What was the HP0-J73 exam?
HP0-J73 was “Foundations of HP Storage Solutions,” the single required exam for HP ATP - Storage Solutions V1 in HP’s ExpertONE program. Per HP’s own certification datacard, it validated foundational knowledge of HP 3PAR StoreServ, HP StoreVirtual, and HP StoreOnce, along with converged storage concepts, federated storage design and management, and support for HP Simply StoreIT solutions for small and midsized businesses. HP expected candidates to have six months or more of experience working with storage systems. The exam is retired.
What the Certification Actually Claimed
HP’s datacard for ATP - Storage Solutions V1 is unusually detailed, which makes this one of the better-documented retired HP credentials.
It states the certification validates that you understand the latest converged storage innovations, such as common data services, and can contribute to federated storage design, deployment and management. It also verifies your ability to support HP Simply StoreIT solutions for small and midsized businesses, including virtualization, file-sharing, and backup and recovery.
The datacard then lists three specific validations:
- Foundational knowledge of HP 3PAR StoreServ, HP StoreVirtual, and HP StoreOnce solutions
- The ability to help support information protection, retention and analytics across many applications and environments
- Foundational server and networking knowledge to support design and deployment in a converged infrastructure
Note the word “contribute” in HP’s framing. This was an ATP-tier credential, positioned as a team contributor rather than a lead architect. HP described the typical candidate as an IT professional with six months or more of experience working with storage systems, and set the skill level as Professional. There were no prerequisites and no upgrade paths into it.
The required exam was HP0-J73 alone, with recommended training course 00729763, “Designing HP SMB Storage Solutions, Rev. 15.21”, a two-day instructor-led course.
One Detail Worth Knowing: The Automatic Award
HP’s datacard records that holders of the earlier Storage Solutions [2013] certification were automatically awarded HP ATP - Storage Solutions V1.
That matters if you are trying to reconstruct your own certification history. You may hold ATP - Storage Solutions V1 without ever having sat HP0-J73, because HP granted it to holders of the preceding credential. HP did this in several places across ExpertONE; a separate archived notice records that holders of ASE - Server Solutions Integrator V8 were automatically granted the streamlined V8.1 version.
If your records show a certification you do not remember earning, this is very likely why.
The Products Behind the Exam
The three product families this exam covered had quite different fates, and that shapes what your knowledge is worth now.
3PAR StoreServ was HP’s flagship enterprise array platform, acquired in the 2010 3PAR acquisition. The architecture, wide striping across all drives, thin provisioning as a first-class feature, and the ASIC-based approach to metadata, was genuinely distinctive, and the platform continued under HPE for years after this exam retired. Concepts learned here have the longest shelf life of the three.
StoreVirtual was the software-defined, scale-out storage line descended from the LeftHand Networks acquisition, notable for network RAID across nodes. It served the mid-market and virtualization-adjacent use cases.
StoreOnce was the deduplicating backup appliance line, aimed at backup and recovery rather than primary storage.
Taken together, they define the exam’s real subject: not one array, but the shape of a portfolio, and how you would pick between primary, scale-out, and backup targets for a given requirement. That portfolio-selection reasoning is the part that transfers.
What This Is Worth Today
As a current certification, nothing. It is retired and unverifiable as active.
As storage fundamentals, it holds up better than most vendor credentials of its era, because the concepts HP built the exam around became industry-standard rather than remaining proprietary.
Thin provisioning, deduplication, snapshots, replication, and tiering are universal now, implemented by every major storage vendor and by cloud block and object services. Someone who understood why deduplication changes backup economics, or what wide striping does to rebuild times, understands things that remain true.
The converged infrastructure framing also aged well as an idea. The datacard explicitly required foundational server and networking knowledge alongside storage, on the premise that storage should not be designed in isolation. That premise is now simply how infrastructure design works.
What did not transfer: the specific product knowledge and positioning. HP’s storage portfolio went to Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the 1 November 2015 company split and evolved substantially afterward, including through later acquisitions. The Simply StoreIT SMB positioning in particular was a marketing construct of its moment.
How to list it. Name the credential and date it: “HP ATP - Storage Solutions V1 (exam HP0-J73), retired.” Describe it accurately as a foundational or professional-level credential rather than implying architect standing, since the ATP tier was explicitly a contributor level. If the storage work itself is relevant, an experience bullet naming the platforms you actually ran carries far more weight.
Where a Storage Background Leads Now
The honest question is which storage you work with now.
If you are still in HPE storage environments, the current HPE certification tracks are the direct continuation, though no credit carries over from the retired credential. Verify current tracks and exam codes with HPE directly, since its catalogue changes and its pages are dynamically generated.
If your work moved to cloud, the mapping is more direct than people expect. Storage tiering became storage classes. Snapshots and replication became managed features with the same underlying trade-offs. Understanding IOPS, throughput, and latency as distinct constraints matters just as much when choosing a cloud volume type as when specifying an array. A cloud provider certification will serve you better than recertifying on hardware you no longer touch, and your fundamentals will make that study faster.
If you moved toward backup and data protection specifically, the StoreOnce half of this exam maps onto a discipline that is, if anything, more prominent now, given ransomware recovery requirements. Immutability and air-gapped copies are newer concerns, but the retention and recovery-objective thinking is the same.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I still take HP0-J73? No. The exam is retired and no longer available.
What certification did it lead to? HP ATP - Storage Solutions V1. It was the single required exam for that credential.
Were there prerequisites? No. HP’s datacard states there were no prerequisites and no upgrade paths available for this certification.
Why might I hold ATP - Storage Solutions V1 without sitting the exam? HP automatically awarded it to holders of the earlier Storage Solutions [2013] certification.
What experience did HP expect? Typical candidates were IT professionals with six months or more of experience working with storage systems. The stated skill level was Professional.
Which products did it cover? Foundational knowledge of HP 3PAR StoreServ, HP StoreVirtual, and HP StoreOnce, plus converged storage concepts, federated storage design and management, and HP Simply StoreIT SMB solutions.
References
HP. ExpertONE Certification Datacard: HP ATP - Storage Solutions V1. Archived October 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20151004020824/http://h10120.www1.hp.com/expertone/datacard/Certification/ATP-StorSolV1 (Primary source for the certification’s validated scope, the 3PAR StoreServ, StoreVirtual and StoreOnce coverage, the six-month experience expectation, the Professional skill level, the absence of prerequisites and upgrade paths, the automatic award to Storage Solutions [2013] holders, the required exam HP0-J73 and its official name, and training course 00729763)
HP. ASE Server Integrator Certification Change. HP ExpertONE, archived April 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150406233944/http://h10120.www1.hp.com/expertone/ASE-ServerIntCertChanges.html (Primary source corroborating HP’s practice of automatically granting certifications during version transitions)
Hewlett Packard Enterprise. HPE Certification and Learning. https://certification-learning.hpe.com/ (Current HPE certification tracks)