HPE Nimble Storage Reviews

It's a fairly standard nimble storage array.

We use HPE Nimble Storage as our typical SAN for virtual environment storage and shared storage.

The most valuable features are its cost-effectiveness, performance, and its deduplication deficiencies.

You could argue that it would be preferable if everything were cheaper in order to save taxpayer money. While that would be nice, they are comparable to what else is available on the market and they are competitive.

We have been working with HPE Nimble Storage for 18 months.

HPE Nimble Storage is a stable product.

HPE Nimble Storage is a scalable solution.

We currently serve up to 375 users. There is also one primary administrator and two secondary administrators.

My recollection is that there was a question in the beginning, and we contacted technical support; everything was fine. Excellent.

Previously, we were using Dell EqualLogic's PS series. We have since removed that from our environment and moved to another storage platform. We switched to the other platform in late 2020. We switched to HPE Nimble Storage.

The initial setup wasn't particularly difficult.

We simply migrated storage volumes from the EqualLogic's, had new ones built in the nimble array, and shifted everything over. There was nothing out of the ordinary.

It does not require a lot of maintenance.

I believe the array, maintenance, and everything totaled around $140,000 dollars.

Certainly, in comparison to what we would have had to consider in order to achieve an equivalent storage capacity with the EqualLogic's end of life, we would have had to migrate to EMC or another platform. It was going to be at least $200,000, and most likely closer to $300,000.

We don't have any extraordinary requirements. We simply require a large amount of shared storage. It's perfectly functional. 

It integrates well with VMware, as do the majority of the products. We are not doing anything exceptional.

I would rate HPE Nimble Storage a ten out of ten.

Availability of our environment has exceeded “five nines”, along with performance being stellar.

Performance, reliability, InfoSight, the ability to upgrade the O/S on the SAN without taking it down, and cost.

Poor performance and reliability would adversely affect my company’s productivity, and thus would increase overall labor costs as people took longer to do their jobs. (Especially if and when critical systems were down due to an outage.) It would also negatively affect employee and customer perception of the quality of IT services.

InfoSight is extremely valuable, because it gives us (IT) a direct understanding of historical performance and capacity trends, including projected utilization based on those trends. This in turn allows us to perform capacity planning before we reach the point where it becomes an issue. Further, some of the information in InfoSight gives us a direct understanding of which of our virtual servers is the most I/O bound. That allows us to investigate the server and mitigate disk traffic through configuration changes at the server level.

Regarding uninterrupted upgrades, one of the biggest problems with upgrading SANs is the fact that (except for Nimble!) you have to take down the SAN to do so. This requires the quiescence of any servers relying on that storage, and thus a service stoppage. While this can be done on a scheduled basis as “scheduled downtime”, the fact that Nimble permits us to upgrade transparently WITHOUT service interruption not only improves perceptions of IT, but it also changes what is normally a multi-hour process into a 30 minute process… saving time and money.

Right now, all Nimble arrays offer data compression to disk, but only the Flash (SSD) arrays offer in-line deduplication. I’d like to see in-line deduplication extended to Nimble non-flash (called “Hybrid”) arrays, even if it’s only the C500 and higher controllers that support it.

While I speak about “five nines”, the truth is we’ve had 100% up-time (no outages, not even planned) for over 3 years.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is extraordinary. Their technical support often helps us with VMware issues and related products when the issue isn’t with their SAN – which is almost always true.

We used NetApp. We switched due to performance and manageability requirements. NetApp was simply an average performer, and managing it was difficult.

The SAN setup itself was simple and easy. The biggest challenge we had was in changing our network to accommodate turning off Spanning Tree Protocol for that segment.

If you evaluate a SAN based on total cost of ownership, you have to consider the cost to the company for down time and maintenance windows, among other things. Their price structure for purchase and pricing for maintenance is excellent. Just as importantly, there are no “additional software modules” to buy at an added price. You get everything up front.

From a price/performance perspective, Nimble simply can’t be beat. From a TCO perspective, the stability alone pays for itself.

We evaluated offerings from IBM, HP, EMC, and a number of smaller vendors, such as AppAssure.

Be prepared for your staff to want to abandon all other SAN’s you may have in place. Make sure your network and network switches are capable of handling the performance, because it would be a shame to buy something so incredibly fast only to choke it down on the Ethernet side of things.

We use it to extend the data center a little further. We have videos which are very large in size and which cannot be compressed. We ran out of space in the data center so we moved the media data center and expanded it. The videos are a business-critical application. We provide videos for students to access 24/7.

We feel that we can rely on this solution more for the business-critical applications we have, compared to what we had earlier.

Also, the all-flash positions our organization for growth. Video quality keeps increasing. From 4K we are now moving to 8K and we expect that the size of each video file is going to grow very high. So our data size is increasing very fast.

In addition, we have noticed that the solution has increased performance.

We like the performance.

I would like to see more integrations. They might already have them, but I want to integrate it with the different hardware we have.

We moved to this solution for the stability. We had an HPE consultant configuring it and we went through some of those features that it enables. We also like the cloud-ready portion and when we move to the cloud that will be used as another factor in justifying our decision.

In terms of scalability, when I said "cloud," that was one of the things that we looked at when considering how we would grow, how we would expand. We are still evaluating. We do have some cloud storage, but we want to have one solution for that. We definitely think that with this product's features, we can go into the cloud and scale to whatever we like.

Technical support has been good so far. We had one issue up til now, but we are good. They took care of it.

We had legacy storage and my team recommended that we had to move to something new.

The initial setup was straightforward. We estimated, in the beginning, that we could do it over the weekend, and it went as we planned. We didn't see any issues.

We had an HPE consultant. Our experience was good.

We haven't evaluated ROI yet.

We had Dell EMC, as well as the company that was originally Sun Microsystems. We also had a couple of startups. We went with HPE mostly because of the familiarity and because my team recommended it because of its performance.

We like the flexibility. Anybody who is looking for a product that is easy to use and deploy, this is good.

I do need to evaluate the security aspect of it, especially intelligence to counter any unpredictable growth. I would also like to see how to use the storage space efficiently, because we do, at times, suddenly come across big videos.

It’s an excellent solution. The failure rates are minimal.

It’s easy to set up.

It's a very easy solution. Whenever I have a question, I find they have already provided a solution for it. For example, I want to sort out backups so that I offload some data off the Nimble since I don't want online to be clogged. They'll tell you we've got storage which is where you write your backup, which one is a partner where you can back up this information, get Veeam to store the backup, and then you can configure and send it to the storage if I want to run high availability.

They have really thought through their solution. They've covered everything.

Even their support is great. We have a support contract, so when there's an escalation on the system, you even see an email from them telling you that you have this issue. They do respond quickly and help you resolve your daily from the log. They’ll say: “This is the issue. Do this.” It's so easy to work with.

When we’re setting up the solution, making options available regarding the replication tool mechanism would be ideal. There's a Nimble storage-based replication. They need to ensure that a customer beforehand understands what they want to do. When I joined, and I'm only about a year and four months in my new role here, I found that there was a gap in understanding of the type of replication they wanted and what they got. This is why right now, we're trying to change. Instead of having storage level replication, we're going to now buy Veeam so that we can run the applications active. That's how they want it set up. They didn't understand they could do that. They need to give options.

In terms of the setup, when someone is buying it, they should actually maybe ensure that they cover the admin portion. They should sit the user down to discuss and say, "If you want to deploy a solution like this, do it like that. If you want it like that, you need to buy this extra, maybe it's Veeam, and ensure you do it like this." That way, they don't just buy Nimble to set it up, and then it's not doing what it's doing. Then they'll think the solution doesn't work. Meanwhile, it's how they implemented it.

I’ve been using the solution since 2019.

We have about 350 users on the solution currently. It's sitting in a data center.

It’s pretty simple to set up. It’s not overly complex or difficult. I’m still earning it. However, it looks simple.

The Nimble deployment took maybe two to three weeks. I'm sure there was even education from the team. It was new to the team. Obviously, to get that sorted, it took a while as it's like a new greenfield. You start from zero, and then with time, it comes together. Now, they’d likely do it in a quicker time as they know the solution.

The pricing is okay. However, it can be cheaper. Performance wise it is okay. If the price was better, it would mean there’s no reason for anyone to think of changing if they bought Nimble.

The cost depends on what components you want to include.

We are just a user.

I'm learning to understand it. I originally was not a support administrator, however, over time, found that it's actually straightforward. I'm looking forward to getting certified or trained in Nimble.

I would advise people to go for it. They just need to make sure that they understand the support around Nimble, in terms of them knowing how to support solutions. Obviously, you don't want every call that comes to you to have to phone Nimble to do it for you. You want to support everyone quickly and escalate issues only.

Also, ensure that you look out for the configuration or proposed architecture from Nimble in terms of the best implementation approach where you have the store ones and the other supporting components to get it right. Sometimes people rush to make it cheaper, however, then you eliminate certain key components that backup mechanisms.

So far, that solution is great. I'd rate it nine out of ten.

We are using it for our high availability cluster.

It's very stable and fast, and I am very happy with the deduplication. It saves a lot of space, which is great.

We are doing a hybrid and are moving some machines to Microsoft Azure to run in hybrid mode. We are checking the availability of extra software-defined storage so that we can configure it.

We have been using this solution for four years.

It is a stable solution.

It is scalable, and we have 600 active users.

We have Lenovo SAN Storage, but it's very slow and is not recommended. The deduplication is not smooth as well. Nimble is the best solution.

The set up is very straightforward, and everything was smooth. Our cluster was managed, and we didn't have any issues.

We have never done any maintenance for the last four years, and even the power supply has been working fine. Everything has been in good condition for four years.

We don't require a license. If we used HPE InfoSight, then we would require a license, but for our needs, we don't need one.

If you want deduplication storage, HPE Nimble Storage is the solution for you, and if you want to run a unit for storage, then Nimble is the best. For deduplication, it is very nice because it dedupes every file you create. You will save storage space. I would give this solution an eight out of ten.

The primary use case is to monitor my storage.

We are in radiology. Although most of our radiologists just read x-rays, there are moments when it is STAT read, where they have to read things ASAP. This applies to the emergency room and emergency departments. Sometimes, things need to be read, and it is a matter of life or death. This can also apply to cancers, detections, etc. Therefore, we need to make sure the storage stays up, and it is working. Then, our radiologists can do their job.

For us, it is about speed and stability. There are a lot of redundancies in place. I am able to access what I need to access. 

Our situation is sort of unique. We need fast disk for compute, but then we also need more traditional disk for our images. Having Nimble, where I can have both fast and traditional disk in one pane, and still see everything, is pretty awesome. 

We use InfoSight for predictive analysis because the answer to most of our problems is that, "It isn't our problem." However, we are being blamed for it. Thus, I can get my answers improved by using InfoSight that it isn't us causing the problem by going into it. For example, one of our applications was acting weird, and we had the application vendor on. They really couldn't answer much. As one of my troubleshoot methods, I said, "Let me check InfoSight." I logged in, and I could see a VM that was heavily pegged and almost in a critical-like status. That VM was the reason why the issue was the way it was. Now, It wasn't because of our infrastructure set up, it still was an application issue, but I was able to pinpoint exactly what it was based off of that.

That application with problems had about 30 servers. As I'm not an application vendor, I don't know which servers serve what purpose within the application. I was able to go into InfoSight, and it told me that one in particular needed to be worked on, so I didn't have to waste time looking at the other 29 servers. Therefore, I knew that one was the one that we work on, and that is the one that needs to be fixed.

We use a platform as a service and have multiple application vendors who comprise that platform. There are moments when those application vendors put the blame on us. By working in InfoSight, I am able to say, "No, it is not us." I can actually provide proof, either by using screenshots or through reporting. 

I wish they would put the InfoSight page back the way it was. I got in it for the first time about two years ago, and it looked the same for about a year and a half. Then, about six months ago, it changed. There are different options now. I can still get to where I need to go, but it feels like it takes longer, where before it didn't. Also, I felt like I had a lot more options before. I have to do a lot more to digging now to get to where I need to go. I just wish they had their old page back.

There are a lot of redundancies in all the right areas, so it is pretty stable.

I get alerts, email, and texts that I regularly check a couple of times a day.

I check the solution's storage capacity a couple times a day. One of the tasks in the morning is someone on my team will go in and take a screenshot of exactly what our capacity is at the moment. Then, we are able to do trend analysis and some forecasting of when we think our capacity is going to be close to maximum or not.

I have already already grown it and added an extra array earlier last year. I still have room for more. So, the scalability is pretty good.

This solution is not for growth, but it can grow. We have the capability to grow, but we're not there yet.

I rarely call the technical support, but when I do, they are good.

We did not have a previous solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. It is a lot of plug and play. Although, there was a diagram of instructions, which was maybe one sheet long. So, it was easy. A lot of that stuff was already ready for me.

When I scaled up, the system came to me, and I did it myself.

We do use a reseller, Logicalis.

We are still too new with our product to know what the ROI is.

The solution has improved our throughput.

We looked at other storage companies. The fact that I can incorporate both flash and spin into one pane, look at Nimble and still get solutions. For me, it was a no-brainer.

This was the discovery phase. We vetted out quite a few storage arrays. This one was the one that we all came in agreement with.

We looked at Hitachi and Pure Storage. The reason why Pure Storage was removed from our list was because they only offered flash. We needed both flash and spin. 

At my previous place of employment, I mentioned to my previous boss about this solution because it would have been good at my prior place of employment. They were in a similar situation. They had flash, spinning disks, etc. However, they used Pure Storage, Hitachi, and even some Dell EMC. When you have so many different arrays, or so many different companies, that you have to work with, it is very easy when there is a problem for a vendor to point their finger at another vendor. For a better chance of a successful integration, keep the products (and vendors) down to a minimum.

I don't really have to do a whole lot to it. Plug it in, and it does its job successfully.

The performance was already good. This isn't a reactionary, but being proactive. We are doing these measures to ensure that we don't have an issue.

The biggest lesson learned is to keep using Nimble.

We use Nimble for our virtualized workloads.

We have been using it close to three years. Therefore, it was even before the HPE acquisition of Nimble that we started using it.

It has been performing well so far. Initially, we purchased Nimble for low-end or less critical workloads, and it has started to evolve. Now, it is right up there with our Tier-Two storage for CO3 and CO4 level workloads.

We have lost that dependency with traditional data center architecture where you have your storage team and server team. Now, our virtual admins are able to take control of Nimble and know how to allocate the storage, whenever it is required, thus reducing time.

The most valuable feature is InfoSight, and the ability that InfoSight gives you, from insight within your environment to what is going on at the storage layer. Also, since we use this product integrated with VMware, we are able to have a view of our virtual infrastructure segregated up to the VM level. We are able to see where the most IOPS are located, etc. Therefore, we are able to prevent and predict where things are going well or badly.

The solution that I have is a hybrid, not a full flash. The hybrid version could be improved.

Stability has not been an issue at all. We have not had a major issue nor downtime which has occurred with Nimble. Whenever we have code updates, you have high availability between your controllers, which is good.

With scalability, we had to replace one of our controllers to upgrade CPU in cache. In the case of something like this, as long as the team is able to manage it within a scheduled downtime window, it is pretty simple.

Technical support is good. We recently use them. There was a bug on the latest firmware release. So, we had to call and see what was going on. There were some features that were enabled recently that were affecting read IOPS or how the way read IOPS are managed. It was simple fix. They just gave us what we needed to do and what we needed to change, then we applied the changes.

We were looking for something where the cost would not be as high as what we were used to with traditional storage arrays. Even so, it has been on par in terms of performance, even though the price was lower, with what we had with other arrays.

The initial setup was straightforward. The initial setup took a little bit over a week because we were in the learning phase. 

We have other arrays, like VNX or HDS from Hitachi. Complexity-wise, this product (Nimble) is simpler and nimbler to set up.

We recently implemented smaller Nimble boxes or arrays for an isolated environment, which was set up by me, within one or two days.

We have not quantified it. However, with the capabilities on compression, we have seen a lot of VMs running because probably 80 to 95 percent of the data is the same. Therefore, we are able to get a good compression ratio. Because of this, I think we have saved a lot compared to a traditional storage array.

We had also shortlisted EMC. We initially went with Nimble because of price, but later figured out the other benefits.

It is a good investment, especially on virtualized workloads. We have seen a lot of benefit there. We have not used it for other types of virtual workloads, both mixed workload applications and databases. 

Our Nimble unit serves our corporate storage infrastructure, all running VMware on top of it. It's primarily VDI file storage and the virtual environment itself.

We have been using it for about three years and the performance has been excellent. We haven't had any outages.

Our upgrades are seamless. Whether we're adding storage, or upgrading the software, we don't take an outage for those upgrades.

Also, InfoSight does exactly what it needs to do. It tells us when we have problems and if we need to move things around. Mostly we use it for capacity planning so we can get the forecast of when we're going to be out of space and order more disk expansion before we run out of actual space.

The only thing that I can really compare Nimble to is all-flash because, right now, Nimble is a hybrid solution. I would like to see them come out with an all-flash alternative.

I'd also like to see them incorporate tools that let me get granular with the VMs. I want to see an individual VM, I want to Snapshot and recover an individual VM. Those are the kind of daily operations features that I'd like to see.

Stability is great. We have never had a problem with the arrays.

In terms of scalability, it's excellent. I think we have four of them now.

We have used technical support. Everything has been solved really quickly. Because I'm the vice president, I don't do the engineer's work but I would hear about it if there was a problem.

In terms of how technical support compares to support provided by other companies, our other source product is EMC and it's very difficult to be worse than EMC.

The switch was because of budgetary constraints. I knew I couldn't put in an EMC array in the initial solution that we used before, which was for VDI. If I had tried to deal with the EMC, I would not have gotten the performance and it would have cost a lot more. 

So we had to look outside the box. We chose Nimble over Tintri at the time, because Tintri's solution, while very good - with the things I was talking about, like granular VM, etc. - it's a footprint that you have to buy all at once. For the Nimble, I buy the unit and I can keep adding to it. With Tintri you have to pick a 13-terabyte or a 45-terabyte and when you run out of that, you buy another 45-terabyte. To me, it just didn't seem as expandable.

In terms of criteria for selecting a vendor, other than scalability and price, the key is performance. The bar was set at EMC. EMC just adds flash disks to a standard array and accelerates things somewhat, but it really doesn't get you to where you need to be. With EMC, you need to buy a lot of disks, you need to get into the 200s for spindle count. With any of the newer hybrid solutions - Tintri, Nimble, Pure - those are all all-flash solutions or hybrid solutions that take advantage of flash the way it's supposed to be.

I'm based out of Southern California. We first implemented it in Virginia, so I flew in to meet an engineer to complete it. By the time I had flown in and got to the data center, he was already done. I expected it to take several hours but it was more like an hour, and most of that hour was unpacking it out of the box.

Compared to EMC, you can't install EMC's products yourself, and it's days of implementation.

If we had stuck with EMC, we would have spent a lot more. We have EMC in-house, we have a bunch of them. Switching to Nimble saved me millions of dollars over the past three years.

Our production environment runs off of Pure Storage, our corporate environment runs off of Nimble.

I'd put Nimble at about an eight out of 10 because Pure storage reset our standard for what is absolutely the best. Pure is a whole different platform and not hybrid. I like Nimble, it's very good, it works, it's definitely cost-effective. It's not all-flash, so you don't get the performance of all-flash. But if you don't have a couple of million dollars to spend on Pure, Nimble is an excellent choice.

In terms of advice, it gets down to budget. Nimble fills a need for performance within a budget that is in the sub-million dollar range. If you're going up over a million dollars, where you can just throw money at the solution, there is Pure and there is Texas Memory Systems and all those high-end solutions. But if you want enterprise-level storage and you want a hybrid, the Nimble has served us well.