We performed a comparison between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and IBM FlashSystem based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two NAS solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."
"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."
"The overall quality of the product is fantastic. Advanced Optimization is one of the best features I never thought I needed until I actually used it and saw it in action."
"OneView is a nice interface."
"I found it easy to deploy and simple to configure the storage."
"We use a virtual domain in 3PAR and we can create individual pools where clients are able to manage their own resources, instead of we, as storage admin, getting involved in that."
"We can do more, faster, whether it's spinning up more virtual machines or handling large amounts of data."
"Proactive support. Before we notice that there's a problem in the storage, or any part, any hard disk, they already notify us, and within four hours, the product is delivered. Within the next hour after product delivery, the engineer is available to support me."
"The solution has increased our performance by about 40 percent."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is replication...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The Flash core models offer amazing performance."
"The most crucial feature of IBM FlashSystem is compression."
"When it comes to the interface of the solution we did not encounter any challenges. Additionally, the solution has good documentation."
"The most valuable features were the performance of the array, i.e., very low latency and high IOPS. Plus, the management interface is very easy to use."
"The storage system is one of the best in the world."
"Over the years, it has become increasingly user-friendly."
"High availability and enhanced security; Proven dependability; Data compression with hardware acceleration; Advanced copy services features are all in this product."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"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."
"HPE could improve by making an old flash system in order to compete with the current market. For the solution to be more competitive in the mid-range market they could increase the performance."
"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."
"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."
"We would like to see the ability to not only be integrated with hybrid IT, but on-prem."
"The GUI interface could be improved. I have been having trouble with one issue in particular. If you look at the DC and DR, if there is a communication break and the link went down—so the data is not replicating from DC to DR—there is no way to find out how much data is ready for transmission. Only the size of the data that needs to be transferred after the link comes up. If the firewall link is down, there is no way of seeing how much data is waiting to be transferred. This is a weak point of 3PAR."
"Cloud integration could be better. They can also add an NVMe to port to that. I would like to see NVMe in the next release. That's the future or the near future for storage. That will give us a real high throughput and some performance."
"The speed of the hard disk could be better. The performance is the main issue for us. The performance of the VMs is not comparable to desktop machines, for instance, and we might need another solution to improve the performance. Other than that, we don't have any issues. We already have a great part of storage with SSDs, and the performance is not as good as I expected."
"The price is very costly."
"The installation is not easy. You need to have extensive knowledge to handle it."
"We use some open-source tools for monitoring, such as Grafana and it should be bundled along with IBM FlashSystem."
"I know they have a flashcopy manager, but it is extra software, an additional license, and some customers don't like to add addition costs to their infrastructure. If IBM could create, or include snapshot management within the GUI, that would really be helpful."
"The solution is not easy to implement. It takes a lot of time to study the product and it's a little complicated in general."
"The solution is quite expensive. That's one of the downsides to using it."
"Cloud file sharing is an area that needs improvement."
"The pricing could be improved, but I think it's getting better and better with each version. IBM needs to implement NAS storage again, as this is a big flaw. Dell EMC is very good at this and if you compared them based on NAS storage, Dell EMC would win right away. IBM's solution for NAS storage is very complicated. We don't have a storage box that provides file sharing from itself, we have to put software on it and go through a whole complicated process. It should be simplified."
HPE 3PAR StoreServ is ranked 6th in NAS with 299 reviews while IBM FlashSystem is ranked 4th in NAS with 106 reviews. HPE 3PAR StoreServ is rated 8.6, while IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of HPE 3PAR StoreServ writes "The product's technical support is outstanding as I can reach someone right away". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem writes "An easy GUI and simple provisioning but our model does not support compression". HPE 3PAR StoreServ is most compared with HPE Primera, Dell Unity XT, HPE Nimble Storage, NetApp AFF and HPE EVA, whereas IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, Dell Unity XT, NetApp AFF and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform. See our HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. IBM FlashSystem report.
See our list of best NAS vendors, best Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) vendors, and best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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