Is your storage End-of-Life?

EOSL is the date after which the manufacturer no longer provides support, firmware or spare parts for a product. It comes after End of Sale (last order) and End of Engineering Support. Hardware does not stop working at EOSL — but you can no longer buy OEM support for it, which is the moment to decide between replacing it, extending it with third-party maintenance, or keeping spares.

Three main paths. (1) Replace with refurbished — a re-certified newer model at around half the price of new, often a like-for-like upgrade. (2) Keep it and extend support with third-party maintenance (TPM) — Gartner has put TPM savings at up to 70% versus OEM renewal (2017). (3) Hold spares — keep a pool of drives, controllers and PSUs from the secondary market. This tool recommends the right path for each platform.

No — the HPE MSA 1040/2040/2042 reached end of support on 30 April 2023. It runs fine, but for ongoing cover you would use third-party maintenance and a spares pool, or replace it with a refurbished MSA Gen5 (2050/2052, supportable to 2028) or a newer Gen6/Gen7 array.

They are taken from HPE and Dell lifecycle notices and cross-checked against third-party-maintenance trackers (Park Place, eosl.date). Two caveats we flag inline: HPE’s MSA Gen5 notice lists 31 July 2028 as the End-of-Engineering-Support date (formal EOSL is shown as “to be determined”), and Dell does not publish a single public EOSL notice for ME4/MD3, so those dates are tracker-sourced. Always confirm current supportability with Servnet before relying on it commercially.

Yes — as a 24-year HPE and Dell partner we supply refurbished replacements, source spares, and arrange third-party maintenance, all under one UK point of contact. Because we sell both new and refurbished across both vendors, the advice is genuinely impartial — we will tell you whether replacing or extending is the better call for your situation.