HPE StoreOnce Reviews

For StoreOnce, we are using it in order to backup some databases. It works fine, and I think it's not a production device, but it still works fine. The time to do the backups is great for us because the last backups we used to have took at least 8 - 10 hours and at the moment the backups takes one hour or less.

It helps us with the backups of our corporate database in order to have the information backed up in case of disaster. It's great for us to take the information in minutes, instead of hours.

It's not big, but it could be smaller and take up less space in the data center. I saw some devices here that are smaller with more power, and I think that StoreOnce could be the same.

I think that we've had it for two years and it doesn't have any issue at this moment.

I've never had to contact tech support.

We had an EMC Data Domain device, but I don't remember the model of it. We switched because HP promised us that it would be easier to manage, easy to implement with the technicals details we use each day.

It was quick and easy to install.

The time to implement, the time to acquire the solution, integrating with our infrastructure was easy and the price was very good.

You need to work with a partner that knows the solutions deeply in order to implement the services and the solution well. It allowed us to provide the services that our customers needs.

StoreOnce is a new product for me. Throughout the years, as director in certain companies, I've been a big EMC Data Domain customer. We've purchased a couple StoreOnce, and so far I really like the product. It's very similar to Data Domain. It was very easy to stand up. We had it going in one day. It was our target for our backups for CommVault, to write all of our backups to. Now we replicate from one StoreOnce to the other, so as far as DR and contingency, it's really nice. The ease of use is excellent and the price point is very competitive. It's really good.

There's no tape involved. The tape is gone. Our backups are very easy to use with the StoreOnce. It's takes very little configuration. We don't have to babysit the device. Every once in a while, we just go in and look at it and see what kind of dedupe rates we're getting and check on our storage, etc. So far it's been a very easily operational situation with the StoreOnce.

Where I've used Data Domain in the past as another application - another use for Data Domain, maybe StoreOnce can improve by not just being a target for open systems, meaning Windows or Linux boxes. In the past, I've used Data Domain with, an IBM AS/400 iSeries, as a backup target to an iSeries platform, so they could possibly improve there.

The biggest thing that StoreOnce is very easy to use, just like Data Domain is very easy to use. The price point of StoreOnce is really something people should be looking at.

In my experiences with Data Domain is that it's going to be very expensive to maintain. To keep that after the purchase, it's very expensive to maintain. Not only on the initial purchase, but also on the ongoing annual maintenance fees of Data Domain.

It was very easy.

I had HPE do it.

Even the small one that I have over at the job site was not cheap.

If it had a little more functionality with other platforms, it would be rated higher. Really look at that product and compare it to the direct competition and compare it as far as features, price and annual maintenance and I think you'll see that StoreOnce should really take a hard look at that one.

It's very usable with the interface for the administration. It works with a lot of different applications so it is very scalable for other applications. You don't have to just backup the entire system but you can back up specific applications if you want.

From an operational standpoint it has increased our efficiency and we're able to save a lot of manpower and resources for mundane backup stuff that we've done in the past so that other people can focus on more strategic initiatives in our business.

One of the things that I think that's on the docket for implementation with StoreOnce is Azure and Cloud incorporation. Currently we are doing object copies with StoreOnce to take our backups and copy them to the cloud. But I know that the feature is actually going to be integrated even further in the near future with StoreOnce and Data Protector so that's one thing that we're looking forward to.

The product is great. I've been a 3PAR and StoreOnce customer for many years now and I am now a very strong backing of HPE's storage and backup infrastructures. It's been a really good experience for the past couple of years.

I think that what other products or other competitors are lacking is the use and the adaptation for other applications within Microsoft. If you wanted to backup SharePoint or SQL or clusters or other kind of features within Microsoft products with other backup companies or other partners they don't necessarily have that compatibility. If you have a large environment with a lot of diverse applications and systems and configurations, Data Protector definitely covers that and obviously StoreOnce is backing that.

They're excellent. Everything from pre-sales to post-sales and then just more on the sustainment model. They're eager to be engaged and they definitely take the extra to make sure that we're meeting our needs because obviously backups are important stuff. I would say they're leading the edge as far as customer engagement.

We were using other solutions previously. We initially started using 3PAR as our storage provider. As we went along that road we saw that 3PAR and their storage solution was really solid. We had a great experience with that so we kind of grew our footprint with HPE and we just added our StoreOnce. It's been a great experience.

It's actually very straightforward. A lot of the times when you're dealing with storage and architecture it can be very complex with other vendors. With 3PAR and StoreOnce, those setups are very easy and then you can hand it over to lower skilled admins to manage the systems because it doesn't take an architect to manage the system.

Veeam obviously does a lot of virtualization but it is only virtualization so we have a very diverse set of applications in our environment. You have NetBackup and Symantec that have their backups as well. They've been around for a long time but I think that the maturity of Data Protector at StoreOnce has really surpassed their technology and just usability and support. That's why we went ahead with StoreOnce.

StoreOnce is fairly new. Even this week, they're announcing a lot of new features for reporting and management. I think there's a lot of room for them to grow and it's exciting to see what they're going to come out with in the near future. I think it's a great product now and I think it's going to get even better in the next couple months.

I think the best thing to do is to get a demo. Try it out. Obviously its looking and feeling is more important than looking at a bunch of slides or a bunch of white papers so actually looking at and seeing how it works and see if it meets your requirements. Everyone has their specific environments and their unique criteria so that's really what we did and we're really happy with it.a

We've only just put it in, so I think for us it's a more efficient way of storage. Time efficient, man power, all of it. We have a very small team, so it just frees up the guys to do other things.

It's only been in for a couple of weeks, so can't really comment too much about what it's done yet.

I'd like it to be quicker.

So far, we've had no issues.

One of my engineers might have called, but I haven't.

We were using EMC, and my engineers put some pressure on me. They said we need to spend some money, so that's how I knew we needed to get something else.

It really came down to relationships. At the time it wasn't just going from EMC, it was also going from Cisco to HPE Networking. We went through a pretty good process, where we talked about our needs and requirements, and also comfort levels of technology change. Some of my engineers were a little reluctant to move away from Cisco. But HPE ecame and sat down and just said "We'll do whatever it takes. What do you need? What are your concerns?" Just worked with us in real detail: able to understand what our concerns were, where we were going, and making sure that the engineers were made comfortable. But also making sure, which was the last part which comes across the line, was that the technology was what we needed, was enough for growth. Whereas Cisco was just a "here's a quote, sent it to us" which I think for me swung me over to HP. The commitment to the customer.

Think about the next 10 years, where are you heading. Personally, I say HPE's a pretty strong organization. They send the right messages, saying the right things. They seem like a very digital company which is all about customer, and that stuff matters to me, whereas some of the competitors, they don't have that mindset. Cisco definitely doesn't have that mindset. I really think long-term about. Sure, Cisco had a lot more features, but we didn't really need them. So, that made the decision easier. For me, when I think about HPE, think about longevity. You want to invest in technology, you're almost investing in the company.

It provided us help at a time when we needed a lot of storage quickly. It provided us that storage and it was really easy to deploy. Needless to say, we were very happy with that.

We're actually not happy with StoreOnce because we had to delete our backups three times. HP support was unable to recover them. We can't even log in to fix the problem ourselves. There was no indicator or any type of system alert that we would not be able to recover the files. We only figured that out once we couldn't backup anymore. When we tried to do a restart, it was not accessible.

We've had no issues with deployment.

The stability improved as they released updates and patches for the software.

It's a good product to scale out because we can just buy more appliances and then we'll easily have more space.

Technical support is OK. When we determined that we couldn't recover the data in our StoreOnce, HP support said we should copy everything to another StoreOnce while fixing the defective one. We didn't have a spare StoreOnce, so this suggested fix was disappointing.

We used ArcServe GPT, but we didn't have enough space for traditional servers and ProLiant disks.

The initial setup was straightforward. That's the idea of the product -- straightforward to implement.

We wanted to restore the files we backed up, and on three occasions we were not able to, and this got us in a lot of trouble, so I don't think I will take this risk again. Use something else.

The most valuable features for us are the very high-performance deduplication and high deduplication rates. These features make it quite cost-effective.

We previously used a tape-based backup system with a tape library and off-site storage of tapes, which was very expensive to run. It also wasn't terribly reliable and we had constant issues with capacity. 

We migrated to StoreOnce and we're using the copy feature of StoreOnce to copy to another unit in a different location. We have the primary unit that we do backups to, and then we have another unit in our disaster-recovery site, and all the backups are copied over the WAN to the disaster-recovery site. It uses deduplication to do that too, so the bandwidth requirements are quite low. 

So we have a completely tapeless backup flow that is very low impact on our network and has very high reliability.

StoreOnce actually does pretty much everything we need. There are  quite a lot of features that we don't use at the moment such as virtual tape library and NAS. 

But the initial network setup is not intuitive, and this could be improved.

I've used it for 18 months.

We've had no issues with deploying it.

StoreOnce has been 100% stable in the eighteen months that we've been using it. We actually purchased an additional unit for a third location after the initial purchase of two units on the basis of the performance and reliability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

StoreOnce is not really complicated to set up. It's probably something that can be done by a typically-skilled systems administrator in a day or a half-day.

I think as long as you have a clear understanding of what it does and you're quite sure that that's what you need, then there isn't a better product. Certainly, in terms of the ease-of-use and reliability, we haven't had any issues with StoreOnce. It's definitely one of the products that I would recommend to anyone.

StoreOnce gives us full-system backups, meaning we need less storage capacity. This is very important to us because less storage capacity means we buy less hardware and have less overall costs.

Not only do we need less storage capacity, but it also performs backups a lot quicker. We save money this way as well because it saves us time which can be better spent elsewhere.

Although we're very happy with it right now, the encryption could be better. Security of our backups, of course, is very important.

We have no issues with deployment.

It's very stable. We've only had one small problem since the implementation.

We're not using anywhere close to what we have. We've designed it to allow for our five-year growth. We're not there yet.

We try to avoid technical support because it's "entertaining", though I'd use different words to describe it.

The initial setup was straightforward.

HP implemented the solution, but it's fine if you go at it on your own. The thing is, if you run into problems, then you have to deal with HP support, which is something I wouldn't advise anyone to do.

We are a BAU house, so our focus is on keeping the business running. We don't have the skill set of an American architect who scoped out the project. We've partnered with an HP partner who does have the skill set once we purchased StoreOnce.

Make sure you run a proper POC. It's a pretty straightforward solution so long as it's configured right from the start.

It's a solution that "datafies" backups so that only data is stored. Because we're sensitive to the amount of storage our backups take, "datafication" is the most valuable feature for us.

It saves storage space and the cost of investments in additional storage capacity. Data in other solutions is stored with other backup information. But with StoreOnce, only the data is stored, "datafying" the backup. This allows us to have a lot of backups within a small space, ultimately saving us money.

It needs to handle different kinds of media better. The system will fault sometimes when combining media with forms. It would be best if it could handle both at the same time.

StoreOnce deploys without any issues.

We had a stability issue once because of development, but it's since been resolved.

We haven't had scalability issues. Again, we're able to store more data in a smaller space.

Technical support is responsive, but since we're installers, I expect it to be quicker.

The initial setup is difficult for the normal user.

Think about your timelines, how you plan to use the load and read data, and how you will set up your system.