HPE StoreOnce Reviews

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.

The most valuable features of StoreOnce are ease-of-use and ease-of-configuration when compared to the old IBM Tivoli family solution that we're using.

The benefits compared to the old solution are broad flexibility, ease-of-configuration, and ease-of-maintenance. We use it for part of our backup solution.

For us, nothing is missing at the moment and over time this will probably become clearer. We are going towards the cloud environment at some point or a hybrid cloud, so it could be something on that front, but we are not working with the cloud yet. For our purposes, it's functioning perfectly fine. We get the data we want from it.

However, you need lot of knowledge before you start out. Maybe that could be improved.

We have not had any stability problems.

Scalability is something that we haven't really needed to utilise but that was one key factor when we chose it over the other solutions. We haven't had to do any scaling yet. We have in the range of 10 to 20 TBs.

We have not yet used technical support for StoreOnce, but we have been using it for less than a year.

We were basically upgrading the whole data center and we wanted to stick with one vendor as a provider of all the hardware. It was kind of logical to also look for a solution from HPE.

I was involved in the initial setup. We had a technician from the partner who was providing the solution helping to set it up. It was very straightforward. I'm comparing to the old solution, which was kind of a pain in the neck. To set up the StoreOnce, all that was needed from us was the IP address and some background information on how we would use it. That was about it. From all the things that we set up in our data center at that time, this was probably the simplest.

Everybody wants to see lower cost, but pricing was competitive.

We also looked at Dell. We went with HPE because we want everything to be from one vendor.

My advice is to use trusted advisors. You can only know so much. It's good to discuss things with an advisor.

When looking for a vendor, the cost is, of course, important, but the partnering with HPE or another vendor and the range of products they offer is the most critical factor.

It's cost effective, technologically advanced, and very scalable. It integrates with the rest of the HPE infrastructure, like 3PAR, for example.

From a business point of view, it enables us to pay closer attention to our caps and our competitive cost level.

Because it integrates with other HPE systems, it is easier for us to manage compared to the system we had before.

I would mostly want to see some technical improvements in some very specific areas. For example, a feature that is missing, compared to the competition, is the ability to globally duplicate all systems.

EMC Data Domain can deduplicate globally among all volumes, whereas HPE StoreOnce's deduplication is per single volume. Thus, it is a little less efficient, if you have several volumes.

So far, it looks quite stable.

Scalability is very good.

We get technical support from our partner and also from HPE personnel. The support is very good.

The previous system reached its end of life and it was becoming obsolete. It was no longer performing enough for the company. Business is flowing, fortunately; so we needed a faster and more scalable solution. The switch to HPE StoreOnce was a planned investment.

I would say the initial setup was straightforward, but I was not involved from an operational perspective. I am involved in that I am responsible for the teams; so I was involved in setting the objectives and I was informed of the key facts. I’m not the one who strokes the keyboard.

We actually work with HPE a lot, but also with Dell EMC. For now, we balance the distribution 50/50. There's some good in both vendors.

My advice to colleagues is to deeply explore the features of StoreOnce because they have improved in the last year. StoreOnce is not the market leader. The market leader now is without any doubt EMC Data Domain. Try not to just look at the market numbers, but also at the technology of the product. Give StoreOnce a try. Try the product before deciding to buy it.

The most important criteria when we choose a vendor is the technology. We are very technically oriented, so first we compare products in terms of technological level. By technology, I mean features, performance, and integration with other vendor solutions.

We put cost effectiveness a little lower in our evaluation. Price is obvious, but it is not the main thing for us.

The partnership with the vendor is very important. The partner must have strong competence in what they are selling to us. It is obviously very important to have a skilled and certified partner that helps you implement the product. This restricts the circle of possible vendors and partners to very few.

For us, we can save a lot on storage costs for doing backups. It integrates seamlessly with our backup solution, which is a third-party solution, not from HPE. We use Veeam; and StoreOnce works with them.

It works great for backing up Windows. Backups are much quicker now. Previously, it took 15-16 hours every day. Now it takes 3-4 hours maximum.

Replication of our site using Virtual Storage Appliance is really easy. We did not have any backup solution for our site before. Now, we just have Virtual Storage Appliance running on site almost without any configuration. We use it to replicate all our site backups.

I would like to see a better integration with Active Directory to identify users. Currently, we need to create separate accounts, so we need to have separate passwords to log in for assurance. It's not a big issue, but it is an issue. We would like to be able to use existing Active Directory accounts to directly authenticate users.

There could always be better performance. There is a little bit to work on in this area.

We’ve been using it for little more than a year.

It is stable. We hardly ever had an issues with it.

When we started, it was already quite large, about 200 TBs. So far, we haven’t had any need to scale up.

Technical support is quite efficient. We only had minor issues, but they were handled pretty quickly.

We built an almost entirely new IT infrastructure for a new stadium that we built. The new infrastructure had a lot more than it had before; so we knew we had to have a better backup solution.

The initial setup was relatively easy. We didn’t need to do a lot. They were already pretty well-packaged out of the box. Aside from the configuration and integration with the backup solution, we didn't have much to do.

We looked at EMC, IBM, NetApp, and some others which I cannot recall at the moment.

We are building an entirely new infrastructure. We chose HPE StoreOnce after considering the servers, the storage, and the backup all at the same time. HPE had a better global solution, especially in terms of the backup solution.

Look into intuitive solutions for storage space. Deduplication is really efficient. You can do deduplication directly with Veeam, the backup software, side now. We save on network and bandwidth.

The most important criteria for us when selecting a vendor was the integration of the old backup solution in the previous stadium, and the need to save on storage space.

• The product is very easy to use.
• Deduplication features are great, especially on Catalyst stores.
• We can also choose where to do the deduplication (source, media server or target).

The product has really improved the backup and restore for our infrastructure. It gives you great scalability options up to 1.7 PB and, according to the vendor, it can scale up to 34 PB using HPE inline deduplication. We were able to perform quick restores because of the elimination of tapes. It provides great features like VTL, NAS and StoreOnce Catalyst.

The support team needs improvement. Sometimes, it takes support a lot of time to fix the issue and majority of the cases have to be escalated to the lab.

I have been using it the last five years.

No Issues , Its pretty easy .

Stability’s good. I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Its good .

On a scale of 1-10, I would rate technical support a 6.

We previously used Data Domain. We switched to StoreOnce because of the complexity of the Data Domain system. Data Domain is a great product, but it’s complex to use.

Initial setup was pretty easy. We did not face any problem.

For licensing and pricing, I would recommend just pay as you go. It’s pretty easy to scale.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this product. We only chose this product because we use HP’s Data Protector as a backup application and it has great support.

Read the support matrix first. It is not supported on lot of the open systems such as OpenVMS or the IBM AS/400 iSeries.

It was primarily about the deduplication technology, and that's what brought it in the door for us. We were looking for something to offset our backup procedures so that we would be able to get better backup times, but also better restore time-frames for our backups.

The D2D capabilities have speeded backups.

The issues that I have aren't with the hardware itself. It's with our backup solution, it's with some of the other things that interact with StoreOnce, and it may be environmental. I don't see any deficiencies in the hardware solutions there.

We are on our third generation of devices. Its been around 5 years.

Early on, the firmware had some issues, but it has been steadily improved by HPE.

It's very stable.

StoreOnce scaling has been good. We've done a couple of field upgrades, we've had three different generations, actually we're down to two now, we retired one of the out already. But we've done a field upgrade of both of those which went really well. As far as the top end capabilities, we're not there. Both of our current generations still have headroom for growth.

7/10 - it can be hit or miss. We get better luck with our premium support levels. We have a named TAM for some of our systems, that works out well. Escalation managers are always good. There is good technical talent, it's just sometimes hidden by first level support. That can be difficult and frustrating at times, but over ten years working with them, I would say today it's probably a little better than when I first started. Actually, I would say it's probably improved a good bit since I first started working with them, but it's still got some room to go.

I wasn't heavily involved with the deployment. There is a little bit of learning curve to StoreOnce, and how it lays out, and different features within it. We had some consulting services when we first set it up, and I don't think we had the best advice, which led to a reconfiguration down the road.

License Catalyst. It is really the best performing interface for StoreOnce - so ensure whatever backup solution you are looking at has native Catalyst support to see the best results with the product. While it has VTL, CIFS and NFS capabilities, the best way to use it is with the Catalyst protocol.

I don't think it has anything much to do with the StoreOnce solution from a hardware perspective. That seems to be really solid, but you've got to have a Symantec NetBackup, HPE Data Protector, or Veeam to really enable you to get the most out of these products. Your mileage may vary based on your backup vendor, and how well they support the hardware. Veeam probably provides the best user experience from the software side - and the software side is extremely important to the solution.

The most valuable feature would be the high deduplication ratios, capable of 20 or more to 1 dedup ratio in a real-world backup environment. It seems to work very good for long retention times, even if there is little use, but sometimes you have to do it due to legal reasons, and that is where it shines.

In my previous organization, it removed the need for manual tape swapping. Hence, it removed the need for actual tape changers to be at 50 separate remote sites, leading to huge savings for the company.

Also, offsite tape storage is replaced by replication to a different/central site/device such as StoreOnce B6200/B6500 or even some lower-end one, such as 4900.

I would like to see them add the ability to turn on/turn off global deduplication and etc.

Currently, only VTL-level deduplication is supported properly, while there seems to be some part of global deduplication working. However, in some rare cases, I saw data being removed on untouched VTL while you were deleting some particular cartridge within a separate VTL. It has probably been fixed by the most recent StoreOnce OS upgrades.

I have been using it for 4+ years.

I have not encountered any deployment issues.

Some models are shipped with one power supply by default, even when redundant PSUs are supported in pairs; be aware of that.

As long as the architecture was done correctly, I did not encounter any scalability issues. If an entry-level StoreOnce device is placed on a “soon to grow“ site, that is a planning mistake, not a scalability issue.

Customer service is great.

Technical support is great.

We switched because of company policy, the tapes aged, etc.

Initial setup was straightforward.

I was within support team, which did implement as well as support the solution.

Huge. Simply eliminating the need for tape changers returned the cost of the hardware within less than half a year.

Get an expert who knows the products, so you can get the best prices possible for both DP and StoreOnce. Because there are some things that can work for the same solution in different ways, hence they are differently licensed as well as priced.

Make sure architecture is planning properly, e.g., centralised or decentralised HPE DP Cell Managers give you some quite different options and etc.

Excellent deduplication ratios.

It did not improve the way my organization functions: It was just an alternative method to accomplish what was being done a different way.

The UI is rather dated and not intuitive. Also, the setup is rather complex and you need to understand the product to best leverage it.

The GUI has a look from the traditional HP interfaces of 10 years ago. The layout is confusing as it is designed for someone that really understands the underpinnings of StoreOnce. The P6500 is basically a pair of DL380 servers running a Linux distribution clustered with all the necessary hardware and then is presented as a single StoreOnce appliance. Many of the menus in the GUI provide drill down capabilities that can get you deep into the inner workings of the appliance but, unless you know what you are doing, it is more there for support to utilize. While the appliance is a single cluster you are really working with each node individually further complicating management of the device. You need to put some thought into how you will distribute the workload across the nodes because the appliance does not provide any mechanisms for load balancing. While HPE claims StoreOnce will work with CommVault, our experience was that the use case was very narrow. While the P6500 has some beefy hardware the software is the Achilles heel. We found that as the dataset grows the P6500 becomes bogged down in housecleaning tasks that conflict with the incoming workload.

3 months.

The product did not scale well and had several issues where it bogged down under load. When used with a non HPE backup product, you really need to optimize the StoreOnce and your backup product to work well together.

Support was good, better than average, but left a little room for improvement.

We were using native backup (Commvault), which was unreliable. We selected this as a method to improve and better scale our backup deduplication, but it turned out StoreOnce introduced enough inconsistencies and incompatibilities, we actually went back to Commvault’s native deduplication.

You need vendor assistance to get the product properly set up and configured.

Vendors supplied resources for install and initial configuration assistance.

Make sure you understand your use case very well, go over it in detail with the vendor and get commitments that it is compatible with your use case.