned to assess it in a few months or years. Since we are in production and making adjustments during the integration phase, it is not straightforward to fully evaluate at this time. A rating of 8 seems appropriate.

We previously used Compellent from Dell.

Compellent is no longer available, and the alternatives were much more expensive. PowerMax could not manage the millions of small IOs we required for read operations, as it had a cap. We verified the documentation for Pure Storage and confirmed that Pure was unable to match the IOPS performance of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 can achieve this performance because it has four compute nodes. With only two compute nodes, HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 can close the performance gap between itself and PowerMax, but four compute nodes are required to exceed PowerMax performance. Of course, HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 cannot compete with very high-end block storage solutions because they operate in a different price range.

We completed the initial setup with the HPE customer engineer. We were in the same data center and worked together on-site, sitting on the floor with a laptop to complete the setup. The initial setup for block storage was easier compared to HPE Alletra backup, which was very complicated. The connection between the HPE cloud console and HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 was not easy to establish. Documentation for this process was not comprehensive. We were sometimes asked to open specific TCP ports to establish communication between the cloud platform and HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. Once the communication was established, everything functioned properly. We could then manage the system through the cloud console, CLI, or the GUI of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

At this time, a rating of 8 seems appropriate because we have not tested the system under real production conditions with a large mass of users. The workload we have migrated includes 400 virtual machines, but we have not yet moved the main workload. In one or two years, we hope to confirm that HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is performing perfectly, at which point we could assign a rating of 9 or 10. For now, 8 is the appropriate rating. Management capabilities may evolve in the future, but at this time, 8 is the appropriate rating. My overall review rating for HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is 8 out of 10.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 offers two types of storage solutions. One is MPX, which is object-based storage, and another one is MP B10000. B stands for block storage, and X is for object-based storage environments.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is the new 10000 series, whereas earlier versions were the 5000 and 6000 series, which are now out of sale. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 comes in two forms. One is 10000 B, which is pure SAN block storage, while another is MP 10000 X, the object-based storage. For AI purposes, X is the best fit if the data is related to that environment, while for virtualizations or databases, I recommend B, which is meant for structured data.

Regarding time-saving aspects, I can integrate HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 with a total HPE environment. I can use the HPE VMware Essential option, which is side integrated and allows me to save money on VMware solutions. Earlier, since VMware was acquired by Dell, licenses became costlier based on previous licensing policies, but HP released a VMware solution to run different ERP applications. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 always provides better IOPS than others, allowing me to achieve the hypervisor layer on Alletra and storage and the servers, creating multiple VMs in that environment.

I have already deployed this in an IT company where I set up AI for classes by deploying HP servers and HP storage. On top of that, I installed the VMware hypervisor and then created the VMs, putting in multiple GPUs within the systems and connecting HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 through the SAN switches only.

I deployed HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 into a hybrid architecture with the help of VMware, allowing couple of VMs to move to the public cloud and come back from public cloud to on-premises.

In using HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, the deployment depends totally on the workload. If the workload is hybrid for AI and for virtualizations or pure block-based architecture, it is easy to scale, which is one benefit of using HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is meant for structured data, specifically for SAP, ERP, and Oracle databases, where high transactional structured data is needed. If the environment relates to PFS or AI, then I should use X instead of B.

I deployed an 18-node cluster, setting up two HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 nodes over the SAN switches. Initially, for nine of the nodes, I ran VMware, and for eight nodes, I ran the Proxmox virtualization solution to create the cluster. It is easier and not complex, allowing me to migrate data running in the existing environment with the help of a third-party tool or, if the environment runs on VMware or Nutanix, I can migrate through the proprietary Move application of Nutanix.

Regarding HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, its best feature is scalability. I can scale up to petabytes, and the data footprint size is lesser than others.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is easy to scale, available in both horizontal and vertical formats, and is always dependent on the controller level. I have to put it in the controller and then easily scale, allowing me to increase compute as well as disk simultaneously. In that environment, the IOPS will always increase in comparison to horizontally scaled.

From a maintenance and management perspective, HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 has helped to reduce the amount of time I spend on storage management.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is basically a high throughput, high bandwidth solution that provides millions of IOPS. If the IOPS is high, then obviously the latency is very low, allowing me to run multiple VMs on that particular storage without any downtime. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 provides a guarantee of 100% availability.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 provides 100% data availability. Earlier, this was only available with the Hitachi system, and now Alletra offers 100% data availability.

With the help of QoS functionality, I can assign limitations for dedicated IOPS-hungry applications. I can enable QoS to achieve the required IOPS for that particular application, and I do not think there is a challenge related to IOPS or performance.

The reason behind this is that HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is providing 100% data availability. If one controller fails, then data is accessible through the second controller.

I think there are some issues to enhance in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. In HP, there is no NAS as of now. Earlier, there was a NAS, but they stopped the unified boxes, creating challenges with customers. For enterprise customers, it is better to keep the environment separate, but for SMB customers, they should introduce unified boxes so that customers can easily use SAN/NAS functionality.

That function is not available in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. It is available in Dell PowerStore and NetApp. If the customer's requirement is pure NAS, in that environment, I cannot suggest HP solutions. If the customer asks for a unified box in an RFP, I have to go to alternative OEMs like NetApp.

As I mentioned, NetApp is known for the unified feature. In HP, there is no option to provide a unified box. If the requirement is for object storage or pure SAN, HP will best fit that environment. In NetApp, there are limitations on the SMB customer side due to the need for iSCSI switches between servers and storage. In contrast, with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, I can connect directly to the switches.

I have not received any performance issues with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. It is stable.

I have never called HPE technical support, as most issues can be resolved through publicly available articles. For hardware issues, I raised a ticket, and since Alletra is a critical appliance, I have critical appliance support, which ensures that faulty hardware is replaced within a four-hour timeline.

In HP, I would rate the tech support a nine, as sometimes the queue length is lengthy, requiring me to hold the call for clarifications.

Overall, I would rate the tech support a nine.

I have experience on other competitors like HP, so I worked on HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, which is basically a competitor of StoreOnce appliances.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 deployment experience is not difficult. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is much easier to deploy, and there is no challenge with the deployment of Alletra solutions.

ROI with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 depends on the use case, number of VMs, and infrastructure type. It cannot be justified solely on the number of nodes; it always depends on the use case.

Licensing in NetApp has two types: basic and advanced. The basic does not include functionalities such as snapshots, immutability, or ransomware protections, while advanced licensing supports data protection against ransomware.

I do not have that option on this for managing and monitoring the global block storage environment from HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000's single cloud console.

I do not think I have an answer regarding whether HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 enables line of business or DB admins to self-provision storage.

I do not have such data or examples on how much this ability has helped in lowering storage costs.

RPO/RTO should be minimal, and for that, I always have a DR solution to achieve that RPO/RTO.

If I require RPO/RTO zero with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, I have to synchronize, requiring two boxes with synchronized replication. Both storage units must confirm each other's status, and to mitigate RPO/RTO, I need to use synchronous and have both boxes available on dark fiber.

I would rate this review a 10.

On HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, we create new LUNs and provide them to the Windows team and Linux team for their usage. They store the data as needed. During network activity, we bring nodes down and keep them down for safety. Since I am new to HPE, these are the two tasks I will be working on.

The most valuable feature of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is that it is very easy to understand compared to other storage solutions, and the commands are also straightforward. I have mostly worked on CLI, which is the command line interface, more than the GUI. It was easy for me to find the commands, and if I need help, the system will show me which commands I can use. The interface is good and useful for newcomers as well.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 reduced the time required for my work. I have worked on other technologies where LUN creation or similar tasks on CLI would take two to three hours, but with HPE, it takes only 30 minutes to 45 minutes. Compared to other storage solutions, it gave me significantly less time to work.

Regarding how HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 helps reduce the time required for storage provisioning, it depends on the size. If it is a TB, it will take two to three hours. If it is smaller, such as GB or MB, it will be completed in one hour. The speed is good, and it is a background operation, so there will be no interruption for other activities. We can have safe time.

Managing and monitoring my global block storage environment from HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000's single cloud console is somewhat complex. If one node is down, we cannot bring the other node down without bringing the first node up. I encountered difficulties because there was network activity, and we needed to bring both nodes down so it would not affect network activity. I brought one node down, and when I tried bringing the second one down, it gave me an alert. When the first one is down, we cannot bring the other one down. Instead, we need to bring both of them down at the same time. I felt difficulties in this scenario because it did not show me that we need to bring both of them down. When I was bringing controller one down, it did not indicate that we need to bring both of them down. This was a difficulty I found.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 does not enable self-provisioning for me.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 can improve in the GUI. When I worked on it, I was unable to find where I needed to go to find something. There was not much help available. If I needed to check the controller status or volume status, I was unable to find that information. I needed to go into something and only there was I able to find that. I could find the volumes or LUNs only inside the node. The interface could be improved or changed.

I have been working with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 for ten months.

In terms of the ability to scale capacity and performance independently on HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 and its impact on my operations and storage cost reduction, we did not have much impact because we have only less storage in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 compared to others. We have only five devices in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. On the performance level, we would get link errors, such as some PCI link errors, which would create an impact, but it would be resolved in two to three minutes, or mostly it would take ten minutes and resolve on its own. There is not much impact or performance issue we have faced in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

My experience with technical support for HPE has been that we have raised cases only for the upgrades we received. If we received any alerts which were false alerts, we had a discussion with the vendor by raising a case and resolved it. The most received incident was a PCI link canister issue, which is a node canister issue. For that, we had a case with the vendor and resolved it. For upgrades, we depend on the vendor to get the correct version and the compatibility version. We had a discussion with the vendor regarding this. I would rate them a seven because most of the time, after raising a case, we will get the update from them after twenty-four hours. They are not available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If we send an email, they will reply a few hours late. There will be a delay, so I am rating them a seven. Other than that, the work will be done, but it will get delayed.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000's AI-driven predictive analytics and performance reporting has not been implemented. We have not done any automation for that. We receive the alerts and handle them ourselves with a human touch.

For disaster recovery with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, I have not found any issue because we had only a few devices. We had a plan for the DR activity with a proactive plan in which we can get it resolved within two hours based on the other team members' contribution. Based on the Windows and Linux teams, they would complete their part, and after that, it would come to our part, the storage part. In the storage part, we need only one hour to resolve that. It is because our storage is not high priority or low priority, and it is not dependent on them. It is dependent on the users who are using it because it depends on the Windows and Linux servers they are using and the users who are accessing this storage. Even if it is low priority or high priority, it depends on the users. It matters in this situation. We need that flexibility.

I would rate this solution an eight overall.

The central use case for our clients using HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is very wide because, in the partner space, the use case for BFSI is different from that of healthcare. Basically, this is to boost the IT ecosystem.

The biggest advantage of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 for me is its integration with HPE GreenLake because most of the things are moving towards AI workload, and HPE has performed well when it comes to heavy workloads.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 saves time on storage management. It is very simple to manage and monitor the global block storage environment with the single cloud console because whether you are using private cloud or public cloud with HPE, it becomes very easy. HPE has made it easy for the end user to manage the HPE ecosystem, even providing an on-premises experience almost like that in the cloud.

It is very easy to move workloads from on-premises to the cloud and back. The ability to scale capacity and performance independently with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 does not impact operations minimally and actually helps lower costs for the end user.

Most of our clients are usually in AWS, but you might also find them in other environments or even private cloud environments.

I find AI, including predictive analytics and performance reporting, to be very beneficial within HPE solutions. With AI and automation, it is easier to diagnose problems as it can even detect and resolve issues automatically. This seamless operation allows processes to continue while problems are addressed without impacting operations.

A hundred percent data availability guarantee is important for our clients' operations and business, especially in the age of data where assurance that data is safeguarded is beneficial to both the technical team and the executives.

There are areas for improvement in support, and they still have potential to be better.

The two problems I distinguished are support, which has potential to improve, and hard disk failures, which have been my main encounters with the product.

I have been in the HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 space for a while now. I have been selling it from twenty twenty, which is roughly five to six years.

Whether HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is 99.9% stable depends on the design you have in your environment.

I recall an issue with hard disk failures, but HPE has a business NBD support system in place, making it simple to get support in case of technical hardware failures.

I would rate the stability of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 a 9.999.

Scalability is very easy with the product, as there are no limitations on scaling.

It is very easy to scale up or scale out for the client. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 does have several flexible options for scalability, and HPE has a new product coming up that minimizes recovery points.

I do not have any complaints regarding customer service or tech support.

I would rate the support a 7.8. The 7.8 rating comes from the fact that sometimes the sales aspect inhibits the delivery of support, although generally, we are okay with it.

I find the integration, interface, and deployment of HPE products to be very seamless. It is one of the products that I find operates up to date with technology, and licensing is also straightforward.

We follow the HPE recommended process for deployment, which makes it very seamless. We also have local support, so in case we face challenges, we are able to get support quickly. I would not say deployment is very difficult, although sometimes you do experience challenges, which is normal not only for HPE but even for other vendors.

Currently, apart from now being the trainer, I am using the products for my trainings as a learner. I moved from the training part, and right now, I am in a partner reseller space for the IT OEM.

We are selling both HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 and other IT storage products including compute storage and backups. We are reselling HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 series.

I do not have any disadvantages of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 in mind unless I think about it and figure something out. Our clients usually have a hybrid model with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, and we position those particular solutions based on the end user requirements and needs.

The RPO and RTO are very low, sometimes even less than five minutes. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is cheaper when it comes to the cost of acquisition.

I would rate this review a 9 overall.

My use cases for Alletra Storage MP B10000 primarily include the data stores on the VMware cluster and also SAP, as we have an SAP on-premise that provides a different array to supply the storage for the SAP servers, while everything else throughout the globe serves as data storage for VMware.

The feature of Alletra Storage MP B10000 that I appreciate the most is the product line, especially since the Alletra MP is bringing to bear quite a lot of features that are important in the different plans, including file services, block storage, file, and everything. The older storage products we have were limited to just block storage, and we're really excited about the Alletra MP and where that's going to go, which we plan to continue when we do our data center refresh next year with a much larger array.

An example of how the features of Alletra Storage MP B10000 have been benefiting my organization is through the reliability and stability we experience, as the engineering team that takes care of it, plus my team that reports up to me, are very comfortable with the technology, which has been reliable, and HPE's support has been fantastic. Anytime we have issues, such as a failed drive or code updates, they are very helpful, and I think part of that is brought to us by the GreenLake program, having that dedicated team to keep us aware of updates, but generally, we have experienced reliability with no failures.

I would like to see Alletra Storage MP B10000 improved in terms of the program's speed, as the administration, creation of change orders, issuance of those orders, and shipping of products take a while. There's a backend machine that HPE has to go through, and we shared with them a month ago at a user group that we want to see improvements in the efficiency of that backend, as no questions arise about the technology, it's really just the paperwork required to get a contract out that is a little slow.

The solution's scaling abilities affect the operation of my business significantly, as I see it as a key feature that prevents us from being locked into a certain maximum size, and with the Alletra MP, we are able to scale quite large.

I would rate the support I've received from HPE a nine, simply for the fact that no one's quite perfect, but concerning the storage itself, they're pretty damn close to perfect.

Positive

I cannot speak to the solutions I considered prior to switching to Alletra Storage MP B10000, as that was a long time before my time, but this year I reevaluated what we were doing and why, ensuring our pricing was lined up with the market by evaluating both servers and storage technology as well as the intangibles of each vendor's support organization, leading me to the comfortable conclusion that HPE still remains the best choice for us.

I have seen a return on investment, which is a little more nuanced, as with Alletra Storage MP B10000 being an operational expense allows me to do a lot more with fewer dollars, spread over the course of the contract, and that helps bring new technology in or expand what I need to, compared to capital costs.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been generally favorable, as the account team is pretty strong and experienced. They do their best to get the machine out, and regarding pricing, this year I compared it with other vendors, and HPE is still on par with what the other vendors have out there, so I'm comfortable with the pricing.

The main point that made me come to that realization is some of the intangibles. While pricing is on par and we know what we'll pay whether we go with Dell or stay with HPE, the team that takes care of our organization has been doing so for the last 10 years, providing on-site support quickly to replace parts, fix issues, and help us troubleshoot, with my account rep Rick Beltz and his team having the necessary resources. He keeps us updated and we have routine meetings about new technology, along with events like Discover allowing us opportunities to meet other customers as well as HPE and partners to find resources.

I am not using or managing my storage AI scale through Alletra Storage MP B10000 at this point, as we do not have an AI presence yet. It is still in development, though the storage we have, especially in the MP line, gives us that foundation, and we're ensuring that when we refresh, we refresh with the proper storage to enable that, while we are still defining what our use cases are for AI.

The solution's data reduction technology has reduced our data center power costs. I cannot specify the exact amount, but I can say that we average about a 2 to 2.5 to 3-to-1 reduction, which obviously reduces the amount of storage required and results in less power being needed because we don't require as much storage.

The importance of having independent scaling of performance and capacity for my storage system lies in serving different workloads, as I can configure the various workloads to take advantage of the processing power within the arrays.

My deployment model for Alletra Storage MP B10000 is all on-prem today, while one of the key areas we're looking at during our current visit is the hybrid cloud, with Azure Local being another key theme of the Discover event regarding HPE's collaboration with Microsoft.

I rate Alletra Storage MP B10000 9 plus out of 10.

The usual use cases for HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 are virtualization with Hyper-V or VMware. Many customers who have Nimble systems transition to HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 when needed.

The features and capabilities of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 that I have found most valuable include very good and fast hardware controllers and CPUs. The new systems have features similar to the old Nimble, such as virtual lock or ransomware snapshots to save the data.

Regarding the predictive analytics feature of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, you can analyze information over the DSCC, the Data Center Cloud Console, where you can see a lot of information to indicate whether the system has had problems or not

In my opinion, it helps optimize data management for the customers fairly well, though I have no definitive assessment.

When the system first came out, it had some problems with the Data Center Cloud Console, which made implementation difficult. However, I have implemented it over the last four months, and it works very easily. The implementation in the Data Center Cloud Console and the startup and configuration is very easy, working similarly to the old Nimble OS systems.

Since last year, I have been working with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 as my new storage systems are an alternative to the Nimble Storage systems, while the Nimble Storage systems are set to be out of sold next year, and the support ends in 2027.

The stability and reliability level of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is very good. We have had no support calls with the systems that we have sold to our customers, and the hardware is very stable. We have no problems.

Regarding my experience with the scalability of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, it has been very good. It is very easy to adapt more storage on the system for additional resources. Upgrading from a smaller controller to a more powerful one is straightforward for enhancing speed, or you can extend the network ports. Scalability is very good and accommodating for resource management.

I do not often communicate with the technical support of HPE. Normally, with the Nimble systems and with HPE Alletra MPs or HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 with Nimble OS, we have not had many support cases in the last years. The systems work very well and easily, and we have no major issues. It is usually a disk failure or a firmware update issue, which can be resolved with an email to Nimble support.

Neutral

My usual experience with the initial setup and deployment of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is that it is very easy. You have a small app to connect the system to the internet, and before you implement the serial number and activation key in the DSCC, you assign the IP addresses in the app, and they connect to the cloud console, allowing the system to be up and running. It is very easy to name and set the IP addresses.

I am an integrator with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. We are a system house and we have customers. We integrate the systems and provide them to the customer.

The pricing of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, in my opinion, is acceptable. The normal prices are very high, but in projects, it is manageable. We win projects with this system, and I find it acceptable. Our customers pay the price, and I think it is a bit more reasonable compared to the older Nimble systems. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is not so expensive.

The usual price of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is suitable for all users, including different sizes of users. When we have projects, we look at what the system or what the people really need. Many people who buy from us have VMware systems, so we need to consider VMware's high pricing, but typically, the storage price is not the problem. Software prices are actually the bottleneck in projects.

I do not know much about the intelligent data management system of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 as we are still implementing the system and providing it to the customer, but we are not deeply engaged with the system for analytics or other things. While we implement and provide it to the customer, it works well.

I do not have any experience with autonomous resource optimization of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

The performance of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 with high-performance workloads is very good. The new controllers with the system and the software are very fast, and we have no performance issues when we change to it from other hardware.

My customers prefer a hybrid deployment of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. Many customers start with hybrid systems, having a portion on-premises and a portion in the cloud, such as Azure or AWS. They consider the prices to determine the best approach. Many move from on-premises Exchange to Office 365, reducing the need for on-premises resources, and similarly with SAP, they host SAP in the cloud instead of on-premises.

I would rate this review as a nine out of ten.

I'm working with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 and Alletra MP, and I have hands-on experience working with the MP. As a Solutions Manager for HPE solutions, I have already proposed Alletra MP for many solutions as it is multipurpose.

I use it for many situations including SAP HANA and virtualization infrastructures, as well as with mission-critical solutions such as Oracle database.

The management and operation of Alletra MP is straightforward, and it already has a protected system to optimize the performance and configuration. The storage management aspect is excellent.

The availability for hardware in the MP storage is great, so I can scale the storage at any time. The controllers for blocks are the same controllers for files, which makes it a good hardware availability for both.

It is simple to manage the storage from the cloud with one dashboard to see all my storage system. The solution enables me to move workloads from on-premises to the cloud and back. In some cases, the business does not have a big team on IT staff or specific IT for the storage system, and only the management for storage is handled by an IT manager or IT infrastructure manager. It is simple to manage the storage and fast in operation.

The solution enables line of business or database admins to self-provision storage. Creating or editing any volume requires simple steps. It is also simple to scale or to add hard disks for capacity, which positively impacts my operations. I feel that it is cost-effective and helps to lower the storage costs. The main best feature of Alletra MP is that I can scale from mid-range storage to high end easily.

The 100% availability guarantee is important to my clients, for sure. Some customers are looking for 100% availability to run their mission-critical applications. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 takes advantage of Nimble DNA, which is a super feature and provides the best experience in the world. For the performance, it is wonderful and provides maximum performance that gives the user experience with virtualization or many applications such as databases or ERP systems. Regarding effective capacity or usable capacity, it is really the best effective with RAID 6 and the spare.

Maybe they need to create a new line or basic line such as MSA for a small business. I have no idea at this time for a missing feature or something that needs to be added in the future.

For MP, I have worked with it for two years, but for Alletra, maybe four or five years for Alletra products.

Until now, I have not had an incident for any failure on the MP.

I find it scalable with options to scale up and scale out, which is awesome.

I think HPE tech support is good and fair enough, but there is a need to enhance it or to provide more engineering support at the Egypt service center because HPE might not have many resources, and they look for authorized partners to solve customer problems, which can depend on the partner engineer's capability. I rate tech support as 8 out of 10.

Positive

For the deployment of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, it is easy and not complex, and it does not need much time or a long time. It is simple and needs a small amount of time. The initial startup or installation is straightforward with no complexities. For the Alletra, I think within two hours including the hardware installation is needed for the initial setup. I think it takes within 20 minutes for the initial configuration or startup of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

I think Dell EMC PowerStore is also a competitor to the MP, but in the small range such as PowerStore 500T, it is hard to compete with Alletra because of the price differentiation between the two vendors. The features provided focus on unified storage; however, when we talk about MP, we must have controllers for block and block controllers for object and controllers for file, which makes us have a competitive advantage against Dell EMC.

In Egypt, sometimes the vendor has to give the customer maximum discount and aggressive discount to win the deal and grab many logos and references, but I think the account managers and sales team in HPE Egypt are not looking for this point as aggressively as Dell EMC account managers. When we evaluate if the MP storage is cost-effective or not, we look at many factors because every customer has a limited budget, and perhaps sometimes they go to the smallest range because of financial constraints.

The sustainability goals in Egypt focus on electricity and low power usage. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is a good choice for customers looking for IT sustainability certification or wanting to see this in their product choices. Perhaps they are looking for large capacity with the best IOPS or highest IOPS.

With enterprise customers or mission-critical applications such as banking, we definitely need to recover everything without any losses, and sometimes we have to propose Zerto to the customer. It is a wonderful product, but it needs enhancements to be compatible with many systems. I do not know if it is compatible with Nutanix or not to replicate between HPE and Nutanix or VMware and Nutanix. It definitely needs more research and development in Zerto to improve compatibility with various vendors.

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 as 8 out of 10 because the feature for unified storage will be awesome for generating a new generation of unified controllers in the MP.

We are the partner of HPE as a Gold Partner of HPE storage solutions. We potentially use it for critical applications. The major use case is for critical applications and 100% data availability guarantee. The ability to scale capacity exists because it is a scale-out architecture. When we design, we understand from the customer how much they require in scalability in terms of the future. We will design the entire solution based on certain design consideration criteria available in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 solutions. If a customer requires more than four nodes or eight nodes, then there are certain criteria we have to meet. It is a scale-out architecture, so the customer can easily scale out whenever they require.

The biggest advantage of the product is the 100% availability guarantee from HPE regarding the solutions. We have deployed the entire solution wherever we deploy in active-active mode, which means persistence mode. Our data is available anytime, anywhere between DC and DR.

It is very easy to manage the solution. The solution has reduced the amount of time that I spend on storage management because HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 comes with the InfoSight solutions, and they provide all kinds of predictive analysis and reports. Management is very easy, and whenever any issue occurs, they automatically trigger the mail. So we get to know that this has happened in the storage, and we will take corrective action.

It is simple. It is basically a simple storage operation through cloud management. We are managing all of that through a single cloud console. Having a single cloud console is a good advantage.

If we have integrated the solution with the cloud provider, we can easily move workloads from on-premises to the cloud and back. We did not configure this kind of scenario, but it is very easy once you configure it properly between the cloud and your devices.

It enables a line of business or DB admins to self-provision storage.

In file protocols regard, an area for improvement exists.

I started using this solution two years back.

The product is more than 99.9% stable.

The solution helps to lower the storage cost for the client because every time, they do not have to change or look after another solution. If they come across a new requirement in terms of an application coming into their environment and they require certain storage space, then you can easily scale out, and they can easily have their desired requirement available.

We are very satisfied with HPE services. The solution is eventually worth buying.

I have worked with Hitachi, NetApp, and Dell. Each and every product has its own pros and cons. Each product is very good, but there are certain aspects in terms of customers choosing any product based on trust, deliverability, and features and functionality. In the market we cater to, they are very trusted partners, so people are choosing HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 for that.

The initial setup is very easy; if any engineer knows how to deploy any storage, he can easily deploy the entire storage. Once it is deployed, it runs very smoothly, so it hardly consumes any time of any administrator. More than 30 to 40% time can be saved.

In current days, we cannot tell about the cost saving because SSD and NVMe or chipset pricing is increasing day by day. However, in normal scenarios, almost 20% or maybe 30% cost savings can definitely be achieved.

The pricing is fair, and at the end of the day, each and every customer will negotiate very hard with the OEM and get fair pricing.

Currently, we are also a partner for Dell and have a very good relationship with NetApp, working on multiple projects. We are basically a system integrator, so we choose any solution based on customer needs, designing an entire solution to deploy at the customer's place.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 model supports both block and file protocols, but there are certain conditions in terms of using the file protocols. They are not coming up with 100% file protocol solutions, so a certain capacity can be used in terms of file protocols.

Everything else is fine. We have deployed more than five to six scenarios for it, and to date, we have not encountered any challenges in terms of availability, working, or performance.

As for the disaster recovery option, we have deployed HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 in Peer Persistence mode, which can be described as a zero RPO/RTO kind of scenario. It works in a metro cluster kind of scenario, near DR, and we have deployed this solution with VMware virtualization solutions. They integrate very well with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, where we can easily achieve zero RPO/RTO time in a near DR scenario.

AI is required for predictive analytics. It can easily predict if there are any hardware issues or failures coming up. For example, a hard disk is going to fail in the near future or the storage is going to be full in the near future. Predictive analysis will help any system administrator or CIO in planning their future budget, and it also aids in health monitoring and anomaly detection.

I have given this review a rating of 9 out of 10.

For my use cases with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, I am trying to replace the existing 3PAR, so a primary use case would be to configure it as block storage for application servers and other enterprise-class applications. I configure it as block storage and provide the space, which is the current use case for HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

Apart from this, I do not have any other use cases yet.

For my one year of experience with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, one positive aspect is that it is very similar to the 3PAR array, which means I am already familiar with all the commands and functionalities. It is not a brand new model that requires me to learn everything from scratch; it feels almost like the latest 3PAR model, and it includes a cloud portal through which I can manage multiple arrays from the internet without needing to log into each individual array for allocation or other tasks.

Regarding the time saved on storage management with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, it has significantly reduced my time because previously, I needed to log into each storage for allocations, but now I have a central console that allows me to access all storage systems without logging in separately. If I calculate the time saved in percentage terms, it has reduced by around 30%.

One area that has potential for improvement is the replication side, as Alletra Direct GUI does not provide options to view replication details. While the DSCC portal offers this information, it is not available in the integrated GUI.

I have been using HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 for the last one year.

I do not see any glitches, bugs, or hardware problems with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000; everything has been functioning well over the past year without any required downtime.

I believe HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is a scalable tool, though there are some limitations on how much I can extend capacity. However, for the projects I have worked on, it has met my requirements thus far in terms of capacity.

Technical support from HP is excellent, as I can open cases directly through the portal or by calling in, which has been a problem-free experience. From my perspective, I would rate the support at nine out of ten points.

Positive

I have not worked with any other storage products similar to HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 from other vendors.

My experience with deploying HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is straightforward, with no complexity involved.

I am working for a client as a customer, and I am a service provider, not just a partner of HP.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 enables line-of-business users and database administrators to self-provision storage easily. The solution definitely helps to reduce the time required for storage provisioning and management. The reduction in time for storage provisioning and management is also around 30%.

Regarding scalability and its impact on operations and storage costs, there is a dual-controller model in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, allowing me to touch one loop at a time without any impact. HP claims that upgrades can be done online without downtime. Currently, I do not see any area for improvement in HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, as I believe it is a good product without any bugs or problems.

Regarding disaster recovery, I do have flexible options for the recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO). This flexibility is important because it allows for easy configurations, and I can set up replication between arrays or make other adjustments quickly through the cloud portal, enhancing efficiency.

Regarding my sustainability goals, HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 supports these goals effectively. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 makes achieving sustainability goals possible because it is compact compared to the 3PAR, eliminating the need for a complete 4U rack, and it also enables deduplication and compression, reducing power and cooling needs, as well as space in the rack.

I would rate this solution nine out of ten points.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is primarily used for managing data storage needs. The usual use cases involve all storage being generally used for the storage of computing operations and data that is required for a process. The host provides the capacity to host the application that we run on the storage. HPE Alletra Storage is used for many purposes.

The features of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 that I prefer most include its performance. These features have benefited my organization by meeting our capacity requirements. If you are growing and your data and capacity are growing, that definitely helps to provide the capacity while adding the disk shelf or a different controller plus disk shelf. The performance level of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 impacts our organization's processes by enhancing operational efficiency.

The main point for choosing HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 over the vendors we compared it with is the costing, which is much lower compared to the others. Currently, I believe HPE Alletra is giving good performance, and reliability totally depends on how many hardware failures we are getting. It could be a good solution, but the performance and reliability depend on how the hardware is sustained for a longer duration, including the controllers and everything.

I have never used the feature of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 to move workloads from on-premises to the cloud and back.

I have been working with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 for about six months.

I have never been in a situation where we tried to scale HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. Currently, every storage vendor in the market is very scalable. You can scale in or scale out at any time without interruptions. I believe HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 will help in a similar way, but I have never dealt with the situation where I needed to scale the storage.

We often reach out to the technical support team of HPE. My experiences with them have been quite flexible, and their response was good because every company and vendor is working on some SLA parts. According to the priority of the ticket, we get the response and solutions when we are facing any issues, so it is quite good. I would rate the technical support from HPE about eight to nine, which would be a great solution.

Positive

Before using HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, I worked with many other technologies for the same use cases. We actually worked on many technologies and vendors like EMC, which is Dell now, IBM, NetApp, and some others that are the market leaders we already worked with apart from HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.

I have never been a part of the initial setup and deployment of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. The deployment was done by the HPE team, and we got the handover storage after configuration. We do implement things like host mapping and everything.

The decision to switch to HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is completely a business decision about what we are trying to achieve within a lower cost.

I am not sure about the pricing of HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 because I never dealt with the pricing part. I am not aware of whether we purchased HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 via AWS Marketplace or any other marketplace because the purchasing team is different.

Managing and monitoring our global block storage environment from HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000's single cloud console is perfectly fine, although I have never seen this feature in practice. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 enables line of business or database admins to self-provision storage.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is on-premises in our organization and we use it as an on-premises device.

I believe we can achieve the targeted RPO and RTO with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. The flexibility of RPO and RTO with HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 is important because it gives you confidence and customer satisfaction when providing a certain limit of SLA for RTO and RPO within a timeframe.

I would rate this review with an overall rating of eight out of ten.