HPE MSA Reviews

When we purchased this solution, we work looking to go from a standalone VMware server to a full-fledged host. We have two hosts and we have the SAN, and so it was the most cost-effective at the time for us, as beginners with SAN technology.

We are currently looking to replace this with a newer product because of its age.

The most valuable features were the dual controllers and being able to expand it.

The support contract is expensive, although they are very responsive.

We have been using the HPE MSA 1040 for almost six years.

This is a very stable product.

We have two of these units and we replicate between them with our sister company.

When we purchased it, we had some open drive bays. If we had needed to expand then we could have, but we never had the need to do so.

HP's technical support is great and they helped us with everything.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

We paid somebody to take care of the deployment. For both sites, it took about a week to complete.

When we bought this solution it was very reasonably priced and they were willing to deal.

The ongoing support is expensive and they get a good amount of money, but they are so responsive that I don't mind paying for it.

Our shortlist to replace this solution includes products from SimpliVity, Nimble, and Pure Storage.

This is a good product and everything I needed it to do, it did and still does.

My advice for anybody who is implementing the MSA is to hire somebody to deploy it if you don't have the staff.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We use HPE StorageWorks MSA for normal servers and as a storage utility.

The cost to performance for HPE StorageWorks MSA is good.

The one feature we value most about HPE StorageWorks MSA is stability.

HPE StorageWorks MSA could maybe include a pay-top of texture feature or something like job replication.

The prices are low. HPE StorageWorks MSA is better than other products.

I would rate HPE StorageWorks MSA eight over 10 because just for our use it is okay.

I guess you'd say it is very durable and reliable, so we use these products in each of our areas. Our company is divided up into different smaller areas, and we use the MSAs to do our data storage and such.

The benefits are definitely reliability and ease of use, because, since we are using the same products, we also know that we can contact HP for assistance if we need it. Basically we use those products because they're small and compact. We can fit them into our racks and we can stack them. So ease of use is a great benefit.

I'm not sure about improvements. I think so far, the way that they're going, the way that the HP roadmap is so far has been pretty good, so I'm happy with what we have, the direction that it's been going so far.

It is a very stable product. Like I say, we use them in all our areas. We have about 30 different program areas and we're using them in most of those program areas due to their reliability and stability.

It is definitely scalable. Like I was saying a little earlier, we use them in all our areas because we know that they're scalable. We can use them to scale up our program area if the area grows.

We always use technical support if we have trouble, like if it breaks and we need to go back on the warranty or if we need assistance with configuration, we do that. We are definitely happy with them.

I was involved in the initial set up. We had to build from scratch, so we had to have all the servers and all the MSAs put into place. It is definitely a straightforward process. Very easy to use and configure.

Our company is basically an HP shop. Cost considerations are definitely important. Reliability and being able to get support from the company are also key issues.

Basically, we have teams, an architect team and senior systems administrative team and we all get together and we discuss the needs of the end-user support. We support a lot of engineers, and they tell us what they're going to be working on and then we do the infrastructure and we figure out the best way to meet their needs.

Basically I would say the same things I said earlier. I would tell him that the products are very easy to use, and there's a lot of online assistance if needed. That's where I always go if I need help, to HP's website for assistance, and if I still really can't figure it out, the customer service is excellent, so that's basically what I would tell them.

Do your own research first on how to configure it and know what you're trying to get out of the equipment prior to trying to install it.

It's a fairly simple product to set up as well, but it's a little bit more entry level; for those customers that can't afford something larger or whatnot, but would still like to get that shared storage or that SAN functionality. It's a great product for that. They're actually adding a lot of new features to it. It's not as dumb as it used to be. As long as you have a basic knowledge of SANs and whatnot, you can get around it without a problem.

They've been adding some different things to it. Maybe if it was a year ago, I would have said yeah, it might be nice to see this, but they've started adding in some different SSD and caching to it that really has revitalized it or reinvigorated that system a little bit.

Rather than it being just dumb storage, they're adding some of the features of the higher-level SANs back into it. Customers can take advantage of some of those things that previously they wouldn't have been able to.

From my experience with it, I haven't really had issues with it. With installations that I've done, customers have been pretty happy with them.

They can scale; I don't think they're meant to, but you can add additional shelves and things, which we've done. That's fairly easy to do.

I haven't had to call tech support on those.

It's pretty easy to install.

They're pretty entry level but you need to be willing to spend some money. It's not going to be $1,000; it might be $10,000 or $15,000. It's all relative what a lot of money is, but they need to be willing to spend some money, invest in their infrastructure. They don't need the performance of a 3PAR or something like that. They're just maybe getting into the whole virtualization, EO mode, and the shared storage and they want the added security and performance of some disk that's not in the local server. I guess that's that type of person or customer.

Dell has an SCv2000, which is fairly similar. Really what it comes down to is they're going to be similar, but some people really align themselves with HPE or with Dell. When it comes down to it, a lot of them are going to just stick to it that way. They're going to say, "I buy Dell, so I'm going to buy theirs." "I buy HPE," so they're going to buy theirs. It can be a hard sell otherwise.

It's a great product for the price. It has a lot of capability for what you're paying for.

• Data progression!
• Volume draining.
• Dual controllers.

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.

• GUI can be improved
• Firmware updates need improvement
• Hardware could use a little refinement. (The fiber ports on one controller pushed through the case causing us to replace that controller under warranty.

3 months and going very well.

Old interface has no progression. New interface does. Nothing spells this out and needed to be discovered.

None. Very stable product.

None. Running 7k drives and 10K drives with SSD caching.

Very good.

Dell Compellent SAN. Shelves were going on 6 years old. Switching to 3PAR but needed a temporary space.

Very easy and straightforward.

In-house. Very easy to install.

The price point's really good for us. At our remote locations, we've been putting MSAs from 1st generation all the way up to the 2040's. We've been very happy with the product, and have had good luck with them as far as not having any issues.

Price is the biggest thing right now. The performance is fine. We use a SAS attached for the MSAs, and it's just been a good product for us.

Maybe a few more feature sets with snapshots and application, and things like that. That's been coming with the 2040's, so they're slowly adding that in. I understand for what I'm paying for, your not getting all the features, but I see they're coming down from there, maybe with some of those feature sets.

We had a few issues with some of the firmware codes, probably about five years ago. Other than that, it's been a rock-solid system for us.

Dell and EMC, as there's not a lot of smaller vendors. It's a niche that the MSA is in, as far as the price and performance, and there's not a lot of competitors out there on that.

As far as setup and stuff like that, it's very easy to set up. You've got the different RAID levels that you need to use. I'm sure the other products have that too, so it comes down to what feels right for you.

We use the MSA outside of our data center. It's a nice robust platform that we can use without buying a whole enterprise SAN, so it gives us the flexibility we need.

It's improved it dramatically. We can put a virtual infrastructure in each one of these sites and hook it to the MSA. Then we can build the servers as we go.

They fit our bill very well. We buy a lot of them, so I think they're just fine. However, we did have some issues at first but we worked through them and currently we have no issues.

We had some differences between the 10 GB and the 1 GB platform that we kind of didn't know about, so we had 1 GB where we needed 10 GB and the flexibility for changing out the hardware wasn't there when we needed it.

I think it's fantastic. That's the reason we buy them.

They're scalable for offsite and we love them.

We have used the technical support. They help us with all our firmware upgrades and things like that, so I would evaluate them at a high level.

The MSA gives us flexibility. We used a Dell product, but when we switched to HPE, we went to the HPE platform across our line, and we're very happy with it.

Very straightforward. We used an iSCSI platform which was pretty easy to set up. All of my technicians can take of it, and it's good to go.

It's a good platform for outside the data center. Even inside the data center for certain purposes, so I would rate them high and give them my approval.

Easy to manage, it’s reliable for us, and fits our environment. Also, support is available when we need it. It’s just been very solid for us.

We’re down to one vendor for most of our hardware and software, so using HP already helps us streamline our internal workings.

In the future we'd like to see more block-based storage. This is because more and more storage is moving in that direction.

Very stable.

For our environment, you can scale several times and that’s exactly what we need. You can’t go beyond four servers for the SaaS connected version, but for us that’s what we needed exactly.

Technical support on the phone is fine and storage has been very good overall.

We’re like an ASP. HP has been the standard we’ve been using for a while, so we continued. Their SaaS connected storage is what we’ve been using more recently because it fits our environment perfectly.

Very straightforward and we’ve got about eight of these setup. We had it delivered to the site and just plugged it in for the customer.

We also looked at Dell, but HP was a better fit and the pricing was better.

Look at reliability primarily. Pricing is also important.

Experience with the interface is very important. Make sure that technical support is available and good. Again, it's about performance and cost and it does a rock solid job for us.