HPE StoreOnce Reviews

Compression of storage. Based on the amount of history that we've got to keep, it limits the amount of storage that we have to purchase.

It's more of a backup functionality. Backup really doesn't make a business do any better or any worse. It's really just storage of data. It's not a user interactive type process. They all go through and store data fine and they all go through and restore data fine. Is there really any business advantage of StoreOnce over some of the other vendors? Not really. It's just that we chose to work more with one vendor, so we get a better cost when we actually purchase stuff.

The beef I have not only with StoreOnce, but also all the Ops Bridge, the people who will be managing these things are going to be more your system administrators. They're not Java programmers. They want to try to do all the API's where people have to know Java to interface with them.

Whereas system administrators, they want to script stuff and so they're starting to turn a lot of their API's into command lines, which are wrappers around the Java API's. Lack of foresight of that is probably one of my biggest irks with HP on that.

I have no data on it as it's too soon in our use.

We've used NetBackup, then there's been some home-grown ones that people have done. StoreOnce is a backup solution with Data Protector in DDD and streaming through offsite storage. It works just fine. The big thing again, we come down to, is by having those products primarily with one vendor, we get a much better cost point.

We had no issues deploying it.

It works well with Data Protector. It works well with 3PAR and that's our environment and so it's a vendor specified solution.

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.

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.

• 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

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

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

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.

9/10.

8/10.

We didn't have a previous solution.

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.

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.

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

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.

My company's customers use HPE StoreOnce to run their core enterprise applications.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that the tool provides good value for somebody who needs an affordable and reliable storage solution. HPE StoreOnce is a robust solution.

I think it does what it says on its label pretty well.

HPE StoreOnce doesn't have a setup phase that favors an end-user setup process. The setup phase is not so simple that an end user can plug and play to make it operational. The setup phase for end users can be considered for improvement.

I have been using HPE StoreOnce for three to five years. I am an integrator and managed support provider for the solution. I use some of the solution's latest and old versions.

It is a stable solution that is solid and reliable.

It is a scalable solution. In my company, we work in an SME-type environment, which is not really large.

If we face technical issues with the tool, we normally escalate them to the distributor and resolve them very quickly. I rate the technical support an eight or nine out of ten.

Positive

I have previously worked with Dell EMC.

HPE StoreOnce always comes in at better pricing and value compared to Dell EMC. However, it is important to note that cheaper products usually have a smaller feature set. The customer should think about whether every single feature in the more expensive product is needed or not. HPE has a feature set and is okay for customers who don't need everything in larger, more expensive products.

The initial setup of HPE StoreOnce was average. The tool is simple enough to work with for its end users.

All I know of the setup phase is that the process involves plugging in the box and then setting it up according to what the end user wants to use it. The tool gets up and running after plugging and configuring it to meet the customers' requirements and a few operational routines because it's a storage device in which somebody needs some backups.

The time taken for the tool's deployment is a couple of hours.

All products require maintenance. The product is simple to maintain.

To those planning to use it, I would say not to be afraid to try it or give it a shot since it might meet your needs.

One buys HPE StoreOnce for its value, and it does serve the purpose. There are cheaper products that have more of an advantage than HPE StoreOnce. There are expensive products that are probably faster and more powerful than HPE StoreOnce.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Deduplication. As well, having Catalyst backups that are supported by HPE StoreOnce 6600 is very good for BURA.

It reduced larger backup windows where we have had to wait for days to complete one full backup of a larger database.

Catalyst backup is used to back up Oracle databases, and provides very good throughput during backups.

We are looking for Federated VTLs just like Federated Catalyst Store. Currently, VTLs can only be created on individual service sets and cannot be used to share the resources of other nodes. 

The good feature about StoreOnce is, its speed. It's integration with 3PAR, so you can do express backups. You can take your snapshots from your 3PAR and you can back it up directly to your StoreOnce. The other nice feature about that is, you can then take your data, and if you wanted to, you can replicate it to another StoreOnce. Even from there, you can have that ... Then you can also offload it Tape. With 3PAR and with StoreOnce, we kind of have an end to end solution for the customer. The other nice thing about StoreOnce is, it supports VTL. You can do a VTL type configuration on your StoreOnce, you can do Catalyst stores, and then you can also do NAS stores.

This is just a personal thing for me as it comes down to documentation and giving clear information. If you want to do express backup from 3PAR to StoreOnce, you need the RMC license, you need Virtual Copy on 3PAR, and then you need the Catalyst license. I've been to a bunch of tech talks, and they never really say this specifically. It's in the quick specs, but I remember my boss asking "What are you adding that license for," and I said, "It's required. Here's the documentation, but I don't think the message is clear enough." You know what I mean? I understand people need to understand the technology, but when it comes down to it, if you're creating a parts list, a build that's supposed to go into a customer's site and work, if you don't know all the parts and pieces, then you've got a failed implementation. That's just my personal view.

It doesn't replace traditional backup, but if you want a solution that can back up your snapshots quickly and reliably, then StoreOnce is good.

We hope to unify all our solutions, so because our storage is HPE and all our services are HPE, we also need to use StoreOnce for our backup. It has good features.

Support is the main thing. If we have any issue, it’s easy for us to track or investigate it, because we don’t have different solutions from different vendors. This is the main benefit we are getting.

I would like to see automatic restore and monitoring tools like a dashboard.

We started using it in 2015.

We have had some issues. We are working with HPE to solve all the issues. For example, when we try to restore, other solutions have automatic restore.
Currently, we need to do it manually and it takes a very long time. This is a critical issue, but we are working with HPE on it.

Also, the hardware is from HPE and the software is from another company that is part of HPE and this causes some problems. So, if we have any issue with the hardware, it’s solved quickly. But, if we have any issue with the software, for example, with the console, we need to reschedule the jobs or there is a delay in a job, we need to go back to that company through HPE. This takes time.

Scalability is fine.

We use technical support quite a bit and we are not so satisfied with them. I rate them 3/5.

HPE introduced us to this solution.

So I’m not the technician, I don’t look at all the different bells and all the things it does but for me the space that it uses is a valuable feature. The compression ratio has been much better than our past solution. Our SQL database backups are getting 56:1 compression ratio and to me that’s incredible. Some of the other stuff is a little less but we’ve got an average of 25:1 and that definitely beats what we had before.

Well benefits that I’m seeing on the StoreOnce are definitely the speed to recover. I can trust the data is there. When we had the quantums in the replication it was taking up to a month, the data would be partial. I trust the data so the benefit is that the data is there. If somebody calls me and needs data recovered, I know I have it.

New features, I don’t know. I expect HP to know that stuff and they’re asking the questions and other people smarter than me know what they need. It does what I need right now. There’s nothing that I could think of that it’s missing.

I don’t like to talk about these things but so far stability on the system has been perfect, no issues. So I have two 4300’s and that came with Catalyst which was new to that platform. So when we had the systems put in the technician that came out actually hadn’t seem them before. So that was maybe the only hiccup but they did a great job installing them. I didn’t have to do anything with it and it’s been running ever since.

My impressions of scalability would be- I’ll never need to much add more space. They did a great deal with me, they doubled the space I asked for. I have enough room for years, but it also is very easily scalable. If I need to put in more trays I can.

We have not used technical support. Now HP as a whole, I have on other servers and things like that but for 3PAR I actually haven’t had to use support yet and, like I said it’s been going on two years. I’m happy with that, I’m sure if I had to call them they’d be right there.

The solution that we had for backups was Quantum for the software NetBackup. We still use NetBackup today, we like it but the quantums were aging. The maintenance agreement on the quantums were costing us a fortune and it was actually cheaper to get something new than keep the old one running. The quantums had gotten to a state where replication between them was no longer working. It would take about a month to replicate.

Hardware was starting to fail on a regular basis and we knew we needed something. We’re a primary storage with EMC so we did look at Data Domain, but I buy a lot of stuff from HP. I knew their storage was great so let’s go look at the backup solution and HP just came in with a good price, I thought it was a good product. We bought the StoreOnce, so it’s two years ago now today and you know they’re running good ever since.

It was extremely straightforward and I think this is typical for any of the vendors. I mean I don’t have all this experience but what you’re talking about is just a storage platform. It’s just disk so all they need to do is put it in, present it so that the backup can see it and that was done and it was done by the tech in just a couple of days, and we had it up and running in a week with a whole new backup catalog and it was very easy.

We did look at NetBackup, they had an appliance but it was about twice the cost. I didn’t look at Quantum because we didn’t have a lot of success with them in the past. I probably could’ve looked at them but it didn’t feel like a partnership with me with them.

With everything that I buy from HP, I just don’t feel like a customer all the time, I kind of feel like a partner, and at Shields Health Care we like to collaborate and partner with people.

And it’s tough to say, what I wanted to look at was the data has to be accurate. And so if we’re backing up patient data, it’s critical. I mean everybody says their data is critical, in healthcare it’s critical. If I need to restore something I need to know it’s there, I need to know where it is, I need to know I can get it fast.

With the quantums we also had a tape solution in place and those tapes were offsite, sometimes it would take a couple of days to get the data back. So what the StoreOnce allowed us to do was to also get off a tape, which was important to me. I don’t trust tape, a lot of people do. With StoreOnce, I know this data is there and I can get it quickly. The speed that we can recover files now is incredible. Even if it’s something small it’s not critical. Say a user loses an email and we backed it up the night before, you can get that email back in seconds. It used to take us a long time.

We’d restore the entire mail store. You’re looking at the entire afternoon just to get some files back. We’re happy and with this upgrade we also upgraded NetBackup. So it’s not to say that the stuff that we had before wasn’t capable, it was time to get a new solution.

I did a panel this week on going into backup solutions. One customer was still using tape, recommendations for them was to go to StoreOnce. For me the maintenance has been cheaper, the implementation was easy, it's small product that doesn’t take up much space in my data center, and it’s been reliable and out-performed what I had used previously.

Peer reviews, anytime I pick up any new solution I like to know that a customer has already done, so I did reach out and talk to other folks that had been in the same situation. It’s tough to get the same exact situation but they had me call a couple hospitals in Boston. They all had great experiences, same ease of deployment that I saw, so those are very important to me. I like to know that someone else has done the same thing and had some results.

We use the product for data backup purposes.

The platform's most valuable feature is Catalyst software. It helps with efficient source deduplication.

They could provide more options for storage capacity. At the moment, they only have an 80-terabyte storage facility. There should be availability of lesser capacities at lower prices. Additionally, they should integrate it with cybersecurity products.

We have been using HPE StoreOnce for ten years.

I rate the platform's stability a nine out of ten.

The platform is suitable for enterprise companies. I rate the scalability a seven out of ten.

They could improve the technical support services in terms of quality.

Positive

We have used Dell EMC Data Domain before. In comparison, HPE StoreOnce has an excellent support service.

The initial setup process is simple.

I rate the platform's pricing a seven out of ten.

HPE StoreOnce optimizes the backup and recovery process through its efficient software, notably the Catalyst software, in terms of speed. The integration of StoreOnce with external software, such as Veeam, further contributes to optimizing backup and recovery.

It is a scalable platform. We can add extensive units and storage capacity. However, it is quite expensive. I rate the ease of management and integration of HPE StoreOnce an eight out of ten.

Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten. It could be compatible with different systems.