Item: HPE Nimble Storage
Rating: 9
Author: Jeeva Kumar

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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 effective solution, we decided to migrate all the non production Data/VM's to a Hybrid storage this maintaining a same level of IOPS, Latency and Bandwidth. Making this decision not only helped us in reducing the cost, but also helped in a good ROI without compromising on the performance of the infrastructure

Pros and Cons

All Flash similar Performance including Latency, I/O bandwidth
Integrates very well with the Vmware
zero downtime on firmware upgrades
Decent Reports

Would like to have a option to customize the reports based on the customer needs
Mapping HOSTS in the storage is a tedious task when there are more than 100 Hosts.
custom CLI scripts to automate the day-to-day activities

Return on Investment

Cost savings
Got a All flash similar performance
Happy Customer
zero downtime

Alternatives Considered

Dell EMC Unity, Pure Storage FlashArray and NetApp AFF A-Series All Flash Arrays

The Main reason for choosing HPE Nimble Hybrid storage is the Cost. However, even though its not ALL Flash Storage it was still providing the high performance, Latency less than 2 ms, good compression and de-duplication, zeop downtime on software upgrade, good reporting through infosight etc. with all these pros, it didn't make sense to invest on a ALL flash storage thats costs 3 time higher than nimble.

Key Insights

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

Other Software Used

ManageEngine Patch Manager Plus, SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA), Redgate SQL Monitor

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

All Flash in Hybrid Solution

Overall Satisfaction with HPE Nimble Storage