HPE 3PAR - hard drive - 1.2 TB - SAS 12Gb/s is rated4.49 out of5 by235.
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Milos Kurtes from
Our data security is greater and our system works faster, and we're able to manage storage with a user-friendly console.What is most valuable?* Simple management console with ability to manage storage (files, blocks, objects, functionalities) that's user friendly.* High-availability and resiliency* Data security (RAID system on global level (disks = modules))How has it helped my organization?Data security was greater and the system worked faster.What needs improvement?There were no areas for improvement a that time.For how long have I used the solution?I used it for one and a half years, before I moved companies.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?No issues encountered.How is customer service and technical support?Customer Service: It's excellent.Technical Support: It's excellent.Which solutions did we use previously?NoHow was the initial setup?It was very simple with a user guide provided from HP representative.What about the implementation team?We used a vendor team.What other advice do I have?Just to go for it if you need storage on site. If you need it in the cloud, there are other solutions tor that.Problem with one of the disks in storage.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-10-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user568179 from
You can set it up and let the system tune itself. Scales better than other solutions.What is most valuable?For me, the most valuable feature is its flexibility. You don't have to pre-plan everything. With more traditional storage systems, you had to decide on the size of your RAID groups and what RAID groups you wanted. A lot of customers don't know that upfront. The nice thing about 3PAR is you can set it up and just let the system essentially tune itself.How has it helped my organization?Since 3PAR is self tuning and it optimizes itself to a better level of performance, then that translates to the application level and the business users can get their functions done quicker and more efficiently.What needs improvement?I think it needs to become even more automated, especially with all this new hyper-converged functionality, which is really easy to upgrade. It should also be self-healing. The upgrade process is still quite clunky for 3PAR. It receives an alert from itself and then tells you what to do. At the moment it's not that intuitive.For how long have I used the solution?I've been working with 3PAR for about four years now.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We've had very little problems with stability.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It can scale as long as the customer's got the budget.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support could be better. The guys you get on the phone generally are not very knowledgeable. It can often take a while to go through several levels of support to get to the solution.How was the initial setup?Initial setup is relatively complex.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?I think the license structure is quite transparent and fair.What other advice do I have?I'd say are the main two qualities vendor must have is good product and good technical support. Obviously, they must also have a reasonable price.3PAR is reliable. Although it takes a little bit of time to get set up, once you get set up, it runs itself. The other nice thing about it is that, the 3PAR scales from small to large nicely. Not like other vendors where you have to have several solutions for different size environments.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Date published: 2016-12-14T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user568167 from
All-flash makes our apps faster, but occasionally it reboots and we don't know whyWhat is our primary use case?It's used as online storage; for almost all applications we have one.Performance, in general, is good.How has it helped my organization?Primarily good performance because it's an all-flash system. Basically, the applications run faster.What is most valuable?Synchronicity mode through the application we use.What needs improvement?There is a caching solution, I know it's in development, to increase the performance further.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It's very stable. Yes, we've had issues with it. Sometimes control is rebooting and nobody knows why, so there are issues.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It's very scalable.How is customer service and technical support?We've spoken with technical support about the above issues, they have not found the root cause yet.What other advice do I have?There are several important criteria when selecting a vendor:* quality of the products* the technology* cost of the solution, of course.I would give it a seven out of 10, overall. It's a little bit difficult to figure out where the capacity is used. There is deduplication that, of course, saves space, but it sometimes it's hard to find out where the space is used. If you delete something, do you get it back? So it's not very transparent regarding capacity.In general, the solution is good.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-25T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Manu Thomas from
It is fast and stable. It is really helping us a lot in terms of data store.What is our primary use case?It is performing great. We are using it for our data store and everything, so that is 3PAR mainly using it. It is a school, so we use the management system and all the virtual machines on the 3PAR.How has it helped my organization?It is fast and stable. It is really helping us a lot in terms of data store, etc.What is most valuable?The Call Home feature is really a great feature, so I do not need to monitor the 3PAR. The 3PAR team is monitoring it and letting me know if there are any problems.What needs improvement?I am not sure because I am not an expert in 3PAR solutions. I do not know what the new features are. Already what we have, it is huge for us.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We have been using it for more than two year with no issues at all. I think it is really stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Right now, we have only one. If I need one more, then I buy one more box and attach it to it. I can scale up to whatever I want. I am not nervous about scaling up at all.How is customer service and technical support?I hardly need to call their support.I did for when we were going to upgrade our 3PAR, because initially the 3PAR has some blank space for hard drives. So, we ordered additional hard drives over there, so that was a time they need to come up and update all the framers and everything before we were doing it. So, it was already taken care by the 3PAR team, and it was excellent support, too.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using a different HP storage. I think it was MSA 7000 series storage that we were using. Right now, it is 3PAR.How was the initial setup?It was pretty much straightforward, because our network is not that complex.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We were looking at competitive product just from a financial point of view to have multiple quotations. So, that is why we looked at a different vendor, but as an IT team, we had 3PAR and HPE on the mind already.What other advice do I have?Go for 3PAR, straight away as I am very happy with this product.Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: As a school, we always have low budgets. We are a nonprofit organization. We do not have too much budget, so we care about prices, discounts, and especially about the product quality. The last 16 years, we have been an HPE customer. We are very much happy with HPE products.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2017-12-25T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Philip Sellers from
It was primarily brought in to replace our EVA with something that was more capable from a performance perspectiveWhat is most valuable?In a word, performance. It was primarily brought in to replace our EVA with something that was more capable from a performance perspective. We did not order solid state in our original configuration and we were looking for something which could grow with us, that could handle unpredictable VMware workloads better, and that didn't have the bottlenecks of a traditional monolithic array. Since that time, we have added solid state to accelerate the performance further.What needs improvement?My 3PAR array is too old to support File Persona, and I would love to be able to do that, but that's something that we would need more powerful controllers. We've got the first generation, so at some point we will get it, but we've got to wait for a refresh cycle.What do I think about the stability of the solution?3PAR stability has been there since day one. It's one of the platforms that has just been a joy to work with, because it changed the way that we are able to protect our entire environment. Being a telecom, we've got really good high speed links between our two data centers and we are able to do with 3PAR in a Peer Persistence configuration, and that's a feature where it clusters the two 3PAR rays together with seamless failover for LUNs from one array to another.Now I've got disaster avoidance, rather than disaster recovery of a traditional replication technology. So Peer Persistence for us is kind of nirvana. It's been a great solution for us.It started out just with VMware, then they added support for our Windows clusters. Most of the things we run on the blades are things that we can do this with. So if we have a blade fail, the great thing about a blade is the server profiles, move that to another blade, spare, in the enclosure, it comes back up in the same server running again, and if we have a storage failure, it automatically switches over in the backend, and our users never know.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We've got plenty of room to grow. We're about three or four years into our 3PARs and we've still got more than at least about 50% of our drive shelves open, so we have a lot more room to grow. With each generation of drive that comes out, we can install bigger and more capable drives in it, so we haven't hit any scale issues there.How is customer service and technical support?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.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using HP EVA, and before that we were HP HSG. So when I first started we had two small HSG arrays that were primarily behind DMS and maybe a couple of other systems, but we had a very small amount of data on a san. VMware changed all of that. So we had all of this data running on EVA and we were staring to hit some limits, and the EVA didn't have good telemetry to let us know where the edge of the cliff actually was, so we were teetering right on the edge and about to fall off when we got the 3PARs in. So that kind of saved our bacon.When we were evaluating potential replacements for our HP EVA storage array, we looked at Tintri and Tegile. We ended up doing evaluations for both of them.Our company purchased Tegile for another project. Internally, my security officer didn't like the NFS of Tegile. That was kind of a no-go for internal use. Otherwise it has really great features for virtualization. That was really appealing to me as a VMWare administrator. We talked with them after a VMUG meeting and brought it in, did a proof of concept on it. It didn't perform as expected in our environment and we found out after the fact why. We would have needed a second active controller and a second disk shelf to get the full IOPS we were expecting out of it. That kind of killed our evaluation. It had good features, it had good reporting, which was one of our big criteria moving from the EVA. We wanted something that was going to let us know how it was performing. That was really strong, in Tintri. It's also been three and a half years since then, so that product has changed a lot also.How was the initial setup?3PAR installation was an easy one. We had really good consulting services that came in and walked us through that process. We've done a couple of field upgrades and those have gone smoothly also, so 9/10.Which other solutions did I evaluate?From a storage perspective we've looked at some other vendors, but once the 3PAR 7000 series was announced with its capabilities, it made the most sense, being mostly an HPE shop.What other advice do I have?I really love that platform. It's rocked for us. It's, like I said before, it's near nirvana for our environment, because we are trying to do something where we want to avoid disasters and have seamless fail-over, and I don't know of another solution that can accomplish that in our environment.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2016-06-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Javier Maldonado from
It has a powerful tool to measure data, how it is working, the performance, and if we have any bottlenecksWhat is most valuable?The reason why we chose 3PAR is because it was future proof. It had some features that the cabinets we were looking for at at the moment when we bought the 3PAR storage, that were not available in the market, like theme provisioning and the movement of blocks, which are really fast and are not so fast. In this way, we can put the hot data where it should be. It also has a really powerful tool to measure data, how it is working, the performance, and if we have any bottlenecks.Also, it does not have any spare disks, so we did not have to use this as a spare. We even had the spare space. So, we had a lot of features which were not not available for all the cabinets in the market, at the time, when we bought this storage.What needs improvement?For me, the main issue with 3PAR right now is its cost problem. Right now, there are some other storage cabinets that can do what 3PAR can do; what 3PAR used to do a long time ago. Now, they can do it as well with a more revised budget. So, the main problem for 3PAR right now is cost.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is a really stable product. We have not had any major issues at the moment. For us, it is a really stable product.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?For us, scalability is fine.How is customer service and technical support?We have a contract where we have field engineer. He is working for more customers, but is allocated for us. So, we do not have any issues at all.How was the initial setup?It was straightforward.What about the implementation team?We used our support field engineer. They helped us on the setup. For us, it was not a big deal because of that.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?HPE is changing on the licensing way, because in the past, you had to apply for a license for everything. Now, they have made a combo for all the licenses, which is more helpful, but there are a few things which are not completely included in the product. Talking from a license point of view, to be more competitive, as customer, we need a more aggressive price that includes all the licenses available.What other advice do I have?Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We look for reputation. Also, we want to have confidence in the product. We want to know a product has been deployed for a lot of customers. So, we are looking for a mature product as well.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-13T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user231912 from
It has common provisioning groups which allowed us to create multiple RAIDs on the same disks.Valuable Features3PAR has CPG (common provisioning groups) which allowed us to create multiple RAIDs on the same disks, move LUNS between CPGs and between RAID arrays. No other storage had this capability.Improvements to My OrganizationIt gave me flexibility in moving things around, for example, I could move the production LUN and test LUNs from RAID 5 to RAID 6 in order to have more redundancy disk failures.Use of SolutionI used it for six months, but am now at a company that is not using it.Stability IssuesIt's very stable, and very fast. Creating virtual disks took literally one minute for a 100GB VM disk.Scalability IssuesNo issues encountered.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: HP was very helpful all the way through.Technical Support: 10/10.Previous SolutionsWe used a NetApp N6040n, and we switched in order to have more flexibility on our storage array as CPG moved LUNs between different RAID arrays.Initial SetupIt's very straightforward to configure. You need to connect the service processor to the storage array and then finish the configuration settings.Implementation TeamHP technicians did the initial deployment and I did the initial configuration. Even without any training I was able to the update firmware to v3.1.3, perform the software configuration, configure the ILO and service processor.Other Solutions ConsideredWe also looked at EMC but 3PAR was the cheaper solution, and it was more flexible.Other AdviceIt integrates very well with Windows 2012 as well as VMware.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-04-30T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567900 from
For roughly the same cost as mixing traditional hard drives with flash, we got an all-flash solution.What is most valuable?The speed and the storage optimization are the best features. I realized that instead of mixing with the traditional hard drives and flash, we could go with flash. We made an RFP, and found that for more or less the same cost, we could get an all-flash solution.How has it helped my organization?* We removed a lot of the restrictions of our old storage solution so we would have better performing applications.* We didn’t have to worry about storage anymore.What needs improvement?We are waiting for the compression to use on a daily basis. We have some deep ticket issues that I know about related to this. Otherwise, we are fairly happy with the solution.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We have some issues with it, but HPE has been very good. Their partners have been very good in working with us and slowly inching us out of the curb.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We are fairly small. We are at the moment 800 virtual services. For us, it has very good scalability; but we are very, very small.How is customer service and technical support?It's not me personally, but some of the technicians are pleased with the support. They have pulled back what have been problems. We are comfortable with their support.Which solutions did we use previously?The previous solution was getting old. It was getting harder to replace with lifecycle handling, so we knew that we needed a new storage system.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was fairly straightforward. We migrated since we are totally virtualized on VMware. We changed all the storage to the 3PAR within a few weeks. Without any downtime or anything. It was very, very good.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We made an RFP that was open to everyone. We evaluated an old flash solution that was better than the traditional solution; but you can't buy an old flash solution if you're going to buy as big as a traditional solution. So you have to have the optimizations that 3PAR has. Otherwise, you're not in business. It gets too expensive.We had offers from EMC and from IBM, but our HPE partner came up with the best offer, so they won the RFP.What other advice do I have?If you want Sun or old fashioned good storage optimization technology, then 3PAR is very, very good.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-01-01T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user252627 from
It’s a good, solid product with ease-of-management.Valuable FeaturesReliability. It’s a good, solid product with ease-of-management.Improvements to My OrganizationBefore switching over from HP’s old storage, we just needed to upgrade our aging infrastructure, which was pretty easy.Room for Improvement3PAR has everything that I’m interested in. I come from a storage background, and everything that I want to see is there. I don’t really have anything pressing to suggest, but nothing is perfect.Stability IssuesStability is rock solid.Scalability IssuesIf my company doubled in size, I could scale it well.Customer Service and Technical SupportEverything has been very positive with no issues. Working at a nuclear power plant, it’s mostly on our end when issues come up. Otherwise, HP’s been perfect.Previous SolutionsIt was mostly just aging storage. We used HP AVA before, and so we just switched over to a new product.Other Solutions ConsideredIt was purchased prior to me being there, so I’m not sure what else was considered.Other AdviceWe always look for ease of use, and 3PAR is very easy to use.From my experience with other storage platforms, if you want something where underlying hardware is designed with a goal and you rely on pre-existing hardware around which you build your product, you’re setting yourself up for failure from the beginning. It seems to me that something like 3PAR, where it’s designed around a specific product, just makes life so much more easier. You’re essentially setting yourself up for success with a product like 3PAR.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-06-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SrEngine62c7 from
Helps With More Than Just Serving Data, But Also With RecoveryWhat is our primary use case?Our primary use for 3PAR is virtualization, SQL Server data, and backup logs. We also use it for our Citrix VDI environment.We have been using 3PAR for two years. It has been performing as expected. We are actually getting ready to invest a big chunk of money to expand our 3PAR.How has it helped my organization?It has improved multiple things. Integration with current HPE products that we have, e.g., backups with integration within Veeam and restores of a huge file server using Veeam. Across the board, it has helped with more than just serving data, but also with recovery.What is most valuable?* Ease of use* Ease of training for my new staff and junior level staff.* The support that we receive from HPE.What needs improvement?I would like more integration with OneView. I would also like to be able to deploy and manage 3PAR within OneView Global Dashboard so we do not have to use the interface for 3PAR. Overall, I would like more integration, which I think is coming.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It meets and exceeds all my expectations. It is easy to scale. It is fairly inexpensive to scale. It easily does whatever I need it to do.How is customer service and technical support?When we have a failed drive or any failure, we receive emails and do not have to open cases.They make the replacement of any parts easy along with the analysis of any issues with the servers, 3PARs, and any upgrades which need to be happening, in addition to any detrimental performance issues.Which solutions did we use previously?We previously had Dell Compellent. We switched because we were using HPE Compute and HPE Blades, and it seemed like we might as well go all in on HPE. Also, we were not getting what we thought we wanted for performance out of Compellent.How was the initial setup?It was the easiest SAN that I have ever set up.What was our ROI?I do not know if I can put a number on it. When we buy products, we do not put ROI on it. It is more performance, and does it meet our business needs?This product has been exceeding anything else that we have had in the environment firsthand.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?Give 3PAR a good consideration. Budget wise, 3PAR is a lot of money compared to other solutions, but what is in the 3PAR integration that customers are getting now from the Nimble and InfoSight acquisitions, it is worthwhile.What other advice do I have?This system has been (by far) the easiest to use, manage, and expand.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-06-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user481920 from
Having the volume sets is a lot more efficient than we do on some other systems, so it's easier to group by host.Valuable FeaturesIt's a definitely an easy to use interface. It's also easy to learn. We're currently moving over to more HPE solutions, so it was an easy transition.Improvements to My OrganizationEase of management at the device level. Having the volume sets is a lot more efficient than we do on some other systems, so it's easier to group by host. That was definitely better than the other systems.Room for ImprovementOne big thing I would like to see is to be able to promote a virtual volume while it's still exporting. That's something a lot of the arrays are doing, other vendors, and 3PAR ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hpe-3par-flash-storage ) is kind of the only one that's not doing it. It's kind of the only thing that is not there. Everything else is great.Stability IssuesWe've been pretty good so far.Scalability IssuesWe have a few arrays. We have scaled up a little bit. It's been pretty easy to rebalance the arrays while we were scaling. I'm overall happy with that.Customer Service and Technical SupportIt depends on who you get, but sometimes they can be a little bit annoying, depending on the case, but usually they've been pretty good and pretty responsive.Previous SolutionsWe're a pretty big data center, so we have a lot of EMC and IBM products. We're kind of starting to spread out though. I like 3PAR, that's what I'm in charge of.EMC ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/emc-vnx ) definitely has a better support structure. HP is not bad, it's just that with EMC, the their relationship with the customer is a little different than HP's. That's really the only thing that separates it. Performance is performance. 3PAR gets the job done.Initial SetupIt's definitely on the easier side when it comes to storage arrays ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/enterprise-flash-array-storage ). It's definitely a smooth array. It was smooth to get up. Smooth to expand.Other AdviceKnow that the raw usable is actually raw and not a lot of arrays come with their usable being RAIDed already. Say it says 270 terabytes, that's raw, and it's actually if you use a RAID5 you got to take a 20%. So you have to adjust for that when you're planning size. Everything else is straightforward.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-07-31T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Matthew Sarro from
Provides speed, and the deduplication features have huge potentialWhat is our primary use case?Right now, we are finishing the proof of concept stage. We're using it as a data store for a virtual infrastructure for telephoning applications.Thus far, it's met all of our expectations and has actually has exceeded them a bit. Once we got it up and running, it seems like it runs pretty rock-solid. There have been a couple hiccups here or there related to how some of the fault tolerance features work. But overall, it's performed very well.How has it helped my organization?The hope is right now it's going to empower us to lower mean time to resolutions. Since it's being used to support a virtual infrastructure, that gives us access to all of the benefits of a virtual infrastructure. So, instead of spending hours trying to rebuild or to fix a broken server, we can instead wipe it out and throw up a new one and we're up and running again.What is most valuable?I like the speed capabilities that it provides. The deduplication features definitely have some huge potential. The latest firmware, where they've enabled compression for workloads that aren't very good for deduplication, I can definitely see huge potential there. It's just going to be a matter of how much time we have in the lab to test all of them.What needs improvement?Automated reporting, real-time reporting would be excellent. Right now, most of the reports are ad hoc, so I have to say, "I want this report." I believe you can schedule them and have them go out to an email address, but it would be nice to have an actual dashboard where I can see in real time, "Ok, this is what everything looks like." It may be there and we haven't seen it yet. It hasn't been the primary focus. We're still in the process of engineering a solution.For how long have I used the solution?Still implementing.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The "hiccups" I mentioned above did not cause downtime in any environment of consequence. It went down when we were trying to break things. When we tried to break it, it broke. But thus far, otherwise, it's been pretty darn solid.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?I can't really comment too much on the scalability. Most of what we're using right now is still a relatively small deployment. I don't see anything that would cause a problem with scaling outwards, and the system is made to scale. We're probably going to be doing our first augment next year, but we haven't really focused on it yet.How is customer service and technical support?We've been working directly with our product management group to work through any issues that we've encountered. There has been some stuff, but it's mostly related to it being a proof of concept, or the gear being proof of concept.For the most part, whomever we've been dealing with, they've been knowledgeable and helpful.There were one or two small issues where it would have been more helpful to talk directly to a subject matter expert. We're an engineering organization, so sometimes it's very difficult and we're asking for a very specific thing, and sometimes not talking to a subject matter expert right away can be frustrating, it feels like you're getting deflected a little bit.But as of today, most of those issues have gone away, and we've gotten answers to all the questions we've had, eventually, so overall it's been a very good experience.Which solutions did we use previously?We worked hand in hand with our product management team to try and determine what the best fit was. In the past, we worked with HPE MSAs and HPE P2000s.This was a logical step forward without going into any really crazy high-ends like Hitachi or EMC type of SAN which has all of its own problems that you get when you go in that direction.How was the initial setup?The initial setup, when we first got the gear, was actually done in coordination with HPE. They had installers on site. We didn't have that much to do. The next parts of the setup went very smoothly, integrating with Synergy.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We didn't so much evaluate other vendors. For different types of workloads we're looking at some open source solutions like Gluster, Ceph. There are a couple of other options we've looked at.What other advice do I have?Our most important criterion when selecting a vendor is support. We're in the telephone sector, or carrier sector. If we have an outage it's going to impact millions of people. So sitting on hold for 15 minutes isn't acceptable, especially when it could mean 911 calls aren't being made. That's really key, we need to be able to get to someone who knows what they're talking about immediately. So far, we haven't had that huge of an issue with HPE hardware.I give it an eight out of 10. Still extremely good. Way better than most. A couple rough edges that could be buffed out. We're about 90% of the way to where we want the solution to be. When we're there 100%, and we have it working exactly how we want it to, I think my score would be a little bit higher.I would tell a colleague who is looking at similar solutions that this is a worthwhile investment to look at, so long as you have the ability to test it appropriately and make sure that it works for your workload. Read through all the best practices, make sure that it will work for you before you try and do it, so you can actually give it a fair shot. But overall, give it a shot. I would recommend a proof of concept.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-26T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
MarioSolano from
Stable, central storage point for our VMwareWhat is our primary use case?It is our main point of storage for many applications. We use VMware so we have all the hosts connected to the 3PAR and that's the central point of storage for our whole organization. It's definitely critical, we can't live without it because that's where all the servers and data are hosted, on the 3PAR.What needs improvement?The interface to manage it could be improved. I was looking at OneView. Something basic like that should be available with the 3PAR. OneView has all the bells and whistles, all the features, but I think something basic and similar to that should be come with the 3PAR, at least for monitoring managing it.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It has definitly been very stable. We haven't had any issues with the 3PAR for years.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We believe it will meet our needs in the future. In fact, we already did an upgrade to the 3PAR, because another company was moving to the same location we use and we didn't have enough space. It was really easy, we just had to add more hard drives and another chassis. It was very straightforward to do the upgrade and scale the 3PAR.It was a matter of hours. Once the chassis was installed, and then the upgrade was added to the chassis - adding the drive - it took a couple hours to do the whole thing.How is customer service and technical support?The support is very good, they're generally very responsive. I haven't had any issues with them in terms of responding in a timely manner to any request that I have had.Which solutions did we use previously?We came from the EVA which was the previous version and this is, hands-down, way better. It has a smaller footprint and is actually quicker than the EVA.What was our ROI?There has definitely been a return on investment. Usually what we do is lease equipment. We are leasing the 3PAR for three years, but after the three years I know we are going to use it for longer. I don't think that we are going to use it for less than five years, so at the time I bought the support for five years, knowing that after the three years with the lease, we were going to buy it out. We are probably going to keep it for five to seven years.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Nagesh Katiyar from
Meets with almost all the business requirements. It needs to be hardware independent.What is most valuable?It is an enterprise-class storage and meeting approximately almost all the business requirements of NxtraData. Upgrading the disks is a challenge that we like the most.How has it helped my organization?We started our cloud journey based on this storage solution and upgraded later on to achieve the desired IOPS.What needs improvement?Since the world is moving from enterprise storage to the software-defined storage, I believe that they also need to work in the same direction and that it should be hardware independent.For how long have I used the solution?I have used this solution for more than three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?There were no stability issues.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?There were no scalability issues.How is customer service and technical support?On a scale of 1-10, I would rate the technical support a 7/10.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was pretty straightforward.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?Prices are flexible and one should negotiate hard before taking a final call.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We evaluated the NetApp ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/netapp ) solution.What other advice do I have?Nowadays, we should look for software-defined storage rather than such OEM dependent products.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-07-06T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user285345 from
We Needed A New Storage Platform In Order To Properly Upgrade Our ERP SolutionValuable FeaturesSo we actually go with a three tier solution. We have near line, we have fast class, fiber channel, and we have SSD, the flash. We began making an entrance into introducing flash. That was really as part of a 7400. So we acquired a 7400, took our F400, put it into DR, and with that 7400, we've now been able to actually grow and increase based upon the needs.So we've been able to look at the data, look at the growth and the need for the SSD, as needed, and we moved things around. We're starting to introduce AO, but realistically, we didn't have to initially jump in and put everything into all flash. I know the sales force wanted us to, but realistically, at the end of the day, we wanted to take a more cautious approach, and it's paid off for us.Improvements to My OrganizationOne of the biggest benefits that we just experienced was we actually went through an Oracle E-Business Suite R11 to R12 migration. Three-quarters of a terabyte database. Oracle came in, said this should take you somewhere around 24 to 36 hours. Realistically, at the end of the day, it took 10 hours, and a lot of that had to do with the 3PAR back end storage system and our ability to transform the actual virtual volumes and the IO, the rate configurations, within minutes. We had one instance where we took the entire 750 gig database, that virtual volume from fast cache to SSD in six minutes.Room for ImprovementActually, during our migration we had a very choreographed timed execution of needing to transform virtual volumes from one level, from one tier to the next. AO wasn't necessarily getting us there. It would need to see and predict, and these were ad hoc, one off, it's going to happen this one time workload, and never happen again. And so one of the things that's been thrown out is, hey, could you all give us some ability to actually choreograph that, to actually be able to lay it out and then trigger it fly by wire in a way, but have it pre-laid out.Stability IssuesWe've actually had a number of drives fail over a three year period, and actually before that, we had on the MC and other systems we'd see drives fail. The drive failures, however, and the way that the predictability comes about and the disc is actually evacuated on a 3PAR, and it's done, you know, preemptively, that's been a game changer for us. Rather than watching an entire raid volume go offline or become poor performing or unstable, we don't have that. Mechanical devices are gonna fail. Ideally, they don't impact your business. That's been one of the big things for us.Scalability IssuesOverall our ability to add storage increase the IOs, on demand and as needed, I can't ask a whole lot more based upon the choices that we made. There are of course more scalable aspects of 3PAR out there than what we have landed on, but based upon what we utilize and the choices that we made, we're still well within. Of course, the beauty of storage and a business is that anytime you build it, they find ways to fill it up. And so we've continued to stay on top of that.With the insight that we get as far as disc usage, we are actually able to more properly calculate our capacity though with thin provisioning. So we're not just stamping out storage and saying, hey, it's wholly dedicated, we have no idea kind of what our growth is. You know, it's wasted over here and needed over here. We don't run into that. It's used through the thin provisioning capabilities across the platform. So that's another aspect of scalability that I think, you know, you don't necessarily find in other systems.Customer Service and Technical SupportYou know, realistically, we have probably seen more upgrades, former firmware updates, insertive updates, good solid response. When, Heartbleed and a couple of other issues came out with open SSL, we saw within a month timeframe that we were getting updates, being notified, okay, here's the level that you need to be running at. That's not necessarily the case with other vendors. It's been really good overall.Previous SolutionsSo originally, we were actually running on EMC CX700 and VNX 5300s. The back end was front ended actually with AIXP5P6 series systems. We were needing to realistically bring our ERP system forward. Poor performance dictated that, you know, we can no longer really continue to do business the way we were doing business on that platform, so we looked at others, including EMC, Hitachi, IBM, and actually HP 3PAR was late to the game and came knocking.Initial SetupThe biggest part with 3PAR is overcoming your pre-existing mindset. So coming into it originally, the whole idea of chunklets and not having dedicated storage groups or, you know, raid types, it took time to understand operationally what what you could really do with it. And so in that sense, I would say that there was some complexity. From a services standpoint, they came in, they knocked it out, they got it installed, and we integrated into the environment. We started migrating.They've made advancements in migrations, that, you know, I've seen now. It would have made life easier for us back then, but they've listened and they've, you know, made improvements.Other Solutions ConsideredRealistically, we ended up choosing HP. It was the more expensive solution at the time, but given the need for the performance, we also looked at a three to five year roadmap and the ability to continue to grow and the ability to add additional storage tiers within the same frame, that played a big part in it for us.Other AdviceIn comparing HP 3PAR against really EMC and some of the others, the ability to kind of maximize the actual storage. So thin provisioning, the ability to use all disc realistically across the storage system from an IOPS perspective, rather than your traditional monolithic, to where you're isolating storage groups and raid groups to particular LUNs and that's all the disc they have, so your spindles are limited, you move away from that.At the same time, our ability and our need realistically to transform the raid or the stripe size, our IO kind of dictated that at times, or our lack of knowledge of IO, and that was really, came along as a third item, is the tools that were native in the 3PAR InServ store gave us the ability to look at the IO versus Navi-analyzer and others, while the capabilities there, we were either inhibited from a performance standpoint, or we weren't getting all the data and visibility that we needed.Don't be afraid of the price tag, number one. If you're willing to really set out a roadmap and know the investment and what you're able to give back to the business, look at what you're able to give back to the business. In our case, we had individuals during close, close would take up to 18 days. It's now down to 10 days. We had individuals that would literally kick off reporting FSGs at night and go home and then check back on them. They might fail, and they'd have to try and kick them back off. They couldn't run them ad hoc during the day. They had to only run them during certain times because the system wouldn't sustain it.Now they can do that any time they want. So don't just look at the price tag of the infrastructure. Look at what you can actually give back to the business, see how you can actually facilitate the business's strategic direction.I think peer reviewers are priceless. Realistically, you can get all the marketing hype, but at the end of the day, seeing how somebody has either pushed the boundaries on a product, looked at the product, and used it in ways that a development team could never- or a product team could never actually envision, and see it either live or die, you know, how it performed, those are the things that you get out of community and from peer reviews, that you're not necessarily going to get from your traditional marketing.Finding a group of individuals that you know is important, that you know the context of their background, because with any data, especially on the Internet, you have to understand the context of where people are coming from, what their knowledge level is, how truthful they're really willing to be. And so having that trusted community is very important.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2015-08-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user680232 from
The most valuable features are performance and support.What is most valuable?The performance and the support are pretty good.How has it helped my organization?Performance. We used to be with NetApp. The overall performance is much better with this solution.What needs improvement?Maybe they could have better alerting. We've had an issue where we had a flapping network link, and it didn't tell us that was happening. We only saw symptoms of the issue. I'd like to see better reporting for those types of issues. Even though the support is better than NetApp was, there are still some improvements they could make in their support.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is very good.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is good.How is customer service and technical support?I have used technical support and it usually is good. Their support is very hands-on compared to NetApp. Sometimes we have issues where they, just like any other vendor, point fingers at either networking or the hardware. We've encountered that with them, as well. Overall, support was good.Which solutions did we use previously?The old system was outdated. We were having performance issues with it and the support wasn't great. It was just time to shop for a new the solution. When selecting a vendor, I look for support, performance, and customization.How was the initial setup?I was involved in the setup and it was straightforward.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Our shortlist included Nimble and 3PAR. One reason we changed was because we have local support.What other advice do I have?I still think it is the best solution out there. HPE will help support issues or even upgrades.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-15T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user568014 from
Capacity, scalability, and reliability are valuable to us. It is modular.What is most valuable?Most valuable to us are the capacity, the scalability, and also the reliability.How has it helped my organization?The benefit of HPE 3PAR flash storage is the scalability. It generally has good reliability.What needs improvement?The SSD disks mainly did well performance-wise. Now that the cost of the system is reduced, it's more financially viable as well. We did have firmware problems with them over the years, but generally we're fairly happy with it.For how long have I used the solution?We've been with HPE for about ten years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability is pretty good, but we had a fiber channel previously, and we found that was a bit more reasonable than the HPE.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability is very good. The 3PAR is very modular, so we can just install more modules as we need.How is customer service and technical support?I give technical support a 9/10. If we have a problem, we log a call and they come back to us within half an hour. It is pretty good.Which solutions did we use previously?We were previously using HPE SAN, but we then went to the P4000, and now we're looking to upgrade our data centre again. So we're quite happy with their solutions and the help. We think it's one of the best ones out there.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was complex. We had the HPE consultants in to work with us, and we had a few issues initially. But we managed to get them resolved.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at IBM, Dell, and HPE. We went with HPE because we have used HPE storage solutions before. We have also used HPE network server equipment and we found them to be good quality equipment. Additionally, we found that working with them was quite a good experience.What other advice do I have?We currently use the P4000, which is iSCSI. We will go for the fiber channel next time, which we have been comparing with the 3PAR.When choosing a vendor, their reputation, and obviously the quality of the products, are important. HPE is pretty consistent with these.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-01-10T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Directora818 from
Moving past traditional hard drives has improved performance and increased productivityWhat is our primary use case?We use this solution internally for our test environments.How has it helped my organization?This solution handles everything to do with our business. If it’s down then we can’t deliver to our customers. We can do more, faster, whether it's spinning up more virtual machines or handling large amounts of data.The All-Flash has positioned us for growth because we can do more. Going past traditional hard drives has really been fantastic for us. Our performance has increased by anywhere from fifty to one hundred percent. Moreover, our deployment time has been reduced by about fifty percent.For us, the increase in throughput translates to an increase in productivity.What is most valuable?The most valuable feature of this solution is its security.The deduplication functionality is fantastic.What needs improvement?We had a minor error when we were configuring this system, which initially detracted from its overall stability.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We had some minor issues at first, although it was mostly due to configuration. Since those were ironed out it's been very smooth.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability of this solution is excellent.How are customer service and technical support?Technical support for this solution has been great.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?Prior to implementing this solution we were using one by Dell. We were not meeting our commitments to customers because it was not meeting our performance requirements.We had a lot of legacy hardware in our environment, and the step into the future by implementing this solution has been fantastic.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was a little complex. It was our first time setting it up but now as we're doing another iteration it is much smoother.What about the implementation team?We used a consultant to assist with our deployment and it was a good experience.What was our ROI?We get about twenty percent more productivity out of our people because we use this solution.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?We do not have any licensing fees.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We only considered solutions by HPE because we have a partnership between our companies and they are our number one pick.What other advice do I have?This product has met our expectations. Once we got past the minor configuration issues, it's been smooth sailing, so I'm very happy with it. It is important to understand the terminology upfront because it helps prepare to do the actual implementation.I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567732 from
For us, the most important feature is reliability.What is most valuable?For us, the most important feature is reliability. It must be tough because we work in a hospital and we want it to be solid. It must work always, always, always.How has it helped my organization?We count on that it works and it's always on; at a quarter of the price. The price and the reliability are key for us.What needs improvement?We need faster disks, but their solid-state disk takes care of that. But they are expensive. I think the solution is to spend more money.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is really stable actually. We never have unplanned downtime. It is really on call for us. We upgraded from the HPE EVA ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hpe-eva ) systems to the 3PAR ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hpe-3par-flash-storage ) and I think it's better than our last EVA system.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have had to scale up a couple times now because our imaging is growing about 30% per year. We cannot plan it; we have to upgrade it. The scalability is really good. We just put in more hardware and it starts to run.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is not so good. They don't understand us and we don't understand them. We had quite simple questions and tend to be transferred somewhere else.Which solutions did we use previously?Actually, it was HPE old technology. We really didn't switch anything. It's HPE already just old hardware, so we just upgraded.How was the initial setup?I was not involved with the setup.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We didn't consider any other vendors because we did an upgrade from old HPE hardware. We can trust it. The whole process works very smoothly. No downtime; that is important for us.What other advice do I have?We like the system, so I can suggest to a friend that 3PAR is okay.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-12-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user370131 from
One of the most valuable features for us is that it has a tiered architecture which we were able to easily adopt into our IT infrastructure.Valuable Features:Most importantly for us, this product provides us with flexibility, it has a tiered architecture, and was easy to adopt into our IT infrastructure.Improvements to My Organization:We built our data warehouse around it, which now operates much more efficiently. We have a smaller footprint, thus saving us physical space and costs associated with larger structures.Room for Improvement:I'd like to see more and better documentation on how we can get more out of it. This is lacking right now and I feel like we can do much more with our investment. Both documentation and education on how to best use the product would be nice.Use of Solution:We've had it for three years.Deployment Issues:We haven't had any issues with deployment.Stability Issues:We don't have any problems with stability. The way we've configured it gives us a lot of resilience.Scalability Issues:It's extremely scalable.Initial Setup:The setup and configuration were pretty straightforward. We were able to quickly adopt it and to get the ball rolling.Implementation Team:A third-party proposed the solution to us and we bought it.Other Solutions Considered:We did evaluate other options as we were going through a third-party supplier, but I can't recall specifically which other vendors we considered.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-01-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SystemAd5372 from
We have built a DR solution based on this solution, minimizing our downtimeWhat is our primary use case?We use it for our main production system, for SAP, and also for SharePoint, Microsoft products.We have a good relationship with HPE, but we still have some challenges in the Arabic implementation and in migration, but for daily work, it's fine.How has it helped my organization?We built a DR solution based on this, we can sustain our business for any amount of time, 24/7. We have minimized downtime to 10 minutes now, because of this solution.What is most valuable?Support.What needs improvement?More flexibility and expansion, and also relocation, a cloud solution.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It's stable. We haven't have any issues, unless it's human error, until now.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have issues with scalability because 3PAR has limited storage capacity, so we have to invest more after a while.How is customer service and technical support?We have gotten to level 3, the last level of support. We had some high issues with them, but they were fixed. It took some time. The issue with it was, when it's in production, even one day is too long.Which solutions did we use previously?For storage we had Dell EMC, and we used to have IBM but not any more.IBM is not a Windows platform, and Dell, they didn't have storage at that time. Now they have EMC. So they both have a full solution, like HPE. And they are presenting a solution to us everyday.What other advice do I have?What is most important to me in a vendor is that when I need them there, they're available.I give it an eight out of 10 because of scalability.HPE is a full solution, and they have a bigger scale for everything. You can build something cheaper when you combine companies, but there will be problems after a while with support and troubleshooting. Everybody will blame the other.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-21T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Julie Imoto from
We are able to cohost and it is still able to deliver the availability and speed we needWhat is our primary use case?We provide DoD services for military healthcare. The storage is used for healthcare delivery.How has it helped my organization?It allows us to cohost as needed. We are able to put more systems on one data storage system and it is still able to deliver the availability and speed that we need it to deliver.All-flash also positions us for growth. We can look to simplify things while still maintaining the reliability and speed that we need to deliver quality healthcare.In addition, it has increased our performance and it has improved our throughput. The latter improvement means that we're able to ensure that the users can get to their data as quickly as they need it, and that it responds to any queries that they have. It's able to meet their daily needs.What is most valuable?* The reliability - the solution's availability is really good* The amount of storage that you can have on a system* The speedWhat needs improvement?We've started to see an issue with the older models that we have. We've had issues where facilities would have unscheduled power outages or scheduled power outages and the 3PARs weren't able to come up successfully. We actually had an incident recently where it wiped data that we didn't anticipate would be wiped.We will be having sidebar conversations with them later today, here at HPE Discover 2019, to talk about some of the possibilities that we're looking at.Going forward, we're looking for bigger capacity and drives, which I know they're looking at. We want them to ensure the speed and reliability because keeping those systems up and running, 24/7, is important to us.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability and scalability of the solution are great. They're among the reasons that we selected this product.How are customer service and technical support?Technical support has always been great. We have to be available 24/7, 365, and for what we've needed, they've always provided really great support.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?We've had a long-standing working relationship with HPE. They're a trusted solution, so we've continued working with them.What about the implementation team?We deployed it ourselves, although we had HPE come in and give us some guidance and then they were available by phone. We worked together but it was pretty easy to do. The HPE consultants have been great. Whenever we've needed assistance, they've been available and able to provide us with the assistance that we need.What was our ROI?The fact that it's able to provide the speed and the reliability that we need means fewer outages for the hospital. That means less back-filling the data so it's worth the money that they're spending.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We have looked at other vendors but a lot of them couldn't handle the capacity or the speed or the reliability that we needed.What other advice do I have?It's a great product. Their support is great. We even have the ability to have loaner products provided to us as an option. We can have the products come inside and test and use them before we make our final decision. That helps with the analysis and recommendation process, so it's been a great partnership with HPE.We haven't really had any significant issues. So other than that it's able to provide what we need and that the customer service is great, we haven't learned any big lessons from using it.We don't use too much deduplication, but from what we've seen so far, it seems to execute what we need it to execute.Once we get this issue that we've had recently resolved then I would say it's a ten out of ten. We haven't had any real issues with it.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-10T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user364635 from
We're able to tailor it to our needs, including the GUI, which makes it easy to use.Valuable Features:The compression it offers is probably the most valuable feature for us. We're able to reduce 16 terabytes of data by a 2:1 ratio, giving us the ability to put a lot more onto the 3PAR than our previous solution. Our files include a lot of large videos.Improvements to My Organization:We have about 250 users on it and it's not messy. We're able to tailor it to our needs, including the GUI, which makes it easy to use.Room for Improvement:IT is always evolving, but there are no improvements that I see right now. There will be a lot of new stuff, I'm sure. I'm interested to see what happens in the future.Deployment Issues:We have no issues with deployment.Stability Issues:It's highly stable and has 99.9999% uptime.Scalability Issues:We just got up as much as we need. We had no issues with scalability.Previous Solutions:Our prior solution was end-of-life, and this was about six or seven years ago.Initial Setup:It wasn't the most straightforward setup. It would be better with an easier setup.Other Solutions Considered:We looked at EMC, Nimble, and Pure Storage, but 3PAR is the market leader.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-01-08T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
David Barrientos from
Increased performance and availability of our serversWhat is our primary use case?This solution provides flash storage for our servers. Our environment contains Linux operating systems, VMware, and some web servers.How has it helped my organization?The availability of the server has given us increased stability in our environment.The mission-critical apps and processes that we use are our Oracle database, VMware, and some web services.The All-flash positions us for growth because of its better performance, which means that our applications are faster.This solution has improved throughput. It has helped when we deploy non-production servers.What is most valuable?This solution has great availability that works for us.What needs improvement?This solution should be easier to use.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability of this solution is good.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have not yet tried to scale this solution.How are customer service and technical support?I think that technical support is good. We have only had one report.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?We implemented this solution when it was time to renew the servers. Prior to this, we used HP EVA, but it had reached end-of-life.How was the initial setup?Although I don't recall the details of the initial setup, I think that it was a little complex. The people that normally work with storage had to ask for help.What about the implementation team?We used a consultant to assist with our deployment.Which other solutions did I evaluate?The vendors that we evaluated were HPE and IBM.What other advice do I have?The All-flash has better performance, which means that our applications are faster. Our performance has increased by twenty to thirty percent.The biggest lesson that I learned from this solution is to try something before you reject it.My advice for anybody considering this solution is to test all of the functions that the vendor tells you about. It is important to see how it works in order to see whether it suits your business.This is a good solution, but it is not perfect.I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Lohar Gross from
Reliability, the right combination of features, and server architecture are the keysWhat is our primary use case?We are using it for the installation as part of our customer solutions. We are not end user, we are integrator, and we are using it in big IT infrastructure projects for our different customers, mainly for NATO.What is most valuable?They are reliable. They are fulfilling their requirements. They have the right features for our customers. It's the overall combination, together with the complete architecture of the servers from HPE.What needs improvement?There's nothing at the moment. Everyone is pretty happy.For how long have I used the solution?More than five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?From our perspective, and from our experience with the customer, it's a really stable solution. We have no problems with the customer, no negative feedback from them, and we have been relying for years on close cooperation with HPE in this area.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?I think our customers will use it for the long term, even though they are now on the way to change. I think the special environment we are working in, they will use it for some years, and it is scalable.How is customer service and technical support?The support from HPE in our projects is always very good. We have been working together for 15 years in this customer environment, and one of the main reasons to stay with HPE is the very good support we have had from all the HPE people over these years. That's one of our main success factors.What other advice do I have?I give it a nine out of 10 because it fulfills what we need and, as I said before, it's reliable and it satisfies our customers. That's the most important point for us; to have satisfied customers.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Integrator.Date published: 2017-12-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user203880 from
It's a scalabe solution. We're planning on implementing the AFA in the future.Valuable Features* Wide striping* Ease of use* Dedicated ASIC* Thin Provisioning* AO and DO* Adaptive Flash Cache* Persistent Ports* Tiered storage* AFA* FuncitonalityImprovements to My OrganizationIt enables growth from the existing array due to the thin provisioning suite.Room for ImprovementEase of updating.Use of SolutionI've used it for three years.Deployment IssuesNo issues encountered.Stability IssuesNo issues encountered.Scalability IssuesNo issues encountered.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: Excellent.Technical Support: Good.Previous SolutionsWe previously used EVA, but as we are an HP house, we migrated to the latest HP offering due to the benefits.Initial SetupOut of the box deployment is easy.Implementation TeamWe implemented it ourselves.ROIIt's an excellent, scalable solution.Other Solutions ConsideredWe also looked at EMC and PURE.Other AdviceDo it, you will never look back. We're not currently using 3PAR flash storage, but definitely plan to in the future. 3PAR AFA is the class leader.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We are an HP Gold PartnerDate published: 2015-03-06T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user471405 from
The storage necessary for applications meets the customer's expectation, or internal customer expectation.Valuable Features:The 3PAR is a way for us to manage our SAN fabric and have a way to do that in this very complex environment in which we operate. The 3PAR's been something we've relied upon for a number of years and continue to do so.Improvements to My Organization:Our particular function works to coordinate with our capacity teams to define the requirements and then they come to us and say they need this amount of storage attached and so forth. From a technical standpoint, I'm not really well versed in that particularly. Internally in our company it's more about defining how we need the storage set up so that the teams that implement the storage necessary for applications meets the customer's expectation, or internal customer expectation.Room for Improvement:I was trying to get into the StoreServe this morning; couldn't get into the basic hands-on lab. Technically, I can't address anything as far as features, support, or anything like that which might be helpful.Scalability Issues:It's scalable just based on the physical placements of the hardware and the white space involved on the floor.Initial Setup:We have teams that work with the fabric directly and do all the fiber channel setup.Other Solutions Considered:They give us the storage requirements and then we coordinate with the teams to do it. As far as competition I don't get involved.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-06-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user680229 from
IOPS, reliability and the value that it adds to our organization are the most valuable features.What is most valuable?IOPS, reliability and the value that it adds to our organization are the most valuable features.What needs improvement?Maybe, there is a need to have an easier interface. They could improve the storage platforms.There are some things that are missing. We had some initial hardware problems that gave us a bad taste. We did, eventually, fix them but it did take a little bit of time to resolve them. These were either hardware issues, disk drive issues or connectivity issues, we just couldn't figure it out.What do I think about the stability of the solution?So far, the scalability is good.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is very scalable.How is customer service and technical support?The technical support is pretty good.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using a different solution previously, we were using EMC. Since we were hitting the ceiling of the hardware, we decided to switch over to HPE. Cost was the main reason why we moved over to HPE.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at other solutions such as HPE and Hitachi.The most important criteria while selecting a vendor are if it is user-friendly, the support provided and cost.What other advice do I have?This is a great product.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user680214 from
Some of the valuable features are cost per disk storage, uptime, and ease of upgrade.What is most valuable?Cost per disk storage, uptime, and ease of upgrade.How has it helped my organization?It runs all the time. I've never had a problem with it. Upgrades have been flawless. We've had controllers die in the middle of the day, and it was no big deal. We've had shelves die in the middle of the day with no impact to our end users whatsoever.What needs improvement?I think they just released Flash Cache. It is the new SSD where you write all your caching information to flash disk, and then it writes it down to your nearline or your flash disk. We just bought all new flash cache for that purpose. So that was one of the features we were looking for.I don't know that you could improve on the 3PAR very much, other than maybe the 3PAR management console. It's kind of an old school console, it's not web- based. It's a fat client that you have to install. It would be nice to have a web- based version that I could go anywhere to, versus having to go back to the 3PAR management console.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability is top-notch.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability has been really good. We've constantly added shelves and disk space to it from the beginning. I think we started out with a 12 to 13 terabyte system, and now we're up to a 60 terabyte system. It has grown exponentially with us over the last few years.How is customer service and technical support?I have used tech support and it’s good. You get some people who are more knowledgeable than others, but for the most part, we've never had a problem. We've always gotten the answer that we needed to sort the problem out.Which solutions did we use previously?We knew that we needed a new solution. We had to move from some old EMC equipment. We had looked at what they had, their price offering versus what we could get at HPE for the same dollar, and this solution was exponentially better.How was the initial setup?I was involved in the initial setup, and it was very straightforward. The HPE engineer came on site, sat down, showed us how to do things as he built and designed it. It was very good.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We had looked at Pure Storage ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/pure-storage ) , Hitachi ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hitachi-virtual-storage-platform-f-series ) , and a couple others. However, 3PAR gave us the best bang for the buck.What other advice do I have?Go with it. It's a beast of a storage system. We love ours.When looking for a vendor, the most important thing is support.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-14T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Branimir Kusanic from
Overall performance is great, and support tells us of problems before we are aware of themWhat is our primary use case?It's our primary storage and we are using it within two of our datacenters with replication between them. Actually, that part is currently being implemented.Overall, performance is great. Personally, I'm fully satisfied, even when we had some problems, failed disks or some bug in a software version, HPE would always be fully proactive. They would actually tell us of the problem, even before we were aware of it.How has it helped my organization?For me, personally, I think the most important value is really the way HPE is treating us as a customer.What is most valuable?I would say that now that we even have flash storage on the 8200 models, it would be the deduplication. We were hoping to use the automated tiering much more, but it's not a good fit for us. Although the technology works great, due to our workload, it's really not an option for us. So, I would definitely say the deduplication on flash drives.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Downtime, never. I have heard of other customers having some serious issues. I personally am not the type of person that would say, "they are now the bad guys," because it can happen. It's technology.Overall, in my experience, maybe one of the worst was when we suddenly got a lot of different alerts. It caused some stress within our team, but later on it proved to be a bug in the firmware version. I think in two-weeks' time we received an update that resolved the issue. So, I really think it's stable. It's a good choice for the price.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?I can say it is scalable because initially, when we bought our first 3PAR, we extended it up to its maximum over the years. That is the part, maybe, where I see room for improving for HPE. Extending is not a problem, scalability is okay. But once you buy additional box of disks, you have to wait for HPE to contact you with their plan for implementation, for connecting, and it can take several weeks. So, you have the box and you have to wait for several weeks to actually implement it.How is customer service and technical support?In terms of reaching the right person, actually, the way it goes is that they call us.Of course they contact us via the partner, but they contact us, and the response is great. Everything is within SLA.Which solutions did we use previously?We had different storage. For instance, we used IBM storage. When the time for replacement came due to age of the old storage, we actually performed a tender. So, we didn't start with, "Okay. We are buying 3PAR." But, through the entire tendering process, we reached the place where it proved to be a good decision to buy HPE 3PAR.How was the initial setup?I think storage implementation is never so straightforward, but I would say it's among the simplest to implement.Which other solutions did I evaluate?IBM. We went with HPE because the decision was, in the end, based on price.We had a list of required specifications, invited several vendors, they offered what they could. But in the end, when you get all of this matched, then the price decides.For me, when we last did a purchase, last year or so, at that time flash drives and the deduplication were really important. Actually all of the vendors have it, offer it, but then we had some discussions looking at overall performance, resistance to disk failures and the like. I would say that HPE is the leader here.What other advice do I have?In terms of the most important criteria when selecting a vendor - I'm saying with a small disclaimer, I'm saying this personally, so it's not the company - for me, the most important is always vendor support. We have, of course, contracts with partners that implemented the solutions, but I think that vendor support is mandatory in the way they are supporting you through the lifecycle of the product. It can overcome any problem the technology may deal with.I give it an eight out of 10 overall. Whenever I rate something, I'm immediately going subtract one because I'm really reluctant to give a maximum grade, so say, "Okay, now it's nine." Well, there is room for improvement, and the way that the implementation of extensions goes is one of the examples. But, overall, I would say we are fully satisfied.I actually do recommend HPE 3PAR because, for me, it proved to make my life easier.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-26T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user331335 from
It is designed around the ASIC which eliminates the CPU bottleneck, although a better user interface compared to the current PC-installed client would be an improvement.Valuable Features:The ability the use all available disks for different RAID requirements and also the replication is available out of the box. The ability to tune the volumes to spread across newly allocated drives.Improvements to My Organization:Previously, we were with another vendor, and we suffered performance issues due to architecture limitation. With 3PAR, we were able to provide the business an acceptance level of performance which directly has an impact on user experience. We are able to keep up with application and user demands as response times are vital for the business to function competitively.Room for Improvement:Better user interface compared to the current PC installed client. A browser based solution was introduced recently and improvements were noticeable.Use of Solution:I've used it for two and a half years. We initially did an evaluation with the 7200 unit. Having tested and being pleased with the outcome, we purchased a 7400 with two nodes, and subsequently upgraded to four nodes. The 7200 was moved to be used for disaster recovery.Deployment Issues:No issues encountered.Stability Issues:No issues encountered.Scalability Issues:No issues encountered.Initial Setup:It is quite straightforward, it is a completely different architecture as 3par is licensed based on the number of drives and after a point it’s capped, i.e. you only pay for the drives and support.Implementation Team:In-house, good knowledge of SAN architecture is required. All zones activity needs to be done by yourselves.ROI:We would say two to three years.Cost and Licensing Advice:Always purchase at the financial year end of the vendor to obtain the best pricing, and also purchase the maintenance in advance. I purchased it with five years maintenance included.Other Solutions Considered:I did evaluate five other vendors, one example Nimble, however, at that time they only had iSCSI model available.Other Advice:3PAR is designed around the ASIC which eliminates the CPU bottleneck and RAID limitation in other vendors.We would say 2-3 years. Always purchase at the year end of the vendor to obtain the best pricing and also purchase the maintenance in advance, for example I purchase with 5 years maintenance included.HP regularly organizes events which are good to go to asthey announce new innovations and share other customer experiences.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-10-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567747 from
Gives us the speed and stability we need for internal and public-facing appsWhat is most valuable?The number one feature is speed. We're serving almost 3.2 million people, we're running an eligibility system, we are on about 80 terabytes of data that need to be churned and processed.In addition, the standard Oracle features like the compression.Right now, all of our development to pre-production, everything is in one single rack, which is easier for us to do. Production is on another rack, another full rack. That's what we use it for.What needs improvement?Pretty much whatever we need from the database side, it is there.There are specific things from the application side; I don't have a list, they do have a list of what you can see from the database side.Most of the developers are used to Microsoft .NET and SQL server. They are cutting out Oracle, so there is a shift within the developer's mind. "How am I going to, starting from the modelling, use it?"Key items, like there's a 90-degree column in SQL that automatically fills in. It used to have triggers, but 12c is coming. There are some good features coming that I'm looking for. I was part of the session for what is new in 12c. I'm really excited about that.We're doing real-time analytics, so another thing is whether noSQL may be the best fit or not. We need to evaluate, not done yet. We are thinking, we have Exadata, we have Endeca, so we want to use the product.For how long have I used the solution?Three and a half years, almost four years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Absolutely stable. After we moved to Exadata the stability has been good. First, we used to go through Microsoft patching every month. With Exadata and Linux, we do only the firmware once in a quarter. It was really only required that we do it because we were behind two firewalls, so we didn't have to apply all the patches.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Absolutely scalable. We have our own five enterprise applications. They're all public-facing systems. Again, going back to the performance. On a given day, anywhere between 5000 to 8000 internal people use them. We do have a public-facing system. People apply for benefits, and it's entirely public, so they can use it.Compared to before, if you look at the performance, some of the applications are 30 to 40 percent improved. Some of the batches are almost 70% better. If you look at the back-end side, your export logical backups, and your disaster recovery, all those things, there is a tremendous increase.How is customer service and technical support?Support is pretty good. There are certain areas specific to the enterprise application, we may not be getting all the support. But for Oracle products in general, pretty good.Which solutions did we use previously?Previously, we were on Sun Solaris, then we moved to a Windows platform, and it was really bad. The processing took too long. Start the load on Tuesday, Wednesday sometime around noon it would finish. Sometimes it would crash. Right now it is within four and a half hours. Starts at 6:00, 9:00 it's done. That is one big advantage we see.How was the initial setup?We brought Oracle in to set it up. We didn't go through the entire setup process because Oracle was part of it. Oracle itself did it, so it was pretty easy for us. One good thing was that we didn't have to worry about the patching, OS levels, and other stuff. It was pretty easy for us.What other advice do I have?When it comes to choosing a vendor, the primary criterion is support. When you have an issue, you need to immediately have a solution; it's a 24/7 application. For example, suppose we are going through patching, and something we don't anticipate comes up, I suddenly find an issue. I never saw that in my lower environments, and now production is impacted, so we create a severity-one ticket. How soon will it be resolved? can I trust it? That's number one.There may be some custom solutions we may be looking for that are not part of the product. Depending on what type of solution it is, we may need additional support.Also training. I think Oracle is growing fast. From '91 when I was with Oracle 6, I know how much it grew outside the databases. So training is one of the biggest issues that we are having. We moved from a Windows platform to a Linux platform, and also how to manage the entire thing. Enterprise Manager completely changed. So it is necessary to do some self-learning, but also vendor-provided training at a low-cost would help. Those are the things we are looking for.On top of that, there are certain things that would be of benefit. There is a new release coming in. If they can provide us with the documents, really help our DBA's to be on the cutting edge, rather than they themselves having to explore.I didn't give it 10 out of 10 because there are still be a few issues that we are working on, but from a performance point of view, ease of use, scalability and reliability everybody is happy with the product.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-11-21T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567591 from
The flash disks make our storage system faster.What is most valuable?The most valuable features are the functions and the flash disks. They make our storage system ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/enterprise-flash-array-storage ) much faster than previous systems.How has it helped my organization?The benefit is that it's one big solution and then we have all of the flash functions.What needs improvement?I would you like to see compression included in a future release. That’s what we are missing.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability’s fine.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability is extremely fine.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is very good.Which solutions did we use previously?We knew we needed to invest in a new solution because of lifecycle management. It was time to lifecycle the product.How was the initial setup?I wasn’t directly involved in the initial setup, but I think it was pretty straightforward.Which other solutions did I evaluate?My organization is a government authority, so we issue requirements and solutions, and the best price wins, when comparing the functions. Any company offering this type of enterprise flash array storage solution ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/enterprise-flash-array-storage ) in Sweden could have made a bid.What other advice do I have?Look at the vendor’s support and the setup; the benefits. HPE is great.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-12-08T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user476301 from
One of the features we use is Peer Persistence as part of our code DR strategy. OneView licensing has been somewhat cost prohibitive for us.Valuable Features:What's relatively common in most SAN ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/modular-san ) environments is consolidation of storage under a single management interface or pool. The ability to quickly scale and expand storage as required, and to accommodate whatever deliverables you're putting out there. I think one of the advantages of 3PAR obviously is its tiered storage, as well as its visibility, deduplication in the flash is a big component. Just being a holistic solution that you can rely on as a cornerstone to the foundation for your underlying infrastructure. You have that flexibility to use it for your virtual infrastructure, grow it out to accommodate other storage requirements. It's a single framework or platform that you can use to accommodate pretty much all your storage requirements.One of the features we use is Peer Persistence on the storage, so that's part of our core DR strategy, so that we have two data centers, we synch and replicate the data between the two centers. Then in the event of a disaster, because we're a virtualized environment, we can fail the storage over, and fail our VMs over, and we can be up and running. We test it on an annual basis, and we completely can fail all of one data center into another data center, and within an hour and a half, we have everything up and tested and back online. That's been our DR exercise.Improvements to My Organization:Although there's been a lot of technical advancement, one of my biggest beefs with HP's drive towards OneView ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hpe-oneview ) as a management platform for this point is really around their licensing. It's been somewhat cost prohibitive. Obviously with the new release of OneView in the near future, the licensing model is going to change, but for customers who may already have a heavy investment in hardware infrastructure, who were not previously licensed with ILO Enterprise, for example, and did not have those rights for utilizing OneView, having to backtrack and buy all new licensing in order to be able accommodate that, in order to be able to manage their infrastructure, it kind of takes away from the whole simplification of having everything under a single pane of glass if you're now forced to have to go back and relicense initial investments to be able to take advantage of that technology.That being said, I will state that it does look like HP understands and has recognized that, and I think that's really why they're trying to make the advancements and the changes that they are in terms of having that. They're pushing it to be that kind of single unified management infrastructure component, and knowing that they want to push customers towards that, I think they also recognize that in order to do that, they have to put some incentive there to make it worthwhile for customers to make that investment and change in their management strategy.Stability Issues:From my perspective it's definitely a stable solution, it's easily scalable. It's really like any other kind of blade enclosure, you buy your chassis, you add the blades as needed. Really no real hardware related issues. You're always going to get your bad spurts, regardless of generation, but I think from our perspective, they'll correct me if I'm wrong, it's been pretty stable.Previous Solutions:We didn't switch in terms of the technology. We switched to the latest 3PAR technology. We previously used 7400s. We wanted to move from a managed services to self-managing, and the contract was coming up for renewal, so that was a golden opportunity to swing off and do our own thing.Other Advice:Really understand what your needs and requirements and future expectations are. Every vendor has a product that fits in the same market space, whether it be Dell ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/dell ), IBM ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/ibm ) or HP ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/hewlett-packard-enterprise ). I think it's really about what your long-term expectations and goals are. With 3PAR for example, if a lot of your underlying infrastructure is HP, it might make sense to go that way, to maintain that consistency. From a management an usability perspective, the full integration components, everything from your Blade, your Interconnects, your storage, your management platforms. Almost all the major vendors now are doing some form of deduplication, compression, storage tiering. I think it really comes down to knowing and understanding what you're looking for. Sometimes it's more of a business related decision and politics than it is an actual technical merit. I would say really understanding what your workloads are, what you're looking to get out of any investment that you make, and then taking it from there.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-08-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
DataCent1a09 from
?The stability of the solution conquers us, every dayWhat is our primary use case?We use it for the production and backup environments. We use it for a service that we deliver directly in our data center for our customers. It's a live environment, directly for the customers.What is most valuable?The stability is what we consider to be the best feature it provides. The stability of this solution is what conquers us, every day.The deduplication is pretty good too. It does the work.What needs improvement?Upgrades could be improved. We would like to see more upgrades.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have already had situations where we had to optimize and put more space on the storage. It has been very simple to get done. We are happy with what we have in place.How are customer service and technical support?Technical support is pretty good. We always have somebody available to support us. We do have a maintenance contract with third-party vendors for HPE but we've been attended to very well in this field.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?It was the first solution that we defined, at the beginning of the data center, so it has always been there. Since I joined the team after the data center was already implemented, I don't have a previous scenario to compare it to, what it has improved or not.How was the initial setup?The setup was straightforward, because of the partnership that we maintain with Logicalis. They supported us during the whole deployment.What about the implementation team?We used a company named Logicalis. They are our partners for everything that we have. Any doubt that we have or any challenges that we face, they are our port of call. We have had a good experience with them.What other advice do I have?We are happy with what we have in place. You should consider getting this solution if you are in the process of acquiring or switching. I would suggest giving this a good look.The biggest lesson we have learned from using the solution is the stability. This is what I always tell people. The stability is what surprises us. It's a stable solution.In terms of growth, we are planning on going from 35 terabytes to around 50 terabytes in the six months. We will probably keep using 3PAR but we may change to something better. We are here at HPE Discover 2019 looking for other solutions. If we cannot find something better we will continue using the same technology, the 3PAR.I would rate 3PAR at eight out of ten because we love the stability but sometimes we still lack upgrades for the solution.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-10T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user251226 from
We have a lot of SQL, so IOPS was important to us. We also wanted tiering to move things in-between tiers easily.Valuable FeaturesThe biggest pro is the overall performance. Provisioning is easy and fast. With NetApp, we needed to run scripts, which was a much slower process.In general, it’s been such a good fit for us, as it's fast, easy, and flexible.Improvements to My OrganizationOur biggest one was the overall performance. Our SQL servers are performing better now, and because it’s easy to provision, more team members can provision who weren’t comfortable doing so before hand.Stability IssuesIt’s been very stable. In comparison to what we had before, it’s a 10/10 -- incredibly stable.Scalability IssuesIt’s very scalable.Customer Service and Technical SupportPretty good. Up there with a 10/10 so far. The few issues we had were resolved quickly.Previous SolutionsWe were using NetApp. We were seeing overall poor performance.Initial SetupStraightforward. Wasn’t overly complex.Other Solutions ConsideredMajor players, such as EMC. We felt HP was a better fit. We weighed it out and HP fit our needs better than EMC.Other AdviceWe were looking mainly for IOPS. We have a lot of SQL, so IOPS was important to us. We also wanted tiering to move things in-between tiers easily.Come to the shows and get demos. Get your hands on it.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-06-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Asif Nizamauddin from
We use a virtual domain to create pools for our clients to manage their own storageHow has it helped my organization?It's advantageous in terms of the cost, in terms of the performance, and taking up less space. We are exploring more with this storage.What is most valuable?It has features which are really giving advantages to our company, because we as a service provider are providing the services, infrastructure, and applications - or software as a service - to other entities. In that case, a virtual domain has been introduced in 3PAR and we can create their own pool where they are able to manage their own resources, instead of we, as storage admin, getting involved in that.What needs improvement?The features we need to provide to the different entities, it's meeting our criteria. That is the reason we went ahead with 3PAR, and we implemented it in the environment. So far, so good. People are asking for the services and, yes, we do provide the services through the 3PAR.And IOPs which has been gravely needed in terms of the back end and in terms of the front end, to meet application needs, I'm glad it's meeting up. So we are not encountering any risk at all.For how long have I used the solution?Less than one year.What do I think about the stability of the solution?So far, no disaster has happened, so I can't comment any more than that on the stability.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Since it's going to expand to a 240 disk maximum, in terms of scalability I have to go for another controller with the nodes and stuff. But based on the model, if you go ahead with a good different model, it supports more disk space in your enclosure areas.How is customer service and technical support?So far I've only opened one case, in the beginning when I implemented a 3PAR in my environment, and I can say I'm satisfied.How was the initial setup?It is straightforward. It's user friendly.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We did an evaluation comparing it with the EMC, and we determined that it's better to go ahead with this.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-20T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user285360 from
I Was Looking For A Flash Solution That Would Allow Us To ScaleValuable FeaturesOne of the things that I really liked about the 3PAR solution, going back to the architecture, is its unified architecture for their entire suite of products. Companies like NetApp and EMC, have a very broad spectrum of products, but as you go through their portfolio, the way that they're managed, the way that their team would have to interact with our product, it differs. So I was looking for a platform that would allow us to scale, because as we know, data is not becoming less and less. It's increasing. So if some day we need to increase the SAN that we have right now. I feel very comfortable that if I was to choose another product within the 3PAR suite, that my team could get it off and running off the ground very quicklyFlash as a solution for us was very obvious. Reason being, as I mentioned before, we're very data intensive. For the longest time, disc has been our bottleneck in our processing service, in our processing capabilities. With flash, we have no concerns. So it's been a very, very great and positive experience for usImprovements to My OrganizationWe've seen a huge improvement in processing times and coming from a traditional SAN over to the HP 3PAR all flash solution, we saw about a 90 percent reduction in the processing time to some of the batch processors that we were running, which for us is very, very huge.Room for ImprovementI would like to see a little bit more of automated reporting. As an IT director, I would like to get a better view, high level view of how the environment is performing instead of having to go and ask my guys. That would be my only future request.Stability IssuesOh, it's been incredible stability. Here's an anecdote. The solution we were on before was a dual controller solution which is kind of a misnomer because the way that the system balances itself, if you have any controller that's running a bit higher than the other, say, 50, 60 percent, and one controller goes down, well, that one controller now has to take the additional load from the other controller. So what we realized at one point was, we had a controller that had to do down for maintenance, and during that maintenance window, we had some performance issues, because the one controller had to pick up the load for the other controller, and it caused our environment to run slower than we would have likedWith the 3PAR solution, it's a four controller system, a four node system. It load balances very well. It actually does it automatically for us. Something that my team had to struggle with actually, with the EMC solution. So for us, it's been great. We've been doing maintenance upgrades on the solution with little to no impact at all on the environment. So it's been very stable for us.Scalability IssuesI would say it's very scalable. I mean, we're not at the point now where we've had to increase the size of our SAN. But from what I've seen on paper and my discussions with the HP engineers, we're very comfortable that we're in a good spot for the next three to five years, with the solution that we selected. However, we know that if we need to move to a higher tier of a solution, that we'll feel comfortable in bringing another product in because of the flexibility the seamless transition from one platform in the 3PAR lineup to another.Customer Service and Technical SupportThe feedback I've received from the team is that they've been very responsive, very attentive to the questions that they've had. Very responsive to any problems that we had initially rolling out. I mean, problems just a little bit of growing pains and try to understand. It's a little bit than where we came from, but over the past few months, we've been running with the solution, it's been great.Previous SolutionsWe were previously using EMC. We looked at EMC, obviously, with the XtremIO product. We looked a little bit at NetApp. We haven't had a previous relationship with them, so we didn't look too deeply into it. And then we also obviously looked at HP 3PAR.Other Solutions ConsideredIn the business that we're in, we deal with a lot of data. I like to think of ourselves as big data before big data was big data. We've been around since 1925. Obviously, there weren't computers back then, but a lot of the work that we did do as far as collecting performances was done paper based. In the last 25 years or so, we've since moved over to computer technology. In the last four or five years, what we've really seen with the advent of a lot of online musical sources, especially things like YouTube, Spotify, Netflix, we're seeing a larger influx of the amount of information that we're having to digest or ingest as an organization we do processing on.So one of the problems that we have is the throughput or the IOPS that was available to us through traditional storage array, we had a traditional tier SAN storage array and we knew that with all the new tech-all the new data that's coming in, we had to ensure that we were positioned well to be able to handle the increasing amount of data that was being sent to us on a daily or weekly or monthly basis.The HP solution to us made a lot of sense. When I was at HP Discover last year and I saw the keynote about the $2.00 per gigabyte, that intrigued me very much so. Flash has been around for awhile, but as everyone knows, it's been a very expensive technology. For a company like ours, we really strive to drive value to our members. We've considered a not for profit, meaning that for every dollar that we collect, what's not used for operational purposes goes right back to our members. So obviously the lower we keep the cost, the more money we give back to our members and the greater benefit we provide to them. So that was one of the most intriguing things about the solution.The other thing that really drew me to the HP 3PAR flash solution was the architecture of it. Being an architecture person infrastructure person, it made a lot of sense to me. XtremIO is a great product. but again, it was a great architecture, but a different approach to solving the same problem that we sort of had to address with the HP 3PAR system.Performance is very important to us. Like I mentioned, we get a lot of data, we do a lot of data processing for a company of our size, and of course, costs and value for our money is very, very important to usOther AdviceThere's always room for improvement. You know, maybe two years from now we'll be seeing flash costing, 10 cents a gigabyte or something like that. But, no, we've been extremely happy with the solution. My team that manages it and as well as my customers, being the business and the application developers are all very excited about what flash can do for them, for their workloads.What I recommend to other people looking at all flash solutions, I would take a look at not only the company that's selling it, but the background of the technology itself. There have been a lot of flash startups, a lot of flash startups being purchased by big name companies like Cisco, EMC, etc. So don't let the big name fool you. Do your homework. Make sure you ask the right questions, and look at the history of the product. Talk to some of the customers and get their feedback and see how they're doing with the solution.I think there was one, I wouldn't say gotcha, but one thing that we kind of had to know going in to take advantage of some of the technology that the people had. Like the in-line de-duplication was the block size. So by default, when you deploy a Windows server it formats at the sort of 4K block size. Take advantage of that, you have to use 16K or higher, so if we had thought of that ahead of time, it would have, we would see benefits more sooner. But now that we're well into our deployment, we have obviously made that adjustment. So I would just say to make sure that people look into that before they deploy.I would say peer reviewers are very important. You know, sales people being sales people that are trying to sell you their product, that's their job. But when you want to talk to the customers and get feedback from the people that are actually using it, the people that spend their hard earned dollars, that are actually supporting the product, I think that is very valuable in itself, and it's very important to me.I normally go about finding info by networking, talking to some of my peers; when I do deal with sales people, I ask them for references. They obviously give you curated references, but, you know, ask the right questions and ensure that the people they're talking to are generally being honest, and they generally are. They don't want to mislead you, so it's good to have that relationship beforehand, and even afterwards, reaching out to speak to people.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2015-08-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user285357 from
Due to the fact that performance is key for us, we like the ability to see real time statistics and historically analyze metricsValuable FeaturesThe replication is important to us for our cross-campus and cross-site replication. So the recovery manager to be able to take capacity free snaps and use those for dev tests and stuff like the adaptive optimization where we can move things between different tiers, retuning and rate levels on the fly, the pier motion stuff moving when doing disc array migrations between models, moving the application online with no down time.Obviously, our performance was key. The ability to see real time statistics and do historical analysis on performance metrics, post base per-LAN and be able to see what's going on when something's going wrong.Improvements to My OrganizationEase of administration, cutting down the time to do things when we do migrate arrays, looking into the stats and making sure we've got, the applications are performing like they're supposed to.Room for ImprovementI'm interested in their new stuff around, in the road map around, in line dedupe on the array, compression back up protection stuff over and above what they've got already, integrating into application aware snap shots. That's the sort of stuff I'm looking for.Stability IssuesVery stable, haven't had any problems.Scalability IssuesScales well.Customer Service and Technical SupportObviously stuff goes wrong from time to time but the support is good.Previous SolutionsWe were previously using a different solution. We did a detailed paper analysis. We flew out to the guys in San Francisco, to their labs. We had a look at their storage and what they were doing, their software stack. We were really impressed with that.Initial SetupStraightforward from bringing the array on-site to plugging in and getting the first LAN provision was less than a day.Other Solutions ConsideredWe ended up with EMC. We had the 3PAR guys on there. Overall, I think it was the best solution for us.Other AdviceIt pretty much does almost everything we're looking for. I think they've got a good road map for the future.Recommendations to peers - It really depends on what you need. If you're looking for something that can scale well and protect your data across multiple sites, we've got visibility into the performance metrics. That's the sort of stuff I'd look at. Do they have a vision for file and object based storage, is that coming? How does it integrate with back up products and archiving.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2015-09-02T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SystemsE33b6 from
If it needs an update, I can do it in the middle of the day with nobody being the wiserWhat is our primary use case?It is our main storage solution for our entire VMware environment.Everything run on the solution is core: MEDITECH, all the EMRs, and back-ends support services.We use a combination of flash and spinning disk. For some of our less critical functions, since we run everything on the 3PAR, there is no reason to spend the extra money on flash to run the stuff that is not super mission-critical.How has it helped my organization?It allows us to grow. We added almost 110TB last year alone. Not a lot of product let you throw that in, resulting in the performance that we have been seeing.It has definitely reduced our time to deployment. We can call up, and say, "I need 110TB," and they configure it so my IOPS stay consistent across 3PAR, Then, I don't actually have to worry about the IOPS. HPE takes care of that for me. I need the space, and they take care of the rest. They install it, and I just provision it, which is nice.If you can handle the IOPS, throughput is a natural byproduct. Usually, IOPS is where you are capped. HPE has done a great job in making sure that our IOP-intensive EMRs stay up and running. We have really good performance on them.We run approximately half a billion IOPS every six months. This 3PAR seems to handle it just fine.What is most valuable?Expandability and performance are its most valuable features.What needs improvement?We do not use Memory-Driven Flash in the old 3PAR. Perhaps we will use it in the new 3PAR. That is part of the reason why we are upgrading.We aren't using HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity yet. We are looking into it. The old 3PAR didn't support it, but the new 3PAR does.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is extremely stable. I'm able to do everything that I need to do in the middle of the day without interruption. It has been an absolute fantastic piece of hardware.The availability is excellent. I have not had any problems with 3PAR.It runs. I don't have a problem with it. If it needs an update, I can do it in the middle of the day with nobody being the wiser. It is phenomenal in that respect. As a hospital, I get two hours every quarter to reboot things, so it is imperative that nothing goes down.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is phenomenal.How are customer service and technical support?The technical support is excellent. They do everything.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?My old 3PAR is end of life, so it is time to switch.How was the initial setup?I haven't done the initial setup yet, and I haven't gone through the initial setup on the new one.What about the implementation team?We used HPE technical services for the deployment. They sent another company, Unisys, who was great. They did it all. I didn't have to lift a finger, which makes me happyWhat's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?I would like it to be cheaper.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We are an HPE shop. Everything that we have is HPE, so we just stuck with them. We have never been upset with HPE. They have been phenomenal, in my opinion.What other advice do I have?Check out HPE. They are well worth it.It pretty much checks all the boxes that I have concerns about moving forward. This version will do dedupe better. We will start to use some of the data classifications where it tiers the storage for us. Of all the bubbles that I care about, it checks them all.We don't use dedupe on our old 3PAR. We're hoping to use it on the new one.We don't use InfoSight at the moment. It's something we're looking into, though.I'm very happy with it. It has performed as I expected.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-17T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Abdullah Alshahrani from
Thin provisioning allows us to satisfy customer requests yet maintain space for othersWhat is our primary use case?We use the 3PAR as a centralized storage system where all of our data for production, mission critical data, are consolidated on that storage.How has it helped my organization?Previously, we were using EVA from HPE. When we moved to 3PAR, we noticed a reduction in footprint, reduced by more than 30%. We use the Adaptive Optimization giving us a reduction in cost and with better performance. So, we are achieving the goal of performance with less cost.It increases our availability and service provision. We provide service to many customers at the same time. Sharing of the resources is a good target we have achieved using 3PAR.What is most valuable?With the thin provisioning we have been able to satisfy a lot of the requests which before we could not. Our customers are requesting more space just to make sure they have it. So, with the thin provisioning, we gave them what they need, but we maintain some spare for the others.We have used the Remote Copy from datacenter to datacenter, as well. It is efficient, and working as expected.What needs improvement?I would like to see more virtualization: storage virtualization, data virtualization would be very nice.Also, the features that we are seeing in Simplivity, if integrated with the 3PAR, would be much better.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is stable, above average. There were some obstacles, but support managed, in the end, to fix it. It wasn't the product itself, it was a configuration issue.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is easy and efficient. It should meet our future needs when we need to scale.How is customer service and technical support?I've used technical support, and the architecture support was efficient for us as well.Which solutions did we use previously?The importance of having thin provisioning was a key factor. And when we found out that 3PAR had been acquired by HPE, since we have good relations with HPE, it was a very efficient and easy decision to take. We have good support, and the functions that we are looking for come in one product.How was the initial setup?It was straightforward, comparatively easier than EVA. We had an HPE support person helping us throughout.What other advice do I have?Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor, or what we appreciate most about a vendor, are* support* easy to reach* trust.If you want a cost-effective solution, go for 3PAR. We did a PoC and found it effective.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-26T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user229383 from
We like the ability for data to be auto-tiered and the flash capabilities.Valuable FeaturesThe ability for data to be auto-tiered and the flash capabilities.Improvements to My OrganizationThe ability for the PAR array to thin provision, effectively means that we can buy only what we need for the first year, and then plan and manage the data for future growth. What this means, is better value for money and long term cost savings.Room for ImprovementScalability, in the sense that it would be awesome if the product had the capability to not only scale spindles, but also processing power.Use of SolutionI've been using it for three years.Deployment IssuesNo major issues were encountered.Stability IssuesNo issues encountered.Scalability IssuesNo issues encountered, but to reiterate, it would be nice to scale processing power as well.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: It varies, sometimes they are a 9/10, and some days they can be 4/10.Technical Support: It varies, sometimes they are a 9/10, and some days they can be 2/10.Previous SolutionsWe previously used an older HP model and switches, and we upgraded as it was a storage refresh.Initial SetupIt was straightforward – it was stood up pretty easily and management is simple enough.Implementation TeamWe had team from HP implement is for us and they were easily 9/10.Other Solutions ConsideredWe also looked at EMC and IBM array’s in the same class, but 3PAR was a better value for money with what they were able to offer.Other AdviceThis is a good, stable product, and management is pretty straightforward. For the price, it is a no brainer.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We are an HP PartnerDate published: 2015-04-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Adminitrd884 from
Helps our core applications run very fastWhat is our primary use case?We use it for mission-critical apps and database. It runs our core banking applications.How has it helped my organization?It helps our core applications run very fast. It has increased overall performance by about 60 percent. There is one process which has gone from taking seven hours to taking one hour. It's a key for storage in our organization.What is most valuable?They provide very good support for our mission-critical processes. It's also very solid and reliable in our environment.What needs improvement?We would like to see full virtual. We would also like to see improvements to the ease of administration of 3PAR.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The hardware stability is very good.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It's very scalable. For our organization, it's very scalable and at low cost.How are customer service and technical support?Overall, technical support depends, but mission-critical support is a nine out of ten.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?We needed the capacity and faster processing.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was very easy. It went very quickly.What about the implementation team?We used an integrator, HPE Enterprise Support. Our experience with them was very good.Which other solutions did I evaluate?HPE is the preferred solution for our company.What other advice do I have?I would recommend 3PAR, especially in the financial industry where data is mission-critical. It's very good.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-17T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user563436 from
We have been running faster and more efficiently since it was installedWhat is our primary use case?3PAR 8200 is performing good with our environment. I have a lot of applications that need higher IOPS, and 3PAR achieves this operation normally without any issues for the management.How has it helped my organization?It is working well. IT achieves our targets. We have been running faster and more efficiently since 3PAR was installed.What is most valuable?It has a friendly interface using the console. I have been working with it for one year and four months, and I have not found any issues.I benefit from the HPE Call Home feature. It tells me about any issue once I have it.What needs improvement?Some management functions through a web interface.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is very stable. We have not experienced any stability issues with the 3PAR Storage. We have other vendors' storage solutions (three of them) and we have experienced issues with their storage solutions.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is scalable, but I do not need to scale it for the future.How is customer service and technical support?I have used the technical support for Call Home, when there is an issue in network, not in 3PAR. It is in network.The technical support is knowledgeable and I have never had an issue with them.What other advice do I have?I would recommend this solution.Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:* Support* Widely used in the market.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2017-12-25T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567792 from
Links our 12 remote ports into one centralized datacenterWhat is our primary use case?All of our servers are HPE, and it links all of the 12 remote ports that we have in Saudi Arabia, so we have only one centralized datacenter. It is the building ground of Saudi Ports' authority, to be honest.What needs improvement?The backup batteries, the WPS, could be better. We have two different vendors that provide the WPS, and HPE is one of them. When we had the outage we shut down the entire thing and tried the backup generators. The electricity was out for 20 minutes and the HPE battery didn't last 10 minutes.For how long have I used the solution?A little over a year.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is good. We had one incident where the downtime lasted less than 30 minutes. So I would say that it is accurate, fast and reliable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is pretty scalable. When we implemented the solution we started with only seven ports and we began to add new servers. Then we started publishing new services to our clients.How is customer service and technical support?The technical support is quick and responsive. They will prioritize things based on how critical the problem is. If they need to be on site, they will come on site. If they don't, then they will fix the problem remotely; just log in and do what they need to do.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We have not looked at other vendors because we are very happy with HPE. We are currently looking to upgrade within HPE.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Date published: 2017-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Director9019 from
Improved our transaction data performance as well as overall capacityWhat is our primary use case?It serves as our centralized storage for three tiers of storage, and we have half a petabyte.It performs very, very well.How has it helped my organization?We've had an overall improvement of performance in terms of actually doing transaction data, and we have a lot more capacity than we once had.What is most valuable?The most valuable feature for me is the support, three tiers of support. Storage is storage. The reality is, is it available and functional? Service and support are more important than capacity.What needs improvement?I would like to see compatibility with NVMe.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Resilience and reliability, unmatched. They take good care of us.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is far beyond what we'll ever need.How is customer service and technical support?The service and support are far better than any other service and support I've had. They are very proactive and very sensitive to any kind of disruption of functionality.Which solutions did we use previously?Our data center was compromised and I had to replace the entire data center. Our previous solution was HPE LeftHand.The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor are* cost* reliability* support.How was the initial setup?The setup was complex from the perspective of the employees having to go through five days of training. If they simplified the administrative process of maintaining the unit, that would go a long way.What was our ROI?We have seen value when it comes to ROI but I can't elaborate.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Nimble. We went with 3PAR because we got a special deal on pricing.What other advice do I have?I rate this solution an eight out of 10 because administrative functionality requires five days of training.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Pnina Sharir from
Security is a mandatory feature because our customer needs to protect delicate informationWhat is our primary use case?For use with a major database for telecom customers who need to collect all of their customers' information.How has it helped my organization?Provides amazing performance all day in multiple workloads. We applied different usage models which showed great performance.What is most valuable?Scalability, because our customer is fast growing and our solution should be able to start very small and grow very quickly.What needs improvement?Security is a mandatory feature because our customer needs to protect delicate information.For how long have I used the solution?Still implementing.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-07-11T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user485052 from
We've only had a couple of problems with them.What is most valuable?They work reasonably well. We've only had a couple of problems with them, and HPE knows about the problems.What needs improvement?On certain of their features that we have to use to migrate data, it tends to go off for about 60 or 90 seconds toward the end of the work.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is pretty good.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It's scaling where we need to go. The issues we have are more the application not scaling. Application design issues, not hardware issues. The hardware will go further than our application will.How was the initial setup?Initial setup was relatively straightforward.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-05-11T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user486621 from
The benefits are the integration with the rest of our system, including solutions for system administration.Valuable FeaturesI think it's the direction in which they're moving in terms of flash storage and being able to take your legacy systems, integrate the old hard drives with flash storage and perform the migrations. Especially when including virtualization and trying to shrink your data center and improve performance.Improvements to My OrganizationHPE has been our de facto standard, and the benefits are the integration with the rest of our system, including solutions for system administration of having one interface with OneView and being able to use 3PAR with your storage and manage everything. The integration with virtualization as all that just brings down cost with administration, and to me that's one of the biggest things it brings.Stability IssuesStability has always been there. Going back to my reliability comment that it's always been very reliable, we've never had any major issues. When there has been issues, it's always been preventative maintenance kind of things that are addressed pretty quickly. With the redundancy that you get in the system, we've never had an outage, per say. Something that you have to maybe go fix, but not a complete downtime.Scalability IssuesWe never buy just for what we need at the time, we always try to make sure we get the full lifecycle use of the product, and so with 3PAR, it might include having the expandability to add more shelves, or looking at the drives that are denser and things like that, so being able to mix and match parts and stuff.The scalability has always been there as well, and like I said, in the old version of the BladeSystem, the c7000, that was around for like 10 years, so it's scaled very well. I've never had a problem with scaling.Customer Service and Technical SupportWe have technical account managers, and we call them to handle any kind of maintenance agreement or things like that, and have had very good support from them. If there's something that they can't answer, they're always willing to reach back and get the right point of contact. We've had very good dealings with our technical account manager and technical support.Initial SetupThere's been some cases where we have migrated systems from one data center into our data center, and done consolidations. Some of that requires backing up older platforms, older systems, and bringing them in. We had one scenario where we migrated a customer, and they were using old LTO tape drives, coming into a new system which didn't support that. In those kind of cases, we had to reach out to HPE for support. Those were things we could handle. Again, during those migrations, I can't say that there was anything that we missed our window. Everything worked out very well.Other Solutions ConsideredWe did a trade study between 3PAR and some of the other ones like Pure Storage. I would just say one thing we saw that I think could be helpful is maybe looking at dedupe and how their competitors are doing it, and making sure that they stay aware of what those other competitors are doing as well.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-07-31T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user229389 from
We are using a lot less power and space with this SAN compared to our previous solution.Valuable FeaturesThe thin technology and adaptive optimization features make the SAN appear bigger and faster than what it replaced, all the while using a third of the rack space. We also use Flash SSD disks for adaptive optimization, and this speeds up the performance up to 10 times what it was.Improvements to My OrganizationWe are using a lot less power and space with this SAN compared to our previous solution. This SAN only takes a third less power and capacity, yet it provides almost twice the performance.Room for ImprovementThe only area I would say that could use improvement is communication on what upgrades should be applied. We have been told that the re-seller cannot perform, nor recommend, upgrades.Use of SolutionWe have been using the product for about two years.Deployment IssuesInstallation was quite easy, and we were using the SAN very quickly.Stability IssuesNone! We had a failed disk and have had replacements before we even knew! Rebuild times are fast!Scalability IssuesWe added a shelf online with no issues and the SAN was online during the upgrade.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: Great, they are able to be reached quickly and without any issues.Technical Support: Support know the product very well and will escalate any issue quickly within their tiers and without being asked.Previous SolutionsWe used an EMC solution before. The price, performance and features swayed us to HP 3PAR.Initial SetupSetup was reasonably easy. We used a CD and a VM template to “birth” the unit. It was all wizard driven and intuitive.Implementation TeamWe used a vendor team who were knowledgeable of the product.ROIGreat! The product has exceeded our expectations.Pricing, Setup Cost and LicensingThe product seemed to be too cheap when compared to replacing our existing SAN. Therefore, we were hesitant at the features and performance offered. I believe we spent around C$80k for the system. Maintenance and proactive support was included, so day to day costs are really only power.Other Solutions ConsideredWe compared EMC and IBM, but both cost more and lacked key space and performance features.Other AdviceCompare all vendors carefully as there are a lot of features that appear to be similar but in actuality are very different.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We are a 3PAR resellerDate published: 2015-04-27T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SystemsAd3f7 from
It has given us the performance and stability that we require to run our enterpriseWhat is our primary use case?We use 3PAR as the primary storage in our environment for all our Tier 1 applications.We have been using it since 2015. It has performed well. You guys have gotten a lot better with the 8000 and 20000 series.How has it helped my organization?We design a lot of our DR and business continuity strategy around 3PAR Peer Persistence and other copy services.What is most valuable?The most valuable features are their tight integration with VMware, their multi-node architecture, and their copy services, such as Peer Persistence. We are a big MetroCluster user.What needs improvement?I would like to see the following:* NVMe support, not only on the disk side, but also in the NVMe over Fibre Channel.* More advanced copy features.* A few user improvements on their SSMC product.* Mesh-Active, which I hear is coming.One improvement that they could do right now is with the way they do their metric clustering. With Peer Persistence, they use a Lua. It would be really nice to have a volume that is truly Active-Active in both of our data centers.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It has been quite a stable product, which is why we continue to invest in it.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It definitely scales.How is customer service and technical support?We use HPE technical support. We have gotten every question answered, so they have been helpful.Which solutions did we use previously?We were look for a refresh. At the time, IBM was not keeping up with their VMware integration, especially with VVols. It was quite obvious that HPE was a leader in it, and this steered us into looking at them. Then, we found out that the product could do everything we needed it to do.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was pretty straightforward.What was our ROI?For the price that we were able to acquire it, we have seen it give us the performance and stability that we require to run our enterprise. They have also added features, such as the compression and duplication, which have further increased our ROI.Which other solutions did I evaluate?NetApp, Pure Storage, and IBM. We chose HPE because they checked all the boxes.What other advice do I have?Nine out of 10 times, the system does exactly what we need it to do.Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Knowing that the product works. We like to choose bigger companies. We do not like to invest in startups because you never know if they will be acquired.We have a good existing relationship with HPE, which was a lot of what steered us toward using them in the storage space.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-06-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user334911 from
It's reduced the amount of time that I spend administering storage requests. This allows us to keep pace with the ever growing amount of storage that our users require.Valuable FeaturesEase-of-use is very high on our list of features, as we are, like everyone else, trying to do more with fewer people.The reliability is very high, as we have performed multiple firmware updates and some controller replacements all on-line with no downtime and no impact to our users.Improvements to My OrganizationProbably the most beneficial aspect from my viewpoint is that it has reduced the amount of time that I spend administering storage requests by at least 50%. This allows us to keep pace with the ever growing amount of storage that our users require.Room for ImprovementThe newer versions of the hardware have really addressed the minor concerns we had, specifically hard drive replacements which were tedious in earlier models due to shelf design. This is now a quick, easy task.Use of SolutionWe have been using 3PAR for the last four years, and have a total of six arrays now.Stability IssuesNot really, as the arrays have performed with no down time or data loss since we first started using them four years ago.Customer Service and Technical Support10 out of 10. I've worked with HP support for over seven years in my current job and have always been happy with the level of expertise I have received.Previous SolutionsMy company has used HP storage arrays since before I joined.Initial SetupVery straightforward installation and set-up.Implementation TeamHP services did the initial installation and base configuration of each of the storage arrays, and took one day for each array.We use a reseller to purchase the 3PAR equipment, and we utilize HP professional services for installation and initial set-up.ROII don't have an ROI as I am not really involved with the financing/budget side in any detail.Pricing, Setup Cost and LicensingLicensing the features that we use was not overly complex to get worked out, and HP was very helpful in providing details on the features we needed to provide the functions we needed, which was primarily the synchronous replication between our sites.Other Solutions ConsideredWe have evaluated other vendors over the years, but we have stayed with HP due to the high reliability and ease of use.Other AdviceWork with your HP pre-sales people to determine which model of array will best satisfy your requirements. I've had very good relationships with all the HP technical and pre-sales that I have worked with over the years.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-11-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user477453 from
Competitive cost when compared to the EMC solution.Improvements to My OrganizationWe're almost entirely HPE outside of the network stack, so it's nice to have one place to call for support.When comparing the cost to the comparable EMC solution at the time that we purchased it, 3PAR was significantly cheaper.It was almost 100% financial decision. They had similar performance, similar build specs, but the business relationship with HPE was much greater. EMC didn't put their best quote forward when we did our bake off, they came in and put in a really high bid. When they found out we were going to go with 3PAR based almost 100% on the cost, they came back and gave us a better bid, but it was a little bit late at that point.The technical aspect really were comparable. The difference with the EMC product was in the way that they cashed to their flash. HP's is strictly tiered based on a optimization. The EMC product, could cash reads for any tier into the flash. There was a performance advantage there the I don't know that we would have gotten. However, it was enough to make the decision easy.Valuable FeaturesThe performance that we get out of it.We probably purchased too big an array for our needs. We're not even touching on the IOPs that it can do. That's been a great benefit; the support on the 3PAR has been really nice also.It's very reliable and it was cost competitive with other arrays at the time that we purchased it.Room for ImprovementSupport in the European region. These are things we are addressing with HPE and they're fixing already, but that's been the biggest problem - getting support engineers scheduled for maintenance, replacing a drive, doing an upgrade. We've had scheduling problems with them. We had one instance where the engineer just didn't show up with no excuse.Our support in the US has been phenomenal, no issues at all. But the European support was poor initially.Stability IssuesNothing bad to say about 3PAR. It's been completely reliable. There's always going to be drive failures with any piece of spinning disc. Those are expected and they've been treated, at least in the US region, with really rapid response times, really great support. Support for upgrades has been painless. HPE is very proactive about doing that - they'll let us know that there's a new version and they'd like to upgrade the array. It's fantastic.Customer Service and Technical SupportIt's getting better in Europe, but it could still stand to improve.Other AdviceI would recommend it over anything. It's a great array; the cost was very competitive; the performance is great.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-07-11T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user251871 from
We’re getting the performance that we need and it's easy to manage.Valuable FeaturesIt is incredibly easy to manage. We’re getting the performance that we need, and that’s what we need storage to be. We plug it in and it works, and everybody forgets about it, which is what we need. We’re using 3 different RAIDS, and it’s working just fine.Improvements to My OrganizationIt’s not as complex as EMC, so whenever there’s requirements for allocating storage, it’s very easy to do. The turnaround only takes 48 hours, whereas with EMC it was taking three days to a week to allocate that storage.Room for ImprovementI'd like to see the system reporter improve. With the reporting feature, I’d like a little more versatility in how I get my reports. The 3PAR just runs and nobody complains, but I’d like to see what the warnings the reporting gives me actually means. I would like that feature to be enhanced more to get rid of more false positives errors. Also, the drive replacement on the 10800 needs improvement. It’s a magazine that has four drives, and to replace one drive, I wish they would not spin down all of the drives just to replace one. It makes me a bit nervous when they do that to replace a failed drive.Stability IssuesVery stable and performance is great.Scalability IssuesWe haven’t really scaled. We have a nice sized array right now, as we’ve just started the migration process. But we have the ability to scale if we need it. We have 25 HP 3PAR devices right now, and will get 25 more. We also have 50 EMCs that we’ve been trying to migrate over from.Customer Service and Technical SupportIt’s been okay. With me being a 3PAR person, my struggle with HP is that when I know more about the product they still take me to the level one person, which wastes my time.Previous SolutionsIt was before my time, but they wanted to diversify from EMC. We are slowly migrating entirely to HP.Initial SetupVery straightforward. It plays with our Oracle products very well too, which we like.Other Solutions ConsideredJust EMC, who were already in place.Other AdviceI think that the most important criteria when selecting a vendor is the business need and the reliability to make my job easier. I need it to be fast and efficient and be able to get graphs and reports from it. Definitely look at 3PAR as it’s a great piece of hardware.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-06-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user252609 from
We were looking for a solution to improve latency. We also needed a new solution because our Dell Ecologic was down often.Valuable FeaturesEasy manageability, and the speed is very quick.Improvements to My OrganizationLess downtime, unlike our previous solution.Room for ImprovementThat’s hard to say because it’s pretty good for us. The areas that we would suggest for improvement, HP is already looking at.Stability IssuesIt’s excellent; no complaints. I’m very impressed with it.Scalability IssuesI’ve already scaled it twice and will scale it again.Customer Service and Technical SupportIt’s also great. We’ve not really had a problem with it in over a year of use.Previous SolutionsWe chose HP to improve on the latency because we knew we needed something that could solve our new needs. Our last system, Dell Ecologic, was very bad and was down a lot.Initial SetupSetup was straightforward.Other Solutions ConsideredWe looked at EMC and HP. 3PAR is using some very high quality software, so we chose HP. Dreamworks uses HP, so we figured it would do us just fine.Other AdviceLook for something that is expandable and reliable. 3PAR is great.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-06-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Principa0182 from
Our applications are now at least two to four times fasterWhat is our primary use case?It is for our IT. It is our kitchen sink; we use it for everything.How has it helped my organization?Our applications are now at least two to four times faster. It was a night and day change.People walk up to us going, "This is just good. Thank you." It is nice for storage people to receive thanks instead of people saying, "Your stuff is slow."What is most valuable?Comparatively to everything else, the value proposition, the TCO, and the price make a big difference from all the other players who are in the same realm.What needs improvement?Better dedupe. It is hard for all the older generation arrays to put up dedupe because they tend to do the other stuff so much better. They have to keep the stability before any other new feature. They have to get it right all the time, not just the first time.For how long have I used the solution?More than five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is stable as heck. That is 3PAR's main name.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We upgraded scalability-wise, and it just hummed along. It was easy.How is customer service and technical support?I have used support a lot. Even in the beginning, it was easy to call somebody, and people say, "Other vendors when they talk to the support guys, they actually collaborate."This was 3PAR five or six years ago until now. When we have an issue, they will call VMware for us instead of us needing to go back and forth.Which solutions did we use previously?We previously used EMC VMAX.When I was at Level 3 Communications eight years ago, we were one of the first customers of 3PAR before HPE bought them. We did a PoC, and it literally made the others in the race look bad. It was that good.How was the initial setup?It was so easy. When you make a volume, it takes seconds instead of minutes, if not tens of minutes. It took me less than an hour to set up the array.What about the implementation team?I was the one who did all the PoCs. I set up everything and tried to automate everything I could.What was our ROI?Performance is at least two times, if not three times, what we had previously. Even now, it is still two to three times in performance what everything else is by price comparison.The value is not just in price, there is the time that the administrators administer the array: It is two times, if not four times the difference. Something that they would take task-wise an hour, it will take (at the most) 15 minutes with a 3PAR. It goes the same way with the Nimble.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Back then, it was HPE versus EMC.What other advice do I have?Just try it out. Do a PoC side-by-side. It wins.Most important criteria when evaluating a vendor:* The technical aspects of the price* The return on investment* The support.You are not making a decision based on just one or two things. If you are, you are not doing a good service for your company or your stakeholdersDisclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Raphael Gondim from
The solution has improved our throughput, which has improved our performanceWhat is our primary use case?The primary use case is DR. We use it in the automation industry.How has it helped my organization?I has helped our organization with DR and replication of our VM environment and Oracle databases.The solution has improved our throughput, which has improved our performance.What is most valuable?It has improved our company's performance.It has an easy implementation and the support is awesome.What needs improvement?We would like to see deduplication and hybrid in the next release of the solution.The integration has room for improvement.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is awesome.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is awesome.All-flash positions our organization for growth. We have more places for Oracle applications, VMware, and servers.How are customer service and technical support?We have had to contact technical support. We have had no problems with them. The support is great.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?We did not use another solution previously.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was straightforward.What about the implementation team?We used a consultant for the deployment. Our experience with them was great.What was our ROI?We have seen ROI.The solution has increased our performance by about 40 percent.This solution has helped our organization reduce time to deployment by 50 percent.What other advice do I have?The performance is great.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-11T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Dale Nelson from
Stability is awesome. Its performance has been steady and it stays up.What is most valuable?The ease of management is its most valuable feature. It is so much easier to manage storage on a 3PAR array than anything that we have had before.I really love the thin provisioning part of it. It has saved us tremendously by being able to provide storage to our Windows guys. They think that they have a terabyte and are happy about it, but they do not use anywhere near that, so it does not chew up space on the array, which is nice.Being able to snapshot things for backup purposes has been key. We do that on our databases four times a day.What needs improvement?We are an all-flash environment, which is really good. One thing that I would like to see is the ability to take storage on 3PAR array and copy it up to the cloud, any type of cloud I want, e.g., Azure, AWS, etc. HPE has StoreOnce CloudBank integration, but I would like to see a little bit more integration from a cloud perspective. In this way, I would have some more flexibility to do more with data, how to store it, and where I have it.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability has been awesome. We have a couple of 8440s that have been in production now for about a year and a half with no hiccups; nothing. Its performance has been steady, very good, and it stays up.That is why we had P9500s and Symmetrix in the day, because they just stayed up, and they just always worked. 3PAR has been every bit as reliable and available as those systems.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We are in a mid-size company, and the 8000 series has been good. We are not utilizing all of it, so we have the ability to expand. We have a project right now that we are looking at expanding, so from that standpoint it is good.You can get way into the 20000 series and just cut into petabytes of data out there. I like that it moves from entry level to as high as you need to go.How is customer service and technical support?Support has been very good. Upgrade-wise, we have had HPE guys call us up, and say, "You need to apply this firmware. We need to get you to this level." Then, we get it scheduled.They are on time and work with us when we need to get anything done. They get things done, so we do not have to do them, which is awesome.Which solutions did we use previously?I have gone the gamut of old EMC arrays, Clarion arrays, and XP arrays, and 3PAR is just so simple.How was the initial setup?Initial setup was straightforward. It is not a hard array to set up and install. Even though we had purchased installation, this was back when we had the previous 3PAR for a performance tool. I got it and set it up.What about the implementation team?I installed 3PAR on the server, and it was not hard to do.HPE called us up and said, "Here are the things that you can do with this." I replied, "I already went through all of that." They said, "Okay."What other advice do I have?They are very good, and I like the product.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-06-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Dallas Widing from
The product's technical support is outstanding as I can reach someone right awayWhat is our primary use case?We're currently running two 3PAR 7200 storage units in high availability. We have three workload tiers. We have Nearline, FAST class, and SSD. Our primary ERP system is an Oracle JD Edwards running on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 that is all on SSD. Then, we have other workloads for our barcode. Our engineering solutions are running on FAST class, and then most of our traditional file and print, storage, and workloads are running on Nearline SATA. Also, have two 4200 LeftHand SANs in the environment. I put very low priority VMs on those two LeftHand SANs. They are minor application servers. They don't need a whole lot of performance. However, the LeftHand SANs are now seven years old. The 3PAR SANs are now five years old, and I have to replace everything in 2020, and I'm looking at HPE SimpliVity, Nimble, and potentially 3PAR as the storage architecture for that environment.Our JD Edwards, which is our ERP system, that is critical. Also, our barcode scanning, because we do a lot of barcode scanning out in the shipping and manufacturing warehouse. Our accounting system is part of the JD Edwards too. All of that is on the SSD. We're currently evaluating whether we upgrade to JD Edwards 9.2 or if we deploy Microsoft Finance and Operations. If we go with Microsoft Finance and Operations, that'll be totally in the cloud, and I'll be able to carve a third of my storage requirements out because it will no longer be necessary to run an on-premise ERP solution.My directive when I was hired in 2016 as a direct IT manager versus an outsourced IT manager, as I was when I started in 2014, is anything and everything I can take to the cloud goes to the cloud. If I do that, it reduces the need for all SSD on-premise, and that's actually what I'm trying to get to, because I'd rather utilize Microsoft Cloud, Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365. I want to utilize that cloud for my performance, whereas on-premise traditional file, print, and storage doesn't really need SSD.How has it helped my organization?In the deployment of virtual servers, I can have a new VM up and running in 15 minutes, run the patches, then done. I routinely fire up base images that I have for my servers: Server 2008 R2, 2012 R2, and 2016. I routinely fire those base images up and do all the updates, then prep them again for cloning. With 3PAR, we definitely have the performance to do that. Those images I do keep on SSD just to have that performance to deploy a new VM.It has improved our throughput. We went from a 1G backbone on our LeftHand SAN, and also the IBM SAN was not redundant, but we put in a 10G backbone with 10G fiber which truly increased our performance.What is most valuable?The high availability is awesome.The reliability: In five years, I have had one drive that has failed, which is not so much 3PAR as much as it is HPE. I have depended on HPE servers since it was Compaq servers.What needs improvement?One of the things I like about the Microsoft operating systems are Microsoft's built-in backups. It's not elegant nor real pretty, but it just works for a single server or single VM. What I would really like to see from HPE is backup built-in, not snapshots nor replaying snapshots, but true block or file level backups integrated into an HPE platform program.Today, I'm using StorageCraft, where I can have a VM recovered in 15 to 20 minutes. I run a continuous restore point on three of my primary domain controllers. I run a continuous restore point against my primary Microsoft SQL server. So, I always have that continuous, but it's taking up so much storage space that I keep running out and having to add. I need something better, as I've been doing this for a long time. Maybe having Arcserve Backup or Seagate Backup Exec more integrated into the hardware solution.What do I think about the stability of the solution?in the last five years, we've only had one drive failure. We have run out of space on our Nearline storage, because our Nearline storage was set up for the Remote Copy groups. I'm actually going to be working with an HPE storage architect next week to redistribute the ARC copy groups. Most of that is low tier that I'm not worried about for high availability, but for our SSD storage and FAST class storage, the high availability is there. I have a six node cluster that we are splitting to two sites on one campus. If I have any failure, everything fails over in a heartbeat, then nobody will hardly notice.In the past, I've been comfortable running HPE servers for more than 10 years. However, I no longer find that to be cost-effective, especially as a customer, because running something that long obviously induces too much risk. Now, I'm on a three to five-year replacement cycle, and the current environment was installed five years ago. I have to get it replaced next year.How are customer service and technical support?3PAR technical support has been outstanding. When I ran into some issues with my Nearline drives last year, they helped out with that. Every time that I have had to update the OS or firmware, I opened up a case with 3PAR support, and I get somebody right away. Then, we schedule time and are able to do live updates with no downtime. This is huge and critical for me.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?I told the company that they needed to invest in 3PAR. They had one IBM DS 5600, a SAN that was huge, but was only eight terabytes, at the time. They were trying to go with the two LeftHand SANs to replace the IBM, but the LeftHand SANs IOPS could never succeed the IOPS from the IBM SAN. Then, the reseller that was helping them was let go and new management was brought in. That management decided to outsource IT to the company that I worked for. I was a huge HPE partner at the time.3PAR has increased our performance over our old IBM SAN that was put in around 2009, prior to my time, which was 1G fiber and all SAS drives. The performance of the 3PAR, with its SSDs and controller nodes, was vastly superior to that older IBM. The HPE LeftHand SANs were all SAS and SATA, so the 3PAR SSD performance was just off the charts.How was the initial setup?Anything new can be complex. There were some things in the initial deployment that I was not happy about. One of my directives was, "However, it's configured, ensure that it can never be overprovisioned." That one key thing was overlooked.This is why I had to have a support call last year, because it actually became overprovisioned and I had to move some stuff around. We're still sort of in that with the Nearline storage, and that's why I'm having another architect work with me next week, so we can redo some things. I've had to move a lot of what was on the Nearline storage over to the LeftHand SANs. If I hadn't had those LeftHand SANs just sitting there with 20 terabytes, I would've been in serious trouble. That was my one point with the deployment team, everybody thinks, "If you do this, you do this, and do this, you'll never get overprovisioned," but I've been doing this long enough, and going back to Compaq StorageWorks, if you're not careful on how you have Remote Copy groups, your redundancy setup, thin provision, thick provision, lazy zero, and eager zero, then you will get overprovisioned at some point. You will lock up on a SAN tighter than a drum.What about the implementation team?I was actually outsourced as the IT manager. Starting in February of 2014, I was selected to lead the management of all the company's nine locations in North America, Europe, and Canada, working with HPE at the time. After we selected to go definitely with 3PAR, HPE helped do the whole design, and I approved the design. It was actually deployed in August of 2014. Everything was deployed to my specifications.What was our ROI?We have seen ROI.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?For the entire six node cluster and the two 7200 units plus the Brocade Fibre switches, we financed it through HPE Financial. It was $850,000. We leased that and paid it off in October of 2018.I have to renew support in October for the existing solution. That will cost me roughly $50,000 this year, which in the grand scheme of things, $50,000 is not that much compared to paying $850,000. However, it will be the last year that I'll be able to get direct support from HPE. Therefore, product has to be replaced in 2020.Which other solutions did I evaluate?I worked with the team from HPE. We looked at their solutions, and selected 3PAR. We also looked at Dell EMC and Nutanix. At the time, when evaluating Dell EMC and other SAN products against 3PAR out-of-the-box, 3PAR just was vastly superior to anything else.Working with the HPE team back in early 2014, they proposed the design. As it turns out, the SAN that we deployed in 2014 was the largest 3PAR SAN in the state of Wisconsin.I just have a long history of HPE. I've tried Dell EMC and IBM before. IBM sold its server products to Lenovo. I always come back to HPE, especially the ProLiant brand, just because of the reliability and consistency through all the generations. You can look at a ProLiant 1000, never having seen one before, but if you know a Gen 9 or a Gen 10 today, if you could find a Proliant 1000 that was still operating, then you would know how to go in and configure it.It is this type of consistency that keeps me with HPE....Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-15T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Payman Maher from
Low latency and high performance for my VVoLWhat is our primary use case?I use this product in VMware Shared Storage. I work with VVoL, but I have a problem that is related to the update.How has it helped my organization?This solution has provided me with very low latency and high performance.What is most valuable?The most valuable feature of this solution is the native full mesh (multi-pathing).What needs improvement?I would like to have support for On-The-fly reallocation Data when using VVoL.For further explanation I must say When using vvol , you can have 3 tier in Storage .This tiers different in IO an Capacity feature.Usually tier 0 can support maximum IO and minimum Capacity and use SSD in this tier, Tier 1 between Tier 0 and 2 for Support IO and Capacity This layer is known as FC (Fast Class) nad Finally in tier 2 you Have only capacity and usually used NL disk for capacity .from that side in vmware Cluster equivalent this tier have a concept called Gold,Silver,Bronze that define in Storage Policy.You may want to first move a virtual machine to the silver group with disks; and then move it to another group, such as gold or bronze.This feature is based on the feature that the storage device provides and This feature is not yet available on the storage device, according to the documentation of HPE company will be presented in an update called T05For how long have I used the solution?I have been using this solution for two years.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-09-17T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Director609e from
Ease of management has cut our storage administration workload significantlyWhat is our primary use case?It's primarily used as our primary SAN, storage area network. We store all sorts of data and VMs on that particular set of disks. It's for local data center usage. We have three data centers now, one in Atlanta, one in Dallas, one in Provo. We aren't doing any site to site replication. It's really just localized and we're trying to get to a point where we are actually doing site to site replication for DR and things of that nature.The performance is good. We enjoy it. We like it.How has it helped my organization?The ease of management is what changed. Where we had, in simple terms, about an hour's worth of work, it has minimized that to maybe one-tenth, or something to that effect. Instead of us having to do a lot of steps to ensure that our environment is where it needs to be from a storage perspective, because of the ease of management, the UI differences, it has allowed us to manage our environment.What is most valuable?* The intuitiveness of the SAN itself, a lot of the built-in logic and functionality* The tiering that it uses to determine what type of disk is best for the various types of workloads* The automation that is built inWe used to have EMC and we have found that it's a lot easier to manage.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability is very good. No issues thus far.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We haven't really had to scale it yet. We got a pretty large footprint initially. I think we've added some SSDs, some nearline disk. But from that perspective, no issues, no complaints.How is customer service and technical support?Most of what we have had to engage support on has been, "Hey, how do we do this?" or, "Hey, I see this, but I don't understand. What can I do?" We've had pretty good experiences so far.Which solutions did we use previously?We had a set of vendors come in and do proofs of concept to help us better understand what options and features were available. Based upon what we found with HPE and 3PAR - I wasn't actually a part of the initial assessment, this is all stuff that I heard when I came on board - it just was the best solution for us at the time.How was the initial setup?My team was involved in the initial setup and I managed the team. We had three resources that were a part of the setup, so they were onsite with the engineers. They got a week or so of training each. That was pretty much all we were a part of during the initial setup.It was probably complicated because most of our team were used to EMC and it's a different kind of mindset. Even today, there are a lot of things that we haven't leveraged because we simply don't have the expertise. Over time, though, as we've used the tool, we've become more comfortable with it.What was our ROI?I don't know if we've done enough analysis to gauge ROI yet.Which other solutions did I evaluate?As far as I know, we had three vendors on our short-list: HPE, EMC, and a third vendor I don't recall at the moment.What other advice do I have?Definitely learn the features of the product, what it takes to actually administer and manage it, what type of resource load is also required. It's not necessarily a tool that enables anyone who says, "Hey, we bought a SAN, go take it over." It really takes someone who has an understanding of and background in the tool, maybe even a little background with HPE. Just make sure you fully understand what you're getting into.I would rate it a nine out of 10. We've been fairly satisfied with the product, we haven't had any issues. It's definitely not something that you can easily jump into without that initial set of knowledge to help you understand how to use the tool. From our perspective, the way we went into it was backward. We bought and then learned, instead of learned and then bought. That has been a part of our hurdle but, overall, it has been a good product.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user364521 from
We need speed, and this provides it. We have strict SLAs, and 3PAR allows me to put the right people together very quickly.Valuable FeaturesWe need performance and this provides it. We also need affordable prices -- both at sales and post-sales -- and maintenance.In terms of technical support, our local HP team supports my requests and I know we can turn to them to understand our issues.In terms of the technology itself, it's not much different from other technologies. But what sets it apart if what happens after the sale -- maintenance and support.We also need speed, and this provides it. We have strict SLAs, and 3PAR allows me to put the right people together very quickly.Room for ImprovementI'd like their technical support to be better. If we need to go to level three, there isn't always someone locally and it can be time consuming to get someone with the right skills.Use of SolutionWe installed it 12 years ago, moved to NetApp, then back to HP because of the maintenance costs.Stability IssuesIt works 24/7. Our core business are our hospitals and clinics, which means we can't waste time on data center or service issues. So the real value is the 24/7, constant stability.Scalability IssuesWe've been able to implement it in both small clinics and big hospitals. It's scalable so we can manage it from the same data center with protected investments.Customer Service and Technical SupportThey support my team. We get second-level support from our local partner and third-level support from HP directly.Initial SetupIt was a straightforward migration.Other AdviceIf it is a first time investment, it's no problem. If it's a migration, then you need to take care of the migration risks as well. There should be no data loss because migration is risky.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-01-07T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Alex Lovett from
All-flash performance means that we can host more VMs on a smaller virtual volumeWhat is our primary use case?We're using all-flash 3PAR to set up a private cloud hosting platform within our company; so for the amalgamation DCC work, bringing smaller datacenters onto the sites. We use that as our primary storage. We use RCG technology to replicate across our two datacenters.It's seamless. We've had no issues at all.How has it helped my organization?Certainly now, with the all-flash arrays, the performance that we get out of those means that we can host far more VMs on a smaller virtual volume. We get much better performance out of those volumes now.What is most valuable?* The Remote Copy Group is amazing for the replication stuff.* We also use dynamic optimization to go between tiers.* The reporting, as well. We can quickly see performance per CPG and per LUN. You can drill right down to see actual performance to the virtual volumes themselves. That's really good.What needs improvement?We're going to start to explore integration with public clouds, and I know that that's something that's very hot in the storage space at the moment. That's something we're looking at.Apart from that, we're looking forward to going to the next firmware major release 331. And also the InfoSight stuff that's coming along the pipeline.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?3PAR, for us, has been incredibly stable. We haven't had many issues at all, except at periods of change; in firmware updates, that kind of stuff.We have seen some issues prior, but those have been resolved very quickly by the engineer who's been working with us on the firmware upgrade. We've rolled back, fixed those issues, and then been able to proceed.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Really scalable. That's one of the reasons we're here this week at HPE Discover, is to have a look at what options we've got to increase the space in our 3PAR, because our platform's growing. Our storage will grow with it.How is customer service and technical support?We use support all the time. Once you get to the level-2, level-3 guys, then usually they've got the right ideas.It's getting better. I think escalation processes have improved dramatically over the last 12 months. We're engaged with our account managers as well, to help improve that process. We're quite strongly engaged with HPE about the technical review and support process. We have had issues in the past, I'm not going to lie. But it's getting better.What other advice do I have?When it comes to selecting a vendor we're pretty much an HPE house. But I think the options you have to expand - within the storage space - you've got to have all those options. Especially performance. I think that's what we're looking for. And the support, as well.It's an eight out of 10. It's pretty solid. We've had a few problems. But, from a performance point of view, our customers are very happy and so are we.I'd take a serious look at it. I think 3PAR is a great product.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-25T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ITManagea7dd from
For virtualization, the failure rate is much less compared to traditional storage where you need more hard drivesWhat is our primary use case?I am from Dubai. We are one of the major system integrators in Egypt. We have customers using some other EMC Storages, and they have some performance issues. When we introduced the 3PAR Storage, mainly for the virtualization, they were very happy, because it is very useful for the performance and utilization points. The customers have been very happy since we introduce them to 3PAR Storage.How has it helped my organization?I am a system integrator, so we sell a lot of 3PAR Storage to our customers. Our business has increased compared to previous days.What is most valuable?* For virtualization, the failure rate is much less compared to traditional storage where you need more hard drives.* When it come to 3PAR, it uses chunklets, so it is easier for the customers.What needs improvement?As a management tool, it would help us to have more customer reports. Even though, we use it for other things, if can improve more things in the supporting, like the reporting tool, it would make it easier for the customers.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is really good. Even though there is some downtime, the support is really fast.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is a very scalable solution.Our customers, they are smaller customers. Very few customers will go to the maximum, but for us, this is fine.How is customer service and technical support?The support is really fast. There is very good support for 3PAR Storage.It was really helpful. Because when I was a customer, having a downtime in the night, we called them (the support team), they immediately reacted. It was product tech support, and within two or three hours, the problem was solved.It was business critical. It was a multinational company. All the data was down. But within a few hours, we sorted it out. The customer really appreciated HPE, as well as the partner.How was the initial setup?It is very straightforward. It is very simple.What about the implementation team?I have sold at least 10 to 15 storages. But I have only had one incident, out of these 10 to 15 where HPE could not install fast enough. Not bad for failure rates.What other advice do I have?We highly recommend HPE 3PAR, plus the latest other storage solution from Nimble, too. We highly recommend 3PAR to all our customers. We are replacing lot of other vendors (EMC, even Dell). We are replacing a lot of storage solutions with HPE 3PAR.Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: I am a partner. Even though, we are partners with HPE, we are also partners with EMC Oracle, but we prefer HPE. With HPE, the support, reliability, and credibility are much higher than with any other products.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner.Date published: 2017-12-25T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
RajeshSrinivasan from
It is a rugged, performance system; it is trouble-free and a workhorseWhat is our primary use case?Our customers use it for primary SAN storage. They have multiple business needs for their enterprise-class business, e.g., for high-end data processing, oil, and natural gas. We also have media customers, who are trying to use it. The businesses are predominantly all verticals who use it.The performance is awesome. It is one of the best storage products comparatively to like size competitors. I am a big fan of 3PAR.How has it helped my organization?It is about the availability and predictably. The performance is also good.What is most valuable?It is a rugged, performance system; it is trouble-free and a workhorse. We have a c7000, which with 3PAR makes a great combination for any workload.What needs improvement?The following need to be improved:* The ability to contact the correct HPE resource to give you the right product.* We had to undergo at least two or three iterations before we finalized a product which fit. This took time.* The availability of technical resources within HPE is becoming a challenge due to availability. They are possibly all busy, or maybe at the headquarters less. I don't know the reason, but this happens every time we have to burn the midnight oil to get some solution out and running.* 3PAR needs to keep on increasing its capacity.* It needs more array support.* It needs to be more data-driven.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have to go through the non-rolling part of it, and that takes time. We are waiting from HPE to hear (possibly next year) how better InfoSight will be coming into the picture. We are looking for more developments on that front.How is customer service and technical support?So far, technical support has been good. However, we use our own in-house expertise to resolve issues.Which solutions did we use previously?We help our customers decide on purchasing new solutions. This is our process:* We have a headroom of about 20 to 30 percentage depending on the customer's business. The visibility for the next year on the future annual growth.* Once we hit a headroom of about 60 percentage, we talk to the customer and tell them that they are up for either scalability, compression, or dedupe for their data.* When the capacity hits about 80 percentage, then we buy a new product and app.How was the initial setup?Earlier, it used to be complex. Now, we have our own skill set, which has made the installation easier. From the time we gather all the necessary data, it takes about a week (five business days) to set it up and have it running.What about the implementation team?We do the system integration for our customers.What was our ROI?Not all of them see ROI, because there is definitely good competition available from NetApp and Hitachi. When you look at the ROI, those are the other two organizations who are making inroads. In terms of product performance, 3PAR is really good.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?Cost-wise, it is a little bit on the higher side, but it is an awesome product.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Other competitors in this marketplace are Dell EMC, NetApp, and Hitachi. These vendors are very competitive in terms of pricing.What other advice do I have?Product-wise, it is good. In terms of cost, I will leave the choice to them.Most important criteria that our customers select a vendor:* Supportability* Scalability* Financing.The main reason that our customers choose 3PAR is because of price.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner.Date published: 2018-07-03T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user332682 from
All the disk drives in the system are used for data, since parity and spares are at the chunklet level. I'd like, however, a unified system with the same controller serving both SAN and NAS solutions.Valuable Features* Scaleable from two to eight controller nodes for High Availability* Persistent fabric array ports* Performance tuning* Dynamic and adaptive optimizations* Highly granular storage* One gigabyte miniature disk concept called "chunklets"* Striping of data across all disks available - wide striping* Highly intelligent Gen3 and Gen 4 ASICs which acts as the brain of the 3PAR storage systems. This is not a regular CPU* Very quick redistribution of data if there's a disk failure* All the disk drives in the system are used for data, since parity and spares are at the chunklet level.Improvements to My OrganizationI cannot share the information on how it improved our storage estates, but in general, it has very good SAN performance compared to EMC Clariion, IBM XIV, IBM Storwize V7000 and its other competitors.Room for ImprovementThey have released a unified version of HP 3PAR, with a separate NAS server unit in the enclosure/rack. I would like to see a proper unified system (same controller serving both SAN and NAS solutions) such as NetApp offers.Use of SolutionWe've been using it for three years. We currently have a 7400 (mix of disk drives), and a 7450 (full flash array, only SSD disks),Stability IssuesThe performance is optimal, if we have planned everything properly well in advance.Scalability IssuesThese are mid-range storage solutions that can be scaled up to 700TB of space depending on the type of disks we use. It does have enterprise solutions that can scale up to eight controller nodes with 1.8PB of usable capacity. However, we have a 7400 and a 7450 with lot of provisioning done to ESX systems with thousands of VMs.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: HP customer support, especially for 3PAR is excellent.Technical Support: They have highly skilled technical support team. I would rate them 8/10.Previous SolutionsWe chose 3PAR because it has the best price compared to its competitors, and delivers the performance expected.Implementation TeamThe initial setup/installation was done by the vendor. We needed to provide them with the necessary hardware and network information, (DNS, NIS etc). Their experience was very good, I have no complaints.Pricing, Setup Cost and LicensingPricing and licensing depend on the customer/partner deals and negotiations/agreements.Other AdviceIt has met our performance and stability expectations. 3PAR is one of the best in the market and it is evident that its sales have raised to 10x since it was acquired by HP. All cloud solutions from HP and many other companies use HP 3PAR storage on their backend for their cloud solutions.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We are a platinum customer.Date published: 2015-10-31T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SystemsE69b2 from
No single point of failure; alerts give you time to plan the fix, the replacementHow has it helped my organization?If you design it right and implement it right, it's headache free. Just keep it there and it does what it's suppose to do. Gives us peace of mind.What is most valuable?* Reliability* The support channelWhat needs improvement?Nothing comes to mind. Most of these products usually come with more features than you need.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Whatever failures you have, there is no single point of failure. So, any failure, you get an alert, you have time, you plan the fix, the replacement, and so on. So your operations are intact.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?In terms of scalability, I think it will meet our company's needs for the near future, but, later on, no. I don't think it will. It's not because it's not scalable, it's just that technology changes so much. Three or four years, you get something new.How is customer service and technical support?The support channel, you open a ticket, they follow up, the replacement part comes to your doorstep in a maximum of three working days. And the price we paid for that, upfront, is very minimal. So, when you buy an HPE product, if you pay, say 10 or 15 percent more, you get the Care Pack for a total of five years. Other vendors, they charge much more for the same deliverables.What other advice do I have?When looking to work with a vendor I would look for manageability features. Monitoring, central monitoring, alerts, mass deployment, functionality. If you have one server, two servers fine, but if you have 100, these pay back easily.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-19T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Mark Frenette from
Chunklet technology has allowed us to spread our load across all our drivesWhat is our primary use case?We run a High Performance Computing grid for Nuance and run GPFS on top of 3PAR. We are using SAS-based 3PAR for data and the 8450s, all SSD, for the metadata.It has been performing great. We have had SSD based 3PARs since 2013 and we have only lost about four drives so far.How has it helped my organization?We are an R&D group, so it does not change the function. However, it improves the performance for our grids.It allows us to buy less capacity for performance. We would buy spindles just for the IOPs, so we were wasting space for the performance. Now, we don't have to.What is most valuable?The performance is the most valuable. We had the spindle problem that most places have. With the chunklet technology, it allowed us to spread our load across all our drives, unlike traditional raid groups that can leave some disks idle while other take the load.What needs improvement?It is more specific to High Performance Computing, but I would like to see a faster Ethernet connection. Right now, it is 10G. If they could do multiple hundred gigs to speed up the transfer from the array to the servers, that would be good. We are trying to get away from Fibre Channel.For how long have I used the solution?More than five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?When we went to 3PAR, it has the Call-Home function. Now, I do not have to do a whole lot for monitoring and problems. The sales engineer (SE) will show up with a drive, and say "You've got a drive down." Therefore, we don't even monitor it.This makes our job so much easier.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We typically max them out. When we buy an array, we buy a SAS-based array with 480 drives. We use a clustered file system on it that prefills the LUNs, so it looks likes it's full the day that we get it. We receive sales calls asking, "You are beyond 95 percent full, do you want to buy another one?" However, we have not even started yet!When we want to scale, we buy another one. We spread the filesystem horizontally across arrays.How is customer service and technical support?We used the technical support early on for tuning and configuration. We went pretty deep with tech support onsite to get the most out of the arrays.Which solutions did we use previously?We had the MSA P2000 series previously. We had 120 of them in one data center. Therefore, we went from the MSAs to the 3PAR, and the decision-making was based on the performance. Our issues was neither a throughput nor an IOP problem, but more of a file open issue. We have billions of files where you need a lot of different spindles with different heads moving around independently of each other. 3PAR provided this for us.How was the initial setup?We first started with the 3PAR V400 series, which is two racks that had to be wired together to provide 600TB of storage. With the 15TB SSD based arrays we replace 6 racks of V400's with 8U of 8450's.What was our ROI?In R&D, it is hard to put an ROI on time. We are a worldwide company with Ph.D.'s working on the system 24/7. We don't want them waiting around so everything we do to speed up their process helps.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?You can find cheaper storage but you pay for performance. 3PARs performance has been consistent. I have seen other arrays slow down as the load increases due to controller saturation.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We had been an HPE customer before, and when we first started with the MSAs, we had an issue where HPE got a batch of drives in from one of their vendors that had a bad firmware on it. Basically, we had to replace 960 drives with the system online. HPE recognized replacing 750G drives with 500G drives was less capacity than what we purchased so they gave us three more arrays just so they could match the space. That was a huge turning point for us going to HPE. We have had vendors say, "It's your problem. Deal with it." We have had vendors walk away from us. For HPE to actually come up and do this, that was a big deal.We benchmark vendor solutions ourselves, and knowing the internal technology that makes it work is important.We had a project where we did get somebody else's storage. It got to the point where we could not keep it performing enough to keep up with the load. We ended up just getting rid of it after a year of problems.What other advice do I have?With our 3PARs, we have never lost data.I would really push the chunklet technology. That is the main benefit out of 3PAR. The way it subdivides a disk into 1GB chunks.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-20T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ManagerD1d2a from
It has improved uptime, as well as speed to deliveryWhat is our primary use case?It is for mission critical storage. We use it to keep high uptime. We have two 3PAR systems that we leverage.Its performance is good. We have a lot of applications that have high I/O, and 3PAR handles those with no problem.How has it helped my organization?It has improved uptime, as well as speed to delivery.What is most valuable?The uptime for mission critical, because have website services that provides 24/7 roadside support. Therefore, we treat it like it is an emergency service and always has to be up.What needs improvement?We would like to see smoother firmware upgrades going forward. We cannot afford to go down. When we went down, it was very painful for all our mission critical system. When we bought the system, we were under the impression that we were supposed to do firmware upgrades transparently, and on the fly with no impact, and it was very impacting. However, this is the only time that we had any issues.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The reliability has been good, except for upgrades. We did a firmware upgrade, and it brought the whole sandbox down. It was supposed to be done transparently, and that did not happen. It was not like we did it on our own; we had support set it up for us. The proactive support help us with the set up.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have no issues with scalability. We have been scaling up.How is customer service and technical support?Support was good. They keep wanting us to always upgrade. However, with this failure that we had, it has made us nervous moving forward.Which solutions did we use previously?We had HPE EVAs. Then, we had to move away from EVAs, and the 3PARs were the next ones in the line.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It took a couple of days.What about the implementation team?We had HPE support help us.What was our ROI?We have seen ROI with the product. Overall, the 3PAR has been performing very well.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked a EMC before Dell purchased them. Cost is what made us decide on HPE, plus we had a relationship with HPE. We have always been a big HPE shop. Otherwise, the products were apples to apples.What other advice do I have?Evaluate your needs. Prepare a cost comparison comparing it to what your needs are. Sometimes, you may not need a 3PAR if you are looking for secondary storage. You may want to go with Nimble. You need to look at what your requirements are, then make your determination that way.Most important criteria for selecting a vendor:* Price* Best of breed* Reliability.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-07-04T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Assistan151c from
It has helped our organization with our DR site and connections to our blade systemsWhat is our primary use case?It is our primary storage for all of our data. Everything from personnel systems to file shares, print services, and databases are mission-critical applications that we run on 3PAR.How has it helped my organization?It has allowed us to set up a fully functioning disaster recovery site with replication, which we have been able to configure between our 3PAR systems.The solution has helped improved our throughput. It has helped our organization with our DR site and connections to our blade systems.What is most valuable?The replication that you can set up between remote 3PARs is its most valuable feature.I would rate it a ten (out of ten) for its ease of use. We haven't had any issues when we have had to build anything out on it. There have been no major issues, as far as outages or hardware issues.What needs improvement?The GUI was a little hard to figure out how to use.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability has been great and solid, so far. We haven't had any hiccups or any major outages.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is very good. We are planning on adding another rack of hard drives.How are customer service and technical support?The technical support was very knowledgeable when we first set it up. Outside of that, I haven't really had any experience with them.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?We had an old HPE SAN. We compared one 3PAR to the SAN. Then, we wanted to set up replication between our DR sites, so we purchased another 3PAR.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was straightforward.What about the implementation team?We used a reseller for the deployment.What was our ROI?The solution has helped our organization reduce time to deployment.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Our organization issued us an HPE 3PAR. There really wasn't any market research with other vendors.What other advice do I have?It is a solid product. It works really well for our situation and what we need at a disaster recovery site. It is fairly simple to set up.We do not use InfoSight.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-09T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ITManage8dfd from
Resilience, redundancy, and speed of the system keep our end users happyWhat is our primary use case?The primary use is our new datacenter. We're using it to increase performance.It's performing really well.How has it helped my organization?Having moved over from a LeftHand, which was seven or eight years old, there's a massive boost in performance. It has definitely improved the speed, the responsiveness, of all our applications, which is always good.What is most valuable?* Generally, the resilience and the redundancy of the system.* Speed has obviously helped.* We do a lot of replication, as well, with our other 3PARs, so it's keeping that data synchronized.What needs improvement?Just generally the management - which I know, they introduced a few new tools yesterday, here at the HPE Discover conference. Generally, the management of the multiple systems that we have. That's really the only problem, always having to go to all these separate tools to manage everything.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is so far so good. It has been pretty seamless. We've used it now about eight months and it's been stable since then.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We planned for scalability so we bought four enclosures, which was overkill, but it's planning ahead.Which solutions did we use previously?We switched mainly because of the end users, the customers, the guys that use the systems and the applications. They're the ones who start screaming when things are slow. We used to have that problem, where things were slow due to the storage bottleneck. But now we're finding other bottlenecks, so it's good.How was the initial setup?It was straightforward. I was in the datacenter with one of the HPE engineers and we went through everything. He was knowledgeable, he retired about a week after he set it up. So he had a lot of experience.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We did try a few other vendors during a trial period. We simulated failovers just for fun, just to see how quickly they respond. Some of them had issues getting parts to us immediately.What other advice do I have?The most important criteria when selecting a vendor are* reliability* availability of parts.I give an eight out of 10, from working with it and using the features, but also seeing what some of the other competitors have out there. One of the big ones is Pure Storage which I was a big fan of. So, they were the competitor to the 3PAR, as well as Nimble, which was obviously acquired.It came down to costing as well, in the end. But to be fair to the 3PAR, it wasn't comparing like with like. It was comparing an all-flash array with a hybrid 3PAR array.Try to decide quickly. Have your criteria and stick to your criteria, rather than trying ten million different solutions and taking years to implement. That was the biggest issue we had, the fact that there are so many different vendors out there. If you're trying to create a proof of concept, it just eats away at time. At the end of the day, there are a lot of nice things with the 3PAR that made us select it. Try not to waste too much time trying everything.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-25T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user225660 from
We switched from our previous solution because the performance and cost of 3PAR was better.Valuable Features* ASIC assisted RAID Calculations* Performance* FlashImprovements to My Organization* Incredible performance* Automation* Ease of useRoom for Improvement* Host Integration* Support for new platformsUse of SolutionI've used it for four years.Deployment IssuesThere were some minor issues.Stability IssuesNo issues if you plan properly.Scalability IssuesNo scalability issues at all.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: It's the best.Technical Support: It's the best.Previous SolutionsWe switched because of the performance and cost of 3PAR was better than our previous solution.Initial SetupIt depends on what aspects you need to configure.Implementation TeamWe implemented it in-house.ROIIt was two to three years.Other Solutions Considered* EMC* NetAppOther AdviceMy advice would be to do the following:* Plan it properly* Implement it* Check it's working as it should be* Monitor it regularlyDisclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:The company I work for is partners with HP and numerous other tech vendors.Date published: 2015-04-19T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567666 from
Good integration between hardware and software. Efficient storage solution.How has it helped my organization?The great value is the integration with the hardware and the software which really has great features that they develop over time. The system we bought back in 2012/13 and installed in 2013 is no longer in the system we are using now in 2016. This is because the software evolved so much and features were added to the system we purchased three years ago. It still adds new features that which we can leverage on the day-to-day use and make the storage investment more profitable and the storage resources more efficient.What needs improvement?The things I keep asking for are certain features which are now available but not to all the systems that are on the market. Sometimes they say we don't think the hardware you have can sustain this feature. We don't let you try it if it probably can't sustain the feature. There are other features where they say they don't support it on this type of spinning media, we only do that on flash. We don't have flash on our RA, so we are out of that. We get so many other features just by a software update, like transparent frame level between sites which is a huge thing. There's nothing really to complain about.For how long have I used the solution?We introduced this solution into our system in early 2013. We were one of the first customers in Germany and Europe who really received the new 3PAR 7400 storage systems. We transferred all our data from our previous system which was the HP EVA system to the 3PAR system. We did that not by means of the online import, but rather the MPX solution. This solution transferred it over the wire, at wire speed transfer, block for block, the data from the EVA to the 3PAR. Over a weekend, we had all the data for virtualization which was the MRV sphere, the file services on top of Windows storage. We were able to transfer into the new system so we can break down the old system, erect the second new system then have everything merge across the sites again, like we had before.What do I think about the stability of the solution?There is no doubt that the 3PAR system is the most stable system we ever had in the storage space. When I look left and right at other systems we had and others still have in the university, we never had any unplanned downtime. We never lost any data. It really does the job the way it should be doing it.There might be some mishaps, but nothing that's out of the ordinary, like losing the website for three days in a row. There's nothing like that. Of course, you have to do all the work to maintain the system. That's hard work, and you have to do it, but the system really rewards you for doing that.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?In terms of scalability, we did careful planning on that in the beginning. I don’t think we will outrun the system within its natural lifetime. Once it gets replaced by the next generation of systems, whatever those might be, it might be 3PAR, or it might be something software defined. We don't know because that will be in 2019.How is customer service and technical support?The support at HPE is not great, but it is good. We have some fights about it. That's basically at the stages where we have a way to think how it should be done. Then HPE has a supported way. Then HPE has a way that will also work. Basically, our way is the way that will also work. That's kind of our fight, but at the end, we settle for the best of both worlds. They're typically deliver what they promise. There's no worry about that with 3PAR. On the StoreEasy side, it's a little bit more of a challenge because half the product is HPE, and the other half is Microsoft. You have a lot of components that play together and if you get to the line where it is stitched together, sometimes you have just these problems. Is it Microsoft? Is it HPE? How do you get that together and then run into all the troubles you are with having multiple vendors included into that, even though you purchased a product from HPE.How was the initial setup?I think it is a complex setup. We didn't set it up ourselves. We had an HPE partner come in to set it up for us. Then we only dealt with the maintenance in running it. The hardware maintenance is done by HPE. Other than that, we do it ourselves now. I think that's fairly reasonable. Have somebody set it up professionally, explain to you how it should work, and then you can take it from there. That's the way it was in old-fashioned IT. This is transforming with all the cloud stuff that's going on, with all the automation. I think that's really getting to a different level going forward.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at all the major competitors at the time when we chose it. We looked at the EMCs, the NetApps, the IBMs, and the Dells. In the end, it turned out only one, namely HPE, not only for storage but also for server and all the other requirements we had, was able to bring it to the market at a price point that we were willing to pay. For the 3PAR, of course, the transparency between sites is valuable. That used to be the huge feature for NetApp. At that time, they weren't able to deliver it in the way we wanted it. Also HPE had to wait about half a year to be able to deliver that. It was just a software update, some more setup, and then we were up and running. I think with NetApp, it would have been little bit of a harder journey.What other advice do I have?In terms of choosing a vendor, there is a mix of capabilities. You need to find someone who is proven in the field, in general. But if you want to go for latest products, we bought a 7400 even before it was announced. There is nothing in the field. You have to have good partners with whom you can work and with whom you can speak. It only becomes apparent over the course of a project how well of a partner you chose. If you have a product where you spent several million Euros, there's nothing that will work on the first instance. There's not anything that will work, but there are some things that won't work on the first instance. Then every partner shines. You have to ask how they get these problems resolved.We have been an HPE customer for over 20 years. HPE consistently delivered on target. They are always in a bidding process. They can never be sure where they will get the next project because they run against the Dells, the Lenovos, and all the others. You have to have the right portfolio, you have to have the right features, the right product, the right services around it, and you have to deliver it for the right price. That's basically it.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-12-15T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Wes Wimpey from
It was straightforward, simple, and easy to set up for managing compute and storageWhat is our primary use case?I am with a healthcare system. It is for our electronic medical record.It has been fantastic. No issues.How has it helped my organization?It is all a part of the GreenLake offering that we have, which includes monitoring, performance, and being able to accelerate delivery with the platform. This is most critical for us.What is most valuable?The most valuable features for me are the simple management of the platform and its performance.What needs improvement?It needs the addition of InfoSight, which is the most critical, along with predictive analytics and AI.For how long have I used the solution?Less than one year.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It has been rock solid for us.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It has been rock solid for us.How is customer service and technical support?We have not used their technical support.Which solutions did we use previously?We took a look at what our current challenges were with just traditional compute and storage, and we were not fully integrated with those solutions. This solution allowed us to standardize on one platform and be able to deliver it in a quick way. That was all around the most beneficial.How was the initial setup?It was straightforward, simple, and easy to set up, along with the OneView tools, for managing both compute and storage. It took a couple of days to set up, and two to three days to get familiar with the interface.What was our ROI?With our electronical health record, we are one of the few customers who are able to offer it as a service to other hospital systems. We are able to deliver these services to our customers, not just within our current business, but future businesses.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?My recommendation would be to engage professional services, if you have questions. We sat down and went through a very extensive (six to eight month) evaluation from the components. We visited some labs and other sites.Take advantage of what HPE offers as far as professional services, and this will help you make the right decision.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We did evaluate other solutions. We chose 3PAR because of the converge system, the all in one solution.What other advice do I have?It has been very beneficial for us.The most important criteria when evaluating a vendor:* Resiliency* The data replication features* An all-flash array* Performance.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user568029 from
It is proven and integrates well with HPE BladeSystem infrastructure.What is most valuable?* The most valuable feature to me is its reliability. After that, it is the architecture, and the rest of the HPE sort of products, like the blades and the storage.* You've got the best of breed from a storage perspective, and a proven solution that integrates well with the HPE c7000 or the BladeSystem infrastructure. You have a solution that has been tried and tested by HPE as an overall solution.* It enables us to use a virtualized layer. Until we deployed our 3PAR, we had pretty much everything as physical servers. With 3PAR, we are in the process of completing the virtualization of our services.What needs improvement?Small companies are interested in simplicity and a very granular licensing model is something that poses a number of challenges.From the cost perspective, (usually this licensing model is geared towards revenue generating…) it makes it expensive but also from the admin point of view it ends up being cumbersome and difficult to manage. We had a number of issues when ordering an upgrade to existing array due to this licensing model.Using a small number of bundles or just a single licensing model (like Nimble for example) will make the product more appealing and simplify the process of organizing an upgrade.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability-wise, I think it's very good. Support-wise, I think it’s debatable based on some issues that we had with it.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?I think the scalability is one of the factors that caused us to select 3PAR.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support was average, and bad handling some incidents.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using direct attached storage. We moved to Sun; and then we decided to implement 3PAR.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was complex. I would say it was flawed because we had issues.Which other solutions did I evaluate?For the storage, we looked at Talent, which is now Dell. We also looked at Nutanix and Tintri. The main reason we chose HPE was that we already had an HPE infrastructure; and it felt like it was the best solution for our needs. The product met our requirements at the time.Reliability is very important in a vendor. We also look at the breadth of offerings because we like to keep things simple. Rather than choosing a varied mix from a multitude of vendors, we like to go with a small number. I have a small team and it's easier from a management perspective, as well as understanding and supporting the product in the best way possible.What other advice do I have?It all depends on what you need, and how you can justify the cost. It is not a cheap solution. It depends on what you have. If it's a brand new setup, then there are other paths you can take, and it's worth researching them. If you already have HPE deployments in-house on the server side, not the storage, I think 3PAR will definitely make a very great addition to your portfolio.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-01-01T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
StorageA404a from
We have the system up at all times with no performance issuesWhat is our primary use case?The our primary use cases for 3PAR are:* We have some secure applications which use it.* We have some built-in, embedded applications that we use on it.* We have some major critical applications which run on 3PAR.* We are using flash arrays 2850 and 8440.The company has been using 3PAR for approximately eight to 10 years. I joined in 2015, and since the day I joined, we had these 8440s flash arrays. Lately, this year only, we bought these new flash arrays, because we had some issues with the 8440s, especially with the drives. After we migrated the 8440s to the 2850s, we have not been seeing performance issues anymore. It seems as if all of the performance issues have disappeared, which is a big achievement.How has it helped my organization?With the new flash arrays, 3PAR has improved our performance. Also, the new StoreServ Management Console (SSMC) tool is more user-friendly.What is most valuable?We are using the SSMC tool. In combination with it, there is a lot happening around InfoSight, and we are spending a lot of time on it. It does seem like there is some additional functionality built into InfoSight that we can use effectively.What needs improvement?We need additional enhancements to InfoSight, especially from a VM standpoint. Today, we can see in the Azure VM performance stats in 3PAR, but it is so huge, we can't just drill down on each and every VM and look at its performance. We want to add rates of performance issues from VM points of time frame. Therefore, we can look, for example at 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM, and see how the VMs performed. That particularly feature is not there today in InfoSight.We are also seeing that there are some enhancements which are required in the SSMC console. There are some features that we do not see in the dashboard. E.g., if the 3PAR is not completely healthy because the remote copy helps are not performing, the dashboard will show all green, so there are some additional enhancements required.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We are not seeing any issues. No hardware failures.I would rate stability as a nine out of 10.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?I would rate scalability as a nine out of 10.How is customer service and technical support?I would rate technical support as a nine out of 10.What was our ROI?As a storage admin, my return on investment is having the system up at all times functioning properly and seeing no performance issues. This is what we are seeing after we recently migrated to our new flash arrays.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?Since the prices of the flash storage has gone down tremendously, I would definitely recommend going for the all-flash storage array or 3PAR. It is a big expensive even now, but it will be the future of all industries.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We are a multi-vendor shop, even today. We do have some IBM storage in our environment, but most of our critical applications sit on 3PAR.What other advice do I have?I will recommend going with the all-flash arrays, especially on 3PAR, because that is something that I have personally experience with and I have not seen any issues.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-07-04T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Brent Dunington from
Provides Veeam integration and the ability to set I/O limits.What is most valuable?We went through a whole data center refresh cycle and one of the things is that we needed to look at our disk system. Everything was for spinning disks, so we decided to make the leap to an all SSD data center. We brought in all the competitors, went through an RFP process and 3PAR came ahead. Some of the main things, for us, that we were looking for was the Veeam integration, i.e., the ability to set I/O limits (floors, ceilings, etc). That was the one thing that we were missing and the customer experience was suffering because of it; we were having all these I/O bottlenecks so we were spending more time having the disk manage us, rather than us managing the disk. It was a huge struggle for us.A little bit of a background about us. UBC is the largest university in Western Canada, we have over 6000 VMs and what we do is Infrastructure as a service for all the higher education in British Columbia. That is around 25 or 26 other institutions, so they look at us for their infrastructure and we provide it. We're not for profit so cost is really important to us because it's publicly funded and it's the tax payer's money.We wanted to make sure that we found the balance of the experience, cost, supportability for a small team to do this and 3PAR came out ahead with that. It wasn't just the technology, it was, also the relationship that we had with HPE over the years. We don't really have time to fiddle around with things because we're a small team we just want to get to the point and move on and do the next thing. Even though we're not for profit and we're a university, the customers still have the same demands as a bank in all this; they're servicing students and students are young people who just want to click on things, and they just want things instantly as they've been trained with an iPhone (you click, download an app and it just works). They don't have the patience so that trickles down to our team, which then trickles down to the vendors. It's like show us what you can do and go through the list if it doesn't work, then it's out.The other important thing, in my opinion, is that the relationship is also very important. Technology problems you can be overcome, but relationships issues with the sales teams and resellers really can't. If you have a poor relationship and no matter how well the technology works, that's still going to impact it. HPE has been a partner with us (we do have a lot of partners), but they have been a loyal partner with us and really wanted to know what our problems were and how to resolve them. They get down to the point, such as how do we solve your problems and they understand when we went through it. It doesn't feel like we're being sold, but instead like we're kind of working together.What needs improvement?The one thing that we've always struggled with are the file sizes. With our competitor, we have had issues with the file sizes (I'm talking about the VMDK sizes) and how big a drive can be. HPE 3PAR, still, has a limit of 16 terabytes for VMDK limit and I think there is more to do in this aspect. There are ways to go around it but we still want DDUP and the compression functionality, if we want to turn those on we have to stay at 16TB. We're working with them on that and it is our biggest hurdle right now. Five years ago, 16 terabytes was big, but not anymore, i.e., not with current file servers. We don't know what the users are doing on the other end, because it's the Infrastructure as a service so we just get the feedback. I want to make a 64 terabyte drive and we need to work through this right.For how long have I used the solution?Actually, we're new with users of the HPE 3PAR solution, this is our first 3PAR and we have just acquired it three months ago.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We're really happy with the stability of the product. Everything's self-service, so our whole cloud-front is fronted by the vCloud Director. The goal with this small team is self-service, so we just publish the new tiers and people start using the tiers. There haven't been any complaints. There are a few technical things with them, we think are to do with the software that we will work through with them, provide feedback, and see how it goes. It has actually exceeded in quite a few spots.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It's VMware so they're all data stores, and data store moves are non-descriptive so we can just keep providing more data stores and then, the software figures out where to place the workloads. If the customers aren't happy with the current performance tier that they're on, then they can self-move to a higher tier. SSD's are coming down in price, it's a usable price range now and having an all SSD data center is actually functional.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is good. It's the standard HPE support where you go through the tiers and if you've worked in IT for a while, you know to mention the words as how to move up. For example, you can ask for the duty manager and then you'll get escalated. However, we haven't got to that point yet. It's pretty new, I'm sure that with anything new we seem to push things to the limit, so it will get to that. I can't say anything negative about it.How was the initial setup?They sent us a team to work with us for the setup process. They still kind of managed the firmware and upgrades right now. It is pretty new and simple to use, it wasn't hard to figure it out. They sent one of their post-sales SEs to come in and go through the training. In two days, the team kind of got it. It's mostly that one of the goals to go back to a small team is we want something that is set and then to forget about it; we don't want to sit there all day and manage it. We want to put it on the floor, be able to do capacity planning, alert all those pieces but we don't want to manage it.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Traditionally, we were using NetApp. We did look at IBM, Lenovo, Nimble and all of them. Actually, Nimble didn't come to the table, they missed it; so IBM, Lenovo, and Dell are the solutions we looked at.They missed the thing, it's hard to describe because earlier we used to strongly believe strongly in just using NFS for ESX since it was easier to manage. However, with SSDs, NFS actually puts in a little bit of latency in it because you have to change that protocol thing. When we wrote the IRP, we made sure that everybody could reply and I think they missed it. There was some sort of miscommunication, so basically, everybody was on that chart.When we are looking at a vendor, it's a mixture of everything. Basically, for our IRP, the feedback from the vendors was good, this is our problem how would you solve it. These are mandatory and minimum requirements whilst selecting a vendor, these are highly desirable, and we broke it all down so that they could fill it all in. The feedback was good, it was easy to fill out but there were somethings that some players could do. Veeam was big and we use them for all our stuff, but not everybody integrates with Veeam. The alerting capacity planning and all those things were a big thing for us too.What other advice do I have?We're not fully pushing the envelope on it, but there are no complaints. Everything's good, the team has been good from the support to the setup to the post-support setup, to we've actually opened a ticket to do their firmware upgrade part. They gave us the plan and broke it down as to what they're going to do and when they're going to do it. Things have been good.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2017-07-04T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Eleny Goritsas from
It supports mixed workloads and is virtualized.What is most valuable?I think the biggest thing about it is it supports mixed workloads. Instead of having to have different arrays or anything to support different workloads, you can actually support them all within 3PAR and you can, which I think is one of the key things. The other thing is it's virtualized and the performance on it is good.What needs improvement?I do a lot of research when I'm trying to find an answer to something, and I want the documentation to be clear. Tell me what's supported. Case and point, we just announced Direct Connect with 3PAR 8000, which we didn't have before. If you look at SPOCK, the information there was not clear and it looked like we actually had a big debate going. The support on it is very limited for Direct Connect, and it just wasn't clear. The feedback got sent and I think they cleaned it up, but I haven't checked.What other advice do I have?If you have a bunch of mixed workloads and you have an environment, it'll support most customers' solutions. You can get a lot more storage in a smaller footprint, so for your data center, power cooling, and OPEX, it's a good solution.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-05-15T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ITInfrasbaa1 from
It is very fast and has effective processingWhat is our primary use case?We have two use cases:* We use it with our internal applications, so for internal use.* We are provider of national research computing infrastructure. Therefore, we are using it out there with all our systems.There are not many mission critical applications or processes that we run on 3PAR. The mission critical applications are usually the ones for internal university purposes, like ERP systems. Our research systems are not a mission critical since our researchers can run their computing again in a week.How has it helped my organization?If it runs, and you don't know about it, that is the best thing that you can have in IT infrastructure. This is what 3PAR does for us.What is most valuable?It is very fast and has effective processing.What needs improvement?I want artificial intelligence. I don't want anybody from my team to touch it anymore. I want the AI to do everything. I see this as a piece of hardware, which I don't want see and don't want to care about. I want some AI over it, not because I want to fire all my team, but what I want my team working on is definitely not to take care of our hardware.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It has basically never failed. It is a very stable thing in our environment. We don't have such experience with the other things that we have.3PAR's availability is fantastic and the maximum.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We are just a customer, who bought a solution and are running it. We don't really do much about it. From what I know, the scalability should be okay. Generally, it was one of the reasons why we purchased 3PAR, because we believed we will grow, etc. However, it is difficult in the public sector if you can't do an RFP for a specific product. So, you need to live with whatever you buy or whatever is the best combination on the market.We haven't really purchase any more 3PARs after our initial buy, and that was a few years ago.How are customer service and technical support?I have never used the technical support, but my team is okay with it. At the time when we implemented 3PAR into our environment, we really needed some help. We had some issues, which were mostly on our side, but my team was very satisfied with the support.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?We previously used a number of small servers with disks attached to it, distributed all over to data centers. This was absolutely not effective and terrible.We had quite obsolete infrastructure. We were thinking about whether we should just upgrade it a little bit or if we should take a different path. At that time, a few years ago, 3PAR for us was a change to a very different type of storage. Today, I would say that it is standard. However, at that time, it was a change. We wanted to improve and start doing things differently. In general, at the time, 3PAR was from today's perspective, like implementing AI over our whole infrastructure. It was a giant leap forward.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was quite straightforward. We didn't need any complex preparation or changing a lot of things in our environment to integrated it. It was quite straightforward. Bringing books and bringing it into the lab in a few days, then everything was migrated. It was very easy.What about the implementation team?We had a reseller helping us implement it, then we took over. The experience with our Czech reseller was great.What was our ROI?We have seen ROI. While the costs were quite high at the time of purchase for our environment, the ease of use and the fact that it hasn't failed all the time, working fine, that makes it worth buying.3PAR has increased your performance. At the time that we purchased 3PAR, it was much more powerful than any of our previous storage.3PAR has helped our company reduce the time to deployment by 60 percent. It is easier than before.The solution has improved our throughput.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We did evaluate other vendors originally. We looked at Dell EMC and all the competitors in the market. We chose HPE because they had the best technology and performance.We have had a very good experience with 3PAR, so we will probably not be looking at different vendors or solutions.What other advice do I have?Definitely look at 3PAR. It is worth it.We do use the Memory-Drive Flash. We don't have any problems with latency anymore that we had eons ago. However, I can't really tell you from a technical perspective if it was from implementing 3PAR or something else.We do not use InfoSight predictive analytics yet, but I would like to.The biggest lesson learned is 3PAR is good, and I want it for future. Let us find a way how to do it. It was a giant leap in technology at the time that we purchased it, and I would like to do the same next time, which will be very close. While I wouldn't say not to buy a 3PAR again, we will need a new technology that will do the giant leap forward again. We need a big step once every few years instead of doing granular steps every year.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-09T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567729 from
Scalable image storage tool that is easy to manage.What is most valuable?It's dynamic and easy to manage. It really meets our requirements.How has it helped my organization?We are in healthcare and we do a lot of imaging with huge amounts of data. If and when we need more storage space, extending 3PAR is easy. It has made everything more simple.What needs improvement?There aren’t many things to improve, but better monitoring would help us get a better look at everything we are doing. I would like to see more monitoring and graphs. It's not easy to pick up the correct numbers. Graphs would make it easier to measure performance. It could be that we don't know everything yet. There is a learning curve. I don't think we have seen the whole potential yet. Maybe I would give it a 10 rating soon.For how long have I used the solution?We have had the solution for approximately 5 years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It's stable. There haven’t been any problems. If something goes wrong, HPE support helps us.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is easily 9 out of 10. It's really good.Which solutions did we use previously?We weren’t using a previous solution, but we did upgrade from HP EVA ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hpe-eva ). Once we starting using this solution, there were some problems with the performance. We tried to see what the reason was. The system was slow. It has been fixed, but at the time, it was difficult to get an idea of where the problem was. This problem was resolved.How was the initial setup?I was involved with the installation, but I didn’t do too much. We had HP EVA and we upgraded to 3PAR. It went smoothly. There was a lot of old data that had to be moved to the new tool, and there were no problems at all.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Our shortlist of vendors including Fujitsu. We have something from them. However, I think it benefits us the most when we stick with one vendor, which is HPE. We try to stick with HPE and HPE tools.What other advice do I have?All of the products with every vendor have their strong points. The strong point for HPE was that we had used HPE before. We were able to transform from the old system (EVA) to 3PAR, and that was the main reason at that time we switched. Now that we've been using it, we know a lot more.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-12-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Cindy Cecutti from
A reliable solution for increased performance and redundancyWhat is our primary use case?Our primary use for this solution is data storage.How has it helped my organization?The increased throughput has allowed us to scale and maintain performance, or even have better performance.In terms of the mission-critical applications that we run on this solution, our application is benefit adjudication.What is most valuable?The most valuable feature of this solution is its reliability.The deduplication functionality is good, and the solution is fully redundant.The InfoSight feature helps us with troubleshooting problems in our environment.What needs improvement?This solution is becoming dated.What do I think about the stability of the solution?This solution is very stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?This is a scalable solution.How are customer service and technical support?Technical support for this solution is very good.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?This product is an improvement over what we had before. Our old solution, which was an HP Blade Server, was four years old. We wanted to switch to newer technology.How was the initial setup?I was not part of the initial setup.What about the implementation team?We used a reseller and our experience with them was good.What was our ROI?We have not seen ROI with this solution.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?This licensing fees for this solution are merged with all of our HP annual costs, which in total are a couple hundred thousand dollars.Which other solutions did I evaluate?HP is the only company that we've ever dealt with, so we did not evaluate options by other vendors.What other advice do I have?Using this solution has increased our system performance. We will continue to use HP products in the future, and this is a solution that is worth investing in.I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567984 from
It is reliable and easy to administer. It meets all the requirements we have for storage systems.What is most valuable?The 3PAR is very reliable, flexible, scalable, stable, and is a high performance storage solution that is easy to administer. It meets all the requirements we have for storage systems. We used to have HPE’s XP solution. That was a little bit too costly. We also had the EVA systems on the 3PARs and the mid-range suits our work very well.What needs improvement?It is difficult for me to say where the areas of improvement are because we haven’t been able to test all the features yet. At the moment, it’s OK for us.I would like to see it cheaper to increase the cost effectiveness.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is very good.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is very good.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is good. We are using and administering all the solutions. Technical support comes into play when we have problems and it doesn't work, but not for the solution setup.How was the initial setup?The initial setup is rather straightforward.What other advice do I have?We needed to invest in a new solution because we moved out entire data centers.I used to be at HPE, so we had to take HPE solutions. We are very confident with them. Now in the new company, we are going to set it up exactly as it was in HPE.We made HPE come faster to the market with a solution that is market proven. We didn't want to have any additional risks.If a colleague was looking for this or a similar solution, I would recommend they use it.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Date published: 2017-01-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user471279 from
We're using deduplication a lot so getting a return on our investment there is great.Valuable FeaturesEasy management is huge as is the scalability and the performance.Improvements to My OrganizationWe're using deduplication a lot so getting a return on our investment there is a great. We're getting a lot of performance through that, so we're running probably a 1000 VMs on a 7440 that has done pretty well for us.Room for ImprovementIt would be nice to see reporting around percent of utilization on the performance side. It tells you what you're doing in the reporting but I would like to know what my array's capable of, versus what I'm using.Stability IssuesIt's very stable.Scalability IssuesI don't know if you can really fix this but to upgrade from 2 nodes to 4 can be a hassle because you have to re-balance everything. So you have to either do a lot of work or duplicate what you've got which can be expensive. I don't know if there's a good way to fix that though, other than start with 4 nodes.I think we're getting towards the upper end of what we have and with what HPE would consider our array is capable of and what percentage of that would be helpful, so we don't have to try and guess. Because you know you ask how many IOPS an SSD can get and they'll say, "Yeah, 2000 to 3000," something like that. Who knows what you're actually going to be able to get out of it. Based on your IO size and things like that, being able to see a clear picture would be cool.Customer Service and Technical SupportWith 3PAR WE haven't had to use technical support.Previous SolutionsWe came from using Hitachi, so provisioning and that sort of thing is way easier with a small team. It's a lot easier to use, the SSMC and management tools for 3PAR than it was for any of the Hitachi tools that we used.Initial SetupI'd like to be able to license different tiers of disks for different features. We have arrays that we could use for different purposes really. And so if I'm using near line drives for camera backup, I don't want to have to license them for things like dynamic optimization that I'm not using them for. If they're in the machine, now you have to license everything. So I'd like to see that. It might make things more expensive but I do like the model that Pure uses where it's just everything's included.Other AdviceGet 4 nodes at the start. I would say that's important. Plan more long term rather than what you need now. Get the licensing and nodes you need upfront, makes it easier to expand later.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-07-01T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user470361 from
We got a lot of IOPS and a lot of throughput with it.Valuable Features:We used it in a casino BI environment, along with the BladeSystem 3000. It was a very good performer, and really no problems with it. It was rock-solid. Using it in a BI environment, we got a lot of IOPS, a lot of throughput with it, and very good performance.Improvements to My Organization:It's a good performer. There's a lot of options coming out with the 3PAR and I'm very interested in looking at the old Flash systems too. In fact, I'm actually thinking of converting the 3PAR StoreServe that we have over to an old Flash system.Room for Improvement:It needs to be cheaper.Use of Solution:We're just getting into the 3PAR world. In fact, we're getting ready to stand it up. We just got it. It's not yet running, but I've used 3PAR in the past as well.Stability Issues:It's very stable.Initial Setup:It was very easy.Implementation Team:I had HPE do it.Cost and Licensing Advice:It's a very expensive solution.Other Solutions Considered:I think it's some of the software features. They've done a good job, and there was always a good class enterprise storage area network. 3PAR's always been at the top. That was a very good purchase by HP when they purchased 3PAR a few years back. That gave them a good enterprise platform, storage platform, that they are now building onto it.Other Advice:In a converged environment, 3PAR is a very good product to look at. There's a lot of good competition out there with NetApp and EMC VNX, but 3PAR is right up there with them. It has features and performance.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-06-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user215859 from
High resiliency with four controllers, no performance impact on single controller failureWhat is most valuable?* High resiliency with four controllers, no performance impact on single controller failure* Cage protection* Performance* Easy to use and maintainWhat needs improvement?Failover times.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Yes, we have had a few issues with stability.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?No, we haven't had any issues with scalability.How is customer service and technical support?Very good but not perfect.How was the initial setup?HPE does the initial setup (hardware and initialization) which makes things much easier. Using 3PAR is simple and straightforward, unlike its competitors such as EMC.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?Current licensing model is good. Future users can optimize by buying the best suited model for their needs and future growth plans.Which other solutions did I evaluate?I wasn't part of that effort at the time, so I can't comment.What other advice do I have?Go for it, it's a good choice, unless it's too big/expensive for your needs.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-10T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user187086 from
The 3PAR build-in reporting features were the answer to all our reporting woes; Customer support is a perfect 10.Valuable FeaturesThe reporting features on the 3PAR are one of the most valuable features in a flexible and intuitive web-based tool.Improvements to My OrganizationReporting has always been a challenge for our company. Add-on tools for reporting purposes are often expensive and require additional configuration. The 3PAR build in reporting features were the answer to all our reporting woes. We are now able to report as often as we would like, including automated report generating.Room for ImprovementStorage migration features. Comparing the 3PAR to IBM’s SVC, storage migration could be much easier to perform if there are lessons to be learned from IBM’s brilliant product.Use of SolutionI have used this product for the past 2-3 years at various clients including various models of the 3PAR.Deployment IssuesNo issues encountered. An HP 3PAR business partner performs the implementation with 24x7 support from HP.Stability IssuesNo issues encountered. The product performs as advertised.Scalability IssuesOne of the key features of the HP 3PAR storage array is the ability to scale and the ease by which this can be achieved.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: Customer service would get a solid 9. 24x7 support is available however this might vary depending on geographic location. Best to check support with the local HP offices or local business partner.Technical Support: Customer support would be a perfect 10. The technical support staff are VERY knowledgeable and another key feature would be the call-home feature which comes with a 3PAR.Previous SolutionsYes. The cost of scaling up was far too high. When compared with the 3PAR, there has been huge cost savings which resulted in the ROI being achieved.Initial SetupThe initial setup was straightforward. HP’s business partner assisted with the installation and were able to get the 3PAR up and running in very short timelines.Implementation TeamThe vendor team (business partner) would get a perfect 10. Their expertise showcased their commitment to brilliant customer service.Other Solutions ConsideredWe considered an EMC VNX as well as an IBM XIV.Other AdviceThe product is definitely worth considering. As mentioned before, onsite support might be limited due to geographic location (only if you live in a very remote part of the planet) but generally the product satisfies most if not all business requirements. We are hoping to implement Flash storage. Flash storage is becoming more cost effective and the performance benefits are well documented when using flash storage.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-01-28T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Erik-Johnson from
The snapshotting capability allows us to do a database replication very quicklyWhat is our primary use case?It is storage for our SAP environment. SAP is the mission-critical application that we run on the solution.How has it helped my organization?The snapshotting capability allows us to do a database replication very quickly. As a result, we have some applications which need a fresh copy of the production database everyday, and we are able to give that to them by eight o'clock in the morning.What is most valuable?Its snapshot capability is the most valuable feature, because replicate our databases from production to nonproduction for development. This allows us to do it very quickly.The deduplication is pretty impressive because it will shrink. We also do some clones in addition to the snapshots, where we can have multiple clones. These reduce the actual written storage by as much as 50 percent.What needs improvement?It has latency issues.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It seems pretty stable. Once we got over the birthing pains, it has been pretty reliable.As long as the array is not full, it is available. We filled it up.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is very scalable. We can grow it up to the size that it will contain. Then, we have to move to another array, a bigger one, if we have to. However, my understanding is that is a pretty seamless process.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?We moved to 3PAR from a different array, which was a smaller array with fewer controller cards in it. So, 3PAR did not increase our performance, and it has increased our latency by at least double.We went with 3PAR because we have HP-UX systems. Since we already knew HP-UX, they offered us a significantly cheaper solution than the one that we had for storage.How was the initial setup?The first array that they sent us was in some type of a factory mode. We didn't find that out until we loaded a bunch of data onto it, then we had to back it all off. We had to replace the array, which was sort of painful.What about the implementation team?We are actually a federal customer, so we get the HPE Federal direct team helping us. Our experience was good, except for that one problem with the first array.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We evaluated Dell EMC, HPE, and some other competitors. We went with HPE because of the price point.What other advice do I have?The biggest lesson that I learned from using 3PAR is the snapshot capability.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-11T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Jason Hetzler from
Tech support is great, and that is for any of their team who has ever worked with usWhat is our primary use case?We use this for our highest tier level applications, our tier 0 through tier 2, so those are our mission critical and business essential type of applications. We want to make sure that we have the most critical things running on the best equipment that we have, and it is performing well right now.We have been working with 3PAR for almost three years now. We leased two arrays, struggling with it a bit. However, HPE did right by us and provided the resources (people, hardware, and additional storage) to do what we needed to do.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It has been reliable recently. In the past we did not have very good luck with it the first year or so that we owned it. Now that HPE has put the right resources, as well as the additional solid state drives, it has helped improve the performance and stability.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We are taking somewhat of a different approach. We are going more towards a hybrid solution in our data center. We are focusing more on developing our hyperconverged technology, and expanding it. We are going to buy eight nodes this year and eight nodes next year. Eventually, we are not going to want to buy large storage devices and probably utilize just storage, but in a different manner going forward.How is customer service and technical support?Tech support is great, and that is for any of their team who has ever worked with us. They are willing and committed to making sure the customer is treated the way we need to be. For example, they were there for about a month or so when we were having calls every day with them.How was the initial setup?Initial setup was straightforward and fairly easy. The hard part was that we were on EMC VNX and trying to get those converted over into the HPE 3PAR, that process took awhile, along with scheduling downtime to get some of the physical stuff migrated over to the new device.What about the implementation team?We ran into some struggles when we were trying to implement it. We have two production data centers running Active-Active. Our arrays did not like talking, reading, and writing to each other. Therefore, they were causing some hiccups, but after several phone calls and meetings with HPE reps, and some additional storage, we were able to get it working exactly where we needed it to.What other advice do I have?I would have rated it higher, but there was a length of time that it took to resolve and get the product working the way we wanted it to. This happened on day 60 rather than day one.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-06-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ServerAnae40 from
The failover/failback keeps our mission-critical stuff running all the timeWhat is our primary use case?We use it for our file shares, our virtual hard drives, and for all of our Hyper-V clusters. It stores everything, like backups.We have virtualized almost all of our servers, except the ones that require high I/O, like maybe our SQL Servers. Everything else in the entire organization runs off of our 3PARs.We actually aren't all-flash, but we do have flash drives for our hottest data which is used most often. This definitely makes everything much more efficient.How has it helped my organization?The 3PAR arrays replicate offsite. Everything is safe and optimized. There's automatic promoting and demoting of blocks, moving hot ones to the flash storage and the less used ones onto Nearline storage. This optimizes everything and uses the resources to their best ability.It has increased performance since we added the flash drives. Originally, we had 2-Tier storage (the Nearline storage and SAS storage), but adding the flash storage really improved performance by maybe 30 percent.We can cut a VM quite quickly, so we can probably stand up a workload in half an hour. So, the time to deployment is quite good.We have been able to back up our data more frequently now that we have everything on flash. It responds a lot faster, so the IOPs are a lot faster.What is most valuable?The failover/failback: Just to keep our mission-critical stuff running all the time.The solution’s deduplication functionality has helped us save a lot of space. People save their files over and over again or email them around, then everybody has a copy of the same thing. Therefore, the deduplication is very helpful.What needs improvement?if it were easier for us to manage the product ourselves without having to get HPE to connect, because it sometimes it does take a bit to get the scheduling worked out with the HPE support. If it were simpler, then it might be easier for us to handle it ourselves.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is very good. We have HPE connecting in remotely to help us with any of the major firmware updates. This keeps everything running great.It has not failed us yet, so it is very highly available and error free, so far.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We could add more drive cages, so I'm sure it's quite scalable. We haven't hit our limits yet, so we haven't had to do that. However, it's supposed to be quite scalable.How are customer service and technical support?Technical support is very good. We bought the support package where they will connect remotely to help us with upgrades and firmware changes. So, it's very solid.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?Previously, we had all sorts of different storage arrays, e.g., the MSAs, which are also from HPE. We also had just servers with hard drives in them scattered around everywhere. Now, we have centralized everything onto the 3PAR arrays.How was the initial setup?It was a little complicated to set up originally, as it takes quite a bit of rack space and we are a small organization. Once it was set up, it was well worth the effort.What about the implementation team?We bought through a reseller called PC Corp in Alberta, Canada. PC Corp was very good.What other advice do I have?I would definitely recommend it. It is a good fit for our organization, and if it works for you, that would be great too.File Persona is now included, so we might explore doing file shares straight off of the 3PAR array.We do not use HPE GreenLake.Biggest lesson learnt: The initial pain is worth it.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-15T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ITManage04a2 from
Allows our SQL databases and report servers to run at a much higher capacityWhat is our primary use case?The primary use case would be disaster recovery and uptime.The entire company and our fire pump division, for the most part, are run on this solution.Getting rid of spinning media is our primary objective.How has it helped my organization?We had a major down five years ago where we actually lost our entire data center, which caused the company to go down for over 12 days. In that time, we bought and implemented a full 3PAR product to get us up and running. We were able to buy a smaller set of storage and invest in the actual technology to get our company back up and running. Then, we were able to buy a second 3PAR to allow us to set up a secondary data center and immediately replicate over to that and succeed in designing a DR strategy without having to relearn everything.We don't use InfoSight for management. We use it to help us determine if we have our workloads in the wrong place or set up incorrectly.My users are happier because the response time is there. We haven't really analyzed the true IOPs, or anything. We are just trying to give them a solid user experience.The solution has improved our throughput. It has allowed our SQL databases and report servers to run at a much higher capacity. Reports which used to take the better part of a day can now run in under an hour.What is most valuable?* Uptime* Technical support* SpeedThe solution’s deduplication functionality does a really nice job for us in that we are able to leverage the money in a more productive way.What needs improvement?We would like to see a bigger integration with the Nimble Storage solution, so we can take our smaller regional companies and be able to send them into our bigger data centers and have everything work seamlessly.The upgrade in the firmware and software need improvement.The user interface is still a little kludgy.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is very stable. We have had no downtime since putting it in.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have not found the maximum scalability yet. For what our initial purchase was, we have been able to grow over the past five years. It has not limited us in anyway with our initial investment.How are customer service and technical support?When I can call and talk to somebody who does not repeat back the question I am asking and we can get to working on it, whether it takes an hour, a day, or a week, I have support for the solution. That is the most important thing for me.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?We start of with the EVAs, and as the EVAs aged out, we were moving up. However, it was the EVA that failed on us and 3PAR was just the next, better solution for our scale of need.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was complex only that we had never seen the solution before. There were some decisions that we didn’t understand the implications of in the beginning that we were able to redesign as the years of owning it allowed us to better understand what were being offered and how we could better utilize it.What about the implementation team?We used Logicalis for the deployment. Our experience with them is wonderful. We appreciate them being our partners and implementing all of our solutions.What was our ROI?The solution has helped our organization reduce time to deployment by about 60 to 70 percent, because I am able to spin up new systems within four to six hours, where it used to take me two to three days.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?Think seriously about the very long-term: the three, four, and five-year costs of the solution. Will it still be there doing what your company needs? Do not just look at the initial capital outlay of year one.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We didn’t really look at anybody other than HPE because we wanted a one stop solution for a single technical support problem, and we knew from Locigalis and from our years with HPE that they would give us an enterprise class solution the first time out.What other advice do I have?We like it so much that we are in the process of evaluating our next three to five year roadmap. We are planning to reinvest in the next generation of the systems.Everything can always get better, but I’ve been very happy with it. I have not been called in during the middle of the night because of it. It is the right solution for the right people.Biggest lesson learnt: You get what you pay for.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-15T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user370125 from
We can decide which portion of our data will be stored on SSD's and which will be stored on disc drives.Valuable FeaturesWe use 3PAR to separate certain parts of our infrastructure. For example, we can decide which portion of our data will be stored on SSD's and which will be stored on disc drives. We have a flexible contract with HP in order to do this, and it's been a huge advantage for us.Improvements to My OrganizationIt makes us more flexible because we can extend our storage size easily. But the most important advantage, again, is our flexible contract with HP. It's a technically wonderful product, but it's also wonderful because of the contract. We have no CapEx and no long-term investment on the contract because we're paying just a monthly rate.Room for ImprovementWe're satisfied with the existing solution, but we are still having discussions to improve something.We're not missing anything in terms of hardware, but the firmware could be improved.Deployment IssuesWe've always deployed them without any issues.Stability IssuesIt's a stable solution and there's global support from the entire HP worldwide organization.Scalability IssuesIt's very easy to scale.Customer Service and Technical SupportWe have a very close relationship with our account manager and they offer us technical support.Previous Solutions3PAR is less costly than our previous solution. We were able to migrate from EVA to 3PAR.Initial SetupOf course it's complex, but with HP's help it made the setup easier.Other Solutions ConsideredWe didn't evaluate other options because we've been with HP for many years now. We have 25 locations worldwide and we needed a global flash-storage solution. HP, also a global company, was the right fit.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We're a global partner.Date published: 2016-01-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user285930 from
It's a very simple solution to manage. I haven't yet had the opportunity to have two units mirrored over my data centers.Valuable FeaturesRight now we’re actually undergoing an expansion of the 3PAR and we’re using flash gearing with AO which is kind of maximizing that flash storage with a spindle in combination. I think that’s gotta be the best productivity feature. The other one would have to be that thin provisioning features, those are great. I think we ended up with a four to one ratio on thin provisioning and the looping.It’s very simple. You log in and it’s got a myriad of graphs and things that I can quickly put into a presentation for my upper management when I’m trying to justify why we’ve gone with a 3PAR, why we’ve made that kind of investment. Also, it’s really easy for me to bring in my lower technical resources into this 3PAR environment because I have to, I don’t have a choice, and kind of make sure that they don’t, we can manage security so that they can, they have enough rights to do their jobs without being able to cause a catastrophe. And again, that’s peace of mind is high on my priority list.Improvements to My OrganizationThe biggest benefit is the flash the IOPS cannot be beat. I’m in a very ever evolving environment and I have now the confidence that I have the appropriate resources at hand that if a bigger problem or a new development project comes around, I can react to it quickly. And with a 3PAR, I’m able to move machines back and forth between a QA, a production environment, the QA environment being in my legacy storage seamlessly. I don’t even need a systems engineer for that, I can have my help desk resources do it. So that’s a real benefit for a shop with five people.Room for ImprovementI don’t know, I think as we scale I’d like to implement replication features. We haven’t been able to test those out yet ‘cause we only have one unit but no, all-in-all I’m pretty happy with the UI.Use of SolutionWe’ve had that unit for just under a year right now. I’m pretty sure I bought the first All-Flash starter kit in the US and it’s been a huge source of success for us. We’ve used it to stabilize our business intelligence infrastructure and extreme line some of the processes in our ERP.Stability IssuesStability is one of my favorite features. Like I said, our BI infrastructure on Wednesdays at the beginning of that fiscal week is getting hammered. You get tired after a while of answering the phone and saying, we’re sorry, we know it’s Wednesday but you know, once we put that particular SSAS uh, implementation into the 3PAR storage we haven’t been down since. The only time we’ve been down in the last 180 days was for maintenance and it was a planned maintenance. That’s a very good thing, that’s peace of mind for any infrastructure manager out there.Scalability IssuesWe weren’t able to do it last year just for budgetary reasons but we recently doubled our footprint with the 3PAR and we probably have plans to purchase at least another shelf. It’s just an easy platform to grow and the 7200 is the smallest model, so for a small shop like me it’s gonna take about half a rack. It’s pretty good.Customer Service and Technical SupportIt’s great and yeah we have a great support agreement with HP and we leverage them, not just for support but for their technical expertise. Like I mentioned before I have a very lean team and none of us really have that industrial strength, big company experience. We know the basics of how to tune storage area network but it’s really handy to be able to call in an HP engineer and have that conversation without having to incur big professional services engagement.Previous SolutionsWe still have it. We have a Legacy Dell Compellent Array, it does great for file storage. It just really wasn’t meeting the mark for our infrastructure and once we put this 3PAR on our SAAS implementation things really stabilized, and performance really didn’t become an issue anymore. We have a somewhat weird fiscal week in that on Wednesdays it’s the beginning of the fiscal week. All of the finance department needs to get their data, all of our stores and our retail customers out in the field come in and they’re really mining through the sales, the labors, the costs, try to figure out how did they do the week before. So on this day it’s like a perfect storm for our implementation in that everybody’s getting a big bulk of data at the same time. Using the 3PAR flash array we were able to stabilize that environment so that I really can get their data on demand.Other Solutions ConsideredI think it’s a common theme for people in my position. I have an older array, it’s the generational investment coming up and we looked at a number of different models, different competitors but you know a big name like HP and a product like 3PAR and at the right price it was just all-all the stars aligned. We are an HP shop but I would have to say that it’s simplicity. In a couple of days we had this array running. We were able to test it out on multiple production level systems and kind of decide where is the best bang for the buck in utilizing that flash storage.We were looking at Nimble Storage which was pretty close. I think the big differentiator there was the features set is pretty similar but I really like the approach of HP and I like the big name brand because the rest of my infrastructure is HP as well. We’re primarily an HP shop so given that I have such a lean team I only have myself, a system administrator, a network administrator, I can’t afford to have a lot of complexity in the way that my storage arrays are configured.Other AdviceIn terms of a rating from 1-10, I’d say a nine and I’m not gonna give you a ten until I have at least two units mirrored over my data centers. I think that’s gonna get me a ten, but bottom line is simplicity. With a lot of the competing arrays you really need to have a team that-that’s really eager and motivated to go and configure this array and try some of the obscure features. I just don’t have time for that. I need this thing up, I need it running, and I need it now, and with 3PAR we’ve been able to achieve that objective and keep our cost per terabyte in line.My one recommendation is we started pretty small, we only bought the all-flash starter kit which is 8 SSD drives and no additional shelves, no spindles. That is a great unit however most of the features that really leverage the power of the 3PAR require kind of that blended approach of the spindle drives and the SSD’s. So buy the flash starter kit and buy some spindles as well.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2015-10-14T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Ammar Alhusaini from
It's not only about buying something, it's the support and the service you getWhat is most valuable?We are using many products from HPE. We are using storage savers and 3PAR, and even the private cloud. We are happy with the service, the products, the support. This is what we like most. It is only not about buying something. The support and the services you get after buying is the most important thing in IT.What needs improvement?Anything that will make the datacenter more scalable, more available, that would be great. Also, easier to operate or monitor, that would be good.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?I haven't had any reports about any incident or problem, so I assume it's stable and working fine. It's good.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?In general what HPE can provide, it can meet my needs.How is customer service and technical support?Usually the support is through partners, a contract after the sale, and they are always available. Kuwait is a small country so they are onsite. We don't have a problem contacting tech support.How was the initial setup?When it comes to upgrades, if they're complex, they're complex from our side. We need to identify what we need exactly, and most of the time this is done with a consultant or in cooperation with HPE and their partners. Once we know exactly what we need and what we're missing, then it's straightforward.What other advice do I have?Because we are a university, it may be that our IT is more sensitive because the whole learning process depends on the IT services. So any problem, even for a short duration, would cause a big headache.I give 3PAR an eight out of 10. I'm happy. We are happy. We cannot give it a perfect score because they need to improve more. We always we need to push them.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SystemsEfd16 from
We have more uptime, better trade times, and less hassle opening ticketsWhat is our primary use case?Low latency storage for production trading systems.We have multiple trading platforms which are trading different products regionally. The complexity comes when we are applying those trading algorithms globally. It has to be efficient in executing those trades, getting the right prices for the customers with the right spreads for the customer. You have every global FX currency that is present plus equities and future options. If you put all these things together, it gets quite complex.We have been extremely happy with 3PAR so far.How has it helped my organization?We have more uptime, better trade times, and less hassle opening tickets with HPE.What is most valuable?* Remote Copy Groups* Peer Persistence* Redundancy* Fairly easy user interface* InfoSightFor how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It's a very stable platform. It has been running pretty smoothly. It's one of those things where you set it and forget it. We tweak it here and there and we add things to it a little bit, but nothing crazy.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We haven't really had to add anything to it recently.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is very good. They're very prompt. They know about stuff before we do sometimes.Last night was a perfect example. We had a problem last night and before we knew it, there was an email and then, about 15 minutes, later HPE Support sent another email saying don't worry about it, it corrected itself, nothing to worry about.What was our ROI?I would think we are seeing return on investment. I'm not sure of the exact numbers.What other advice do I have?I've had a great experience with it and I would recommend it to a colleague.I rate it at nine out of 10. It's a very stable platform, it's very easy to learn how to use, has an easy user interface, tasks are very simple for an admin. As I said before, you set it up and you don't have to worry about it after that. With HPE you're in good hands.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user368739 from
We can now virtualize our environments and bring in all storage into those environments.What is most valuable?The most valuable features for us are the performance and efficiency. These servers work well even as you add more and more transactions to it.How has it helped my organization?Our cost savings are significant because it performs much better with greater efficiency. We can now virtualize our environments and bring in all storage into those environments.What needs improvement?The biggest area of improvement would be the cost. It's an expensive solution and the initial cost of ownership is high.Another area of improvement is the loss in performance when bringing in different types of storage. You can get very high performance when you have all new storage in the same virtualized environment, but if you have legacy storage, the configurations have to be different and the performance will suffer. You end up losing a lot of the efficiency of the whole storage system.What was my experience with deployment of the solution?It deploys without any issues.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It's very stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have the option to scale, though we haven't done it yet.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was easy.Which other solutions did I evaluate?I still use Dell. We also looked at EMC.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567753 from
It can provide different endpoints with different amounts of scalable storage.What is most valuable?* The ease of scaling.* It's ability to provide different endpoints with different amounts of scalable storage.* The way that it integrates with different HPE systems, such as the CLX, which is a cluster extensions package.* The ability to migrate workloads from one data center to another.How has it helped my organization?The greatest benefit is its uptime. Also, performance and flexibility are very good. It runs both virtual workloads, as well as, native presentation workloads for both Windows and Unix environments. That's the main benefit. One of the other benefits is the way that it does consolidation and deduplication inline with the flash arrays.What needs improvement?We rely on WORM, so some sort of WORM feature would be good. We have to use other platforms for that. It would be nice to have that on the table right here.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We've had no issues with stability. All failures have been handled seamlessly within the platform. We've had controllers fail and they haven't impacted performance or stability at all. All very good.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scaling is really easy. We can do online scale-ups adding more capacity and adding controllers without impact to the serviceability of the system. It’s all very good.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support's been very good. The dedicated help desk for the 3PAR platform has always been very good. We’ve used them for troubleshooting where certain things don't happen the way that you'd expect them to. Sometimes this is our perception of what we feel we should do and not necessarily a shortcoming of the platform. It's just something we'd expect them to do.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using a legacy EVA system. It was just a natural choice. We needed to maintain the CLX packages that were also available for the EVAs. So when we wanted to refresh, it was the natural solution because it supported that and it was more up-to-date technology.How was the initial setup?I was involved in the scoping of the solution. We were able to consolidate down from some of the old arrays very easily. In terms of implementation, I can only defer to the amount of time that it took, because it only took a couple days after the issue.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We were looking at NetApp and EMC.What other advice do I have?When picking a vendor, the ability to execute on time and deliver on time is most important.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-01-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Ricky Santos from
Fast, reliable, and provides disaster recovery for our database-related storageWhat is our primary use case?We have deployed HPE 3PAR systems on all database-related storage including MSSQL and Oracle. All of the SQL databases are running on VMware, and the database-related storage is mounted as RDM. The Oracle database is mounted directly to HPE 3PAR with remote-copy enabled.How has it helped my organization?HPE 3PAR provides fast and reliable storage for our critical systems like the database (MSSQL and Oracle). It also improved the availability of the system and at the same time provides a Disaster Recovery solution by using the remote-copy feature.The adaptive optimization is also a factor in maximizing the capability of the system.What is most valuable?The most valuable features of this solution are Remote-copy and Adaptive Optimization.Remote-copy provides high availability and disaster recovery for the connected clients.The Adaptive Optimization provides tiering and optimizes the storage requirement of the client based on its load from time to time.What needs improvement?The cloud-based monitoring Infosight would be better if users are automatically enrolled in the cloud/group based on the configuration or information gathered or uploaded on the internet.The auto-discovery of the system is not easy for first-time users.For how long have I used the solution?I have been using this solution for two years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?This is one of the best solutions if you want to have a stable and highly reliable system.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?This is a highly scalable system.How are customer service and technical support?Technical support assisted us with a smooth and fast installation.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?Previously we were using HP EVA but since this is an old solution, we wanted to upgrade. We wanted to try a newer solution with almost the same features, like HPE 3PAR.How was the initial setup?The initial setup for this solution is indeed straightforward, although HP will not allow non-HP engineers to do the initial setup.What about the implementation team?The implementation was completed by an HP engineer through the vendor.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?The cost is reasonable given that the licensing is all included once you purchase it.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution.What other advice do I have?The setup is pretty straightforward but HP only allows their engineers to do the setup. This gives us peace of mind for the setup.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-09-17T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user225402 from
The new Adaptive Flash Cache feature combined with Adaptive Optimisation really helps performance.Valuable FeaturesThe 7200 and 7400 are both easy to manage. The reporting suite is a must and gives you all the information you need to manage storage. Thin suite helps you manage how the storage is used and reclaimed, and one of the best features is the new AFC (Adaptive Flash Cache) which combined with AO (Adaptive Optimisation) really helps performance.Improvements to My OrganizationWe have implemented two 7400 arrays replacing older EVAs with replication, we used to use CLX (Cluster Extensions for EVA) for the Windows machines, but we never had anything but manual failover for the VMware environment.With the 7400, we implemented Peer Persistence and this removed the requirement of CLX and also gave us a similar site protection in the VMware environment meaning that we no longer have to do a manual failover.Room for ImprovementMajority of the day to day management can be done via the GUI, but certain functions have to be setup via the command line interface such as AFC.Use of SolutionI have used the 7200 for over two years and the 7400 for around six months.Deployment IssuesDeployment and migration was quite straight forward.Stability IssuesBoth versions are very stable. The 7200 has not had any downtime since it was put into production back in November 2012.Scalability IssuesThe products that we bought both scale very easily, and were bought knowing what the maximum was (which increased on the 7200 from the time of purchase).Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: It's very good for the amount of times we have been in contact (not much as there's no need to make contact).Technical Support: Tech support is fantastic. It seems that you have your own personal support, as we are notified whenever a new firmware/patch/update is released, and we have had the remote support team upgrade the firmware numerous times. We have had only two failed drives on the 7200, and each time the process was simple.Previous SolutionsPrior to the 7200, we had a HP P2000 storage array, and this proved not able to cope with the workload (it was designed/implemented and used to be managed by another company) since the 7200 has been installed, there haven't been any issues.The 7400, replaced four EVAs (two 6500s and two 8400s) and we switched these because they becoming instable causing various issues. They also lacked the failover ability for our virtual environment (without having to buy SRM).Initial SetupThe initial setup was straightforward as it was planned for. Also, the installation document that was filled out had all the info required to make it that way.Implementation TeamBoth installations were carried out by myself.ROIFor the 7200 there has been no downtime in over two years and this is priceless, whereas with the old P2000, which wasn’t designed or setup properly, we had multiple downtime periods.For the 7400. each of the 7400s replaced an EVA 6500 and an EVA 8400 taking up three racks of space, which was condensed down to a single rack. For the first two months, we ran purely on the FC tier (tier one) and the performance was better than both the EVAs. We have three tiers of storage SSD, FC and NL and now the AFC and AO in place, performance is fantastic and we have plenty of capacity.Other Solutions Considered* EMC* IBMOther AdviceAfter spending months of looking at products and choosing the HP 3PAR’s the best advice is to:* Plan the installation and migration – this saved us time in getting the new storage in production* Think about all the features you require as they aren’t expensive and probably will save you money (Peer-Persistence was a good one for the 7400)* Don’t buy for years – as they are easily upgraded the capacity should be sized correctly.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:HP ResellerDate published: 2015-04-19T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user194907 from
With our previous solution we had issues with replication and tiering. Our nightly backup jobs now run much quicker.Valuable Features* Replication between sites* Migration* Dynamic Provisioning* Tearing* Manageability* Easy user interfaceImprovements to My OrganizationA real example is that before 3PAR, the nightly batch job would start at 7:30 PM and run until the next day in the afternoon, until around 2:00 PM.Now with the 3PAR storage platform, the night batch job starts at the same time (7.30 PM) and finishes at 4.00 AM (instead of 2:00 PM the next day).Room for ImprovementFirmware stability could be improved. Apart from that I can't think of anything else.Use of SolutionWe have been using this solution for more than a year.3PAR 10400 (Production) and 7400 (DR - location)Deployment IssuesNo issues with the deployment and we had very good support from the vendor. It's very easy to get it going.Stability IssuesA part of the firmware for the controller had a bug that caused some issues while doing the Dynamic tiering, however once we upgraded it was fixed.Scalability IssuesNo, there is plenty of room to grow.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: On a scale from 1-10 I will give them a 9.Technical Support: We had a quick turnaround time with one issue, and even a dedicated engineer working with us even though the issue was on the network side for the replication. Overall, we have very good support.Previous SolutionsWe had a XP24K and a EVA 6000 and we were experiencing challenges in replication and doing tiering. That was one of the main reasons we chose to switch.Initial SetupIt is very straight forward. Any person with basic storage knowledge can do the installation, with no specific training required.Implementation TeamWe implemented through a vendor for the production site, PKA Technologies, and using what we learned, we have implemented the DR site in-house.They are very helpful, and even after the implementation they have provided support for troubleshooting on the network issue.ROIAccording to the performance and scalability of the product, a rough calculation is that in three years we will be able to get an ROI.Pricing, Setup Cost and LicensingOriginal cost was about $2 million. Day to day, it's just the cost of the power to run the hardware.Other Solutions ConsideredWe evaluated Hitachi HUS VM, and EMC alongside 3PAR.Other AdviceWe are using the SSD but not flash. Even without that part, we are very satisfied with the performance.It is reasonable and good product.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-02-18T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ITManagec405 from
Provides us with simplified, centralized storage but the performance has been disappointingWhat is our primary use case?We use 3PAR as our centralized storage for database use, mostly. It's also data stores for our VMs. We have a few Oracle Databases running on 3PAR and we have our production VMs running on 3PAR, as well.How has it helped my organization?Before using centralized storage, we needed to make sure that we have enough physical disks installed in a server. Now, we know exactly the capacity that we need for the upcoming year, and it's much easier for us to enlarge the capacity and expose these disk volumes to the relevant servers. Again, in our case, it's mostly the databases.All-flash positions our organization for growth in a way, mostly for performance, because again, we're using all-flash for the performance that it provides, and we have critical databases running on it. It's providing day-to-day functionality, the way I see it.What is most valuable?* The ease of use, from one perspective* The centralized storage* The ease of copying, backing up, and moving data from one server to the otherWhat needs improvement?I would like to see more visibility regarding issues - active alerting. I know that InfoSight is currently trying to do what Nimble did for its storage. If it were proactively alerting regarding maintenance or something that's going to go bust, it could be very useful for us.What do I think about the stability of the solution?All in all, it's a stable solution. From an availability perspective, we have it in both data centers.We found one huge bug when we implemented the solution, a critical bug that eventually crashed and shut down the storage, which is something that we cannot live with. But since then, a patch was provided for this issue, and over the last a year-and-a-half we haven't had any stability issues whatsoever.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is problematic. We would like to scale with our current infrastructure but we can't. We need to actually buy additional components, not just add disks. We actually need to buy additional controllers and, eventually, another storage unit. So it's not good enough.How are customer service and technical support?The technical support is not good. Usually, when we have a problem, it takes ages until we get a response. We need to escalate several times, using HPE and the partner in Israel to make sure that we get the appropriate response. Usually, what we know or what we find out right away, is the same response that we get from support a week or two later - that something is happening. And only a month after that do we get a good solution that we can do something with.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?From a technical perspective, we understood the benefits of having centralized storage. From that point on we looked for what was supposed to be the right solution for us. Eventually, we zeroed in on the 3PAR solution and not the competition.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was complex. It's not a straightforward integration. There are a lot of parameters that you need to configure, and each parameter affects a lot of other things. Even though we used a partner for the implementation, after the installation in the data center we needed to rebuild everything and reconfigure everything several times. At the beginning, it wasn't good. Now we are stable so, except for the performance issue, everything is working as we expect it to work.What about the implementation team?We used an integrator. The guys are great, responsible. They did what they were supposed to do. They worked with HPE regarding the sizing of the storage solution, and it seems like someone there didn't do his job correctly. I don't know if it was HPE or the partner. But eventually, we had a problem.What was our ROI?It's a much more expensive solution than just buying local disks. On the other hand, it provides us a centralized point of management for all our storage. I can't tell you the exact ROI, but the simplicity and the centralization of the storage probably provide us with some kind of a return.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at NetApp. We also evaluated hyperconverged solutions like Nutanix, but it was not relevant at the time. And we were approached by HPE regarding SimpliVity but it was not relevant as well, at the time.We went with 3PAR because, at the time, we were convinced that this would provide us the solution that we need, from several KPIs that we were looking at. We were promised performance that we didn't get in the end.What other advice do I have?Check the performance and every technical aspect that you can, as much as you can. Don't trust anyone else telling you otherwise. Test everything yourself.The biggest lesson I've learned from using this solution is that having centralized storage is the right way to go and that sizing is everything. If you don't do the sizing right and you don't understand every detail of the product, how it works, you can be in a very unpleasant situation when you pay half a million dollars and you have a product that does not work as you expected.What every IT guy will tell you is that we disable the dedupe, mostly because of the hit on the performance. Regarding InfoSight predictive analytics, we tried to use it. It was not that predictive because it doesn't give as much information as we were told. We had actually turned it on and we had a few critical issues but we got no alerts from InfoSight regarding them.It increased performance for a while, but then, as we grew, and we did not grow significantly, performance dropped down. For a few of our critical, online systems, we went back to using the physical disks and not the centralized storage.It was supposed to improve throughput but it was not enough, not as much as we were told before we bought the product.We have talked about using the flex-capacity offering, HPE GreenLake, but we haven't used it yet.From our experience, I would rate low, but I don't want to rate it low because from a technical perspective, it's a stable solution, it works. I would give the product a seven out of ten, even though our experience has not been that good. A seven is fair at this point.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-14T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user685005 from
It allows us to deliver more storage than other solutions.What is most valuable?The solution allows us to provide solid capacity.How has it helped my organization?The team provisions and it has been wonderful for our environment. We manage hundreds of terabytes. It allows us to deliver more storage than other solutions. It allows us to have many files so we can provide better service for our customers.What needs improvement?Right now, we don't use a solid-state disk. We use a historical monitoring platform for a Telco. For the long-term storage, we don't need so much speed. However, now that we are dealing with the main BI and doing big data with that information, we will need to speed up really fast. Right now, we are thinking of adding some solid-state capacity, or even better, get a new, solid-state controller. That is the new initiative that we have been looking into.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We have not experienced any down times since we started 3PAR. For us, it was the right decision. It was the best way to provide a storage solution for our company. It has been running for over two years without any down time.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?In terms of scalability, once we made the capacity planning in the very beginning, we did not need increased capacity. Our operation is stable. We manage a certain kind of volume of data. We don't need to increase so frequently. We have been working with the capacity with which we started at the beginning.How is customer service and technical support?We have used technical support. They came most of the time, even if I didn't need it. I called and they sent some drives if I needed them. There were some pre-failure alarms that we needed to replace and they took care of it. Technical support has been working great.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using another solution before. We were spread over different locations so it was the most affordable solution we found.We needed a new solution. We were working with a partner and they showed us options. We discussed price and we got the point between stability, reliability, and price. These were the main factors in choosing this solution.How was the initial setup?The setup was straightforward. It was easy. Most of the activities were done remotely. The field engineer did a lot of it. The factory people get in and set up all the equipment.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We talked to Dell and EMC. We decided upon HPE because the partner with whom we worked hand-in-hand had been working with them for many years.What other advice do I have?I would highly recommend this solution. The trends in storage solutions have been going through a lot of changes. They are not as centered on basic storage. They are moving to local and multiple nodes of storage. These storage-defined solutions have been evolving a lot over these last couple of years. It will be a harder decision to choose between one or another vendor.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-18T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Tommy Hong from
There is a performance hit for a few hours/days every time you add additional storage. The initial setup is okay.What is most valuable?This product does not impress me anymore.What needs improvement?This solution should have better reporting and alerting. Deduplication and compression should function without a performance hit. The 16TB LUN limitations should be fixed.For how long have I used the solution?I have used this solution for over seven years at many different companies.What do I think about the stability of the solution?There is a performance hit for a few hours or days every time you add additional storage until the additional storage is added to the pool.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The main issue is the 16TB LUN limit. This bug has not been addressed for years!How is customer service and technical support?I would rate the level of technical support as average.Which solutions did we use previously?I did not previously use a different solution.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was average.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?For the price you pay, there are far better products out there.Which other solutions did I evaluate?I evaluated Pure Storage before choosing.What other advice do I have?Do not buy this solution. It lacks the innovation required to compete in the market.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-11-01T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user471384 from
We chose to go with it because it runs on OpenVMS.Valuable FeaturesWe went with 3PAR because we primarily use other storage solutions for our main production products. We chose 3PAR for one product because it runs on OpenVMS and it's only certified to run on HPE. That's why we went with 3PAR. It was a smooth transition over. It went pretty stable. We got an outside HPE VAR to help with the rollover. It's been very stable since we moved to it so.Room for ImprovementIt's a mature product. It's been working fine.Use of SolutionIt's been about eight months.Scalability IssuesHard to say with that product line. That product line, it's much more mature. It doesn't grow that dramatically, so we planned ahead with a five year window, to be on that platform. It's running fine. We're not running into any hurdles right now.Customer Service and Technical SupportWe have an HPE VAR on the openVMS side that helps us too. We kind of reach out to them if we do.Previous SolutionsWe switched from a really old legacy platform storage solution that was just into life. We were running it on Data Vault which was an HPE product.Initial SetupWe switched from a really old legacy platform storage solution. I'm pretty sure we were running it on NetApp at the time.Other Solutions ConsideredIn most cases Pure Storage is better. It's better overall, and allows us to scale up faster, the cost of ownership's lower, and the replication across areas is good. 3PAR is not bad either, but Pure Storage is just more competitive.Other AdviceI would also evaluate others hard. We use Pure Storage in other areas a lot.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-06-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user362250 from
The older and newer HP systems mesh together well and we've been able to move data from the old to new easily.Valuable Features:It handles the structure of our system easily and provides us with really good performance. We have the older systems and not the new ones with the 7400. They all mesh together well and we've been able to move data from the old to new easily. It's also easy to code.Improvements to My Organization:We use all of HP's services, so HP is a big partner of ours. Staying with HP for storage means we don't need to switch partners.Room for Improvement:I'd like to see just a little bit more virtualization so that as I work on the front end, I can make any necessary disc switches. I'd also like to see expanded correspondence systems.Deployment Issues:We had no issues with deployment.Stability Issues:We've had no problems with firmware, so all of this is really done smoothly without interruptions.Scalability Issues:We've always been able to upgrade easily and now have three or four kinds of upgraded systems.Previous Solutions:We switched because HP is stable and reliable.Initial Setup:We needed HP specialists to help stand up the 3PAR systems. It was a little tricky. After that, things were straightforward.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-12-31T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Abdullah AlQadeeri from
It is easy to scale, easy to manage, and easy to configureWhat is our primary use case?The primary uses are for the server environment and for the file share system. This how we store our files. This is what we mostly use the system for.Performance is amazing. The downtime is almost none. It is easy to manage, even for their new software updates, the integration with the server, and with all the HPE environment.How has it helped my organization?It provides very fast deployment. The performance for our most critical applications is very quick. Even the support is 24/7.What is most valuable?* Security for encryption* Performance* The support, because we have the online support directly with HPE. Any error or any incidents, they are directly involved and solve it. It makes our life much easier, even as IT.What needs improvement?HPE has a product that I am very interested in, but it lacks of integration with 3PAR - HPE SimpliVity. If it could be integrate with 3PAR, it would be amazing. This is what I am looking for going forward.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We have not had any downtime in two and a half years.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is scalable. The model we have, we scaled it last year. We bought another rack mount, and we extended it to 12TB. It is easy to scale, easy to manage, and easy to configure.Thanks to HPE remote IT assistance, they can do the updates with the configuration in best-case scenario.Even for a future of big environment, if we wanted to go bigger, we can migrate easily to other bigger projects or bigger versions.How is customer service and technical support?The support is easy. It is either by phone or by email. Mostly by email. They are supportive and they answer any question. It is perfect.Which solutions did we use previously?Yes, HPE EVA, the older one. It is at end of life. They are no longer updating it or supporting it, so we needed to switch.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was straightforward.What about the implementation team?HPE helped us with the configuration, so it took us approximately one week to set up.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We thought about EMC. But as I mentioned, in terms of integration and compatibility, 3PAR was better because we have EVA. To migrate from EVA to 3PAR with 3PAR is zero downtime migration, and with EMC, it was little bit complex. That is why, we did not want to risk it.What other advice do I have?If he has HPE servers, I would totally tell him go with HPE 3PAR. If he has another company's servers, I am not 100% sure about the compatibility with other products, but for management and for configuration, I would recommend 3PAR.Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:* The integration with systems that we are going to use. For example, our server environment is HPE. The first that we think about is something compatible with this and easy to manage. That is why we choose HPE.* The performance and even their views. When you check those consultations, reports, HPE is ahead in leadership, in terms of storage.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2017-12-26T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Infrastrd82a from
The initial setup, with computing and networking, was like a greenfield scenarioWhat is our primary use case?It is our primary storage array for our virtual environment. We implemented it in the beginning of 2016. It has done well for us.How has it helped my organization?We went to an Active-Active data center, set it up to where both data centers are separate, but they act as one. We can have workloads at either side at any given time, and it is all based on the Peer Persistence architecture.What is most valuable?* Remote copy* Peer Persistence.What needs improvement?We have had a few issues with it. We had our virtual environment lock up a few times on storage-based things. We think we have it sorted out, but maybe it came down to a configuration issue on it.They have starting to do some integration with the VMware and reporting from that. I think continuing along that path would be pretty good.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We have had some issues in the past, maybe due to configuration issues.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?No issues with scalability.How is customer service and technical support?We have used technical support. We have proactive care on it, but we found that the GDC team, which is the primary support team for it, has not been on the ball with everything.There have been misunderstandings with what we are trying to do and with scheduling. We have two 3PARs, so they scheduled the wrong one for the work when it should have been the other one, or scheduling it on one and not the other one when they should be both in sync.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using HPE EVA before and the solution had been in place for like six years at that point, so it was ageing, we're limited on what we could do with it. So, it was time to switch over to something that was newer, had better features.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was straightforward and easy. We did the whole thing, including compute networking, like it was almost a a greenfield type of scenario. If we had not had an issue getting our circuits put into place, it would have been just a few months and we would have had the whole thing done. However, it was not just storage. It was a new virtual environment, we were putting in NSX networking, new networking switches from HPE, etc.What about the implementation team?We had a partner that came in and helped us architect the whole thing, but one other guy and I worked through that whole implementation of it.What was our ROI?I can't really comment on it because I was not part of the whole purchase.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We talked with EMC a little bit, but it was decided pretty quickly that we were going with the HPE solution. We looked at the environment holistically, and we weren't just looking at we replacing storage. We thought, "How are we going to do storage, compute, and networking, then what will it look like?" Then, we chose to partner with HPE rather than just go with a one off here and there.What other advice do I have?We have fewer limitations, but there are still limitations that we have work though. Overall, it is a good solution.We set out to do something very specific with this, and that's the stretch metro cluster. A single VMware cluster across two data centers acting as one, not a lot of people do it in the way that we did it. I am not sure I could advise somebody unless they were doing the exact same thing.Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Speed, scalability, and the ability to support a metro storage cluster environment.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-06-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567807 from
Allows us to have an active-active scenario. They are fast, easy to manage, and easy to extend.What is most valuable?It's quite fast, easy to manage, and easy to extend. Adding new shelves or new platforms is easy.How has it helped my organization?In our case, 3PARs were easier to implement into our existing environment. Also, we had problem with storage space so it was the easiest way to expand.What needs improvement?I'm happy for the moment. But I would like to see them implement the new types of RAM; the NVRAM that is being used in the server environment. This would make storage quite a bit faster. It's not slow, but it could always be faster. Maybe this can also be available partially in a storage environment.For example, if you have a DSQL server or something similar. Most companies have the lock database on the local server. In our case, we have everything on the 3PAR and it would make sense to have faster storage. We would like to see some innovation. There's room for improvement.For how long have I used the solution?We have been using 3PARs for a year.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We have never had any stability problems.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability is always a matter of price of course, but you can put in new disks with no problem at all.How is customer service and technical support?We used technical support to do updates. They're good and very fast. They were very helpful.Which solutions did we use previously?We used EMC before but it was quite old, about 7 years, and it was time to change. There wasn't a good solution from them at that time. The ability to scale to size was important to us when choosing a vendor, as well as the speed. We want our solution to be future-proof to an extent.How was the initial setup?I was partially involved in the initial setup. It was complex because of our environment. We have 10 or 15 different systems in the background so it wasn't easy. We thought it would be easy, but in the end it was quite complex.Which other solutions did I evaluate?There isn’t only one solution on the market. We already had the EMC systems. We were not limited to flash providers, so we also looked at Nimble and Hitachi and others.At the end of the day, 3PAR was the most valuable. It was the most valuable solution. It was quite fast and it wasn't too expensive. Additionally, we could have an active-active scenario. That was for us the most important thing.What other advice do I have?I would say go for it. You should at least give it a chance.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-12-27T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567990 from
The deduplication features and compression are helpful to me.What is most valuable?To me, the deduplication features and compression are really helpful. The all-flash integration is valuable. It's high-density storage, so the total cost of ownership of the solution is good for a company.How has it helped my organization?It's easy to manage. There is less need to manage the storage and we are more able to focus on the business.What needs improvement?Product improvement is a matter of the orientation of storage solutions in the market. Product improvement will follow the market trend and HPE will follow market trend about storage solutions.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It's I think a five-9s (99.999%) solution, so it's very stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It can be scaled to more than enough capacity. So, it's okay.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is useful and helpful.Which solutions did we use previously?We did use previous solutions, but it's a matter of quality and it's a matter of economics and that was the choice.How was the initial setup?I was not involved in the initial setup.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at Dell EMC and HPE. We chose HPE because of the product portfolio that they keep alive and evaluate and improve. The one we chose includes all the features and capabilities that the company makes.What other advice do I have?I suggest to sometimes be disruptive in the choice of storage solution and don't always focus on the continuity. Sometimes discontinuity may help. When picking a vendor, reliability is important. Stability is important as well, but in the matter of looking at the future.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-01-10T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
NetworkM17fa from
It is worry-free. I do not have to sit there and tend it.What is our primary use case?It is our primary storage. We use it with our VMware environment and all of our high performance applications are stored on it.I work for an equipment distributor, but we have various business lines: everything from earth moving to electric power generation. These are very different needs. Then, we have our accounting system which is on there, plus business intelligence. All these are different types of workloads.We purchase the 3PAR that has flash tier and we can migrate between the spinning disk and flash. It seems to work very well. It self-optimizes. I do not need to worry about it. It does its job. It is the self-driving car. You let it do its thing and it gets you where you need to go.How has it helped my organization?It has improved the ability of the executives to get proper insights, because our old storage was not fast enough.What is most valuable?It is worry-free. I do not have to sit there and tend it, because I have a lot of other things that I have to do. Once you set it, you can forget it until you need to go and add more storage. It does its thing and you can go do your work.What needs improvement?3PAR has StoreOnce and replication. I would like it if they worked together. Or, if I had Nimble and put that either in DR or a primary cohesive management, but still use the cool features of 3PAR, that would be awesome.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We have never had a problem.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is good.How is customer service and technical support?I have done two different upgrades with them. That is all I have done because the stuff is all working.Technical support was very helpful. They scheduled around me, then when it was time, we just met in a HPE room, they did the upgrade, and I saw everything they did. Then when they were done, we left the room and I was done. I had my stuff back.Which solutions did we use previously?We are using Tableau, and it is a heavy thing, especially when you start calling in a lot of data sources. At our old storage, it was iSCSI connected and not adequately responsive. Therefore, they had to trim down the searches, and as a result, they were getting less insight. Now, they get everything they want and in a timely manner.We were using Dell EqualLogic. The load from our VMware (when we first put it in was fine) had gone from approximately 20 virtual machines to 150 virtual machines on the same storage. The storage load had increased so drastically that we just could not keep up with it, so we looked at different things. I mentioned 3PAR is an excellent enterprise cost product.We switched because noticed there was a lag in our previous storage, then went ahead and got 3PAR.What was our ROI?We certainly have seen value and everybody is happy, including our executives. They are very glad that things are working smoothly and they can get good insights and information from Tableau.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?It is a little more money, but it is worth it because it does it better.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at Dell's competing product. This is prior to them buying EMC. We looked at Compellent. We also looked at EMC and Pure Storage.We bought EqualLogic before Dell bought it. After Dell bought it, some things changed. Now I am afraid of buying a small player that might get purchased and the story changes. Therefore, we thought HPE is a very stable partner. Nobody will buy HPE. We can go ahead and trust that it will be a stable, supported product for the foreseeable future.What other advice do I have?It does a great job and I do not have to worry about it. It worries about itself. It tells me if there is something wrong.Go to Houston, the executive briefing center, if you can. It is very good because you get a very deep dive and you can ask questions to obtain information. I did it and thought it was helpful.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ClausAndersen from
The replicate, peer persistence, and recovery manager work really well.What is most valuable?The thin and deduplication technologies are quite effective. The replicate, peer persistence, port persistence, and the recovery managers work really well.How has it helped my organization?* Always online* Easy to service* Easy to manage* Really provides powerful advanced management and troubleshootingWhat needs improvement?Customer facing management should be easier and simpler for those who do not work with it too often.For how long have I used the solution?We have been using this solution for over five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It has been very stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?There were no scalability issues. The scale-up in the architecture works really nicely and there are no disruptions. This is also the case with the firmware and software updates.How is customer service and technical support?In terms of technical support, this is where HPE ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/hewlett-packard-enterprise ) has a problem. The support is cumbersome and most of their staff speak with a poor English accent. Some of the support staff works in privacy mode, which means they might do something that the customer is not secure about, and this causes uncertainty.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using an end-of-life, old product before. It couldn’t keep up with new technologies.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was fairly easy, but you have to understand it well if best practices are to be gained.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?The system just went to an all-inclusive license model.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We evaluated some of the EMC ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/dell-emc ) products and NetApp ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/netapp ) was being looked at.What other advice do I have?I usually say look at the weak points in a system. 3PAR is great since it does most of what is boasts about in a good and mostly satisfying level. So the weak points in this system are quite high compared to a lot of other solutions. They tend to get good technology integration into the product, even though it sometimes takes a while. For instance, compression only came out now in the latest OS version.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We are the biggest partner of HPE in my part of the world. We also sell products from other vendors.Date published: 2017-07-03T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Vicente Sendarrubias from
It has given us higher performance over our servers and applicationsWhat is most valuable?* It has a real active-active architecture, so one volume is served by both controllers with the processing advantage of a central global cache.* It is easy to manage with the management console.* It is always on with cache software.How has it helped my organization?It has given us higher performance over our servers/applications, which work better now than with our previous storage system.What needs improvement?It needs more host ports.What was my experience with deployment of the solution?We have had no issues with the deployment.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We have had no stability issues.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?There have been no issues with scaling it for our needs.What other advice do I have?You should use HPE installation, or at the very least, authorized partners.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Sometimes HPE is a client for our knowledge in IT.Date published: 2017-11-02T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user539658 from
Better performance and we're able to use fail-over and load-balancing at different locationsWhat is most valuable?Switching from HDDs to SSDs, because of better performance (IOPS) and, hopefully, reliability.How has it helped my organization?No improvement for the organization, it's "only" storage, but due to moving from one system to two systems, we are now able to use fail-over and load-balancing functions on different locations.What needs improvement?* OS/patch/firmware installation can only be done by a division of HPE Support, which must be coordinated.* Error reporting and alarming needs additional VMs per node (SPOCK) and cannot be integrated in HPE Remote Support, which is used for all the other HPE devices (FC Switches, Proliant Servers, etc.).For how long have I used the solution?Approximately nine months, and still in the migration process, so a total assessment of the whole product and it's functionality is still not possible.What do I think about the stability of the solution?So far, no issues with stability.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?So far, no issues with scalability.How is customer service and technical support?The level of technical support which we have used up to now has been good, but luckily there have been no major issues. I cannot rate how such issues would be solved.Which solutions did we use previously?It's not a different solution, same vendor with the follow-up product, with newer technology and more space.How was the initial setup?The setup of the storage itself was OK and not too complex, but there are additional VMs (or appliances) needed for remote support, reporting, etc., which can only be set up by HPE or a partner technician.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?The new licensing model includes every function for the same price, and in terms of price, everything is possible if HPE is interested in getting the contract.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Yes, Tintri T850, but at the time of the PoC the solutions provided by Tintri were not scalable enough for future demands.What other advice do I have?Everything works as expected but, as stated above, we are still in the process of migrating our data from our old storage.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-11-26T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user248730 from
We're able to dedupe on a CPG level, yet I would like it to have better integration with VMware to show volume levels.Valuable FeaturesI would say one of the most valuable is the ability to dedup on a CPG level. That's one of the newest features that has come out most recently and has enabled us to get a ratio of about 7.1 to 1. That's one of the things where we really were going for with it. One of the main examples for that is we were able to save a lot of money on we've converted from an older F400 to a 7400 SAN.Improvements to My OrganizationWe were able to save money by not buying more physical drives for storage and more cabinets, things like that.Room for ImprovementOh, that's a great question. I would consider having better integration with VMware. It's on a license basis and VMware does communicate with the SAN, but right now the capabilities are only that it shows you what the deduplication savings is or what the thin provisioning savings is. It doesn't actually show you on a volume level what you can do, how many extra VMs you can get on there for example. If we're only using 20% of the available storage, it still sees like it's full. I would like to see a better integration of that. We actually had a bunch of different solutions. I wouldn't say that we had any specific one. Well, storage is about performance for a lot of people.Stability IssuesWe had an accident where when we turned on deduplication and we had it active for some of the virtual volumes that we had in our environment, it did actually cause a problem that HP had not heard of previously and had not yet documented that was fixed in a release 2 weeks later, and a software patch 2 weeks later. We did have an outage related to that specifically where it's not dithering us from doing it using dedup long term, but that was actually the cause of that. Other than that, reliability has been fine but that's a pretty big marker as far as having a problem.Customer Service and Technical SupportWe had to aggressively work to upgrade through the ranks of HP support in order to get to a tier that would really help us with this problem that could really understand this problem. It took us several hours to get through that. Of course we're relying on the thousands of concurrent connections we have at any given time. That was an issue. I have no complaints there, whatsoever. You can add controllers, add drives as much as you want. It's pretty much unlimited how far we can go with it. I mean HP did the setup work for us. Therefore, it was very straightforward. The only thing they really wouldn't do is the wiring which is understandable, so we had that taken care of and could not be happier with that part.Previous SolutionsThis was actually a revolution of getting us into the cloud because one of our clients demanded that we start offering a cloud-based solution. This is when we went out and started really looking for solutions that would empower a cloud level enterprise.Other Solutions ConsideredFor us, it was about reliability. Our SaaS solution, our clients depend on and our clients' customers depend on on a daily basis, so that was number one. NetApp was a contender, but honestly we mostly looked just at HP 3PAR.Other AdviceSpecifically with flash, I would say don't believe the hype of other vendors that say they can save you money by deduping and that was their go to strategy. With 3PAR, they can do the exact same thing and it's a lot more scalable on an enterprise level and you'll pay about the same amount of money. Don't apply the latest technology, even though they say it's vetted and tested. Just in case, dedup was a relatively new feature.We deployed it believing in the reliability of the 3PAR and it ended up being a problem for us. Wait until a couple of cycles have ended. Let customers that do that vet it for you and that's just typical sound practice. It's really invaluable. We heavily rely on online resources to do that research for us and the reviews are critical. We'd like to see things that other people in our same caliber are using. When we explore a new solution for example, we say, "Okay. Can you give us our position, equivalency in that customer? Can we talk to them and see how their real life experiences has been with it?" That kind of thing, online reviews very, very important.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2015-09-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
MassimoCavallini from
Performance is good, it's cost effective, and we've had no downtimeHow has it helped my organization?It's the basis of the storage of one of our five companies. All ERP and customer products rely on 3PAR storage. It's used heavily every day.What is most valuable?It's fast and it's affordable.What needs improvement?No complaints.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?No downtime, it's stable, and they are very happy with it.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?I can't say anything about this because they bought the necessary size two years ago, and they don't need to expand for now.How is customer service and technical support?The support is good. Fortunately, we have not needed to call them many times.Which solutions did we use previously?It's much better than two other platforms we have, one of them is EVA4400. EVA is less affordable and not as powerful. It works, but it's very much less powerful. For example, six months ago during a restore, the production environment was completely blocked, it worked slowly. This doesn't happen on full-flash 3PAR.How was the initial setup?It was straightforward. No problems.What other advice do I have?When we look to work with a vendor we look for* response to our calls* affordability* that they have been in the market many years* the cost.I rate it an eight out of 10 for the reasons I've already mentioned: the affordability, the speed.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
NetworkAd9ed from
Data access has been tremendously betterWhat is our primary use case?It is our primary storage. The entire company runs off 3PAR. Right now, we are in a VMware environment. All of our virtual machines are stored on 3PAR, along with all of our EMR applications, practice management solutions, and email. All of our virtual machines are running off of 3PAR. Our file server is on there too.How has it helped my organization?The product has heavily improved the way our organizations functions. Before we got the 3PAR, we were running an HPE Generation 6 server as our storage server. It was slow, and we were getting low on space, so we weren't able to expand capacity that easily. Since we went to 3PAR, it has fiber connections connecting all the cabinets together. Therefore, data access has been tremendously better, especially when we have to constantly recall, all day long everyday, patients charts or when we are doing scheduling. We see over 2000 patients on a daily basis, so we have to have speed and reliability. By implementing 3PAR over the old, regular file storage server that we had before, it has drastically improved our patient care.What is most valuable?Reliability is its most valuable feature. We have multiple cabinets with multiple failure points, so if there is one failure then we don't have worry about it. It is easy to replace a part of the cabinet when we are up and running. We can replicate back over, then we are good to go. Our uptime has to be there, so we can continue seeing patients. That is the biggest part of the reliability that I am looking for.What needs improvement?I would like an easier user interface and setup to help with deployment. There were many areas of the setup where I was like, “Why don't we do it this way?” Therefore, some of the things in the user interface could have been more refined, so you don't have to click in 5000 different places to accomplish one goal. Less clicks means more efficiency.I feel like there is a big training gap. Obviously, the HPE engineers know all about the product and can come in and do the setup with ease. However, once they hand off the product to the in-house IT group, there might be a learning gap there. E.g,, I have to call them now every time I have a problem.I feel like they should've spent more time with us. They were only onsite for two days, and I feel like there should be more outside training to explain how to use the product.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It has been pretty stable. We have only had one major issue. It was because of a redundancy that we had set up. HPE sent us a new part, then we swapped it in and were back up and running.So far, I'm pretty satisfied with the solution's availability.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?So far, we have not had to scale up. However, that day may be coming, and we actually provisioned our 3PAR to be scalable in the future. So, I think the scalability is pretty good considering HPE helped us design and implement it in a way where we can scale up when needed.How are customer service and technical support?So far, the technical support has been good. We had one major failure and the technical support team sent us a part within four hours. Then, we had the new part, and it was everything was back up and running. We were able to talk to a 3PAR specialist to walk us through how to get everything reconfigured. So, there was virtually no down time.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?The previous solution that we had was about 10 years old. It was an HPE Generation 6 server. We had some management changes, and it was time for a refresh which we hadn't done in many years.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was pretty complex. There were a lot of different things that had to happen which was the reason why they had to send out the HPE engineers to help us.My philosophy is if you have to send out an engineer to do it, then it is probably more complicated for the end user.What about the implementation team?Softchoice helped us procure the equipment, and HPE sent out 3PAR specialists to help us configure and deploy the product. Our experience with Softchoice was great.It was pretty easy to deploy the product to begin with because HPE helped us do it. They sent product specialists in. So, deployment of this particular product was definitely easy-breezy.What was our ROI?We have seen ROI. We are able to see more patients now, bringing more money into the practice.3PAR has increased our performance.The product has definitely improved throughput. We are able to more efficiently see patients because all of our medical records and practice management software seems to run faster. Uploading images and charts is a lot faster. Recalling information in the exam rooms is faster. The overall throughput of data, going back and forth, is so we can more efficiently see patients, and it also helps increase our patient flow. We can see patients a lot faster, getting them in and out a lot more quickly.What other advice do I have?Spend your time doing the research on the product and learn the system.So far, it has been pretty reliable. It has been a set it and forget it type product, which has been great, except for when there are some minor issues. However, the issues that we have had were resolved fairly quickly.We are flash and standard disk combo, or hybrid. Having flash though does not mean that we have faster performance. What it does helps us with is being able to see more patients, because we're not having to wait as long for applications to load or waiting for the data to get sent to where it needs to be.Biggest lesson learnt: Why didn't we do it a long time ago?Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-11T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Jerome Wendt from
Recognizes infrequently accessed data and can either move it off to disk or even another HP 3PAR array.Since 2012, there have been three constants in DCIG’s world: death, taxes and an HP 3PAR StoreServ storage array model coming out on top in its Midrange Array Buyer’s Guides. In each of the three (3) Buyer’s Guides focused on the topic of Midrange Arrays produced in that time, HP 3PAR StoreServ arrays have consistently ranked well with the HP 3PAR F400 coming out on top in 2012, the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 in 2013 and the latest 7440c nailing the top spot in the 2015-16 Buyer’s Guide.To accomplish these feats, HP had to do more than simply put more powerful hardware into its arrays. HP had to merge disk and flash media, offer software that today’s highly virtualized infrastructures require and deliver these in a way that satisfied today’s enterprise demands. The HP 3PAR StoreServ 7440c does so by offering features that represent what enterprises most want midrange arrays to deliver now.HP 3PAR StoreServ 7440c Proves that ASICs Matter by Unlocking Flash’s PotentialThe HP 3PAR StoreServ platform introduced its architecture in the early 2000’s when hard disk drives (HDDs) were the primary storage media used in midrange arrays. Fast forward to today and both HDDs and solid state drives (SSDs) are deployed.To effectively manage the idiosyncrasies of both media, the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7440c array takes the following steps. For every drive, it recognizes all available capacity on the HDDs in its system and breaks it into chunklets. Using these chunklet, it then creates virtual volumes that span all HDDs (and SSDs). This especially helps to improve HDD performance while expediting the recovery of failed HDDs.To deliver on the increased performance that SSDs offer, HP 3PAR StoreServ introduced more powerful processors and higher throughput storage networking interfaces as well as updated its software to manage SSDs’ idiosyncrasies. In doing so, the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7440c differentiated itself from competitors in the following ways.Many competitive storage arrays solely use Intel-based processors to handle their storage processing needs. While this takes advantage of Moore’s Law by doubling processor performance about once every 18 months, Intel-based processors currently have limited to no awareness of data packets nor have they implemented deduplication that would help to make the broader deployments of SSDs within organizations more economical.The HP 3PAR StoreServ 7440c does use Intel-based processors for some tasks it performs. However, it also use a unique application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) that is specifically configured and optimized for storage processing. The 3PAR ASIC is programmatically updated in the 7440c to manage the idiosyncrasies of SSDs and take better advantage of their performance features.The ASIC complements the native wear-leveling algorithms found inside SSDs to help extend their lives. Using the HP 3PAR’s chunklet technology, the ASIC spreads write-intensive blocks of data across SSDs in the system so a single SSD is never overwhelmed with too many writes that would cause it to quickly wear out. The ASIC also optimizes SSD storage capacity through its use of thin deduplication by inspecting each data packet as it passes through the system and making the necessary calculations to deduplicate the data. Due to the techniques it employs to perform deduplication, it accomplishes this with minimal to no impact to application performance.To further deliver on the performance that SSDs have to offer, the 7440c has a mesh active controller architecture that uses four (4) controllers. These provide high bandwidth, low latency interconnects between each other and to the back end HDDs and/or SSDs. The 7440c takes full advantage of this high bandwidth by spreading writes out across all drives using its wide striping technology. This serves to help SSDs wear more evenly, achieve a longer life and collectively provide the performance boost that organizations expect from SSDs.By taking all of these steps the 7440c gives organizations the flexibility to effectively use the characteristics of both HDDs and flash. Unlike all-flash arrays that must keep all data on flash, the 7440c recognizes aging and infrequently accessed data residing on flash and can either move it off to disk or even another HP 3PAR array (assuming there is another HP 3PAR array in the environment.)Forging Ahead with Proven and New TechnologiesThe flexibility to implement both HDDs and SSDs in a single array is functionality that the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7440c distinguishes itself from competitors in how it manages them. However media management alone did not push the 7440c to the top of the DCIG 2015 Midrange Array Buyer’s Guides. Rather, it was its robust software features.Like the other models in the 7000 series including the all-flash 7450c, the latest 7440c simplifies storage management, optimizes available storage capacity and accelerates storage performance. Options such as automated storage tiering, deduplication, and priority optimization, to name just a few, have put the 7440c at the forefront of midrange arrays. Collectively these features have contributed to DCIG ranking its array management and virtualization features as “Best-in-Class” in prior DCIG Midrange Array Buyer’s Guides.Further, HP is not resting on its laurels as it continues to bring forward features to add to the 7440c’s versatility. Features that HP recently introduced to continue to make it practical for organizations to implement the 7440c more easily include:* Data migration software. Using its 3PAR Online Import feature, the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7440c can first virtualize other arrays such as the HP EVA, the EMC VNX, the EMC CLARiiON CX4 or the EMC VMAX prior to migrating data off of them.* Unified storage. The 7440c concurrently supports both block-based, storage area network (SAN) protocols and file-based, network attached storage (NAS) protocols. The 7440c supports this functionality through its File Personal software that enables the convergence of these protocols on a single HP 3PAR node.* VMware VVol support. The HP 3PAR StoreServ 7440c as well as the 3PAR StoreServ 7000 and 10000 systems support the newly announced Virtual Volume (VVol) function on the VMware ESX platform. Providing storage management granularity at the virtual machine (VM) level, it helps to facilitate the introduction of automated, policy-based storage management by eliminating manual LUN management.HP 3PAR StoreServ 7440’s Top Ranking Stems from Its Alignment with What Organizations Most Need TodayDCIG gave the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7440c high marks in its 2015-16 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide due, in large part, to how well its features align with what organizations need today. Its scalability and mesh active controller architecture position the 7440c particularly well to meet the ever increasing performance demands that enterprises place upon midrange arrays while also offering the flexibility of adding HDDs as needed, Yet what is even more impressive about the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7440c are its array management software and high levels of integration with VMware.As organizations continue to strive to become ever more “lean and mean” by asking their IT staff to manage an ever more virtualized environment, it is software that easily, effectively and efficiently utilizes and manages the underlying midrange array hardware that differentiates the best from the rest. In this area, HP 3PAR StoreServ 7440c has outpaced its competitors which is reflected by its #1 ranking in the recent DCIG 2015-16 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-03-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SystemsM2aeb from
Allows us to mix drive spaces; the redundancy and tiering are also key for usWhat is our primary use case?VMware and SQL.In terms of performance, we had an issue with the earlier version, the 7400, an iSCSI issue. They replaced it with one from the 8000 series and it has been doing pretty well so far.How has it helped my organization?It lets us mix a lot of drive spaces, as well as performance drives, between Fibre Channel, long-term storage, and SSD drives. It performs pretty well as far as moving the data around and not letting a lot of it go to waste.What is most valuable?* Redundancy* Performance (I/O and stability)* The tieringWhat needs improvement?Nothing really comes to mind. We talked to somebody earlier today, here at HPE Discover 2018, about their Docker integration for it, so that's something we'll probably check out next for both the 3PAR and Nimble.For how long have I used the solution?More than five years.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We haven't any issues with scalability. We have added a lot of different shelves to it, we have close to about 400 terabytes. It has done pretty well in that regard.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is pretty good. We've used it mainly for firmware upgrades and those type of things. We also used them initially for troubleshooting issues on the previous version. They have been helpful.How was the initial setup?I was not involved in the initial setup. We did have HPE onsite to help with that. It didn't take too long, maybe two to three days.What was our ROI?I believe it is paying off at this point, but I don't have any numbers for ROI.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at Dell, Tegile, and Pure Storage. We went with HPE in the end because we already have HPE equipment, we're mostly HPE server and software, so we went with that. We're trying out the new Nimble now in our new data center.When I evaluate vendors the important criteria are* redundancy* scalability* performance* metrics for reporting.What other advice do I have?My advice would be, make sure you know your workloads going into it and how you will best be able to utilize a solution, especially when deciding what disk structure to get and how to lay it out.Overall, I would rate 3PAR at eight out of 10. The biggest issues we had were performance issues with the older version, but this one has been doing okay.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567699 from
The peer persistence solution provides us with a viable disaster recovery solution. We can do failover and upgrades without interruption.What is most valuable?The reliability, scalability, and performance of HPE 3PAR are the most important things for us.How has it helped my organization?Now we have a reliable solution, divided over two data centers. The peer persistence solution provides us with a viable disaster recovery solution. We can do failover to the other site without interruption; and we can also do upgrades without interruption.What needs improvement?We have only had it for one year. At the moment, I don’t know about areas for improvement. Everything we need is included.For how long have I used the solution?We have it now for more than one year.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It's very stable. We did an OS upgrade three weeks ago. It went very smoothly without any interruptions. It was great.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is very good on scalability.How is customer service and technical support?The technical support is very good.Which solutions did we use previously?We had the HPE EVA solution. We had performance issues with it. We needed another BI solution. Now, we are very happy with the performance. Also, when we needed to upgrade our storage system, we had downtime with EVA. Now with the 3PAR solution, there is no downtime. It goes very smoothly.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was quite straightforward. Of course, we had help from the HPE specialists, but it was straightforward.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We were obliged to look into other vendors; but we tried not to leave HPE because we have many years of experience with them.What other advice do I have?We have had nothing but a good experience over the last year. I would advise colleagues to go with HPE 3PAR.The most important criterion when I choose a vendor is reliability. Reliability is very important to me. When there is an issue, I need to be able to count on the vendor.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-01-11T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Steve Davidek from
Ease of use, low power consumption, and expandability make it awesome for usWhat is our primary use case?We use 3PAR for storage of all the city's data, everything from videos of sewer lines, to orthophotos for our GIS system, to storage of our databases, data in general.It's performing awesomely.How has it helped my organization?We're able to expand more. It's faster, more efficient. The technology is 10-years, 20-years advanced from where we were before.What is most valuable?* Ease of use* Low power consumptionWe saved a ton of power just turning off our old one when we went to the new one.What needs improvement?All of a sudden something didn't work. We've never had downtime where data wasn't available, because it's got multiple ways of staying up. It doesn't usually go down. But we've had some issues when we were trying to upgrade, doing some firmware upgrades.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We've never had downtime in four or five years now. Except when we want to.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It's very scalable.How is customer service and technical support?We've had our issues, but overall they've been pretty good. Doing some upgrades, we've had some problems.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using HPE EVA. The support on our old EVAs, the cost to keep them up was more than going to a new one. Then, by the time we added the power savings and the reduced space and the heating, it was just so much less that it was well worth it.What other advice do I have?When selecting a vendor the most important criteria for us is ease of connectivity. I also like the fact that I know Hewlett Packard Enterprises. I've worked with them for a long time. They're very reliable.I give it a 10 out of 10 because it's just been awesome. We have four 3PARs running our enterprise, the city.Don't be afraid. It can do just about everything you want to do; for a small/medium business, to a large business. I'm running a small city and all our storage is 3PAR.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-25T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
EricSlabbinck from
Automation of the failover allows the IT department of the hospital to improve the availability of systems.What is most valuable?Transparant redundancy for VMware virtual machines, because this makes it possible that storage switches over from one system to another without interruption of the VMs.How has it helped my organization?Automation of the failover allows the IT department of the hospital to improve the availability of systems.What needs improvement?From a personal point of view, what would interest me is a mechanism that detects file-rot, i.e. that detects whether a file or sector has become corrupt; for example, as a result of copying the sector to other locations from the original location.On a file basis, this is implemented in ZFS, where for each file, some error-check is calculated and stored. Periodically, the file system can be scrubbed to detect corruption early, so that a corrupt file can be restored from backups.3PAR is based on block-storage, so this feature would have to be implemented at block-level.For how long have I used the solution?We have been using the product since the beginning of 2014.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We did not encounter any issues with stability.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We did not encounter any issues with scalability.Which solutions did we use previously?We used HP EVA previously.How was the initial setup?The setup was fairly straightforward because we emphasized simplicity as an important purchase criteria.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Other systems evaluated were Dell EqualLogic, Hitachi, IBM, Netapp.What other advice do I have?Don't buy either the oldest or the newest technology!Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ITEngine0293 from
The thin provisioning, data protection, easy deployment, and great support are pivotal for usWhat is most valuable?I think the storage is very good, the way it stores, the thin provisioning it provides, and the data protection. And it's easy to deploy in any environment. We are using VMware. So for me, it's a right click and it's deployed. We can configure and create LUNS very easily with 3PAR management, and the interface is very user-friendly. Easily understandable.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?For me, now, it's a stable product.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Of course it will meet our needs going forward. We have just utilized maybe 30 to 40 percent. It should be scalable for up to five more years.How is customer service and technical support?We have proactive support on it, the logs are being sent to the proactive team, they are working fine. Before we notice that there's a problem in the storage, or any part, any hard disk, they already notify us, and the part is already delivered. The engineer is already coming in, and the support is very good.What other advice do I have?I think HPE is the best because of the after-sale support they provide. Not all companies provide that much support. I don't want to name any vendors on this, but some vendors, when you have a problem they will tell you, "Our engineer is not available," or "The product is not available," or "The part is not here, it will come in two weeks," and that sort of thing. But HPE support, I feel it is the one. Within four hours, the product is delivered. Within the next hour after product delivery, the engineer is available to support me.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-20T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user684999 from
We added this solution to our organization because of its price-point, speed and performance.What is most valuable?Ease of use, cost, and provisioning are the most valuable features.How has it helped my organization?It's just something that we added because of its price-point, speed and performance.What needs improvement?There is need to have pre-defined setups for your clients so that you know that the configuration at the LS is correct.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability is good; we had issues at first, but we have cleared them up.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We haven't tried scaling it, yet. I'm sure it will be fine.How is customer service and technical support?We have had to use technical support, they were very good. It was a little slow at first, but once we got over that, they were good.Which solutions did we use previously?We are a large EMC shop and have a lot of EMC products.The most important criteria while selecting a vendor are the cost and support.How was the initial setup?The setup was complex because we were using iSCSI and we don't have a lot of iSCSI at our shop; this made it a little bit more cumbersome for us since we're generally Fiber-attached. This was resolved after we contacted HPE support.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Since we're an EMC shop, we test a lot of stuff.What other advice do I have?It's a good product. We like it so far and haven't been unhappy with it.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-18T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user178500 from
Flash storage is worth it for performance advantage and simplicity.We were running HP servers and an HP storage area network (SAN), but with the business’s growth we were coming to a point where we either needed to upgrade the CPU and buy additional disks for the SAN, or replace everything – we considered both possibilities.The application provider did have a version running on Windows, but we wanted the proven stability of UNIX, and in particular of HP’s HP-UX. MomentumPro is business-critical, and runs all our inventory and financial systems. We considered systems based on other UNIX platforms, but that would have involved bringing in a completely new operating system, which would add additional risk. If we had a year for the project we might have looked at other UNIX versions, but our business’s rapid expansion meant we had tight timescales– so we stayed on HP-UX to simplify the migration.Once we had decided on HP-UX, we looked at the blades, storage and chassis available from HP. The blade system had the benefit that, as well as handling the expansion of the ERP, we could consolidate Windows environments and other servers onto the new infrastructure.We chose an infrastructure housed in an HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosure, and it selected an HP Integrity BL870c i4 Server Blade featuring HP-UX 11i v3. For storage, we selected HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 Storage system with thirty-two 480GB solid state disks (SSDs). The system includes HP FlexFabric interconnects.Had we upgraded, we would have had perhaps just a year before we had to upgrade again. Also, with an upgrade, maintenance costs are increasing each year – but the replacement system included support, so we are ahead on operating expenditure.When we did a comparison, the replacement was lower in cost than the upgrade, with a fifteen month payback period on the hardware. By replacing the system, we could build everything and get it up and running without interfering with the current operation. If we had done an upgrade, there would have been significant downtime, even if there were no problems – but with a replacement we could build it all in parallel, do comprehensive testing and make sure everything was working.The implementation went extremely well, and the engineering support people at HP were excellent – everything was here on time or early, and it all went smoothly. We built the new system and got the operating system loaded, the disks up and database restored, and were able to run tests till satisfied to give us a comfort factor. Then we took the users off the system and started the migration of data at 6pm, and had everything up and running by 11pm that night.With the new infrastructure, the biggest single benefit is improved performance, not least due to the system’s solid state storage.The 3PAR storage was worth it for the performance advantage. We knew we had to speed up the processing, if we expand into Western Australia we would lose three hours from the overnight window, due to the time difference. We had to do the same tasks in a smaller timeframe.The old system would already have been unable to cope – we would have been on about 99 per cent CPU, but at the moment we’re sitting at 15 per cent CPU. It’s a massive change – we would have been happy with a 50 per cent improvement, but we’ve got almost an 80 per cent increase. While the store rollout is the priority, we’re also going to look at adding extra functionality in the ERP application. In the past we were constrained by hardware performance, but the new system is giving us the opportunity to add more modules.By moving from a rack-based server system to blades, we will be able to shrink infrastructure from eight cabinets to only two. HP’s de-duplication features will also save us money, as we will need to buy fewer disks to migrate our existing external servers onto Hyper-V virtual machines on the blades. We were at full storage capacity on the old system, but now with the 3PAR we will be at around 70 per cent after we have migrated Exchange onto the infrastructure – and that’s even before we add in the benefits of de-duplication.This was a deliberate choice – we wanted a system with the flexibility to grow, without having to buy hardware now that we wouldn’t use for six or twelve months. The project has gone very well and exceeded my expectations, and I was surprised at the ease of deployment– all the different components integrated well together.Overall, the biggest benefits for us were performance, simplicity of implementation and cost. Due to this positive experience with HP, we’re now looking at working with them in other areas of our business, and we’re already rolling out HP thin clients at some of our stores.Disclaimer: IT Central Station has made contact with the reviewer to validate that the person is a real user. The information in the posting is based upon a vendor-supplied case study, but the reviewer has confirmed the content's accuracy.Date published: 2015-03-12T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Jeff Stone from
The flexibility and ability to adjust to business needs is where its robustness isWhat is our primary use case?We target 3PAR because of the availability aspects that it brings with a synchronous replication. I work with a lot of medical and larger business organizations which are looking for the ability to run stretch clustering between data centers. If they lose a full data center, they can use this to flap over live without application downtime. This is probably the biggest thing that comes into play from an availability aspect. Then, there is also inherently a lot of the performance which comes with it. E.g., if I have a lot of high demand applications, it is one of those where the system, the all-flash array, the 8450, and even the 9450 that recently came out, can keep the latency and response time down.How has it helped my organization?A lot of it has to do with its ability to stretch between data centers. It has helped a lot for times when our customers do DR testing. Instead of having to spin down and spin up, I can do it live and seamless. Therefore, I do not have to schedule downtime with an organization. Especially maintenance on arrays, if I need to do some maintenance, it could potentially slow down somethings or even take things offline.With 3PAR, I can transparently sort of flap over to that other data center and do all the maintenance I need to do (even if it means forklift upgrading things). I can do this without having to take applications down. For a place like a hospital, which is open 24/7/365, it can't suffer downtime. That is why this product is one of those nice game changers.It allows me to do so much and worry about taking care of the clients, instead of how do I keep things up.What is most valuable?Its biggest feature is the ability to do a lot of stretch clustering. When I look at a couple of the other arrays, sometimes I have to put extra layers on top where I can do this natively. It works with Hyper-V, VMware, and physical servers. I can keep that storage up transparently when it flops over and also to the kind of the way that it integrates with other stuff in the portfolio, like a Nimble and StoreOnce, to offload like snapshots. Therefore, I am not eating up a lot of what we call Tier 1 data for retention, when I am trying to keep data for archival purposes. I can offload it to less expensive storage.It all works in concert using Recovery Manager Central (RMC). HPE coordinates it all, so it is more of a solution instead of products trying to do things together.What needs improvement?Some people are talking about getting NVMe drives in with faster flash. However, I think that is on the roadmap. I was at Aspire this year, and they were talking about the next chassis and they are ready for it. It is just a matter of getting them in.Feature-wise, with the InfoSight additions, there is a lot of the stuff missing in the intelligent interface. As they grow and push, a lot of it will not tie into Hyper-V. I have a lot of clients with Hyper V, so having that put into InfoSight because I have a lot of clients who run half-and-half or a lot on Hyper-V, especially a lot of schools with public domains. There has been a shift more to Hyper V because the features are really good now, and getting those analytics would really help.With OneView, there are some challenges. When I set up the Peer Persistence, it is very hard to manage zoning from OneView for arrays. We have eight 3PARs out there right now, and we do all our zoning outside of OneView, which is the opposite of what they say to do.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability is nice. A lot of other systems have two to four controllers. From a performance perspective that gets into availability, it can suffer parts failures. The nice part about 3PAR is it starts getting into the six to eight node controllers, if I want to scale up. It is built-in there, and what helps with that is they from almost a managed services, or service provider background, before HPE even acquired them. They have a great structure, where if I have different business units, I need to get granular access. I can create separate domains for clients, but then manage it a little bit differently. The flexibility and ability to adjust to business needs is where its robustness is. Sometimes that adds some complications to the setup and the configuration, but sometimes that is needed based on what the business is trying to do with it.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?If I need to step up performance-wise, I can add additional controllers. As far as different systems, if I need to go between the 8000, 9000 or the 20000, I can get into the multi-petabyte and still maintain massive performance, if needed. Therefore, I can start low, even with small businesses. I can look at a two-node 8200, but then if I need to go big, I can get into the eight-node 20000.It is a nice family of products. It adjusts for even the smallest client and largest business clients.How is customer service and technical support?Usually if it gets to the point where we can't solve it, we will getting on the horn with technical support. Recently, we did have an under the hood issue which came up, and we know where to go or who to contact. Normal support has been good, but if I have to, we can get with their team that is developing the code.HPE even hooked me up. There is one guy who is writing their Remote Copy Software, and there is an inherent little bug we found. We have a pretty complex solution, and unfortunately, somebody always has to be the person to find the bug. The nice part is how they responded to it. Their team all came together, and everybody has been real responsive, even to this day. The VP and their product manager are emailing me, and I receive email updates, even as recent as yesterday. They are staying involved and care about the client.Reactive is normal support, you do not go there. What will happen, and this is what we are excited about, InfoSight from the Nimble acquisition has a lot more of that predictive information because that is where I am pushing my clients to shift. They should be at the right OS level, so we can get those heuristics in there, because a lot of that information is will help. If something is going wrong, then we can identify it ahead of time, because it is easier to prevent than it is to repair.One of the reason why I think HPE bought Nimble is not so much for the Nimble Storage, but for the InfoSight part of it. A lot of the intelligence and data center will help resolve those last little issues regarding, "Why did we have downtime?" We should have seen this coming.There have been a couple bumps with some of the support stuff, but HPE needs to sort that stuff out and that is where I hope Nimble will help because they are well-known for their support. For example, there were a few goofy things with support where we were trying to do OS upgrades and HPE MyRoom failed. However, they would not get on WebEx because they are only allowed to get on HPE MyRoom. Therefore, we had to reschedule an upgrade three times because of it. It was one of those where it was no one person's fault. It was just a policy and procedure issues. So, I am looking forward to getting some of these things cleaned up.I would rate the technical support as a nine out of 10.Which solutions did we use previously?It is the availability aspect. Over the last few years, I have done a lot of shifts where people come off of Dell, Hitachi arrays, or even some other products within the HPE line, and they need either the performance or the availability. The availability that they want to put in is a lot of time a type of Peer Persistence setup. We are selling at least two 3PARS where they have multiple data centers, so if an array goes down in the same data center, the customer can lose a whole array and still stay up because they have peer persistence set up. That has probably been the single biggest selling feature: availability. Nobody wants to be the person in the news that is down or costing their shareholders money. Thus, availability has been a real big push, and 3PAR does availability really well.How was the initial setup?If you have never set up a 3PAR, it can be daunting. There are a lot nerd knobs. There are a lot of things that we can turn on and adjust. It is easy to get lost in 3PAR. This is where our organization gives a lot of our time, in the setup.A lot of times people play with buttons just because they are there. That is where you can get in a little trouble with 3PAR. This is because there is plenty of stuff to do. That is where we try to get ahead of the game, and help them with planning and architecture, e.g., here is what we will do and here is what we will set up and do, because you can get yourself into trouble playing with everything.We have a pretty good routine down now where the last two arrays that I did were all-flash 8450s, including racking time, and it took less than probably a handful of hours before we were up and running. We did about eight shelves. It is not overly complicated. It is more the OS and configuration which take more time. Usually, most installs never go beyond a day. The rest of it is just fine tuning and adjusting to the environment, depending on the size of the array.What was our ROI?Even as we have upgraded the product, one client that I work with a lot has eight 3PARs. They had two of the old 10000 arrays, all three tiers of disks, and they traversed about three to three and a half racks each. Therefore, we had almost six and a half to seven racks of storage. When we went to ...Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner.Date published: 2018-06-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user227073 from
Convergence with the HPE/VMware ecosystem? is a feature we've found valuable.Valuable Features:* High granularity* Easy to use* Convergence with the HPE/VMware ecosystemImprovements to My Organization:3PAR's ease-of-use has really improved our functioning because it requires less administration and less tuning. It really just works.Room for Improvement:We need something with less performance and lower cost to fill a gap in our customer solution offerings. We'd like to be able to have something like branch office storage, which is still capable of interacting with enterprise systems like 3PAR 8400, for example, in terms of replication, backup capability, peer motion, etc. Specifically, we need lower end 3PAR devices. Sometimes, we need 3PAR for the same cost of an MSA2040 to replace it.Deployment Issues:There have been no issues with deploying it.Stability Issues:We had some issues with power down recovery and boot disk issues. Other than that, it's a stable solution.Scalability Issues:We had no issues scaling it for our needs.Other Advice:3PAR made its success by scaling down enterprise systems to the mid-range level, which was not typical for the storage market. Although no one cares about inventing something cheap, HP did it with 3PAR and succeeded.But my advice would to try it! It's cool.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We are both customer and partner. We are integrators with pretty advanced internal architecture.Date published: 2016-04-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Steve Davidek from
Ease of use and reduced power consumption are among the key features for usWhat is our primary use case?We use it as our main data storage for everything from SQL Server, storage, databases, to all our virtual machines - servers and desktops - to file storage for everything: for the city's mapping. We use it for just about everything we do.The performance is amazing. It's been probably one of the best products we've bought in years.How has it helped my organization?We upgraded to 3PAR from an HPE EVA about seven or eight years ago and power consumption went down.What is most valuable?* Ease of use / very user-friendly* Ease of adding on* InexpensiveWhat needs improvement?In the next release, I would like them to make it a little easier to find where everything is in the new console. It now has the OneView look and sometimes I don't think the OneView look is enough. It's too different from the original console that was a separate system. I haven't totally learned it. I knew where everything was, and now I think to myself, "Why do I have to go there? It doesn't logically make sense."For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It's very scalable.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is not as good as I would like. Our biggest problem is usually the language barrier. I don't want to say anything derogatory, but sometimes we have a hard time understanding what they want us to do. And sometimes the required upgrades have been a little bit involved: "You have to do this before you do this," and I want them to explain to me why. It's more work than it should be.Which solutions did we use previously?When we knew we were at end-of-life. I have a product lifecycle that I keep track of, how long I want to keep things. We knew that our HPE EVA was running long enough that we really needed to replace it. I was looking, I got some ideas from our vendor - from HPE - on what solutions there were to replace it. We were able to cut our power consumption by 80 percent. We're very happy with 3PAR.In selecting a vendor what was important to us were ease of use, that it was easy to transfer the current data without a lot of trouble, and it was. It was really easy. It was moved and it was done.How was the initial setup?It took me a day to totally get everything in my mind regarding what we need to do and to teach my staff how to use it.What was our ROI?The total cost of ownership really is worth every penny.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at a few others, but I'm probably one of those people who just prefer to have one vendor for almost everything. I'm pretty much an HPE shop.What other advice do I have?My advice is, look beyond the sales pitch. Talk to customers, and find out how they're really using it and how easy it is to use. Because, sometimes the sales pitches, in my opinion, it doesn't really get how people are using it day to day.I can't imagine not having 3PAR. We're very happy with it. I just bought more storage and actually bought another 3PAR which is being installed next week. We're continually adding on to it, and I would consider that one of the bests things we could do because you can never have enough space to put everything. I work for a local government. We now even now have body-worn camera videos, and we somehow have to store them temporarily before they put out to cloud storage. We need good, reliable data because we never want to get caught not having something we need.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user568047 from
We like the reports provided by the management console and the web-based interface for some parts of the monitoring.What is most valuable?The main features are good pricing, very good options, and ease of use. From a management point of view, the reports provided by the management console are very good.What needs improvement?We are pretty happy with what we have. One small disappointment was when we invested in an HPE 3PAR 7440c two years ago. We had heard that it was supposed to be a long-term system. Around a year later, when they answered our RFP, it was for an HPE 3PAR 8400c, which was already on the market. The HPE 3PAR 7440c system was a bit old. I would appreciate if they made more of an investment in the “c” series.We are wondering what we should do for the next purchase, because we want to invest for five years going forward to protect our investment. I know that we have the support for new, huge capacity, so on the technical side, there is no pressure.I would like to see a bit of improvement from the new managed interface because they have this Windows client which was used in the past. I don't remember the exact name of it, but it worked fine.The new web-based interface for reports is great for some parts of the monitoring. But for day-to-day usage, it’s not very user-friendly.What do I think about the stability of the solution?This solution has been in production for a year and a half, and we have installed everything on it. It’s 99% stable. We had some crashes, but they were due to technical problems. All companies have these kinds of things happen.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability of this solution is pretty easy. When we did the initial sizing of the solution, I estimated our business needs at the time. Approximately three years ago, the estimate was about 700 TBs in total. We had two sites, so I sized it with all of the documentation and with staff feedback to have it grow in size to 1.5 PBs per site. That comes out to 3 PBs in total.We have had very extensive growth due to some medical applications we use, such as DNA and image analysis. We are up to 2 PBs for each system. This is our maximum capacity, but it's our problem because we scaled it up too much.How is customer service and technical support?I have used technical support and they are pretty good, responsive, and quick. Many companies outsource technical support and then you have a very process-by-process situation. Overall, the technical support is okay. We've had some problems, but we can survive.Which solutions did we use previously?When I arrived two and a half years ago, they were using multiple Windows solutions. They were using NetApp for all of the file services and we decided to separate. We decided to keep NetApp for all these file services, but I suggested that we use FlexArray in order to virtualize our NetApp tool with a disk from HPE 3PAR.They also had a lot of Hitachi Data Systems (HDS). They were customers of Hitachi for 10-15 years. They had multiple systems. My goal was to consolidate everything on those boxes. Currently, we have one storage box per site. There are almost 2 PBs for each site and we have storage arrays to perform the deduplications and backups.Since I already had experience with storage solutions for almost 15 years with IBM and Hitachi solutions, I did an RFP to find our next provider of a storage solution. I made a request for features. As a public institution, we are primarily focused on price, and the competitive price was one of things I really appreciated about HPE.How was the initial setup?I was involved in the initial setup and it was really, really straightforward and easy. Because we are one of the biggest customers of HPE 3PAR solutions in Switzerland, our problem was that the consultants weren’t with us during the installation. The installation was just done by installation wizards.When we did some auditing, we requested a highly technical guy from HPE to come directly to us. They sent us someone from another city and he did okay, given our large environment. For our environment, installation wizards are not so good. We needed to fine-tune the installation. For basic environments, for perhaps 70-90% of installations, the installation wizard should be okay.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We received four replies on the RFP, and HPE beat them all in terms of price.What other advice do I have?You need a good service contract. HPE has a solution called Datacenter Care. If you are a big, critical customer, then you should get this type of contract.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-01-10T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Tony Rigby from
The most valuable feature for us is the ease of 3PAR's scalability. The tech support structure is also not as clunky as with other organizations.Valuable FeaturesThe most valuable feature for us is the ease of 3PAR's scalability. We have 330 different organizations within our company; we do anything and everything. That's why scalability of 3PAR is so important to us.Improvements to My OrganizationIt provides us with on-demand service. For example, if we win a contract but don't have access to a service facility until midnight, we have to be able to "flood in" suddenly to keep the services running without any downtime. We have to be able to keep the systems running instantaneously and don't have the luxury of, say, a three-month provisioning or a new-chassis swap. So with 3PAR, we're able to provide on-demand service.Room for ImprovementIt needs to provide better customer visibility of what's going on. For example, having access to a customer's ticketing system if only on a real-time, read-only basis could be a perspective that's extremely helpful. It's important that we have clear and open lines of communications with our customers, and 3PAR doesn't provide that yet to meet our needs.Use of SolutionI first got involved with 3PAR in 2006.Stability IssuesWe have a large number of HP storage products and 3PAR is by far the most stable. We do have a couple of clusters that have normal, standard discs, and these are so stable. We wanted something high-end, and that's why we went with 3PAR. If something goes wrong, we know it's not a hardware issue, but rather the software configuration that's running on it.Scalability IssuesI'm normally used to reaching the point of a system where you just can't expand it any further and need to do a step change, swapping out a base unit or something like that. With 3PAR, that problem doesn't exist -- you just keep adding to it and capacity grows in a nice, linear fashion. If I want to add just a terabyte, I don't have to add 100 terabytes. Expansion of 3PAR is very, very smooth.Customer Service and Technical SupportFrom an ownership perspective, I like the technical support HP provides because they're better engineers. The tech support structure is also not as clunky as with other organizations and there's a better spread of skill-sets amongst techs. So overall, technical support is pretty good.Other AdviceIf you speak to your techies, as opposed to your managers, and ask them how easy it is for them to use and understand 3PAR, they'll say it gets a 10/10. The techies get it and they love it.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-01-13T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user193209 from
The wizard guides you through the installation process and the possibility/feature to move data across tiers (AO) is great.Valuable Features* Peer Motion* On-line import* AOImprovements to My OrganizationAs a 3PAR consultant, I have installed systems for a lot of customers, municipalities, and other state authorities. I cannot speak for them, but the results are very good. The possibility/feature to move data across tiers (AO) has been a great feature, and of course the possibility to non-disruptively migrate from current storage system to 3PAR.Room for ImprovementDeduplication on FC disks needs improvement.Use of SolutionI've used it for two years.Deployment IssuesAs a 3PAR consultant, I’ve seen some deployment issues with the broadcast-handshake procedure between 3PAR and the service processor.Stability IssuesI did find a bug in the system in 3.1.2 MU3. Deleted data on the 3PAR did not reclaim the deleted space.Scalability IssuesNo issues encountered.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: No issues encountered.Technical Support: 9/10.Previous Solutions9/10.Initial SetupInitial setup is straightforward. The wizard guides you through the installation process, but I always install the 3PAR and SP via CLI to eliminate any deployment issues that may occur when using the wizard.Implementation TeamImplementing 3PAR StoreServ for clients as a vendor, we have the highest level of expertise, but it would be naive to rate my own level of expertise without any of my clients' inputs. However, I’ve been working with implementation, upgrade and maintaining 3PAR systems for two years with certifications and continuous information regarding anything that happens within the 3PAR storage.ROISince our company doesn’t own any 3PARs I cannot respond correctly on this question. I consolidate, install, upgrade, and maintain the 3PARs.Pricing, Setup Cost and LicensingWait for the right opportunity as HP tends to do “3PAR bundles”. They bundle 3PAR storage and software licenses at a great discount, so never accept the listing price for a 3PAR, but that goes without saying.Other Solutions ConsideredAs an IT consultant, it’s my job to compare different storage solutions. Many of our customers want our consultation where I evaluate and recommend different products depending on the business needs and demands. The other products that usually come in play are Dell, EMC, and NetApp. I’ve also seen some evaluations on a “new” storage manufacturer, Tintri.Other AdviceI can clearly see a trend of implementing a full flash array instead of the traditional 3PAR hybrid solution. Why? Well, the cost of SSD is dropping steady and the $/GB is less than FC disks when using deduplication, which is to this date, only applicable on SSD tier. You will not only have lower $/GB, you also significantly increase the performance, stability, and durability. For a smooth start-up, make sure you have done a valid assessment in your environment before implementing a new 3PAR. Read about the different software that 3PAR can offer your business.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-06-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Eduardo Fontanella from
The solution, stability, and the performance work well for usHow has it helped my organization?All our data is in 3PAR.Our application worked well after we implemented the 3PAR solution.What is most valuable?* Stability* PerformanceThese features are why we like this product.What needs improvement?The newer versions have some other characteristics that we are not using. We would like to use them and set them up in our current version.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is reliable. The product is rich and very stable. Since we started, we have not had any problems.Also, we have some upgrades that we have needed to start for a while. However, stability is a characteristic of the product.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have not upgraded the size of the discs since we started.How is customer service and technical support?Support is good. Every time that we contacted HPE, the problems were solved within a good time frame.Which solutions did we use previously?Previously, we had another solution where we have some problems. The application would be waiting for the IO. With 3PAR, everything was solved.The solution, stability, and the performance work well for us.What about the implementation team?HPE helped us set it up and the product worked well afterwards.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Hamilton Ribeiro Dos Santos from
Robust solution which provides fast access to our dataHow has it helped my organization?It has provided a robust technology which provides us with fast access to the data. This is one of the areas where it has improved our company.What is most valuable?3PAR is very fast and robust.What needs improvement?I have been looking into additional functionalities of 3PAR but at this moment we are very satisfied with the basic functionality.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It's stable. I can't recall any problem with the 3PAR technology.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It's scalable. We are creating a plan, with our HPE partner in Brazil to duplicate our 3PAR environment because for us it is very important. It's the base of our data center.How is customer service and technical support?Support Is very good. We get to resolutions very quickly. Our partner in Brazil is there for us every time.What other advice do I have?I give it a nine out of 10. 3PAR is very good, but not perfect.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SystemsE65a1 from
Very easy to use with pretty good supportWhat is our primary use case?3PAR is our primary storage for everything aside from VDI, which is where we are using our Nimble.We use everything from point of sale to database. Those are the two big mission-critical applications. There is also virtualization for servers.How has it helped my organization?It makes for less administrative overhead.The solution has improved our throughput by helping us keep up with the demand and acquisitions that we have been going through.What is most valuable?* Easy to use* Easy to deployThe quick, easy deployment, along with its administration, are its most valuable features.What needs improvement?I would like to have more details on alerting. It is not real granular right now. What It gives you is sort of basic, and we can't do a lot of tweaking on our own. We would like to be able to tweak some of the alerts for our team.For how long have I used the solution?I am fairly new to using 3PAR. I have only been with the company for about a year, using 3PAR during that time.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It has been a lot more stable over the past year that I have using it. Early on, we did have some issues, but working with HPE, we were quickly able to fix all that. Since then, it has been very stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It does help with the growth, mainly in some of the point of sale systems that we need.How are customer service and technical support?I would rate the technical support about a seven or eight (out of ten). They have been pretty good. The response time has been pretty good for any issues that we have had. From a hardware standpoint, we haven't had that much. It has been more from a software side, and we have had some pretty good responses from HPE.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was straightforward. It is quick and very intuitive. You can turn it on and figure out pretty much what you need to do right away. You don't have to have too much hand-holding for it. So, it's fairly easy to use.What about the implementation team?We did it all on our own.What was our ROI?The solution has increased our performance.It has reduced time to deployment by about 30 percent, mainly from the virtualization server standpoint.Which other solutions did I evaluate?I have used a number of different storage solutions, and the HPE products are probably the best from an ease of use and administrative standpoint.What other advice do I have?From my experience in the past with other storage solutions, it is very easy to use with pretty good support. So far, from what I have seen, I do like it.It is a real good solution. It is probably one of the better storage solutions for large enterprises and main back-end storage that I have used in the past.We do the InfoSight predictive analytics. We have just gotten into it with the 3PAR storage, as we have mainly used it on the Nimble side.We actually don't use the deduplication right now. That is something that we have looked into, but haven't implemented yet.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-09T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user368673 from
The most valuable features for us are the switches, which have either 24 or 56 ports, and their connection to the blade servers.What is most valuable?The most valuable features for us are the switches, which have either 24 or 56 ports, and their connection to the blade servers.How has it helped my organization?We've had faster internet connectivity and improved communications between various groups in our organization. And of course, this means that we are more efficient and can use resources more cost-effectively.What needs improvement?It's an expensive solution, so lowering the entry point for owning this solution would be a great improvement. Also, it should include an SSD for big data, something we could really use.What was my experience with deployment of the solution?It deploys just without issues for us.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is always very good.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We currently have 400 employees, and I believe it will scale for us.How is customer service and technical support?10/10How was the initial setup?It was very easy and straightforward to set up.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Dharmendra Gurtata from
Provides us with robust operations although the product support needs improvementHow has it helped my organization?It has kept our operations robust.What is most valuable?What I like is the flexibility and the pricing of the storage compared to other enterprise storage solutions. Also, the technology - they use chunklets, they spread the data out and offer resiliency.What needs improvement?The product is sturdy, it's robust, it fulfills its purpose. However, if the support guys or the installers, those who are deploying it, would show us all the features, I think that's would improve things.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It has very stable. We had one or two hiccups initially, but the HPE engineering team took care of them.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?For us it's scalable, absolutely. We are not using it that much. It can scale beyond our needs.How is customer service and technical support?Support is the biggest downside. I'm not so happy with support. I'm happy with HPE's products. HPE being an engineering company, they provide world-class products. But where we are struggling is with the services, the timeliness and how they deliver and support those products.Which solutions did we use previously?We were an XP7 shop and we went from that to 3PAR.How was the initial setup?The setup is becoming more straightforward now. Initially, we had hiccups during the upgrades and they caused some outages in our environment.Now, the upgrades are doable at the customer level. They're point-and-click. They have brought the administrative functions down to the user level.What was our ROI?We actually bought the most recent model six months ago. We bought two units, and that was based on our ROI analysis.What other advice do I have?I rate the product itself at nine out of 10, but support gets a four out of 10.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user427308 from
We have additional space in the enclosures for additional disks, so we can scale up without any downtimeWhat is our primary use case?Our use case is Oracle, VMware, and Citrix. Performance is good, but our main scope is to have high availability.How has it helped my organization?We have 24 hour production, so it is working.What is most valuable?High availability features are the most important for us.What needs improvement?Maybe someone can add the suite of features into the Synergy enclosures. That would be a great feature for us.I would like them to improve it so I can do firmware upgrades without downtime.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is very stable. That is why we bought it.Sometimes when we do firmware upgrades, then we must have downtime, but this is plant maintenance.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability is very good. We now use only 50% of controllers, so we can scale up from 50% to 100%, when we need it. We also have additional space in the enclosures for additional disks, so we can scale up without any downtime.How is customer service and technical support?We have automatic technical support.We have called technical support. They are helpful and do not give you the runaround.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We have compared a lot of vendors and this was the best solution for us. We were running it when it was originally 3PAR and was not merged with HPE.We are very happy with the solution.What other advice do I have?I would recommend this solution.Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Support is very important for us and the reaction time when we have a problem.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner.Date published: 2017-12-26T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user680250 from
It has been easier to provision storage and it has been faster using it.What is most valuable?The most valuable feature is being all-flash. We have an all-flash SAN. It has been great having production systems be much faster than they were previously. The UI is nice. It is easy to work with.How has it helped my organization?It has been easier to provision storage and it has been faster using it.What needs improvement?I would like to see compression and deduplication. I know that future versions of the software will have compression.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability got off to a rocky start. It has been much more stable after we went through some best practices guides. We ran into some issues where we had to work with support and high level engineers to get through. It was not something that was readily apparent, but we were able to overcome those issues. Had we followed the best practices guide from the beginning, it might have been avoided.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have scaled it and the scalability is great. You have to add everything in pairs though, so we're at a point now where a small addition would require some extra overhead. In general, we've been able to double the storage and get better availability out of it. It wasn't too crazy.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support has been helpful when I've been able to reach them. We would try to submit support cases online and that didn't work. I never heard back from them. I finally figured out there was a phone number to call. Everyone likes to do everything online if they can, but the phone number has gotten me through to support.Which solutions did we use previously?Our SAN was outdated, so we needed to get something new. We evaluated some different vendors instead of sticking with our typical one. We ended up switching over to 3PAR. We were using EMC VNX. This decision took place before I came on-board, but I believe the short list was HPE was EMC.When selecting a vendor I look for support. That is ironic, given my previous answer that indicated otherwise. Support is a big deal. If you need help, you want to be able to get it.How was the initial setup?I was not involved in the installation. I wish I would have been involved. I inherited it.What other advice do I have?Read the best practices guides.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-15T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user680313 from
Data optimization is the most valuable feature of this solution.What is most valuable?Data optimization, i.e., basically we have an adaptive and dynamic optimization about the clear structure of the data and this is the most valuable feature that comes with the HPE 3PAR solution.How has it helped my organization?This product is scalable, i.e., when you have a need for the performance and to grow online, without having any downtime. It's really optimized for any application.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It's pretty strong; actually, it is five nines (99.999 percent).What do I think about the scalability of the solution?You can scale as per the demand and definitely, you can start with a one disk enclosure and then go up to nine to twelve disk enclosures, without having any performance issues.How is customer service and technical support?I'm really impressed with the technical support, the team is very effective and they do resolve issues on time.How was the initial setup?The setup was pretty straightforward.What other advice do I have?I would definitely recommend it.The reliability, scalability and support are the important criteria whilst selecting a vendor.We've been with HPE for a long time and we'll stick with it.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-18T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user252639 from
We value this solution for its performance and manageability.Valuable FeaturesOur most important criteria when selecting a vendor for Flash Storage is partnership. Additionally, we value this solution for its performance and manageability.Improvements to My OrganizationDuring the migration process, we have had to troubleshoot less than in the past.Stability IssuesThe stability is fine. We put disks in the system a couple of weeks ago, which went off without a hitch.Scalability IssuesWe haven’t had any issues with scalabilityCustomer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: We haven’t had any issues. We wanted white-glove treatment and that’s what we got.Technical Support: We haven’t had any issues. We wanted white-glove treatment and that’s what we got.Previous SolutionsWe ran on NetApp and had maintenance, performance, and troubleshooting issues.Initial SetupThe initial setup of 3PAR was straightforward.Other Solutions ConsideredWe also looked at BMC.Other AdviceThe solution is great and I haven’t had an issue.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-06-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Jay Liu from
I can provision disks and monitor the performance easilyWhat is our primary use case?Our use case is primary storage.How has it helped my organization?Forest who actually take a back up of our databases, like snapshot, to another volume and snapchat to be melded for a different operating systems, which has helped us tremendously as far as speed and time to completion.What is most valuable?It is very easy to manage. I can provision disks and monitor the performance easily.What needs improvement?I would like to see the reliability improve. While it has been a good product, the QA of the product could be done a little more thoroughly.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We had a rocky start. It has been stable for last year or so.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It should meet our needs going forward.How is customer service and technical support?Support has been great. We find the people knowledgeable, and it is easy to find the right person for anything.We did have a rocky start. However, support has been with us all the way to remedy issues.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was straightforward and easy to setup. It can be done in a couple of days.What was our ROI?It has greatly reduced my management overhead time. Therefore, it has been good.What other advice do I have?The performance is pretty good and the usability is excellent. The only thing which will downgrade it is the stability.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Mark Gunnell from
It has simplified the management of the array.What is most valuable?There are tools in place that allowed easy migration from our existing infrastructure, i.e., our EVA arrays. We have a great relationship with HPE that has worked over many years. We have great confidence in what they can deliver for us and that it will fit in well with our existing environment.How has it helped my organization?The availability of the 3PAR array is the greatest benefit. The ability to perform upgrades to the machine while it remains online is very valuable. It saved us from making our systems unavailable. In addition, the tools that are built into the 3PAR array are a significant improvement and give us great visibility into what's actually being used and how it's being used. It has simplified the management of the array.What needs improvement?If you're familiar with 3PAR, there are multiple GUIs that have been available over a course of time and the new SSMC GUI is excellent. It has great consistency against the HPE line, so that an operator is immediately familiar with it. However, there are a few features that were included in the previous GUI that haven't been brought forward, or maybe are not quite as obvious. I would like to see some of those previous resources brought forward, or at least an option to see an emulation of that previous GUI.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We had great availability and stability with our previous HPE arrays and that has continued with 3PAR. We have not had a single incident of downtime nor have we had any service interruptions of any kind.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability seems to be very good. I think it's been one of the strengths of HPE products in the array space for a long time. With 3PAR, the scalability is excellent.How is customer service and technical support?The technical support is very good. The folks that have come in to work with us, particularly on some of our software upgrades on the machine, have been excellent. The field service staff is just superior.How was the initial setup?I was involved in the initial setup and it was complex. There is more to it than there was in previous arrays, but I think that really ties into making the machine valuable to us. We probably have to rely on HPE a little more for the setup, but they did such a great job. I understand that it was necessary and I appreciate it.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Our arrays were getting on the older side. The new array fits in with our existing infrastructure very well. We have a great history with HPE support and it wasn't a difficult sell. We did look at other options, but in reality, because of the long-standing great relationship and outstanding support, we went with HPE.What other advice do I have?For their own benefit, they really should consider 3PAR. It's so reliable, functional, has great support from HPE, and it is tied into so many of the HPE family of products. It is a great piece of hardware.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-19T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Somboon Leeputtaphan from
AO, CLI, and the Performance reports are the most valuable featuresWhat is our primary use case?It's used for allocating disk to many servers.How has it helped my organization?It has high availability, and it's flexible to tuning for system admin.What is most valuable?* AO* CLI* Performance report.What needs improvement?Integrate to monitor with CentOS.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-02-13T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567840 from
The most valuable features are integrity, performance, and stability.What is most valuable?The most valuable features are integrity, performance, and stability. It's a very good solution for the right price.How has it helped my organization?It's a better solution because we can operate faster than before.What needs improvement?If we could do more things online for the business, it would be great.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is good.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability is very good.How is customer service and technical support?The technical support is very good.Which solutions did we use previously?We knew that we needed a new solution because we couldn't do what was needed for the business, so we needed a new and better solution. Beforehand, we were using the HPE EVA solution.How was the initial setup?The setup was straightforward, without any kind of problems. We installed it very quickly.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We compared it with other products outside of HPE such as EMC CLARiiON. We chose 3PAR because it's a good product.The most important criteria when selecting a vendor is the way that we can negotiate things. It's very important for us.What other advice do I have?If you buy 3PAR, you will have a good and stable solution for your business.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-03-09T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567951 from
The scalability and the support are the most valuable features.What is most valuable?The most valuable features are the scalability and the support, because you need to keep the business running.How has it helped my organization?I am not sure that there are benefits over other solutions. It's just that we've always used HPE. I think it comes down again to be more about support and the scalability.What needs improvement?I would like to see a lot more monitoring and reporting out of the box.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is very stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We've scaled it up quite a bit. It doesn’t have any problems.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is getting better.Which solutions did we use previously?I used to use HPE EVA. We needed to switch because we couldn't expand anymore.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was complex. I was one of the first customers to get their StoreServ 7400. It wasn't a good experience at all. The guy who set it up didn't really understand the technology that he was building. He didn't have build documents. The solution that I was initially sold wasn't correct so the workloads failed. It was a nightmare.Which other solutions did I evaluate?I looked at things like Tintri and another company that I forget the name of now. They didn't have the support model that I needed at the time.What other advice do I have?I think that it's a more mature product now, so you’ll probably have a better experience; but certainly do your homework on your actual workloads and what you need. We initially got a solution which died all the time because we were trying to get too much output.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-01-10T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Brian-Earnst from
It was running well until we tried to split our two 3PARs and put them into two different data centersWhat is our primary use case?It runs all our tier one and two apps. Right now, we are replicating between two 3PARs and two different data centers. We use for our tier one and two apps, so they can do failover, synchronous replication.We have been running 3PAR for three years. It was running well until we tried to split our two 3PARs and put them into two different data centers. Then, we had a lot of problems.How has it helped my organization?I do not think it has changed the way that we function.When we were having problems, it actually hurt us. Before that, we did not have any problems.What is most valuable?The most valuable feature when we purchased it was that it was a four-node system. However, the throughput knowledge should be a lot better than what we previously had (EMC).What needs improvement?A lot of tasks, you have to manually set up. They need to already have them set up and working. Then, you can just go in and tweak them if you need to. There are a lot of things that we did not know that we needed to schedule and make happen, and that is what we found out six months ago.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability is a little lower than EMC, because of the problems that we have had. We ran EMC for the last 10 years and never had any problems with it.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have not scaled it up yet.How is customer service and technical support?We worked with technical support for six months to get the splitting 3PAR issue resolved. We met every day, until it was finally resolved, but it took six months. It was good that the issue was resolved, but we were disappointed it took so long.Which solutions did we use previously?3PAR was quite a bit less money than EMC, and that was one of the deciding factors.We switched because of the cost and 3PAR's four-node system, because they said we should get more throughput from the four-node system, since EMC is a two-node system.How was the initial setup?3PAR is more complex to set up and start than EMC. There are a lot more things that you have to do and know that you need to do. Where with EMC, stuff sits there and runs.The initial setup only took a few weeks to get it going. However, this is when we found out there were a lot of things that we did not have set up right. We just got these fixed about six months ago.What about the implementation team?HPE assisted us with the initial setup, but they did not tell us about all these other things which needed to be done.What was our ROI?For the amount of downtime that we have had, I do not know if it was a good option. We might have been better to spend the extra money and stay with EMC, therefore not experiencing any downtime.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?Purchasing maintenance: You can't get software maintenance from a third party. You have to do it from HPE, which is a letdown.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We did not evaluate other vendors.What other advice do I have?Evaluate if the money savings is worth it. One of the problems that we have had is HPE spec'd it out for us. They underspec'd it, so this was one of our problems with performance. It did not have the amount of drives in it that we needed.Pay attention to what you are spec'ing out and make sure that it will meet your requirements.It is a good product, but it is very software driven, and it has some software problems. That will be our challenge going forward. Once we go out of maintenance, how do we keep the system up-to-date software-wise, if we have problems purchasing maintenance?Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Cost is definitely part of it and reliability has to be there. When you buy something, you do not know what you are getting until you purchase it and put it into production. We did not do any type of try and buy. It was just off the word of the vendor.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-07-04T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Jose Newman from
Enabled us to consolidate down to a single platform which meets all of our needsHow has it helped my organization?From a management standpoint of the arrays, they work really well. They handle a lot of data and, overall, it lowers the complexity of our storage infrastructure. We've been able to consolidate down to a single platform which meets all of our demands, anywhere from our advanced meter systems to our customer information system.What is most valuable?When we started using 3PAR what we liked was the simplicity of the product. We needed a higher performance storage and, in our support model, we needed to keep the simplicity of the storage architecture, keep it as clean and as manageable as we could.What needs improvement?We have seen one area, where we have highly virtualized Solaris instances, where we're getting into the queue depth, so we probably need to do some work in the queue-depth area in the arrays. I'm not sure if its specific to Solaris, because we haven't encountered it on other platforms but, then again, on some of our largest Solaris frames, we are running several hundred virtual containers and we see the queue-depth issue there.For how long have I used the solution?More than five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It has been stable. It has been very reliable. I have no problems around it.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?As we transform and we're starting to move data, much more data, we're looking at the scalability. I don't have any indicators that it will not scale, but there is a lot of analysis we have to do. We're doing modeling of that data right now to see what decisions we will make in 2019. I am assuming we will maintain at least some 3PAR, but we may have to compliment it with something else, based on the demands we have around our data.How is customer service and technical support?From my experience, tech support has been good. I'm not directly interacting with support due to my role but the feedback I've received has been good.How was the initial setup?This is a question better answered by the guys who actually support it, but it's my understanding that the upgrade process is pretty seamless. They scheduled it over a weekend, they rolled the upgrade through, and it works pretty well. Occasionally, there are glitches they need to work through but, from what I have observed, they're minor.The process doesn't drag on. It's just planning, scheduling it, change tickets go in, and then they run it. It's a process that pretty much takes under a day. And then, after implementing, it's a matter of watching it to make sure everything is smooth after the upgrade finishes.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SrSymEngineer from
SSD, SAS and SATA disks in one box. Transparent failover between datacenters, delivers performance as promised.Valuable FeaturesSSD, SAS and SATA disks in one box, transparent failover between datacenters, delivers performance as promised.Improvements to My OrganizationLess data is stored in silos, more is kept in this central solution with advantages of raid, tiering and backup. We are looking into Flash, we already own some violin boxes and have a small capacitiy of SSD disks in the 3PAR.Room for ImprovementMonitoring and reporting.Use of Solution6 months, it’s predecessor HP 3PAR T400 for 6 years.Deployment IssuesSmall bugs in the GUI that were resolved in the latest version.Stability IssuesNo issues with stability.Scalability IssuesNo issues with scalability.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: 9/10.Technical Support: 9/10.Previous SolutionsNo, we owned its predecessor and were very happy with that.Initial SetupInitial setup was performed with a reseller, but you should have some idea about how you would like to ‘shape’ your environment. All can be altered afterwards if you would reconsider.Implementation TeamVendor team. I would rate them 8/10; An HP technical expert was needed for some configuration add-ons.Other Solutions ConsideredYes, comparable systems from Dell, EMC and Hitachi.Other AdviceOrganize a couple of meetings with the technical staff to build the storage array that will meet your demands. Knowing in front which type of RAID you will need and the type of IO will benefit you.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-01-28T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Lazar Mogin from
Stable and scalable, Care Packs provide great supportWhat is most valuable?It's pretty stable and scalable. I think we've only had a couple of issues, three disk outages in six years.What needs improvement?I don't have any complaints.For how long have I used the solution?More than five years.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It meets our needs for now.How is customer service and technical support?We have Care Packs for 3PAR and we are very satisfied with this part. On the C7000, we have six-hour auto repair. They're very proactive, so we are very satisfied with that service.How was the initial setup?I'm not working with 3PAR directly. I'm a manager. But from the experience of my employees, I don't see that they have any issues with complexity. To be honest, we have a senior administrator with a lot of experience with 3PAR and other vendors' storage, so I think it's not too complex for him.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user229386 from
We were looking for a way to simplify our storage management.Valuable Features* Virtual volume sets* Hosts sets* Remote copy* Snapshots* Storage tiering* We currently use SSD for a few databasesImprovements to My OrganizationOur storage management has been simplified and the performance has improved.Room for ImprovementWe have a need for a LUNS larger than 16TB but this unit does not support it.Use of SolutionI've used it for two years.Deployment IssuesWe had HP installers help with the setup and deployment.Stability IssuesWe haven't had an issue yet.Scalability IssuesNot so far.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: Customer service is excellent.Technical Support: It's excellent.Previous SolutionsAn EMR upgrade forced us to do a hardware refresh and HP was chosen for several reasons including cost, performance, and ease of use.Initial SetupIt was straightforward as HP did most of the setup.Implementation TeamWe a had a team from HP help with the installation and they were great.Other Solutions ConsideredWe also looked at EMC storage.Other AdviceI would highly recommend working with HP directly during the installation process. We had the system up and running with production data one week after the equipment arrived.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-04-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user230487 from
New disks can be added without any downtime at any point, and any provisioned disk can be expanded on-line.Valuable FeaturesAlthough the technology is packed with features, it's still very simple and intuitive to use at both hardware and software levels.Improvements to My OrganizationWe are now using thin provisioned disks from 3PAR attached to hosts. Using this feature, along with chunklet RAID technology, we are able to reduce the overall physical storage by about 40%. This was a significant change, as we are now able to run more resources and VMs. Also, we are using adaptive optimization, which automatically analyses CPG (disk groups) and makes automatic decisions to move high I/O regions of CPG to faster disks. This makes the provisioned disks attached to hosts work smoothly under any load.Room for ImprovementFrom my point of view, the part of this product that needs improvement is the reporting. I would like it to have richer graphic charts, more info, and more reports.Use of SolutionWe have been using 3PAR for more than a year now. We are using two 7200 devices. The first has 48 disks, and the second is equipped with eight flash SSD Disks and 56 SAS Disks. We are using the flash disks in combination with adaptive optimization technology to cache high I/O regions from disks to SSD. We have no dedicated flash storage, but the solution we are using is working great. Additionally, we own ab old HP EVA storage.Deployment IssuesWe had no deployment issues at all. and everything was done smoothly and without any issues.Stability IssuesSince we deployed 3PAR, there hasn't been any downtime, or other issue with stability. The main production 3PAR uptime is over 360 days to date and without any degradation in performance or any other issues.Scalability IssuesThe scalability is superb. New disks can added without any downtime at any point, and any provisioned disk can be expanded on-line.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: Customer service is good enough in our region.Technical Support: Technical support is great! HP 3PAR has a service processor that is connected to HP support directly, so HP is monitoring the status of our 3PAR storage. When any kind of issue or a warning is picked up by HP, we are get e-mails from them with recommendations on how to solve it. HP support also predicts failure of disks, and sends e-mail about disk changes before a disk failure occurs. This is a great level of support, and having this means we have no downtime or performance degradation at all!Previous SolutionsAs I mentioned earlier, we were using an HP EVA storage device, and it was not giving the right speed or IOPS we needed. We started to look at different solutions, starting with NetAPP and EMC, to HP and IBM. As the price and technologies of HP offered was better than the others, we decided to buy HP. And now, we are very happy with this solution and it is a great product!Initial SetupThe initial setup went easily as HP gave us training before we started the setup and use of 3PAR. This was a great experience, as we were working hand in hand with HP technicians on the initial setup, first run, etc. We gained a lot of experience and knowledge from them which enables us to go further with this product.Implementation TeamWe set up everything hand in hand. The HP team worked really perfectly, giving attention to every single detail. Also they were answering the questions we had at when we set it up.ROIROI is high, as the money spent on each GB of storage is slightly lower than any concurrent solution. We also got virtualization done on this product, so we have saved a lot of energy and costs on physical servers.Pricing, Setup Cost and LicensingThe original cost for two storage devices, was around US$200,000. Both devices have been in production for a year now, and we have not changed a part of it starting from the physical disks. It just works! As for other costs, it consumes about 1KW of energy.Other Solutions ConsideredAs I mentioned above, we had five or six vendor companies for storage. This was NetApp, EMC, IBM, HP, etc. We chose HP as the technology it has, had no real competitors at that time. Also the price was great!Other AdviceFor sure you should ask HP to present you the product and I think you'll love how simple and robust it is. It's a great product for mid-range, big companies, and banks. It's redundancy and expandability are great, and it is packed with a lot of features and technologies.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-04-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user233388 from
Has helped us speed up deployments and better track our I/O consumption.Valuable FeaturesFor the P10400, we didn’t license many of the features that would have made this product really shine. We bought it for its advertised scalability, active-active controller design, and uptime (non-disruptive upgrades, port virtualization, etc.). We have not upgraded its capacity, controller count, or connection count since we’ve bought it so the scalability piece really didn’t make much difference for us. The uptime piece, however, has been 100% since initial start-up which is great. Although we cannot service the unit ourselves, cage level availability and the support team that takes care of the InForm OS updates and failed hardware have made it a great array for simply servicing I/O with nothing fancy added in.The 7400 array is where things really start to shine for us on products and features. We initially bought this array as a production replacement of a set of EVA’s for file services and VMWare. As such it was important to us to have a reliable array that would balance itself, and was easier to upgrade than the P10400. It needed to support new OS’s fairly quickly and also have non-disruptive upgrades. We put that to the test when we added our test environment to the array. In that upgrade, only six months after initial purchase, it was very important that we could keep our test I/O from disrupting the production environment, so priority optimization became an important feature. We added two controllers, and doubled the size of the array to accommodate our test environment, and did so without downtime. The priority optimization is a real-time QoS component of the array that can be changed without disruption and takes effect in seconds. The six fibre ports per controller allow me to segregate I/O streams from VMWare and Windows to keep from having queue length and buffer issues or to simply balance out I/O load.Improvements to My Organization3PAR, in general, has helped us speed up deployments and better track our I/O consumption. We are able to speed up deployments because we are no longer having to install a vendor specific DSM/MPIO on top of the Microsoft OS or Linux ones as we did with the EVA line. System reporter allows us a more in depth look at our I/O utilization patterns in an easy to gather and archive way.Room for ImprovementLicensing is still a pain point. It has gotten better, as any spindle count based licensing is capped at a certain number of spindles depending on the model of the array, but it is still expensive as you must buy every feature. Many of the arrays available from competitors come with just one or two licenses to buy which cover the entire array no matter the spindle count. The arrays are also not very user serviceable, which is something I miss about the EVA. A field tech must come out to replace a drive which is something I could do myself with the EVA.Use of SolutionI've used the P10400 for three years, and I would rate it 7/10. Alongside this, I've been using the 7400 for one and half years, and say it's 8/10.Also, we are not currently using 3PAR flash storage but are planning an implementation. We are currently looking into flash to speed up our MS SQL for the logs and TempDB LUN’s. We are also looking into it as a possible future deployment for an as yet not deployed VDI implementation.Deployment IssuesWe didn’t encounter any issues with deployment. The pre-deployment guides were comprehensive and prepared us well for actual deployment of the product.Stability IssuesWe have only expanded the 7400, doubling its size in disk and controller count, and did it without any issues.Scalability IssuesNone yet.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: High. We have “proactive” support, so many times they are calling me about issues before or right as I see the alerts. Our account support manager reviews our environment twice a year to discuss any issues we have had and any recommendations from HP on how the systems are performing.Technical Support: High. Updates to the InForm OS and firmware have gone off without incident. When something was wrong with the HBA ports resetting, they brought in additional resources from other areas to resolve it. The issue turned out to be a problem with the fibre channel switches fill word instead of the array.Previous SolutionsWe were using HP EVA and direct attached storage. Our EVA’s were getting old and needed to be replaced within a year or two. The push to replace them sooner came after our main production array crashed due to LUN ownership issues between the controllers. A lot of I/O was coming into the non-owning controller and so it would switch ownership. Since ownership was set to fail-over/fail-back it would just keep hoping back and forth. It was a problem with VMWare losing its MPIO configuration but that caused major issues with the array. True Active-Active controller design really became an important criteria after this incident.Initial SetupBoth. The v400 was a complex setup where the 7400 was much more straightforward. The v400 had many requirements for how cables were run, specific hole sizes and cuts in the raised floor tiles, and the installation guide that the HP Field Technicians used was either out of date or incorrect in several places causing installation to take longer than it should have. In contrast, the 7400 had none of the requirements, as it was mounted in a more traditional style rack and the installation process was more mature. The service processor could now be deployed as a VMWare appliance and set up by the customer ahead of time.Implementation TeamWe used a vendor team with in-house support where needed. The vendor team was much more knowledgeable on the 7400 installation than the v400. We had bought the v400 not long after HP acquired 3PAR so there were some issues there. However, the local installation team had a “quick” line into 3PAR support for installation so we weren’t waiting around for support to answer questions.ROIIt was never calculated for these arrays outside of cost to buy new against the cost of continuing support of the existing arrays. It has been several years since we upgraded the class of array and type of support.Pricing, Setup Cost and LicensingThe original setup was about $700,000 for the v400 and $350,000 for the 7400. The day to day cost is negligible in terms of support as they are really stable arrays.Other Solutions ConsideredWe evaluated the Hitachi VSP and Netapp FAS 6800.Other AdviceDo your homework and follow the deployment guides, it will save time and headaches. If you do not license at least Direct Optimization the array cannot re-level the data so the array will eventually not preform to peak efficiency as you add and remove data.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-04-27T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567555 from
A quality product with all the latest advances in technology which you would expect from an all-flash array. The real-time replication over distance has been a long time in the coming.What is most valuable?The service and the support, as well as the technology. Yes, there are plenty of technical features that it offers, which we would expect from HPE. One of the reasons that we use HPE is because they tend to provide a quality product with all the latest advances in technology; so, its storage level, things like deduplication ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/deduplication-software ), all-flash array ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/enterprise-flash-array-storage ), real-time replication.In addition to that, it's just as important that the ongoing support and monitoring of the system is proactive, and also the account management side. If we have particular challenges with either the specific design and build of the array or we need to upgrade, we feel like we have good support from the people who own our relationship to help guide us through that process.How has it helped my organization?It's a very critical technology component within our service offering. The storage sits central to everything else, such that it needs to be really robust. It needs to be highly available and it needs to be secure as well. All those things are very important. Because we're a service provider and we offer multitenancy, we need to be available to do that in a way such that we can host multiple clients’ data on the same storage system and in a secure fashion.What needs improvement?I suppose I’d like to see more security in terms of encryption on the device without it impacting performance. For all I know, that might exist. It’s something occasionally we get asked for. Our understanding has been that there are challenges around introducing inline encryption to a storage system because it increases the performance overhead.Initially, some years ago, it missed a few important features. Until reasonably recently, one feature that was missing was the asynchronous real-time replication. In the last year or so, that's been introduced. I think that's taken too long. That was a little bit of a step back.For how long have I used the solution?We've been using 3PAR ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hpe-3par-flash-storage ) for about five or six years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Overall, touch wood, we've never had a major failure. We found it to be very, very stable. I think there are some challenges when it comes to upgrading the firmware on the system, and making those incremental updates. Apart from that, it's pretty rock solid.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?I suppose that those types of highly scalable environments that perhaps larger service providers need; we don't really push the boundaries of the product in that sense, too much. There are some step changes you have to make, I suppose, as you grow, which you'd prefer not to. You have to invest, maybe, in more enclosures or those kind of things, whereas you'd like it to be a bit smoother.From a financial point of view, which is probably the main challenge there, HPE are providing solutions for that in the terms of flexible capacity, where they help part share the financial responsibility and give you a more linear and smooth scaling of the system, and help you fund that.Which solutions did we use previously?Before 3PAR, we used the HPE EVA technology. We’ve always used HPE.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We have looked at EMC as an alternative to HPE 3PAR ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/dell-emc-xtremio-flash-storage_vs_hpe-3par-flash-storage ), but in terms of servers and storage, we are very much aligned with HPE and have been for over 20 years, so there are a lot of reasons why we use them.One of the reasons we selected 3PAR was a similar reason that HP first acquired 3PAR: It's used by the world's biggest service and cloud providers. They're particularly focused on the multitenancy elements. It provides virtual domain technology that allows you to securely separate different customers' environments and where they store that data. You basically create multiple virtual SANs within a SAN. For a service provider who's doing multitenancy, clearly that's a big advantage for us.The most important criteria when selecting 3PAR was the multitenancy piece, because we get a lot of questions from our clients around how we securely segment their data; if we can prove to them that our administrators can only log into their specific domain within that shared storage system and we can provide an audit trail.What other advice do I have?Absolutely get the design of the system right. Work very closely with the right pre-sales technical teams. If you don't, it can be expensive to try and rectify that after you've bought it.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-12-08T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
WilliamCheung from
Systems respond quicker and customers do not have to wait as long as before.What is most valuable?Speed, it is because systems could respond quicker and customers do not have to wait as long as before.How has it helped my organization?System response time.What needs improvement?Cost, it is still fairly expensive, cost could go down to make this technology more popular in the market.For how long have I used the solution?Three months.What do I think about the stability of the solution?No issues.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?No issues.How is customer service and technical support?Fairly good.How was the initial setup?No comment, because we requested our local vendor to perform the setup and configuration for us.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?Always bargain with your local HPE account manager, the price could go down a lot if you know how to negotiate with them. For example, it could help if you tell them you have another brand of product on hand and it cost less than HPE, then they would likely offer you a huge discount for their product.What other advice do I have?Remember, the initial setup only covered the default configuration, you have to know what you need before you know which configuration settings suit you the best.Hardening is another issue.All the SSL options, default password, and cipher suite are other issues which we looked at very carefully.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-30T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Carsten Cimander from
Improved performance and availability to better handle our mixed and unpredictable workloadsWhat is our primary use case?We use this solution for mixed, unpredicted workloads.How has it helped my organization?This solution has allowed for massive performance acceleration of all workloads and massively increased availability (with peer persistence/transparent failover feature).What is most valuable?The most valuable features are:* Peer Persistence, where storage failover is transparent to servers and there is no complex cluster-software integration.* Thin Provisioning translates to reduced efforts in management on the server-side, where calculated growth of application data and LUNs can be provisioned on the first install.What needs improvement?The Unified Multiprotocol Access to the storage array needs to be improved.For how long have I used the solution?Four years.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-15T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user362307 from
I use the reports when I want to see performance, like how the discs are performing and how the AL is moving data to and from tiers.Valuable FeaturesThere are several valuable features, including the easy-to-use application and straightforward end-user tools. That's been helpful for me and there's nothing complicated to learn. The reporting and charting are also actually quite good. I use the reports when I want to see performance, like how the discs are performing and how the AL is moving data to and from tiers.Improvements to My OrganizationI think it leverages our investments of using this multi-tiered storage approach. We have SSDs, we have SAS, and we have inline SAS, so we're able to have a lot more teams running in one environment rather than having to build separate environments, and understand which applications need high performance and which don't need high performance. 3PAR does that thinking for us using it's adaptive optimization. It's been successful for us. The technology is sound, they used 3PAR quite heavily in our organization. It's been a quite good experience.Room for ImprovementIt needs better statistics and configuration. The system allows too much human input. It's automated enough, but it wants you to determine some of the settings. If you do them wrong, you can make a very good system perform badly. If you do it well, you can make an under-permissioned system perform very well. There should be more best practices that they suggest, not "okay, what do you want."I'd also like to see better real time performance rather than charts and graphs you've got to go in all the time. It'd be nice to have something running all the time, like a real tool from which you can actually see performance of what's actually happening rather than having to go in all the time and generate them. Real-time notifications, real-time performance statistics. They have those, but they're all command line and I can't keep the session running all day on some screen. You have to go in to get them and you can't really provide a thumb display for customers to see.Deployment IssuesDeployments haven't been an issue.Stability IssuesIt's been quite stable. There's been things that have broken for us, like discs and some other ports, but the system still works.Scalability IssuesIt's been quite scalable. Since we bought this one in the summer, we've expanded twice, so it's quite scalable. Now it's over 200 terabytes and 176 discs, I think. The maximum is 250 on this one. It's not the biggest 3PAR, but it's quite powerful actually.Customer Service and Technical SupportTechnical support has been very good. The guys on the line are knowledgeable even at level one.Initial SetupThe initial setup was straightforward. I don't think it was too complex. We've used other technology that's much more difficult to use. I haven't had 3PAR experience before, mostly Dell and Hitachi and some other EMC.Other Solutions ConsideredWe evaluated Hitachi and we chose HP because of the price and ease-of-use.Other AdvicePlan what the I/O needs are. You need better statistics before you buy something. Really plan to see what the loads are.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-12-31T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user253332 from
We're pleased with the scalability and that we're notified when updates come out.Valuable FeaturesScalability is the most valuable feature.Improvements to My OrganizationWe had unexpected capacity growth. We informed the integrator what was going on and they were able to work with HP, forecast what we needed, and install it overnight without any downtime.Room for ImprovementI'd like to see future versions have improved protection and optimization, such as whether we're using the right disks properly for the assigned workload.Stability IssuesNo problems or issues with stability. We get notified from HP when the updates come out--really simple, quick, and easy with no downtime.Scalability Issues3PAR has been extremely scalable.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: Customer support is excellent.Technical Support: I think we’ve only had to call once for understanding the update process, but I've never personally had to call.Previous SolutionsWe didn’t have a solution in place, so we went through an integrator and got a recommendation.Initial SetupInitial setup was complex because we didn’t have any previous knowledge. It's been two years since, and I think it’s essentially a simple setup and we just didn’t have any prior experience.Other AdviceWhen deciding on a storage vendor you need to look at IOPs and scalability.I would recommend 3PAR; we tell everyone everyday. It beats Hitachi and EMC (Clarion) hands down. We would recommend them over all those solutions.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-06-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SysAdmin574 from
Allows for configuration and use of disks that help us to define both disk performance and availability.What is most valuable?All Flash Only* Designed as only flash with the xx50 designation. This array was never intended for spinning disk or hybrid use.* We have never seen a disk or other hardware failure in over two years.* Average latency is less than one millisecond.* 3PAR ASIC is the heart of the processing power built into 3PAR arrays and it is built specifically for its role.Common Provisioning Groups (CPGs)* CPGs allow for versatile, yet powerful configuration and use of disks that help us to define both disk performance and availability.* There is no need to pre-carve space. It auto-grows and distributes as it is defined. Factor in wide striping, the fact that this is all flash, and the performance and reliability are even better than the other models of 3PAR.Data Reduction Services* The 3PAR and the ASIC really help the CPG to leverage an increase in performance as well as data efficiency.* Dedupe is applied to all items inside a CPG. There is no need to manually configure per volume.* Features are all inline and there is no post-processing window. The ASIC really shines on faster write speeds with the Zero Detect Algorithm. All zeros are ignored, resulting in much faster writes, not just space savings for blank data.* Thin provisioning* Thin clonesNative Veeam Support: Provides ease of use for backing up and restoring with the additional integration with Veeam.VMWare 6.x Vol SupportVMWare Fibre Channel: Reference platform for v6.Scale up, or out: It does both on demand unlike other arrays that leave you stuck with a single alternative. 3PAR Active Mesh Architecture is quite robust.How has it helped my organization?We were quite hesitant on the array size when it was pitched as our replacement of an aged SAN.We were guaranteed we would get much more space than the physical capacity. (Make sure you get it in writing.)In reality, their safe numbers were extremely safe.We were expecting 2:1 as a rule of thumb, but in reality, we ended up sitting at greater than 8:1 across the entire array with all compaction/reduction features factored in.What needs improvement?I would really love to see HPE add some cloud analytics. So many other Tier 1 SAN vendors have enhanced cloud analytics and flashy visuals. While HPE has the StoreFront and it is better than nothing whatsoever, other competition offered “shiny” reporting and analytics engines.For how long have I used the solution?I have used the product for over two years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We have not encountered any stability issues. Its performance and capacity have been even better than expected.The code updates have been exceptionally smooth compared to our previous SAN vendor. This includes no outage windows and really short upgrade durations.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have not encountered any scalability issues. This device can scale both up and out. It is exceptionally versatile.How is customer service and technical support?I recommend that you always procure the higher support offering with an enterprise product. It will pay for itself.We went with Proactive Care Advanced, before HPE was offering Datacenter care.The Advanced Care provides proactive interoperability reports from a dedicated technical account manager. They provide further recommendations on your current configuration if it is not compliant with HPE best practices.Which solutions did we use previously?Our previous solution was retired due to capacity and performance issues.HPE really addressed our issues with their recommendation of the 3PAR 7450 for our specific needs.It’s actually less expensive per Gigabyte than a conventional array when looking at the true cost of ownership. Not to mention the performance is six times greater than the competitor’s device.How was the initial setup?The entire setup, from rack and stack, to configuring the array, was shockingly expeditious.It took longer to rezone my fibre switches than it did to get the Common Provisioning Group (CPG) configured and begin storage with vMotion VMs.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?Remember, you are charged per disk with a 3PAR array for licensing. Make note of this when considering future capacity. A smaller number of higher capacity SSDs can be less expensive than multiple smaller capacity disks.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We evaluated EMC, Nimble, IBM, NetApp, and Pure Storage.What other advice do I have?* Make sure that you are trained on the nuances of 3PAR technology if you select this Storage Area Network.* There are many useful features and you need to leverage them to lower the total ownership cost while easing the management of the device.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-03-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Gustavo Galicia from
Provides our clients with high performance and reduced storage through dedupe and compressionWhat is our primary use case?As a partner, we use it to run databases and for virtualization. Another use case is the cloud.How has it helped my organization?All-flash provides optimization through deduplication and compression and provides high performance for both databases and virtualization. It has increased IOPS by 200 percent. In addition, it has reduced deployment time by ten percent.One of our customers, using SAP, had 16 terabytes of data. When we implemented this solution for them, their storage was reduced to two terabytes.What is most valuable?* High-Availability* Security* High performanceWhat needs improvement?I would like to see improvement in the product's scalability. As a partner, I had serious problems because of the competition from Dell EMC and Pure. It's definitely problematic. It needs to scale out better.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It's stable and uses Call-Home. Support is 24/7.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The 3PAR solution has a problem with scalability.How are customer service and technical support?Technical support is excellent. It's predictive. If my customer has a problem, they inform the customer of the problem and send any necessary parts. They also email the customer to let them know when they need updates.How was the initial setup?The initial setup is easy.What was our ROI?We see ROI after six to eight months, by using all the capacities of all-flash, including deduplication and compression.What other advice do I have?3PAR provides high performance and HPE's service is good.In terms of HPE GreenLake, we have just introduced this service to our client. We expect it will help with our client's capacity management efforts, but for now we have just presented and explained the service.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner.Date published: 2019-07-17T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Solution7c6e from
The scalability is good because it is easy to add in new disks. We just add them on the fly, and they are available for use.What is our primary use case?We use 3PAR as our main production environment. Therefore, we use it for everything from VMware to our NAS solutions. It is used for complex business needs, because we also store all of our databases on the 3PAR as well.We have a lot of systems at the airport where I work. So, we have a lot of Oracle databases, which run a lot of core functionality. This includes the financial systems. We have a large maintenance program, and we have to track all of our maintenance needs. This is all done through an Oracle database. All of these databases are on the 3PAR.We have about 500 users. All of their user data is stored on the 3PAR for groups and user data. Then, most of our environment is in VMware. Thus, we have a reasonable sized VMware environment of about 700 servers, and that all runs off of the 3PAR.How has it helped my organization?It has improved our functions because we have a very small IT team. We have to do a lot of things. The more solutions that we can bring onboard which are easy to use and do not require too much maintenance, this is good for us. We just do not have enough bandwidth to cover everything.Therefore, we are always looking for good solutions which do their job well and are easy to use.What is most valuable?3PAR is fairly easy to use. We have used a few different arrays in the past, and they were a lot more complicated. This one was fast to bring up and start using right away. It is easy to keep running and does not require too much effort. It has been very reliable, which is key.Foremost, we look for a reliable solution foremost, and 3PAR has been very reliable.What needs improvement?I would like to see the ability to be able to migrate to newer versions of the 3PAR without having to take any of our data offline and be able to upgrade on the fly. That would be a great feature.The controllers are going to age out, then eventually they will need new controllers. If we could upgrade those controllers live without interruption, that would be great.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability has been great. We have had zero issues.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is good because it is easy to add in new disks. We just add them on the fly, and they are available for use. We do not have to go in, then configure then. We just put the disks in, then they are available, so it is easy.Which solutions did we use previously?I needed to invest in a new solution because the previous solution was getting old.We wanted to go to market to find a better solution. We wanted something that had a little more intelligence. However, because we are a semi-public company, we had to go to market. We could not just pick 3PAR.The 3PAR actually had to prove itself. It had to be scored and graded across a panel of people in order to win the bid. Not only that, it had to have a good price.How was the initial setup?It was not complex.What about the implementation team?We had a third-party vendor help set it up. We had two weeks to set it up, and we had it done within one week. We had a whole week to sit back and enjoy it.What was our ROI?I have seen ROI, because it has performed extremely well so far. The amount of data that we have flowing through it has worked out very well.The return on investment for me is that all of my customers are happy. That is a really good return on investment: less complaining.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We evaluated Hitachi, NetApp, EMC, Dell, and 3PAR. We went with 3PAR because of price and the functionality had everything that we wanted it to do. Also, the presentation that the HPE team put together went really well.What other advice do I have?Give the product a good, hard look, because HPE does a very good job. They are a market leader. They are not a small player in the space. You can be very comfortable when dealing with a company like HPE.It is doing everything that we want it to do. We are not that big, so we did not have a lot of crazy requirements. Therefore, it is doing everything we want it to do. The other big factor is that it is easy to use.Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:* Price* Easy of use* Ability to have two arrays back each other up. In case one of them has a problem, the other one can take over.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-07-04T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Computerd47b from
The all-flash storage gives us the performance that we needWhat is our primary use case?We use three power arrays. The first array is for video storage and video surveillance. The second array is for production of our virtual machines. Pretty much everything is run on one of these three systems.How has it helped my organization?It provides us some disaster recovery capabilities. The all-flash storage gives us the performance that we need.The remote copy group failover is very useful and has helped us.We use InfoSight predictive analytics. The most useful part of it is being able to see the growth curve.What is most valuable?* The uptime* Its reliability, that day in day out, it will continue to be running.The solution's availability is very good.What needs improvement?I would like to have single click upgrades because the process is cumbersome right now. The upgrade process is very tedious. It takes a lot of time and effort, in addition to coordination with HPE. We are looking for something which is more user-friendly and easy to deploy. Fixing the upgrade process is very critical.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability of the solution is very good.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is alright. When we try to scale it, we do upgrades.The all-flash positions our organization for growth. If somebody comes to us who needs an application with performance, we have that already formulated.How are customer service and technical support?The technical support is good. We work with a local vendor.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?Our previous solution was between five to six years old, so we were looking for something newer, like all-flash.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was complex, but we had the partner there to help.What about the implementation team?We used a partner for the deployment, and our experience with them was good.What was our ROI?The solution has increased our performance.The solution helped our organization reduce our time to deployment.Which other solutions did I evaluate?I would recommend looking at Nimble instead. It is a similar option and something that we are looking at now, though 3PAR has been a pretty solid product.What other advice do I have?The solution’s deduplication functionality is alright.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-09T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Infrastrb292 from
Provides the ability to have a solid state and deduplication on that solid stateWhat is our primary use case?It is for the storage that we use. Our entire banking system is on it, which is mission-critical.How has it helped my organization?It has provided us our solution for VDIs, so it has been working very well.Any infrastructure is an enabler that provides services for the applications that you run.What is most valuable?The ability to have a solid state and deduplication on that solid state.The deduplication functionality is great. We have seen a lot of benefits in the deduplication ratio. So, it has proven that it is a good cost savings.It is easy to manage and performs very well.What needs improvement?There is always the case where there are the little things that bother you, but you live with them.There are features that we would like to deep dive into more, but that is where the consultants would come in and help.For how long have I used the solution?We have been using the product for 10 years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We are using Synergy, so it is the next evolution of blades, which has been great. We have had no complaints, except for the problem with the Spectre vulnerability.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is great, because if we need to, we can just turn on a blade and start paying for it. Also, if we want, we can shut it down, and the next month, we don't pay.How are customer service and technical support?The technical support is good. We haven't had any major issues where we have had to call them, as of late, so it has been fairly good. They help us when we do our upgrades, but that has been going well.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?At the time, we needed a better solution than our previous solution (Dell EMC) for storage, so we looked to HPE.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We been setting up 3PARs for 10 years now. It is like second nature for us.The straightforward setup also applies to experiences with Synergy and Flex Capacity.What about the implementation team?We mostly deployed it ourselves. We also had help from HPE, because we purchased directly from them. Our experience with HPE was great. This is the case when they give you how to get everything going, but it would be nice if they could go a little deeper sometimes. That is always the case: To get the value-add, you have to pay for those services.What was our ROI?We have seen ROI.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We did not look at other vendors beside HPE. We were one of the first adopters of 3PAR. We had one of the old T800s. We were early in the adoption of HP 3PAR.Management made a decision to go with 3PAR, because HPE came and made it appealing.What other advice do I have?It is a great solution. There are others out there, but we have always been using 3PAR. We are pretty happy with it.We are using the GreenLake Flex Capacity offering. At first, the service was great, because we had a configuration that was meeting our needs. However, when the issue came with Spectre, and then the L1TF vulnerability came out, those really affected us, so hopefully we will find a solution that meets our needs going forward. That is what we are looking at now.We just started getting into InfoSight predictive analytics. It is something that I want to explore more, and something that I want to get going.I can say that, "All-flash is the way that the future will be."Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-11T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user680301 from
The OS and UI are straightforward. It is manageable inside OneView and it is attached to Synergy.What is most valuable?We use a lot of different products by HPE, with 3PAR being one of the biggest. When we look at Synergy, we see how we can integrate. We have our 3PAR SAN. We see how we have our physical servers and how we can remove them and bring everything together. 3PAR will always be our back-end and it will always be our storage back-end.If we can start leveraging some of this cool, new technology into how we deploy servers and how we give our DEV teams and our production teams exactly what they need in the shortest time possible, then that will define our business.How has it helped my organization?It is easy to use. The OS and the UI are straightforward. It's all manageable inside HPE OneView and it is attached to HPE Synergy. It's a unified experience. It really sucks going through 10 different systems and trying to fit all of them in. It takes too long and it is confusing. In fact, being unified is what it is all about. Being unified is the biggest win and the biggest draw.What needs improvement?We would like to see more Nimble integration, now that HPE owns Nimble. We would like to see how they come up with solutions to integrate Nimble storage and all-flash storage into our existing 3PAR traditional spinning disk. We would like to see what kinds of benefits that would give us. Perhaps we could add more cache.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is extremely stable. We don't really have any problems. They release updates pretty frequently if there are any major issues. We've never suffered a catastrophic failure. It's been pretty enterprise grade, rock-solid for us.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is awesome. We just recently upgraded to a new system, and we now have the capacity to scale up. Essentially, the sky is the limit. We'll never get that big because our company is not that big. However, if we wanted to, we could easily scale.How is customer service and technical support?We have used technical support. Usually, they're pretty good, but there's some room for improvement there. Typically, if we have a SevOne, Class A, super high-priority issue, production-down issue, they're pretty good. There are a lot of different cooks in that kitchen. There are a lot of different people and a lot of different, moving pieces. If they can get that integrated a little tighter, that would be even better. But overall, technical support is pretty good.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using BlueArc. It is not as resilient and not as robust. It is not as enterprise-grade as an actual HPE 3PAR system is.When selecting a vendor, you want name recognition. You want to know that you're getting the best of breed. You want hardware services because it's not just about the hardware. The hardware can be awesome, but if you don't have the service to support it, manage it, and maintain it, then it's kind of pointless. HPE brings all of that together: Hardware, service, and support. It's all there.How was the initial setup?The installation was actually pretty straightforward. Everything is well-documented, which is another big plus. HPE has always been there for us through each step.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We've looked at Dell, but we've always been an HPE shop. We don't really have any plans of changing that.What other advice do I have?I say try it out. There are a lot of test drives of all their solutions. Look at the UI. See how well you can integrate with your existing systems and talk to the HPE guys. They are willing to show off all their technology and all their solutions.We are very interested to see what HPE starts to offer in terms of integrated Nimble all-flash storage solutions. We’re also curious if HPE are going to introduce anything to augment an existing 3PAR system (ie; are they pluggable modules or expansion hardware that can take advantage of new Nimble-powered low latency, fast access flash storage?). And if they do have these types of solutions roadmapped, we are very interested in seeing what the average and peak theoretical transfer speed/access time improvements are!Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-16T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user680223 from
It allowed us to put storage in remote facilities without purchasing a complete SAN solution.What is most valuable?Its ease of administration and reliability are the most valuable features.How has it helped my organization?It allowed us to put storage in remote facilities without purchasing a complete SAN solution.What needs improvement?There is a need for just cleaning up the administration page a little more and making it a little faster. We'd like to see a little more preemptive alerts for the usage and spikes.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability has been great, we haven't had any issues with it. The normal firmware patches come out to keep it up to date.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability has been great. As we have needed to add storage, its just a matter of adding the disk and then, adding them to the bulk.How is customer service and technical support?For the 3PAR the technical support has been great. They've been able to help us with any issues that we've had.Which solutions did we use previously?This was a net new solution for our remote facilities so we had nothing in place. This was something that we purchased and built out ourselves.How was the initial setup?I was involved in the initial setup and it was very straightforward, specifically for the way that we wanted to configure it. It was the ease of administration, setting up the pool, connecting it to the chassis and then, zoning it to our brocade fabric that made the setup straightforward.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at Dell, EMC and Pure Storage. However, HPE was the only one that provided the flat SAN solution that we wanted for those remote locations.The important factor while selecting a vendor is the range of products for the solution in terms of the issue that I'm trying to fill. Also, how the vendors support their products and the price are other crucial factors that we look at before selecting a vendor.What other advice do I have?Make sure you're looking at everything that's out there and that 3PAR has come a long way.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-19T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
PeymanMassoudnia from
Doesn't require purchasing more licenses to get all of the features you needWhat do I think about the stability of the solution?The solution is very stable. HPE is always stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability has always been great because of one idea from HPE: no need for us to pay from the beginning for the full machine. We can purchase based on the budget of our company. This makes it scalable. It's great.How are customer service and technical support?Technical support for both 3PAR and Dell EMC in my country, Iran, is very difficult because we are under sanctions. We can get it through other countries.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was straightforward.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Any action we want to do with a Dell EMC product needs a license. But with 3PAR's converged solution, at least there is no need to purchase more licenses to get all the features that we need. We can get basic and mid-range features without licenses. But for simple activities with Dell EMC, we need a license. Also, HPE is simpler than Dell EMC for the end-user.What other advice do I have?I would recommend this product for sure.At a minimum, I would rate this product at eight out of ten. I give it an eight because of the support, that I can't get support in my country. This is the worst part. Support cannot be sold until we are out of the sanctions. It's not anything to do with HPE, it's political issues.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner.Date published: 2019-08-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user330981 from
We've standardized with it as it's a good combination of equipment, support, and implementation staff. The only issues we have had are with deployment.Valuable FeaturesExcellent support staff and quality equipment.Improvements to My OrganizationThe 3PAR arrays provide excellent performance for a very reasonable price point.Room for ImprovementTheir installation and design engineers leave something to be desired.Use of SolutionI've used it for five years.Deployment IssuesThe only issues we have had are with deployment. Depending on the quality of the installation engineer, one must keep a close eye on them in order to make sure that the equipment is connected and configured properly.Customer Service and Technical Support8/10 - most of the support staff are top shelf, but service can be ponderous if the wrong engineer is engaged.Previous SolutionsI have used other HP arrays, EMC, Netapp, and Fujitsu. HP 3PAR by far has the best combination of great equipment, very good support, and good implementation staff. We have standardized on HP 3PAR for this reason.Initial SetupAs with most arrays, that is dependent on the system you’re installing. We tend to be “power users” and push the edges of how the equipment is used. In most situations, the setup is straightforward.Implementation TeamWe engage HPs installation teams. My advice would be to make sure that future expansion plans are thoroughly discussed at the first installation to make sure that the array is as future proof as possible.ROIMy team isn’t exposed to ROI.Pricing, Setup Cost and LicensingI can say that one can realize very nice discounts if the order is placed towards the end of the calendar year, as that coincides with HPs fiscal end of year. Licensing for some features can be quite expensive, so one should take care to fully vet out which features should be licensed. Don’t let the sales team oversell licensing and make sure that the installation plan is fully understood.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-11-01T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user229374 from
I like the performance, scalability, and cost effectiveness.Valuable Features* Reliability* Support* Flash storage - I wish we were using itImprovements to My OrganizationWe have not had a moment's down time.Room for ImprovementI would like it to be greener, with a lower power draw and generating less heat. That is not a comment on a problem with this SAN, it's something I look for in any hardware additions.Use of SolutionIt entered into production in July 2012.Deployment IssuesNothing unexpected.Stability IssuesNo issues encountered.Scalability IssuesNo issues encountered.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: It's fine, no issues.Technical Support: Two years ago it was 9/10. Now, perhaps it's 7/10. The quality is still excellent but, like many other vendors, the primary support is on the other side of the world, and there is a time zone issue. We will schedule a patch and I'll see an email or a phone message that came in between midnight and three AM, with a question. You lose a day replying, because the engineers don't call with questions during normal business hours in the Central Time zone. This is not an issue if you run a night staff.Previous SolutionsWe also previously used NetApp and Xiotech, and switched to 3PAR as HP presented a solution that addressed performance, scalability, and, I'm told, it was cost effective.Initial SetupThe HP setup spreadsheet is a beast. It's much more extensive than any previous SAN, but going through the process addresses almost every issue that's likely to come up.Implementation TeamWe were guided through this process by Sayers Consulting. They were outstanding, especially Bill Tohtz and Dean Flatland.Other Solutions ConsideredYes, we looked at several presentations.Other AdviceSet time aside to go through the setup spreadsheet.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-04-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Herve Garcia from
Needs better support for iSCSI, as it was not designed for it initiallyWhat is our primary use case?We use it as a shared storage solution for a virtualized environment. It is not for complex business needs. It is really just for storage, and not even a very large amount of storage: between 20 to 40 terabytes.We have used it in three environments. We were not happy with the performance initially, because it turned out the system was initially designed for Fibre Channel, and we needed iSCSI. So, we used the iSCSI configuration option off of 3PAR. This was probably when 3PAR was purchased by HPE, but the performance were extraordinarily bad in terms of I/O capabilities. It took a long time to obtain HPE's help and resolve the issue. This was for iSCSI in the context of VMware for shared storage.How has it helped my organization?The product is not for us. We deploy solutions on-premise. We use this product for one of our customers.What needs improvement?We would like to see better support for iSCSI.What do I think about the stability of the solution?After being properly configured, it has been a very stable product.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Our systems are fairly static once they have been deployed.How is customer service and technical support?Their technical support is bad. I would rate it as a two out of 10.After we insisted for quite some time, then we did receive good support. However, it was a bother, we would have liked to have known initially that the system was not designed for iSCSI.In the end, we ended up selecting something else.Which solutions did we use previously?We were previously using multiple vendors. We switched to 3PAR for more performance, reliability, and we had challenges with MSAs (low-end storage).How was the initial setup?The initial setup takes about two days.What was our ROI?I have not seen any ROI so far.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We evaluated Nexsan. However, we wanted to stay with HPE.What other advice do I have?Be extremely careful if you want to use the iSCSI feature of the 3PAR. It was not designed for it initially.We were using low-end storage from HPE. I was hoping to get something a bit midrange in their storage, in terms of price with the reliability. I am still hoping that it will be reliable despite poor initial performance previously. As the problem was fixed, I am hopeful it would be reliable in the long run.Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We need something stable and reliable in the long run. Our contracts are at least five years, and they can be extended all of the way to seven to 10 years.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-07-04T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Ryan Dooley from
The optimization features move chunklets or hot spots to faster drives, but the management interface is not intuitiveWhat is our primary use case?Our primary use case is SAN for VMware hosts for hosted VMs for a K-12 education environment. Also, some space that we provisioned for security camera storage and backup targets.How has it helped my organization?We upgraded from HPE EVA and it was much easier to manage and provision LUNs, when necessary. Our EVA was maxed and was end of life.The 3PAR tool is cheaper to maintain with more storage available.What is most valuable?The optimization features move chunklets or hot spots to faster drives. This way data which was getting hit most frequently was always on drives that could best handle the data, whether it was SQL data on SSD or rarely accessed file shares on the 7200 RPM drives.What needs improvement?The management interface is not intuitive. It is much better than EVA, but took some time to learn.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-02-22T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user361944 from
There are regular updates with the software which bring out new features.Valuable FeaturesThe most valuable features for us are the flexibility and expandability of the platform itself. Also, there are regular updates with the software which bring out new features. The licensing policy is such that it brings us some additional revenue if we ever needed it. It's quite clear what kind of license we're purchasing.Improvements to My OrganizationIt's simplified our management and increased the speed of our applications. We're able to use different solutions on 3PAR. It's become easier and faster to do.Room for ImprovementWe'd like to remove some of the barriers to integration with Microsoft. Having the same level of integration with Microsoft as with other applications would be an improvement.Use of SolutionWe went with it quite recently.Stability IssuesWe are fortunate that they haven't had any incidences yet. It just works.Scalability IssuesWe are not too big in terms of scalability. But we're quite scalable in case we need to scale, but we haven't had to yet.Customer Service and Technical SupportThey were quite professional and were able to fix some issues that we had before. We also have service contracts with partners, which provides us some assurance in case something happens.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-12-31T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user469275 from
We made the decision to purchase it with the view for growth, and we know we'll just plug another array or another stack pretty quickly.Valuable FeaturesThe implementation of it was amazing. It's easy and it's come a long way. The platform we had before was about four years old, so the technology's always going to be better. We didn't take that for granted. Overall I think that the ease of understanding what we needed and then procuring it and getting it, and then how quick it was to get it installed. It's just amazing.Improvements to My OrganizationIt's really taken away a few headaches that we had. It's one of those things you know it's there until you get something that's built for what we want to do, it was matched to what our requirements were. It's provided huge turnaround for us.Room for ImprovementI'd like it to be quicker.Stability IssuesSo far, we've had no issues.Scalability IssuesWe know it's there. We made the decision to purchase it with the view for growth, and we know we'll just plug another array or another stack pretty quickly.Customer Service and Technical SupportOne of my engineers might have called, but I haven't.Other Solutions ConsideredIt 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 came 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.Other AdviceThink 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.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-06-27T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user253320 from
We previously used equipment with capacity limitations, but 3PAR is expandable on demand.Valuable FeaturesOne single rack with the ability to expand and grow as needed. We are not currently using flash, but probably will in the future for some database solutions.Improvements to My OrganizationWe now have the ability to expand storage on-demand as needed. The application won’t run out of space as it's really easy to add a disk and continue without any interruption.Room for ImprovementThe management console could be improved, but the newest release already seems much better than the previous version.Stability IssuesWe haven’t had any issues or downtime.Customer Service and Technical SupportEverything was fine when we needed support. So far so good.Previous SolutionsWe had aging equipment with capacity limitations.Other Solutions ConsideredWe also looked at EMC.Other AdviceWe look at cost and scalability. We’ve had room to grow as needed based on demand or business needs. We now have 1500 global users.You should look at 3PAR as it's flexible, stable, and provides the growth and stability you need from a storage solution.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-06-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user252639 from
It's reliable and it's fast.Valuable FeaturesIt's reliable and it's fast.Room for ImprovementThey are constantly moving and will address an issue instantaneously. If somebody has an issue, HPE ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/hewlett-packard-enterprise ) is very responsive because the 3PAR ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hpe-3par-flash-storage ) is one of the flagship products. I haven’t had any issues and they’re very on top of making sure that we follow through with code upgrades.Stability IssuesThe 3PAR is very reliable. Most of our performance complaints went away after we put the 3PARs in. We also went from a 4 GB to 16 GB fibre channel, so it’s simple to manage and easily serviceable by our technicians.Scalability IssuesWe have had no issues with our 3PARs. We like them a lot.Customer Service and Technical SupportHPE support ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hpe-3par-flash-storage/by_topic/technical_support ) is very good. I've never had an issue with it. HPE stands behind their product so they work hard to fix issues.Other AdviceTo pick a solution, we generally create a matrix and then fill in what we want out of the product. We pump in vendors and choose whoever meets the targets that we set. I would also advise that users follow best practices with the 3PAR.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-08-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Doug Newell from
When you add drives into it, it automatically recognizes them and spins them upWhat is our primary use case?We using it for our core compute (storage).We have had it for about two years and had zero problems with it.How has it helped my organization?Less management.What is most valuable?* Dynamic disk pulling* Ease of storage creationFor how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?In two years, I have had no downtime.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability is excellent. It is easy to add drives. When you add drives into it, it automatically recognizes them and spins them up.How is customer service and technical support?One my engineers used the technical support, and they walked him right through the upgrades on the controllers.Which solutions did we use previously?We previously did not use another solution.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was simple. It took me a single day to set it up.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We considered NetApp, EMC, and Dell. 3PAR came out on top.What other advice do I have?I recommend this system to everybody because it doesn't fail. I am just installing another one now.Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:* Good customer support* Good technical support* Price of the product* Advanced features of the system.These were all deciding factors.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-06-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Mikael Jonsson from
We have much better performance than we managed earlier and are now saving lots of spaceWhat is our primary use case?The primary case is the utilization of VMware, and it is performing well.How has it helped my organization?We have much better performance than we managed earlier and are now saving lots of space. We feel as we spread things out that we have become more efficient in our performance.What is most valuable?Its consolidation.What needs improvement?We are waiting for compression.For how long have I used the solution?Less than one year.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is performing great; no downtime.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We do not have a need for it yet, but it should be no problem.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support has been very good when I have used them before. I felt like I was reaching the right person. They call me to check up when they have seen that we have some problem and tell us what we should do to fix it.Which solutions did we use previously?We used Nimble previously, before it was an HPE product.We had a big issue with the performance. Last year, we spoke with HPE's people, and they recommended this solution and we are now certified.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was straightforward.What about the implementation team?HPE helped us with the initial setup.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?Speak with HPE and describe your whole scenario before buying it, so you do not buy and hope.What other advice do I have?Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: stability. That I feel I can talk to the vendor and they understand what I want.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2017-12-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user285333 from
The most valuable features to us are the automatic failover and the peer persistence. As we grow our data quite significantly, we're still working on scalability.Valuable FeaturesThe most valuable features to us are the automatic failover, the peer persistence, and that ability to be able to be confident that if we have a data center outage, that our business will keep running. Those were the features from a business perspective that were the most important to me.Improvements to My OrganizationSome of the benefits that we're facing in using 3PAR, I did mention before, are around the ability to patch our systems quite easily. We can easily failover. We know that if there are any issues, we can continue to provide services. We recently had a power outage in Aukland, which tested our data centers, our mechanicals, and electricals in the data centers. It also helped us understand that if we did have a problem in one data center, we could easily file between the two very easily.Stability IssuesThe stability of the system has been great. I think we've only had it since October. We had not had any problems. It's been great, at the moment.Scalability IssuesIt's working for us on scalability, I think. We're still to see how we go. We've got some issues at the moment on scalability. We need to grow our data quite significantly. We need to find something that is more scalable.Customer Service and Technical SupportThe technical support has been absolutely fantastic. The whole project, when it went in, was really a joint partnership between HP, VMware, and the University. Everyone worked really well to make sure it got in on time, on budget, and was successful. It was a good project.Previous SolutionsWe knew we needed to invest in a new solution because we had a lot of issues in our data centers. We needed to increase our resilience and make sure that we could have our teaching and learning and research continue while we might have data center outages or if there was any problems.Initial SetupThe whole project seemed straightforward to me, as I was the business owner. I didn't see a lot of the technical issues going on in the background. It might have been a bit more complex for my team, but it was fairly straight forward. They managed to migrate 650 VMs without any outages. It was a Greenfields's solution. We didn't have any resilience for a number of our faculty machines. We had quite a number of data center outages because of some physical issues in the data centers. It was highlighted that not having resilience for our faculties, for their file services, and for their research, and for their cost material was not appropriate. We really needed to be able to put something in place so we could increase our resilience. It's also helped us to increase our security and all sorts of other aspects, and have all sorts of other benefits, not just resilience.Other Solutions ConsideredIt needed to fit into our current infrastructure. We needed to make sure that whatever we put in place had as minimal effort required regarding staff work load. We wanted to make sure that it didn't need any manual intervention in order to failover. The peer persistence that the 3PAR has was also important to us to make sure that we had replicated data, and we could access it quickly and easily. Recovering quickly and little data loss were the most important things to us. We had a few vendors on our short list. The reason we chose HP was it fitted those criteria very well. I would rate the 3PAR system fairly highly because it met our requirements of what we needed at the time. We're quite comfortable using it. We're seeing less stress from teams around issues that we have had in the past.Other AdviceIt just depends on what your requirements are. You've got to match your requirements to the system you need. Very important, we do reference checks. We do make sure we get all our requirements. We do comparisons. We've got pretty strict procurement requirements and we stick to those.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2015-09-27T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user485697 from
The most valuable feature is the way they've taken into consideration the tiered storage aspect of it.What is most valuable?The most valuable feature is definitely the way they've taken into consideration the tiered storage aspect of it. They've added a newer gen now; they were adding the faster A6 and whatnot to accommodate more workloads. That's been really great for us. The tiered storage solution they used was a lot more beneficial for our company. We have a lot of data storage that's just cold storage but it conveniently pulled back into a SSD, as well, so that helped us quite a bit.How has it helped my organization?With 3PAR, we got more insights. We could see where data is going; overall better performance as well from that standpoint. For the ProLiant servers, I don't know what to say about the series. I rack them and throw them in there. Once you put them on a rack, as long as you don't mess with it, they just run.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We haven't overly stressed it to say whether there's any stability. Once we expand it and do any replication, that's where we're going to see the stability but on basic operation of 3PAR, it's stable. You would expect that there's no quirkiness. I'm not seeing glitches in the UI, I'm not seeing too much in there.How is customer service and technical support?The technical support leaves a lot to be desired. I find it amazing that I paid for extra for support for the 3PAR and I wait on the phone for 30 minutes. For that extra support, when I'm paying for the premium support; so it's US-side support, US-based support, I should mention. If I call the regular number without the extra support, I talk to someone instantly.It's, "What care plan are you on? What care plan are you on?" That's the question of HPE, "Are you on the SA plan?" "Are you on this plan?" You got to dig through this matrix of plans to figure out which phone are we going to call. It's absurd.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was pretty straightforward. The only complexity we've really had for the initial setup was actually with HPE, in scheduling. We have to have an HPE person on site to put the 3PAR in so they can vet it and all that stuff. Getting him coordinated, it was a wreck. The first time.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We did look at EMC instead of 3PAR for a little bit. We chose 3PAR because I've dealt with LeftHand before. Then, HPE bought LeftHand, namely 3PAR. I dealt with their storage stuff previously a little bit. I like what they were doing and how they were doing it.It was just one of those things. I knew it. I was comfortable with it but it wasn't necessarily a front-runner until we started looking at EMC and just how convoluted their solution was to get there. The price at EMC was expensive. We had all these tertiary software you had to purchase just to get to run normally. There's still that with the 3PAR but it wasn't as steep of a cost. I wasn't paying for this huge EMC name.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-05-11T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user252609 from
Manageability and reliability are the most valued features.What is most valuable?Manageability and reliability are the most valued features of 3PAR. We've had no issues with it. We did a lot of research before we installed it. The other three companies we looked at were top of the line.How has it helped my organization?We did not lose connectivity, as we did with the other units. We've had no failed drives. The system has been up and running for almost four years now and there has not been an issue anywhere.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is very stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is very scalable. We've added quite a bit to it since we started.How is customer service and technical support?We have used technical support. They were great.Which solutions did we use previously?The system we had prior to 3PAR had a lot of drives. We didn't lose any data, but it was just not reliable.How was the initial setup?I was involved in the initial setup. It was pretty straightforward.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at two other vendors. One was Compellent and one was EMC. Through our research and talking to various companies that were already using 3PAR, it was determined to be the better product.When selecting a product, reliability and support are the most important requirements.What other advice do I have?It's a very reliable product. I would advise them to get it.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-19T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
DataCentc0ab from
Remote Copy for DR is a key feature for usWhat is our primary use case?Normal file storage, SQL databases, Cache databases, and replications to our DR instance. The business needs it covers for us are not highly complex, only a little.Performance is good. We've had some issues with doing virtual volume updates using Snapshots. We've had some issues with the dedupe garbage collection process as well. Supposedly those have been addressed with the latest OS update that we've yet to apply.How has it helped my organization?It has not changed the way we function a whole lot. We were on the P9500 Array before and it had similar capabilities, just different ways of doing it. Still, it has worked well for us.What is most valuable?We're using the Remote Copy functionality a lot, just for DR. That is one of the main features that we're highly dependent on and like to use.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability has been an issue going back to the dedupe issue.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?I haven't had to do a whole lot of scalability with it. We're on a lease model, so we spec'ed it out for what we needed and haven't really had to scale it up at all, for the most part.How is customer service and technical support?We had issues with HPE support, trying to work through that whole dedup issue; it was long and drawn out.I'm not highly satisfied with support at this point, unfortunately. I am satisfied with our local reps. They have dug in their heels with us and have tried to help, to get a faster time to resolution, but it's the people we were dealing with through the phone and emails who really were not finding the resolution in a timely manner.Which solutions did we use previously?The switch was based on that fact that we're on a lease-refresh cycle. That is what really drives this kind of change, for our business.Our main criteria in selecting a vendor include stability, that is a big one. What really drove us towards 3PAR was having just one vendor; having HPE as both our server and our storage versus HPE for server alone.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was straight-forward. We came from the P9500, so it was more or less a rip and replace. It was involved with the project to replace our Blade infrastructure as well, but from start to finish, it probably took six months from design to implementation.What was our ROI?I see the value in investing in 3PAR. I think HPE, overall, is a good partner for us and we're happy. It's just the support that is the only issue that we've had with them. But overall, I'd say we're happy with HPE as a company.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We also evaluated Pure Storage but we wanted to stick with one vendor.What other advice do I have?I would definitely recommend evaluating it. Depending on what you need for your business, it could be a good fit.It has been rather stable, other than the couple of hiccups that we've had. Once we've gotten through those, it has been rock solid for us.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
MikeBollman from
There have been a number of platform stability issues, but we have seen a massive performance improvementWhat is our primary use case?The primary use case is workload consolidation: everything from Oracle, SQL databases, Exchange, hundreds and hundreds of virtual servers, and all your typical enterprise workloads. We use this solution for business-critical applications. From the commercial aspect of things, we have Oracle Financials run on 3PAR. We are a pipeline company, and we have a pipeline control system which runs on 3PAR, as well.Oracle and Exchange are mission-critical for us. Also, there is a pipeline control system called DNA from AVEVA that actually controls pipeline assets. So, you're talking about billions of dollars of revenue along with potentially life safety, if something goes really wrong. It doesn't get much more mission-critical than that.All of our arrays are traditional NAN-based, solid state disk arrays. We're not using Storage Class Memory (SCM) today.How has it helped my organization?The biggest thing for us was the workload consolidation, especially looking at an all-flash platform. We didn't have to worry about noisy neighbors so much. If I have a particular server that all of a sudden gets very hot, it is less likely to cause a resource constraint issue with another server on the same array. Again, the ability to mix those different workloads, whether it is VMware or Oracle Exchange, I can run all of those on a single array, which makes my life a lot easier from an operational perspective and be a lot more efficient.A characteristic of all-flash in general is that it doesn't really matter the product that you're talking about, the big benefits are the performance, reliability, and availability that all-flash brings to you when running an infrastructure. It allows you to throw those different workloads on there. It allows you to dynamically expand really quickly to deal with new projects and workloads. Therefore, it definitely makes life easier from those aspects.It makes us operationally more efficient and improves our time to deployment.What is most valuable?From a 3PAR perspective, it's the ease of setup and use. You can train somebody pretty quickly how to do basic operations, especially if it's a very dynamic environment where you're constantly having to make changes with exposing additional VVs to a given host or spin up new servers. It's really simple to use.What needs improvement?We don't use the solution’s deduplication functionality because of bad code. I have friends that have used 3PAR dedupe, and have heard horror stories. We took a very much wait and see approach and never enabled the functionality. We have no desire to do so.One thing that 3PAR has done very well over the years is data mobility, moving data from one array to the other. It has also been really good about optimizing itself inside of an existing array. It would be great to take that concept, and say, "Instead of looking at optimizing performance for a given workload inside of a single array, why not federate that across multiple arrays, looking at all of the workloads and leveraging non-disruptive data mobility (NDM) to move certain workloads?" So, if you look at VMware, and how you build a VMware cluster, you enable dynamic resource-sharing (DRS) workloads to move from server to server, and you don't care. It happens all day, everyday. Take that same concept, and apply it to storage arrays.Take that knowledge of AI and machine learning and apply it to the array. Make the array smarter and make the arrays more aware of all of the workloads in the data center, not just their specific workload based on their specific configuration. As a data center operator, we don't have enough time in the day to turn all the different knobs, so we need the system to help do more of that for us.What do I think about the stability of the solution?There have been a number of issues. About two to two and a half years ago, there was a branch of code with 3PAR where 3PAR engineering started chasing Pure Storage specifically for feature functionality. The consequence of that was platform instability. It cost them a number of large customers that I know of firsthand, including ourselves. We experienced multiple outages. We had one outage that was 12 hours for our entire financial system. You just can't do that.There were a number of platform stability issues, which have gotten better. The engineering team, to their credit, listened to some very harsh feedback and lessons learned, spending a lot of time on this. This was one of their big efforts for about two years. We worked hand in hand with them, because we were a big customer for many years and helped highlight some of the issues that we were seeing, not only from a code perspective, but also from a development lifecycle perspective.Today, the product is stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is a very scalable platform without question. We've never run into any performance bottlenecks from a scalability perspective. I'm sure you could. In our case, our largest array is an eight inch and all-flash 2850. It can generate or push something around half a million IOPS, or thereabouts. We've hardly scratched the surface of that.How are customer service and technical support?The technical support has been dicey over the years. It has gotten a lot better. About two years ago, they moved support from overseas back to Alpharetta, which helped. This isn't just HPE, but there was a culture inside of support to own tickets and not escalate them. This would cause delays in getting problems resolved. That has been improved. There are still pain points around code upgrades, as an example. You still have to go through a group oversees who handles all code upgrades. The scheduling of that and getting those resources lined up is painful, and it shouldn't be.One of the challenges that we ran into early on was when the platform would become unstable from a support standpoint, there was only so much that a traditional support organization could do inside of HPE, then it would have to go over to engineering, where it was lob the football type scenario. One of the things that we pushed for and HPE changed was to build this direct relationship between their Level 3 support in their ERT team by actually embedding people and allowing them access to code inside the array. That helped supportability, immensely.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?When we went to 3PAR about seven to eight years ago, we were an HPE EVA shop and a Compaq EVA shop before that. The EVA had become very long in the tooth. Platform developments that stalled. Therefore, we knew that we were going to have to move to something different anyway. At the time, we were a very large partner of HPE. We had a good relationship. HPE had just acquired 3PAR. Coincidentally enough, we had actually looked at 3PAR when they were still a private entity and sort of discarded them because we weren't really sure that they would be around as a startup. Once HPE acquired them, it made sense. We brought in a couple of their arrays. They performed very well. Manageability was similar in many ways to EVA, just slightly different. We really liked it, and it was a great platform for about five years.How was the initial setup?The initial setup is very straightforward. You go through this out-of-the-box type process where you define certain key parameters, which is straightforward.What about the implementation team?We do the deployment ourselves.We will do a minimal HPE service, which means they show up, decrate the array, and land it on our floor. Then, they plug it in and power it on. From there, we do all the configurations.What was our ROI?We have not seen ROI in recent years.We saw performance increases compared to what we were running prior to 3PAR all-flash. Our initial 3PAR arrays were not only hybrid, they were spinning disk, so no flash at all. We migrated those to all-flash based 3PARs. We had a 2850, 7450, and 8450. We saw nightly patch time processing performance improvements of an order of magnitude around 60 to 70 percent. Nightly database dumps backups were again in the 60 to 70 percent performance increase range. So, we saw huge performance increases there. The upside is when you have hundreds of databases which are all doing nightly dumps, like typical DBAs want to do, that is usually your biggest bottleneck. So, that can make the system become resource constrained. If you can narrow those windows down, there is less bottlenecking happening, which is sort of a win-win.It has improved our throughput, specifically around some of those nightly batch processes and being able to run them in a much shorter time frame. We had a particular business case where we had business users who were coming to work in the office at five in the morning because of a nightly batch process that would take so long to run. It would run throughout the evening, then around five in the morning it would finish. The business team would come in and run their calculations, manipulating the data in the ways that they needed to generate their reports, then fire off another process. This was all trying to meet an eight or nine in the morning meeting with executives. It was like that daily, "Here is our revenue forecast. This is all the product that we moved." The challenge was that we actually had to force business users to work alternate work schedules because of the technology, which is never a good...Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-16T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SeniorSycb53 from
You can't beat its scalability. Just add more storage space when you need it.What is our primary use case?We use it for virtualization, vCenter, and infrastructure.We have simple needs. We are a very small shop and are not a technology company, but we do have mobile apps and websites that we provide to our customers.I am new with the company. I have only been there about a year now, but I understand that they have had this system for at least three to five years.The performance has been fantastic. It has not had many issues whatsoever, and what issues they do have, the support picks up on it quickly. They send us tickets saying that they are doing work without us even having to engage them. So, that is very nice.What is most valuable?All-in-one containment: I do not have to worry about cross systems talking to each other or multiple systems trying to interact with each other. Our entire vCenter infrastructure is one large stack, which is nice.What needs improvement?I would like to see a little better integration with OneView and provisioning ESX Hosts, but other than that it meets our needs.Possibly because of the version that we are running, but we do not have not enough features.For how long have I used the solution?Less than one year.What do I think about the stability of the solution?I am very impressed with the stability. We have had a stable environment for at least the year that I have been at the organization.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?You can't beat its scalability. Just add more storage space when you need it, which is very simple.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is very responsive. Most of the time, they are engaged before we even know about problems that are there. However, for things like disk outages, you have to arrange for somebody to come out and do something.They have been very helpful, and worked within our schedules and our maintenance windows. We are very pleased with them.What was our ROI?We absolutely see the ROI. Sometimes when you purchase large pieces of equipment like this, uptiming is a huge thing that we need. Also, the stability of the system along with the fact that we have had to put very little time into the product once it was up, established, and running has reduced our costs. It allows us to focus on other important projects, rather than having to constantly restructure the infrastructure.What other advice do I have?Support is great. The hardware is great. Unfortunately, we are running on an older version.I would recommend taking a look at it. I have been looking at the newer options and technology. Not much has changed with it, so the expectations are still there that it would be a solid choice for somebody else.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-07-03T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user561069 from
It has had multiple drive failures, including one that completely crippled our business until it was resolved.What is most valuable?We find the adaptive optimization and dynamic optimization to be the most valuable features.How has it helped my organization?This has not improved my organization at all. It has had a direct effect on how we see our storage solution and how critical it really is and how availability is a priority. This product ran great for 6 months until we had our 1st drive failure. After that, it started falling apart and we have had nothing but issues ever since.We did oversubscribe our drives in regards to IOPS capacity with no alerts of such. This caused us to lose another drive a couple months later, which brought a HUGE performance hit to our business until the drive was rebuilt. Shortly after it was replaced and rebuilt, another drive failed, which completely crippled our business until it was resolved. We were down most of a day because of this.Since then, I have had too many tickets open to count. I still currently have a ticket open with them that they do not have a resolution. They know the issue. It is 3rd-party firmware on the HBA card in the controllers, which is going to be released in some unknown future release.We have just received another unit as a PoC to set up Peer Motion so that we can try and update our current production array for a completely different reason, which we have been waiting several months for. We have no confidence in HPE technical support or engineering to update our current production array without any type of outage.We have replaced FC drives, NL drives, SSD drives, HBAs in controller nodes, and SFP connectors. The onsite CE’s that came out to service the unit have been great, but I find it ridiculous that I can’t run for 1 year without an issue.What needs improvement?Only room for improvement would be to just abandon this product line and start with another.For how long have I used the solution?We have been using this product for 1 year.What was my experience with deployment of the solution?Suprisingly, we had no issues with initial deployment.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have not had problems with scalability.How is customer service and technical support?Customer Service: They will dedicate resources to help resolve issues. That part was impressive, although to actually get a resolution at times we had to really push.Technical Support: Technical support is hard to understand at times and we always had to escalate to level 2 or 3 or engineering. I have even had escalations to Lab still with no real resolution.Which solutions did we use previously?Previously, we used Dell EqualLogic and switched because of some minor instability issues that we had, which, looking back now, were pretty petty. We actually pulled them from storage and powered them up to resolve stability issues with the 3PAR array.How was the initial setup?The setup was fairly straightforward, once given the proper documentation and we had knowledgeable people onsite. Our initial HPE people that we had out to help show us best practices and usage were ridiculous. The HPE person we had out that did the physical installation, unboxing, racking, and initialization of the array was good.What was our ROI?We have experienced absolutely no ROI. We have lost money due to these arrays.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?STAY AWAY. They will give you a book for an invoicing quote.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We evaluated several other products and we were over sold on these arrays. At the time, we looked at EMC, Dell Compellent, Nimble, and IBM. At the time, HPE sales sold us what appeared to be a superior product, but that was really not the case and was a mistake.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-01-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
VirtualizationSysAdmin415 from
We do not have to take the whole system down to do upgradesWhat is our primary use case?It hosts our virtualization platform. It works really well.How has it helped my organization?We do not have to take the whole system down now to do upgrades.What is most valuable?It is very easy to use. That is its best feature.What needs improvement?What I would like to see the SSMC management interface and the regular, Microsoft Management Console (MMC) interface. I would have to use both, because one of them has features, the other one does not, and vice versa.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is very stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability is improving. We have some 7400s, 8200s, and 8400s. So, we can scale pretty well.How is customer service and technical support?With the support that our organization has, I can talk to someone right away if I have an issue. It has been very good.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using HPE EVA. We had a lot of issues with it to begin with. Anytime you wanted to do an upgrade, you had to take systems offline. That just would not work for us.We switched when our warranties were up.How was the initial setup?It was a bit complex in the wiring of the cages. Other than that, it was pretty straightforward.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We also evaluated Dell. We chose 3PAR because of price and functionality.There are some things out there now, such as HPE SimpliVity that do more things, and maybe we would like to go in that direction. Right now, we are doing a PoC with HPE SimpliVity. It seems to be working well, especially the backup solution that it has with it, where you can do snapshots. We really like that since 3PAR does not have this.What other advice do I have?I am not on the latest release yet. We are still trying to get there. The people that I work with at HPE have recommended where we should be in our version. We are not to the 3.3 version yet. I am looking forward to upgrading, because you can do them yourself. You do not have to have HPE do them. Also, it will integrate with InfoSight, which I am looking forward to.Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: In our case, price is usually the biggest factor, because we are a university and have no money. Price is always big when we make a decision.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-06-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ITManagedead from
Everything runs smoothly and the expandability is goodWhat is our primary use case?We are using it for the storage for our on-premise servers, which are both Oracle workloads, as well as having many VMs. We have a lot of complex business needs around legacy things.Our organization has been using 3PAR for about a decade. The performance has been good.How has it helped my organization?Everything runs smoothly.What is most valuable?The expandability is good.HPE can login, fix things, alert us to things, and upgrade. We are there and aware, but we do not do the work. So, that is good.What needs improvement?There are some weird things that we can't figure out.For how long have I used the solution?Less than one year.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability is good.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability is good.How is customer service and technical support?My team is happy with technical support. However, I have not called them personally.Which solutions did we use previously?We had EVAs before, then switched to an earlier generation of 3PAR.What other advice do I have?If you can afford it on-premise, and that is the way you want to go, then it is a good solution.Overall, it has been a good product, and it is stable.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-07-04T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567876 from
Setup was straightforward, it has never been down, and I can scale by adding more shelves.What is most valuable?It is affordable and trustworthy with high availability. It has never been down since I’ve been using it.What needs improvement?Everything I need is in already, but we could maybe use a bit more monitoring to get more insight into performance and where the bottlenecks are.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is very good in terms of stability.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is nice. I need to expand the system by 70 TBs this year, so I just added more shelves. That's pretty easy.How is customer service and technical support?I'm doing it all by myself.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using a slower solution, and then it went down a few times. So we were looking for something more stable.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was straightforward.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We tried Fujitsu and NetApp.Support is the most important factor to us when selecting a vendor.What other advice do I have?I would recommend this.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-12-26T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user679263 from
The most valuable features are price and becoming certified.What is most valuable?The most valuable features are having the proper contacts, getting a better price, and becoming certified. For example, our partners get certified because we are the only partner who has the most certifications.How has it helped my organization?It has helped us work much better.What needs improvement?HPE Mexico takes a lot of time to register and deliver. After we negotiated the final price, HPE releases it and then it takes 48 to 72 hours to deliver it. This is not the best deal.For how long have I used the solution?for the last 4 yearsWhat do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is great for our customers and for us. It's perfect.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is sufficient. We are expanding our operations now.How is customer service and technical support?I have used technical support and I would give them a rating of 8/10. Their staff just came from university and they are still getting experience.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was very complex, because it was our first installation.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We didn't evaluate any other solutions besides HPE.What other advice do I have?Of course, you should go for it. We are an HPE shop and we have to focus on that. We have to focus more on the competence and less on the financial considerations.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ManagerI5065 from
We like the Virtual Volumes and how we can do thin provisioningWhat is our primary use case?We use it mainly for our virtual environment.Performance-wise, it's pretty good. You can't say we have the high-end version, but the one that we have does meet our requirements. Overall, we are happy with the performance.What is most valuable?We like something called Virtual Volumes and how we can do thin provisioning. These are the main things that we usually look for.Redundancy-wise it's quite good. We've got redundancy at each level.What needs improvement?At the present time, there is nothing we see that we are lacking.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is pretty stable. That's the reason we bought one more 3PAR. We just had the 7400, but got the 8200. We may procure the 8400 as well. Overall the platform's quite stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?In terms of scalability, it's quite scalable.How is customer service and technical support?The support that we receive from HPE is pretty good and that's one of the major factors. Sales - anybody can come and sell it - but the main thing is support. After sales, support is the main thing and they've got a really wonderful team back at our place.Which solutions did we use previously?We were predominantly an HPE customer, but in the middle we had other vendors also come in. But, gradually we are going back to HPE.How was the initial setup?From a technical perspective, I'm not directly involved. I'm mainly from a management and overall overview of the system.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?Nowadays, from a storage point of view, there are so many vendors in the market. So cost is one of the factors that pushed us to go with HPE 3PAR. Cost-wise they're pretty competitive.What other advice do I have?Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor are* stability* after sales support* cost.The experience that we have had with HPE is pretty good.Product-wise, it's good. It differs from environment to environment. What we require, for the criteria of our environment, is met quite well.I would say do a PoC. Have a look at the solution. It's pretty stable, scalable. I don't see a problem, why anybody should not go with HPE. They've got multiple solutions in terms of storage also. 3PAR is not just a single solution. They have, they can cater to a hybrid. A lot of things are there. SSDs, a normal SATA disk, high end or low end. So it depends on what your requirements are. You should be doing a PoC just to confirm that it is it.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-21T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
PaulMarshall from
The GreenLake Flex Capacity has allowed us to grow as requiredWhat is our primary use case?Mass storage.At the moment, it's performing very well, but we need to look to expand and innovate.How has it helped my organization?With the HPE GreenLake Flex feature, we can grow as required, and at present, we are growing faster than our requirements, so we need to look to develop and innovate.What is most valuable?Flexibility.What needs improvement?The ability to not only be integrated with hybrid IT, but on-prem.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability is fine.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?At the moment it's under-scaling. We grew quicker than we expected.We know what our issue is and that's why we have to look at Nimble and what it has to offer us at the moment. At the moment, it looks like the solution that we're going to be moving to.Which solutions did we use previously?We've been using 3PAR now for the last three years. Prior to that, the EVA 6000 for five years.We scoped out and scaled 3PAR for three years. We're now approaching that three-year mark, so we're here at the HPE Discover conference to re-approach and scale and future view for the next three to five years.What other advice do I have?This is just my initial view, but I'm going to give it eight out of 10. I need to do a lot more in-depth research into the product and how it's going to benefit Aldermore Bank.Stick with what you know and rely on your instincts.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-25T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SanAndStd11c from
Compression has allowed us to regain some data center floor spaceWhat is our primary use case?Our use case for 3PAR is for all our block storage. Our biggest consumption for 3PAR is for our hypervisors, VMware and Hyper-V. We're almost 90 percent virtualized and 3PAR fits the need for hypervisor environments very well.We got our first 3PAR in 2008 or 2009 and we're up to 71 3PARs now.How has it helped my organization?It propelled our desire to virtualize more quickly, to go from physical servers to more and more virtualized servers.What is most valuable?The most valuable feature is its ease of use. Initially, when we had the hybrid solutions that had SSDs and Fibre Channel drives, the AO was the thing we liked the most - moving the data around where it was needed to be kept for hotspots. But now we're using the all-flash arrays and, with the deduplication and compression, it just really fits our virtualization environment very well.What needs improvement?In the next release, I would like to see faster upgrades, where it's really transparent to our host and our end-users. No node reboots, those types of things are the next feature set I would like to see.For how long have I used the solution?More than five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?They are very stable, we have very few problems with them.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability is very good. We have replaced multiple 3PAR systems with just one or two 3PARs, because of how they scale in the all-flash environment.How is customer service and technical support?I would rate technical support an eight or nine out of 10.Which solutions did we use previously?I had looked at 3PAR before HPE bought it. Then, when HPE bought it, that solidified the decision - that they had the backing of such a big organization. But the biggest factors were the features and functionality, how the hardware worked. And Adaptive Optimization was something we were really wanting.How was the initial setup?The very first 3PAR we got was an eight-node V800, so we were very involved because it was a very big five-rack system, a very large system. It was one of the largest in the southeast. The initial 3PAR was not very straightforward, we had to have help. But since then, we've been able to do some of our own installations without much trouble.What was our ROI?HPE has been a long-standing partner with us in terms of block storage, so it's been a continuous investment.What other advice do I have?Definitely check it out, especially in your hypervisor environments. That is where the compression has really been a huge benefit for us, allowed us to regain some data center floor space because we're now able to put more of the environment in a smaller number of 3PARs.It's almost a 10 out of 10 but the reason it's not is that some of the upgrade processes have been a little challenging, not always technically, sometimes services-oriented. But other than that, the product itself, the ease of use and the value it's provided for us make it a valuable asset for us.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SeniorSy74ad from
The deduplication and compression features allow me to buy less storage to fulfill my business needs.What is most valuable?The ease-of-use, reliability, and the value I get for the capacity are the most valuable features. All of the deduplication and compression features allow me to buy much less storage to fulfill my business needs. I don't have very many support issues with it.How has it helped my organization?The benefit to the company is less down time. I can put my time towards other things, such as finding ways to increase performance or doing more proactive tasks.What needs improvement?Support has gone down a little bit in the past few years. It's hard to get the right person initially and sometimes you have to wait for a call back. It was better when it was 3PAR.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability is great and it's getting better every year. I have less and less issues as HPE works on the software.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Our newer array is much more scalable than I had in the past. I don't anticipate ever reaching a limit on it.How is customer service and technical support?Overall, technical support is great, other than some problems getting connected with the right person. But once you get to the right technical resources, they are very easy to work with and quickly resolve our issues.Which solutions did we use previously?Initially, we were using another HPE DBA product and we were hitting its limits. So this was a great fit for us. We bought it just before HPE acquired it and the solution has been great ever since. This solution replaced a product that wasn't scaling well for us. Now we have a nice, scalable solution.When we are looking for a vendor, we want somebody who can be a true partner with us and not just somebody trying to sell us something.How was the initial setup?I was not involved in the setup of the original 3PARs we have, but I was involved in five subsequent installations. They were straightforward compared to other storage products that I've used, such EMC.Which other solutions did I evaluate?I'm sure they probably looked at EMC, but I wasn't there for the initial sale. For now, we are staying with HPE.What other advice do I have?Don’t have any second thoughts and just go with it. It's really a great product and should fulfill most business needs. It is easy to use.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-20T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user680247 from
Provides ease of setup and connectivity to our server environment.What is most valuable?Ease of setup and connectivity to our server environment.How has it helped my organization?We use it for our VND environment. It’s made it easy to make sure we have the highest throughput capable. It has helped with our connectivity to our DL servers. It’s made functionality a lot easier, doing that.What needs improvement?As far as what I do with it, I don't have any additional needs from the system. It is doing exactly what we need it to do. To make it even better, it could be faster.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is very stable. The only issue that we've had with our 3PAR system was caused by a firmware update and it caused an outage. It was actually a human issue.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It’s very scalable.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support was actually really good. Once we got the right person on the call, then it was actually resolved pretty quick.Which solutions did we use previously?We changed to the 3PAR solution to do a direct connect to 3PAR. Before that, we had a VND environment and we were connected to a larger SAN array. We actually had HPE come on-site. They drew up the solution and the architecture that we wanted to do and they actually were able to implement it based upon what our needs were. When selecting a vendor, we look for support, which is one of the biggest things. Other elements are up-time and hardware reliability.How was the initial setup?I was involved with initial setup. HPE came on site for the configuration and they were really good.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We have IBM solutions on the docket. We are really big. Our storage team has everything, so we actually brought in 3PAR to get it in-house.What other advice do I have?Work with HPE and the sales team. The HPE sales team has been great to work with. They offered a great solution to us.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We are Summit partners.Date published: 2017-06-19T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
WayneCross from
Easy to maintain storage array and enables us to scale faster and get our applications out in much less timeWhat is our primary use case?We use 3PAR as our primary storage array.How has it helped my organization?We have been able to scale faster and get our applications out in much less time. We don't need to worry about the platform's ability to manage the workload, so we are pretty happy.Our VMware platform sits on 3PAR. We also have databases, ERP applications, and websites running on it.All-Flash also positions our organization for growth. It certainly has its place. We don't use All-Flash because the performance of the existing arrays knows the job, but I certainly see where if we are doing data-intensive operations it could assist us.We deployed InfoSight predictive analytics not too long ago. It improved our management of VMs. We are now able to see a lot more using InfoSight and we have a pretty good idea of exactly what's going on in our storage array.The storage array absolutely increases performance. Compared with what we had before 3PAR, this has certainly done its job.The solution has also helped us reduce time to deployment, I would say by at least 30%. It's easier for us to deploy. We get our servers up and running quickly and that way we support our environment faster so we can be more agile.It has also significantly improved throughput, so we don't need to worry about performance for any of our platforms.What is most valuable?The ease of maintenance is what is most valuable for us. We don't need to worry about upgrading the platform. HPE takes care of it for us.Deduplication functionality is pretty good. We have had it for quite a few years. We are pretty impressed with their capabilities and we've never really had a problem.What needs improvement?As it is, it does its job very well, so it's very difficult for me to say what we should be looking for in the next platform. I think cloud integration would probably be the biggest part because that's where everyone is going and the seamless integration between on-premise and cloud is an important part of any IT strategy today.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It's very stable.Also, the solution's availability is remarkable. We have never had a breakdown over a storage array.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It's very scalable as well. We never had a problem where that is concerned.How are customer service and technical support?They are pretty good at what they do. Those guys fix whatever the problem is. We just kind of plug it in and leave. We don't look back at it again.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?We previously used HPE. We had to upgrade because our previous platform was end of life.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was pretty straightforward. The guys knew what they're doing and I have a technical team to assist as well.What about the implementation team?HPE did the deployment for us. Their onboarding process is pretty good.What was our ROI?We have absolutely seen a return on our investment. I don't have numbers offhand, but the organization has certainly grown significantly as a result of the kind of platform that we have deployed.Which other solutions did I evaluate?All of the tier one vendors were on there: Dell EMC, etc. From a perspective of price point, performance, and integrity, we felt that HPE gave us the best value.What other advice do I have?It's not necessarily about the price. The price is certainly an important factor, but what the solution does and how it supports you is even more important than price.Our biggest lesson was that we need to do our homework and make sure that we're going with a vendor that can support us in the long term.I would probably rate this as eight and a half out of ten. It does what it's supposed to and does that very well, even if there are areas to improve on. More integration with cloud would be great. But what it does, it does very well.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user285342 from
It's dynamic, allowing us to change our mind at each layer of the technology stack.Valuable FeaturesThe most valuable features of the HP 3PAR solution for us I would have to say would be around thin provisioning and being able to provision big and then see what the utilization is like. And ultimately, the biggest thing, if you could draw a line from all of these features here down to one common thing, it's really the ability to change your mind. Now, as a service provider, you have to be able to change your mind, because your customers will, and if your customers change their mind and you can't, then you're kind of backed into a corner. So, you know, with the HP 3PAR and all of the dynamic-ness of that, you're able to change your mind at pretty much every layer of the technology stack.Improvements to My OrganizationSo a key example of how the HP 3PAR has benefited our organization would certainly be from a reputation point of view. HP 3PAR is globally well known as a very high end, if not the best storage offering. But in particular, again, drawing back to that performance requirement it also has a reputation around performance and it does deliver on promise. We make big promises to our clients around performance, we have to be able to back that up with a technology that will actually support that initiative.Room for ImprovementIn the future releases of 3PAR, in terms of the overall roadmap, now I have been to the CDN booth and obviously can't say too much about that. But, HP's roadmap tends to align very well with our expected roadmap, for lack of a better term. And in terms of where we're wanting to see the technology go in order to accommodate the needs of our clients HP has a roadmap that aligns very well with that. So I would say I don't have any particular requirements that I don't think HP already have on their roadmap without saying what they are.Stability IssuesThe stability of 3PAR is unquestionable. From day one, we had had not to bag the LeftHand product set, because it has a place in the market, but we had had some issues with that when we really pushed it probably too far. So when we moved to 3PAR as soon as that became apparent, and never looked back. You know, there's been no issues with 3PAR throughout the way through, and I say, the ability to change your mind and change your rate levels, change the way you're deploying the storage, that means that you don't have to break it just to make it what you want it to be.Scalability IssuesSo the scalability of 3PAR, bearing in mind we operate cloud platforms in New Zealand is far beyond what we need because our market is fairly small, and so being able to scale to multiple petabytes on a single SAN is great to know that it can do that, but it's not something we've had to worry about in terms of an overall capacity limit.Customer Service and Technical SupportWe engage quite heavily with HPTS, as we call technical support, and when it comes to implementing new technologies or birthing a new 3PAR, then we don't do that alone. We work closely with HP to make sure that it's all done according to best practice.Previous SolutionsSo before we went down the road of looking at the HP 3PAR, we were using another HP product, LeftHand, which was doing the job fine, but as we started to scale and started to see the demands of the client base that we were attracting, we knew we needed to make a change.So prior to the HP 3PAR, we were using LeftHand products. That was really local disc in the servers themselves, which doesn't scale particularly well, certainly not back when we started, there was not a concept of a virtual SAN.Initial SetupThe initial setup of the 3PAR environments, I would say is very straightforward, when it comes to a new technology. Not so much now, because we have five 3PARs in play. But when our first 3PAR arrived, we spent a month trying to break it, and we do that with any new technology that we're not comfortable with and not yet confident in terms of our own use of the product. And so getting that implemented and trying to break it for a month, you know, we couldn't break it, and so that was good. But that's kind of our model.Other Solutions ConsideredOther than HP, we've been talking to, I wouldn't say working with, but we've been talking to both Cisco and Dell, more so with Dell over the years. But we've really failed to engage to the level that we have with HP. HP have always been incredibly engaging, incredibly communicative, with regards to not only the product sets that are available, where they're going. And the entire ecosystem around these product sets is really what adds to the ultimate value. Anybody can buy a hard drive and stick it in a machine, but, you know, being able to support that long term, understand where that technology needs to go, and then get it there.Other AdviceSo most recently, we have implemented the all flash or the entire flash-based 3PAR 7450, and the roadmap towards making that decision was really around performance. We've always kept a couple of keywords close to our heart with relation to our branding, and performance is one of those, quality being the other. And so the all flash environment has enabled us to deliver on promise with regards to performance.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2015-09-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Marty Riedling from
Our throughput has improved as jobs and servers run fasterWhat is our primary use case?We use 3PAR for everything. There is not much we don't use it for. Most of our storage is on 3PAR at this point. We run SAP, VDIs, and all of our server infrastructure on it for the most part as mission-critical applications.What is most valuable?* Reliability* Speed* Stability* Easy to expand* Easy to maintainThe solution’s deduplication functionality works great. We are getting about a 16:1 dedupe ratio on our VM workloads.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is good and stable.The availability has been great. We haven't had any outages from the 3PAR itself. Although, we have had two or three outages from the techs coming onsite and working on it, then causing an outage.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is good. Our storage is small. We don't have petabytes. We have an 8200 right now and only have 16 drives on it. Therefore, we have a lot of room for growth.All-flash positions our organization for growth. Currently, we are using all-flash, and with the dedupe, it makes it cheaper for us to deploy than other systems.How are customer service and technical support?The call-in support is fine.The onsite techs have caused outages. However, this issue has been fixed as HPE is now outsourcing this.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?We were running out of capacity on our 3PAR 7200, so we bought a new one.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was straightforward. The seller came and installed it, setting it up. We had just enough money. It wasn't that big of a deal to start creating LUNs at that point.What about the implementation team?We used a reseller, High Performance Technologies, for the deployment. Our experience with them was okay.They are not a good fit for what we need now. So, we have moved onto another provider.What was our ROI?The solution has increased our performance.The solution has improved our throughput, as jobs and servers run faster.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?Our licensing costs are all lumped together with everything else, so I don't know the breakout.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at 3PAR, Nimble, and Pure storage.What other advice do I have?Look at both the 3PAR and Nimble, then see which one is best for your needs. They are both reliable systems which work great. They just run.We have had 3PAR for a while. So, it has reduced time to deployment by about 10 percent, which is the same as our older platform.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-09T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user229380 from
We migrated pieces from various storage technologies - EVA, Nexsan, and an old EMC Clarion. They were all EOL and 3PAR had the performance to consolidate all the workloads.Valuable FeaturesThe performance is a good feature.Improvements to My OrganizationWe have consolidated our storage solution from six EVA's of various ages into a single 3PAR array.Room for ImprovementThe support needs to be improved.Use of SolutionI've used it for three years.Deployment IssuesThe only issue I run into with HP storage is that they are not really focused on parallel file systems. It's not that their hardware is incapable, it's that HP's knowledge and support in this space is extremely limited and they are not interested in developing it.Stability IssuesNo issues encountered.Scalability IssuesThe array was fully built out when purchased. The only scalability available is to stripe the file system across a second array, which is a very viable option.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: The pre-sales team is 8.5/10, however, post sales team is a 3/10.Technical Support: The parts replacement is good, however, as for serious technical issues, getting to someone who actually knows enough to help is usually a challenge. This is especially for areas that HP are not interested in developing.Previous SolutionsWe migrated pieces from various storage technologies - EVA, Nexsan, and an old EMC Clarion. They were all EOL and 3PAR appeared to have the performance to consolidate all the workloads at the right price.Initial SetupAny time you're setting up a parallel file system, the setup is going to be complex. I'd say it was no more complex than any other. However, HP's limited experience with parallel file systems on their hardware (especially at the time we purchased the 10800 three years ago) was limited so a lot of performance tuning had to be done prior to releasing the system into production.Implementation TeamWe did it mainly in-house, but HP brought in a partner for the rack, stack and cabling. I then did the implementation with limited guidance from HP engineers.ROII don't know the financials, but we were able to quadruple the production output by shifting the work to the 3PAR array.Pricing, Setup Cost and LicensingI don't have an idea of actual numbers, but I do remember at a high-level meeting, stating that a three year lease, including hardware support, would cost us about as much as we were then paying for support for the six EVAs that we owned.Other Solutions Considered* DDN* EMC* IsilonOther Advice3PAR is the best storage product HP has ever sold. It's not cheap, but it's definitely one of the better block-level storage products out there.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We are a HP Platinum partnerDate published: 2015-04-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SeniorMab0f2 from
Remote Copy functionality supports our disaster recovery project; amazing performanceHow has it helped my organization?We started to initiate a business continuity project, to cover disaster recovery scenarios, and we decided to implement a 3PAR solution for the Remote Copy functionality from this area. We can share this with software integration and cover the business requirements.What is most valuable?We have never had problems, it's running well. The other point is the performance that the storage provides. We currently use 3PAR with full flash, and the performance is really amazing.What needs improvement?I saw recently saw that they will integrate the predictive software from Nimble with 3PAR, and I think that's a good move. With the next firmware release, software release, we will really profit from this integration. I think it's a really good idea that HPE is now integrating this as a possibility on 3PAR.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It will completely meet our needs, moving forward.How is customer service and technical support?It's difficult to say anything about tech support, because it's running so well that we are not regularly in contact with support. I think we had some issues during the implementation phase. We had, I would say, two or three times where we contacted the support, which was really good. I have no complaints. The knowledge and the competence were good.What other advice do I have?Because we are so happy with 3PAR, it's so reliable for us, for the moment we don't see any move to Nimble storage. It depends on the strategy from HPE. They will probably combine the two storage technologies; I don't know what will be the future.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-20T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user364536 from
Scalability is the most valuable feature for us.Valuable FeaturesScalability is the most valuable feature for us. It also has a great price point for cutting edge technology.Room for ImprovementBecause we buy so much storage, we have a lot of headroom that we may not use for six-12 months. So what we'd like to see is the booked-capacity piece which has recently been introduced at HP Discovery London.We'd also want tighter integration between NetApp and HP.We also had stability issues with older versions.Deployment IssuesIt has deployed without issue for us.Stability IssuesWe've had no issues with instability.Scalability IssuesIt scales just fine.Customer Service and Technical SupportWe get great support with self-logging directly so that HP contacts us for quick fixes. But we get disc failures frequently, although there's no interruption to business because that's the way storage arrays are designed to work.Previous SolutionsAt my prior employer, we used EMC and NetApp, which were stable platforms and environments. A lot of it comes down to how you deploy. 3PAR is also a great product, but you can still deploy it incorrectly.Initial SetupWe used HP best practice and we consulted HP. We got it right and it works well for us because of that.Other Solutions Considered* EMC* NetApp* WhiptailThe storage team tech lead chose HP over these.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-01-07T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
GlobalMa4cee from
We're able to replicate data between our sites very easily, and performance is excellentWhat is our primary use case?We use it as a primary storage device for user data and applications. It covers complex business needs in our organization. We have a lot of secure data on there. A lot of our financial applications run on our 3PAR.It has been excellent. We've got a 7440c at my office and then we have two 8000 series at the other sites. We're using Adaptable Optimization, we've got the different tiers of disks. We find that the performance is excellent, really excellent.How has it helped my organization?Previously, we had lots of different storage vendors. We moved to a standardized platform using 3PAR and then we were able to have a consistent set of documentation through all of our sites, and we're able to replicate data between the sites really easily.The biggest benefit is the fact that it's pretty much bulletproof; we never have any issues with them.What is most valuable?Reliability, the fact that it works really, really well. It is a really solid platform.What needs improvement?I know that the reporting functionality is changing. It's going to be much better and that's something that we're looking forward to.I would like to see more flexibility with the cloud. I've actually just been in a presentation about it, here at HPE Discover 2018, so those features are coming.It's still an older architecture, you've got a lot of physical spinning disks. I would imagine more the memory-based computing is coming.For how long have I used the solution?More than five years.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is massively scalable. It's very easy to add more capacity, it's very easy to add more modules if required. It's the same with the licensing model. I think the licensing model changed last year, or two years ago, and now it's much more flexible.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is good. It's still separate from the normal HP Enterprise support team. It's really responsive, incredibly knowledgeable. Their engineers are wonderful, really good. We have had really positive results with the 3PAR support guys.Which solutions did we use previously?About eight years ago, we had a bunch of different storage platforms, and we actually went through a proof of concept and selected 3PAR. Our company was expanding. We realized that our data footprint was going to grow massively in the next few years. We're a game developer so our data growth is completely mirrored by the hardware that we make our games on. At the time, we knew that there were new versions of PlayStation, Xbox 4K coming out for TV, so all of our assets just blew up, about 20 times the size.We realized we needed to invest in an enterprise-grade solution. We looked at three or four different companies. Then, we rolled out the F400 series.The factors we considered were the normal things: Obviously, cost per terabyte or gigabyte, performance, IOPS; scalability was a massive factor as well. We knew that we were going to grow and we needed to be able to just add shelves of disks or add SSD, add SaaS or add Nearline.How was the initial setup?The setup is one of the drawbacks of 3PAR system, it's a fairly complicated piece of hardware. You need to get the engineers in to do it. So it wasn't something that we could do on our own. The Professional Services that we engaged with were wonderful, and it was a couple of days as opposed to a week or two weeks.What was our ROI?ROI, that's a difficult one. It's expensive. When we compare that to the cost of the product that we make, and the return that we get, it's a small piece of the overall project cost. So we don't really complain about how much we initially had to pay for it. The value is that it works, and we don't have any downtime. The return on investment is pretty good.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at NetApp, we looked at EMC, we looked at 3PAR, and 3PAR was the best fit for us totally.What other advice do I have?* Get a proof-of-concept* Draw a list of testing criteria* Have a testing matrix* Be clear in your objectives3PAR is a great solution but it has a big physical footprint for the amount of data. There are other solutions out there. If you don't necessarily require the performance and the redundancy, there are other things to consider. But, it's a really solid storage appliance.I would give the 3PAR an eight out of 10. Because we don't have any issues with it, it's hard to complain about it. But obviously giving it a 10 out of 10 would mean that there is no work to be done. I give it a strong eight.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
IctCounte381 from
Positions our organization for growth by making things faster and easierWhat is our primary use case?The primary use case is production data. The mission-critical app that we run on this solution is SQL.How has it helped my organization?* Performance that it gives me.* The speed of how we process data on the manufacturing floor.What is most valuable?* Ease of use* The speed of the performance of the unit.What needs improvement?The solution should have better integration with legacy systems.We would like memory-driven performance on the storage.For how long have I used the solution?We have had the solution for less than six months.What do I think about the stability of the solution?So far, the stability has been good. We have not had any outages.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?In theory, the scalability is supposed to be fast, but we don't know until we try.It does position our organization for growth by making things faster and easier.How are customer service and technical support?The technical support is very good.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?We were previously using NetApp.We needed a new solution because:* Our old unit was very old.* We had requirements from our production.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was complex, due to calculating the amount of performance that we needed for the floor.What about the implementation team?We used Compucare for the deployment, which was rocky at the start. Now, it's very stable.What was our ROI?We have not seen ROI yet.The solutions has increased our performance. We went from 24,000 IOPS to around 70,000 IOPS.The solution has improved our throughput. We have less downtime.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We didn't have a shortlist. We worked directly with HPE.The reasons for switching to HPE were:* The performance.* The technology that HPE uses had more integration with our servers.What other advice do I have?Never go with your first impression regarding 3PAR. They say that hybrid is the best thing anytime, but if you read the small print, it depends on how you use it, etc. So, we went with an all-flash for that reason. So, don't go with your first feeling. Investigate and try it out. Try to get a demo to make sure it works.I like that the solution's availability gives me:* Ease of use* Performance* Good support from HPE.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-14T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ProjectD7fc0 from
You can mix SSDs with running and slower drives, minimizing cost but maximizing storageWhat is our primary use case?The primary use case for 3PAR would be security video recording, and the security video is used for multiple purposes. In the healthcare environment, it will be used for real-time locating, patient wandering, infant abduction, asset tracking, and staff duress.Taking it to the next level of healthcare, in pharmaceuticals one has to keep track of the production and movement of products and retain those records for a period of two years, as per federal regulations. So now, we need multiple levels of storage: immediate storage, short-term, and long-term, with the data being kept for up to two years.In these scenarios, 3PAR is an ideal solution, and we've had a lot of success because of its capabilities and the different types of storage. You can mix SSDs with running drives and slower drives for longer-term storage, minimizing your cost but maximizing your storage. And you can also evolve storage as needed. You can increase the amount of storage by adding in drives on the fly, as the need arises. 3PAR provides a very ideal solution for some of my customers.How has it helped my organization?It gives organizations a single point of storage and single point of backup. I would call it a "single repository" of all your data with a good archiving system. Those are the biggest benefits I see.What is most valuable?There are lots of valuable features, so it's difficult to isolate a few. Number one, being able to provision drives on demand, as opposed to populating a whole stack of drives and not using them. In the latter scenario, you are locking your money in, you don't get a return on investment. On the fly, you can build up your storage as needed, so that's a very good feature.The second one is the mixture of drives. You can have SSD drives, fast disk drives, and slower drives, redundancy between drives, and hot-swappable drives on the SSDs, the faster hard drives, and the slower drives. This is a huge advantage as opposed to some other systems out there.And of course, there are plugins and compatibility with the standard HPE hardware and it gives you a single panel to view the performance of your devices. From a single panel, I can see the performance of my service, my network, and my storage.What needs improvement?I would like to see them lower costs.It would also help if they integrate current technologies, newer technologies, and more efficient technologies, as time progresses. For example, integrate the fourth level of NAND devices. I believe at the moment we have third-level NAND load-leveling in place. I know these devices are around the corner. In the not too distant future, they should add these types of drives in there. That will give us much faster access. Hopefully, in time, we will replace the spinning hard drives with SSDs only, and the different types of SSDs.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Hot-swappable drives and built-in redundancy gives stability to the solution.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Being able to add drives on the fly gives the solution scalability.Which solutions did we use previously?Most of my projects are large P3 (public-private partnership) projects, where we do design, build, and maintenance of a facility for up to 20 to 25 years. We then return it to the client with another 10 years of service. So, upfront, I have to decide what solutions to put in there that will give me the minimal refresh over a longer period of time. I have to weigh the pros and cons of how much I spend upfront and what my maintenance cost will be over time. That's where the 3PAR solution is a good solution for me. It gives me fewer refreshes over a period of time and yet, at the end of the contract, I can still return it to the client with another 10 years of service.My clients rely on me for evaluating vendors. One of the things I do is take the data sheets from multiple suppliers, compare them, see what is the best fit for the client and then, of course, use my own judgment and experience with my other clients on the given product. Fortunately, 3PAR has been a good product, so, I have no hesitation in recommending it and moving forward with it.How was the initial setup?My involvement is primarily in the initial design of the system. I'm not involved with the actual setup. I will engage vendors recommended by HPE, or HPE-authorized vendors, to do the setup for me.What other advice do I have?Go out, do your research first on the different products that are out there and make the judgment for yourself. The information is out there.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner.Date published: 2018-06-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ManagerL4e9d from
VVols and Thin Provisioning are important in our development workWhat is our primary use case?It's for storage, provisioning to our R&D teams. The developers provision the storage and test their products. The storage is critical for our development.How has it helped my organization?Right now we are looking at automation. Based on my conversation with 3PAR, they are using Ansible to automate the provisioning, so that simplifies the day-to-day operations.What is most valuable?* VVols are important for us* Thin Provisioning* DeduplicationWhat needs improvement?We would like to see automation. We are primarily looking at provisioning and deprovisioning the storage, based on the customer requirements.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is good, we really like the stability and uptime.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We have multiple storage arrays, we have yet to expand the existing storage.How is customer service and technical support?We use technical support for firmware updates and any other application issues. The technical support is good.Which solutions did we use previously?The decision to find a solution is based on internal requirements. We need storage capacity. Currently, we have, let's say, two petabytes. When we needed more storage then we'll think about expanding the existing storage or buying a brand new system.The important criterion for us when looking at vendors is performance. We recently evaluated all-flash-based arrays and the hybrid model, and how they handle I/O throughput. Those are the key areas.We went with 3PAR because it is easy to use and we are very familiar with firmware which is easy to manage. Creating the internal groups and other areas is very easy for us.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was straightforward; configured the management interface and it was ready to use. After the physical deployment - you need to connect the power and network - it should not take more than one day, even less than one day.What was our ROI?We are using the same area for multiple product groups and multiple setups. It's a shared environment, so we see a lot of benefits with that model.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at NetApp, Hitachi.What other advice do I have?I would recommend 3PAR or Nimble. Nimble is all-flash arrays, if you have the budget. Otherwise, we favor 3PAR, the 8000 and 10000 series.I rate 3PAR at nine out of 10 because of the provisioning, the interface; and now there is InfoSight. We are planning to integrate all our arrays. I see that as valuable.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Kasper Billeskov from
All-flash is the most innovative way of using storageWhat is our primary use case?We use 3PAR as a shared platform for services, applications, and databases.How has it helped my organization?For the past three years, all-flash has been the most innovative way of using storage, based on the 3PAR platform.What is most valuable?It is scalable.What needs improvement?I am hoping to see some snapshot functionalities: Oracle snapshots, snapshots for VMware, and hypervisor snapshots.We have had some bad issues on stability. Also, the new feature sets, like deduplication and compression, are complex to work with. I hope when I view the roadmap that they will be less complex.For how long have I used the solution?More than five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We have a bad track record on the 3PAR system. We also have some Virtual Fibre Channel (VFC) storage platforms. However, we had a bad start on 3PAR. It is going better now.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We are managing more than 50 3PAR arrays worldwide. In our test centers, we are managing 15 HP all-flash arrays. The use of it is to be able to scale the platform. This is the most flexible way and one of the requirements for use in our environment.How is customer service and technical support?Our administrator uses the support every day. So far, I hear that it is working okay. The Call-Hall function is what we are putting our value on. This is also the primary reason for using their support.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using EMC VMAX, EMC VNX, and NetApp. We switched due to price.How was the initial setup?HPE has always done the initial hardware setup of the solution. It is straightforward, because we have good local engineers.What was our ROI?The performance compared to other products. Over time having the product and using it for six years, the performance has been a tremendous and bought about positive things.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We always channel all our vendors whether it is HPE or some others. Price is one of the most important features, but functionalities, availability, and the scalability of the systems is also very important.What other advice do I have?Do some benchmarks on it and compare the requirements for whoever will be installing this product.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-06-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user188622 from
When comparing the cost with the features and performance, this solution is a good choice.Valuable Features* Separated multilayer and specific SAN Storage operating system (Informos)* ASIC based operation* High end feature in mid-range scale* Wizard based configuration console* Scale in scale out forward* Storage virtualization technology like chunkletImprovements to My OrganizationIncrease provisioning time and reduce configuration complexity based on chunklet technology. It supports advanced virtualization services on storage operations and virtual computing infrastructure.Room for ImprovementCommon data center standards for temperature, humidity, firefighting etc.Use of SolutionI've used the Inserv 7000 series for two years.Deployment IssuesMany points were needed for the initial system on first time setup. We had some non-predictable random issues during initialization like non-probable Inserv serial numbers etc. Time was needed for the chunklets restructure to take effect.Stability IssuesVery dependable system structure to each node on healthy clusters.Scalability IssuesBased on our experience and the documentation it looks easy.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: 9 out of 10Technical Support: 9 out of 10Previous SolutionsWe used to use the EVA 8000 series but they have just two nodes in that series and it is unsupported for active clustering, HA for controllers and nodes. 3PAR is also more cost effective on hardware, and has less performance issues and more scalability.Initial SetupComplex in initial pre-requirement and finding the serial numbers and the necessary information for setting up the system.Implementation TeamI did the implementation myself.ROIWhen comparing the cost with the features and performance, this solution is a good choice.Other Solutions ConsideredYes, we compared this series to the EMC VNX series based on feature/performance/technology and cost.Other AdviceIt has a large basket of advanced features to integrate storage system into the service layer, good performance on provisioning and SAN service.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-02-18T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567642 from
The features I like are the reliability, the cost, and support.What is most valuable?The features I like are the reliability, the cost, and support. It is quite an expensive kit, but the support we get and the reliability is what we pay for, and that's important to us.How has it helped my organization?The scalability has improved our organization. We can add to it, and we can future-proof it in that regard. It's flexible in that we can grow it or shrink it as our business demands require. It allows us to be flexible. Since we do have peaks and troughs in our data storage, we need to be able to either add, take stuff away, move things around for projects, and that's just what they can provide.What needs improvement?I would like to see, obviously, regular disks and more storage on them. I would like to be able to fit more data into the same amount of space or smaller. That's always where disk storage is going to go. They continue to innovate on the disks, bigger capacity disks in the same amount of space so we can get more storage for the same amount of room of physical space.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is excellent. It has been very stable, and we do give the storage quite a good workout. It's busy all the time, most of the day, 24/7, most of the weekends. Our account manager says it's one of the most worked three-part storage devices he's seen. We do use it a lot. It's been perfectly stable, and we have, “touch wood”, not had any particular bother with it.How is customer service and technical support?We absolutely have used tech support, and they have been great. They're very good. Luckily we haven't had many issues, but when we do, we contact tech support. They're usually very good at getting back to us, because it's automated tech support. They will actually call us, and tell us there's a problem before we even notice it ourselves.Which solutions did we use previously?We were using an HPE product, and that basically folded, as it got quite old. We went and looked around in the market for what is current, and HPE came along and said, "We can do that. Our replacement for this unit is now the HPE one, and this is what we recommend." We got some consultancy from them just to go through our requirements and our needs. They did lot of graphs and showed that it was right for us. It was recommended to us by them.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We considered Dell before HPE. We chose HPE due to its reputation. We had a relationship with HPE previously, and actually they were able to come in and recommend, and actually spend time with us to sit down and ask what our needs were, analyze, project and give us both sets of figures of what we need, how quickly to fulfill them, how long it would take, and that sort of thing. They were able to come in and do this. Other vendors really just tell us, "Here's what you'd like." That certainly won't do as we need to have some details in pre-sales. This solution does fit our needs very well. It is flexible, and we get good support with it. It's stable, and it works, and so I'm happy with it.What other advice do I have?When looking for a vendor, look for reliability, backup, support, and reputation. It's got to be someone we know who has a good reputation in the industry. We do go with some newer sort of vendors as well, but we like HPE for their reputation. We know their stuff is good because we've been using them for years.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-12-08T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user187794 from
3PAR - Popeye's spinach for the I.T. IndustryValuable FeaturesThe CPG, Dynamic / Adaptive Optimization, the CLI, and more importantly the way it's licensed as you are not "tagged" and held hostage when you're at 1TB, and another, and another, and another. The licensing is a brilliant approach to the fiscal tourniquet of scalability! Oh.. I also like the service processor and how it's out of band and monitors the SAN, how it does the updates - neat little component.Improvements to My OrganizationScaling and performance. Easy to add shelves, easy to move data around while everything is hot, move data from tier to tier, expanding a LUN, there are so many ways it's just amazing how much it's helped! The snapshot and sending them to different tiers by using the CPG makes life a bit easier!Room for ImprovementRemoving a LUN mapping from a single host is a bit odd, worse a single host in a host set, it needs 10G ports for IP based replication (needs to be 1 or 10G). Keep working on the SSMC and allow for GUI management to be cross platform.Use of SolutionAround 2 yearsDeployment IssuesI have deployed several and found the SmartStart CD to be intermittent. Also, during the install when the SP locates the array, the network based multicast can't find the storage array and you have to go to console / serial cable. Not too big of a deal, but you then have to configure settings manually.Stability IssuesNever as of yet. It has been rock solid!Scalability IssuesWe can't hit it hard enough yet. As I said adding shelves and drives all is pretty nice and straight forward.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: Early on, I had some strong opinions about the transition to more of HP support. I raised concerns, The HP team in Alpharetta, Ga lead by Brad Bates took significant steps, listened, and made adjustments. Buying a product is one thing, post-sale is what keeps customers coming back and maintains longevity.Technical Support: Thus far, pretty impressive. I met the actual teams of people and after the initial "hiccup", I had a chance to see the HP Lab, meet some of the people that enjoy what they do. It's important for everyone to understand that IT people work inverse hours and when we make changes it's evenings, weekends, and holidays. Senior level - tenured members of most companies are "off" while HP found a way to keep solid individuals available to be available.Previous SolutionsFunny you ask - let's just say a "no named" array that had redundant controllers completely torched nearly every ESX datastore where it "gutted" the data inside of it, but left the shell. Yet, the support person on the phone called the update "successful on my end". Sure, the nodes made have updated, but the data was gone - you be the judge! I have used solutions from many, many storage vendors.Initial SetupPretty straightforward - even though HP says "self installable" I highly recommend a qualified person with a great deal of understanding of virtualization, zoning, etc. Could a person with no experience using storage do this? Eh...maybe getting the array on-line, but I would not recommend it (nor would I for any vendor).Implementation TeamWell, I am "that vendor team", but I am also a user as well. So, if I am allowed to rate my experience - 25 years of IT, nearly 15 years of storage - we can do pretty well!!Other Solutions ConsideredThe usual EMC stuff.Other AdviceWhether you are new to storage or advanced, this is the most amazing piece of hardware I have ever had my hands on, built, and used. The thought behind much of the detail of how it works just seems incredible. Think about this, you have drives that sit in multiple RAID arrays because of the CPGs and how the SAN is always moving chunklets around to keep hot spots from occurring. If I could meet the founders and shake their hand, I would love to and let them know thank you. Thank you for giving me the chance to have fun with my job and have access to such hardware. I would also thank HP for taking a datacenter class piece of hardware and re-aligning it to be competitive in any space - just brilliant!Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:I personally bought my own 3PAR for myself (no HP discounts were given to me - other than I bought the arrays using the HP renew program), my company owns 3PAR arrays for our hosting practice, but I am also the Director of a consulting practice that is responsible for architecting solutions for clients. We can sell any vendor, and we have, but we landed and only sell HP because 3PAR is the "SAN doctor in the house"!Date published: 2015-01-29T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567717 from
The most valuable feature is its tiered approach to data structuring. We can quickly move data from slow disks to faster disks.What is most valuable?The most valuable feature is its tiered approach to data structuring. We can quickly move data that's stored on slow disks to faster disks if the demand arises. That's good value for our company.How has it helped my organization?We've recently embarked on a large-scale convergence project where we've consolidated about 250 physical servers to virtual servers. Those virtual servers are hosted onto 3PARs 7400 systems, which are located in two data centers. They give us high availability and real-time access to data in both locations. In terms of the value for business and the value for us, it's given us the facility to have a business continuity plan, which we never had before.What needs improvement?Data de-duplication is something that's lacking in 3PAR ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hpe-3par-flash-storage ). We use HPE StoreOnce ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hpe-storeonce ) systems as part of a backup solution. StoreOnce systems, they use a SAS disks, which are spin disks. They have about 80% de-duplication ratio, which from a backup perspective, that gives us tremendous capacity to back up to disk; not to take to disk for 12, 24 months. When you compare that to 3PAR, 3PAR doesn't have de-duplication and this causes storage issues.Technically that's not true. 3PAR has de-duplication on the SSD drives, but because it's a mixed drive chassis, the large proportion of data that we have comes in the first class of the SAS disks, which will equate to maybe about 70 or 80% for top data. They're not de-duplicated. I think that's a feature that HPE need to work on quickly.What do I think about the stability of the solution?3PARs are very stable. We've been using 3PARs both in the UK and our headquarters in France for maybe four years now and we've not had any issues with the system, so they're a quite a reliable system.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability depends on the situation. Whenever you try and provision these converged platforms, you've got to have an element of planning in terms of where your business is going grow for the next two or three years. It's interesting. We planned for 20% data growth on a 3PAR infrastructure over three years. What we found was we had closer to 20% data growth per year.So if you look it from a data scaling perspective, we've reached the limits of our 3PAR 7200s in Europe. Thankfully for us, we've got 7400s, which gives you a lot more scalability in terms of storage. From a memory and processing prospective, they're perfect. So we have no issues with scalability.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is very good for the 3PARs you get. We've bought a 5-year support plan and we get to speak to the 3PAR technical support team in Houston, Tx. They're quite responsive. The 3PAR support plan, as well, is a reactive support plan, so we've got people from Houston who are looking at our systems and they inform us whenever a disk is filled. They send disks to be swapped out. They can be swapped out by our team or they can be swapped out by an HP person that turns up and does the job for you.Which solutions did we use previously?We're a large company of many, many small companies and we've realized through global projects that have an autonomous approach to IT departments, for example, where it doesn't work. That's exactly the same when it comes to the architecture behind your IT environment. We had to look at centralizing all of our systems, all of our platforms, so that we could offer a meaningful level of service to business. Without centralization, we couldn't guarantee the service of any of our platforms around the key business applications that the business expected us to deploy. That's how we knew to centralize all of our systems and platforms and host them on converged systems.How was the initial setup?Initial setup was very complex. These systems are very complex, but if you buy a converged system from HPE, the converged system is part of the package and HPE provides you with the technical expertise to come out and build the converged systems for you. They're built and tested at the manufacturing plant. You can go and visit the manufacturing plant and see them if you want. Some people can. Then they're sent to your site and HPE sends experts to build the 3PARs on site and assist you with the build.What other advice do I have?We have a global HPE agreement and it depends on the sort of size of projects and whether or not we issue and RFP when we got to other suppliers. If we do issue an RFP, then we're not tied internally to working with HPE. We can work with whoever we think's best for the requirement. But because we have such a good close working relationship with HPE and because they attend industry events, I'm always key to recommend to some of our peers and our colleagues around the world that they should be looking at this or that particular product.3PAR's good from a medium-sized to large-sized enterprises. We're probably a large-sized enterprise company, but we have also small companies around the world where we wouldn't recommend the 3PAR for those sort of situations. We'd recommend applying a platform converged systems solution.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-12-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
UnixAdmi6d0e from
Makes us more agile - I can move it to another server in a couple of minutesWhat is our primary use case?3PAR is our main storage solution that we use for anything and everything, mainly Oracle right now. But we also have different db8s as well flute.com on our 3PAR. We have a number of different things on it.It's outstanding, it works like a champ. We have been using it for about 15 years. We have a T400 sitting in the data center right that I'm trying to get up off of. We've been using 3PAR for quite a while.How has it helped my organization?We're able to move things around with more agility. I can take it off one server and slap it on another in a couple of minutes, so we're really agile when it comes to that. If we run into server issues, it's a quick jump, we're on a new server, we're off and running again. And then I have time to look at the server. That's a really nice feature.And the speed is outstanding, it really works wonderfully.What is most valuable?I really like the new RMC (Recovery Manager Cental) software that was introduced with the 3.0 or 3.1 update. It allows us to use our data protector with our 3PAR and give it a nicer front-end than the SSMC did.What needs improvement?I'd really it to be able to interact with older 3PAR storage, and possibly even non-HPE. I would like to be able to pull stuff off of old things and bring it up to the standard that has been set, simply, quickly, and efficiently. That would be a really nice feature. Right now it is a big pain. It seems to work but we tend to get some latency behind. It seems it could be better.For how long have I used the solution?More than five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?I've never had it go down unless I wanted it to, ever.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability is easy. We just had HPE come out and put in a whole other shelf for us, for more storage. You can scale it out almost indefinitely. It works amazingly, I'm a huge fan.How is customer service and technical support?Up until this point, technical support has been amazing. I am a little leery because I have heard they are doing more outsourcing with their support. I've run into that with other vendors that we deal with and it has never really worked out that well. We always seem to get less knowledge and then we have to go through three or four people before we get to the person that used to be the number one guy that we talked to. And he was the only guy we talked to. He knew how we use our things and at what capacity they were used, so it was easier for him to help us troubleshoot. Now I have to go through all these different hoops and jumps, and I'm not a fan of that.What other advice do I have?I would give 3PAR an eight because, first, I don't think anything is ever a 10. It's still really good - but since 9 is really close to 10, and that's almost perfect - it's about an eight. The reliability is really there. Once it's there, it's there. You don't really have to worry about it, which is really nice because we have enough things to worry about.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user362331 from
With the reporting, we get needed information about how much and where we're consuming storage.Valuable Features:The most valuable features are the reporting and replication. With the reporting, we get needed information about how much and where we're consuming storage. Reporting also shows us our replication as we replicate between volumes.Improvements to My Organization:It's helped us with data redundancy, which makes our system run more efficiently. Also, the interface is user friendly, but it requires a little training to know all the different functionalities and options.Room for Improvement:It could improve in the virtualization of the storage. Also, it needs better reporting on other vendors' technologies, such as VMware.Deployment Issues:We don't have problems with deployment.Stability Issues:It's stable.Scalability Issues:It scales without issues for us.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-12-31T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user568020 from
Latency is low. Technical support is on time.What is most valuable?This tool is directly attached to the ProLiant server. It has very, very low latency.How has it helped my organization?The solution hasn’t benefited the entire company. It's a special solution that has provided benefit for part of the company. We have global data instruments around the world. This tool has allowed us to decrease the data import time from nine hours to just one hour.What needs improvement?I would like to see fewer licenses.What do I think about the stability of the solution?This is a stable solution. We have used it for three years.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is the end of the product. We had to buy all of our 3PAR products in 2012. At the time, it was a new product. It wasn't viable. It is now running out of disk space.How is customer service and technical support?We have used technical support. They are on time and very good. They provide good solutions.Which solutions did we use previously?We did not have a previous solution. We had a service provider, which had IBM solutions. I needed a solution for a particular application, and HPE 3PAR was one part of the solution.How was the initial setup?I was involved in the installation. We have problems every time. Sometimes there are three parts to one problem.For example, I had to get help from the engineering team in India. It took a year to solve this issue. There was new documentation in which the installation requirements for the disaster tolerant systems changed. That is one of the installation issues.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We didn’t have an alternative at the time. Our client could only work with 3PAR. There were no other products in the world which could do that in 2012. I don't know about solutions that are available today.What other advice do I have?I have experience with HPE since 1996. I'm a member of "Connect". I know HPE better than I know IBM.Some HPE solutions are very good. In terms of performance and digital equipment, they have very good knowledge in some types of IT.HPE tries to be visionary, but I don't think they are. Perhaps they have the right products today, but the whole world is changing.I could help a colleague who is making a decision by showing him our HPE solutions. I could explain what we have done and why.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-01-01T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Christophe Calus from
Extensive command line enables drill down on performance and statistics, but compression and dedupe need workHow has it helped my organization?It's the performance that we need. Before, we had another system and we noticed that the performance wasn't enough, so now we have two types of 3PAR systems, the 20850 all-flash and also the 8450 all-flash. We can really see that the performance is much, much better and the latencies are much lower. That's what we needed.What is most valuable?The performance.The new interface, the OneView, is a nice interface.The command line is very extensive, a lot of tools so in comparison to other vendors. It's one of the great things about 3PAR, that you can really drill down on performance, get statistics, really know how your system is internally performing. You don't need to wonder what is happening, you can really see it inside.What needs improvement?For performance it's all okay, but we are also hoping for the compression feature, hoping that we can have not only good performance but also more gain in our capacity; we are still waiting for it to be deployed.We have had a painful migration to transform from the old way of doing dedupe, in version 2, to the new way of doing dedupe; and also getting rid of the old CPGs with the old way of storing the data. So it's a bit painful, cost a lot of manpower to do it.One big thing that we really need - it's a simple thing - is longer names for our volumes. Now they're only 28 characters and we try to have the same name convention as our VMware guys, the datastore names. We want the same name, but if we want to create a SnapShot, and we want to add something - an underscore or something like that and maybe another number - then we have issues. It's only 28 characters and we then hit our limit. Twenty-eight is too low nowadays. I will ask our Technical Account Manager to do an enhancement on that. It should be 64, or at least more than 32 characters.It sounds simple but, somehow, I think it's a deeper integration issue and it's not so easy to change. But I need to ask for it because now we are trying to use SnapShots for copying production data to servers and we need those extras, a space, character spaces, to create a longer name.For how long have I used the solution?One to three years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We haven't had any downtime. There have been some small issues sometimes with an upgrade, a link went down but we didn't investigate further. Or sometimes we send it to support but it takes too long. But no downtime, not like we hear from other customers. Sometimes they really have a node that reboots; or our colleagues in Hungary, they had some issues, but we haven't had any downtime or the like with our 3PAR systems. We're happy about that.How was the initial setup?Setup was very easy. I think even for the 8450 - we had also prepared ourselves -but in one day we had installed everything and it was up and running. So it's easy to set up.What other advice do I have?I rate it about seven out of 10. It's not bad but it's also not the best. We had some issues, now they are resolved, but one issue existed for a year. We needed to migrate everything, and all the extra work needed to be done by our VMware colleagues, and they would not be so happy if we ask again to transform something.Also some things were promised, like turning on/turning off dedupe and compression on the fly. But now it will create another one, compress, and then migrate it via the VMware tools. So we are really depending on vMotions. We wanted to remove the load from our VMware colleagues so that we could say, we will do the transformation to compress, you don't need to worry.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Frank Baittinger from
I can convert data from any storage type to any other storage type.What is most valuable?Flexibility, in regards to the different disk tiers in the 3PAR, is the most valuable feature.I can manually move data between the different tiers (NL, FC or SSD) or I can let AO do it for me. Thus I do not need 100% precise planning in advance.How has it helped my organization?I can play with it real time, all day. There's no need for a very dedicated planning for the future because I always can change it.What do I think about the stability of the solution?Stability could be better. We have had it 3 years and we had three down times.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We scaled up in the past and we will scale up again next month. The last time the previous system engineer did this. I don't have experience with scalability.How is customer service and technical support?The quality of technical support was inconsistent. I did not always find that they dealt with our issues on time.Which solutions did we use previously?There were HPE EVAs before and they were at the end of their life.When looking at vendors, the most important aspect is openness; that they really talk open and are not just marketing.How was the initial setup?I wasn't involved in the initial setup.Which other solutions did I evaluate?I don't know if other vendors were evaluated. It was before my time. But, there are still better products. I would like to have an HPE XP7.What other advice do I have?Go and play. We have a lot of offices and backup sites so they can really get hands on. That's the benefit.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-12-26T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567576 from
It offers a variety of disk types at different price points and speeds.What is most valuable?It's probably the most cost-effective, value-for-money system for the mid-market.How has it helped my organization?Besides from being cost effective, it's got a low-cost disk, upon which you can load any of your imaging stuff. Then, there are also the higher-cost disks, and the SSDs, which are phenomenally fast. SSDs make our systems work significantly faster. I've used SSDs before when I was a customer. Previous to this job, I was the infrastructure executive for a much larger company and we invested quite heavily in HPE 3PAR.What needs improvement?In the next release, I think I would like to see lower-cost SSD features. I would prefer to spend a little bit less there so I can afford to actually move my entire 3PAR system into SSDs.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is pretty good.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is very good.How is customer service and technical support?We have used technical support. Sometimes we used HPE's technical support out of India and it is quite difficult to understand them. I think that HPE needs to look at that. Besides that, the technical support is relatively good.Which solutions did we use previously?Before this solution, we were in a situation where the disk capacity we had continued to grow. When I joined the company three years ago, each system had their own stuff so we invested in 3PAR. We were just using all internal disks. I've used one or two other disk systems, but I don’t recall the names. We also used HPE's EVA, which I don't think was necessarily the best environment. We also used their XP environment which was very good. EVA was not as fast as it should have been. I think it was too costly. When we chose this solution, we were looking for the most value for our money. We had a short list of other vendors, but I've been buying HPE since 1982, I think, so it didn't take long for me to think about HPE.How was the initial setup?I don't do this sort of leg work, the keyboard stuff, because I'm an executive responsible for other matters. However, I have a technical background, so I know quite a lot about it. The feedback I received was that it went very well. Otherwise, I wouldn't recommend it.What other advice do I have?I have heard of a solution called "Clear" or something like that. If you look at them, trolley-for-trolley, or pound for pound, I think that HPE 3PAR is probably the best system around.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-12-11T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
ICTDirector782 from
We can deploy new servers and new solutions pretty quickly. If systems are stopped while the record picks up that they're starting to fail, we can add more resources to them quite dynamically.Valuable FeaturesWe can deploy new servers and new solutions pretty quickly. If systems are stopped while the record picks up that they're starting to fail, we can add more resources to them quite dynamically.Improvements to My OrganizationIt's a lot more automated and a lot easier, which provides us with a better business continuity solution.Room for ImprovementHP has what they call the OSS, operation support site. I hand over all my BAU to HP to manage and fix, but they don't go down to the 3PAR level. We can't afford to fall back on government money to take the time to identify issues. OSS only provides high-level support, and it would be an improvement if they drilled down more.Deployment Issues3PAR deploys just fine for us.Stability IssuesIt's stable generally. When we had problems, it was due to an omission in our manual process and not in the automated process. It's quite techy, so you need to make sure you have someone on your staff or an outside expert to provide advice.Scalability IssuesIt scales just fine.Customer Service and Technical SupportWe pay for proactive support from HP, but I wouldn't rate it 10/10. It's not as proactive as I'd like, though I'm not paying for the highest level of support. Sometimes, it's takes them 4 hours before they start doing things.Initial SetupThe initial setup was a bit complex and took much longer than we anticipated. We have 5,000 users now, but it took us two years to be able to get there.Implementation TeamWe implemented it in-house.Other AdviceSpend as much as you can on HP support for the product. Don't rely on it being all in-house.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-01-12T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user568101 from
You can mix cheap storage with expensive storage.What is most valuable?* It's fast.* You can mix cheap storage with expensive storage.* It's very reliable. It's a system that is 100%; no failures.How has it helped my organization?We have approximately 100 companies renting servers and storage from us. We are using HPE 3PAR to achieve a hybrid IT solution, combined with Asher.It helps us earn money.What needs improvement?I want an easier solution for provisioning new servers. Currently we need to go in, set up a server, give the server names and functions, declare the number of gigabytes the server has for storage, and so on.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability is very good. When we buy flexible capacity from HPE, there are HPE personnel that are drifting the solution for us 24/7, 365 days a year.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is very flexible in terms of scalability.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is very good.Which solutions did we use previously?We have three EVAs that we were using before we took 3PAR.What other advice do I have?I would advise colleagues to buy the flexible capacity that HPE provides with 3PAR.When we selected HPE, our most important criterion is that they cooperate well with us.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-01-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user680334 from
The post-implementation service is the most valuable feature.What is most valuable?I think the service during post-implementation, and not just pre-implementation, is the most valuable feature. That's the most important thing for us. When the system is running in production, we need to solve problems very fast.How has it helped my organization?The benefit is that it doesn't crash.What needs improvement?I would like to see more fast storage and more inside support.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is very stable.How is customer service and technical support?I would give technical service a rating of 10/10. The service was good.Which solutions did we use previously?We knew we needed a new solution because of our growth.How was the initial setup?The setup was complex, because the technology is new in Central America.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?The price is not too high.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at Dell and Lenovo.When selecting a vendor, we look for the presence in Central America. They should have offices in Central America.What other advice do I have?They should buy it of course.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-18T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Scott Samowitz from
Streamlines our storage purchases, improves performanceWhat is our primary use case?It's our primary storage for our VMware environment. Performance has been excellent. We don't have multiple business needs. It's just focused on our virtual storage.How has it helped my organization?It has really improved performance. Before, we just had different storage devices based on different needs - so we didn't have to buy all-flash for everything. We couldn't do tiering. 3PAR was the first device that gave us that ability. It has really improved how we can streamline our storage purchases, as well as performance. It has done well.What is most valuable?Multi-tier storage was the primary reason that we bought it. I also love the interface that you use for administering it.What needs improvement?I haven't really thought about what a future release should contain. We've liked what 3PAR has so far.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It has been very stable. We've had very minor issues, but I've loved how HPE is proactive on letting us know. Usually, they let us know before we notice it ourselves and they already have a solution for us. It has been great that way.How is customer service and technical support?We have used tech support a couple of times. Usually, it's just involving them in upgrading the service processor or upgrading the OS on the appliance. They have been really good.The only drawback on it is they seem really busy. We get a critical notification when an important patch comes out, but sometimes it's a month before we can get this critical piece on because they just don't have time on their schedules to do it sooner.Which solutions did we use previously?Our main reason for switching was based on age. We weren't having major issues with our storage, but we try and replace things on a five-year schedule, at that level.When selecting a vendor the biggest factor is a vendor we know. In the past, we had used one that seemed to be leading edge. I had a guy on the financial side that was pushing more for that. He really liked how that vendor didn't require you to purchase their drives. You could use off-the-shelf, enterprise-rated drives, so the costs of expanding the array seemed to be cheaper going that way. But after two years that company went belly-up and disappeared. This time, even though there were a couple other vendors he liked better - Nimble was actually one of them at the time, but they were still new enough that I pushed back - I said, "Nope. I'm going with somebody whose name I know."How was the initial setup?The initial setup was very straightforward, very easy to do. It took a couple of hours. It wasn't very hard. We only had about seven servers that we had to connect to the three chassis, so it was very easy.What was our ROI?The biggest thing is we haven't had to buy multiple, different storage devices. That has reduced our costs significantly.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Nimble. At the time, Nimble wasn't an HPE company.What other advice do I have?I would rate 3PAR a nine out of 10, primarily for a couple reasons. First, we've never had problems with it. It has been super stable, it has done everything that we've wanted it to do, and the performance is great. Second, I never give anything a 10, because there are always improvements that can be made.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user368793 from
We can quickly move our large volumes and check or test something, and if it's not faster with SSD, we can just move it back.Valuable FeaturesWith our previous EVA system, we couldn't shift data between different tiers online. We have multi-tiered storage and can move them online between SSD and global SAS. With 3PAR, we can quickly move our large volumes and check or test something, and if it's not faster with SSD, we can just move it back.Improvements to My OrganizationWe have zero downtime with 3PAR. This saves us a lot of money as the business stays up and running.Room for ImprovementThere is only one thing I would really like to see, but I'm not entirely sure if this is actually 3PAR-related or not. I'd like real-time reporting. We can get reports, but it's difficult to monitor the system in real-time, which is critical, for example, when something is running slowly. It takes us hours to find out what the system is doing.Also, real-time reporting will tell me who the "top talker" is at any given time. This is something we go to Brocade for to use their fiber channel and open grid. The first thing it shows is the top 5 talkers so you know that one of those is mostly likely causing the problem.I think that 3PAR will eventually have the fiber channel feature, increasing its cost. I don't see us buying the license for that, though, as we've already spent a lot of money on 3PAR licenses.Use of SolutionWe've used it in production for one and a half years.Stability IssuesWe haven't had a single problem yet. I'm quite happy with that actually.Customer Service and Technical SupportIt's not good and kind of stressful when you're at the first level. Sometimes we have a hard time explaining what our problem is. We have to escalate the issue to someone who really knows what they're talking about.Initial SetupThe initial setup with different tiers and adaptive optimizations was very easy after seeing the DQE. Migration of our data that first time was also very easy.Pricing, Setup Cost and LicensingThe pricing is fair, but you have to pay for every little feature, which is something I really dislike about HP. You buy the software, then the hardware, then the OS license, then if you want more, you have to pay more just to put your data on it.For example, if you want to replicate data, you have to get the replication license. You can't just replicate data and I can't always get budget approved to do that.Other AdviceWe're really happy with 3PAR as it performs very well despite a few failing discs, which is normal. Upgrades went well and we haven't had any outages. We'd recommend it to others.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-01-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Dwayne Vidi from
We have yet to have a disk fail, and when there is an issue support has been fantasticWhat is our primary use case?It's the main storage system, both for the primary site as well as the DR site.We have complex business needs. Our business has multiple databases - both Oracle and SQL - an Exchange environment, Active Directory environment, websites, web servers, SharePoint. We have a variety of use cases - including development VMs for custom web apps - all being stored on 3PAR at the primary site. The DR site gets Veeam backups of the primary site, so we have the backup recovery on our other 3PAR.How has it helped my organization?Performance-wise it has been fantastic.What is most valuable?So far, we have yet to have a disk fail on either system, other than one I forced to fail when we first got the system in. So the reliability of the 3PAR system has been outstanding. We've had maybe one controller go bad, but not enough to bring the whole system down. It was just random, maybe a degraded state, until HPE Support came and fixed it, and they have been fantastic.What needs improvement?In terms of features I'd like to see, I have been hearing a lot about InfoSight with the 3PAR, here at HPE Discover 2018. I'd be curious to see some of the additions that will bring to the system. We're fairly up to date, so we should easily be able to utilize some of it, once it's available. I know that came from the Nimble platform, so they are still integrating it in.What do I think about the stability of the solution?With the uptime and reliability, it's been rock solid so far.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We just added an SSD tier to it, so we're even leveraging that. We literally have three tiers of storage, SSD, fast class storage, and a slower storage state.We haven't had needed to do much, other than add the SSD tier, at this point. Normally, we try to guess at our storage needs for about a five-year turnaround time, and then from there we usually buy another storage system to replace at that point. I don't know if we'll go to that model, with the 3PAR. It has been so rock solid that I might look into just extending support on it. So it may save us money on storage systems in the long run.How is customer service and technical support?HPE support has been great.Which solutions did we use previously?We used to have a Dell EqualLogic storage system prior to this one. On the phone, with support, they managed to tell us to do something that caused the whole system to come down. That was one of the determining factors to go completely away from anything Dell had their hands in and go with something else.In our research, as much as I tried to look on the web to find anything negative about 3PAR, I couldn't find it. I found negatives about every other storage system we could find, but not on the 3PAR.Among the most important criteria for us when evaluating a vendor is support. Support is always a concern. We don't have that many IT staff, so we do rely on vendor support and we usually keep the maintenance up on all of all our main equipment. So having a decent support relationship with vendors is critical.How was the initial setup?Setup was pretty straightforward. We attended a week-long training with HPE onsite. Other than that, we've been able to manage it ourselves, for the most part. If there are any issues, we just call them in to support and work over the phone with them.I believe they did most of the install in one day. They came out for two days or three days, but the majority of it was done - the initial racking - in one day; maybe some finalizations on the second day. It didn't take long.What was our ROI?We definitely see ROI. The price point for the 3PAR was actually cheaper than the other storage systems we were looking at. From just the initial cost perspective, it was already cheaper. From what I can tell working with the other storage systems we've worked with - we've had EMC, we've had EqualLogic on the Dell side, and we have even had older Dell storage over the years - there is no comparison between our 3PAR system and the rest of them.Which other solutions did I evaluate?When we were initially looking we priced out some IBM storage, obviously Compellent, some Dell stuff, EqualLogic. Realistically, we didn't want to go back with EqualLogic, mainly due to support.With the Dells, they were telling us we could upgrade it, firmware and everything else on it, and we said, "No, we're going to hold off until we get another storage system in place and then we'll try that." When we migrated to the 3PAR, we went ahead and did a full upgrade on the Dell EqualLogic. It lost blocks, it lost about 12 drives, and I was thankful that we didn't actually need that data. We left the data on it while we did the upgrade just to see, following Dell support recommendations, what it would have done. Had we listened to them, we would have had, probably, multiple hours trying to figure out what data was actually misplaced, lost; and it had no way of telling us where it lost blocks.So from that perspective, we were nervous about doing a 3PAR upgrade which we did recently. We made sure all our backups were off of it prior to doing it. It had no problems during the upgrade, except that one card wouldn't upgrade, and they had to replace it. But there was no issue affecting any data, which is the primary purpose of having a storage system.What other advice do I have?You couldn't go wrong with the 3PAR system.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Saresh Raghavan from
Scalability is the main purpose, that I can scale out, keep adding more modulesHow has it helped my organization?We are trying to create a valued addition, because the project is still on, and we are looking at how it can benefit the business more. It's a new solution in place which we are looking at now.What needs improvement?At this stage I can't give you any feedback on that. It's too early.For how long have I used the solution?Still implementing.What do I think about the stability of the solution?No stability issues at this stage.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability is the main purpose, that I can scale out with something, where I can keep adding more modules onto it.How is customer service and technical support?Tech support is good. They're knowledgeable. The people with whom I'm dealing are pretty good. We go through the usual channels, but right now we have a partner in place who is helping us out.Which solutions did we use previously?We were running on some technologies which were going off the market, and we wanted to upgrade them. So we looked to put 3PAR in place, and we are moving into 3PAR now.How was the initial setup?It was not complex. It's pretty straightforward. It took approximately two and a half months, the project which we have run through it. So it's pretty good. And now that our actual deployment starts off, we'll get to know the actual time lines on it.What other advice do I have?When we look to work with a vendor we look at their reputation, and along with that is the way it can be scaled up. Also, the new technology innovations which can can be added to your portfolio must be excellent. That's where we started off moving into HPE.At this stage I would rate it somewhere around eight out of 10, because there were some initial challenges in finalizing the design, etc. Now we are looking into the cloud solution as well, so we'll see how that goes.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-12-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Alan Drummond from
Flexible solution, it streamlines our workload throughputWhat is our primary use case?Our primary use case is data retention. We also use it for test environments and deploy systems for customers as well. The performance from it has been excellent, from what we have seen so far.How has it helped my organization?It has improved our throughput in terms of workloads.What is most valuable?The flexibility and the intelligence inside of it.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability has been great. Of course, we've had limited experience with it so far.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability looks excellent as well.Which solutions did we use previously?We used older HPE solutions. We worked with our HPE rep. He described some of the functionality and we could see how it fit into our organization.Our most important criteria when evaluating a vendor are* performance* support.We went with HPE because we had worked with them and they met our requirements. Those were the main drivers. They had proven support and reliability.How was the initial setup?I wasn't involved in the initial setup but it was straightforward. It took about two days.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We evaluated some other vendors loosely, but we were more focused on HPE.What other advice do I have?In our limited experience so far, it has been excellent. Support has been fantastic, the setup process was smooth.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SrEngine483a from
Peer Persistence and predictive analytics are key features in our deploymentWhat is our primary use case?Virtual machine data storage. It's serving one specific business need.It is performing as expected. It hasn't been fully exercised as we're still moving production onto it.How has it helped my organization?We are still transitioning to it.What is most valuable?We're utilizing the Peer Persistence.Also, we haven't had to fully embrace it yet, but the predictive analytics, where we're getting notifications prior to a failure - we've gotten some during our PoC and testing - has been helpful.For how long have I used the solution?Less than one year.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It has shown a lot of stability. We have a pretty rigorous QA process and there have been some minor issues and some things that we've had to work through, but nothing that has been unpredictable or unexplainable or just flat out faulty. It has been pretty reliable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?I'm not too familiar with the scalability, I haven't to expand on it yet. But, from what I understand, scaling it should be easier than with typical storage platforms. We did recently just add a shelf of disks, which didn't take too much effort. I think it definitely has good scalability, but I don't have too much hands-on with that yet.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support has been pretty good. We always have to work hand in hand with our HPE support teams, we have to provide data and logging and feedback, etc. But typically they're pretty responsive. They dig into issues and but you have to work with them. You can't just throw a problem at them and expect them to fix it, you have to keep an open line of communication, give them the data they need, and work with them that way.Which solutions did we use previously?We were in a position where we could reinvent our wheel. We had an older, aging architecture and we needed to update. So, as much as it is a replacement and an upgrade from our existing equipment, it is also brand new. It's a complete transition from where we were to this. It's hard to look at it as a transition when there is that much stark difference. When we get over to it, there's going to be a clear benefit upgrading from what our legacy networks and servers are.When evaluating a vendor our criteria include* price* customer service* quality of the technology* whether or not it can serve our needs.How was the initial setup?I think once you know the system, the setup is pretty straightforward. Being somewhat unfamiliar with it going into it, it can appear complex. Once you understand the key concepts and the configuration points that 3PAR is using, I think it becomes easier.We worked at it for at least two weeks, but we had other priorities than just setting it up. We were exploring, poking the box, so it wasn't just an out-of-the-box, get it set up process. The out-of-the-box, basic set up was about a day for rack and stack and then maybe another day or two - once we knew which configuration we needed on it - to have it fully implemented.What was our ROI?Clearly we see value. It is serving a specific purpose for our hardware solution. When our full solution is implemented, there is a clear return on investment, not just for the storage component but for our compute networking components that are part of the larger architecture picture that 3PAR fits into.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Our organization already had an established relationship with HPE so, in this particular case, we weren't in a position to shop this piece of the solution around. We stuck with HPE after making the other decisions.What other advice do I have?It's a very good solution. It doesn't come without some of its own quirks. We had a few struggles to get certain things working and HPE worked with us through them. Not everything was well-defined in the HPE White Papers. It definitely required working with HPE engineering and the solutions architects to get through that. That being said, the promise of what 3PAR was supposed to do for us, we were able to achieve that.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user680211 from
It is easy to implement and manage.What is most valuable?The valuable feature for me is the best performance when I source the data. I manage a lot of data and my storage is very low.How has it helped my organization?I had a lot of problems with storage before. When I implemented this solution, the storage was faster. There is very little down time.What needs improvement?I would like to see better implementation with Veeam.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It is very stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?The scalability is very easy for this solution.How is customer service and technical support?I have used technical support. They are available 24/7. They provide good support for this solution. I got a replacement part at my site in four hours.Which solutions did we use previously?I used Dell. When I changed to 3PAR, it was easier. Dell has delays and didn’t always have equipment. HPE has better service.When selecting a vendor, I look for support and price.How was the initial setup?The setup was straightforward. It was not a complex implementation.What other advice do I have?The solution is fast. I’m very excited about it. It's very easy to implement and manage.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2017-06-17T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Chris Gurley from
Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PARLeading up to EMC World ( http://www.emcworld.com ) 2015, IT Central Station ( http://www.itcentralstation.com/ ) asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a few posts already.In 2015, though, the HP giant began to rouse and challenge the mainstream status quo with its 3PAR offering. Quantifying 3PAR's platform is different from XtremIO and Pure, though, as it can seem amorphous given the many ways it can be quoted. Are you asking for all flash? 3PAR will give you that and lay claim to the best-of-breed title. Oh, but you want some mass storage akin to archival or virtual tape, too? 3PAR changes jerseys and shouts, "I'm it!" Is it, though? Let's put 3PAR against XtremIO and see how they measure up!Define the ConversationThe hard part about these comparisons and competitive analyses is that we aren't talking about products of the same species or specialization. I struggle to put it properly, but consider it this way. In pre-AFA days (the age of traditional spinners like NetApp FAS3040, EMC CLARiiON or VNX, and even last-gen 3PAR), the contest was like pitting a Toyota Camry against a Nissan Altima. They did most of the same things with minor strengths, weaknesses, and preferences.Talking about XtremIO versus 3PAR 74xx is more of a discussion about construction-grade, heavy-duty cranes versus massive earth movers. They are in the same genus/genre, but are far from the same thing. Since they are different, we need to speak to some of the principles behind the questions and be willing to engage in a little philosophy rather than hanging up on shallow metrics.Architecture + Organization + PotentialI'd like to steer this post to three foundational topics, some where 3PAR and XtremIO are curiously aligned, and others where they diverge notably. In Architecture, I'll highlight the product frameworks and touch on performance. In Organization, I'll focus on the companies behind the arrays and what I've observed through recent interactions. Ending in Potential, I'll look to the future, something that is very important, since we're all prone to think primarily about solving today's problems.ArchitectureXtremIO is an array that has only known life as flash. It was birthed for that purpose and has never known a day where it didn't live life in the fast lane, read and writing data with microseconds in mind. It only knows how to count in single-digit milliseconds and feels like it is having a bad day when that gauge exceeds "1". Its life goal is to be an all-flash array, and it's already there.3PAR looks over at XtremIO with, I think, a touch of jealousy and a dose of mature mirth. In its adolescence, it wasn't all that different from XtremIO. It spun 15K FC disks like no one else and laughed at the complexity of other products' configuration and administration. Over time, 3PAR has grown, not forgetting all of the lessons it has learned and not forsaking its spinning history. Now it burns flash, too, and can pull out an all-flash coupe that purports equal performance. And it does that on top of a proven track record of mature development and enterprise reliability.Getting technical, XtremIO solves for the need for speed. While it has started branching out with new features that other products have had for years (snapshots, APIs, wider host/hypervisor support, etc), those take time for a product that was a prototype 17 months ago and learned how to do its first non-disruptive upgrade 11 months ago.Beyond speed, XtremIO also brings one of the more robust data reduction technologies to its flash platform. It deduplicates and compresses data inline, opting for an 8KB fixed block implementation that prioritizes speed over reduction. This is an area of similarity with 3PAR, which also uses fixed-block deduplication.3PAR starts shining in its ability to adapt to customer needs. It supports several media options, including flash/SSD, 15K & 10K SAS, and nearline SAS, all in a variety of sizes. Every word of that is important, because XtremIO currently requires homogenous (same) building blocks. If you start with 10TB bricks, that's all you can add. When it comes to expansion, this can be a painful expense point. Not so with 3PAR.Versatility doesn't stop there either. 3PAR also support file access in addition to block with NFS, CIFS, and object access. That's a point that sets it apart from XtremIO.On the data reduction side, 3PAR recently released deduplication to its SSD layer (not yet on spinning disks). With slightly larger 16KB fixed blocks, it looks very similar to XtremIO and achieves most of the same gains on that element. Compression is still a roadmap item, though, so XtremIO wins there.In this comparison and sub-part, XtremIO is right for you if you need blazing speed, some reduction, and can accept a bit of risk around a still-maturing product. That's what it does today. On the other hand, 3PAR can be spec'd with the same speeds in mind, but I personally believe it excels most when you value one of its other capabilities (hybrid, file+block, maturity). Full disclosure: I do not have on-the-floor experience with the latest 3PAR models, so I cannot put my word behind its field performance, only its claims.OrganizationI know everyone wants to start with technical architecture and performance, but I think this section and the next carry equal or more weight. It's the "who" behind the "what". The winning words here are "integrity", "passion", and "consistency". Even the best products glitch, crash, or need help, because we or one of our fellow humans made them. We're fallible like that and it's okay--that's why we need each other and probably have the jobs we have.The players here are EMC and HP. Let's talk about them. Up front I'll confess that this is subjective and you may have a drastically better/worse than experience I have had or will have. I have 9 years of customer history with EMC and 6 years with 3PAR/HP, so I've seen my estimation of each change a lot over time.5 years ago I wouldn't have touched HP with a 10-foot pole as I had a mix of consumer and enterprise experience that was simply bad. 3 years ago I mourned HP's acquisition of 3PAR. Today I have new confidence in HP, at least HP 3PAR, which is what matters here. Our account team has attributed many of the recent gains to new executive leadership reinvesting in the organization rather than inflating a stock price. If that's the reason why, then my hat is off to Meg Whitman and crew.3PAR's product team has demonstrated a level of ambition and advancement over the past year that makes me happy to endorse the product and organization behind it. For years, the 3PAR product and management tools really haven't changed much. Some underlying pieces improved, but nothing drastic. That was okay, because it was an excellent product at its acquisition. It just wasn't worthy of glamour. In the last year, though, I've witnessed and deployed things like Adaptive Flash Cache (AFC) and the new StoreServ Management Console (SSMC) on our 3PAR P10400 array. In fact the old InForm Management Console (IMC) that's been unchanged for years is finally being deprecated in favor of SSMC 2.1 which now has all major features of the IMC. I digress on a rabbit trail, but these are notable advancements. Thin Dedupe is another, and that's just getting start.Support is the counterpart to product development and has also been consistent and passionate in recent times. In fact, the line between support and development has been encouragingly fuzzy on a few cases to the degree that those who wrote the features made themselves accessible to expedite the resolution around it. Nothing means more to me than a support team that jumps on an issue and demonstrates that they care about fixing it as much as I do.I'd like to say that I have that same confidence about EMC, but honestly I can't. We've been an EMC shop through CLARiiON, CX3, Avamar, and now XtremIO. In the early days, I enjoyed my EMC interactions and was overjoyed to return to the fold after a painful foray into NetApp territory. A lot has changed since then and I'm not sure EMC knows quite who they are, or at least how to manage what they are. They've purchased so many companies, including Avamar and XtremIO, but they've also left many opportunities untapped. Avamar was great, but it's the same thing it was in 2011. No significant development or advancement in a space that is ripe for progress (see Rubrik ( http://www.rubrik.com )).XtremIO is a different topic because they know they have to move it forward to compete with competitors like Pure and now HP 3PAR, so they are pushing code out quickly to add features that were really pre-requisites for 1.0. It's a game of catch-up, much like HP has had to do with the flash market, but the attitude just isn't the same.In the past year or so, I've had near-constant support cases open with EMC on the Avamar and XtremIO fronts. In nearly all of them, I sadly could not depend on the cases getting traction without escalation (or account team back-end escalation). On one XtremIO case, we crashed during an upgrade in late June. In early August, we allowed another crash due to the same issue for debug and log collection. EMC punted to VMware mostly after that (though the issue was solely on XtremIO; 3PAR was fine). My team and I spent hundreds of man hours on it, because of the haphazard level of engagement from EMC Support. Even when the problem was clearly documented and readily reproducible, they still asked us to continue testing for them rather than pursue it in their own lab. I could tell similar stories on the Avamar side, but that wouldn't be useful to anyone.At the end of it all, I think EMC has been a good organization in the past, and I thi...Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-05-01T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567906 from
It is easy to use and has good response times with no latency.What is most valuable?Most valuable to us is that the 3PAR is very easy to use and has good response times.How has it helped my organization?It is a very responsive system with no latencies and high performance.What needs improvement?I would really like to see it be more efficient at reclaiming storage when deleting something, instead of just being thin at the start.What do I think about the stability of the solution?There were some bugs, but after the latest update, it is acting more stable.How is customer service and technical support?Technical support is excellent.Which solutions did we use previously?We have many different types of solutions. Since HPE is one of our partners, it was natural to evaluate their products and buy from them.How was the initial setup?Initial setup was straightforward.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at some of the bigger vendors like Dell EMC and IBM, of course.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:My company is an HPE partner.Date published: 2017-01-08T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Tye Summerville from
Workloads have improved in performanceWhat is our primary use case?We are using 3PAR for production workloads, processing insurance policies and claims, file shares, and storage.It has been performing well so far. We have had a few hiccups on the configuration side, but we have been working with HPE on them. For the most part, the product has been pretty seamless.How has it helped my organization?It had our organization start to think like an actual organization. A lot of stuff came out where the management of our workloads has improved dramatically.We have gotten out of the mindset of physical is better; virtualization has taken hold and is starting to take off. We are going through the process of consolidation to 100% virtual. It has been incremental growth over a short period of time.What is most valuable?I live in Houston, so disaster recovery (DR) is very important, and the site-to-site replication is huge. I love that feature. We have our backups set up to replicate between two sites, then we also have our storage set up to replicate between two sites. The next piece would probably be to stack on a synergy appliance and be able to get our compute layer replicated between the two sites as well, which would round out that whole DR scenario.What needs improvement?What appeals to me is having mobile functionality. There is a vendor portal for 3PAR for whatever you want to purchase. I would like to see something from an administrator's standpoint, as opposed to having to go to a web browser, where you get a ping on your phone which says, "Your license is coming up for renewal," or, "You have a drive that is bad," in conjunction with stuff, such as InfoSight.This is something which provides value back to me, because then I am not having to constantly babysit my vendors and say, "When do I have renewals coming due?" It is tough to get vendors who engage with you on that level. They go back and say, "Just a heads up, but these are what are coming due." Maybe they can backfill that with a mobile app.My admins like having this functionality and direct integration, where it is like, "I need to do this, this, and this." If they could do it all from their phone that would be better. Though, sometimes it is tough, because of tiny phones, and all there is to use is a web browser. It can be hard to read on a smaller screen. If it is a mobile app, maybe it could be finessed into something where basic tasks could be done.For how long have I used the solution?Less than one year.What do I think about the stability of the solution?After we got past all the hiccups with the conditional configuration, the stability has been rock solid. I like the simplicity of it. We do not have to fidget with it a whole lot once we have it set up correctly. It has been stable and performs well, so I have no complaints whatsoever.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Scalability is incredible. We have a single server cabinet today, but we can grow it to as many cabinets as we need.How is customer service and technical support?We go through a third party. We did not use HPE tech support unless we need to escalate an issue.Sadly, the support from HPE has not been all that great. It is tough to get a tech out or get a response from some of the techs that we have.How was the initial setup?I was not involved in the initial setup. When I came onboard, the product was already in the environment.What was our ROI?We have already seen ROI. We have had it in the environment for about three months. It has been absolutely tremendous. Workloads have improved in performance. We do not have a lot of the same struggles that we used to.It is stable. It does what its supposed to. You can feed it compute and storage as you need to. Whereas with our standard DL380 and ML350 servers, once you get to a certain point, that is as big as you can get. With this product, you can throw another shelf of storage or blade at it and grow it as much as you need to.As our workloads have increased, we have been able to finesse those into a good size to where they are valuable for us.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?We had to go back and purchase iLO licenses and brocade switches for the flex fabric to have a complete solution.Which other solutions did I evaluate?Our organization looked at NetApp and Pure Storage. Pure Storage was just too expensive. NetApp was good, but they did not have anybody familiar with the NetApp configuration.Our biggest requirement was ease of use. HPE seemed to have all the pieces that we needed, and it easy enough to get somebody trained up on how to manage it.What other advice do I have?Understand your needs first. If you do not have a need for a highly technical solution, or you have workloads which are not high-performing. 3PAR is a perfect fit.Understand your environment. Know what you are getting into. Research the different tools which are out there. Make sure that it is a good fit. It is nice to have the high performance stuff, but if you do not have high performance workloads, keep it simple and 3PAR is simple for us.Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Our biggest requirement was ease of use. Scalability was another. We can scale it up pretty much as big as we need to. Those were the two biggest criteria.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-07-03T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user680190 from
We're using Peer-to-Peer for two data centers and having that fill over is what we really needed for disaster recovery.What is most valuable?The speed of the Flash Array is better than what we had with the previous products. We like their blades better than the Cisco Blades. It is easier to manage.How has it helped my organization?We're using Peer-to-Peer for two data centers and having that fill over instantaneous is what we really needed for disaster recovery.What needs improvement?The thing that we're a little bit bummed about is they're not so quick to get it with the latest version of VMware and we're also using an older version of OneView; so to get to the newer/later releases, it seems like it's a two week process for two different data centers. If they could streamline that process, make it a little quicker, maybe so that the customer can do it, instead of hiring somebody else, then it would be helpful.What do I think about the stability of the solution?So far, we're very stable; we've been using it for a couple of years now.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Its scalability is really good because we're only using a third of the array's storage that we have, so we'll be able to keep that for several more years.How is customer service and technical support?The technical support team is very good. We've gotten a really good response from them.Which solutions did we use previously?We needed a faster storage and more capacity, so that's why we upgraded and switched from EMC to HPE.How was the initial setup?The setup was pretty straightforward.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We did look at Hitachi and they were a close second to HPE. However, it was just that, we were more familiar with HPE because we already had some of their C-Class Blades.Manageability is an important criterion while selecting a vendor. Also, for system administrators like myself, it is important to be able to understand the solution right off the bat.What other advice do I have?Probably, you should purchase the CS700 all-in-one storage, so that it's easy to implement it that way. Don't try to do it yourself.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2017-06-18T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user252618 from
I found the product to be easier than others to administer because it’s virtual storage that aggregates all the disks together.Valuable FeaturesI like the adaptive optimization and that it functions as virtual storage and I don’t have to go in and carve things across spindles.Improvements to My OrganizationThe biggest benefit is the ease of administration, since we only have one administrator – me. If I’m not there and others need to be able to allocate storage, I can give a step-by-step guide for my company to follow to do that; whereas if I had an EMC product, for example, we’d need two administrators. We’re an agricultural co-op so we have to run a very lean IT shop.Room for ImprovementIn future versions, I would like to see Peer Motion become bi-directional, and also able to function over the normal data ports and not require extra ports. I thought I was going to like storage v-motion, but I’m running into problems where Peer Motion doesn’t do what it was advertised to do.It works as if we have a disk on that is currently our destination, and we wanted to put that on our source 3PAR. We have to tear down our Peer Motion and rezone a bunch of stuff, changing how courts are acting on the 3PARs, and rebuild a new Peer Motion configuration. Because of this, it’s a lot more cumbersome than what we thought it would be.Deployment IssuesNone. It's an easy system to get installed and up and running.Stability IssuesIt’s very stable; rock solid.Scalability IssuesIt meets our needs. I don’t foresee a point where we won’t be able to meet our needs with 3PAR.Customer Service and Technical SupportCustomer Service: Excellent. We do have critical support, but for us, the cost of critical support is well worth it.Technical Support: Two pieces. First, the 3PAR people (backend support) are kind of hit and miss, and it depends on who you get. I’ve had some great people and I’ve had others who seem to think it was their mission in life to frustrate me. As I understand it, most are based in Colorado but others are based in India, and it’s really hard to communicate with them at times.We have what’s considered a secure site, and 3PAR can’t just remote into our SANs, and their technicians seem to take issue with that sometimes. However, the hardware people, meaning the field service engineers, are excellent.Previous SolutionsWell, we had an EVA, which is another HP product, and our storage usage was growing so fast that we weren’t going to be able to expand that to cover what we needed.Initial SetupIt was very easy to set up.Other Solutions ConsideredWe looked at Dell, HP, NetApp, and EMC. There are two big reasons why we chose HP:* The 3PAR product is a lot easier to administer because it’s a virtual storage that aggregates all the disks together; and* There were two virtual products for what we were looking for, but we liked what it did in terms of optimization better than Dell.Other AdviceSupport and service is a big one for us, we needed good support. Also, we had to make sure pricing was good. For our purposes, it’s the best SAN that we have found. The things that keep it from being 10/10 are things like Peer Motion and the back end service.Unless you have a very specific kind of load that requires a super high-end array, which 3PAR is not designed to be, I would recommend you look at HP, as there’s a very wide range of what HP can cover.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2015-06-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
TechDire6cb5 from
It is flexible, and they have a convenient capacity model that works well for usHow has it helped my organization?It is status quo from what we came from. We came from ViON and Hitachi. Part of that is our own problem. It is not as much HPE, as to how we are using it. We lifted and shifted, identically from one system to another.What is most valuable?It is flexible. We receive a lot of flexibility. We do at capacity on demand (COD), so we do not buy it upfront. They have a convenient capacity model that works well for us. HPE are a sub to the ones we buy it from, but they are the best sub that you could ask for. Whenever we have a problem, they come right onsite.What needs improvement?I would like to see more openness with other platforms. InfoSight synergy as a whole is great, if I own all HPE products.It is whoever gets me the best price and value. They win the contract. I need that flexibility to work with, for example, if Dell were to win my server contract or ViON were to run the storage, and I still had HPE servers. I need flexibility for interoperability across multiple platforms, not just HPE.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We had major issues in years one and two.Now, it is stable. In the beginning, we had some stability and reliability issues. Over the last three years, it has been very stable and reliable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is definitely scalable. We do not have any issues.How is customer service and technical support?The tech support is great. If we have a problem, we literally will have boots on the ground with senior sales people, as well as the people to fix the problem, to help make sure we are taken care of.How was the initial setup?It was complex for us, but we were literally migrating nine data centers across the globe, from product A to product B. We got in our way more than anyone else did. I can't judge how the product would be in a typical environment, since we are talking about 75 petabytes over nine data centers. It was a big project.The product is straightforward enough. If we were to do it as a new implementation, it would not be an issue.What other advice do I have?We are happy with it. However, there is always room for improvement.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-06-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Wayne Cross from
Very stable and scales quickly, allowing us to roll out new servicesWhat is our primary use case?We deploy 3PAR across all of our locations, Canada-wide. It provides primary storage. It covers complex business needs. All of our financial applications sit on it, all of our databases sit on it. We also use it for unstructured data storage, and we're about 95 percent virtualized so it runs all of our virtual workloads.How has it helped my organization?At one point, we had HPE EVAs and when we were changing them out we didn't just look at 3PAR, we looked at all the solutions. We actually started out with a V400 which is an older version of the 3PAR - they didn't have the 7400s as yet - at our data center. Eventually, when the V400 became end-of-life, we looked at all the EVAs and by that time, they had come out with the 7400 and 7200, which are a lot less expensive and a better fit for a smaller organization. We were able to throw any workload on it and not worry about performance. It certainly made my job easy and my team's job easy in terms of maintenance and management of the platform.What is most valuable?The most valuable feature is the uptime. It doesn't go down. You can do firmware updates on it, no issues.What needs improvement?Integration with some cloud services would be nice. That's not so much of a 3PAR thing, it's more of an HPE dashboard and management platform. The 3PAR is also a part of it. We would like to be able to provision from the 3PAR and decide whether or not we are going to provision onsite or the cloud.And something that I know that they're already bringing in is cloud-based analytics, which they are bringing in from their acquisition of Nimble. When that comes to 3PAR, that is going to be a game changer for us, that predictive analysis.What do I think about the stability of the solution?It's very stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?I think it does a very good job. We're a law firm. So we store a lot of data. The way a law firm operates, you can't really predict the growth of data because they don't know the cases they're going to take on. A given case may have a terabyte of data and another case will have 15 terabytes of data. You really can't tell.So the ability for us to quickly grow the platform, scale the platform up, is important. But as important is ensuring that, as we scale, it doesn't impact the existing users. We definitely don't have much of an issue with the growth of any of the platforms, be it the 7200 or the 7400. For us, especially on the 3PAR, HPE tends to hand-hold us through most of the scaling so I really don't have too much of an issue with it. We have a huge 7400 in our data center with about 200 or 300 terabytes of data on it.How is customer service and technical support?HPE has very good support on the 3PAR, including the predictive support. We have turned on the Phone Home feature, which allows the HPE engineers to figure out what's happening to the box. At the time they'll actually call us and tell us about the problem. We have actually had a replacement drive show up before we knew there was a problem.They are one of the best in support, for sure. We're an HPE shop through and through except for networking. We are HPE for desktop, HPE for laptop, HPE for primary storage, HPE for backup, as well as HPE for archive.Which solutions did we use previously?The existing solution that we had was getting to end-of-life. And the workloads that we had on it were driving the IOPS through the roof. Everything was slowing down. We knew we needed a solution that would take us through at least the next five or six years. We really didn't know where the business was going and some of the things that it was going to do. We needed a solution that could guarantee us that level of performance. With any vendor, your platform is as good as the support. And traditionally, with HPE, we have had good support on the service side.And with 3PAR we have actually had better support compared to what we had before on the EVAs, the older version of the platform.In terms of the most important criteria when evaluating a vendor:* support is very important to us* the kind of relationship that we think we will have with the vendor* our relationships with account managers.And the reason those relationships are important is that we really can't deal with a buy-it-and-forget-it type of vendor. Even though you might spend less money to get the platform in, when you have a buy-it-and-forget-it vendor and you need to strategize, there is nobody there to help you to strategize. If you can't find the account manager, you don't know the direction that the organization is going. It's like you buy something and then you just drop into a black hole. So it's important for us to work with a vendor who will work with us.When you buy a platform like a storage array, it's seven years. You have to have some strategy over the seven years. By year three or year four you want to know what you should do. Do I buy the next version? Instead of one platform, they now have six platforms. Where do they fit? So that kind of interaction is important to us. So we are looking for vendors that we think we can work with.And price is also important. At the end of the day, even though HPE makes a good platform we still have to hold them accountable and make sure that they are working within the price range of their competitors.Features are important too. We were looking at a platform that would enable us to maximize our investment. Features like deduplication and tiering were an important part of our platform as well, the ability to move workloads from one tier to the next and to automate that using AO. In addition, features like replication, because we have our primary data center and our backup data center. And then, we're a highly virtualized environment so we needed a platform a storage platform that would be advantageous in that environment; one that would give us a better deduplication ratio built into the platform.How was the initial setup?The setup is complex. I don't think it's something that we could take on ourselves. I'm not sure if HPE does the same thing now, but when we bought it, HPE was actually the one that did all of the deployment. They did the "birth" right through deployment. You have to update the firmware, you have to update all the drives, you have to update the controllers. It's a pretty complex platform. In fact, I don't even think they allow you to do it. I think when you buy it, they do it.I think it's complex enough. Hopefully, some of the tools that they are deploying now will simplify that process. But for us, when we buy maintenance, we also buy the support for them to do it. Even though it was complex, it didn't really make a difference to us because we weren't the ones doing it.From set up to burn-in it was probably about a week. A couple of days to get it up and running, but then they had to upgrade all the firmware, upgrade all the drives. Then they had to do the validation.What was our ROI?As a law firm, we don't really measure ROI for 3PAR. It's difficult for us to comment. I wouldn't be able to put a number on it. What I can say, though, is that 3PAR has enabled us to bring additional services to the organization that we wouldn't have been able to bring on. The organization has been able to focus on things other than infrastructure performance.No one cares about the performance. They simply expect that a platform is going to do what it's supposed to do. A lot of us take it for granted that nothing is going to break which, with 3PAR, is probably true - we have never had that problem with 3PAR. It has given us the flexibility of just not worrying about the infrastructure. It gives the business the confidence to roll out services.The business has grown by leaps and bounds because we have a solid infrastructure and a part of that solid infrastructure is 3PAR.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We looked at all the other major vendors. We looked at EMC back then. We looked at IBM. IBM had some storage platforms back then as well. And since the transition, we have looked at some of the new players like Pure Storage. We looked at SimpliVity and Nimble before HPE bought them.Some of them were just young. Most of those organizations came on about three or four years ago, so they were just coming onto the scene. While they were very innovative with their technology, with an organization that young, it's a risk to buy a platform when you don't know how long they're going to be around. If we had known HPE was going to buy them we'd probably be using them.What other advice do I have?Anyone looking into 3PAR or a similar solution needs to know the direction that the organization is going, and they need to make sure that they are are working with a vendor that is going in the same direction as the business is going. With hybrid IT, there are so many flavors of platforms out there. There's hyperconverged, the cloud is also in the mix, you have edge computing. So if you are looking for storage, you need a storage platform that can take care of the now, but from a manufacturer with the vision to know where the technology is going, so you feel like you can future-proof that platform. You don't want to buy a platform now and then, in a year and a half say, "Okay, well can my storage platform tie into this and this?" And they say, "No, no. We don't do th...Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user567645 from
Speed, capacity, and deduplication in a stable HA solution.What is most valuable?The data deduplication is one valuable feature. Another thing is the fast storage possibility and the whole clustering mode. Because we have a dual data center set-up and we wanted to have a high availability solution, we chose HPE 3PAR.How has it helped my organization?This has helped our organization with fast storage and the whole administration which is handled quite automatically. In this way, I can save one full time equivalent (FTE) a year in my team, so that alone is a great benefit.What needs improvement?I would like to see a more stable deduplication because with the deduplication we have right now, the percentage that we can save is not as high as we hoped for. The second thing I’d like to see is a more scalable and faster storage possibility without the main licenses increasing in cost. Now that we are in a full flash set-up, we want to go to a set-up where we can use flash and slower disks. While that set-up possibility exists, there is a whole license step-up that has to be done. It takes too long to do all the licenses. The license and the flexibility towards licensing needs improvement.What do I think about the stability of the solution?The stability, “knock on wood”, is okay. My feeling is that this solution is rock solid stable.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We are on the verge of the next step up. We implemented last year and now we are going to double the capacity. Based on how it’s going so far, it will be an easy step up.How is customer service and technical support?We rely on our partner for technical support. They have a direct connection with HPE for the support. So, at the moment, we have no issues.Which solutions did we use previously?Before we were using the EVA solution and HPE LeftHand. We had a large IOPS problems with our ERP system. They weren’t stable enough and they did not have a proven record for us. Our ERP system has a large database, lots of IOPS, and these solutions couldn’t handle it. That was why we changed to HPE 3PAR that has a full SSD solution that could handle the IOPS. The main competitor was NetApp. We chose HPE because of the stability. We know HPE, we have a multi-year contract with them. We looked at several reference cases and those convinced us to choose this solution.What other advice do I have?When looking for a vendor, stability and a proven track record are the things to look for. I would absolutely recommend it. When you need fast storage, high capacity, and deduplication, it's a good solution.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-12-11T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
it_user485712 from
I like how easy it is to use for users who don't do storage admin every day.Improvements to My OrganizationIt's consistency. And again, it's going through to HPE ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/hewlett-packard-enterprise ) for everything. And I know that my blade, my DL and my 3PAR are all going to work seamlessly together.Valuable FeaturesWhat I like about 3PAR ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hpe-3par-flash-storage ) is just how easy it is to use. A lot of my guys don't do storage admin every day and yet they have no issues allocating the storage. From my perspective, it's really easy for me to be able to get in and do any troubleshooting with it and it's very consistent. It's a rock steady performer.Room for ImprovementUpgrades on them are a bit tricky. For us to do a head swap on one is a full outer joiner storage frame, which is obviously not that easy to do in a production environment.Other Solutions ConsideredWe have looked at various competitors, and we have swung away from HPE storage, and then back into HPE storage as well. We were looking at EMC ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/emc-vnx ) for a while, we actually had some BMCs in our environment as well. Right now, they are running alongside our 3PARs, we do actually want multi-vendor storage for their environment, depending on what the demands are for the storage. We treat our 3PARs as our tier two storage.Other AdviceEither go all Flash ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/enterprise-flash-array-storage ) or at least a mix of flash and near line, you don't want to just get locked in with just near line or SaaS, because you're going to get locked in with slow disk and it gets really hard to upgrade after the fact.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-07-31T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
reviewer1059243 from
Easy tiering did a good job in a large scale environment of 1000 VMs, however, the price is outrageousWhat is our primary use case?* Transport sector* Four nodes, 1000 virtual machines* Entire rack solution* Partially flash* 350TB (dense IO).How has it helped my organization?The bad news: In its initial firmware, both four-node clusters were locked down. The downtime was 17hrs, and once patched, it worked like a charm — no outage for two years. Whereas, IBM SVC had three outages (node crashes) with impact in the 2 yrs beforeWhat is most valuable?* Four-node performance* No split IO groups as on IBM SVC clusters.* Easy tiering (with a small % of cache) did a good job in a large scale environment of 1000 VMs on 350TB external Monitoring, giving a detailed dashboard. A nicely virtual appliance for remote callout support to HPE services.What needs improvement?* Made on three times a price comparison, and only on one occurrence, the largest enterprise infrastructure of all three was HPE able to compete with its competitors.* It's way too expensive for the SMB market.* HPE care packs like datacenter/enterprise provide highly automated reports and reviews.* I liked the periodic SAN performance reviews which are highly detailed reports in about 100 pages and provide recommendations and a final score. However, the price is outrageous!Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-04-11T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Leonardo Amarello from
My administrators don't need to spend a lot of time on maintaining or troubleshooting issuesWhat is our primary use case?Primarily, we use it for SAP storage. At this moment, we are running an ERP system on it.SAP is our mission-critical app.How has it helped my organization?All-flash is positioning our company for growth. We need to improve our systems with better hardware and systems. That will happen in the next three to six months.What is most valuable?It is easy to use and understand. It is also very stable.What needs improvement?I would like the documentation easy to find. There is a lot of documentation, but sometimes it is hard to find. You have to do a lot of searching to find it.Before you could go on the HPE website, and download every driver that you wanted. Now, you need to have a service contract, or something else, to be able to get the drivers. Sometimes, you just need a simple driver, because your machine needs to restart and reinstall. If the machine is not under warranty anymore, it's hard to get the driver. That is a setback when compared to other solutions.We are in the Caribbean, but we are Sint Maarten. Sint Maarten is French and Dutch. We are on the Dutch side. We speak Dutch and English, but because we are in the Caribbean, the way the system is set up with HPE in Latin America, a lot of times when we contact support, we get a Spanish-speaking people instead of an English-speaking people. I find that is a problem. When we are dealing with support to send somebody over, for example, we make sure to always put the emphasis on, "Make sure you send somebody who is English-speaking to us."What do I think about the stability of the solution?The product is really stable. The main thing is the solution is easy to use, and my administrators don't spend a lot of time on maintaining or troubleshooting issues because of it.We never have a problem. The system runs. One of the main things is that we are in the Caribbean. The amount of power outages that we have compared to the US is more than 60 percent higher. The 3PAR can handle that. A lot of systems, when power goes out and it come back, they just don't work. We never had that. The 3PAR was one thing that always used to backup. I had problem with other servers, but not with the 3PAR.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?It is very scalable and simple. The moment that you understand the product, it is straightforward to use. That is one of the most important things when it comes to our administrators. They don't like complex things.How are customer service and technical support?Because we are in the Caribbean, sometimes our waiting time for a problem is a bit longer than when you are in United States.If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?For the solution that we were looking at an ERP system, and what we need to do with it, 3PAR was one of the best. On top of that, the company used to use another product called, LeftHand. After LeftHand, we moved over to 3PAR. When I saw the performance from LeftHand compared to 3PAR, it was a very good improvement and the way to go.Speed is what we are all looking for right now. Before, people could wait for data, but now, the moment they wait five minutes, and are not typing, that's the minute they say the system is down. In the past, we used to have a different way of storing data. Since we moved over to the 3PAR, where we have two different sizes, the replication and accessibility are much faster.How was the initial setup?The initial setup is straightforward. The moment that you are ordering a product, you pay for your support. When they come, there is communication going on between you and them. They check what is available for you. They send a person over, and that's it. After that, once the engineer has left, you have a working product.What about the implementation team?We used HPE support, who are special for implementation and installation. When we order a product, we have good support from them. They come and install it for us. Then, we pay for the support after that. We use external support too.I can't complain about the support. Usually, they send somebody over because we are in the Caribbean. When we install a new product, they have to send a person over, and they are with us a week sorting the system. The fact that we're doing it together is always a very nice experience, because it is hands-on. I find it really good. I'd give them a 10 out of 10 for that. For the last, I will say six to 10 years, we have had three different engineers from HPE, and they were all awesome.We used to get somebody from Houston, but now, they switched us to somebody from Barbados.What was our ROI?We have seen ROI. We have less of maintenance. Our administration has been cut down by a lot. The people who used to administrate other databases are not buy improving the system.3PAR has increased our performance by at least 40 percent.The solution has reduced our time to deployment by at least 60 percent, because there is less maintenance and time to spend on the storage.What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?Our licensing cost are $32,000 annually.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We are a fully HPE shop since 2000. Since then, we never really went over to a different vendor. We were approached by Dell EMC back then. They wanted to change up our whole server room and data center with their product. However, we are happy with HPE.What other advice do I have?I don't really know the other products out there, but I love this product.We are not running SSDs drive yet. When we move to SSDs, I think it will be much faster.We are not yet using the HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity offering.Biggest lesson learnt: if you have a good product, you have less maintenance.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2019-07-16T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Guillermo Daniel Lisotti from
Easy to deploy and simple to configure the storageWhat is most valuable?I found it easy to deploy and simple to configure the storage.For how long have I used the solution?Less than one year.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We have had no problems so far.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?One of the points that moved us towards 3PAR was we wanted to escalate it in a very high way.How is customer service and technical support?We have not used tech support often, but when we have, they have been clear with us.Which solutions did we use previously?We have already some IBM storage, but we are not happy with it. After checking out other models, we decided to work with 3PAR. Not only because we are familiar with HPE, but also the features combined well with our services.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was easy. However, we get stuck on preconditions. We were not aware of some of the preconditions. For example, the need for a different, separate IP network for replication. We had to rethink how we were going to implement it.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.Date published: 2018-07-04T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
SrStorag7e72 from
Peer Motion makes data migration easyWhat is our primary use case?We use about 40 percent of our workload in 3PAR. We have 3PAR 7400, V-Class series. We use dynamic tiering, so we have a mixed workload, SSD Fibre Channel and Nearline storage.In terms of performance, it has been a little bit up and down, but overall there isn't much to complain about. It's because we have the Nearline storage, so that doesn't perform well. That is the reason we have SSD and Fibre Channel tiering. We use Adaptive Optimization and that helps us to improve certain applications using those high-performance tiers.What is most valuable?The next step for us is refreshing, likely with another 3PAR. Migrating the workload from one 3PAR, to another 3PAR is pretty easy using Peer Motion.In terms of multiple business needs, we have multiple applications running and I don't have complaints. I think 3PAR runs multiple applications well. They're easy to manage.Overall it performs well.What needs improvement?I would like to see more cloud-based integrations and more file storage capabilities. They do have that now, but we haven't started using it.For how long have I used the solution?Three to five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We haven't had any major issues on 3PAR. We have pretty much had 100 percent uptime; we haven't had any outage. We run a lot of production workload on it with no issues.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?Regarding scalability, we are maxed out right now on all our 3PARs, so we can not add more storage. So we just order a new one and it's fine.How is customer service and technical support?Support is good, overall.Which solutions did we use previously?We had HPE EVA storage. We switched because all of it was legacy storage. We migrated from legacy storage to the new 3PAR. The main reason we went with HPE was the migration from the old legacy to the new 3PAR was very seamless. They have Peer Motion integration so the data migration was easy. If we had gone with another vendor we would have had to do an offline migration.When it comes to selecting a vendor, HPE is our business partner so we use their products.How was the initial setup?The initial setup was not that complex. We work with HPE to take care of all the implementations. It took less than one day.What was our ROI?Our ROI has been pretty good. I can't share how much we invested, but it has been almost five years and we migrated something like 40 or 50 HPE EVAs to two 3PARs. We consolidated it quite a bit.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We did consider other vendors. That's the reason we did a proof of concept and 3PAR was the winner. The other vendors on our short-list were EMC and NetApp.What other advice do I have?I rate it a nine out of 10 because the product just works; we haven't had a lot of problems. I'm satisfied with the product.3PAR is a proven, more reliable and stable SAN solution. Go with it.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Isaac Gutierrez from
It's not really that complicated as long as you have the basic knowledge on how SANs work.Valuable FeaturesIt's very user intuitive. It's not really that complicated as long as you have the basic knowledge on how SANs work. It's easily deployable and costs verses other brands is good. This size is also a plus.Improvements to My OrganizationIt's more about the redundancy. Their uptime has to be pretty much all the time. They can't really afford to have any down time. The reliability that HPE offers, the 3PARs ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/hpe-3par-flash-storage ) are just a perfect fit for the company. They're easily deployable and it's easy to provision storage to the blade server when we need to. It just works, it's a perfect fit.Room for ImprovementThere's a lot of stuff you can do with the 3PAR. Right now, we're using it for what it's mainly designed for - the provision storage. I'm still looking into all the other features like Deduplication and Flash Cache.If we see that deduplication can fit into our infrastructure, and if it will benefit the company, then we'd definitely look into that option. It would be nice to have it as a core feature included in the product initially at no extra cost.Stability IssuesEverything is straightforward.Customer Service and Technical SupportIt's outstanding.Initial SetupAs long as you check the start-up manual, you should be able to deploy it pretty simply.Other Solutions ConsideredWe went with the HPE product because we really didn't have the need for such a big SAN. The company isn't big enough to warrant an EMC SAN ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/modular-san ). We're a midsize business, so the 3PAR was a perfect fit for us.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2016-07-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by
Infrastr6155 from
Backups of our large volume of SAN-level Snapshots has been phenomenalWhat is our primary use case?Our primary use case for 3PAR is our EMR application. We're in healthcare. We also use it for virtualization. The performance is excellent.How has it helped my organization?Backups were huge. We take a lot of SAN-level Snapshots and it has been phenomenal in that aspect.What is most valuable?When we bought it, the big sell for us was what they called "wide striping," how they striped the data and could get performance on a cheaper disk. Nowadays, the newer models that are out, which we are going to in the next couple of years, the most valuable feature is mainly being able to achieve such high IOPS in such a small chassis.What needs improvement?In new releases, I'd really like to see it more targeted towards hyperconverged. They are working that way with Greenlake and integrating their own "build your own" expansion environment within 3PAR.I would like to see some of the InfoSight integration. In the speech today, here at HPE Discover 2018, it was pretty clear that that is where it's heading.I think it's on track, on the whole, as far as where we're going. I'm probably two years away, maybe less, from a 3PAR purchase. LIkely, by the time I'm ready to buy, it's going to be in there.For how long have I used the solution?More than five years.What do I think about the stability of the solution?We have had one major hardware failure in the last seven years and nothing went down because of it. It was a controller failure. It's a four-node cluster so end-users didn't even notice an impact in performance. Nobody was in a panic besides me. In the end it worked out, they just replaced it.What do I think about the scalability of the solution?We're at right around 700 or 750 terabytes raw, and we're about maxed out for the version we're in, without a wholesale swap-out of our drives and drive architecture. From a scalability standpoint, we can add to it but we have to add more controllers. But we're in an older version. The newer versions have gotten better, faster, stronger. Probably the next step is going to be Greenlake and that avenue.Which solutions did we use previously?We went from an old XP24k, a long time ago, to an EMC VNX. The EMC storage was cheap on the front-end but expensive on the back-end for maintaining it. It was cheaper for us to jump into another 3PAR than it was to maintain support on the VNX. We quickly moved to 3PAR and we haven't looked back since.In terms of important criteria in selecting a vendor besides price, we're primarily an HPE shop. I can count on one hand how many other pieces of hardware we have other than HPE: a Palo Alto firewall and maybe a couple of vendor-supplied Dell boxes. I always look to HPE first. If they can't do it, I call and complain to my regional sales VP and he tries his best. Sometimes he can pull one out and get something going for me, but if not then I start looking at others.How was the initial setup?I was involved in the initial setup but we did have Professional Services come in and set it up because we didn't have any training at the time. The setup was a while ago, but it took longer to unbox it because our reseller messed up and sold us all the individual boxes for every single drive. So the implementation guy wasn't very happy: four pallets of itty bitty boxes for every single hard drive. But soup to nuts, with that problem in play, the setup took about a week. If he didn't have all that, it probably could have been done in a day.Overall the setup is very straightforward. It's just like any other enterprise storage. If you set up one you've set them all up, as it were. They're the same idea, different architecture.What was our ROI?From a comparison of bang for the buck, what you get for the money, I'd have to say they are one of the market leaders. Are there solutions that do it faster? Sure, but you're going to pay for it. 3PAR isn't the cheapest, it isn't the most expensive, but in my opinion, it's the best.Which other solutions did I evaluate?We've looked at Pure Storage, we've looked at Kaminario. We've looked at EMC's new VMAX. From a price standpoint, what you get - and with us moving towards VDI and having Synergy frames and SimpliVity on the market - it doesn't really make sense to switch. Do you really want to pull away now after you have invested so much?It's a matter of: "They're going down the right path so just keep following it." The reason we jumped ship for VNX back when we did was that, at the time, HPE stepped away from SAN and storage. Those were their bad years of MSA versus EVA and dropping away. They didn't really have an offering that fit that mid-tier storage that we were at. We had to do something. "Once bitten, twice shy", so now we'll look at EMC, we'll look at other vendors, but I always have a feeling we're going to come back to 3PAR.What other advice do I have?My current 3PAR, three years ago I would have rated it a 10 out of 10. Today, just because it's aged, I'd give it a solid seven. It's because the drive architecture has changed over the years. Comparing it to the new ones that are out... it comes back to "better, faster, stronger." Without me spending another six figures to swap out hundreds of terabytes of storage, I can't get the added performance. It comes down to me making a critical decision of, "Okay, how do I balance my current IOPS, deliver what I need to deliver to my customer, and still meet the budget?"Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Date published: 2018-06-21T00:00:00-04:00
