We performed a comparison between HPE Nimble Storage and HPE 3RAP StoreServ based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, HPE Nimble Storage came out ahead of HPE 3RAP StoreServ. Even though both products are easy to deploy, have many valuable features, and are in the same price range, HPE 3RAP StoreServ requires improvements in its technical support availability which caused inconveniences for numerous customers.
"It's just very easy for general block storage."
"It helps simplify storage. When you're running Pure all-flash, you don't have to do a lot of the old Oracle best practices. You don't have to worry about putting log files on a different disk channel than the data files, and those types of issues... That has made it vastly easier to do large volumes, rapid provisioning in databases, without taking a performance hit."
"At this point, I don't know anything that they could provide in a better way."
"Performance, dedupe, and that it works well with database workloads are its most valuable features."
"On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the most comfortable pricing, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The solution helps to simplify storage."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is it never goes down. We can expand and create volumes."
"We do not have to take the whole system down to do upgrades."
"The InfoSight feature helps us with troubleshooting problems in our environment."
"For virtualization, the failure rate is much less compared to traditional storage where you need more hard drives"
"It is very easy to manage. I can provision disks and monitor the performance easily."
"We can do more, faster, whether it's spinning up more virtual machines or handling large amounts of data."
"We use all the features, but some of the most valuable are the replication, priority optimization, provisioning, and deduplication. There are a lot of good features in this product."
"We're using the all-flash arrays and, with the deduplication and compression, it just really fits our virtualization environment very well."
"I like that it's stable. This is the reason why we're using these products. We work in the broadcast market, and stability is very important. HPE has global services, and that's also important. Dell and HPE are some big companies, and their solutions are robust and stable."
"VMware integration, why is pretty self-explanatory."
"We have seen our average latency go from four milliseconds to point four. Therefore, we are getting 10 times better performance down to the end user on everything. We have seen an increase in our IOPS by ten times."
"The scalability is straightforward."
"We use a platform as a service and have multiple application vendors who comprise that platform. There are moments when those application vendors put the blame on us. By working in InfoSight, I am able to say, "No, it is not us." I can actually provide proof, either by using screenshots or through reporting."
"Definitely ease-of-use. I've experienced many different arrays out there and Nimble is definitely there."
"Regarding their support, you always get through to somebody who knows exactly what they're talking about."
"Its speed, ease of use, and it has been completely reliable."
"It has totally taken away a layer of time and effort, management-wise, from two engineers to give that time back into developing more solutions. It has provided us essentially with a platform to go away and be more creative, knowing that that is stable and can do whatever we chuck at it."
"A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad."
"The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality."
"There was some complexity in the initial setup."
"I like what they're doing, but some of my customers complain that they do not have all the bells and whistles and knobs to fine-tune workloads that some of the competitors have. In my opinion, that's good. All customers don't have dedicated storage gurus, and they can get themselves into trouble if they fine-tune too many of those high-performance knobs, but they do get knocked down. Pure Storage takes a hit in the minds and opinions of some of the customers because they cannot customize things as much as compared to a legacy storage provider's appliance such as NetApp, Dell EMC, or even HPE. I personally think 95% of my customers are better off letting the system fine-tune itself. That was something that you needed to do 12 or 15 years ago, but now with all-flash, the technology can handle what it needs to handle. Customers just end up shooting themselves in the foot if they are tweaking too many default settings."
"It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups."
"The file functionality could be better."
"We would like to see more cloud support, which we know is coming, although it's not out yet. It's going to be released in the next versions. That would be the biggest win, if additional cloud support is built into the array."
"The price of this solution could be improved."
"During the initial setup, it was a bit complex in the wiring of the cages."
"I would like to see more cloud-based integrations and more file storage capabilities."
"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."
"I would like to see improvement in the product's scalability. As a partner, I had serious problems because of the competition from Dell EMC and Pure."
"The solution could improve by being more secure."
"if it were easier for us to manage the product ourselves without having to get HPE to connect, because it sometimes it does take a bit to get the scheduling worked out with the HPE support. If it were simpler, then it might be easier for us to handle it ourselves."
"As long as they can keep the solution stable, it will be good. Stability is very important to us."
"Would like to see some management functions through a web interface."
"The HPE Nimble Storage could have better integration with monitoring and machine learning system information solutions."
"There are customers who want to do some different things with the Microsoft Resilient File System. There are some customers who want to do different types of connectivity. I do not know if I would call that an improvement, necessarily, because if you want that, you should get a different product."
"I don't think it is officially released yet, but the main reason that we chose Nimble is because of the sync rep feature. So, I would like to see that further evolve. This feature will be essential for our setups."
"Scalability, in terms of being able to scale out, is not easy and should be improved."
"You could argue that it would be preferable if everything were cheaper in order to save taxpayer money."
"I would like deduplication by default on all the volumes. I still don't understand (or know why) dedupe isn't enabled for the templates out-of-the-box. We have to go in and manually enable it each and every time."
"When we’re setting up the solution, making options available regarding the replication tool mechanism would be ideal."
"There is no active-active controller, which means that we can only have one controller online at a time."
HPE 3PAR StoreServ is ranked 9th in All-Flash Storage with 299 reviews while HPE Nimble Storage is ranked 5th in All-Flash Storage with 119 reviews. HPE 3PAR StoreServ is rated 8.6, while HPE Nimble Storage 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 HPE Nimble Storage writes "Beneficial management software, straightforward installation, and good support". HPE 3PAR StoreServ is most compared with HPE Primera, Dell Unity XT, NetApp AFF, HPE StorageWorks MSA and HPE StoreOnce, whereas HPE Nimble Storage is most compared with Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, HPE Primera, VMware vSAN and Huawei OceanStor Dorado. See our HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. HPE Nimble Storage report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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