HPE Nimble Storage vs. HPE StoreOnce

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.

Incentivized

If you are looking for a backup infrastructure which is efficient and compatible for both file system and block level backup, then HPE StoreOnce is a great choice. It's easy to configure and easy to manage. We didn't have to hire a separate storage expert to set up StoreOnce for us. The HPE team helped our system admins and it was a easy to configure.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• We really like the deduplication feature of HPE StoreOnce. It helps reduce storage footprint by 1:3 to 1:10 depending on type of files being stored.
• It's easy to manage files on HPE StoreOnce servers using command line options.
• We use Veeam Backup Server software to manage our backups on HPE StoreOnce.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• file share based backups
• larger drive options for the storage system
• somewhat dated on network connectivity parts to have the fastest network connections

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

It just works and the support contract we have is good enough for the company needs

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

My team who are currently administering HPE StoreOnce do not come from a storage background. We still didn't had to struggle much configuring and using HPE StoreOnce. Of course, HPE team was very helpful in smooth technology transition. For critical errors, we already have phone home feature enabled and HPE support team has been excellent and their response time in dealing with technical errors/incidents.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We had couple of incidents so far and HPE support team was very proactive through the process until the incident was closed satisfactorily.

Incentivized

It was pretty smooth, at least smother that a Dell EMC Unity we set it up last week

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Some of our staff have worked with Baracuda, so it was a recommended product. But after our evaluation, we decided to use StoreOnce because of the types of backup, ease of administration, and cost savings.

Incentivized

• 100% uptime 4 years and counting in a 24/7 environment.
• Long hardware support lifecycle, with extremely affordable maintenance renewal plans that provide real value.
• Nimble has been the most cost-effective SAN solution I have ever deployed.
• The inital costs, ongoing maintenance, and administration requirements were all 50% less than EMC and NetApp.

Incentivized

• While not completely eliminating tape, it has relegated the use of tape to monthly and annual backups for compliance. It has reduced the recurring expense of tape media.
• It has increased the length of the retention period because of its efficiency in storing backups.
• The online backup repositories are now replicated to the secondary datacenter, a capability not possible with tapes.

Incentivized