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Firmware fixes and hybrid bundles make mutant MSAs meatier

HP boosts entry-level MSA arrays with flash

HP has improved its firmware and hybrid bundle pricing to make flashifying its MSA arrays more enticing.

The addition of flash PCIe cards and SSDs can radically improve data access times, but also expose weaknesses in controller software/firmware through disk-based access assumptions in the code. HP has found some of these, and fixed them, to produce pleasantly beneficial results that customers on maintenance get at no cost at all. And very nice for them too.

In all, the MSA 1040 and 2040, announced in March 2014, get three enhancements:

  • The latest firmware, v GL210R004, optimizes application access to solid-state media in hybrid storage configs to speed apps by up to 45 per cent through:
    • Optimized data paths to boost controller CPU cache use using built-in performance monitoring algorithms.
    • PCIe utilization improvements to reduce the number of transactions needed to complete each I/O request.
    • Better cache lookup techniques.
  • New hybrid MSA 2040 bundles lower the costs by up to 45 per cent. They can include the MSA 2040 Performance Tiering license with single-SKU ordering, and start at $13,300.
  • 6/12Gbit/s SAS direct host connections makes it possible to directly connect up to four app servers to a redundant shared pool of capacity scaling up to 384TB. MSA 1040 SAS arrays start at $7,000.

HP says eliminating dedicated SAN switching infrastructure simplifies deployment for smaller sites, and costs up to 34 per cent less than other connectivity options. The firmware improvements can increase hybrid 2040 config IOPS from 20,350 up to 37,000 as well as reducing latency – pretty dramatic.

HP has also gone into Energy Star certification and MSA 2040 ENERGY STAR-certified SKUs are available worldwide with a starting price of $10,970.

In general, the price cuts should help HP and its channel weather any general storage spending downturn. This is being reported by QLogic, Seagate, and Quantum, all beset by suddenly falling revenues necessitating preliminary quarterly results announcements.

The firmware upgrades are free to supported customers and downloadable from hp.com. Various new, single-SKU, worldwide and regional MSA hybrid flash bundles are available on that website today. MSA 1040 SAS arrays are available now. ®

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