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We'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 Features
The 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 Improvement
Support 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 Issues
Nothing 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 Support
It's getting better in Europe, but it could still stand to improve.
Other Advice
I would recommend it over anything. It's a great array; the cost was very competitive; the performance is great.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Jul 11 2016
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