HP entry storage flash makeover aims to gives existing SMBs, startups competitive edge

By Digital News Asia July 27, 2015

HP enhancements make flash even faster
Lowers cost of market’s entry SAN array family

HP entry storage flash makeover aims to gives existing SMBs, startups competitive edge
Technology giant HP announced a series of products under its MSA Storage range in Singapore, aimed at helping startups, established small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), as well as customers with small sites to find low-cost ways to drive faster time to value and reduce equipment costs.

New firmware enhancements for MSA 2040 Storage will optimise application access to flash-based, solid-state media in hybrid storage configurations, resulting in an improvement of up to 45 percent, or a performance increase of up to 37,000 IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second).

New SAS (software as a service) connectivity for MSA 1040 Storage can also potentially make it more affordable as a shared storage system.

“HP is committed to bringing high-impact technologies like flash to smaller customers at incredibly affordable prices – and we are doing it on proven platforms like MSA to give them the power to accelerate their business growth with confidence in their IT infrastructure.” said Pras Moorthy, Country Manager, HP Storage, Singapore.

HP claimed the firmware upgrades include optimised data paths that maximise the effectiveness of controller CPU cache using built-in performance monitoring algorithms, Peripheral Component Interconnect Express utilisation improvements that minimise the number of transactions needed to complete each input output request and the implementation of higher performing cache lookup techniques.

To sweeten the deal HP is introducing several new, hybrid flash MSA 2040 bundles. The company claimed these bundles bring hybrid flash to even more affordable price points with up to 45 percent savings.

Starting at US$13,300 (S$18,250), these bundles also accelerate sales velocity for HP channel partners by reducing quote and pricing approval times.

HP also announced more flexible connectivity choices for MSA customers looking to deploy shared storage to support application high availability without the cost of dedicated storage networking infrastructure.
The new HP MSA 1040 SAS array with support for high performance 6Gb/12Gb SAS direct host connections makes it possible to directly connect up to four application servers to create a fully redundant shared pool of capacity that can scale up to 384 TB.

HP is also helping customers reduce power and cooling costs through certification of the MSA 2040 Storage family as part of the ENERGY STAR program to reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint.

Pricing and Availability

Firmware upgrades to HP MSA 1040/2040 are available via support pages on www.hp.com and are free of charge to existing customers on warranty or support contracts. The latest version, GL210R004, is available to customers in Singapore.
HP MSA 1040 SAS array bundles are available to customers in Singapore, starting from S$7,680, with GST.
New MSA 2040 ENERGY STAR certified SKUs are available in Singapore, starting from S$9,600, with GST.