HPE Nimble boxes are a great choice for any organization, small or large.
Updated November 12, 2019
HPE Nimble boxes are a great choice for any organization, small or large.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with HPE Nimble Storage
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Nimble's snapshot capability has saved us several times. It would be hard to estimate the amount of money we would have had to spend, in additional support, without the capability to quickly revert a LUN/VM back to its previous state. Much better than relying on VMware or MS Snapshots.
- Having the Nimble has allowed us the capability to build better and faster clusters which in turns as allowed our users to do more work in less time.
- Nimble can be expensive to start off with so initially it took a while for our ROI to turn positive.
Starwind is much less expensive and is more of a virtual "provide your own hardware" San so its performance will really depend on how much extra money you put into building the back end. With that said the amount of work it takes to get Starwind working correctly and building the hardware side really makes Nimble seem like a better value in the end. And since Nimble is an all in one solution you do not have to worry about the vendor blaming any other hardware you brought into the mix. We selected Nimble because of the ease of management and lack of need to build the back end.
Do you think HPE Nimble Storage delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with HPE Nimble Storage's feature set?
Yes
Did HPE Nimble Storage live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of HPE Nimble Storage go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy HPE Nimble Storage again?
Yes