The Hewlett-Packard Modular Smart Array 2040 (HP MSA 2040) is a rack-mountable storage array for enterprise SAN environments. It is designed to be part of a modular SAN, and supports virtualization with features such as automated tiering, volume copy and virtualized snapshot services.
The MSA 2040 is a 2U base array, with available 2U large form-factor or small form-factor (SFF) disk enclosures for expansion. It holds up to 199 2.5-inch SFF drives, supporting both SAS and nearline SAS drives. Alternatively, it can hold 96 3.5-inch large form-factor drives.
The unit supports 200 GB, 400 GB, 800 GB and 1.6 TB solid-state drives (SSDs), and has a raw capacity of 288 TB out of the box. It has an optional expansion of up to 576 TB using a maximum of seven disk enclosures. In addition, the MSA 2040 supports RAID configurations 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10 and 50.
It has data-to-parity ratios of 2:1, 4:1 and 8:1 for RAID 5; and 2:2, 4:2 and 8:2 for RAID 6. The HP MSA can have multiple combinations of 16 gigabit per second (Gbps) Fibre Channel (FC) ports or 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports on the four-port SAN controller. It also carries a four-port SAS controller that has 12 Gbps SAS ports. Both controllers have 4 GB of cache.
The unit works with SANs running on Microsoft Windows Server 2012, Windows 2008, Windows Hyper-V, HP-UX, Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux and VMware ESXi Version 5. Clustering support for Windows, Linux and HP-UX environments is offered.
The array includes a range of software, such as MSA Snapshot Software, which enhances data protection.
The array includes a range of software, such as MSA Snapshot Software, which enhances data protection. The Snapshot Software is controller-based, so it uses no host resources, and comes with 64 snapshots. Users can purchase an optional 512 Snapshot Software license for further expansion.
The HP Volume Copy software makes a physical copy of the data to another set of drives within the same array, though it only works with linear volumes. HP Volume Copy is also controller-based.
The MSA Performance Tiering upgrade is an automated tiering engine that moves data between hard disk drives (HDDs) and SSDs based on real-time access and usage trends. The archive tiering functionality of this engine moves data between SAS HDDs and nearline SAS HDDs based on I/O patterns. HP MSA Array Remote Snap software provides remote replication on the HP MSA 1040, 2040 and P2000 G3 arrays. It supports both Ethernet/iSCSI and FC interconnects.
Though the company's pricing is confidential, HP MSA 2040 units can be found online for between $5,000 and $40,000, depending on the configurations and bundles chosen. A three-year warranty on parts is included. Additional features such as 24/7 service or on-site support can be purchased separately.
