| Q1. |
Why is HP offering the HP StorageWorks 70 Modular Smart Array (MSA70)? |
| A1. |
HP realizes the importance of common platforms in the enterprise and is simplifying our product offerings for our customers. Commonality, reduced complexity, and reduced risk help to form the basic building blocks of the HP vision of storage as a utility. HP is committed to providing the latest technology to improve enterprise performance: the new MSA 70 enclosure provides a 2U disk drive storage enclosure supporting 2.5” SAS or Serial ATA (SATA) drives. |
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| Q2. |
Why should customers purchase the MSA70? |
| A2. |
The MSA70 provides an end-to-end SAS storage solution for customers looking for high capacity external direct attach storage with built-in redundancy, enhanced reliability, enhanced performance and tiered storage flexibility. MSA70 supports customers requiring the flexibility of mixing SAS and SATA drives in the same enclosure. At HP, we realize the storage enclosure is a key storage building block for your current and future data center. That is why the MSA70 enclosure undergoes extensive testing and qualification to ensure the highest level of reliability, compatibility, and interoperability. |
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| Q3. |
Can I cascade enclosure using the MSA70? |
| A3. |
Yes. The MSA70 supports the cascading of enclosures in a 1+1 configuration to allow a maximum of 50 drives in a 4U configuration behind each port on the Smart Array P800 controller for a total of 100 drives in 4 enclosures. |
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| Q4. |
What does it mean to mix and match SAS and SATA drives in the same enclosure? |
| A4. |
Most businesses are working to balance budgets. By creating a tiered storage architecture of high performing SAS drives and high capacity, low cost SATA drives, businesses can align the their data to the storage which best meets business requirements. |
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| Q5. |
What procedures does HP recommend to remove power from the MSA70? |
| A5. |
Although not required, HP strongly recommends using a HP UPS (Uninterruptible Power System) in conjunction with any server or storage products. This allows for a graceful shutdown of the server or enclosure. It is also recommended to plug the MSA70 enclosure into one load segment and servers into a different load segment on the UPS. This allows for the enclosures to be powered off while maintaining power to the servers and other equipment within the environment. Learn more about HP UPS's and load segment control. |
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| Q6. |
Are drives included in the MSA70? |
| A6. |
No. Drives must be ordered separately. |
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| Q7. |
In which rack cabinets can I install the MSA70? |
| A7. |
The MSA70 can be mounted in the current generation of HP 10K G2 rack cabinets including the 42U and 36U racks. For additional details check the product QuickSpecs. |
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| Q8. |
What array controllers will work with the MSA70? |
| A8. |
The Smart Array P800 controller works with the MSA70. |
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| Q9. |
Serial SCSI has point to point connectivity. Does that limit the number of drives that can be connected? |
| A9. |
Point-to-point connection to drives ensure the best performance. The use of expanders helps connect large number of drives. In fact the MSA70 can cascade to two enclosures behind a single SAS port. |
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| Q10. |
Who are the target customers for the MSA70 family? |
| A10. |
The MSA70 is the perfect complement for ProLiant servers in the SMB market. These businesses will have either a small IT with an average of 4 servers at either a centralized IT center or a remote office.
The target - The mail application in these businesses would be Exchange, which is constantly overflowing for these businesses and which they cannot afford to have shut down due to reaching capacity limitations.
Target industries would be:
Healthcare, where we find small businesses struggling with HIPPA, who have no time to be continuously managing Exchange servers running out of space.
Manufacturing, where many small and medium manufacturers are overly burdened in growing their business and becoming compliant with inventory management. These businesses have no time to spend planning their Exchange growth and need simple scalability so they can spend more time on ERP and compliance.
Retail for inventory systems and data marts.
Real estate for small, but growing websites of rich media files. |
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| Q11. |
Why is HP moving from Parallel SCSI to Serial SCSI? |
| A11. |
Storage technology is moving from parallel to serial SCSI and HP is leading the transition from parallel SCSI to serial SCSI. |
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| Q12. |
What are the power and cooling benefits of the 2.5” drives? |
| A12. |
SFF drives consume 70% less space and use 50% less power than the 3.5” drives. The smaller form factor of the drives allows systems to be designed to accommodate more drives per U increasing the total system IOPs/U. |
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| Q13. |
Is it necessary to have comparable amounts of GB in each drive slot of the MSA70? |
| A13. |
Controllers read the lowest common GB amount on each drive. If you have 36GB and 72GB drives in a stripe set the controller reads all disk drives as 36GB. |
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| Q14. |
How does the MSA70 provide higher levels of availability? |
| A14. |
Most businesses know that they can lose access to their data by either having a hardware failure or by through data corruption that results from intrusions such as WORMS, Viruses and hackers. The MSA70 array can protect business data should either incident occur.
The MSA70 (Ships standard) with redundant power supplies and with high availability RAID configurations, such as RAID 0/1, 5 and 6, with HP’s RAID 6 with Advanced Data Guard providing the highest level of protection; able to continue to provide access to data even after two disk drive failures. |
