3Par Opinions

[scottm]

Hello!

So we are a current EVA shop and are evaluating multiple vendors for a storage refresh. We are currently looking at a V400 for our primary site and a F400 (or it's replacement) for our DR site. There are multiple facets about all of the vendors that we both find to be positives and negatives. I was looking to solicit any unbiased input, both positive and negative on your experience with 3par products in general, the V400 specifically, and any experience with HP since they have taken over 3par.

Thanks in advance.

[Richard Siemers]

We converted from EMC Symmetrix and Clarriion to 3PAR and haven't looked back, I would imagine you would be just as happy, if not happier, transitioning from EVA. I'll admit I liked 3PAR better when it was just 3PAR... but thats mostly personal preference, my biggest complaint is navigating the HP website for 3PAR docs and downloads.

We bought 800 chassis' with 4 nodes, "just in case" we needed to scale. Hind sight 20/20, 400s would have hit the spot. I like 4 node solutions due the mirrored write cache staying active in a single node failure/maintenance situation.

Likes: The hardware design, reliance, flexibility and performance... and absolute ease of administration compared to others like Symmetrix or Netapp.

Dislikes: Some vendors like to charge heavy on hardware, and give you a break on software, other vendors do the opposite... HP/3PAR tries to get you on both sides of that fence. It seems that the engineers behind 3PAR talk way too much to marketing because every little micro feature requires a license key to enable. A piece of advice, get all the licensing you think you will need up front and discounted on the initial deal, put your purchasing negotiator to work.

[scottm]

Much appreciated Richard. We have been an HP customer for some time so I definitely agree with you about the support site (itrc). We have been able to get some aggressive pricing and definitely like the v400 for our primary site. Now we are vacillating on the f400 for our DR site as they are supposedly due to release it's replacement in the next few months. It would be nice if the v series had a SAS backend.

[Fastjack]

Hi,

we've been running a V800 for half a year now and while I would buy again, the system is not without its problems. Here are some thoughts:

- The main problem so far has been the support. HP seems to have sold way more machines than they can currently handle. This has even lead to mistakes during installation, slow responses and all kinds of chaos.
- The disks come in magazines with four drives per magazine. To change a drive you have to take out the whole magazine, thus offlining four drives. As a consequence the procedure to replace a disk can take hours since a lot of data has to be saved before and checked after.
- Some background-tasks like defragging, compacting and Adaptive Optimization work pretty slowly, sometimes taking days or even weeks. In some cases this has lead to delays in our projects. While I do realize that in some of these tasks large amounts of data have to be moved but looking at the disk utilization I think there is room for improvement.
- The system is very easy to work with. I love the CLI; it is powerful, well documented and easy to script with.

[ilv]

If you think about your Bussiness Continuity Plans, do you think an F-class would be a good DR storage for the V400 in terms of real usage ?

Since the technology seems pretty scalable, I would consider an underpowered V-class for DR.
At least that's what we did : Primary Site V400 - 4 nodes , DR Site V400 - 2 nodes.

Keep in mind that I'm buying, not selling HP products !

On the other hand I fully agree Fastjack ... especially on support issues. We had only 1 though.

[Richard Siemers]

The definition of "DR site" varies as I have recently discovered. We are building a "DR site" however, its purpose is just to hold our replicated data. In the event of a disaster, we would have to build a location to restore said data to, to include new cpu/networking and disk. Even if it is in the same or adjacent cage.

I guess the industry should be more specific with terms like DR Hot Site, or DR Cold Site.

[scottm]

Well we ended up with 2 v400's. Setup is in process. I look forward to utilizing the resources in the forum!