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HPE Nimble Storage

HPE Nimble Storage

Overview

What is HPE Nimble Storage?

Nimble Storage was acquired by HPE in 2017. The enterprise flash array product line now goes by the name HPE Nimble Storage.

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Learn from top reviewers

HPE Nimble: Analytics and Scalability

Rating: 9 out of 10
January 4, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We purchased an all SSD array a few years back and still use it in production today. Our top tier storage provider for production is PURE, but we supplement with this array fo...
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Tim Lillis
Director - Information Technology
Director of Infrastructure
Kent Intermediate School District
HPE Nimble Storage25 years of experience

Positive Business Result Storage

Rating: 10 out of 10
April 1, 2022
Vetted ReviewVerified User
HPE Nimble Storage are currently being used in our pre-production environments for virtualization setup. This storage user interface are easy and replication policy also easy ...
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Jagmender Kharb
Consultant - Information Technology
Technical Team Lead
Wipro Limited
HPE Nimble Storage10 years of experience

Nimble - Great at what it does.

Rating: 8 out of 10
February 3, 2022
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use HPE Nimble storage arrays in 5 different datacenters for our virtualized environments. They provide fibre channel block storage and datacenter to datacenter replication...
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Brian Aguirre
Manager - Information Technology
Sr Mgr Cloud Infrastructure
Allstream
HPE Nimble Storage6 years of experience

All Flash in Hybrid Solution

Rating: 9 out of 10
February 2, 2022
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
we use the HPE Nimble Hybrid storage to offload some of the non production Data from the ALL FLASH storage to Nimble. Since expanding the all flash storage is not a cost effec...
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Jeeva Kumar
Manager - Information Technology
Information System Manager
ZeOmega
HPE Nimble Storage1 year of experience

It's not just Nimble it's agile too!

Rating: 10 out of 10
February 2, 2022
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We are currently using HPE Nimble Storage for our primary and disaster recovery VMware datastores. These are setup as replication partners between our production site and our ...
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Scott Anderson
Administrator - Corporate
IT Administrator
KPFF
HPE Nimble Storage1 year of experience
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Product Demos

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI - Adding a new server using Stack Manager

YouTube

Managing HPE Nimble Storage using Stack Manager

YouTube
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Features

Enterprise Flash Array Storage

All-flash array storage is a solid state, high performance storage option.

8.7
Avg 9.0
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Product Details

What is HPE Nimble Storage?

HPE Nimble Storage Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Nimble Storage was acquired by HPE in 2017. The enterprise flash array product line now goes by the name HPE Nimble Storage.

Reviewers rate Flash Array Integration and Data Compression and Non-Intrusive Upgrades highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of HPE Nimble Storage are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Reviews From Top Reviewers

View all reviews
(1-5 of 14)

HPE Nimble boxes are a great choice for any organization, small or large.

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
November 12, 2019
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Construction Company, 51-200 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
HPE Nimble Storage
7 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Nimble Storage to host our CSV and shared volumes among our Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster Hosts. Each user at our company relies on it to serve data to them each day. When we first started considering a clustered approach virtual computer we needed to find something to host the VM's on such that they could be accessed by any clustered host and Nimble was the perfect solution for us.
Pros
  • 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.
Cons
  • The add on and upgrade parts for the system are a bit overpriced and if you buy your own third party they may try to not honor their warranty.
  • Setting up redundant Nimble boxes is not as well documented as it could be.
  • They are seeming to stop supporting some older devices a bit faster than they used too ALA Microsoft Windows and the way they are not handling version 10 though not as extreme.
Likelihood to Recommend
HPE Nimble is well suited for any situation where a company wants a stand along or synced across the WAN San solution without needing to invest in too much training for the admins. Since they sell both partly SSD based cache devices as well as all SSD devices, they have the best of both worlds whether you need consistently fast storage with some front end cache or high-level box that is always serving up fast. As in our case, it is also well suited as a back end iScsi based box for cluster scenarios.

If a company is just looking for Standard hard drive storage then Nimble is overkill.

Nimble Storage - Excellent choice

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
December 03, 2018
JK
Jeff Koelker
IT Security and Network Manager
DuTrac Community Credit Union (Financial Services, 51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
HPE Nimble Storage
1 year of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
The Nimble storage device is our primary source of network based storage. We house all of our virtual servers on this device which includes our test environment as well as our production environment. We noticed an enormous leap in ease of management as well as performance when comparing this device to our previous NetApp storage device.
Pros
  • GUI based interface for ease of management
  • No downtime for firmware/software upgrades
  • Integration with other vendors such as Veeam for backups and disaster recovery
Cons
  • 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.
Likelihood to Recommend
Nimble is able to handle a multitude of data repositories very well by applying "performance policies" to their storage volumes. This allows you to fine tune your environment and ensure mission critical repositories always have the appropriate resources attached to them where as your test volumes would get less. Some organizations may not need a separate storage device for their virtual machines and may opt to have their storage they use be built right into their hypervisor. Either way would work but I trust the Nimble equipment to house my data with that being their primary objective.

Nimble SAN revew

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
August 16, 2014
LA
Larry Askew
IT Systems Engineer
Transwest (Transportation/Trucking/Railroad, 501-1000 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
HPE Nimble Storage
2 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We needed small SANs, each to support VMWare HA clusters at different sites. We needed ease of use, good data/reporting, minimal rack space and lastly, while our performance needs could have been met by a wide range of products, we didn't want that to be a limiting factor down the road. While we have a range of server types running on the Nimble arrays, MS SQL servers and application servers are the most important.
Pros
  • The data available from the dashboard/UI is really great.
  • Nimble's tech support, not only for their product directly but also digging well into VMWare and working with VMWare tech support on one particularly difficult problem was impressive. They didn't draw a line and begin to ask that we contact another vendor.
  • The performance is really quite good. While our applications don't push the array at all, I was able to drive impressive IOPS using SQLIO. The numbers were particularly impressive considering ours is 1GB iSCSI.
Cons
  • One of our arrays has had no hardware failures at all while the other has had a failed power supply and controller. Both caused alerts to be generated and Nimble contacted us to ship the replacement components, so I suppose that's a weakness and strength in one.
  • While compression is a great thing, it does cause some confusion in terms of capacity when looking at vCenter and the Nimble web based UI. Somewhere between thin provisioning, multiple VMs per partition and compression, I sometimes find it difficult to know exactly where one might be tight on space.
Likelihood to Recommend
Really anybody needing a high performing iSCSI SAN with great performance, ease of use and support would be well served by the Nimble, that is if cost isn't a primary deciding factor.

Nimble Storage

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
January 18, 2019
CJ
Curtis Jackson
Network Admin
School City of Hammond (Education Management, 1001-5000 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
HPE Nimble Storage
3 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Our Nimble storage array is used as SAN storage for our VMWare infrastructure across the district. It is fast storage and easy to manage.
Pros
  • Storage is fast
  • Easy to manage
  • Augments our VMware environment as a SAN datastore
Cons
  • For our usage, there are no problems
Likelihood to Recommend
It is very well suited for VMware infrastructure usage including VDI deployment. We were able to spin up the hybrid storage as a datastore in our VMware environment quickly and easily. There is a plugin available for VMware vCenter to assist with datastore maintenance including resizing, cloning, deleting, and creating snapshots. The management console is easy to use and gives insight into space utilization and monitoring. Software updates are also very simple.

Nimble Storage - Highly Recommended

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
March 22, 2016
AN
Anthony Nguyen
Sr VDI Administrator
Direct Energy (Utilities, 5001-10,000 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
HPE Nimble Storage
2 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We are using the Nimble Storage Array in our current VDI Environment. Last year when we decided to upgrade our old infrastructure with newer equipment, the question of storage came up and we needed to find a device that could handle our workload plus be easy to scale and have manageability. Our search took us to Nimble, which was already a leader in storage using adaptive flash arrays. Their patented CASL (Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout) was extremely impressive in I/O reduction and performance. The enhanced quickness could be seen immediately on our SQL servers, resulting in faster VDI times and related services. Nimble also has tie-in compatibility with other big named technology such as Cisco (SmartStack Integration) and VMware SRM (SAN Replication). This allowed it to easily be used with our Cisco USC and with our Disaster Recovery Site where we used VMware's Site Recovery Manager. It should also be noted that the Nimble team was extremely helpful during our POC (proof of concept), implementation, and post implementation. They provided knowledge, insight, and training to our group and were always ready to help, if we needed assistance.
Pros
  • CASL (Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout) - basically the backbone of their OS that allows them to be so efficient in speed.
  • Management Portal - Insight offers storage management and predictive analytics (prescriptive guidance).
  • Support - Excellent support model. All representative were very knowledgeable and could assist or expedite to someone who could.
Cons
  • Price - the Nimble Solution is on the high end of the storage market.
  • Hybrid Flash solution - part SSD, part HDD. There is rumor that an all Flash Array is coming soon - Q3?
  • Education - not much in formal training is available for this product. There is a class given by Nimble but is not thorough enough to teach someone to be certified in using Nimble.
Likelihood to Recommend
If using a virtualized environment, especially with virtualized SQL, Nimble Storage with all it's features would be highly recommended.
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