HPE Nimble Storage Reviews

We use HPE Nimble for deduplication and to compress data.

We have a large number of customers that rely on high availability from this product.

The deduplication and compression capabilities are powerful. We see deduplication savings ratios at ten to one, and twenty to one.

For me, Nimble has two main problems.

There is no active-active controller, which means that we can only have one controller online at a time. Replacing the controller is what I see as the only major issue, although I'm not sure that HPE can do this.

Nimble has a limit for objects. We have it configured for VMware, so if you have a laptop machine then you have a problem because of this limit. Also, if you have a virtual desktop with a lot of VMs, such as 2,000 to 3,000, then it's a problem because the window has a limit.

I have been using HPE Nimble Storage for more than two years.

Nimble is a stable product.

Scalability-wise, it is very good.

I have been in contact with technical support and I would rate them an eight or nine out of ten. They are very good.

I am also using HPE 3PAR.

I also have experience with HPE Primera, which is a better product. It's a merge of 3PAR and Nimble and it's a more stable storage solution.

If I were comparing a group of products then I would rate StorageWorks MSA a five, Nimble a seven, 3PAR an eight, Primera a nine, and StorageWorks XP a ten.

The initial setup is very simple, and in fact, the simplest of these solutions.

It takes approximately four hours to deploy including hooking up power, cabling, getting it set up on the rack, and configuration.

Deployment and maintenance are done in-house.

We keep the versions updated.

In summary, this is a good product and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We are resellers. We provide products to our customers.

Unfortunately, we were not able to sell this product because it is too expensive. We use it in our own cloud. We created a VMware VCPP cloud to provide VMware services to our enterprise customers.

The performance and the processor are good.

HPE has very good technology in terms of storage, and they have very good support assistance.

The problem is the price. It needs to be improved.

I would like to see an added feature to auto-fix, or a dynamic alerting system on storage. This is very important because we would like to prevent a disk failure before it happens.

If we had some sort of AI in place to alert us then we could replace the disk before it occurs.

Also, we would like to receive alerts if space is over the limits. This is necessary for us.

I have been selling HPE Nimble Storage for a few months.

It's very stable.

It's a scalable product. We have one POC user in our organization.

Technical support is good. HPE has a good channel system in Taiwan.

Previously, we used Dell.

Nimble Storage is too expensive for our enterprise customers.

We are still trying other products. HPE GreenLake has very nice packaging. It's a financial program, and we used Nimble through this financing program. We didn't purchase it, we were testing. 

We are still testing other products, such as Dell Storage.

We have some local storage vendors, so we are not formally using it in production.

We are not able to recommend this product as we are still in the testing phase. We are still doing the POC tests.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The device works very well.

We like how we can report and access everything directly over the cloud.

The solution runs pretty fast.

The solution requires a higher availability.

The pricing of the solution isn't ideal. They should work to make it more affordable. It's very expensive.

I'd like to be able to configure the solution from vCenter, which isn't possible right now.

It would be great if the solution offered even more integrations and plugins.

We've been using the solution for three years.

The solution is very stable. It's been working for three years, and we haven't had any errors. There aren't crashes. There isn't any bug or glitch that affects the way it functions.

The scalability is good. It's easy to expand the solution as needed.

We have around 1,000 people working with the solution currently. We use it quite extensively.

The technical support is really good. They give us adapted support and it's very helpful. We're satisfied with the level of support we get.

I have experience with a few different solutions. Nimble is quite a large solution that runs well without errors. One of its competitors, NetApp, is good but hard to configure. You need to really be an expert to configure it. With Nimble, you don't have to be overly technical. 

I've also worked with Huawei devices in the past as well.

The solution has an easy initial setup. It was straightforward. We didn't find it to be complex. You don't need advanced knowledge, or to be an expert.

Deployment is pretty quick and takes just 25 minutes. It's really quite fast.

We had three team members deploy the solution. They also maintain it. They were all part of the administration team.

We were able to install the solution ourselves without any outside help. We didn't need any help from an integrator or consultant.

The solution is quite expensive. We can't really afford to buy a second device.

We've recently been looking at Pure Storage.

We're currently using model CS5000 and we're on version 5.05.200.

We are not yet on the cloud. We're on-premise. We installed it in our data center. In tests and features, they call it InfoSight. InfoSight collects logs and tries to send to the cloud. It's customizable, and it offers reports for you and any upgrade. It tries to give you information about your device.

I'd recommend the solution. I'd rate it nine out of ten.

Our primary use of this solution is to host business-critical applications in the cloud for customers.

We can have fewer resources manning and monitoring the storage and we can reallocate resources to work on other things while maintaining confidence in our storage solution.

We have successfully integrated various applications such as SAP Business One, Microsoft Dynamics GP, any of the ERP systems we have tried work.

The Nimble Storage solution has enhanced performance over the previous system.

I haven't got the details of the IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) so I don't know it exactly, but definitely performance on the service is much better.

The most valuable feature for our organization is that the solution provides us access to the storage we need without having to have multiple storage experts on staff to address changing storage needs.

As far as what future versions of the product should include, I don't have any experience with what it is lacking. It is really up to the technical guys to determine what is potentially missing from the solution.

The uptime for the solution is excellent. So far, so good.

While we have not had the need to scale yet and we haven't utilized it, it does seem like the utility should scale up quite easily.

The storage capacity efficiency is decent. We get about 2.1 dedupe capabilities using the solution.

Our experiences with technical support have proven to be excellent so far.

We previously used a different solution and knew we needed to change our solution to provide storage for our virtualization. The storage solution we had previously could not provide this and so it was not adequate. It was a rented system from another company and we were not happy with the performance.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. However, we did need to ask some questions to understand how they do the LANs and other technical details of it. There were no major stumbling blocks.

We didn't use a vendor or reseller to deploy. We implemented the solution ourselves.

Our return on investment appears to be excellent. The product delivers a lot of return to our company in various ways.

We purchased the solution for something in the $80,000 range. It was a fixed-price option.

We had a couple of options that we were considering before going with Nimble. We also looked at some of the offerings from Dell. I think those were the two main ones. There was a third one, Tintri, which we were not happy with because of their bankruptcy filings. Nimble was the leading option coming out of the gate and ended up being the solution we selected.

On a scale of one to ten, I would say this product is a nine. I think it does what it promises and support is decent. The only drawback I find is the size of the components. They never told us that the hardware has a large form factor and we were barely able to squeeze it into our older racks.

Storage is a critical piece of our business and, with a small team like the one that we have, Nimble ends up being a pretty good system that fits our need while lowering administrative needs.

For anyone considering this solution seriously, I would suggest you do your research with other competitors out there and look at what you are using, what type of infrastructure you have, as well as resources you have to support your system. Based on that, I would do a small POC (Proof of Concept). The flash version is more expensive, but I think you can get away with this with a hybrid model. The solution we chose is a hybrid system which we found to be just as good as the flash system. We have another system that is flash-only and the hybrid appears to behave just as well. We accomplished that by just adding 20% or so SSDs and doing that gave us what we needed to achieve similar performance.

We have feeds into HP that give us the Infosight analysis. However, I'm not sure if we're doing it proactively.

The all-flash solution could be considered as positioning our organization for growth, but we also have a hybrid system which we find just as good as the flash. Either would position us for growth compared to previous solutions.

Our primary use case if for our central data storage. This contains our files, financial services, and customer data.

We are a 24/7 operation, even though our corporate office is a typical Monday through Friday operation. It is vital that we have all of our data up and running, all of the time because a lot of our customers have what they call "volume runs" during the month. For example, one of our customers is subscription-based, so we have to run about three million packages during a two-week timeframe. All of the data has to be fully accessible and we can't afford to have any downtime.

This solution has increased our performance by ten to fifteen percent. From both an operational standpoint and management perspective, it is an improvement. It has also reduced costs and allowed us to allocate more towards other projects.

My engineers have said that this solution has improved our throughput. This has helped because when a customer comes up asked for a solution then we can guarantee it will actually meet the demand for their product or service.

The All-Flash storage positions us for growth because of the speed aspect. We have pool data that doesn’t have to be accessed quickly, but when it comes to other things then we are required to be on the spot. This is especially true for SQL databases.

The most valuable features of this solution are it's reliability and the redundancy that it provides. This is also a good product from a financial perspective.

The performance of this solution allows us to have real-time access for SQL databases.

I would like to see more advanced analytics in the next release of this solution. Perhaps it will help us to see things that we're not seeing already.

We have almost one hundred percent uptime. It seems very reliable and cost-effective, and it seems like it can be molded to any solution that you need.

From what I have heard, it is extremely scalable. It is interesting because you can start with a very small margin and expand to as high as you want, with very little effort on the side of the end-user.

Technical support for this solution is very good. It's always on-demand, and we never feel like we're too far off from getting support. It's always available when we need it, and you're getting a live person a lot faster than you would from other providers.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

The initial setup of this solution was a lot more straightforward than we thought it was going to be.

We handled the deployment in-house.

The ROI from this solution comes from the savings in time, just from managing and keeping everything up and running. It also reduces the stress and burden on our database team.

We looked at providers other than HP, such as Pure Storage, but we don't like to be on the bleeding edge. We prefer to be with providers that have been stable and around for a long period of time.

This solution is efficient in more than one way. Not only is it high performing, but it is also more compact and fits better in our storage arrays than equipment from other storage providers. This helps out with space in the data center.

We have experienced an increase in performance of ten to fifteen percent.

This product has proven itself to be very reliable and we're looking forward to where it's going to take us in the future. Everything that they've told us it's going to do, it has done and exceeded.

The biggest lesson that I have learned is not to run at any solution that is already out there. Really dive into what it is that you need. Find out what your baseline is, and have a number in mind from a cost perspective. Then take a look at what your priorities are. Is it cost, or uptime, or perhaps having a reliable solution? Always define what your parameters are.

My advice to anybody considering a solution such as this is to always do your research. Look at everything, including peer evaluations, and always take your time. I have met a lot of people that try to rush into a solution and then end up finding stuff that they didn't think they needed. So, as much as possible, take your time and do your studies.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We have a primary data center, and then a secondary data center for our applications and our colo (colocation data center). Our financial and document management systems are on this platform.

This solution has given us reliability that is evident by the fact that it has been running for five years with virtually no hiccups.

InfoSight automatically predicted or resolved problems in your environment. It has given us insights with respect to our VM using more resources than we thought.

Our performance has increased by approximately ten to fifteen percent.

The most valuable features of this solution are the replication functionality and the snapshotting of the storage array.

InfoSight has been very useful because it gives me the ability to see what ones are actually working and how they’re functioning.

We use this for business-critical applications. Our financial and documentation management systems are on this platform.

An area that needs improvement is extending the life of the device after five years.

The solution is very good with respect to stability. The uptime is very good.

The scalability of this solution is moderate. 

Storage capacity efficiency is very fitting for our company and our usage.

Technical support for this solution is good.

We implemented this solution because our legacy applications needed a better solution than we already had. We used to use the HP LeftHand Storage Array. Our performance has increased by approximately ten to fifteen percent.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

We deployed this solution ourselves.

We have seen ROI, but I do not have specific data points.

Our options were IBM and HP, and we found that HP was the better choice for us.

Using this solution has shown us some of the things that are possible, and what we can better improve on in the future.

Nimble Storage is a solution that I would recommend to anybody who is in the same kind of space as I am.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use for this solution is SAN storage for virtual server workloads. We do not use cloud volumes.

This is a storage solution and while it is faster than our old storage platform, that in and of itself hasn't really improved any of the operational aspects of the company.

Performance has been restored to the same level of what we replaced, although it has taken six months of working with Hewlett Packard to allow them to understand our unique environment.

I don't think that it's fair to say that All-Flash is for growth. It's the next logical progression that we had to make.

I really like the form factor, which is nice and compact and small. 

We do use Infosight, but it does not greatly affect us because we are one hundred percent Hyper-V, and the analytics are not yet released for that environment. I know that they are coming later this year.

The storage capacity efficiency is very good. 

It would have been nice if the vendor had informed us of a known bug that occurred during the firmware upgrade because we could have prevented our only major failure.

I would like to see greater integration with Microsoft's Hyper-V platform. We are one hundred percent Hyper-V and no longer have use for the expensive VMware platform.

This solution is very stable. The uptime is excellent. We had only one major failure, and it was during the firmware upgrade. There was a known bug, and it would have been nice if they had told us because we could have prevented the failure.

Performance has been restored to the same level of what we replaced, although it has taken six months of working with Hewlett Packard to allow them to understand our unique environment.

This is a very scalable solution.

The support for this solution has been phenomenal.

We needed additional capacity and our old SAN solution was seven years old, at about end-of-life. We had been using a Dell Compellent, and it wasn't really suited for our type of workload.

The initial setup of this solution is very straightforward.

We handled the deployment in-house.

I would say that we have seen ROI, but the specifics are elusive because it was replacing an older, end-of-life platform.

There are no licensing costs for this solution.

The only vendor on our shortlist was Nimble. We had investigated them years ago because other sister companies within the community had already begun using them. We want to have a synergy with them.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this solution is to only make changes in maintenance windows, even when the engineers say that nothing will happen.

My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to go through a detailed sizing operation with HPE so that it can be appropriately scoped.

We do use this solution for business-critical applications but it is too broad and there are too many to name a specific example.

I like this product, but there is always room for improvement and nothing can be a ten.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Secondary storage and supplemental primary storage are our use cases. We use Nimble for business-critical applications such as accounting, our in-house EPS platforms.

The InfoSight platform and the reporting help us to identify network issues and compatibility problems.

All-flash also positions our company for growth. We've deployed 3PAR all-flash for our core applications and will not transition outside of flash from this point forward.

Nimble has increased performance with better IOPS evaluation, mixed-load capacity. Also, it improves throughput which means we've been able to transition off of remaining rack mounts onto Nimble plus virtualization structure, in a cost-effective manner.

• Reliability
• Performance
• Cost

The solution's uptime is fantastic. It's 100 percent. In addition, Nimble's storage capacity efficiency is very effective.

I'm very impressed with the stability of the solution.

We haven't had to scale beyond our initial purchase.

We have used tech support. Nimble's technical support is excellent.

We previously used Dell EMC. We went to Nimble because of space-growth requirements.

The initial setup was straightforward. The platform is fairly intuitive with standardized SCSI configuration and it was up and running. The product was very self-explanatory so we were able to move it into production very fast.

We had install assistance from HPE, but they would probably not be required for further installs. Our experience with HPE's assistance was good.

We've seen ROI in the retirement of obsolete platforms, the reduction of the licensing cost of outside products, and by collapsing of other storage platforms into a single platform.

We looked at 3PAR, Tintri, Pure, and more. We chose Nimble because it was an HPE acquisition and due to familiarity with Nimble products.

My advice is that you bring it onsite and evaluate InfoSight's reporting.

The biggest lesson we've learned from using Nimble is that it provides better insight with a single pane of glass.

It's feature-complete for what we are looking for. I rate it a ten out of ten. We've been very happy with Nimble.