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HPE MSA vs VNX [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

HPE MSA
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (3rd)
VNX [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

JT
Manager, Information Technology at a construction company with 201-500 employees
Ensures quick data handling but needs advanced security features
The speed and performance of HPE MSA are admirable. I found that its scalability benefited my organization, especially in larger settings. While the price is not reasonable, its performance makes up for it. Additionally, the licensing costs are consistent with most brands. Compared to Huawei, however, I found that Huawei's processing power, performance, and cost were more advantageous.
AZ
Works at AIT
The Nimble CS-Series has proven to be reliable with 100% uptime
When we started the process of looking for a SAN vendor I had four primary criteria: reliability, performance, cost, and simplicity. We were really looking for a unicorn and were fully expected to have to make compromises in one of those areas. The Nimble CS-Series was recommended by our solutions provider, and we were blown away. Not only was it the most affordable option, but it was the easiest to deploy, had the best performance, and has proven to be reliable with 100% uptime.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The integration with Veeamware, with VAM for backup, is improved with the new version."
"It's a great product for the price."
"MSA performs exceptionally well, particularly in regions with frequent power outages."
"Was purchased as a DR solution but became our production SAN, very fast and easy to use, a great SAN for SMB's with enterprise features."
"The simple configuration feature is great. It is very simple, allowing you to set up MSA very easily."
"The solution is pretty transparent and works well."
"The cost to performance for HPE StorageWorks MSA is good."
"The most valuable feature for customers is the autonomic tiering, which enhances their storage scalability as easily as possible."
"One thing I would like to explicitly mention here is the EMC support; it is by far one of the best supports you will ever get in comparison with any vendor."
"It has a good, high-level of storage."
"It’s very stable in all the years I've worked with it, I know it’s stable and the support is there."
"FAST auto-tiering is a great feature."
"In one cabinet, we have many environments: VMware, Oracle, Adabas, NAS (CIFS and NFS resources), and mix disks on tier configurations Tier configuration with different disks (SAS, SATA, Flash) The software for management is very user-friendly Snapshots for backup and refresh development on test environments"
"The most valuable feature is the auto-tiering, which helps in the speed of data access."
"Integration with VMware"
"The stability of the hardware, and its ability to manage millions of IOPS, provides great comfort to system administrators, IT managers and CIOs."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in terms of scalability. There are times when we need to upgrade the device and the firmware. Sometimes, that can be a struggle."
"It would be beneficial to have an add-on feature to improve analytics or insight capabilities inside the app."
"It would be ideal if there was a better management interface."
"The support contract is expensive, although they are very responsive."
"Data security features are more important to me than anything else, and I think HPE MSA lacks in this area."
"The solution requires hardware."
"HPE should reintroduce customizable ports as they were in Gen 5, allowing customers to use both iSCSI or SC on a single controller."
"It should show more options for cloud backup support."
"Intel Xeon processors with under 2 GHz processing speeds could be replaced with more recent ones."
"The performance impact snapshotting had on the cluster was enormous. The entire cluster performance took a performance impact of about 30% as soon as we created one snapshot of all the volumes created on the cluster."
"EMC wasn't able to fix the issue, so they had to stop using snapshots."
"We have had some scalability issues. Scalability options are limited due to the supported SSDs."
"The administrative console (Navisphere/Unisphere) needs some improvement, especially on their Java-based GUI. The updated version of Java is not compatible."
"The management software used for the VNX is Unicenter. While it is an improvement over Navicenter, used in older EMC SANs, it still feels outdated in comparison to other SAN management software."
"It only supports 10Gb copper, and cannot do 10Gb fiber."
"Poor connection to FC."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution involves a one-time CapEx payment, followed by warranty extensions."
"The solution can be a bit expensive."
"This solution is quite expensive; they should lower the cost."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
"The price of the solution is a little high and they should provide more competitive pricing. If you want to increases the storage size there are additional fees."
"When we bought this solution it was very reasonably priced and they were willing to deal."
"HPE StorageWorks MSA's licensing is perpetual and not integrated."
"I would rate the pricing as nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"Pricing is somewhat higher, especially in Zambia, perhaps due to the low sales volume."
"While EMC tends to be on the expensive side, the stability and support of their products are top-notch and I feel are worth the cost."
"The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable. Yearly EMC is more expensive."
"​Reducing dependency on JavaServer Pages​ (JSP) could improve the administrative overhead.​"
"The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable, the yearly EMC is more expensive"
"Make sure you understand how the licensing works and that you are getting the right set of licenses if you need array-to-array replication."
"Over time, VNX has become pricier than its competitors, and we have turned enthusiastically to Unity."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE StorageWorks MSA?
I did not compare the cost of HPE MSA with others because we buy with a framework contract, and HP is the only brand available on that contract, so we have no comparison.
What needs improvement with HPE StorageWorks MSA?
The user web interface is a bit slow, but it is really easy to use, although you still have to wait a bit when you send an operation. We have had some drive failures, but with the redundancy, we ha...
What is your primary use case for HPE StorageWorks MSA?
We use HPE MSA as storage for the VMware servers, and we will try to use Proxmox server later on, but currently, we use VMware.
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

HP StorageWorks MSA
VNX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Femsa CSC, TTX, Rabobank
Samsonite, Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Kindred Healthcare
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