I have evaluated Pure Storage and they are very similar to HPE Nimble Storage but are a lot more expensive. For ease of setup and cost perspective, HPE Nimble Storage is the better choice.

We did evaluate a few other options. However, we found HPE to be the best. 

I have heard that NetApp, Dell, and Cisco offer something similar to HPE Alletra dHCI and HPE Nimble Storage, but I have never had an experience with any such solutions.

We evaluated a few vendors, including Dell EMC, NetApp, and IBM. Nimble Storage delivered the most bang for our buck. It was also relatively simple to deploy. 

EMC, NetApp, and Pure storage too.

To purchase the solution is a one-time purchase.

We had a couple of options that we were considering before going with Nimble. We also looked at some of the offerings from Dell. I think those were the two main ones. There was a third one, Tintri, which we were not happy with because of their bankruptcy filings. Nimble was the leading option coming out of the gate and ended up being the solution we selected.

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

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 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. 

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

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

We looked at Nimble and NetApp.

I have had some bad experiences previously with the performance of the NetApp units, which is the reason that we went with Nimble.

We evaluated NetApp, which is our previous solution, and then we also evaluated Pure Storage.

Nothing else was evaluated.

We had Dell EMC, Nimble, and 3PAR come out. Our partner is Logicalis, and they set up all these interviews for us. We interviewed them one at a time. With our partner, we came to the decision that Nimble was the right choice for us.

There is nothing like it that we can buy that even comes close to this product. We looked at five different products, then we decided to go with Nimble. It is hands down the best device that was available to us.

We've recently been looking at Pure Storage.

We looked at providers other than HP, such as Pure Storage, but we don't like to be on the bleeding edge. We prefer to be with providers that have been stable and around for a long period of time.

We did evaluate quite a few products. We evaluated Nimble vs Nutanix, Pure Storage and Tintri. We also tried exploring the hyperconverged solutions such as Nutanix and a few other products. But we felt that, for the service that we're providing, Nimble is the best choice because we have multiple options, i.e., both hybrid and flash options. It is easy to scale and switch between the platforms. Based on the performance requirements that we have, I think Nimble is the best choice, so we finalized on the product from among multiple other choices.

We looked at EMC, Pure Storage, and VxRail.

We do actually have a certain set of criteria that we use and it's a weighted criteria set. One of the top criteria, for us, is the relationship that you have with the vendor because everybody hopes that things are going to go right, but the real question is when things don't go right, is your team going to stand beside you? I have worked with the sales team and have said, "Hey guys! Is this pillow talk or is this an after-the-sale conversation? Are you still going to stand by me?" This is me, the customer, talking to the vendor.

They stood by me, more than did prior to the purchase. I get constant updates from them checking in, "Hey, do you want to talk about whatever?" I always feel well-prepared. We never had an incident where I really had to hit that red button, but I am 100% confident that if I did, then they would be standing there right probably in the room with me, making sure that I've got everything I need to get through this situation. This is a huge thing, i.e., being right there for us, which is reliability from an array perspective. It has got to have at least 5 nine's and that's just starting the conversation. We absolutely need the critical uptime and from there, there's also the price-point. For us, it's the vendor relationship, product reliability, and then, probably, the price-point while selecting a vendor.

We looked at

• EMC
• HP Lefthand
• HP 3PAR
• NetApp

Our clients evaluated other options such as 3PAR StoreServ, HPE Primera, Pure Storage, and Dell EMC.

We looked at 3PAR, Tintri, Pure, and more. We chose Nimble because it was an HPE acquisition and due to familiarity with Nimble products.

We looked at Dell EMC, Nimbus, and Nimble.

Nimble just stuck out of the pack. The demo that they gave us years ago was really what sold it. We have a reseller who we work with, and we are a partner with them for other things. We do networks for them, and they do other system switching for us. The reseller had a Nimble and demonstrate it to us, which made the deal right there. It wasn't Nimble who did the demo, it was the reseller, and the reseller really came through.

Whenever we want some more capacity, CPU, memory, storage etc, then we normally make an analysis and basically we make the upgrades.

We have Nimble and Tripper, as part of the approved solutions. We have Tintri and Dell Compellent.

We have been working with HP on the server side for a long time and I think that now that they have Nimble and Tripper, they have very good and complete solutions. So we trust them. And they have good solutions because depending on the type of load that you are trying to put together, I mean, you can choose either one of these systems.

There were multiple things which helped our choice, but in this particular case, it was EMC because the EMC solution was not using the same technology so we were not seeing the benefits of having this on the analytics especially.

EMC, IBM, NetApp.

Our options were IBM and HP, and we found that HP was the better choice for us.

Pure Storage and Nimble were on our shortlist. 

We chose Nimble because they were the incumbent. We had a good experience with them. They have good support. Ultimately, they had the better price.

We did consider other vendors. Ultimately, I had had my eye on Nimble for a long time, and I had already researched it, had done my homework on it, and was just waiting for the right opportunity.

We thought about the HPE 3PAR, but it seemed to be pricey. Frankly, Nimble came in and sold us on their solution. The 3PAR guy did not really make a strong sales presentation. He just said, "Trust me, it's good." My reaction was, we can't just trust you. Whereas, the Nimble guy told us the ins and outs of it and gave us all the details.

We were looking for a VDI solution that gave the same performance as a desktop/laptop. We tested PureStorage and ExtremIO, but chose to do a PoC with Nimble because others who were already using it were so positive about it.

We evaluated other competitors (Pure Storage and NetApp), and it came down to cost per a dollar of what you could get.

Pure Storage had better deduplication rates, but it just cost three times more.

We compared both traditional vendors including NetApp and HPE as well as upcomers like Pure Storage, Violin, SolidFire, Microsoft Storage Server and others.

We evaluated NetApp FAS, EMC Unity, and Pure Storage.

When we went to market, the team already had a good knowledge of other vendors, having used a good variety of arrays between us. Nimble were the first new array we got in to test. They blew us away with their performance and their support. The personal touch they gave us really helped, too. They took the time to learn about our needs and our environment. It was easy to decide not to go to anyone else.

Yes, EMC, NetApp, Simplivity and Violin.

We compared both traditional vendors as NetApp and HPE, as well as up-comers like Pure Storage, Violin, SolidFire, Microsoft Storage Server and others.

The only vendor on our shortlist was Nimble. We had investigated them years ago because other sister companies within the community had already begun using them. We want to have a synergy with them.

It was a decision that was made before I joined to the company. The reason they chose Nimble over other products was because HPE required too many licenses at that time. Nimble didn’t require all of that.

Now that Nimble is an HPE product, HPE has changed their whole licensing for their other products as well.

The shortlist included HPE, Dell, and EMC. We chose Nimble because of all- flash, user-friendliness, and the compression and deduplication. It does way more than any of the other vendors. I have 10 terabytes with compression. That's a big change. Other solutions are not as user-friendly and cannot do all of that compression.

When selecting a vendor, I look for security. We want something that can be integrated and is compatible with our environment.

I was not part of the initial hardware selection. My client was working with a VAR to choose and obtain the hardware for a data center refresh. During this process, it eventually worked out that I took over the complete data center refresh project, from design to deployment.

I inherited this vendor in my environment but it has proven to be a worthy vendor and no plans to change.

Looked at options from Hitachi, EMC, NetApp and HP.

I looked at the traditional products out there and did a comparison with Nimble as well. For example, we compared EMC Storage with NimbLe and I also did consider SimpliVity, at the time but for this specific workload, it turned out that Nimble had the best approach.

We evaluated other NetApp, EMC, and DELL EQL

We looked at Pure Storage, Compellent, and Tintri.

Before choosing this product, I also evaluated other options such as EMC, HPE, IBM, etc. Among those brands, for me, Nimble was the most cost effective and simplified.

We evaluated Pure Storage and EMC XtremeIO. We found both products could not scale in the way Nimble can, they could not compete on the price to performance ratio, and they could not provide a competitive right-sized solution.

No other options for storage were evaluated.

We had an incumbent storage provider which was also tendering; one of the bigger storage providers. But we were a bit put out by their ability to provide us with any real reason to stay with them. They didn't seem to have any innovation going on, and their lack of ability to actually support and help us with issues was a factor.

We only evaluated HPE. Our previous experience has a bearing on which vendor we choose. In terms of Nimble, I did a thorough technical evaluation and had discussions with the vendor and with Nimble themselves at the time. My questions were answered.

Yes, Dell, EMC, Hitachi, NetApp, Pure Storage.

NetApp.

Everything from NetApp, EMC, Dell/Equallogic, and even QNAP. It's really no contest when you learn about the architecture in detail.

We did not evaluate alternatives.

We looked at everybody on the market.

Our customers have been looking at 3PAR, but:

• It is too expensive.
• It was not automated enough, in the way that Nimble is.

It is sort of one of those decisions that it is quite easy to make in terms of the Nimble solution for money for storage size regarding which is more cost effective. Also, the ability to set it up and more or less leave it alone to run itself. It is a big positive. 

We evaluated Violin, and it was much too expensive and not that much faster.

No. We got a PoC array delivered to us first, that got us convinced about the product.

• EMC
• EqualLogic
• NetApp

Before choosing Nimble Storage, we also evaluated NetApp and Dell EMC. The biggest difference was the management stuff with InfoSight.

Nimble competes against IBM Storwize and Dell. The main reason we went with Nimble was that we have over 10 years of experience with Infosight.

We probably only looked at HPE and Nimble, and they are the same company now anyway.

Before choosing this product, I evaluated Dell and EQL.

Yes, Lenovo and DELL/EMC storages.

Tintri

I joined the company after the decision has been made. An external IT provider assisted with making this decision.

We evaluated other options. We received a competitive offer from NetApps, but they lost on size. They are still a traditional solution, relying on the number of spindles and performance.

We previously had Dell EqualLogic It was considered when it’s time for renewal.

This was large POC track and the others were -

• Cisco Imperva
• Kaminario
• NetApp EF
• Pure Storage
• EMC XtremIO

We evaluated Pure Storage FlashArray and IBM Storwize, which is now called IBM Flash Array.

We looked at HPE 3PAR and Dell EMC.

We evaluated some others but I'd rather not say which vendors. The features of the product, stability, performance, support and cost are important to us.

HPE 3PAR, Tintri, EMC VNX, and EMC XtremIO.