HPE MSA vs. Scality ARTESCA

The HPE MSA is best suited for basic SAN requirements. Having dual controllers provides redundancy and allows for firmware upgrades without incurring downtime to the environment. It provides enough IOPS for most workloads be it VMWare or servers requiring storage. For applications such as MS SQL or Exchange, other SAN solutions would be better. Plus the lack of storage snapshot capabilities is also a detriment to the product line. Lack of any reporting capability is also an issue especially when determining workload capabilities.

Incentivized

The team in charge of implementing Scality has to be full stack in order to guarantee the correct functioning of the entire system. However, you have to think very carefully about the balance between servers and disks, perhaps adopting smaller fully populated servers instead of large semi-populated servers, which would mean that over time our disk updates will not have a fully useful life.

Incentivized

• Functions well as a disaster recovery cluster repository
• Since the space is a spinning disk, it is inexpensive
• All of our VMs are stored in a mass storage repository on the system, but we could carve out specific LUNs if needed.

Incentivized

• I love the redundancy of the software.

Incentivized

• Firmware upgrades. We have had major issues on two occasions, causing extended downtime. HP was quick to help and resolve, but I am not sure why our simple implementation caused an issue that should have been picked up by testing prior to release. Once was bad, twice painful. The end result is that we purchased a unit solely to test firmware upgrades on, not really great for us!
• Support life span. Units go end of life support after around 4 years, a little too short for us.

Incentivized

• The overall packaging is not very good. I think it could be more efficient for installation.
• There are many components in storage servers. This can generally be complex to understand, you have to be patient.

Incentivized

It is a functioning Replication system for us and checks all the boxes that the auditors are looking for. Further, it is inexpensive and the storage we purchased was cheap. HP has a good reputation in the industry that plays into the decision also.

Incentivized

As an organization, it took us a while to understand the shift from a traditional black box SAN to software-defined storage, but now we are much more certain of what this means. The time invested and the resources were not very high, thanks on the one hand to the technical support and on the other to the coherence and good development of the platform.

Incentivized

I have seen Scality in the office meeting with our VP and get the feeling that they are here to support us.

Incentivized

The dual controller configuration of the HPE MSA trumps the Synology DiskStation's single controller configuration. For that alone, I would select the HPE MSA. Without that setup, any controller issue or firmware upgrade is disruptive to the systems the SAN is providing storage to. Furthermore, HPE's support is better than what Synology currently provides. The lack of phone support on Synology's part slows down the troubleshooting of issues compared to HPE. Furthermore, HPE's engineers are able to do a remote session and can work on the problems directly compared to Synology's support.

Incentivized

Due to the nature of our business we require extensive encryption and availability for sensitive customer data. The erasure encoding that Scality provides gives us the assurance that documents are rest are never in a state of being downloaded or available to a casual data thief. This is something that can be found with other vendors but at a fraction of the same cost. Having this kind of performance, availability and redundancy at the cost that Scality provides has made a large difference to our organization.

Incentivized

• Increased up time. Better user experience.
• Good value for money. ROI high.
• Peace of mind. Just knowing that you rely on the solution to meet storage performance needs is great.

Incentivized

• Keeping sensitive customer data secure is a must for our organization and Scality has great features to make this happen.
• We replaced a single SAN with a Scality ring and found performance to improve as we store more and more customer data.
• Being able to lose various portions of our Scality ring and allow it to continue to service customers while maintaining high performance has been key to our business.

Incentivized