HPE StoreEasy Series: Features & Pricing

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Bottom line:

As a workhorse network attached storage performer, this unit has a good reputation in the industry. However, without an all-flash capability, it can’t compete with higher end NAS offerings. On the other hand, this unit doesn’t need to: For those already running with HPE and Windows environments, this could be a good fit. 

Also important is this StoreEasy’s large capacity – a key need for many NAS buyers. This unit also touts much better performance and far less latency than its previous version. All things considered, a solid choice for a NAS unit.

Company description:

Established in 2015, by the split of HP into consumer and enterprise segments, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has 63,000 employees. NYSE: HPE. The company is a leader in the majority of the market segments it serves: #1 in servers, #2 in networking and #2 in total storage. Its servers power 100% of the top 10 global manufacturers. The company acquired 3PAR several years ago and has since continued to invest in the technology. It has also more recently acquired another flash vendor (Nimble).

Product description

According to HPE, its StoreEasy 1660 offers 60% more internal capacity than its previous best-selling NAS. The 1000 series of products also boasts up to twice the performance and 50 percent lower latency than previous generation hardware. The devices are based on HPE ProLiant Gen10 servers and come pre-configured with Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2016.

Designed for file storage, StoreEasy 1000 NAS appliances integrate easily into administrator and user workflows. Available in a range of form factors, performance, and capacity points, organizations can select a pre-configured HPE StoreEasy 1000 or tailor a system to their capacity and connectivity requirements.

Key Features:

• Low-cost expansion

• Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2016

• Three-year warranty

RAID/Data Protection features:

• RAID6 is default for configs with more than 4 HDDs. Customers can configure any RAID level through HPE Smart Storage Administrator, however we have RAID6 as default (4+ drives) and RAID10 for (

• Native replication up to 100 TB

• Optional cloud backup or tiering to Azure

• Snapshots

Storage Saving Features:

• Deduplication

• Compression

Data Management features:

• Identify and classify files based on their content and metadata for actionable insights and automated governance.

• File Management Tasks help administrators automate most cumbersome file management operations with the insight gathered through File Classification Infrastructure to optimize storage efficiency with built-in archiving, improve file storage security with built-in AD RMS encryption.

• Auditing and screening: Gain detailed insight into file activity on SMB and NFS file shares for compliance and enhanced security

• Reports: Generate reports on file consumption and audit trails by various file & user properties

• Volume Shadow Copy Service

Implementation:

StoreEasy 1000 products are all rack mounts except for the StoreEasy 1560 (tower). Customers can install themselves or purchase installation services from HPE Pointnext. It’s fairly straightforward to rack and cable the systems and instructions are in the box that ships. Components like drives and network adapters are all factory integrated, so it’s easy to get out of the box and set up.

“It was a fast and smooth setup,” said an IT manager in the retail industry. 

Technical support:

Three years parts, labor and onsite support warranty for hardware with next business day response, plus 1 year 9×5 software phone support.

Capacity:

StoreEasy 1660 – 2U, 12 large form factor (LFF) drives slots standard, 16 LFF with mid-chassis expansion tray. Software is installed on 2 mirrored SSDs – so the capacity listed below is purely for user / application data, not OS image, etc. Maximum raw: 192 TB (16 x 12 TB HDDs)

StoreEasy 1650 Expanded – 2U with 28 LFF drive slots. Software install on 2 mirrored m.2 SSDs, so the capacity listed below is purely for user / application data, not OS image, etc. Maximum raw: 336 TB (28 x 12 TB HDDs)

StoreEasy 1860 – 2U with 24 SFF drive slots standard, up to 28 SFF with rear expansion cage. Software is installed on 2 mirrored SSDs – so the capacity listed below is purely for user / application data, not OS image, etc. Maximum raw: 67.2 TB (28 x 2.4 TB HDDs)

Performance:

7,200 rpm HDDs will inhibit performance for some applications.

Markets and Use Cases:

• SMBs

• Remote/branch offices of distributed organizations (consolidating data, connecting ROBOs to primary data centers with WAN optimizations)

• General purpose NAS use cases, including file shares, Windows home directory consolidation, backup target, compliant archiving, data stores for small virtualization workloads (over SMB or iSCSI).

• Simple to deploy and manage, and straightforward for users. Most customers “set and forget” – which means it continues to do the job it was intended and they only need to ensure they’ve got adequate capacity and the health of the system is good.

Delivery

Single node NAS appliances. Scale-up only.

Media:

SAS or SATA HDD or hybrid flash.

Pricing:

Most configurations are between $6-15K USD list