HP announces new storage solution for SMEs

Hewlett Packard has announced the sixth generation of the Modular Smart Array (MSA), which will help small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) focus on growing their business with an entry-level storage solution.  

With the MSA, SMEs can preserve cash with a modernised storage solution that continues to get better, with new data services, through updates. The solution also allows SMEs to ensure their most valuable data is secure and easily accessible by employees, no matter from where they are working. Through its new data services and a modernised architecture, it enables users who run on-demand businesses – like media streaming and online education – to manage their distributed applications and workloads remotely.

“The 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,” says Sky Cumming, product manager for IT distributor Dicker Data. “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 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.”

HP provided the following information on improvements in the latest MSA:  

• 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. 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 system performance.  
• An improved MSA Health Check tool eliminates common causes of downtime. With this tool, data shows that 76% of HPE MSA support calls will be eliminated for customers who utilise the MSA Health Check functionality proactively. This cloud-base tool reduces local administration overhead by searching sensor data for known issues. 

“HP 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 at HP. “The HP MSA is helping SMEs by delivering the performance and automation they need to keep their businesses running.” 

Pricing and Availability 

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