HPE’s MSA Storage arrays are a popular choice for SMBs as they provide an excellent range of storage virtualization and data tiering features at a very affordable price. The latest Gen6 MSA 2060/2062 Storage appliances look even better value as along with a completely revamped management interface, they claim a big performance increase over the Gen5 models.
Prices have remained on a par with the previous generation with the MSA 2062 Storage on review starting at around $7,779. This is impressive as the Gen6 arrays sport an uprated ASIC and larger cache memory with HPE claiming these can boost IOPS by up to 45% and sequential throughput by 75% over the Gen5 arrays.
They come as standard with dual hot-plug controllers running in active/active mode and cache memory for each one has been boosted from 8GB to 12GB. Each employs a super-capacitor and CompactFlash card to protect their cache contents in the event of a power failure.
Data port choices are extensive as you can order the controllers with 8/16Gbps FC or 10GbE iSCSI host ports and HPE also offers a 12Gbps SAS3 direct-attach version. The only downside is the new controllers no longer offer the converged host ports available with the 2050/2052 arrays.
Storage and expansion
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HPE’s quick start wizard makes light work of array setup and deployment
ere are no physical differences between the 2060 and 2062 models and both are offered with 12 LFF or 24 SFF hot-swap drive bays supporting SAS3 and Midline SAS (ML-SAS) HDDs and SAS3 SSDs. Expansion potential is outstanding as the controller’s SAS3 ports support up to nine disk shelves for a total of 240 drives – a 25% increase in disk density over the previous generation.
The MSA 2062 Storage FC model we have comes with four 8/16Gbps FC host ports per controller and the base price includes two HPE 1.92TB read-intensive SAS3 SSDs. It also has HPE’s MSA Advanced Data Services LTU license applied which activates the performance tier, increases the number of volume snapshots from 64 to 512 and activates the remote snap service for asynchronous replication to remote MSA arrays.
HPE’s data tiering supports a performance tier of SSDs, a standard tier of enterprise SAS drives and an archive tier of ML-SAS drives. All page moves between the tiers are fully automated allowing the array to respond quickly to changes in I/O patterns.
The standard and archive tiers come as standard on all Gen6 arrays and they also include features such as thin provisioning, snapshots, volume copies and SSD read caching. RAID options for storage pools are extensive with support for standard mirrors, RAID10, 5 and 6 arrays plus striped SSD read caches.
Another new feature is HPE’s own MSA-DP+ virtual disk groups. These support from 12 to 120 disks and are designed to provide faster rebuild times and improved performance.
Great FC performance
Add a disk group to a storage pool and the MSA will automatically place it in the most appropriate tier
When connecting your host systems note that the array uses an asymmetric active/active mode. MPIO links across both controllers won’t double performance as the link to the controller that doesn’t own the pool will show as non-optimised and reserved for automatic failover.
We chose to use Dell and HPE dual-socket Xeon Scalable servers running Windows Server 2019 for FC performance testing and equipped them both with quad-port 16Gbps FC ATTO Celerity HBAs. On the MSA 2062, we quickly created two storage pools each with a dual SSD mirrored performance tier and a RAID5 standard tier made up of five 10K SAS3 HDDs.
On the first server, we cabled it to both controllers, handed it a 1TB volume from Pool A and started Iometer. After 5 minutes, we could see from the web console that the array had moved all activity over to the SSD performance tier.
Performance is impressive with Iometer reporting sequential read and write rates both of 12.3Gbits/sec while swapping to random operations returned speeds of 12Gbits/sec and 7.4Gbits/sec. With a 1TB volume from Pool B assigned to the second server, we saw cumulative sequential read and write speeds increase nicely to 24.6Gbits/sec while random rates ramped up to 19.1Gbits/sec and 14.8Gbits/sec.
Swapping to 4KB Iometer block sizes saw equally impressive I/O rates with cumulative sequential read and write throughput for both servers measured at 640,000 and 178,500 IOPS. Changing to random read and write operations returned 398,500 and 111,000 IOPS.
Easy management
HPE has designed the array’s web interface to be simple to use so you don’t need a dedicated administrator to manage it. The new SMU v4 web interface succeeds admirably as on first contact, it presented a wizard that led us gently through system setup, securing management access, creating storage pools, provisioning virtual volumes and setting data port host assignments.
The web console provides a wealth of graphical information about array performance
Each controller is assigned one storage pool which can be up to 1PB in size. Within the pool you create multiple disk groups by choosing disk types, RAID levels and the controller they should be assigned to.
Tier configuration is fully automated so when we assigned a dual SSD mirror to a pool, it was automatically placed in the pool’s performance tier. It’s all very simple and after creating a SAS3 HDD array, it was designated as a standard tier.
Virtual volumes creation is a piece of cake as choosing a controller determines which pool they will go in and then you provide a name, enter a size in MB, GB or TB and assign them to specific host data ports. Selecting the data protection option for a volume presents a snapshot menu where you can fire them off on-demand or apply a schedule which can repeat them as often as every minute.
Conclusion
HPE’s new Gen6 MSA 2060/2062 Storage arrays are ideal for SMBs that want a virtualized storage and smart automated data tiering solution at an affordable price. The revamped SMU v4 web interface makes them incredibly easy to deploy and manage, expansion potential is even better than the previous generation and the MSA 2062 Storage FC model on review combines great performance with excellent value.
