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Dell EqualLogic PS series vs HPE MSA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell EqualLogic PS series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE MSA
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of Dell EqualLogic PS series is 2.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE MSA is 20.0%, up from 17.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

Abdul Rehman Abid - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful auto tiering, excellent support, and highly reliable
The initial setup of the Dell EqualLogic PS series is simple. The physical connectivity and rack mounting time depend on the size of the deployment. For example, if we have five of the Dell EqualLogic PS series we can mount and do the cabling within two hours. The initial configuration can be done within an hour. The estimated time to deploy from start to finish in this scenario is four to five hours maximum. One person can do most of the deployment, such as configuration, but a helper is needed to do the mounting of the cables.
Pragnesh Sachania - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalable, easy to manage, and used for virtualization environments
We didn't face any issues with the technical functionality. However, we faced a lot of challenges with our custom configuration. The HPE support person who did the installation was very technical. He answered all the queries, and we resolved the entire setup. We set up the storage as per our requirements. We previously used a physical server instead of virtualization. With the help of an HPE engineer and partners, we prepared a strategy for migrating the entire physical servers to our virtualization infrastructure. It took two days to deploy the solution. Six people were involved in the solution's deployment, including two from HPE and four from our IT team.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Its high availability. It has a lot of redundancy and good management software as well as good alerting."
"The technical support for EqualLogic has been universally outstanding."
"We were attracted by the flexibility of being able to put in a new shelf whenever we needed to, to expand."
"The solution can scale."
"The most valuable feature of Dell EqualLogic PS series auto tiering by using this feature, the customer can get higher performance on a valuable budget."
"It is stable and scalable."
"Dell's technical support is very good."
"The technical support is very good."
"The most valuable features are the storage levels and snapshot features."
"The cost to performance for HPE StorageWorks MSA is good."
"It has notably provided scalability benefits."
"The product is very easy to deploy."
"The most valuable features are data deduplication and snapshot replication."
"HPE MSA is a very flexible array because we can add more enclosures and extend the capacity dynamically."
"The solution is very easy to use, it is not really complex for any user, such as non-technical individuals."
"The speed and performance of HPE MSA are admirable."
 

Cons

"If I need to have more space or more capacity, I need to replace the product. It would be ideal if we could scale without replacing the box itself."
"Individual file recovery would be a nice additional feature."
"6510 and 6610 have two iSCSI connections in each controller. Why do 6110xxx members have only one, and why do the same members have the possibility of having an active iSCSI interface in the passive controller? It could make a lot of noise with a failover."
"The performance isn't as good as, for example, Nimble."
"The product is reaching the end-of-lifecycle."
"The only challenging part in the tool was related to some site recovery area. In order to exploit the site recovery area, my company had to purchase additional VMware products."
"There is no option for mixing RAID types in one device."
"The solution is out of date and the new version has a lot of advanced features."
"The solution could improve by adding configuration tools."
"Synchronized replication is very important for MSA; however, HPE StorageWorks MSA doesn't provide synchronized replication."
"The platform’s monitoring capabilities could be enhanced."
"It would be ideal if there was a better management interface."
"It should show more options for cloud backup support."
"Data security features are more important to me than anything else, and I think HPE MSA lacks in this area."
"The support contract is expensive, although they are very responsive."
"HPE StorageWorks MSA could maybe include a pay-top of texture feature or something like job replication."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, the solution is cheap. I rate it a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"Dell EqualLogic PS series can improve its scale-out feature. Sometimes the customer has a limited budget for storage expansion. When they want to expand their capacity, they need to buy a complete controller plus storage capacity, which sometimes is out of their budget. If Dell EqualLogic PS series support could scale up the environment in which only hard drive extension controllers should be supported, then customers can expand within a lower budget."
"There are annual maintenance costs beyond the original licensing period."
"I didn't buy it. It was another person seven years ago. So, I don't really know, but all storage platforms cost a lot of money. It is probably in the mid-range, but you get what you pay for."
"​It is a fair price."
"I don't think I would say that the product is less expensive...The product's price is not an issue for our company, considering the relationship we have with Dell and the customer support we receive."
"All features are out of the box. The license will be in the virtual, OS, or application layer."
"Licensing is pretty straightforward."
"The solution can be a bit expensive."
"I would rate the pricing as nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"This solution is quite expensive; they should lower the cost."
"This solution involves a one-time CapEx payment, followed by warranty extensions."
"HPE StorageWorks MSA's licensing is perpetual and not integrated."
"When we bought this solution it was very reasonably priced and they were willing to deal."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
"The price of the solution is a little high and they should provide more competitive pricing. If you want to increases the storage size there are additional fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell EqualLogic PS series?
The technical support for the solution was really good.
What needs improvement with Dell EqualLogic PS series?
An improvement that could be made is to have a storage solution with all SSD hard disks, as we currently have a Dell EqualLogic PS series with traditional hard disks. It's not simple to replace a h...
What is your primary use case for Dell EqualLogic PS series?
Dell EqualLogic PS series is the storage of our server, which serves our use case. The deployment of Dell EqualLogic PS series takes about five days.
What do you like most about HPE StorageWorks MSA?
The most valuable feature of HPE StorageWorks MSA is its flexibility.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE StorageWorks MSA?
I did not compare the cost of HPE MSA with others because we buy with a framework contract, and HP is the only brand available on that contract, so we have no comparison.
What needs improvement with HPE StorageWorks MSA?
The user web interface is a bit slow, but it is really easy to use, although you still have to wait a bit when you send an operation. We have had some drive failures, but with the redundancy, we ha...
 

Also Known As

EqualLogic PS series
HP StorageWorks MSA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FAW Foundry, AW Engineering, Unimat, eLongNet Information Technology, BDO Brasil, Odyssey Space Research
Femsa CSC, TTX, Rabobank
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell EqualLogic PS series vs. HPE MSA and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.