HPE MSA D2600 12-Bay 3.5-Inch LFF Storage Enclosure

Overview of HPE MSA D2600 Storage Enclosure

The HPE MSA D2600 is a high-capacity enterprise storage expansion enclosure designed to integrate seamlessly with HPE ProLiant servers and HPE storage systems. Developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, this 12-bay Large Form Factor (LFF) enclosure provides scalable, cost-effective, and reliable storage expansion for growing IT environments.

Designed to support business-critical workloads, the HPE MSA D2600 delivers enterprise-level performance, redundancy, and manageability, making it ideal for data centers, branch offices, and virtualization infrastructures.

12-Bay 3.5-Inch LFF Architecture with Drive Caddies

The HPE MSA D2600 supports:

• 12 x 3.5-inch LFF SAS or SATA hard drives

• 6Gb/s SAS backend connectivity

• Enterprise and Nearline drives

• Included hot-plug drive caddies (trays)

The inclusion of drive caddies ensures easy installation and replacement, allowing administrators to swap drives without downtime. This hot-plug capability improves serviceability and minimizes operational disruptions.

Enterprise SAS 6Gb/s Connectivity

The HPE MSA D2600 uses 6Gb/s SAS connectivity to provide high-speed and reliable data transfer between the enclosure and connected servers or storage controllers.

Key connectivity features include:

• External Mini-SAS ports

• Support for HPE Smart Array Controllers

• Multipath redundancy configurations

• Optional dual I/O modules for high availability

This ensures optimized data throughput and fault tolerance in production environments.

High Availability and Redundant Design

The HPE MSA D2600 is engineered for reliability with:

• Redundant hot-swappable power supplies

• Redundant cooling fans

• Dual-domain support (optional)

• Hot-pluggable drives

These enterprise-grade features reduce single points of failure and ensure continuous uptime for mission-critical applications.

Scalable Storage for Growing Data Demands

As business data grows rapidly, organizations require storage solutions that can scale efficiently. The HPE MSA D2600 allows multiple enclosures to be daisy-chained, expanding total storage capacity without replacing existing infrastructure.

This scalability makes it ideal for:

• Virtual machine storage

• Backup repositories

• File and print services

• Surveillance and video storage

• Long-term archiving

The modular architecture protects long-term investment while maintaining predictable performance.

Compatibility with HPE Server Ecosystem

The HPE MSA D2600 integrates seamlessly with:

• HPE ProLiant DL Series servers

• HPE ProLiant ML Series servers

• HPE Smart Array controllers

This compatibility simplifies deployment and ensures optimized performance within HPE-based IT environments.

Performance Efficiency for Enterprise Workloads

With support for enterprise SAS drives and high-capacity SATA disks, the HPE MSA D2600 balances performance and storage density. It is well-suited for workloads such as:

• File sharing

• Data backup and restore

• Application storage

• Departmental databases

• Archive storage

Its 6Gb SAS architecture ensures consistent and reliable data access speeds.

Advanced Cooling and Thermal Design

The HPE MSA D2600 features an optimized airflow design that ensures efficient cooling even when fully populated with high-capacity drives. Intelligent fan management adjusts cooling performance based on workload demand, helping reduce power consumption while maintaining optimal hardware temperature.

This advanced thermal design enhances hardware longevity and ensures stable performance under continuous operation.

Cost-Effective Enterprise Storage Expansion

One of the key advantages of the HPE MSA D2600 is its ability to deliver enterprise storage expansion at a competitive cost. Instead of investing in a completely new storage system, organizations can expand existing infrastructure using this enclosure.

By leveraging standard SAS or SATA drives, businesses can optimize their storage tiering strategy — using high-performance SAS drives for active workloads and cost-efficient SATA drives for bulk storage. This flexibility reduces total cost of ownership while maintaining enterprise reliability.

Enterprise Data Protection and RAID Flexibility

The HPE MSA D2600 12-Bay 3.5-Inch Storage Enclosure is designed to operate alongside HPE Smart Array controllers that support advanced RAID configurations. This enables organizations to implement RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, or 60 depending on workload requirements and protection levels.

By leveraging RAID redundancy, businesses can protect critical data against disk failures while maintaining optimal performance. The enclosure’s SAS architecture ensures stable communication between disks and controllers, minimizing latency and ensuring consistent throughput for business-critical applications. This level of data protection makes the HPE MSA D2600 ideal for enterprise backup systems, virtualization environments, and application storage.

Optimized for Virtualization and Hybrid IT Environments

The HPE MSA D2600 12-Bay 3.5-Inch Storage Enclosure is well-suited for modern hybrid IT infrastructures. It provides the storage backbone required for virtualization platforms such as VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, and other enterprise hypervisors when connected to compatible HPE servers.

Its scalable architecture allows IT teams to allocate storage dynamically across virtual machines, ensuring balanced performance and capacity utilization. Whether deployed in small enterprise environments or larger data centers, the HPE MSA D2600 supports evolving workload demands while maintaining reliability, flexibility, and enterprise-grade performance standards.

External Reference (Official Source)

For full technical documentation and official specifications, refer to the HPE data sheet:
https://support.hpe.com