Dell Unity XT hybrid flash arrays are storage systems for running general purpose workloads that do not require the low latencies and speed of all flash/NVMe architectures. Unity XT hybrid flash arrays balance performance, efficiency, features or outcomes.
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HPE MSA
Score 9.3 out of 10
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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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Pricing
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
HPE MSA
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
HPE MSA
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
HPE MSA
Features
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
HPE MSA
Enterprise Flash Array Storage
Comparison of Enterprise Flash Array Storage features of Product A and Product B
Dell EMC Unity is an easy system and very flexible component and very easy to navigate while providing effective services and management of multiple project information management and the data pulling from the supported third-party platform is easy and quick. Excellent reporting features and easy to use and the analytics tools are amazing.
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.
Alerting: receiving an alert when an issue occurs. That is good to know. However, if the alert is cleared, or somehow no longer in alarm, no email is received. At times I will receive the email alert on weekends, not knowing if the issue is resolved or not until Monday when I can access the unit. I have learned in most instances, the alert is a false alarm, which could be a problem.
The alerting itself is sometimes not clear. For example, it tells me the link is down, we reset the connection, the link is still down, a tech was dispatched, he troubleshot, and finally the alarm cleared. This incident took almost a week. It went back into alarm after he left, then suddenly it cleared on its own.
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.
Not only support for Unity, but for any Dell product, whether for companies or for the end consumer. Support is agile, helpful, and always focused on solving the problem. To date, there has been no problem that Dell's support has failed to resolve and help us with.
I was instructed to buy these arrays, but I was not given the opportunity to evaluate other arrays. We evaluated other products in the market that competed with Unity and found that the younger array built from scratch had far better features, software, and ease of use. The Unity system has a unique way of storing the data when compared with other systems.
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.
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.
