The addition of SSD support to the HPE MSA 1040 also enables software enhancements which have been available on the flagship MSA 2040, and removes much of the feature gap between the two models.
The HPE StoreEasy 1650 Expanded
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced two significant enhancements to its entry level storage portfolio. Its MSA 1040 now has SSD support, which in turn now allows it access to software enhancements which require SSDs, In addition, HPE has enhanced its StoreEasy NAS family with the HPE StoreEasy 1650 Expanded.
The HPE MSA 1040 now has SSD support, which the larger MSA 2040 had previously. SSD support enables more cost-efficient hybrid flash acceleration, which effectively reduces the price by 30 per cent for the same capacity point. HPE thinks this will open up the MSA 1040 to a broader range of use cases and customers.
“The MSA 1040 is clearly for the ‘S’ in the SMB, with a price point between $USD 6,000 and $12,000,” said Vish Mulchand, Senior Director, Product Management & Marketing, HPE Storage. Much of its sales have, however been concentrated in three markets: enterprise ROBO (Remote Office/Branch Office), with a centralized IT buyer; independent remote offices, buying outside centralized IT; and customers buying from a DIY integrator,
“We think that the added capabilities and lower market price will help expand the MSA 1040’s reach in price sensitive markets,” Mulchand said.
Mulchand also emphasized the importance of the new storage virtualization services the SSD support now enables.
The HPE MSA 1040
“We have added four key software services to the MSA 1040,” he said. “The first one is read caching and performance tiering, which weren’t available on the 1040 before because it didn’t support SSDs. Secondly, we have added redirect for faster snapshots. This was on the 2040, and the same software was available on the 1040 but at a significantly higher price. Thin provisioning has been added. Archive tiering, which has been available on the 2040, is now on the 1040. It lets you tier on a cost basis between a 10k drive and a 7.2k drive, which lowers cost by up to 75 per cent by auto-moving data to the right tier.”
Support for SSDs on the MSA 1040 is available now through firmware update GL220, which is posted on hpe.com and free of charge to customers on warranty or a current Service Contract. The MSA 1040 Advanced Virtualization Upgrade license is currently available at a price of $350, which Mulchand said had been significantly lowered because of the SSD support.
The second part of the HPE announcement, the StoreEasy 1650 Expanded, introduces a new model in the existing StoreEasy NAS family.
“This new model is targeted at the same market, but has a lower cost and higher capacity,” Mulchand said. “One of the nice things about this is its ability to support a very large internal capacity. It has two banks of drives, with 14 in front and 14 others in the middle of the chassis.”
This ‘Expanded’ system’s 28 Large Form Factor drives provide up to 224 TB of internal capacity in a single 2U chassis, making it the most dense 2U NAS appliance on the market.
“It can store unstructured data for 41 per cent less and in 80 per cent less space, with 82 per cent fewer components than a comparable NetApp FAS system,” Mulchand said.
“The HPE StoreEasy 1650 Expanded has several new software capabilities,” he added. New rapid configuration tools include Pool Manager, Dashboard Manager, which makes it easy to monitor, and Server Manager, which lets you launch snapshots and dedupes. New security software drives file system and data in-flight encryption. There is new sophisticated data access around Microsoft ADRMS [Advanced Data Rights Management Services].”
Other new features on this model include sync and share support, to provide easy remote device access to data on StoreEasy without requiring a DropBox or similar product, and a lockable bezel on the front of the box.
“At this price point, you usually don’t get this kind of feature like the lockable bezel,” Mulchand said.
The StoreEasy 1650 Expanded is available now, starting at $14,777 with 32TB of capacity.
