HPE Nimble Storage Reviews

Originally posted https://www.juku.it/en/nimble-storage-all-flash-late-but-right/

Nimble has finally launched its new All Flash Array: Predictive Flash Array. It took too long but, now that it’s out, it can’t be said they didn’t get it right!

All-Flash, finally

Nimble-Storage-AFA-4up-rackAll-Flash is table stake now. Don’t have it? …well then, you can’t play!

That’s the real problem. All-Flash still counts for a relatively small percentage of overall primary storage sales but, again, it is an option that customers want to have in every new project.

It is true that prices are continuing to fall, and somewhere down the line your next primary storage system could most likely be an AFA, and that goes for smaller enterprises too.

Nimble has been pressured a lot lately because of the absence of such a product in its lineup. But at least now they have a good array… ready to compete with all other AFAs, with interesting features and some good news coming for existing users of hybrid systems too.

Why it’s right

Pressdeck2The product looks very dense compared to the competition. Nimble has also adopted an interesting disk tray design that can host both 2,5″ and 3,5″ drives and the performance output positions them in the right spot in terms of balancing between performance and capacity (we are talking about 2PB usable capacity and 300K IOPS for the single system, up to 8.2PB and 1.2M IOPS for a scale-out cluster of 4 nodes and 16RU). I actually don’t have an independent benchmark, but one of their customers who has been included in Nimble’s beta program, told me that the numbers measured in the field are aligned to what Nimble says in its slides.

It’s interesting to note that the NimlbeOS remains exactly the same for both hybrid and AFA systems. And new features introduced today (like Deduplication for example) will be available on old (hybrid) systems too. And this is probably one of the reasons why it took so long to bring the AFA to the market.

Another characteristic of Nimble’s new array that I really loved today is the scale-out capability of the product. Nothing new really, and not because of scale-out itself, but because you can mix different system types in the same cluster. It doesn’t mean that it is safe to span data volumes between different types of arrays, but it will be of help for transparent data migrations (especially if you have no success with functionalities like VMware storage vMotion). To be fair, this feature is not unique to Nimble in the market but again, it could be very useful in some environments.

PressdeckNimble’s offer is also aligned with the competition when it comes to support, with a 7-year warranty on Flash Drives and other good support program characteristics. Again, not unique but great for end users.

But flash is just flash

From my POV, a primary storage vendor must have an All-flash array today (and not only), but this is not the differentiator. Not anymore!

Again, if we go through any single spec of this system and compare it to others in the market, I’m sure we will find that some could be better, others could be worse… the differentiation lies elsewhere.

Looking at Nimble now, as far as I’m concerned the differentiator is in its Cloud-based analytics tool: InfoSight.
This tool, thanks to the great amount of sensors continuously collected and the big data applications at the backend, puts the end user in the position of knowing what’s really going on with his/her storage system at any time, suggesting actions and helping the sys admin in his/her day to day job.

This kind of help could contribute to driving down TCO while increasing system uptime, especially for small and mid-size organizations where resources are often constrained and sysadmins are forced to cover every aspect of infrastructure support.
Nimble is investing a lot in this area, InfoSight is being continuously improved and the company is also looking at how to implement new features aimed at taking a deeper look at all infrastructure components and up in the stack, into the applications!

Closing the circle

The message is quite simple here: Congratulations Nimble for finally introducing your AFA to the market… and thank you for doing it in the right way (without disrupting compatibility with other products and by adding more and more features to InfoSight and for your existing hybrid customers). But that’s it, Flash is no longer the differentiator and even more important, basic specs don’t make a huge difference either. You simply have to have an AFA to play and start a conversation with end users today (even if the project will probably end up with the implementation of hybrid arrays…)

All the good now happens in the upper layers: software, efficiency, sophisticated data services, QoS, integration, analytics and so on (which is not a cotracticion to what I wrote above!). I also think that all primary vendors should look much more carefully at secondary storage and cloud integration. Something that is still not happening… but that will be the next differentiator.

Valuable Features

Improvements to My Organization

Room for Improvement

Stability Issues

Scalability Issues

Customer Service and Technical Support

Initial Setup

Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing

Other Solutions Considered

Other Advice

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Originally posted at https://www.freeitdata.com/

Over the last 15 years, the storage industry has primarily been dominated (market share) by six companies, EMC, NetApp, IBM, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), HP and Dell. In 2013, these six companies made up approximately 85% of all storage sold in the United States.

The remaining 15% of the storage market is made up of all the other storage manufacturers. Needless to say, it is a very crowded 15%. For as many new products that are introduced into the market each year, just as many disappear. However, a few of the very best have found ways to grow. Innovators like Nimble Storage, Pure Storage, Tintri, Simplivity, Tegile and the like are most commonly referred to hybrid storage, all flash storage, or hyper-converged products. All these technologies are considered disruptive storage technologies to what the Tier 1 storage providers have been offering. These organizations are pushing known boundaries and finding new ways to innovate, store and protect data.

What is the biggest driver for their success?

In addition to being true innovators these companies manufacture products that are easy to implement, easy to use and affordable. These companies are doing things differently based on the ever-changing Information Technology eco-system. These disruptive technologies have evolved to fit the changes in virtualization, utilize improvements in flash technology, feature faster CPUs with more cores, and feature new software/GUI innovations. How?... They have figured out, that by developing better software capable of running on commodity hardware, they can provide a better end-user experience at a drastically reduced cost. Even with the use of commodity hardware, they still provide up to five 9’s of availability through redundancy in the infrastructure.

Nimble Storage Graphical User Interface

These companies are also providing new methods of data protection, replication, inline de-duplication, in-line compression, and encryption. They allow tighter integration with virtualization hyper-visors and application software. Because the innovation is in the software, these companies are able to more quickly improve capability and provide features to adapt to the changes in the technology eco-system.

How much did virtualization change the game?

Arguably the x86 server manufactures were blindsided by how much virtualization was going to affect their servers business. At this point x86 servers have become utility devices, which are fairly inexpensive, when you look at 25-75 virtual guest servers are running on what used to be a physical box only a few short years ago. These emerging storage technologies are starting to do the same thing. It is possible that the legacy storage vendors could find themselves in the same position as the x86 server manufactures as more and more development goes into virtualization of storage and placing data on commodity infrastructure.

What does this mean for the future of storage technology?

Well, 12 years ago VMware was emerging as a disruptive technology. Now VMWare is the standard for virtualization. VMWare could quickly become a disruptive technology again, with Virtual SAN (VSAN). I predict over the next 5 years, we will see even more consolidation of storage vendors, as newer and better ways to store data are developed and the traditional SAN that we know today will be drastically different. It is quite possible that Object Based Storage and the use of data protection via replicas will overtake the traditional and very antiquated RAID technology solutions and fundamentally changes how we store, manage, search and protect data.

Pure Storage vSphere Web Client

There will probably always be a need for the traditional storage methods, but as we have seen, that segment will continue to shrink as virtualization and storage innovation continue to change our IT landscape.

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

What about the implementation team?

What was our ROI?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

What about the implementation team?

What was our ROI?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

What about the implementation team?

What was our ROI?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

What is our primary use case?

What is most valuable?

What needs improvement?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and support?

How was the initial setup?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

What other advice do I have?