HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. SolidFire (discontinued)

The 3PAR flash storage is perfect for use cases that need high I/O and low latency (like data bases or even VDI). The flexibility of the system allows you quickly to allocate or expand storage. I would not recommend it for use in archival storage (too expensive) or for systems that have very low I/O requirements.

Incentivized

Well suited for companies who use NetApp Storage. This is one of the more performant offerings from NetApp and is highly customizable.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• All-flash performance is very good, particularly on read-intensive workloads
• Performance scales linearly by adding new nodes
• Guaranteed QOS policies offer both a minimum IOPS and maximum IOPS with burst capabability, so its not just capping the upper limit of a workload
• Encryption at rest is integrated into the array platform
• Grid architecture ensures that ability to perform rolling upgrades online without severely impairing performance
• VVOL capabilities with the array allow granular control and visibility of the workloads

Incentivized

• No SNMP Support: You can monitor almost every device nowadays with SNMP, but 3PAR does not support it. You have to buy HP Openview, which costs extra and does not integrate well with your already existing monitoring solution.
• No NFS Support: HP provides an ugly workaround by deploying a VM onto 3PAR that then provides the assigned storage as NFS storage.
• Only expensive SSDs can be run.
• Upgrading the storage with new firmware is a horrible process. They assist you with a support center based in India. Just picking an appointment is a hassle. They send you PDFs that look like they have been created by children, with red circles and yellow highlights. You have to go through the whole update routing every time. Even if you already did the routing last time and are now only upgrading a minor release.
• Outdated management application: The application looks like it was developed 20 years ago. It is very unintuitive. They announced that you can manage 3PAR over the web, but it is all again just an ugly workaround. You have to install an application that runs on a web server locally, so you cannot access the management via web from everywhere. The web overview looks nice and is intuitive, but it does not provide all the features. You still have to go to the old application for lots of things.
• The compaction value is just marketing. If you deploy a disk of 100GB and only have data of about 10GB, 3PAR calculates the unused 90GB into the compaction value. This is just for show and does not provide any "space savings." Dedup is where the real savings come in. Depending on the type of data, we have a dedup ration between 1.3:1 and 4.4:1 on our VVols.

• There seems to be an overarching view (with drill downs) of the entire infrastructure.
• You need a solid partner to implement this product initially.
• As this product is still integrating with Net Apps mature support systems, I still think that there is room for a better end to end experience.

Incentivized

We are very satisfied with 3PAR performance and especially the IOPS (Input Output Per Second) is pretty amazing. It is easy to configure and doesn't require much knowledge of storage for Tier 1 support team.

Incentivized

HPE customer support is very good. We always found them very supportive and their response time was always within our SLA.

Incentivized

I have not had to use support. However, others on my team have and have been impressed.

Incentivized

We also considered NetApp All-Flash FAS since it works on similar technology and provides comparable throughput. However, we were offered better deal from HPE as we are existing customers for HPE, hence we chose HPE 3PAR StoreServ.

Incentivized

All in all, Net App Solid Fire is a strong competitor to Nutanix AOS or HPE SimpliVity. It is conceded that there are plusses and minuses for the competitive landscape, however, Net App Solid Fire is a worthwhile competitor at a very competitive price point.

Incentivized

• HPE 3 PAR has quickly proved its value to our organization. I cannot speak to ROI, but feel that it has quickly met the expectations of our organization.
• The 3PAR has allowed our organization to expand business due to its ability to be expanded with no downtime.

Incentivized

• Effectiveness
• Ease of use
• Cost savings by tiering

Incentivized