An awesome backup infrastructure solution
November 05, 2018

An awesome backup infrastructure solution

Ravinder Gupta | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with HPE StoreOnce

We are using HP StoreOnce as our backup infrastructure for both databases and applications. We have 200 + Virtual Machines and 20+ Physical Servers. We are using HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Store RMAN plugin to backup oracle databases to StoreOnce catalyst store. This is a great feature since now we don't need to take local backup and then push it to tape device. The backups to StoreOnce device is very efficient. We are also using CIFS (NAS) Shares on HPE StoreOnce to backup virtual machine using a third party backup software.

Pros

  • Backups to HPE StoreOnce device is very efficient. This is particularly because we are using all SSD (flash ) devices in our HPE StoreOnce infrastructure.
  • The compaction ratio with HPE StoreOnce is amazing which reduces our total storage footprint by upto 95%.
  • It supports both block storage and file system storage. This is especially beneficial since we wanted one backup infrastructure for both our application and database backups.

Cons

  • We had a little trouble sending backups of physical servers using SMBv1 protocol to SMBv2 CIFS shares. We had to implement a work around but it would have been nice if StoreOnce could be smart enough to take care of SMB version automatically.
  • There is no native Catalyst Store replication from one StoreOnce device to another StoreOnce. The replication has to be handled by the backup software which is backing up to one StoreOnce device. This puts an extra overhead on the source.
  • HPE StoreOnce command line is a little complicated for beginners. It takes a little while to get familiar with how to leverage it.
  • We are pleased to use HPE StoreOnce for our backup infrastructure. We did not had to hire a separate storage folks and this has greatly cut down on our cost.
  • HPE StoreOnce is very fast and efficient. We have not had any complaints of backups going slow.
NetApp is a great product and very well established in market. But HPE StoreOnce features like scalability using disk based duplication that lowers the backup footprint. It is very well coupled with HPE Recovery Manager Central provides backup protection and backup efficiency. We were also offered a nice discount while choosing HPE StoreOnce.
If you are looking for a backup infrastructure which is efficient and compatible for both file system and block level backup, then HPE StoreOnce is a great choice. It's easy to configure and easy to manage. We didn't have to hire a separate storage expert to set up StoreOnce for us. The HPE team helped our system admins and it was a easy to configure.

HPE StoreOnce Feature Ratings

Data Center Backup
8.2
Universal recovery
8
Instant recovery
8
Recovery verification
8
Business application protection
8
Multiple backup destinations
7
Incremental backup identification
8
Backup to the cloud
Not Rated
Deduplication and file compression
10
Snapshots
8
Flexible deployment
8
Management dashboard
8
Platform support
8
Retention options
9
Encryption
9

Evaluating HPE StoreOnce and Competitors

  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Vendor Reputation
  • Existing Relationship with the Vendor
We have been using lot of HP products including DL380 servers and HPE 3PAR StoreServ. When we talked to HPE about their backup system and that we are also using Commvault in other projects within the organization, they helped us decide choosing HPE StoreOnce. Existing relationshop with the vendor was one of the key reason we went with HPE StoreOnce over other options like Commvault.
We are extremely happy with HPE StoreOnce Backup System. We are using it for storing backups of 200+ Virtual Machines and 4 Physical Servers with a great compaction ratio and great performance. Although our systems are still growing in data, but the current backups run pretty fast without causing very high IOPS.

HPE StoreOnce Support

We had couple of incidents so far and HPE support team was very proactive through the process until the incident was closed satisfactorily.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
Yes - We work in tight SLA's and premium support was promising.
We had a storage corruption with HPE StoreOnce. The phone home feature notified HPE support team of possible failure. They contacted us to schedule a time to visit the data center. They were able to fix the problem before a bigger downtime would have occured.

Using HPE StoreOnce

My team who are currently administering HPE StoreOnce do not come from a storage background. We still didn't had to struggle much configuring and using HPE StoreOnce. Of course, HPE team was very helpful in smooth technology transition.
For critical errors, we already have phone home feature enabled and HPE support team has been excellent and their response time in dealing with technical errors/incidents.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Creating a catalyst store to store and manage backup files is pretty straight forward.
  • I didn't had to struggle much creating NAS/CIFS volume.
  • SMTP configuration and email alert configuration is very user friendly as well.
  • It took me some effort to understand how StoreOnce controller nodes and ports work.

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