HPE Nimble Storage Reviews

The main purpose for using HPE Nimble Storage is virtualization.

The positive aspects of HPE Nimble Storage include very easy cloud management to identify problems, and it also has the capability to forecast performance in the future, which is a benefit for us as a reseller to recommend to customers that have a service contract with us.

Predictive analytics helps to improve operations.

There is no need for improvement for the customer, but the upgrade process should be more flexible. Currently, customers need to buy everything together to update, and a little more flexibility would be good for both the customer and the reseller.

The customer doesn't buy the Enterprise edition because it's expensive; I haven't been managing it.

They are hard to understand us when we request their support. It's not a significant problem, but sometimes their first and second-tier engineers cannot solve the problem effectively and need to escalate to the third-tier engineer, who is quite worse in terms of understanding our problem.

For our customer segment, which is medium and small business, the solution is good in terms of latency and performance.

There are no issues with performance and latency.

Regarding their support for real-time analytics and mission-critical applications, their support is similar to ProLiant, and it's not quite good.

Neutral

I cannot give an opinion on the installation of HPE Nimble Storage because all the Nimble Storage that we provide to the customer is installed using HPE service.

My official job title is Technical Manager.

I never sell the T-Series PowerEdge for Tower servers; I just sell the rack.

I am familiar with OpenManage and we have been implementing it for the customer, but I am not familiar with Dell CloudIQ for infrastructure monitoring or SharePlex.

I know about OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter, but we don't have a customer that is using this.

I don't know much about Flash Optimized Architecture, but my customer is using both hybrid and full flash, and the customer that uses hybrid has benefited in terms of performance.

HPE Nimble Storage is fairly priced compared to Dell; they are directly compatible and can compete with each other.

Based on my direct experience, HPE Nimble Storage is easier to use compared to Dell, although I don't have much experience with Dell Storage.

The interface and the concept of the storage structure make it easier to use.

My overall experience as a reseller with HPE Nimble Storage is very good, and I would rate it 10 out of 10.

Positive

HPE Nimble Storage is mainly SAN-based, dual-controller-based, and two-node-based storage. It's for only a SAN-based solution. HPE Nimble Storage is a unified solution that you can use on-premises and deploy on the public cloud.

You can remotely manage the solution from anywhere. Compared to other vendors like Dell, IBM, and Supermicro, HPE Nimble Storage is very easy to deploy. The solution is plug-and-play, where you can buy a chassis and upgrade an existing chassis. You can use OneView to deploy, configure, and manage HPE Nimble Storage.

HPE Nimble Storage is a very organized and customer-oriented tool. Its support service is very good worldwide.

Most customers in the Bangladesh market want a hybrid solution that has both SAN-based and NAS-based storage. HPE Nimble Storage provides only SAN-based storage and does not support NAS-based storage.

I have been using HPE Nimble Storage for seven years.

The solution provides good data availability and performance.

I rate the solution’s stability ten out of ten.

Around 300 users are using the solution in our organization.

I rate the solution’s scalability ten out of ten.

Customers can create tickets for their issues, and the technical support team provides support.

Positive

The solution's initial setup is very easy. A non-IT person can also use a manual to deploy HPE Nimble Storage.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive and ten is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing ten out of ten.

Dell is the main competitor for HPE Nimble Storage. Dell has a hybrid solution that supports both SAN-based and NAS-based storage. However, HPE Nimble Storage doesn't have a hybrid solution that supports both SAN-based and NAS-based storage.

You can upgrade the solution to 45 drives, including NVMe, SaaS, SSD, and other existing infrastructure. Then, you can integrate with an additional chassis and upgrade 400 drives. A backup solution is integrated with the solution by default.

HPE Nimble Storage has already integrated InfoSight, a predictive analytics feature that detects failure. When your storage's hard disk consumes 70% to 80%, it automatically generates an alert to replace your hard disk. This is done by AI, which has already been integrated into HPE Nimble Storage.

When your hard disk fails, HPE Nimble Storage automatically creates a case and mails it to the HPE portal and distributor.

I would recommend the solution to users who have a lot of processes, use frequently hit software, and maximum read-intensive users. The solution is ideal for financial institutes and banks where the transaction process is very high.

Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.

HPE Nimble Storage offers a 6-nines data availability, meaning it offers 99.99 percent data availability. I am able to achieve 6-nines data availability with HPE Nimble Storage.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that HPE offers an integrated backup solution, which is very seamlessly integrated with HPE Nimble Storage, which is easy to configure and schedule. HPE Nimble Storage is considered to be a secured one. If a ransomware or enterprise-level attack happens, my infrastructure remains totally secure. If any virtual machine gets damaged or collapses, we have built a backup solution, which will take a minute to restore the same version of HPE Nimble Storage in our company.

HPE Nimble Storage's cost is very high, making it one of its downsides. HPE Nimble Storage's cost is very high compared with any HCI solutions, like HPE's SimpliVity, Nutanix, VMware, or Dell VxRail.

A person requires a special skill set to operate HPE Nimble Storage because there are hardly any solutions similar to Nimble Storage in the market.

The product's support can be made faster and more responsive if HPE trains its partners in such a way that they acquire more expertise on Nimble Storage through the training sessions.

HPE Nimble Storage is dependent on only VMware vSphere Hypervisor. In the future, HPE has to make Nimble Storage feasible with other hypervisors like Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix Acropolis, and RHEV, meaning it should be hypervisor agnostic.

I have been using HPE Nimble Storage for almost a year. My company has a partnership with HPE.

There are no issues with the stability of the solution.

The solution is scalable up to 32 nodes, which is very much sufficient for our infrastructure and for any other infrastructures because 32 nodes with high computing, which we get nowadays with each server in our company, is

very much sufficient.

There are 800 to 1200 users of the product in my company.

The solution's technical support is very good. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have mostly worked with HCI solutions in the market, which includes HPE Alletra dHCI.

The product's deployment process is carried out perfectly from HPE's end. My company receives a good support mechanism from HPE. Whatever commitments my company has made to our customers in terms of SLA, we are able to achieve that SLA with the help of HPE's installation and implementation team.

One project manager, two infrastructure engineers, and two network engineers can manage the solution's deployment.

The solution can be deployed in two weeks.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on an on-premises model.

In terms of return on investment, I can say that I don't face any downtime when I use the solution. I can say that I have a solution that works with zero data loss and functions with zero downtime, which can help improve my business and reduce my OpEx costs because I don't have to rely on our company's engineers for their expertise as we get full support from HPE. I can say that the tool helps me to reduce 30 to 40 percent of my company's CapEx cost.

My company has opted for HPE GreenLake payment model, meaning the billing is done on a quarterly basis. HPE has a good buyback policy in place that allows users to return dHCI's hardware after five years and choose whatever is required at that time. HPE usually provides a new solution with a new price after deducting or considering the buyback price. My company pays for license and infra costs every quarter, so it's an OpEx model and not a CapEx model.

I have heard that NetApp, Dell, and Cisco offer something similar to HPE Alletra dHCI and HPE Nimble Storage, but I have never had an experience with any such solutions.

The solution's maintenance is very easy. I can contact HPE's support team or raise a ticket via the dashboard, and we can get L1 or L2 support remotely. I don't require somebody to come to my premises and do the maintenance.

Those who run mission-critical applications that can bring you business or create revenues need to opt for HPE Nimble Storage, as it is the best solution that can give you 100 percent uptime. With HPE Nimble Storage, you can provide TCO and ROI to your management or CFO as it offers you a better deal, especially in terms of CapEx costs.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

We use Nimble Storage to virtualize several specialized workloads. 

Nimble's phone-home capability is decent. The compression, dedupe, and caching are also solid. Generally, I like the simplicity. It's almost a set-and-forget solution.

Nimble Storage could increase its flexibility by adding more protocol options. Nimble mainly uses fibre channel protocols, whereas many other storage arrays support fibre channel, iCSI, and NFS protocols.

I have used Nimble Storage for more than eight years. 

I rate Nimble Storage eight out of 10 for stability.

I rate Nimble Storage seven out of 10 for scalability. I have used it for organizations with user bases ranging from 500 to 3,000.

I rate HPE customer service eight out of 10.

Positive

The other product we used was no longer available, so we switched to the next-best solution. 

I rate Nimble Storage seven out of 10 for ease of setup. It's relatively straightforward. We've deployed it ourselves, but we had professional services do it a few times. It went smoothly both ways. Deployment takes about a week. 

I rate Nimble Storage seven out of 10 for affordability. The price could be improved. We aren't using the subscription-based version, so we are fully on-prem with a five-year support license. 

We evaluated a few vendors, including Dell EMC, NetApp, and IBM. Nimble Storage delivered the most bang for our buck. It was also relatively simple to deploy. 

I rate HPE Nimble Storage seven out of 10. It's a good solution, but there are other options. I would recommend it, depending on your workloads. 

I primarily use the solution for storage. 

It has a dual power supply. Whenever I want to upgrade, it's got a pack of power with the network and everything. It's got zero downtime.

It's very easy, very compatible, and user-friendly. 

You don't have to do anything. When you power up, it'll ask you a couple of questions. For example, what IP address is required, the name, and how many partitions or, if you don't do the partition, just go for the IP addresses. 

It has a power backup network card and everything.

You don't have to go directly to the storage to create anything. It's automatically from the VM or any other software. Whatever you are using, you just create storage over there or in space, and it automatically creates it in the Nimble.

It has SSD cache and it has a physical drive as well. It is fast. It'll automatically sense your data. Whatever data you are pulling frequently, it'll store in that cache instead of storing directly on the hard drive to pull or store that. It is a very good feature.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

It is scalable. 

It's stable. 

I don't find anything that is needed in terms of improvement. They are now gradually upgrading everything and are more powerful than we have.

It was a bit expensive.

I've used the solution for a year. 

The stability has been good. I would rate it eight out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

We do not have plans to increase usage at this time.

It can scale, however. I'd rate the scalability eight out of ten. 

Technical support is good. Nimble talks directly with the HB, the heartbeat. Nimble sends its heartbeat to the support team every day, every hour, whatever the schedule is. If anything happens, it automatically will open a ticket without calling me. They call you back and will fix the issue for you.

We've also used Dell storage solutions. They were not pure storage, however. 

It is a straightforward solution to set up. 

HPE came and racked the solution for us. That's all we needed. 

We have witnessed an ROI while using this solution. 

The solution is a bit expensive. I would rat the pricing six out of ten in terms of affordability. 

We did evaluate a few other options. However, we found HPE to be the best. 

I'd advise other potential users not to go anywhere else and just use Nimble. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We use HPE Nimble Storage for VMware VMDK object workloads.

The first installation we did was at a mine in South America, Chile, in a place called Ike where the elevation was very high that spinning disks were failing, the meantime for failure was low. The main reason we put our first all-flash array was that it was solid-state which has no moving parts. This solution allowed our organization to operate in that location.

The management software that runs in the cloud is called InfoSight and it is very good. It is similar to machine learning software that monitors your hardware.

I would like to have more administrative rights, for example, root-level administrative rights to the underlying OS of the storage array. We want more access to the kind of underlying infrastructure of the storage array rather than relying on support. However, most companies are looking to have more managed solutions which is the opposite direction of what I want. 

I have been using HPE Nimble Storage for four years.

We have approximately 5,000 virtual machines servers and over 100 storage arrays and they are placed all over our organization. We are using this solution extensively in our organization.

The technical support has been good in our experience. I have worked with the support quite a lot and I have not had any issues with their support.

We have used NetApp previously and our management preferred to use HPE Nimble Storage.

The installation is straightforward. The whole implementation took use approximately one day.

We did the implementation using an in-house team. The solution does not require a lot of maintenance. I have not updated the software in a year and when it is updated it is all done online with no downtime.

There is a one-time price for hardware, and with the software support, everything is included, such as software upgrades. The licensing of the solution is included in the cost of the hardware and the support is an extra cost. We have purchased support on an annual basis, but you can purchase support up front for up to seven years. We usually buy five years and near the time of the expiry, we sometimes extend it. 

I have evaluated Pure Storage and they are very similar to HPE Nimble Storage but are a lot more expensive. For ease of setup and cost perspective, HPE Nimble Storage is the better choice.

We are transitioning a lot of our hardware to Azure and we partnered with Microsoft on their cloud services. For our on-premise setup, we are doing a switch from traditional storage arrays to more of a VMware Cloud Foundation type of structure where we are using VMware vSAN instead of storage arrays.

I rate HPE Nimble Storage an eight out of ten.

The solution can be used for SAP HANA applications and some Linux-based databases. Our customers use it for SUSE Linux.

InfoSight is a valuable feature. It enables 24/7 monitoring and administration of our storage. Whenever there is a fault, the user will be alerted. It is a 100% customer satisfaction-based experience. Everything is on the dashboard.

The solution could reduce its price.

I have been working with the solution for the past three years.

I didn't see any failure so far.

I rate the tool’s stability a ten out of ten.

We have around 180 users.

I rate the product’s scalability a ten out of ten.

The intervention of the technical support is only to facilitate parts replacement. InfoSight gives the user information like predictive failure and faulty parts. The vendor is then notified about it.

The initial setup is simple. HPE makes every deployment simple and easy to integrate. It takes us two to three hours to deploy the product because everything is connected over the internet. We need internet connectivity for the deployment.

We need only one engineer to deploy the solution.

We can choose between a yearly license fee or once in three years. The solution’s pricing is reasonable for the features that it provides.

I haven't checked the latest version of Nimble yet. Maybe there will be lots of improvements after the 2019 version. It is a good solution. I recommend it. My recommendation depends on what the customer needs. Sometimes, customers overdo the specifications. Sometimes they need only SaaS-based storage.

Customers should know what they need and what applications are running on it. Then, the partners can recommend a solution accordingly. Customers should not take the specification directly to the supplier. They should ask the partners. Partners would give cost-effective recommendations.

Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.

We're a reseller. We're a managed security agency. 

Our clients need fast storage. They run VM environments on it.

The interaction with VMware is most valuable. 

Its pricing could be better. It's expensive.

In terms of features, it just works. It's in there, and it just keeps working. I don't spend a lot of time actively interacting with the Nimble environment, and there aren't any particular features that I want to see because it just works. I don't have any use cases where it's falling short.

I've been using this solution for three years.

I'd rate it a ten out of ten in terms of stability.

At this stage, I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of scalability. I know it can scale up a lot, but I haven't had to do it, so I don't have firsthand experience with it.

In terms of the size of our clients, it's New Zealand. A medium business is probably about five hundred users.

It's integrated with HPE InfoSight, so if there are any alerts, HPE gets advised at the same time we do. It's incredibly simple for me to log a ticket because I just click log ticket from within InfoSight, and people get back to me and fix it. It's very simple.

I'd rate their support a 10 out of 10. They've always been excellent.

Positive

It was all fantastic because HPE came out and built and deployed the entire environment. Configuration was very easy because we didn't have to do anything. HPE aided it all.

I'd rate its setup a ten out of ten in terms of ease because we didn't have to do anything. All we did was pay for HPE to come on-site and build everything. It took two weeks.

It's expensive. It could be cheaper. I'd rate it a five out of ten in terms of pricing.

We're on a yearly licensing. I haven't come across any additional costs. We just paid for three-year support.

Make sure you scale it correctly the first time. Just make sure you're very aware of your own environment and exactly what you're going to be running.

I'd rate it a solid nine out of ten.

It’s an excellent solution. The failure rates are minimal.

It’s easy to set up.

It's a very easy solution. Whenever I have a question, I find they have already provided a solution for it. For example, I want to sort out backups so that I offload some data off the Nimble since I don't want online to be clogged. They'll tell you we've got storage which is where you write your backup, which one is a partner where you can back up this information, get Veeam to store the backup, and then you can configure and send it to the storage if I want to run high availability.

They have really thought through their solution. They've covered everything.

Even their support is great. We have a support contract, so when there's an escalation on the system, you even see an email from them telling you that you have this issue. They do respond quickly and help you resolve your daily from the log. They’ll say: “This is the issue. Do this.” It's so easy to work with.

When we’re setting up the solution, making options available regarding the replication tool mechanism would be ideal. There's a Nimble storage-based replication. They need to ensure that a customer beforehand understands what they want to do. When I joined, and I'm only about a year and four months in my new role here, I found that there was a gap in understanding of the type of replication they wanted and what they got. This is why right now, we're trying to change. Instead of having storage level replication, we're going to now buy Veeam so that we can run the applications active. That's how they want it set up. They didn't understand they could do that. They need to give options.

In terms of the setup, when someone is buying it, they should actually maybe ensure that they cover the admin portion. They should sit the user down to discuss and say, "If you want to deploy a solution like this, do it like that. If you want it like that, you need to buy this extra, maybe it's Veeam, and ensure you do it like this." That way, they don't just buy Nimble to set it up, and then it's not doing what it's doing. Then they'll think the solution doesn't work. Meanwhile, it's how they implemented it.

I’ve been using the solution since 2019.

We have about 350 users on the solution currently. It's sitting in a data center.

It’s pretty simple to set up. It’s not overly complex or difficult. I’m still earning it. However, it looks simple.

The Nimble deployment took maybe two to three weeks. I'm sure there was even education from the team. It was new to the team. Obviously, to get that sorted, it took a while as it's like a new greenfield. You start from zero, and then with time, it comes together. Now, they’d likely do it in a quicker time as they know the solution.

The pricing is okay. However, it can be cheaper. Performance wise it is okay. If the price was better, it would mean there’s no reason for anyone to think of changing if they bought Nimble.

The cost depends on what components you want to include.

We are just a user.

I'm learning to understand it. I originally was not a support administrator, however, over time, found that it's actually straightforward. I'm looking forward to getting certified or trained in Nimble.

I would advise people to go for it. They just need to make sure that they understand the support around Nimble, in terms of them knowing how to support solutions. Obviously, you don't want every call that comes to you to have to phone Nimble to do it for you. You want to support everyone quickly and escalate issues only.

Also, ensure that you look out for the configuration or proposed architecture from Nimble in terms of the best implementation approach where you have the store ones and the other supporting components to get it right. Sometimes people rush to make it cheaper, however, then you eliminate certain key components that backup mechanisms.

So far, that solution is great. I'd rate it nine out of ten.