HPE MSA (modular smart array), formerly HP StorageWorks MSA, is a series of storage appliances, from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, a product line built for a modest budget, available as the HPE MSA 2052 hybrid flash array, the HPE MSA 2500 SAN storage appliance, and the MSA 1050 SAN storage.
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Huawei OceanStor
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Huawei offers OceanStor Dorado, an all-flash storage system boasting a wide range of applications and versatility to meet the needs SMBs, larger enterprises, or vertical industry applications.
The dual controller configuration of the HPE MSA trumps the Synology DiskStation's single controller configuration. For that alone, I would select the HPE MSA. Without that setup, any controller issue or firmware upgrade is disruptive to the systems the SAN is providing storage …
The MSA is much cheaper than a Nimble. Spinning disk storage is much cheaper than flash storage. Just know that you are going to get what you pay for. The MSA doesn't stand up to what the Nimble can do, but at the same time, it works really well in disaster recovery scenarios.
We had tried Dell's solution but found it to be similar in price to HP and with very poor support and some performance issues. We also compared with some other vendors but ended up choosing HP due to reputation and wide user base.
All Flash NVMe SSD technology is currently at the top of this business. Its disk structure is hundreds of times faster than traditional mechanical SAS systems, but also compared to today's SSD systems!
It has a much more affordable price than the devices of the same class.
The Huawei OceanStor product line is very broad and they offer a wide range of storage systems from entry-level for the small enterprise to high-end storage systems for those demanding workloads typically required at medium to large enterprises. Huawei OceanStor is very …
SME environments, those after quality and reliability. Price point is medium. Reliability better than the competition in our opinion. Ideally suited for smaller IT teams, needs little technical skill once setup and running. Start small and expand later, lands of options for increased storage space and configurations.
Easy tools for the user to set and flexibility of the functionalities is amazing and Huawei OceanStor can migrate a group of different data from other third parties platforms easily and generation of excellent data analytics through Huawei OceanStor is also easy and profitable. The environment on which the user can manage multiple data through Huawei OceanStor is incredible.
Collecting support logs from the HPE MSA could be better. It takes a long time to collect logs, sometimes so long your login times out.
The HPE MSA could have a better management GUI. The layout of the menu, having the navigation buttons all around the edges is odd. It would have been better if it was in just one location.
The drive type and capacity options available can be better between the small form factor and the large form factor. We would have liked better options in the future.
It is a functioning Replication system for us and checks all the boxes that the auditors are looking for. Further, it is inexpensive and the storage we purchased was cheap. HP has a good reputation in the industry that plays into the decision also.
When purchasing support for your Huawei OceanStor system, there are two support options offered by Huawei (i.e. Hi-Care and Co-Care). Huawei Hi-Care service is when Huawei responds to your technical requests for remote troubleshooting and advance hardware replacement in the shortest possible time. Hi-Care provides onsite technical support to help you maintain a more efficient and stable network environment and improve network productivity. Whereas, Huawei Co-Care service is a collaborative solution delivered by Huawei certified partners. Depending on the capability of your Huawei support partners, I would recommend Hi-Care for mission-critical environments since this ensures Huawei takes responsibility for meeting the support SLAs. If you have very capable Huawei support partners, then Co-care could be a more cost-effective support option.
The dual controller configuration of the HPE MSA trumps the Synology DiskStation's single controller configuration. For that alone, I would select the HPE MSA. Without that setup, any controller issue or firmware upgrade is disruptive to the systems the SAN is providing storage to. Furthermore, HPE's support is better than what Synology currently provides. The lack of phone support on Synology's part slows down the troubleshooting of issues compared to HPE. Furthermore, HPE's engineers are able to do a remote session and can work on the problems directly compared to Synology's support.
The Huawei OceanStor product line is very broad and they offer a wide range of storage systems from entry-level for the small enterprise to high-end storage systems for those demanding workloads typically required at medium to large enterprises. Huawei OceanStor is very reliable with many software features at competitive costs when compared to other storage systems. Huawei OceanStor can easily integrate within the data centre as their system supports many operating systems, hypervisors, SAN switches etc. Another important point to note is that Huawei has made it known that they spend a substantial amount of their revenue in R&D and that is confirmed in the reliability of their products.
A positive ROI of the HPE MSA is the ability to configure the RAID set of the array to our requirements. We can maximize the storage capacity of the array improving our ROI.
The flexibility of configuring the HPE MSA is another positive ROI. In our production environment, we can use a fiber channel switch while in our DR office none of that redundancy is required so we directly connected that MSA to our VMWare servers.
HPE's support is another positive ROI. We have been able to connect with support right away to troubleshoot an issue. Part replacement is also excellent, ensuring our HPE MSA is not in a degraded state for long.
The HPE MSA's architecture is rock solid, there have been minimal issues with the hardware, besides the rare time that an SFP has gone bad and needed to be replaced. We've had no issues that brought down the MSA.
