HPE StorageWorks MSA Reviews

The price point's really good for us. At our remote locations, we've been putting MSAs from 1st generation all the way up to the 2040's. We've been very happy with the product, and have had good luck with them as far as not having any issues.

Price is the biggest thing right now. The performance is fine. We use a SAS attached for the MSAs, and it's just been a good product for us.

Maybe a few more feature sets with snapshots and application, and things like that. That's been coming with the 2040's, so they're slowly adding that in. I understand for what I'm paying for, your not getting all the features, but I see they're coming down from there, maybe with some of those feature sets.

We had a few issues with some of the firmware codes, probably about five years ago. Other than that, it's been a rock-solid system for us.

Dell and EMC, as there's not a lot of smaller vendors. It's a niche that the MSA is in, as far as the price and performance, and there's not a lot of competitors out there on that.

As far as setup and stuff like that, it's very easy to set up. You've got the different RAID levels that you need to use. I'm sure the other products have that too, so it comes down to what feels right for you.

Relating to MSA storage, the simple configuration feature is great. It is very simple, allowing you to set up MSA very easily.

Synchronized replication is very important for MSA; however, HPE StorageWorks MSA doesn't provide synchronized replication.

I have been using HPE StorageWorks MSA for roughly 15 years.

It's designed for small businesses, not for a large enterprise. The enclosures are enough for this amount of storage. With the sixth generation, we can have nine enclosures and add them to a base chassis.

The scalability could be improved, but it's enough for a small business. If you have a large business, you should opt for HPE Primera or Nimble.

I haven't had to call HP technical support because I am an HP expert and I can set up any HP storage by myself. We have a team of five engineers who handle all maintenance-related issues.

Deployment out-of-the-box until the final configuration took roughly 15 to 30 minutes.

This solution is quite expensive; they should lower the cost.

HPE OneView is a better solution for managing and monitoring MSA. You can't add MSA Storage to OneView. We can add OneView, but we can't add MSA Storage to OneView for monitoring and management.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give HPE StorageWorks MSA a rating of eight. If they improved the central management and lowed the price, I would give it a higher rating.