HPE StoreOnce Reviews

For us, we can save a lot on storage costs for doing backups. It integrates seamlessly with our backup solution, which is a third-party solution, not from HPE. We use Veeam; and StoreOnce works with them.

It works great for backing up Windows. Backups are much quicker now. Previously, it took 15-16 hours every day. Now it takes 3-4 hours maximum.

Replication of our site using Virtual Storage Appliance is really easy. We did not have any backup solution for our site before. Now, we just have Virtual Storage Appliance running on site almost without any configuration. We use it to replicate all our site backups.

I would like to see a better integration with Active Directory to identify users. Currently, we need to create separate accounts, so we need to have separate passwords to log in for assurance. It's not a big issue, but it is an issue. We would like to be able to use existing Active Directory accounts to directly authenticate users.

There could always be better performance. There is a little bit to work on in this area.

We’ve been using it for little more than a year.

It is stable. We hardly ever had an issues with it.

When we started, it was already quite large, about 200 TBs. So far, we haven’t had any need to scale up.

Technical support is quite efficient. We only had minor issues, but they were handled pretty quickly.

We built an almost entirely new IT infrastructure for a new stadium that we built. The new infrastructure had a lot more than it had before; so we knew we had to have a better backup solution.

The initial setup was relatively easy. We didn’t need to do a lot. They were already pretty well-packaged out of the box. Aside from the configuration and integration with the backup solution, we didn't have much to do.

We looked at EMC, IBM, NetApp, and some others which I cannot recall at the moment.

We are building an entirely new infrastructure. We chose HPE StoreOnce after considering the servers, the storage, and the backup all at the same time. HPE had a better global solution, especially in terms of the backup solution.

Look into intuitive solutions for storage space. Deduplication is really efficient. You can do deduplication directly with Veeam, the backup software, side now. We save on network and bandwidth.

The most important criteria for us when selecting a vendor was the integration of the old backup solution in the previous stadium, and the need to save on storage space.

• The product is very easy to use.
• Deduplication features are great, especially on Catalyst stores.
• We can also choose where to do the deduplication (source, media server or target).

The product has really improved the backup and restore for our infrastructure. It gives you great scalability options up to 1.7 PB and, according to the vendor, it can scale up to 34 PB using HPE inline deduplication. We were able to perform quick restores because of the elimination of tapes. It provides great features like VTL, NAS and StoreOnce Catalyst.

The support team needs improvement. Sometimes, it takes support a lot of time to fix the issue and majority of the cases have to be escalated to the lab.

I have been using it the last five years.

No Issues , Its pretty easy .

Stability’s good. I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Its good .

On a scale of 1-10, I would rate technical support a 6.

We previously used Data Domain. We switched to StoreOnce because of the complexity of the Data Domain system. Data Domain is a great product, but it’s complex to use.

Initial setup was pretty easy. We did not face any problem.

For licensing and pricing, I would recommend just pay as you go. It’s pretty easy to scale.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this product. We only chose this product because we use HP’s Data Protector as a backup application and it has great support.

Read the support matrix first. It is not supported on lot of the open systems such as OpenVMS or the IBM AS/400 iSeries.

It was primarily about the deduplication technology, and that's what brought it in the door for us. We were looking for something to offset our backup procedures so that we would be able to get better backup times, but also better restore time-frames for our backups.

The D2D capabilities have speeded backups.

The issues that I have aren't with the hardware itself. It's with our backup solution, it's with some of the other things that interact with StoreOnce, and it may be environmental. I don't see any deficiencies in the hardware solutions there.

We are on our third generation of devices. Its been around 5 years.

Early on, the firmware had some issues, but it has been steadily improved by HPE.

It's very stable.

StoreOnce scaling has been good. We've done a couple of field upgrades, we've had three different generations, actually we're down to two now, we retired one of the out already. But we've done a field upgrade of both of those which went really well. As far as the top end capabilities, we're not there. Both of our current generations still have headroom for growth.

7/10 - it can be hit or miss. We get better luck with our premium support levels. We have a named TAM for some of our systems, that works out well. Escalation managers are always good. There is good technical talent, it's just sometimes hidden by first level support. That can be difficult and frustrating at times, but over ten years working with them, I would say today it's probably a little better than when I first started. Actually, I would say it's probably improved a good bit since I first started working with them, but it's still got some room to go.

I wasn't heavily involved with the deployment. There is a little bit of learning curve to StoreOnce, and how it lays out, and different features within it. We had some consulting services when we first set it up, and I don't think we had the best advice, which led to a reconfiguration down the road.

License Catalyst. It is really the best performing interface for StoreOnce - so ensure whatever backup solution you are looking at has native Catalyst support to see the best results with the product. While it has VTL, CIFS and NFS capabilities, the best way to use it is with the Catalyst protocol.

I don't think it has anything much to do with the StoreOnce solution from a hardware perspective. That seems to be really solid, but you've got to have a Symantec NetBackup, HPE Data Protector, or Veeam to really enable you to get the most out of these products. Your mileage may vary based on your backup vendor, and how well they support the hardware. Veeam probably provides the best user experience from the software side - and the software side is extremely important to the solution.

StoreOnce is a new product for me. Throughout the years, as director in certain companies, I've been a big EMC Data Domain customer. We've purchased a couple StoreOnce, and so far I really like the product. It's very similar to Data Domain. It was very easy to stand up. We had it going in one day. It was our target for our backups for CommVault, to write all of our backups to. Now we replicate from one StoreOnce to the other, so as far as DR and contingency, it's really nice. The ease of use is excellent and the price point is very competitive. It's really good.

There's no tape involved. The tape is gone. Our backups are very easy to use with the StoreOnce. It's takes very little configuration. We don't have to babysit the device. Every once in a while, we just go in and look at it and see what kind of dedupe rates we're getting and check on our storage, etc. So far it's been a very easily operational situation with the StoreOnce.

Where I've used Data Domain in the past as another application - another use for Data Domain, maybe StoreOnce can improve by not just being a target for open systems, meaning Windows or Linux boxes. In the past, I've used Data Domain with, an IBM AS/400 iSeries, as a backup target to an iSeries platform, so they could possibly improve there.

The biggest thing that StoreOnce is very easy to use, just like Data Domain is very easy to use. The price point of StoreOnce is really something people should be looking at.

In my experiences with Data Domain is that it's going to be very expensive to maintain. To keep that after the purchase, it's very expensive to maintain. Not only on the initial purchase, but also on the ongoing annual maintenance fees of Data Domain.

It was very easy.

I had HPE do it.

Even the small one that I have over at the job site was not cheap.

If it had a little more functionality with other platforms, it would be rated higher. Really look at that product and compare it to the direct competition and compare it as far as features, price and annual maintenance and I think you'll see that StoreOnce should really take a hard look at that one.

The most valuable feature of HPE StoreOnce is the virtual drive.

HPE StoreOnce could improve the capacity support.

I have been using HPE StoreOnce for approximately five years.

HPE StoreOnce is stable.

HPE StoreOnce is scalable in general, but it all depends on your requirement. If this solution was to be used in a large environment with many queries it would have difficulties.

I have used the support from HPE StoreOnce.

I rate the support from HPE StoreOnce a five out of five.

The initial setup of HPE StoreOnce is simple.

We did the implementation of HPE StoreOnce in-house.

The licensing schemes could improve in HPE StoreOnce and the price is high. They should reduce the price.

I rate HPE StoreOnce an eight out of ten.

Federated Catalyst Replication allows us to centrally control and store all backup data with minimal effort and administration, and also removes relying on onsite staff at remote locations to change tapes.

Not every office has skilled IT staff, so changing backup tapes was always a challenge. A person was typically “burdened” with the task of changing tapes daily or weekly and would often be neglected for other priorities or be completely forgotten if the staff member was away or on leave. Now, there is no requirement for any staff member at remote sites to be involved in any task related to data backup and recovery.

We averaged at least three missed backups a month due to issues with the right backup tapes not being in the drive at the time of a backup. This has been completely eliminated since moving to StoreOnce and using Catalyst Stores and Catalyst Replications since all data moves are automated and bandwidth friendly, so they complete well within our nightly backup windows, and tapes are only used at the Datacentre which is controlled by trained IT professionals. We now have no one to blame but ourselves

1. Other products are able to read and write directly to/from StoreOnce Catalyst Stores (Symantec NetBackup and Backup Exec, Microsoft SQL Server, SAP, Oracle and soon Veeam Backup & Replication). However, they cannot integrate with StoreOnce Catalyst Replication. The replication must be triggered by software such as HP Data Protector, which must first know about the data that exists on the Catalyst Store. Unfortunately, data written to a Catalyst Store by one of the other products is not visible to Data Protector, so automating actions to occur based on new data being written to a Catalyst Store is not available. This really limits the ability to integrate all backups in to the Catalyst Store using their own native tools (MSSQL Maintenance Plans for example) and leverage the Federated Catalyst Replication capabilities. All backups must be written by Data Protector use Federated Catalyst.
2. The performance of NAS/CIFS Shares on a StoreOnce is acceptable for a standard write operation, but performance during restores (such as Virtual Machine Restores from Veeam Backup and Replication) is unacceptable. This is being improved as more products natively support StoreOnce Catalyst but is not widely adopted as yet.

We have been using StoreOnce for approximately two years, and couldn't be happier. It's used across two main datacentres and over 15 remote sites that use a combination of the 4430, 4220, and 2620 systems. All StoreOnce systems run the same OS Version, currently 3.12.1. We do not use the VSA, as we strive to maintain physical hardware separation between our production data and disk backups. We backup data at all remote sites to a local StoreOnce device, then replicate it to Datacentre A, then again to Datacentre B, and then finally copy to tape for secure storage.

Also in-use, is HP Data Protector 9.03 which controls backup of data into StoreOnce Catalyst Stores and automated object copy operations which utilise the HP StoreOnce Federated Catalyst to replicate backed up objects between StoreOnce Backup Systems. All data backups at remote sites follows the same routine:

• Single Data Protector Backup Specification for all clients in the site.
• Data Protector Disk Agents back up data to a single HP StoreOnce Gateway (we use one of the same disk agents being backed up to also serve as the gateway).
• Data is written to a StoreOnce Catalyst Store at the local site.
• Data Protector Post-Backup Object Copy Job with the “Use Replication” checkbox enabled is triggered automatically upon completion of the backup to replicate data to Datacentre A.
• The StoreOnce Gateways at both sites trigger a Catalyst Replication where the StoreOnce's replicate the Data Protector Backup Objects from one StoreOnce to the other utilising source-side deduplication has dramatically reduce WAN usage (only blocks that do not exist are transferred).
• Once completed, another Post-Backup Object Copy Job copies the data from the StoreOnce at Datacentre A to a similar StoreOnce at Datacentre B.
• A final Post-Backup Object Copy Job then copies the data from Datacentre B on to LTO6 Tape.

Using this process results in many restore options, and the entire process is automated. We can restore from:

1. StoreOnce at the remote site
2. StoreOnce at Datacentre A
3. StoreOnce at Datacentre B
4. LTO6 Tape at Datacentre B

No real issues other than the change in mindset for our backup administrators and the increase in the number of jobs that are now configured. For a typical remote site the following seven jobs exist:

1. Daily Differential Backup (Monday to Thursday) to local StoreOnce
2. Daily Post-Backup Object Copy to Datacentre A
3. Daily Post-Backup Object Copy from Datacentre A to Datacentre B
4. Weekly Full Backup (Friday) to local StoreOnce
5. Weekly Post-Backup Object Copy to Datacentre A
6. Weekly Post-Backup Object Copy from Datacentre A to Datacentre B
7. Weekly Post-Backup Object Copy from Datacentre B to LTO Tape

There is also now the requirement to upgrade HP Data Protector to provide certified support for newer StoreOnce OS releases. HP Data Protector upgrades typically bring with them enough problems on their own.

We did experience an issue for many months where Post-Backup Object Copy jobs would remain stuck “In Progress” and never report any data movements even though the two StoreOnce devices successfully replicated data. The jobs had to be aborted and manually re-run. We experienced approximately five of these a week out of over 200 jobs that would run. This was eventually fixed in Data Protector 9.03, and a post-hotfix.

The HP StoreOnce support team are very responsive and quick to react to problems and offer ongoing support and guidance. However, StoreOnce really shines when integrated with a backup product that utilises the StoreOnce capabilities to better protect your data. This is where the HP Technical Support breaks down. It is often difficult to have a team take ownership of a problem or admit there is a fault, the blame is often directed to someone else. Typically, we have found this to be more of an issue with the Data Protector Support than with StoreOnce, but being the same company it is quite jarring at times how little cross-communication and teamwork there is despite Data Protector and StoreOnce being so heavily dependent on each other.

We previously used Symantec Backup Exec at remote sites to back up data locally to tape, and HP Data Protector at the Datacentres. Managing two separate products was difficult, particularly with staff trying to remain current on both products that have very different lifecycles. Since we already used Data Protector at the datacentres and HP StoreOnce is the most tightly integrated with Data Protector the choice to use StoreOnce was very easy. We did not evaluate any other disk backup products.

The initial setup was complex, at least compared our previous backup solution of each site being their own installation of Symantec Backup Exec, and only a couple of small jobs to maintain. We have a much larger number of backup jobs to maintain now, and must be very careful when running jobs during business hours as most jobs now have other jobs that chain off them, so you run one job and it could trigger many others.

However, all configuration is done from a central location, all replications are triggered automatically, and we have full tracking of where every piece of backed up data is and where all of its copies also reside. A sore head upfront to have automated backups of every location and centrally replicated and multiple restore locations is well worth it.

We leverage the HP Level Two StoreOnce Startup Service which gave us access to the HP StoreOnce engineers for a few days. We were able to workshop our requirements and vision and come up with a solution that would technically achieve what we wanted. Unfortunately, HP Federated Catalyst depends heavily on HP Data Protector and there doesn’t seem to be much cross-skill of engineers between Data Protector and StoreOnce.

Thankfully we have over eight years of in-house technical experience with Data Protector so we were able to leverage what we learnt during the StoreOnce Startup Service to expand upon the solution and deliver above and beyond what we thought was possible. To make use of Federated Catalyst I strongly recommend a deep understanding of HP Data Protector (it’s not as scary as it first appears to be).

It is not abundantly clear, but the HP Catalyst License also includes the Catalyst Replication capability, so no other license is required if Catalyst Stores are the only backup target being used. StoreOnce devices cannot replicate Catalyst Stores automatically for you, the replication must be triggered by other software such as HP Data Protector.

Depending on the backup product being used with HP StoreOnce, there may be disk backup capacity licenses also required. HP Data Protector requires Advanced Disk Backup Licenses for the usable capacity of the StoreOnce Systems (this is the native usable capacity, regardless of how much data you can actually store thanks to deduplication benefits).

You can use a StoreOnce as a NAS/CIFS Target and also as a Virtual Tape Library. These backup targets can be replicated to other StoreOnce Backup Systems, however these require additional licenses.

We do not have much experience with other disk backup solutions. The Federated Catalyst Replication and the deduplication ratios obtained are amazing. As an example, we only keep two weeks of daily backups and six weeks of weekly backups on disk, and have over 470 backups from around the country stored at Datacentre A which equates to over 140TB of data that consumes less than 13TB on disk. The dedupe ratio is 10.7:1. This ratio grows even larger as retention periods are increased. We are still fine-tuning our retention periods and will likely be doubling them within the next six months.

The StoreOnce VSA is a great place to start as it is 100% functionally the same as a StoreOnce physical device, and you can use a free trial. Definitely the best place to start. The same goes for HP Data Protector.

We use the product for backups in the manufacturing industry. 

HPE StoreOnce is particularly useful in situations where organizations require a backup solution to store their data. Its deduplication feature is quite impressive, providing a deduplication ratio of around 25 to 26. 

The tool is easy, quick, and reliable. 

HPE StoreOnce needs to provide a SaaS solution by offering high-density disks. 

I have been using the product for two years. 

I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten.

The tool is a scalable solution, and it often works with Data Protector, a software that initiates the backup process. I rate it a ten out of ten. 

The solution's support is responsive and quick. 

Positive

I rate the tool's deployment a ten out of ten. 

HPE StoreOnce is simple, scalable, and stable. I rate it a ten out of ten.

The most valuable feature would be the high deduplication ratios, capable of 20 or more to 1 dedup ratio in a real-world backup environment. It seems to work very good for long retention times, even if there is little use, but sometimes you have to do it due to legal reasons, and that is where it shines.

In my previous organization, it removed the need for manual tape swapping. Hence, it removed the need for actual tape changers to be at 50 separate remote sites, leading to huge savings for the company.

Also, offsite tape storage is replaced by replication to a different/central site/device such as StoreOnce B6200/B6500 or even some lower-end one, such as 4900.

I would like to see them add the ability to turn on/turn off global deduplication and etc.

Currently, only VTL-level deduplication is supported properly, while there seems to be some part of global deduplication working. However, in some rare cases, I saw data being removed on untouched VTL while you were deleting some particular cartridge within a separate VTL. It has probably been fixed by the most recent StoreOnce OS upgrades.

I have been using it for 4+ years.

I have not encountered any deployment issues.

Some models are shipped with one power supply by default, even when redundant PSUs are supported in pairs; be aware of that.

As long as the architecture was done correctly, I did not encounter any scalability issues. If an entry-level StoreOnce device is placed on a “soon to grow“ site, that is a planning mistake, not a scalability issue.

Customer service is great.

Technical support is great.

We switched because of company policy, the tapes aged, etc.

Initial setup was straightforward.

I was within support team, which did implement as well as support the solution.

Huge. Simply eliminating the need for tape changers returned the cost of the hardware within less than half a year.

Get an expert who knows the products, so you can get the best prices possible for both DP and StoreOnce. Because there are some things that can work for the same solution in different ways, hence they are differently licensed as well as priced.

Make sure architecture is planning properly, e.g., centralised or decentralised HPE DP Cell Managers give you some quite different options and etc.