HPE launches new storage solution for SMEs

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has unveiled the next generation of its HPE Modular Smart Array (MSA), HPE MSA Gen 6.

The new solution aims to help small and medium sized businesses focus on growing their business with an entry-level hybrid-flash storage solution that delivers performance and automation for the tightest of budgets, HPE says.

"In today's digital-first economy, technology spending is limited for most SMBs. With HPE MSA, SMBs can preserve cash with an updated entry storage solution that continues to get better with new data services and a modern architecture," it says.

"HPE MSA also allows SMBs to ensure their most valuable data is secure and easily accessible by employees, no matter where they are working from.

Through its new data services and a modernised architecture, HPE MSA enables customers who run on-demand businesses - like media streaming and online education - to manage their distributed applications and workloads more easily."

Sky Cumming, product manager, Dicker Data, an IT distributor and HPE channel partner, says, "The HPE MSA is ideal for the clients we serve whose businesses require a reliable, simple and low-cost storage solution that can match today's workloads, and scale as their performance and capacity needs grow.

"The auto tiering capabilities provide the performance needed to power their applications, and the archive storage provides a flexible enterprise-grade storage solution at an entry-level price point.

"The new HPE MSA Health Check tool protects against attacks and predicts failures before they happen so small businesses can focus on making their business thrive without an IT headache."

Updates to HPE MSA deliver benefits that help to meet the needs of SMBs, including automatic tiering for faster data access, an improved MSA Health Check tool that eliminates common causes of downtime, and integration with HPE Cloud Volumes Backup for cloud backup and data archival.

The new features include:

• Hands-free tiering that delivers workload efficiency with improved performance and lower latencies. This feature boosts delivered performance by 2 4x compared to hard disk drive (HDD)-only configurations, and allows the array to respond to changing workloads utilising a small amount of solid state drives (SSDs). 

This feature moves the hottest data to the fastest media in real-time, allowing customers to more effectively maximise SSD performance and HDD capacity based on workload needs.

• A new level of in-array data protection with the new MSA Data Protection Plus (MSA DP+). This protection capability spans all drives, and eliminates idle HDD spares to improve overall system efficiency and performance. In the event of a drive failure, MSA DP+ would speed rebuild times by 25x2, dramatically minimizing the time the array was in a degraded or vulnerable state.
• Improved MSA Health Check tool that eliminates common causes of downtime. With this tool, data shows that 76% of HPE MSA support calls will be eliminated for customers who utilize the MSA Health Check functionality proactively. This cloud-base tool reduces local administration overhead by searching sensor data for known issues, and adherence to best practices, improving the user experience and maximizing availability.
• Integration with HPE Cloud Volumes Backup to provide customers a simple and inexpensive route to cloud-based data protection, while saving money on a separate backup appliance. SMBs can instantly start backing up to the cloud with HPE Cloud Volumes Backup, a built-in enterprise cloud backup service using HPE Recover Manager Central, without changing any existing backup workloads. HPE Cloud Volumes Backup cloud services are also now available through HPE GreenLake.

"HPE has continually built on and refined the MSA product family for six generations, focusing on the balance between performance and affordability, as well as looking at the simplicity and customer experience," says Chris Powers, VP and GM for Big Data and Collaborative Platform Development and HPE.

"HPE MSA is helping SMBs by delivering the performance and automation they need to keep their businesses running. We take pride in providing our customers with a reliable and fast solution at an affordable price so that their businesses can serve their clients efficiently."

 Pricing and Availability

The HPE MSA Gen 6 is now available for order globally direct and through channel partners starting under $7,000 USD.