Using this platform, we were able to provide virtual desktops (VDI) to our end users across WAN, to help alleviate some of the problems that we’ve had with bandwidth.

We leveraged StoreVirtual to provide a software SAN for our management cluster of vSphere - this allowed us to run monitoring and management applications on a separate infrastructure from the rest of our Fibre Channel based vSphere clusters and allowed us to watch and observe, even when the SAN was having a problem.  

I administer a 100% virtual environment. To use the HPE StoreVirtual VSA edition, I did not have to buy an expensive external array. I was able to create two 3.27TB usable HPE VSAs from all the older disks I had laying around. Granted, eventually, I did purchase two storage blades to be used by the VSA, but that is not how usage started. Recently, I have been using HPE StoreVirtual on KVM as well.

It's easy to set up, easy for my team to manage, the tools are pretty easy to learn, and it's important for us to be able to provision storage quickly in my environment, so as soon as we get a new node in, we can get it up and running very quickly, provision it, immediately use the storage.

The only issue that we have, occasionally, is bonding the NICs sometimes is problematic. It could be our environment. We have the Cisco Nexus infrastructure, and sometimes the nodes just don't want to bind. We have all kinds of problems with it, and we have to call a ticket in, and the product guys to help us figure out what's going on. It happens occasionally, it's not like, every time, it's just every once in a while.

It's saved us a huge amount of money on hardware and other data center costs. The next step for us is to integrate it with backbones. We're still doing traditional provisioning of VMs, but ConvergedSystems allow us to do things for our students. The data and analytics we get speeds up on multiple servers.

We're able to give students access to parts of the system and let them onto 30 servers. We didn't have that capability before. One day we'll allow classrooms to do their own self-servers to really speed things up.

It hasn't helped as the HP provided software for the host server systems has become a continuous nightmare when it comes to HP LH OS upgrade process with our 260+ systems in multiple management groups/clusters.

It offers, while still affordable, a really high end storage solution that I can present to my customers.

Business continuity and disaster recovery. The storage environment is spread between two geographical locations – bi-annually BCP/DR tests are conducted proving the validity of the architecture. Each site in turn simulates power loss – both the compute and storage that supports the vSphere estate are affected. In all cases, these tests have been 100% successful.

Prior to the introduction of the StoreVirtual VSA, our four domain controllers resided on local disks in each data center (two in each site). There was no functionality for cross site migration and in the event of a data center failure, we were left without 2 DC’s for the duration of the outage. The implementation of StoreVirtual has allowed us to create cross site storage volumes, allowing VM’s to migrate freely between data centers. In the event of a data center outage, potentially all 4 domain controllers could be running from one site.

On several occasions, we’ve had a complete power failure at one of our two SAN locations, yet all of our VMs continued to function because the VMs that were running on the downed SAN simply moved to the other SAN without the need for operator intervention. With most other mirrored SAN solutions, the VMs would need to have been manually moved to the other SAN location. With VSA, however, it’s automatic and transparent.

When we bid on projects and scope out the work, we usually will have three design iterations that we follow -- a Multi-Site, Single-Site P4500, or Single-Site P4300 class setup -- depending on what is needed. All three build-outs use the same CMC and basic setup helps to standardize and help get a handle on costs and budgeting for these projects. We’ve built a multi-tiered storage solution for our customers using one product.

StoreVirtual has proved to be a highly available, very stable and robust solution. It allows compute and storage to operate separately, and has the ability to take SAN nodes out of production for maintenance with little effort and zero downtime.

We are able to build server clusters without external storage and still provide high availability. We are able to run the VSA version inside the actual servers, thus converging server and storage in same units.

We're a private hybrid cloud service provider, so we're very focused on personal sales. We don't have large investments to trial and make mistakes. We have to get it right each and every single time. With the infrastructure capability, it gives us the confidence and peace of mind to get it right time and again. Dealing with vendors, there's always going to be ups and downs, but the key thing with HP is that they make sure that they test the issues.

Room to grow is always there because we're in the technology space and the day we get complacent with ourselves and we get self-satisfied, the game is over. I think the key for us is flexibility. We're growing as a company and we have to scale and we don't want to get caught up with a baseline infrastructure that doesn't scale and grow over time. So far, what we've seen in terms of HP's roadmaps, we're very satisfied that we're not going to find ourselves in a difficult situation. HP is there supporting us and making sure that they will be able to meet our future growth requirements. Everything in HP's roadmap really gives us that flexibility and a very good price point.

In the past we didn’t have a shared storage solution in small offices; with StoreVirtual, we can benefit from the advantages of a SAN (vMotion, HA, DRS etc.) without investing big money.

Server provisioning and capacity expansion are much easier than before.

It has allowed us to expand our available ESX storage without replacing arrays or adding hardware. It also helps with vMotion and provides disk space for extra clients on hosts with under-allocated CPU/Memory.

The things we like best about it is just that it's safe, it's reliable, it's easy to transfer data back and forth, it's easy to replicate elsewhere. We've been very happy with them.

We and our customers did not have any downtime for their SAN, not because of an update or due to an expansion of the cluster with extra nodes. The support tool does not depend on one system. It just reads the status of the SAN and can be installed on more than one device.

Data is stored in two different places, leveraging more security and availability. Therefore, network problems are having less affect on iSCSI. We also plan to build a Metro Cluster using VSA.

The biggest benefit is cost savings because I have to bring in a lot of new technology. For example, with servers, we need one for archiving, another for BI, and another for IT support. With the new virtual environment in ConvergedSystem, I don't need to purchase new servers because I can just create a new server and continue work.

We operate in the healthcare sector, and there aren't a lot of solutions that allow us to make sure that our solutions are ready to go in our environment. We have a unique staging environment. We literally test the solution to death before it goes into the hospital environment with the 80/20 rule. If it's 80% configured, we'll run it step-wise before it gets over the doorstep. This helps us to mimic a real-life environment on a smaller scale.

It gives us what we want. It provides stability and availability. It is a very reliable solution.

We implemented it into a development environment, but we found that it was not reliable enough to put it into production.

Shared storage in the organization allowed for higher availability and simplified server maintenance.

We’ve created two data centers. This allows us to keep working when there are power outages on one of the two sites. The data centers are about 150 meters apart in different buildings.

In the past, we were exclusively Fibre-Channel focused with all the associated disadvantages of running a separate FC SAN with particular array types. Every host we wanted to connect to shared storage had to have an HBA installed.

With iSCI and the clustered StoreVirtual approach, we can now use standard IP networking, standard ethernet NIC, and we can easily provide storage to any server anywhere in our datacenter.

If we need more capacity or performance we simply add additional VSA nodes, which my be backed by internal server disk storage as it's cheaper than the legacy array storage.

We can afford shared iSCSI storage and it’s easy to deploy for the lab as well as production usage, not just for critical production apps.

• Input/Output (I/O) has greatly improved.
• Easy updates without taking down storage and virtual machines (VMs).
• HA is now a real possibility which I could not fully achieve with normal NAS datastores.

HP StoreVirtual added the benefits of a shared storage to a highly-virtualized environment:

• Live migration
• High availability
• Data protection (snapshots)
• Better performance

The stability and flexibility are the greatest improvements to our organization.

It has allowed us to create a SAN from existing hardware without having to purchase any other hardware.

It has removed the single point of failure. The resiliency was improved due to features like snapshotting at hardware level. It gives us better uptime and improved HA time, which means less downtime in the event of a failure.

It allows us to provide simple High Availability SAN solutions that are scalable with both speed and storage by just adding extra nodes.

If one datacenter fails, we can continue without failure.