The vendor states that the Cisco MDS 9000 multilayer SAN switches can help lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of storage environments. They combine what the vendor describes as a robust, flexible hardware architecture with multiple layers of network and storage-management intelligence. With them, users can build highly available, scalable storage networks with advanced security and unified management.
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HPE Nimble Storage
Score 8.1 out of 10
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Nimble Storage was acquired by HPE in 2017. The enterprise flash array product line now goes by the name HPE Nimble Storage.
The best scenario where we found the Cisco Storage Area Networking is best suited is for an architecture where we need a robust technology that provides high level SLAs regarding downtime due to maintenance activities. Our infrastructure provides the core to our Data analytics team, which provides the data needed for our commercial and management leaders to make the right decisions thanks to the data. We need our infrastructure to be robust and reliable, when it runs smoothly, we can focus on other aspects of IT Infrastructure areas, giving our inside business clients the service they need.
HPE Nimble Hybrid storage is very cost effective that can provide the same Latency, I/O and Bandwidth compared with any other All FLASH storage which is 3 times expensive than this. From a feature comparison standpoint of view, there isn't much difference between Hybrid Vs ALL Flash. HPE Nimble Storage uses ALL Flash disk at the front end to process the data thus by reducing the cost by using a regular SAS disk at the back end. Its the software and the algorithm that HPE Nimble StorageE uses to achieve this. having said that, the overall data reduction, de-duplication and compression is above the mark as what the sales team promised initially. Overall, the storage is performing well without any challenges.
HP Nimble is basically an all in one SAN with SSD cache or in some cases fully SSD based however the thing it does the best is its front end GUI and user management capability making it easy for anyone to ramp up on managing it quickly.
The Nimble SAN is also very easily managed when it comes to hardware management. Outside of some major internal parts such as the mainboard, almost everything in the system is duplicated so single failures never bring the system down. Power supplies and drives are easily swapped out.
Nimble has incredibly capable and easily accessible support that is available 24/7.
The price point on Nimble, though higher than piecing together a home made SAN out of spare Windows Servers, is perfect even for some SMB's.
I'd like the GUI to include more information for some of the features such as replication data totals each night. You have to go to the command line for this.
It would be nice to have a feature built into the GUI that would show you the command line equivalent to get the same results you are seeing in the GUI.
Although the intial setup was easy, they could always improve on that portion. During my setup, I did have to do a lot of back and forth with research on their site as to what each setting was that I was setting up. They could have provided some sort of description for each field within the setup that would have made it easier to know what they were having us set up.
Nimble is doing its job well and any issues that do come up cause the Nimble support team to alert us before we would potentially see an impact to our production environment. I do wish we could expand into the unused space in the CS210 shelf which is limited by what I assume is a marketing/sales strategy, but we will likely add shelves moving forward.
Almost perfect, some hoops to jump through after major upgrade, but overall simple and effective. Our storage administrator really likes the integration with vmware as it makes his life easier. Also it was no trouble integrating it with our active directory credentials. The only issue we had was getting the plugin in VMWare going initially.
My rating of Cisco Storage Area Networking is a solid 10 regarding low-latency network is due to the high needs our data analysis teams need on their tasks. They have a lot of batch jobs that last quite some time and that also overlaps in a series of periods during the day. Their batch jobs need to run flawlessly, so our commercial teams can make the right decisions right on time. Our data also needs to be backed, up, when we run backup jobs, it is important that they do not decrease the efficiency regarding the service. This is also a key point in our choice to use Cisco Storage Area Networking as our backbone.
Any time I have had to contact support, they have always been quick to respond, and very efficient in resolving any issues. When an action has been required on our side for a fix, they have been very helpful in explaining step by step what was required, and when replacement parts have been needed, we've had them within 24 hours.
We looked at the Brocade G series and IBM SAN switches, but the seamless integration into our AAA suite and availability of skills in our local market were big factors. We also have these deployed in FlexPod and VxBlock environments, which the reference architectures provide additional confidence in the solutions overall compatibility, supportability and sustainability.
We used a Dell EqualLogic PS Series storage array for many years and it worked well. A big issue was that upgrading firmware required system downtime and during one upgrade I was unable to bring the systems back up afterwards. I spent several days on the phone over a holiday weekend with Dell and VMware support in order to get my systems back up and running. It made me very nervous about doing firmware upgrades after that.
