Fast, easy to manage, and will make you look incredible!
October 13, 2019

Fast, easy to manage, and will make you look incredible!

Jane Updegraff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage

We use HPE 3PAR storage enclosures (with integrated controller) at two locations; The primary location is our corporate datacenter headquarters where the 3PAR acts as the primary data repository for the data produced by our most important, business-critical application, our ERP system, which is called Infor BaaN IV. The second 3PAR enclosure (with integrated controller) is located in a co-lo that is far enough away from our HQ datacenter that it provides for disaster recovery. So that 3PAR acts as the "failover" location. HPE's 3PAR replication is so effective that we keep our ERP data replicated to within about 15 minutes of "live". Therefore, we would be able to run our ERP directly from the co-lo, in a "live" failover capacity, if our HQ datacenter were destroyed or became otherwise unreachable.
  • Replication - HPE 3PAR offers exceptionally fast and well-managed replication with little latency and that's why we bought it to store and protect our most important ERP data. We wanted identical performance and connectivity for our primary storage and our failover (DR) storage and so we bought two of them.
  • Hybrid storage is right up HPE's alley. You can assign different roles to different types of storage arrays inside one enclosure, for instance, you can store your data that needs super high availability and fast IOPS on an all-flash volume but on the same shelf you can have a platter array for longer-term and less- time-critical data. This saves a lot of money on the front end because you don't have to buy all-flash. Why go all-flash for that data where you aren't going to need it?
  • 3PARs can do both file-level and block-level replication which is nice.
  • The data compression/compaction is really very good.
  • HPE 3PAR enclosures are expensive, especially if you want to go all-flash.
  • I don't much care for the management tool, but I have to admit that provisioning is super easy, as is monitoring.
  • Thanks to 3PAR enclosures, we now have a disaster recovery solution that is both more affordable than the hyper-converged solution we had considered for our HQ and DR col-lo and with a whole lot better replication speed and less latency overall. I can't quantify a saved expense for Disaster recovery because it hasn't happened yet, but I would guess that just having a good solid DR solution powered by HPE 3PAR could easily save us millions per day in the event of a disaster. We would be able to keep working even if we lost our primary datacenter.
  • The 3PARS have eliminated the need for more overly complicated NetApp enclosures with their clunky GUI and requirements for what can only be described as arcane knowledge. We've saved hours and hours of engineer's time by using the easy-to-provision and easy-to-manage 3PARS, and pulling storage reports is a total snap. I'd guess we save about 10 hours per month in engineering time.
We still use NetApp storage enclosures at each plant for our routine file shares (CIFS) but I would love to swap them out for the HPE 3PARs as we use for our ERP app data. The 3PARS are simply faster and much better at near-instant replication. But even more importantly we can get the reporting that we need from the 3PAR within a few minutes, even custom reports. 3PARs are much easier to manage than NetApps in general and I think that the only place that they compete is in compaction.
I just love these enclosures and their awesome mesh architecture. They have made me look like a replication and disaster recovery rock star. InfoSight makes me look like a brilliant storage intelligence genius with the super-easy-to-grab reports, most of which come to OOTB and even when not, you can create new reports quickly and easily with the intuitive UI. Support is incredible.

Do you think HPE 3PAR StoreServ delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with HPE 3PAR StoreServ's feature set?

Yes

Did HPE 3PAR StoreServ live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of HPE 3PAR StoreServ go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy HPE 3PAR StoreServ again?

Yes

NetApp SnapMirror, NetApp ONTAP System Manager (formerly OnCommand), Autodesk Inventor
If you want all-flash or hybrid flash/platter enclosures that can be very fast, very easy to provision and at the same time be very versatile with regard to how you retain your data (i.e. for different data types and access needs) then this is the right product for you. The competition does just about as well with compaction/size reduction but the reporting is better and the IOPS are blazing. The thing runs like a scalded ape!