HPE R0Q47A 1.92TB SAS 12Gbps Read Intensive SFF Solid State Drive

Overview

The HPE R0Q47A is a 1.92TB, 2.5-inch Small Form Factor (SFF) SAS 12Gbps Read Intensive solid state drive designed specifically for HPE Modular Smart Array (MSA) SAN environments. If your workload leans heavily on random read IOPS — surveillance video indexing, VMS database queries, security analytics platforms, or any read-dominant application stack — this is the drive tier to reach for. It ships with the Standard MSA Carrier and a hot-plug tray already bundled, so you can go from box to populated bay without sourcing additional hardware.

Read Intensive (RI) class drives like the R0Q47A are calibrated for approximately 1 drive write per day (DWPD) of endurance. That's the right trade-off when reads vastly outnumber writes: you get higher capacity per dollar and optimized read latency without paying for mixed-use or write-intensive endurance you'll never consume. For a 24/7 surveillance archive or a read-heavy VMS analytics tier, that endurance budget is more than adequate.

Key Features

• 1.92TB RI Capacity: At nearly 2TB per drive bay, you can build meaningful surveillance storage density inside an MSA 1060 or 2060 chassis without exhausting shelf slots. For video retention workloads, more capacity per slot means fewer expansion shelves and lower per-TB infrastructure cost.
• SAS 12Gbps Interface: The 12Gb/s SAS interface delivers twice the raw bus bandwidth of SAS 6G, which matters when multiple drives are streaming simultaneous read requests to an MSA controller. The interface ceiling won't bottleneck a well-configured read-intensive array.
• Read Intensive Endurance (1 DWPD): Rated for 1 drive write per day, this drive is purpose-built for workloads where data is written once and read many times — exactly the access pattern of surveillance video storage, WORM archives, and analytics read caches. Paying for higher DWPD tiers when you don't need them wastes budget.
• HPE Digitally Signed Firmware: Drive firmware is cryptographically signed, meaning only firmware originating from a verified source can be applied. In security deployments where chain-of-custody and data integrity are audit requirements, this is a meaningful protection layer — not just a checkbox.
• Standard MSA Carrier Included: The drive ships populated in an HPE Standard MSA Carrier, the correct carrier format for MSA 1060 and 2060 SFF bays. No separate carrier purchase required, no compatibility guesswork at installation time.
• Hot-Plug Tray Included: The bundled hot-plug tray lets you add or replace drives in a live MSA array without scheduling downtime. For 24/7 surveillance environments where storage interruptions translate directly to recording gaps, hot-plug capability is operationally significant.
• 3.35 Million Hours of Testing: HPE qualifies drives through over 3.35 million hours of cumulative testing before release. That qualification depth is why MSA controllers and management software treat these drives as known-good — you won't encounter the compatibility edge cases that sometimes surface with non-qualified alternatives.
• 2.5-inch SFF Form Factor: The SFF bay format maximizes drive count per shelf unit in the MSA chassis, which directly affects how much raw capacity you can pack into a given rack footprint before adding expansion hardware.

Integration and Compatibility

The R0Q47A is qualified for use in HPE MSA storage arrays, specifically the MSA 1060 SFF SAN Storage and MSA 2060 SFF SAN Storage platforms. Both accept 2.5-inch SFF drives in the standard carrier format that ships with this unit. If you are populating or expanding an SAN storage array in a surveillance or security operations environment, verify your chassis accepts SFF bays — the MSA line also offers LFF (3.5-inch) variants that use a different carrier and are not compatible with this drive.

The SAS 12Gbps interface requires an MSA controller with SAS 12G connectivity. Both the MSA 1060 and 2060 controllers meet this requirement. The drive's spare part number P13237-001 can be referenced in HPE support and procurement systems for replacement tracking. For guidance on storage capacity planning in multi-camera surveillance deployments, matching drive count and IOPS headroom to your camera channel count is worth modeling before populating a shelf.

For broader enterprise storage solutions and complementary HPE networking infrastructure, pairing your MSA array with appropriately sized SAN switches ensures the SAS 12G throughput of these drives is not choked at the fabric layer.

What's in the Box

• 1x HPE MSA 1.92TB SAS 12Gbps Read Intensive M.2 SSD (R0Q47A)
• 1x HPE Standard MSA Carrier
• 1x Hot-plug tray

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which HPE MSA arrays is the R0Q47A compatible with?

A: The R0Q47A is qualified for HPE MSA 1060 SFF SAN Storage and MSA 2060 SFF SAN Storage. Both platforms use SFF (2.5-inch) drive bays and SAS 12Gbps controllers. Confirm your specific chassis model accepts SFF drives before ordering — MSA arrays also ship in LFF (3.5-inch) configurations that use a different carrier and drive format.

Q: What is the warranty on the R0Q47A?

A: The R0Q47A carries a 90-day manufacturer warranty.

Q: What does Read Intensive (RI) mean, and is it appropriate for surveillance storage?

A: Read Intensive drives are rated for approximately 1 drive write per day (DWPD). Surveillance storage is a strong fit: video is written to disk once during recording and then read back for review or analytics far more frequently than it is rewritten. RI endurance is correctly sized for this access pattern. If your workload involves frequent in-place rewrites or heavy database transactions, a mixed-use (MU) drive tier would be more appropriate.

Q: Does the R0Q47A ship with the carrier and tray, or do I need to order those separately?

A: The drive ships as a complete unit: the SSD is already mounted in an HPE Standard MSA Carrier and includes a hot-plug tray. No separate carrier or tray purchase is required for a standard MSA SFF bay installation.

Q: What is the spare part number for the R0Q47A?

A: The spare part number is P13237-001. This number can be used for HPE support tickets, procurement tracking, and replacement part identification within HPE's service and logistics systems.

Q: Is the R0Q47A a hot-pluggable drive?

A: Yes. The included hot-plug tray enables drive insertion and removal in a live MSA array without powering down the chassis. This is critical in always-on surveillance environments where storage downtime means recording gaps.

Marty Allison

When I spec storage for MSA-based surveillance backends, the R0Q47A hits the right balance for read-dominated workloads: 1.92TB per SFF bay at SAS 12Gbps with an RI endurance profile rated at 1 DWPD. For a 64-channel VMS archive node where cameras write continuously but investigators scrub footage on demand, that endurance headroom is appropriate — you're not burning write cycles you don't need to pay for.

Technical Highlights:

• SAS 12Gbps Interface: Double the bus bandwidth of SAS 6G — relevant when you're servicing concurrent read requests from multiple VMS workstations against the same MSA shelf.
• Digitally Signed Firmware: HPE's cryptographic firmware signing means a compromised or counterfeit firmware image cannot be applied. In security infrastructure, that's not an optional feature.
• Hot-Plug Tray Included: You can swap a failed drive in a live MSA 1060 or 2060 without a maintenance window. For 24/7 surveillance operations, this eliminates the recording gap that a cold-swap would cause.

Deployment Considerations:

• Confirm your MSA chassis variant is SFF before ordering — the MSA 1060 and 2060 also ship in LFF configurations, and the Standard MSA Carrier included with this drive is not interchangeable with LFF bays.
• The 90-day warranty is shorter than HPE's standard drive warranty tiers. Factor that into your support contract coverage and spare-drive stocking if this drive is going into a mission-critical recorder.

The R0Q47A is the right call for an MSA 1060 or 2060 SFF chassis serving as a dedicated video archive tier in a mid-size surveillance deployment — one where the array is ingesting continuous streams from 32 to 128 cameras and investigators are pulling footage throughout the day. It's not the drive for a write-heavy transactional database sitting alongside the VMS; for that, step up to a mixed-use endurance tier in the same MSA family.