HPE Storage Users Group

My vendor is saying that HP's Installation and Startup Service is mandatory with the purchase of a 3PAR array (7200c + 1 M6710 enclosure in this case). Can anyone verify this??? There is a LOT of install and configuration documentation available for what seems like self-install. Since getting into 3PAR is at the edge of my budget, I'm reviewing every line item to make it as palatable to executive management as possible.

I've handled all of our StoreVirtual expansion and reconfigurations and I honestly ENJOY knowing every single bit of our setup top-to-bottom. Am I dumb for wanting to pass on this? Is it worth the cost at around $4k???

Thanks!
-Jim

Unfortunately, yes it is. I've done a lot of screaming about this and they won't sell without it.

With 7xx0 models no Installation and Startup Service by HP is required. You can do it on your own.
The old Models and the 10xxx series need Installation and Startup Service.
Here is a straight forward installation document for 7xx0 Series:
http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c03585782

But i would prefer to buy some service, even a few hours from an partner, because not everything works fine while installing. Some help could be handy.

best regards
Sebastian

In the beginning it was mandatory, but since the Release of "SmartStart for 3PAR 7000" it is no longer neded for the 7000 Series.
We have had the same on the EVA (P6000).

But you can save a lot of Time if a Storage ASE assit you.

Theoretically it shouldn't be mandatory...

That being said, it's worth it. You get an hp tech on site with you for 4 days getting everything up and running, answering questions, etc

4 days??? For even something relatively small like our proposal? We're about 2-2.5 hrs. outside of the DFW area...I can't they'd pay for a tech that long. But maybe I'm wrong!

We've had the same discussion with our vendor, but they confirmed it is not anymore mandatory.

We always prefer to do the setup ourself to be able to troubleshoot whenever things go wrong. Currently we're having a demo with 2x 3PAR 7200c's at the office. We can test the hard- and software for 3 months without any cost. If you don't like it, you just send it back. Of you do; you can buy the setup you already have. In this period, we'll be breaking and making the setup many times to be sure we are ready for the most common reasons of outages.

I strongly suggest to do a demo before buying anything. You can make yourself comfortable with 3PAR. After setting up, you could ask for a chat with an engineer to be sure you've configured things right. No installation, just a meeting with some handson and best practices material It's the way how we do it.

So the install service is in fact four days. There is a tech that comes to power up the array and verify all the hardware and cabling is good, and a second tech comes to your site for 3 to 4 days to walk you through zoning, cpg's, setting up recovery manager, system reporter, etc. He also does a lot of knowledge transfer, and serves as a good sounding board for production ideas you may have.

You can still do what you wish afterwards as emizor does, but when your talking about a piece of hardware that can easily exceed 100,000 us dollars, having someone who has been working in storage for over 20 years like a lot of the hp techs in the us give it a once over and verify best practices is worth it's weight in gold

As has been said, it's not mandatory, although they said the same with the eva, these products can be installed by the customer, but it's very easy to get something like this working, but whether it's configured correctly or to best practice is another matter.

Hp would prefer it's set up to best practice obviously, as then it shouldn't cause so many problems moving forward for them to support etc.

I work for a partner and we install these on behalf of HP in the UK. Persoanlly I'd say it's better to get a partner to install it (can still use the same hp install part codes if they are a service one provider and have the 3par accreditation) as with hp, you never know what quality of engineer you're going to get, and I've seen some substandard ones. Ones that need to read off a script etc, and have racked it incorrectly even! Hp has to send out 2 engineers, as mentioned above, all our consultants do both jobs, we don't need 2 different bookings, on 2 different days and 2 different people, from hp one guy just racks and powers it on and runs through the moment of birth and out of the box.

It then takes another engineer to come and do the other software parts depending on what's been purchased. These are the ones I think are way over priced, the DO or remote copy or virtual copy services are massively overpriced, as there's very little to do.

I would say the services worth purchasing are the startup of the hardware, and then the recovery manager ones if you have those. AO maybe, and system reporter is pretty easy, and will be included in the GUI anyway so won't even need a separate install then.

I know I'll sound biased, but I think you're much better spending £2-3k on professional services form a decent partner than buying the hp part codes, that way you get a personalised service (the hp service is pre set and very finite as to what they'll do) and still get it installed properly, and imo better as the consultant should know the end to end process, including other elements such as the os and application integration.

One thing I certainly wouldn't recommned is for a customer to think they can save a few bucks by doing it themselves, when this product is designed to host your entire data and needs to high performing and very resilient, get it installed properly, you don't want to be in the firing line if so,etching goes wrong and hp say its configured incorrectly when you log a support call.......

They say that, but I've got an eclipse deal that's been bouncing with "Invalid BOM" for over a month while I try to get the install service dropped.