HPE Alletra Storage Reviews

We primarily use the solution for our block storage for VDI and VMware.

Speed-wise, we went all flash, so it's really reduced our user issues with VDI and some other things we're using.

The usability is very good. It's really easy to use, especially with the DHCI. It's very easy to upgrade and maintain.

There's unlimited lifetime on their arrays where you can keep upgrading.

It provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. 

Day to day, we really don't have to touch it as it runs. As far as operations, it's made it a lot easier to manage and set things up and delegate those tasks to junior engineers now instead of having to do it all myself.

It has helped reduce the time spent on storage provisioning.

The product has helped use time spent resolving storage-related support tickets.

The licensing could always be cheaper. 

I've been using the solution for probably ten years. 

The solution is stable. I'd rate it ten out of ten.

The solution is scalable to a degree.

Technical support and customer support are excellent.

Positive

We did look at Nutanix. We had previous experience with this solution, and we already had existing arrays. I also liked the DHCI stack with the conversion infrastructure.

The support team is excellent. They take ownership of tickets and save us a lot of hassle. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It offers good usability and support. It's been a good product overall. 

We primarily use the solution for virtual machines and hypervisors. We use it mainly in data centers. 

The solution has provided us with a solution that is reliable and cost-effective. 

The reliability is very good. 

It's cost-efficient compared to other competitors. We noted the cost-benefit almost immediately. The reliability and consistency benefits that we appreciate took a few months to appear.

We've also used the solution InfoSight with this product.

The guarantee of data availability is very important to us, and this solution is very good in that regard. We store transactional data on it. 

The capacity efficiency is excellent. 

Its ledger helps us simplify storage operations such as provisioning and day-to-day management. 

The solution provides us with a cloud-like operation model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. We were planning on moving to the cloud. However, this has given us a good alternative. We get to own everything yet keep our data center. It helps mitigate security complications that come with the cloud and also helps with latency issues with networking.

It provides predictable performance and capacity for applications without sacrificing data integrity. It's helped us reduce the time we spend on capacity planning. It's also less complicated to manage than the alternatives. It's also been able to reduce our data management operation expenses by possibly around 10%.

The energy usage could be further improved. Generally speaking, if it uses less energy than the alternatives, it would be great.

I've been using the solution for two years. 

The stability is good; it's better than the industry standard.

While I can't say for sure if the solution provides modular, non-disruptive capabilities to scale up and scale out, my understanding is that it does. 

We've only talked to technical support once. They were very good. 

Positive

We have also used Pure, and offerings from Dell and NetApp. There were some features from Pure that are helpful.

The learning curve on the deployment is a bit high. That said, overall, it was relatively easy. We had three people involved in the setup on the storage side and then on the backroom side, we had about eight people, so we had 11 people in total working on the product. It took a couple of months to fully deploy. While it does require monitoring, there isn't much maintenance needed. 

We generally handled the solution in-house with some help from HP. 

We're a customer and end-user. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

New users should first do their homework and lay out what their needs are before they jump in and make a purchasing choice. 

Our main use cases for HPE Alletra Storage are strictly for block storage, with no SMB, no NFS, no SAN replication, snapshots, or anything; it's strictly block.

One example of how the features of HPE Alletra Storage benefited my organization is the Nimble reliability. We had a single hard drive failure with all the other units we had, and we got a notification saying, 'Hey, we've detected a hard drive failure. Parts coming out.' It arrived the next day, and it was good.

The features of HPE Alletra Storage that I most prefer are its speed, as we were having issues with some of our VMs running into wait time on the older all-flash unit, and moving to the new Alletra's fixed the issue with no tweaking, no tuning, and it's awesome—basically set and forget, as Nimble has always been.

HPE Alletra Storage scales with the growing needs of my organization, eliminating the planning for growth since it tells me, 'You have this amount of capacity, this is your deduplication, we estimate you could throw on this many VMs or this amount of storage.' I just sign into the stats page and see what I can do.

Regarding capacity planning, HPE Alletra Storage has helped us. We used the calculator on the website to figure out what we would need, and when we started moving over the VMs, we were surprised with more caching and deduplication than we had on the other units, so now we don't have to think about capacity.

I would assess HPE Alletra Storage's capacity efficiency as good. It was only half-populated when we purchased it, allowing us to buy additional disks and slide them into place as we've done with the Nimble's in the past.

Our usage of HPE Alletra Storage is unique. We just use it as two standalone units for block storage, without replication or a metro cluster. I wouldn't say HPE Alletra Storage has reduced our data management operations expenses since we spec'd it out with the size we needed and with the projected growth.

HPE Alletra Storage offers a cloud-operational model on-premises for managing data infrastructure through GreenLake, as the web interface provides access to the GUI, which features the same interface as the rest of the HPE website.

To improve HPE Alletra Storage, a couple of things could be addressed. This is more on the support side, as the initial cost is for a very large company. Especially for smaller companies, it would be nice if there were more disk add-ons or incentives, such as 'If you buy our system with our forever warranty, you get new controllers every three years.'

We have been using HPE Alletra Storage since it was still Nimble before HPE bought them, and we went through the CS100, 300, the hybrid flash, the all-flash, and then the Alletra, which we got last year around March.

I assess the stability and reliability of HPE Alletra Storage as good. It works just as the Nimble's have, and we haven't had any issues; it's basically set it and forget it.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support for HPE Alletra Storage as good. We ran into a small issue with some licenses that came through email not working for whatever reason, and we had to get a couple of different technical people involved who were confused and just regenerated new licenses, which fixed the issue.

Prior to adopting HPE Alletra Storage, I was using the Nimbles and we also had some older 3PAR equipment still floating around.

My experience deploying HPE Alletra Storage was pretty simple. I basically unboxed it, put the rails in, slid it in, and turned it on. It couldn't have been any easier, and I was happy, seeing no improvements needed.

I wouldn't say we have seen an ROI with HPE Alletra Storage as we purchased it knowing what we were going to get, so it's just there, and we use it.

Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing for HPE Alletra Storage, we talked about the pricing earlier, so it would be nice if there were incentives to use. 

When we purchased everything, it came with the GreenLake support and add-ons, which seemed okay. It was around $1,000 on the bill, and while that doesn't account for much when you're buying something for $60,000, it could be better with credits or something for the support person running after it—even if it's not monetary, it could be 'Get one of our HPE shirts.'

Before selecting HPE Alletra Storage, I considered Pure heavily. The only reason HPE won over Pure was that HPE had the GreenLake integration and was still rolling out the Gen11s and Gen12s, promising more features to come. Pure was substantially cheaper and significantly faster than HPE Alletra Storage.

My advice to other organizations considering HPE Alletra Storage is to go with it if you have other HPE hardware as it integrates so seamlessly. If you don't, I would suggest Pure, as Pure is still faster when put up against the Nimble; they offer better incentives, but since we have HPE everything, it was just better to stay in the same ecosystem.

I rate HPE Alletra Storage eight out of ten.

Our main use case for the HPE Alletra Storage is VMs.

The feature of the HPE Alletra Storage I appreciate most is the speed. These features have benefited our organization by providing general data for our customers.

The GreenLake AI Ops enables me to get assistance from the senior support engineers without having to go through support escalations.

The solution has reduced our data management operations expenses; however, I could not provide a specific number since we were offline for a few years.

The solution has helped reduce the time I spend on capacity planning by approximately 80%.

I would assess HPE Alletra Storage's capacity efficiency as oversizing everything, so we have never really hit any kind of limit.

HPE Alletra Storage provides a cloud-like operational model on-premises for managing data infrastructure. The cloud-like operational model has affected my operations such as deployment, provisioning, and day-to-day management by making it very easy to navigate and easy to get to everything I need.

There is nothing I can think of offhand to improve HPE Alletra Storage or for additional features that should be included in the next release.

I have been using HPE Alletra Storage for probably eight months now, while we have had Nimbles for years.

I would assess the stability and reliability of HPE Alletra Storage as something we do not want to experience downtime, crashes, or performance issues with.

HPE Alletra Storage scales very with the growing needs of my organization. I have expanded usage, and the process was smooth as we upgraded just to add size.

I would describe my customer service experience with technical support as good. On a scale from one being the worst to ten being the best, I would rate customer service/technical support as a ten. We have a good response time.

Before adopting HPE Alletra Storage, we were replicated, which is what we considered to address similar needs.

My experience with deploying HPE Alletra Storage was that it was an expansion, not a brand new hire, and it was pretty much the exact same.

I have not seen a tangible return on investment with HPE Alletra Storage.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that I see a price, but that is about it.

We have been an HPE shop, so I have not really seen the need to switch from that when considering other solutions before selecting HPE Alletra Storage.

My advice to another organization that would consider HPE Alletra Storage is that Zerto is probably one of the best, as we do SQL servers and everything. 

For using HPE Alletra Storage overall, I would rate it a ten out of ten.

It is for dHCI, which is the hyper-converged infrastructure for HPE. It is replacing the tradition where when you have node storage, you have to purchase a model of switches. It combines the compute and storage.

Its benefits vary because I have used many models. I see it now handling VDI. Previously, when I had VDI and I put HPE for it, I would always go for Simplivity, whereas now, with the new model and GreenLake, they have attached Alletra to the cloud. It is serving people working from home a lot. They do not need to log in to do VPN anymore, create volumes, and manage their backups. If they have a full system for virtual storage, and they have Zerto for application replication, they can manage everything on the cloud. Zerto can also be managed on the cloud. If you have a stack, it does not matter how many systems you have. They all are going to show up in one interface. This is a huge benefit. Anything living in the storage can be monitored through the cloud.

HPE Alletra Storage has different models to cover SMBs, midsize companies, and enterprises. Enterprise companies with modern compute, CPU, and memory can have more virtual machines. It is easy for Alletra to grow and expand with the shelves. Customers are happy with it. Only one time I upgraded Alletra from 6010 to 6030 to add more storage and change the controllers. Customers are happy with Alletra. They do not complain. I never see them complain.

It is the simplicity of the deployment. They have unified all the features they have. For example, the creation and management of the storage was previously done through the plugins but with limited features. It was slow and had some challenges, whereas now, they have modern plug-ins that have more features and simulate the interface for the storage. Customers love it. The thing that they love the most about the plug-in is the one-click upgrade. They do not need to go to each device.

There can be more visibility and statistics for the customers to see. The customers would love to see AI. Even if it is not AI, there can be more visibility and real-time statistics that IT people can monitor and show to their bosses and impress them. To monitor things, they have reports, but the report system is old. Reports are by email. If they can show monthly growth and advise on the usage, it will make the lives of customers and IT people easy. They are going to love it. They would like to have one tool that can take them everywhere. There should be a single pane of glass. If they sit in a meeting, they should be able to answer questions related to whether they need more storage. They should not have had to go to different portals to get results, which creates confusion. If they have one place where they can see everything in graphics, it will be great.

We have been using HPE Alletra Storage for three years.

I have been working with HPE for six years. When I do an upgrade, I can see the Nimble that I installed for the customer five years ago as it is. No one touched it.

They continue to do a good job. I did not reach the max for anything. Every time I add a shelf for the customer, it takes 15 minutes. You just add a shelf, put the SaaS, and you are good to go.

Their support works very well. You can just grab the phone and reach out to their support. Their support answers you immediately. This is a big deal for the customers. 

I do deployment as well. Every time I get stuck at something or something goes wrong because something is missing or the customers do not have a proper configuration, I can reach out to their support immediately. I just pick up the phone, and they answer. We talk for ten minutes, and their support engineer understands the case. I open a secure channel for him to access or I give him a CLI with remote access. He applies his magic and reset the things.

I would rate them a ten out of ten because they get my issues solved. If the support engineer can not resolve an issue, he just escalates it. Being a technical person, I understand that the response can take longer. There could be some bugs, and their support team cannot give you the answer immediately.

Positive

I am HPE ASE certified. I do not bring any other customers to the game. I always present HPE. It has been six years since I have been doing this work for my company. We are beating Cisco. We are beating anyone with Dell PowerVault. We beat all of those models.

All the other companies have the same solution, but it comes down to knowing the expectations of the customer and putting things together for them from the switch to the compute to the storage. When you present them together, the result is going to be a yes. The price also plays a role, but HPE is what customers like to go for most of the time. About 70% of customers decide in advance where they will go, but some customers are surprised with the combination that we bring. We put Zerto, and we put the cloud for them. We provide them visibility and make the deployment easy for them. We give them administrator training. All these things that we add on top make customers comfortable to go with HPE even if they do not know HPE.

About 60% to 70% of customers go with the cheapest price, but they also need to see the performance and other things. We have a lot of customers. We took them to HPE Headquarters in Houston. We bring customers to events like HPE Discover. Last year, we brought a customer here and sold four sites to him with dHCI. We finished the Dallas one or the last one three months ago.

Our clients mostly use it on-prem, but they also use it for the DR site and HQ. 

The deployment is simple.

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage a nine out of ten. There should be 99% uptime. There are no issues with dHCI when it comes to upgrades, but with Alletra, they need to have the ESXi upgraded to the latest version. They need to use the correct or compatible plug-ins for it. Every time you go up with the storage, you need to look at your environment. Customers are probably not aware of all this because they do not create volumes every year or every day. There are certain things they need to keep in mind to upgrade. I do not blame the device. They need to initiate a call with the support for compatibility to ensure that everything will work.

The clients' use case for HPE Alletra Storage is mainly for banks and telco companies, which are mostly the sectors who use this solution.

HPE Alletra Storage helps simplify storage operations. One of the strong points of HPE is its friendly UI, which is super easy, and users can have a short tutorial and start working on it.

HPE Alletra Storage provides predictable performance and capacity for applications. This prediction may not be entirely accurate, as it's more about prediction, but it gives insights about the average compression and some statistics on the stored data.

The main benefits people receive from HPE Alletra Storage include saving money, as its price compared to other high-end storage is competitive, and it's easy to manage, with an uptime availability of almost 99.999. While all storage boxes must be available at that level, I haven't encountered any issues with it.

The most valuable features in HPE Alletra Storage that I have found are the compression and deduplication, along with the availability of the storage box. In the last two years, I haven't received any negative feedback about it from customers.

HPE can improve HPE Alletra Storage by adding some features to be available from the offline GUI, especially related to snapshots and taking a snapshot for the whole storage, as some customers need this feature. This feature is available in Dell storage but not in IBM storage and Alletra Storage, and it's available from the Data Lake for snapshotting the whole environment at once.

I have been working with HPE Alletra Storage for almost two years.

It's very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.

It's easy to scale. I have performed many scale-ups and scale-outs successfully. I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability.

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage's technical support a nine out of ten. I don't give the full mark for any vendor or any product, as if you're the best, you don't need to improve. Before I joined HPE, I was a customer, and I raised tickets, which were solved easily, and the support representatives were very helpful. This was one of the reasons I joined this company.

Positive

I have worked with other vendors and products before I joined HPE, including IBM Storage, all-flash FS9000, and A9000, and the efficiency is almost the same. It holds up competitively.

The capacity and efficiency of HPE Alletra Storage are good. I am satisfied with HPE Alletra Storage's capacity efficiency as it performs deduplication and compression with a good ratio.

The initial setup for HPE Alletra Storage is very simple. If you do the prerequisites correctly, you can complete it in a few minutes. It all revolves around the prerequisites, such as ensuring the ports are opened and the account for the Data Lake is created correctly.

The main competitor in the market for HPE Alletra Storage is Dell Storage, as they are selling at a low price. Dell Storage PowerMax VMAX is a competitor, alongside Dell and IBM storage, though IBM storage might be more competitive.

It is helpful to integrate HPE Alletra Storage with HPE GreenLake, but not all customers have integrated it with HPE GreenLake, as there are some regulations here to connect the storage boxes to the cloud. However, a few customers have integrated it to get all the features available on HPE GreenLake and some statistics and insights. 

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage a nine out of ten.

HPE Alletra Storage is being used for systems for online banking transactions. We have sold this to the main bank that connects with all other banks, and the transactions occur in real-time.

HPE Alletra Storage comes with zero downtime, which is its best feature. It has real-time replication available, so no additional features need to be bought when purchasing the system. It can be cost-effective in this sense, with no extra cost for the customer to own any services. 

HPE Alletra Storage supports up to five petabytes, which is enormous. It simplifies storage operations such as provisioning and day-to-day management. It is a one-window operation, making it easy to manage.

The user interface, configuration, and customization could be improved, though the configuration is currently very easy. Even the migration from one platform to HPE Alletra Storage is very smooth. 

Pricing could be optimized, as it is always a challenge. The competition offers some storage solutions at lower prices, making the cost a significant factor.

We have been working with HPE for approximately 25-26 years.

Some users of HPE Alletra Storage mention that they would prefer higher scalability, although it is generally good.

We have recently sold a lower model of HPE Alletra Storage, but its performance is good. We are in the process of selling them the top-of-the-line HPE Alletra Storage 10000 series, B10000. Once it is installed, we can gather customer feedback, but at the moment, they are satisfied with the lower model as their operational requirements are not as demanding. The next phase project is called a micro payment gateway. For this, they have to perform a tech refresh, and they are opting for a higher model of HPE Alletra Storage B10000. This choice was made because they are satisfied with the lower models they are currently using. They are comfortable with the software as a service that HPE Alletra Storage offers.

HPE technical support is very good, and the customer service is rated 10 out of 10.

HPE 3PAR is not upgradable anymore, so it is being replaced with the HPE Alletra Storage C40 model. Other solutions, such as Dell PowerStore and Data Domain, have also been sold.

Its price can be optimized. The cost before deployment is significant to customers, but post-deployment cost analysis is not common.

I would rate HPE Alletra Storage a ten out of ten.

Right now, we're using DHCI cloud infrastructure. It's primarily going to be the backbone for our ESX environment between stretched between two data centers.

It's been a cost-reduction and space-reduction asset for us. It uses less storage rack space and therefore, less power. It has less physical connectivity. So far, it's working fine.

The replication between the two sites, the presentation to the ESX environment, and the plugin that allows us to go directly into ESX and not have to manage the storage itself directly are all valuable aspects. It's easy for anybody to use. With 3PAR or any of the others, you have to go into the storage directly.

Right now, it's offered both cost reduction and space reduction. It uses less Storage rack space. Therefore, less power. Less physical connectivity. And so far, it's working fine.

The solution does offer a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. However, I don't use it that way.

It's helped with predicting and preventing problems before they occur. So far, that's been working well.

The plug-in with vCenter and integration into vCenter is spotty at best. The last three upgrades that we've had have been absolute nightmares. That said, we found if we did an upgrade outside of the DHCI infrastructure that it is part of and just did the Alletra upgrade itself, it's better.

For me, the solution has not helped reduce the time spent resolving storage-related support tickets. I've had more tickets open for this than any other system I've ever had.

I've been using the solution since November 2023.

The storage itself has been stable. It's just working. 

The scalability looks pretty good. It's all connected through switches and ICSCI. 

The support guys are on-point. They are next-level. You can talk to them like somebody you've known for years. You don't talk to them tech to tech. It's like talking to a normal human being. 

We previously used 3PAR. The purchase of Alletra was made while I was away.

The deployment has been a challenge. I've had more open tickets with this solution than any other that I've done. The software coding between Nimble and HPE has been a challenge. The backend Python script wasn't as fleshed out as it should have been. 

The ROI will end up being pretty good as we did get a good deal and it is replacing two racks of storage for six years. 

The pricing so far has been pretty good. 

I was looking at Pure Storage and the upgraded version of 3PAR, Primera, and one other option.

I'd rate the solution six out of ten. I'm coming from fiber channel. I feel it's a downgrade from ICSCI. Plus, with the backend, they tried to shoehorn Nimble Storage into an HPE product. Transitioning from one company to another is where they are having a problem. However, they are getting better about it. That's where I see the main problem - the transition.