3PAR Users Group

Last week I had a disk failure, and I had scheduled the repair, and the on-site tech called me and said we had to move the time, since they had a mandatory meeting.

Once we were on-site he mentioned that they were all being laid off in ~3 months, and Unisys will now manage all the 3PAR repairs.

I have worked with Unisys in the past, and honestly this feels like the final nail in the HPE coffin.

I am really disappointed, as 3PAR arrays are by far my favorite to work with and manage, this includes Netapp, Netapp E-Series, Solidfire, EMC VMX, EMC Clarion, EMC Isilon, and many Custom Linux/BSD boxes.

This is disappointing news on several levels.

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Richard Siemers
The views and opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Asked our PointNext team to respond to this and this is what I have:

Yes, in the Americas, Unisys will perform onsite technical break-fix, installations (I think for volume products) and preventative maintenance support operational support services in the Americas. Proactive delivery roles are out of scope. There is no impact on Technical Consultants, Account Support Managers and Account Delivery Managers as a result of the outsourcing decision.

HPE's commitment to continue our close relationships with all our suppliers and deliver a world-class support service to our customers during this process remains unchanged. HPE will continue to ensure that we receive the best service at the best price and review our supplier arrangements – including those with Unisys- as we would any other supplier.

Well, HPE Support has dropped the ball more times then I can count on my fingers and toes (including not reading the warning and taking down an entire DC for 8+ hours), the on-site support was the ONLY part of HPE support that, to put it bluntly, didn't suck.

Our last HPE Rep couldn't even correctly add our arrays to support, so we only had support on 'some' of the disks/shelves and not any of the nodes.

We almost purchased a Nimble, but HPE bought them, and we couldn't make that decision in good faith any longer. Too many missed SLAs, with no accountability to HPE.

As much as I dislike Netapp arrays, their support is amazing.

My history with Unisys goes back over a decade, and last I checked (like googled it right now) their 'Field Engineers' make not much more than Costco cashiers (avg 14/hr) ... you really want 17/hr tech, touching your mission critical arrays?

HPE is more and more becoming a dumpster fire.

I'm sorry that your experience didn't meet your expectations. I'm never happy to see stories like yours. If you have either serial numbers for your 3PAR or Case IDs, I'd be happy to get people to look into what went sideways.

A few additional comments:

The support model with HPE Nimble Storage is unchanged from when we acquired it. Personally, if you wanted was a great array with a different support experience, Nimble was the best choice. 86% of customer issues are opened, resolved, and closed before a customer knows about it. 56% of the issues detected aren't storage. HPE InfoSight is pixie dust for IT infrastructure and NetApp can't begin to match the experience.

For HPE Nimble Storage customers, when they do have an issue, the issue goes directly to L3. Much of the time the L3 engineer is calling the customer to alert them to the issue. I've talked to lots of Nimble customers and they have said nothing has changed with their support experience - it's still world-class.

I'm excited to see that we are starting to move 3PAR on to HPE InfoSight. It's just the first step but seeing first hand how InfoSight has continuously improved availability and support for Nimble, I think you'll see things change with 3PAR as we pull more predictive analytics for it into InfoSight.

I've been with HP/HPE and in storage for a LONG time. I've seen some smoldering dumpsters in my time here but there are no dumpster fires burning now.

Again, feel free to reach out to me if you'd like me to pursue what happened in your environment. My email is: hpestorageguy at hpe dot com.

1. Infosight would be awesome, but I have it on good authority that you can't actually upgrade to 3.3.1, to get any actual Infosight features beyond what Storefront remote used to offer.
2. Agreed with the previous sentiments, I have a specific on-site technician I typically try to push my service calls into his working hours, because I know he'll do things by the book and probably won't ruin my array, unlike some of the remote support jockeys. Unfortunately, with on-site support being outsourced to the lowest bidder, I fully anticipate some of the worst experiences I've had with other vendors to come flying back, like the time an 'EMC' tech showed up, without a working laptop to serial into the array, asked me about job openings at my company, and I eventually sent him home because he was useless.

The team is working hard to change that. Quality releases is a top priority for the team and I know they will have something soon that supports the additional InfoSight features.

HPe clearly underestimated the competitive advantage they maintained with their employed onsite personnel. i know of not a single customer who is happy they are now getting service from unisys. many of us with various vendor storage already deal with unisys and are fully aware how much worse it is. some of their onsite staff were more knowledgeable than any of their account or remote support staff. it is what limped them along during the darker eva days...

this coupled their weak account teams, their reduction in engineering, and their blind pivot to nimble...is just a recipe for disaster. like the guys/girls that ran ibrix into the ground keep getting promoted and new even more critical duties... ill stop there, as i will end up with a list of pure rambling nonsense. i gotta get back to magically converting all of our arrays from 3+1 to 6+2 cause you know...its the current year.

You did enter into rambling nonsense. Some of your comments I nod my head yes to but some of it shows a lack of insight, which I get as you don't see what I see on the inside of HPE Storage for 25+ years.

Yup, CEO Hurd ran storage into a ditch when EVA was our flagship product. He left, and a week later we acquired 3PAR. That changed everything - they were dark days before he was shown the door and we acquired 3PAR.

In the nonsense category, Nimble wasn't a blind pivot. It wasn't a pivot at all. InfoSight is some awesome sauce and while you might not understand that now, bet you a six pack of beer (or beverage of choice) you're wrong.

Today, HPE Nimble Storage customers with InfoSight have 86% of cases opened, resolved, and closed before they know about it. When they do have an issue that requires talking to support, they go directly to an L3 engineer (not L1 or L2), often times with the L3 initiating the call to the customer. And the average time to resolution for those calls is about 45 minutes.

Since you're a 3PAR customer, I'm sure you've heard we have a team working to bring 3PAR into InfoSight. In fact, it's already supported but we have more to do before 3PAR on InfoSight gives us the kind of results that Nimble Storage has seen.

im not here to argue or even throw insults.
time will tell how it goes for HPe storage. and the reference to pivot is in regards to engineering. as a customer, ive been in "halo" rooms where "top men" at hp were mentioning a parallel development of eva/3par products for 10 years....again time will tell.

as i said, dont care to argue non sequitur topics in excess. the outsourcing of the field engineers was not wise. its an informed opinion of one of your "nonsensed" riddled customers.

i added examples of other bad decisions, and one possible future issue IF...not handled well...like other acquisitions.

defending the nimble acquisition so early is up to you. and the only thing you could elaborate on.

the thread is all yours hpestorageguy, best of luck keeping your other customers happy. 3par was a great success ...of an acquisition...., and your welcome to decide how many other successful acquisitions there were. hopefully everyone you encounter will agree with you.