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it_user253347 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, IT and Operations at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
The most valuable feature is the deduplication ability, but file sharing is also really good.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable is the deduplication ability, but file sharing is also really good.

How has it helped my organization?

We saw less capital outlay after implementing the solution.

What needs improvement?

For subsequent models, I would like HP to improve deduplication rations for tiny files numbering near a trillion, which they do in our business. StoreOnce doesn’t work for our class of data, which is small, and needs to include more genomic and medical research as test cases.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using StoreOnce D2D for four years.

Buyer's Guide
HPE StoreOnce
June 2025
Learn what your peers think about HPE StoreOnce. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability was good but undersized for what we needed. We weren't able to de-duplicate what we needed.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It was not able to scale for us; we had to buy another solution (X9000) to store copies.

How are customer service and support?

I found HP to be helpful, but they asked too many questions and were not really able to help our business.

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

We were in need of backing up petabytes of data for medical databases.

How was the initial setup?

We had experience with the solution, so it was relatively simple.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

  • EMC
  • Comvault

What other advice do I have?

The most important criteria for us is reliability.

If you work for a medical research institute or something with very small files, then this solution may not be for you. Your best move is to do a POC.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user

I always appreciate folks taking time to leave a review - thank you!

It sounds like you have an older StoreOnce unit. The latest StoreOnce 6500 can start at 120TB and grow to over 2.2PB (raw capacity before any deduplication). Here's a blog post that gives a good overview of the StoreOnce portfolio: hpstorage.me

it_user248508 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Operations Specialist - Server at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
We are able to reduce the amount of backup tapes we need.

What is most valuable?

  • Faster backup and restore process
  • Data de-duplication mechanism

How has it helped my organization?

With D2D2T appliance, and backup jobs reconfiguration we are reducing the backup tapes count. The appliance offers a fast backup and restore process, and a data replication mechanism to a remote site location. This ensure data center backups disaster recovery.

What needs improvement?

  • Data capacity graphical interface

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for three years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues during the deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

10/10.

Technical Support:

10/10.

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

This is the first solution we have implemented.

How was the initial setup?

It was straightforward, because we had chosen the right template for our needs and all the connectivity was prepared before the device was on site.

What about the implementation team?

It was implemented through the local HP support team. They provided us with excellent support and knowledge of the product technology.

What other advice do I have?

Always follow the vendors best practice and guidance to avoid any problems.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user

Thank you for the review - I always appreciate it. Which StoreOnce are you using? If you've been using it for 3 years, I'm guessing the portfolio updates have replaced what you have now. For those that don't know the portfolio well, here's a blog post with a good overview. Be sure to watch the videos too: hpstorage.me

Buyer's Guide
HPE StoreOnce
June 2025
Learn what your peers think about HPE StoreOnce. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user242520 - PeerSpot reviewer
DB Admin / LAN Specialist at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
The cost savings of not having to continually purchase additional shelf space has been the driving force of staying with this product.

What is most valuable?

The deduplication feature is awesome. The storage space has been cut down by at least 50% and on some instance greater reduction has been achieved. Here is a current example showing the space savings: Actual User Data Store 44.9TB, Actual Size on Disk 4.0TB with an 11.3 dedupe ratio. This was only one of my libraries on the StoreOnce 4430 device.

How has it helped my organization?

Please refer to the answer above about valuable features. The space saving on storage of actual user data also has a cost savings attached to it. We do not have to extend the actual storage space as quickly now due to the space savings of the deduplication feature.

What needs improvement?

The auto load balancing between VTL Libraries has been not as efficient as it should have been. I have manually load balanced between my libraries to maintain a tight control.There have also been bug fixes in the past for their auto load balancing feature. I would like to see this greatly improved so that I feel that it is trustworthy enough to utilize this feature.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for one and half years in an enterprise environment with HP DataProtector v7.0

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues during deployment of the 4430 device into the enterprise environment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Not with this current model 4430, but with a previous model we did have stability issues and these have been resolve with the 4430 model.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues with scalability. We purchased an additional 20TB shelf with the 4430 device (which came with a 20TB shelf included in the package we purchased).

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

HP’s customer service is outstanding. Turnaround time on parts for us is four hours and we also have them in less time than that. The HP service representatives are knowledgeable, friendly and are very easy to speak to. They are people who don't read from a script, but actually have a working knowledge of the equipment.

Technical Support:

It's outstanding.

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

No, and we chose StoreOnce as we are currently an HP enterprise environment.

How was the initial setup?

In most ways it was straightforward, however, you need to be an experienced network administrator to install this device.

What about the implementation team?

It was done as an in-house implementation. However, we currently work with an HP partner in all our enterprise purchases. They're called High Performance Technologies, Inc. in Palm City, Florida, and the IT team at this business are outstanding and they all keep up to date with their HP certifications. They work with HP to obtain the best pricing for the equipment we need to ascertain. With this business relationship, comes years of trust and we know that they understand our enterprise network topology and make recommendations based off that long term knowledge.

What was our ROI?

The cost savings of not having to continually purchase additional shelf space has been the driving force of staying with this outstanding product.

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

The original cost was approximately $250,000. Included in that was the device itself and 40TB of storage space.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did evaluate other options but due to the fact that HP has set the standard, we stayed with them.

What other advice do I have?

I've had little to no issues with either the StoreOnce 4430 device or the DataProtector software. I would highly recommend this type of backup system for enterprise environments.

Read the documentation provided by HP on their website and research the web to avoid any possible issues during implementation.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user

Wow - thank you for the honest feedback on StoreOnce. StoreOnce is a hidden gem in the HP Storage portfolio? For those that don't know the portfolio well, here's a blog post with a good overview. Be sure to watch the videos too: hpstorage.me

it_user236532 - PeerSpot reviewer
Specialist-System Administrator at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
When using the dedupe feature, backups take up less space than they previously did.

What is most valuable?

De-duplication is valuable because it is a technique to take backups of unique data only. We have to do backups on a daily and weekly basis, where the daily one is incremental and the weekly one is a full backup. When we ran this type of backup on a physical cartridge, it would take up a huge amount of space as there is no de-dupe with cartridges. When using de-dupe, backups take less space than they previously did, and this minimizes the costs to our company.

How has it helped my organization?

The de-duplication feature saves us storage space.

What needs improvement?

The performance could be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using it for one and a half years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We're unable to expand our storage capabilities smoothly.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

It's good.

Technical Support:

We are not getting any direct support from HP, but we are getting support from their partner. The support is relatively good.

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

This is the first solution that we have used.

How was the initial setup?

It is straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We used a vendor team who were 8/10.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

This was done by the planning team.

What other advice do I have?

I recommend using the upgraded version of this product.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user

Thanks for the review StoreOnce. Here's a link to a blog (with videos) that we have that gives more. hpstorage.me

it_user236529 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise IT Infrastructure - Team Leader at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
We switched to HP because we needed a VTL solution with deduplication.

What is most valuable?

VTL with deduplication because with deduplication, you can have spare storage space.

What needs improvement?

Interoperability with other vendors backup software.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for two and a half years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

In the beginning, we had a lot of problems with bad firmware.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We had problems with the various firmware versions.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues scaling the product.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

It is very high.

Technical Support:

Customer service is very high.

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

We did, and we switched because we needed a VTL solution with deduplication.

How was the initial setup?

It was simple, especially to integrate it with our existing EMC network solution.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it in-house.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also looked at EMC DataDomain. We chose StoreOnce because it was cheaper by more than 60,000 Euros.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user

Wow - that was a huge difference in price compared to EMC Data Domain. StoreOnce is a hidden gem in the HP Storage portfolio? For those that don't know the portfolio well, here's a blog post with a good overview. Be sure to watch the videos too: hpstorage.me

See all 2 comments
it_user236520 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Technician at a university with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
We previously used Symantec Backup-Exec to LTO-4 tape. We needed a more scalable solution that was faster and allowed replication off-site nightly at a much quicker rate.

What is most valuable?

It's fast and reliable when compared to tape solutions.

How has it helped my organization?

Over 51TB of data is backed up and replicated off-site every week quickly and reliably, compared to the laborious tape archiving solution we had in the past.

What needs improvement?

The web-GUI is not intuitive enough for basic users and offers fairly limited functionality compared to a backup solution such as Veeam or Backup-Exec.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for 15 months.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Rarely have issues with stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues when you need to scale up. It's as simple as 'chucking more disks' into the array when the space needs expanding.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Good from HP, as usual (on a contract).

Technical Support:

Good from HP, as usual (on a contract).

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

We previously used Symantec Backup-Exec to LTO-4 tape. We switched because we needed a more scalable solution that was faster and allowed replication off-site nightly at a much quicker rate.

How was the initial setup?

Simple, it was handled by HP.

What about the implementation team?

We had HP do the implementation, with a third party consultancy firm called System Professional. They had exceptional understanding of the entire platform.

What was our ROI?

I cannot put a price on this investment. Suffice it to say that the countless number of man-hours saved not having to deal with tapes every day/week/month is invaluable.

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

£100,000 including installation, support and maintenance contracts. This also includes two StoreOnce devices - one at our datacentre, and one replica at another campus.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No, we have an extensive support contract with HP and were given a heavily discounted educational agreement as opposed to what other vendors such as EMC were offering.

What other advice do I have?

If you work for an educational institution (as I do), the potential long-term savings will easily add up compared to the short-term initial investment. Do your homework and look elsewhere and you will find it difficult to beat the product/service in terms of cost and performance

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
it_user265584 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user265584Senior Systems Administrator/Engineer at a university
Vendor

I joined this forum looking for the experience of others for backup and SAN solutions. I am more of an expert at Next Generation Firewalls offered today. I see this user is happy with the HP backup solution. Are there reviews somewhere for VEEAM? Also I noticed the several good reviews for HP 3PAR SAN storage. Is there an in depth review for Nimble storage as well to compare? I have researched Nimble, NexGen and Kaminario for the larger SAN projects but have not purchased one of these yet. Thanks

See all 2 comments
PeerSpot user
Sr Backup Administrator with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
We like the ability to control where the dedupe takes place and the replication between data centers and smaller credit centers.

What is most valuable?

The ability to control where the dedupe takes place. StoreOnce allows deduplication in three locations; the client, the backup appliance and designated media servers. This flexibility can come in handy especially in smaller shops/data centers. For example, if network bandwidth is the issue you can dedupe at the client, and that reduces the total amount of data that has to be sent over the wire, or if a backup client doesn’t have the horsepower to dedicate CPU and memory to the dedupe process, you can do it at a designated media server (90% of our backups happen that way). Thirdly, at some of our smaller data clusters, our clients needs all their CPU and memory for running apps, and we don’t have a dedicated media server so we let the StoreOnce appliance do the deduplication.

Also, the ease of replicating between the three types of StoreOnce devices.

How has it helped my organization?

Since we went from disk to tape to D2D that’s a huge improvement. We now have faster more reliable backups, easy replication between data centers and smaller credit centers.

What needs improvement?

  • Capacity of the B6200 as the capacity has improved/tripled in the 6500
  • It would be nice if it dedupelicated per service set instead of by the store

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for two years including testing, and in production for 16 months.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

The B6200 was designed to ingest data from different networks and we had three. Some we had to do some additional VLAN tagging.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We’ve experienced data lost. We’ve had three stores go off-line (which were recoverable) and had a disk become corrupt at the service set/couplet level. The corrupt service set had to be formatted and we lost 40TB of data. Luckily most of it was replicated from another data center.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

9/10.

Technical Support:

8/10.

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

We didn't have a previous solution.

How was the initial setup?

It was very complex because our setup included six data centers with three types of StoreOnce devices. Replication between multiple sites, and Oracle, Lotus Notes, VMware, SQL, and Exchange online integrations.

What about the implementation team?

We used a vendor team who were 5/10. HP sent their design team, and they were helpful but the StoreOnce product was very new and they were learning the product. We were given bad information which led to a crash.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also looked at Data Domain, and another whose name I can't remember.

What other advice do I have?

Don’t get the B6200 get the 6500 even if you have to start small in terms of storage. You can add on as you need it.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user

Thanks for the review StoreOnce. Here's a link to a blog (with videos) that we have that gives more. hpstorage.me

it_user231918 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Technical Architect at a university with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
It has given us the ability to run data straight from the device in case of a disaster.

What is most valuable?

StoreOnce has the following advantages:

  • Fast backup
  • No need to manage and store tapes
  • Ability to run data straight from the device in case of a disaster
  • Reliable compared to weekly problems with tapes
  • The data is replicated to two remote locations

How has it helped my organization?

We have moved away from tape backup.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We had one problem when data replication got stuck and we had to ask HP for help.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

It's very good.

Technical Support:

It's very good.

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

We only used a tape solution. We switched because tapes are too slow, prone to mechanical problems, tape management is a burden, and the time taken to do a restore is slow.

How was the initial setup?

It was easy. Also I did HPs StoreOnce training.

What about the implementation team?

HP installed the device for us, and showed us various configuration options. The team was very knowledgeable.

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

The initial cost was high, however, day to day costs are low.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I could not find a better product.

What other advice do I have?

It is worth buying HP installation. It is difficult to estimate how much storage is needed as de-duplication depends on the type of data, so reserve extra money for expansions, and buy a model which can be expanded. Also, the StoreOnce course is very good.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user

Thanks for the review - StoreOnce is a hidden gem in the HP Storage portfolio? For those that don't know the portfolio well, here's a blog post with a good overview. Be sure to watch the videos too: hpstorage.me

Buyer's Guide
Download our free HPE StoreOnce Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: June 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free HPE StoreOnce Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.