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back to article HP offers enterprise fatness to small biz bods in bulked-up sales push

HP's latest MSA 2040 array is one of those cases where midrange enterprise array features have trickled down to an SMB-class product, the MSA being HP's entry-level drive array range. Meg Whitman's company is also boosting its channel programmes to get resellers selling faster to small and medium-sized businesses. In detail …

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  1. M. B.

    Nothing says entry-level...

    ...like 16Gb fiber channel, 12Gb SAS, and 90k IOPS.

    I'm surprised they still ship the MSA instead of just dropping their pants on the 3PAR 7200. Must be some money to make there somewhere. Guess it's the same for IBM still pushing the DS series (NetApp/Engenio) alongside the v3700 in the entry-level.

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  2. EricB

    I thought the same thing when I saw the spec for 16Gb, thats nice but is the SMB market going to pony up for 16Gb enabled switches? I would say not anytime soon until the costs come down. I would also say why are they not creating a much more refined storage stack? P4500, MSA, EVA, D2D, VTL, 3Par and theres a few more I'm missing. This ultimately sends a mixed message to resellers who will just opt to purchase EMC or NetApp storage solutions.

    What does HP want to be when it grows up?

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    1. Man Mountain
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      Seriously Eric, are you for real? HP has a much simpler portfolio than EMC. EVA and VTL (I guess you mean VLS) have both already gone end of life so HP have a single dedupe solution in StoreOnce ... EMC have Data Domain and Avamar. P4500 is an iSCSI only solution. In terms of block storage, if it's very low cost it's MSA, if it's 6 x 9's it's P9500, but everything else (95% of use cases) is 3PAR. So from 8 drives, to nearly 2000 drives, from SSD to Nearline, it's all 3PAR. EMC has VMAX, VNX and XtremeIO all covering that space and no interoperability.

      HP and NetApp have a much more similar model. Buy into the benefits of 3PAR / NetApp and then just pick your size. You don't need to worry if you're small or huge, you have access to all the same functionality.

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      1. Adam 61
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        Now correct me if i'm wrong Doesn't Data Protector do De-dupe now as well? so HP also have 2 x De-dupe solutions....Avamar is backup software in an appliance form, whereas DD is really a backup device similar to StoreOnce.

        Lets Compare currently available ranges - you can see that they isn't actually that much difference and you could ask where is the interoperability between MSA/3PAR/Lefthand and XP as those are the kind of apples you are comparing. And actually one persons simplicity is anothers inflexibility.

        So Entry Level

        EMC = VNXe HP = MSA or Lefthand

        Midrange

        EMC = VNX HP = Lefthand or 3Par 7000 (mostly 3Par)

        High End/Enterprise

        EMC = VMAX - HP = 3Par 10k or P9500 XP

        All Flash

        EMC = XtremIO HP = 3Par 7450

        De-dupe Appliance

        EMC = Data Domain HP = StoreOnce

        De-dupe software

        EMC = Avamar HP = Data Protector

        Disclosure - now work for EMC, used to work at HP Channel partner. Of course its all about the right tools for the job thats why we have diverse portfolio's because there is a desire and use case for all of them in today's IT, no doubt this will change over time but that's the current nature of the storage market which has been evidenced by the growth in the Flash sector for example.

        NetApp probably has the simplest portfolio in the market in my view out of the big storage providers

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      2. EricB
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        HP is no where near NetApp, The NetApp storage OS OnTap runs on all of the FAS line, all have the same storage system functionality granted you pony up for the licensing. That's inclusive of DeDupe, Compression, Snapshots, Snap Manager, MultiProtocol, Snap Vault. Oh one managment interface OnCommand SysManger, storage tiering, QoS, cluster mode for scalability. and many more features

        To do the same thing with HP storage you need almost a device for each of those functions and at least need a D2D or VTL for backup. Each device requiring a different management interface, and no common Storage OS. Is there even an HP storage solution that offers bot SAN and NAS based protocols? What about scaling or offering pNFS?

        Thanks for validating my point that in order for HP to be competitive they need to streamline their storage offerings.

        >>I work for a large VAR and have deployed HP, EMC, NetApp, Hitachi over the last few years. So I would like to think I am somewhat in tune with Vendors product offerings. We stopped selling HP gear due to margin being higher with other Vendors we partner with, like say Cisco, EMC, NetApp.

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        2. Anonymous Coward
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          Anonymous Coward

          Bike spanner

          Nice bike spanner you have there, I think I'd rather :-

          a. Buy the best tool for the job at hand and not try to hammer a square peg into that round hole.

          b. Avoid a 20+ year old (1992) NAS architecture and it's inherent scalability issues (that's why they need cluster mode)

          c. Keep my primary and backup storage separate and avoid forking out for expensive enterprise disk to Netapp for holding my static backup data.

          But then again if your focus is "margin being higher" rather than your Customers requirements, I could understand why you wouldn't want to recommend any of the above.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    EMC in damage limitation mode again

    Yes Data Protector does dedupe, but it's the same StoreOnce engine as on the new StoreOnce VSA (do you have one of those ?) and the StoreOnce appliances, so calling out DP as a different product is disingenuous at best.

    I noticed you missed VNX2 and VPlex out of that list, but even so 95%+ of the above EMC product range is covered by THREE HP products:-

    Entry level through Midrange - StoreVirtual (inc VSA)

    Midrange through Enterprise including all flash - 3PAR StoreServ

    Entry level through Enterprise Deduplication - StoreOnce (Inc VSA)

    With MSA being a bit of a jack of all trades, jbod, direct attach (where EMC doesn't play), small cluster environments, low cost sequential access etc.etc.

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    1. Adam 61
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      Re: EMC in damage limitation mode again - hardly

      So the vast numbers of MSA's sold are the exception rather than the rule??

      ps it was my ignorance on the DP side nothing disingenuous (and i did say correct me if im wrong which you did).

      As I said its horses for courses - one persons simplicity is anothers inflexibility, converseley one persons inflexibility is anothers simplicity. Lets let the market decide which approach works best.. and the market will evolve!

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      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: EMC in damage limitation mode again - hardly

        Like I said MSA fits more places than VNXe would, its a different animal, it's not a pure play entry level array and is a bit of a Swiss army knife and hence why it's still around. It's a good performer in it's space and the components that make up MSA can be broken out and reassembled to fit a particular use case. It's a SAS JBOD, direct attach, small cluster, backup target, HPC backend etc etc etc, all with a relatively low cost per TB / MB/s & IO/ps. So yes HP sell vast numbers but they're not necessarily counted as pure play SAN arrays.

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