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.

If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you 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 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.

If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you 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?

* 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.

If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you 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?

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.

If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you 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»

If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you 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»

What is most valuable?

Stability and a lower failure rate are the most valuable features.

How has it helped my organization?

We make steel and the manufacturing also requires software. These servers are the ones that we prefer. Since the beginning, we were tied with HPE and I have an annual maintenance contract for all of my servers. I have around 3,000… more»

What needs improvement?

I would like to see more of a hard drive base. IT keeps on changing the versions of their products. There have historically been great differences in time than when the G server, the Gen8, nine, and now 10 generations of DL ProLiant server… more»

What other advice do I have?

I would rate them eight, primarily because of the service that they provide and stability that the hardware gives. For any other person who wants to buy any hardware, the first thing that he should look for is who is going to support him… more»

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also looked at Dell EMC and IBM. The most important criteria when selecting a vendor, apart from costs, is service. Service will ensure stability.