Hewlett Packard Enterprise Software and Solutions

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are - 1. Ease of setup 2. Ease of Management with Web UI 3. InfoSight - analytics sight that collects data for all Nimble arrays deployed… more»

How has it helped my organization?

These arrays perform very well and have allowed us to move many physical servers to virtual and run them from the Nimble arrays without any performance impact and there is… more»

What needs improvement?

No areas require improvement at this time. The arrays run very well and updates are flawless when completing.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously used Dell Equilogic arrays but they were end of life.

What other advice do I have?

Given the chance to evaluate Nimble it is highly recommended. Their CASL architecture is very fast and being able to get the performance from spinning disk that you see on… more»

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No other options for storage were evaluated.

What is most valuable?

* The ease of management in these deployments were some of the most valuable things. * The date storage infrastructure that it provides is pretty fantastic. * The ease of… more»

How has it helped my organization?

Looking at the way that our infrastructure team works now, we don't think about infrastructure, storage, or compute anymore. The solution just works. It is same with the… more»

What needs improvement?

The biggest feature, which should be included, is some method to handle archival backup or cloud-based backup. Where SimpliVIty typically falls down with their data… more»

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

For the VMware licensing, it is approximately $10,000 a year.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We didn't initially think we needed to invest in a new hardware solution. We really were focused on DR backup. As we went through the use case and worked out the… more»

What other advice do I have?

Try to understand your rate of change on your data: When you take a backup, how quickly is your information changing or being updated, and whether it is a database, file… more»

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

SimpliVIty, HPE's previous hyper-converged solution, Nutanix, and Scale Computing were on our shortlist. What made us chose SimpliVity was the tight integration on the… more»

What is most valuable?

The speed and deduplication ratio are two of the most valuable features of the solution.

How has it helped my organization?

Nine years ago, we were relying on backup tapes only. Now, since we've moved to StoreOnce, as per the legal and compliance perspective we still have to use tapes, but we… more»

What needs improvement?

I'm using this product to save some files. It has a feature where I can make it as an SMB share. When I started using it for CIFS, the SMB share, had a limitation of… more»

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The license is part of the hardware. You don't need to buy or renew it separately. StoreOnce comes in a package: hardware and software. All the licenses come with it… more»

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We didn't have another solution previously, in terms of backup storage, but in terms of software, I have used some other products like Windows deduplication. This… more»

What other advice do I have?

We are using the private cloud deployment model. If you purchase the product, you will have peace of mind. You don't have to worry about the product at all. My only advice… more»

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did evaluate Data Domain from EMC, but I didn't like it because Data Domain has other limitations. In terms of density per rack, it was using more rack capacity. Also… more»

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this product for sure. At a minimum, I would rate this product at eight out of ten. I give it an eight because of the support, that I can't get support in my country. This is the worst part. Support cannot be sold until we are out of the sanctions. It's not anything to do with HPE, it's political issues.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Any action we want to do with a Dell EMC product needs a license. But with 3PAR's converged solution, at least there is no need to purchase more licenses to get all the features that we need. We can get basic and mid-range features without licenses. But for simple activities with Dell EMC, we need a license. Also, HPE is simpler than Dell EMC for the end-user.

What is most valuable?

From a 3PAR perspective, it's the ease of setup and use. You can train somebody pretty quickly how to do basic operations, especially if it's a very dynamic environment… more»

How has it helped my organization?

The biggest thing for us was the workload consolidation, especially looking at an all-flash platform. We didn't have to worry about noisy neighbors so much. If I have a… more»

What needs improvement?

We don't use the solution’s deduplication functionality because of bad code. I have friends that have used 3PAR dedupe, and have heard horror stories. We took a very much… more»

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The only licensing costs are around 3PAR in the form the OS itself. You pay at time of purchase. It is capacity-based, and you have annual maintenance that you pay.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

When we went to 3PAR about seven to eight years ago, we were an HPE EVA shop and a Compaq EVA shop before that. The EVA had become very long in the tooth. Platform… more»

What other advice do I have?

Really dive into the details around things like failure scenarios. Every vendor out there, whether they are a startup or big company will tell you, "We are fully… more»

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

When we went from EVA to 3PAR, we looked at 3PAR and NetApp because we were using NetApp at the time for the filers. We looked at Hitachi because we had used XP in the… more»

What is most valuable?

We have over 100 terabytes of storage, and it is all solid state. That is pretty valuable for everything we do. The build alone is amazing and the way everything is… more»

How has it helped my organization?

On some of our backup jobs, we are getting a dedupe rate of 11 to 13 times. Nimble is taking up a minuscule amount of actual raw storage for backups, etc. Data management… more»

What needs improvement?

I would like to see the network portion of the product improve, especially with some of the things which are coming out from Aruba and HPE. Both are innovating more of an… more»

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We are paying for the licensing yearly.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

The former CIO hadn't upgraded anything in almost 20 years. Everything that we had was completely outdated. We wanted to move to a more efficient solution for our… more»

What other advice do I have?

I would definitely point a colleague toward the Nimble product. Most of my peers are also at universities, and the product fits perfectly into what we are trying to do. As… more»

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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… more»

What is most valuable?

The way that it optimizes the hot data versus cold data is really what Nimble does super well.

How has it helped my organization?

We want rock solid stability, making sure all of our customers have complete 100 percent uptime, which is our goal. Nimble achieves that pretty well. InfoSight is a regular part of our weekly routine… more»

What needs improvement?

I would like deduplication by default on all the volumes. I still don't understand (or know why) dedupe isn't enabled for the templates out-of-the-box. We have to go in and manually enable it each and… more»

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were running out of space. The ability to compress and dedupe stuff with Nimble is unmatched. Coming off old Dell EMC PowerVaults and our own custom SAN solution that that we had running with… more»

What other advice do I have?

Try it out. Demo it. Just have somebody put it in front of you, so you can poke around and demonstrate how it works with a real environment. Check out a Hyper-V or VMware. VMware is a lot more… more»

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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… more»