We performed a comparison between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and NetApp AFF based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The predictive performance analytics are good."
"We've had to use tech support on a number of occasions. They did everything remotely and talked us all the way through. They fixed the issue within 30 minutes. Every single time we contact them, they're perfect. I would give their technical support a ten out of ten."
"It's extremely stable and has good performance."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are simplicity, ease of use, and dashboard management."
"The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"We can store more for a cheaper price as opposed to paying for larger devices and larger rack spaces which get outdated sooner and which we'd have to change every two years. It simplifies storage for us."
"The initial setup was really straight forward."
"The deduplication and compression meet all of our system requirements."
"The support is really fast. There is very good support for 3PAR storage."
"The intelligence around the solution is good."
"The technical support is very good."
"It is a really stable product. We have not had any major issues at the moment."
"We do not have to take the whole system down to do upgrades."
"Any action we want to do with a Dell EMC product needs a license. But with 3PAR's converged solution, at least there is no need to purchase more licenses to get the all the features that we need. We can get basic and mid-range features without licenses."
"They provide very good support for our mission-critical processes."
"3PAR is different from other storage solutions because it uses a chunklet when we initiate the storage. Every disk is submitted as a 1 GB chunklet. This chunklet can be RAID 1, 4, 5, or 6. This fabulous feature is very useful for me because I can distribute the RAID for any volume. The adaptive optimization is the biggest feature in 3PAR. 3PAR is very usable with thin volume because it detects zeros while writing. Every time I tell the hypervisor to make the full provisioning, it makes the volume as simple provisioning in 3PAR, not full provisioning. Other vendors take this volume as thick provisioning because of which the capacity is reached quickly. It doesn't happen in 3PAR because it detects zeros. It only writes the data, and it doesn't write zeros. There are two processors in 3PAR: the ASIC processor and the main processor. The ASIC processor detects zero writing and doesn't write it, which is a big feature in 3PAR."
"The most valuable features are high performance and encryption. It also provides aggregate level dedupe."
"The most valuable feature of AFF is that it offers better visibility and control over performance, ensuring it meets customer needs effectively."
"The most valuable features of AFF are its speed and the responsive support from NetApp."
"It's very stable. It's always there when we need it. With the Dual Controller, if one drops out, the other one comes right online. We don't use any iSCSI so there is a little bit of a latency break but, over the NFS, we don't notice that switch-on. We can do maintenance in the middle of the day, literally rip a whole controller out of the chassis, and do what we need to do with it."
"It scales well, probably more so than the FAS. Because of the storage density with the SSDs, we can't buy enough SSDs to max one out."
"The most valuable features are the speed and performance for our transactional workloads for our databases."
"It impacts customer retention because of its overall ease. When you are running a business, where time is a factor, that is the biggest selling point. Things happen really rapidly, when they happen, and being able to say, "Yeah, we can get this up and running in a day, if you want," or even less time in some cases. Sometimes, that can be what makes or breaks our case."
"The performance of NetApp AFF allows our developers and researches to run models and their tests within a single workday instead of spreading out across multiple workdays."
"Automation could be simplified."
"In terms of the future, I have been excited by some of the copy data management stuff that they're talking about building into the environment. There are feature sets where I've done a lot of automation work. So, I am always looking forward to extensions of their API. They're also talking about a phone home centralized analytics database being used as a centralized management console with a list of new cloud features, but this doesn't seem finalized."
"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current. I think it's bundled with the deduplication and other compression factors. We need more user interfaces for forecasting in this software and more interfaces need to be integrated with this array management tool."
"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."
"Some services could be inserted directly into the SAN, so Pure Storage could complete with the HyperFlex."
"The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release."
"I would like some performance analytics which go deeper than today. It should be specific to some hosts and applications. This would be good."
"It's too early to tell if we've seen a reduction in total cost of ownership. The solution is expensive."
"The solution’s stability could be improved."
"Sometimes the required upgrades have been a little bit involved: "You have to do this before you do this," and I want them to explain to me why. It's more work than it should be."
"This solution only provides active-passive replication, as opposed to active-active."
"Scalability and management could be improved."
"I would like them to improve it so I can do firmware upgrades without downtime."
"If HPE 3PAR could handle NAS and all things related to NAS, you would not need to have a mixture of different storages, storage boxes, one solution could fit all."
"I would like the documentation easy to find. There is a lot of documentation, but sometimes it is hard to find. You have to do a lot of searching to find it."
"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."
"There is room for improvement with the user interface. There are a few things that cannot be done in the GUI. We do a lot of things through the CLI, but that's grown out of a lack of ability to do them in the GUI. An example is QTrees. You can manage them within the GUI, but the GUI is missing a few options."
"The total cost of ownership has increased a little."
"As for AFF itself, I don't have any suggestions of what I would be excited about seeing. I think that adding the support for the rest of APIs to AFF would be super handy. I think it's something that we've been waiting for for a while which would be fantastic."
"It would be better if they just improved the performance of the system."
"The bad part about having scalability is the expense. It is currently extremely expensive, to be able to scale so fast on flash."
"On the fiber channel side, there is a limit of sixteen terabytes on each line, and we would like to see this raised because we are having to use some other products."
"We'd like to see improvement in the time to retrieve from the Cloud, whether it's on-prem to cloud and whether it's public or private cloud."
"Something I've talked to NetApp about in the past is going more to a node-based architecture, like the hyper-converged solutions that we are doing nowadays. Because the days of having to buy massive quantities of storage all at one time, have changed to being able to grow in smaller increments from a budgetary standpoint. This change would be great for our business. This is what my leadership would like to see in a lot of things that they purchase now. I would like to see that architecture continue to evolve in that clustered environment."
HPE 3PAR StoreServ is ranked 9th in All-Flash Storage with 299 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews. HPE 3PAR StoreServ is rated 8.6, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. 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 NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". HPE 3PAR StoreServ is most compared with HPE Primera, Dell Unity XT, HPE Nimble Storage, HPE StorageWorks MSA and HPE StoreOnce, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN and NetApp FAS Series. See our HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. NetApp AFF report.
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From what I understand of Gary’s response, can we assume that the HP 3PAR is more suitable for multi-site companies that require replication between sites, and that the Netapp is more suitable for local installations and is probably faster in terms of local backup and restore operations?
Either will after the maintenance period expires. They both offer 3,4 or 5 years upfront for maintenance and support. After that they will sting you big time for renewals.
If you have a lifecycle of say 4 years then get it upfront as there won't be any new charges due to replacements. Software wise is usually around 20% of the rrp price for annual renewal after the initial period of 3,4 or 5. Depends on the vendor.
The other part is how much your data is likely to grow as dedupe appliances such as store once and dell will charge a lot for upgrades. Again it's better to get more at the start to make sure your covered for the time frames you need.
Hope that all makes sense
Thanks you for your advise mate, any way let me know one things which one will give me the iceberg cost at the end of the day...? 3par with storeonce and switch or Netapp with additional third party storage back up let say from Dell server as storage to backup my data, app etc.
iIsee a lot of good comments on features of both Netapp and HP3Par, one important point to consider is that both these solutions offer some sort of point in time snapshots, snapvault,... these do not offer any cataloging features, A good backup solution includes a data base of backups for history. This is why you should also add either Data Protector, VEEM, Catalogic,. CommVault.,... the arrays themselves will do great snapshot recovery but without any information on the backups, the solution would be very limited.
Oh god I wondered when pure would raise its hand here. Seems to happen on every all flash post like they are desperate to sell systems.
I wouldn't touch pure they are struggling with sales against HP and EMC with xtremeIO systems. At a guess I would say they will get bought out soon by someone like Lenovo or another storage vendor.
However the topic here is HP vs NetApp and what's needed i would recommend staying on subject and not trying to promote other systems that haven't been asked about.
I would back the HP system here with data protector for backup. NetApp as someone else mentioned has big issues with their all flash hence why they bought an all flash competitor solid fire so that they have a proper all flash offering without WAFL
Hello, i am not familiar with 3Par storage but i can tell you great things about the PureStorage all-flash-arrays. We installed the FA-450 and an M50 and the performance is unbelievable!! Both pump through 200,000 32K IOPS. All redundant hardware and fantastic customer service.
Will there be any offsite replication ?
So if I understand what you're asking, you want to know if there is any
kind of premium to being able to back up the 3par array? The answer is no,
but there is software specifically available to do snapshots (Virtual Copy)
and for special direct-to-disk backup from a 3par to an HP StoreOnce
de-duplication appliance from Oracle or SQL Server. Feel free to call me if
you need further explanation.