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HPE StoreOnce

Score7.3 out of 10

15 Reviews and Ratings

What is HPE StoreOnce?

HPE StoreOnce is a backup and recovery hardware solution from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, providing disk-based backup, deduplication, and long-term storage. StoreOnce offerings can support virtual and cloud environments for small business, mid-size organizations, and enterprises.

Top Performing Features

  • Backup to the cloud

    Ability to store and back up data to the cloud

    Category average: 8.5

  • Snapshots

    Ability to take regular snapshots to ensure that Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is met

    Category average: 8.7

  • Deduplication and file compression

    Integrated deduplication and compression capabilities

    Category average: 8.3

Areas for Improvement

  • Instant recovery

    Instant recovery is the ability to restore operations very rapidly

    Category average: 8.4

  • Management dashboard

    Web-based dashboard allowing configuration and monitoring of all backups

    Category average: 8.9

  • Encryption

    Data encryption to ensure that data is safe while being backed-up

    Category average: 9.4

The best vm and agent backup storage system there is

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use HPE StoreOnce for vm and agent based backups for Veeam. It is a wonderful product that works amazing well with top notch performance both in backups and in restoring content. We use this product across our entire IT infrastructure for all virtualization backups and agent backups. It is so successful we have upgraded from a previous model to this model due to its high quality backup functionality.

Pros

  • vmware vm backups
  • windows agent backups
  • hyperv vm backups

Cons

  • file share based backups
  • larger drive options for the storage system
  • somewhat dated on network connectivity parts to have the fastest network connections

Return on Investment

  • It is extremely expensive compared to other backup systems for vms
  • it is overly expensive based on the hard drives and storage per tray cost in a HPE StoreOnce. Needs drive size optionality
  • we recovered from a ransomware event years ago and we did it in a few days which we've heard of all kinds of poor recovery efforts from smaller companies on other backup system devices and software. Extremely happy with this
  • incremental and file based recoveries have been bullet proof with this backup system

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Barracuda Backup, NetApp E-Series, Pure Storage FlashArray, Dell Avamar, Dell Unity XT Unified Storage and QNAP NAS

Other Software Used

NetApp E-Series, QNAP NAS, Pure Storage FlashArray, Barracuda Backup

Smart Backup Server that helps reduce size on disk

Pros

  • We really like the deduplication feature of HPE StoreOnce. It helps reduce storage footprint by 1:3 to 1:10 depending on type of files being stored.
  • It's easy to manage files on HPE StoreOnce servers using command line options.
  • We use Veeam Backup Server software to manage our backups on HPE StoreOnce.

Cons

  • StoreOnce to StoreOnce Replication is not real time. It needs to be setup as copy jobs with specific time interval.
  • There is not StoreOnce Catalyst Stores Replication between two HPE StoreOnce servers.
  • Navigating through large number of files on the server is slow and sometimes causes GUI interface to hang.

Most Important Features

  • StoreOnce Catalyst Stores
  • CIFS shares
  • Deduplication

Return on Investment

  • It has helped us reduced our overall backup storage footprint
  • It provides faster backup and restores compared to tape devices.

Alternatives Considered

Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery

Other Software Used

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, Veeam Backup & Replication, HCL BigFix (formerly from IBM)

HPE StoreOnce has nothing but great usability and superb support

Pros

  • It handles the storage on a DRP quite well.
  • It was not that hard to implement it, even though 3Par was easier.
  • Setting it up on vSphere was painless.
  • It was easy to link the paths on a couple VIOSes.

Cons

  • Could be more user-friendly when deploying.
  • Cost is as friendly as Pure Storage Array.
  • HPE does well support this technology.

Return on Investment

  • Well, HPE is our partner so we support the product directly, which means it gives us a slice of the contract as long as the client is happy, which they are.
  • At first, our client was not happy about the deployment, which took some time, which could be a starting point for HPE.
  • The management console is easy to handle and very intuitive; we really like it.

Alternatives Considered

NetApp FAS series, Pure Storage FlashArray, Dell EMC Unity and IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)

Other Software Used

Pure Storage FlashArray, IBM Storage Insights, Dell EMC Unity, HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage, NetApp FAS series

Usability

An awesome backup infrastructure solution

Pros

  • Backups to HPE StoreOnce device is very efficient. This is particularly because we are using all SSD (flash ) devices in our HPE StoreOnce infrastructure.
  • The compaction ratio with HPE StoreOnce is amazing which reduces our total storage footprint by upto 95%.
  • It supports both block storage and file system storage. This is especially beneficial since we wanted one backup infrastructure for both our application and database backups.

Cons

  • We had a little trouble sending backups of physical servers using SMBv1 protocol to SMBv2 CIFS shares. We had to implement a work around but it would have been nice if StoreOnce could be smart enough to take care of SMB version automatically.
  • There is no native Catalyst Store replication from one StoreOnce device to another StoreOnce. The replication has to be handled by the backup software which is backing up to one StoreOnce device. This puts an extra overhead on the source.
  • HPE StoreOnce command line is a little complicated for beginners. It takes a little while to get familiar with how to leverage it.

Return on Investment

  • We are pleased to use HPE StoreOnce for our backup infrastructure. We did not had to hire a separate storage folks and this has greatly cut down on our cost.
  • HPE StoreOnce is very fast and efficient. We have not had any complaints of backups going slow.

Alternatives Considered

NetApp FAS series

Other Software Used

Oracle Database 12c, Veeam Backup & Replication, VMware ESXi, VMware Site Recovery Manager, Windows Server, Azure Active Directory, JIRA Software, Control-M, Oracle GoldenGate, ClickUp, Slack

Usability

Versatile backups. ease of administration and amazing compaction ratio

Pros

  • File uploads and querying the backup repository is quite fast, given that we have so many backups and a good retention period.
  • A free add on "HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Plugin for RMAN" was a great benefit. We saved the cost of buying an additional backup infrastructure for our databases.

Cons

  • HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Stores do not have a native replication. You will have to rely on third party software to backup your backup files from primary StoreOnce to secondary StoreOnce.
  • We also see disconnects in the HPE StoreOnce Catalyst RMAN Plugin. We are still trying to figure out if this is a StoreOnce issue or something with our network.

Return on Investment

  • HPE StoreOnce doesn't require a lot of technical knowledge for day to day administration and management. This helps reducing IT support staff cost.
  • It provides an amazing compaction ratio and saves you a lot on the storage side.

Alternatives Considered

Barracuda Backup

Other Software Used

Apple iCloud, Google Drive, MS SharePoint

Usability