HPE Nimble Storage vs. NetApp FAS Storage Arrays

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
HPE Nimble Storage
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Nimble Storage was acquired by HPE in 2017. The enterprise flash array product line now goes by the name HPE Nimble Storage.N/A
NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
NetApp's FAS series systems offers a storage array system for enterprises.N/A
Pricing
HPE Nimble StorageNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HPE Nimble StorageNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
HPE Nimble StorageNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Considered Both Products
HPE Nimble Storage
Chose HPE Nimble Storage
HPE Nimble compares well from a performance and storage perspective. It is easy to manage and maintain and there is adequate support with a 4hr Same Business Day response for parts. The unit is a little larger than AFA from competitors however it fits well in a 4U rack. Pure …
Chose HPE Nimble Storage
We were early adopters of Nimble. At the time of our SAN deployment, EMC and NetApp didn't have solutions that matched our needs. Nimble presented itself as a next generation storage platform that wasn't bogged down by legacy technologies. They had a turnkey solution for our …
NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Chose NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Dell EMC PowerScale is [a] good product, however, the product is not good with small files; even after enabling the small file efficiency, the product did not perform well. However, [the] NetApp FAS series gave us the results we expected in our performance testing; after …
Chose NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
NetApp stacked nicely and gave enterprise-level usability for snapshot-based backups. Our previous RPO was several hours. It was selected prior to me arriving at the company, but It was selected for the hardware refreshes due to its compatibility with several other vendors, …
Chose NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Only other SAN we used before this was an EMC CX300 that was used for around 8 years. It was ok in that it didn't have major issues, just some bad drives here and there, but the interface and setup of it were horribly difficult.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
HPE Nimble StorageNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Enterprise Flash Array Storage
Comparison of Enterprise Flash Array Storage features of Product A and Product B
HPE Nimble Storage
9.5
11 Ratings
4% above category average
NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
-
Ratings
Flash Array Performance9.610 Ratings00 Ratings
Flash Array Integration9.79 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Compression9.610 Ratings00 Ratings
Non-Intrusive Upgrades9.811 Ratings00 Ratings
Simplicity9.611 Ratings00 Ratings
Power Savings8.910 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
HPE Nimble StorageNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

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Medium-sized Companies
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 9.2 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Enterprises
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 9.2 out of 10
NetApp AFF A-Series
NetApp AFF A-Series
Score 9.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
HPE Nimble StorageNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Likelihood to Recommend
9.4
(27 ratings)
8.7
(13 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(5 ratings)
9.9
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
HPE Nimble StorageNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Likelihood to Recommend
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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.
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NetApp
It is very easy to use with NFS. Creating new volumes and mounting to servers such as ESXi or Linux is a breeze. It does also support CIFS but it is far less intuitive and requires much more effort. Replicated data is also very simple and robust in the form of SnapVaults or SnapMirrors. This data is either immediately or periodically replicated to a peer FAS in the cluster for retention.
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Pros
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
  • 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.
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NetApp
  • The selling point for NetApp FAS is the application and data protection integration capabilities they provide.
  • We have been able to use NetApp FAS in a variety of use cases with a standard set of management tools.
  • NetApp FAS has evolved over the years from just NAS to also include block protocols. At this time they support almost all industry standard protocols.
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Cons
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
  • 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.
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NetApp
  • Deduplication job runs at certain times and creates a large CPU overhead for the system
  • Management of a volumes, disk groups, LUNs, etc. is a burden to manage and is not efficient with storage capacity
  • Upgrades are complicated and not "non-disruptive"
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Likelihood to Renew
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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.
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NetApp
No answers on this topic
Usability
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
No answers on this topic
NetApp
It does have a really nice and easy to use web interface to do pretty much anything you need with it. It was very simple to configure our volumes and luns and connect them to our VMWare environment using the interface. It has options to rename, shrink, grow, and other things with our luns and volumes. It was nice and easy to read graphs to see where you stand on your storage usage at a glance.
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Support Rating
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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.
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NetApp
NetApp support in Brazil is managed by its partners. We know in other countries, such as the US and NO, they have support directly from Netapp. We have a very good NetApp partner working with us since the beginning, on both the implementation and daily support. Very few cases needed to be escalated to NetApp support, most of the cases are handled and satisfyingly closed by the partner.
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Alternatives Considered
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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.
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NetApp
NetApp stacked nicely and gave enterprise-level usability for snapshot-based backups. Our previous RPO was several hours. It was selected prior to me arriving at the company, but It was selected for the hardware refreshes due to its compatibility with several other vendors, like CommVault and VMware.
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Return on Investment
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
  • 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.
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NetApp
  • The speed of file recovery is the biggest positive impact. Recovering from a ransomware attack in minutes is something you can certainly brag about.
  • Integration with products like Exchange and SQL can certainly speed up normal day to day processes. Not just in backup recovery situations either.
  • Redundant paths make migrations and updates very easy with no downtime.
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ScreenShots