HPE Nimble Storage Reviews

We used HPE Nimble Storage for several purposes. Primarily, it served as our storage solution. 

Additionally, we employed it for disk-based backups. We also had a tape system in place and HPE Nimble Storage integrated seamlessly with our HPE Synergy infrastructure. 

I appreciate its batch capabilities, the capacity is important, and the DriveTape support. They offer hybrid support, which I like.

It could be more cost-effective. For customers with budget constraints, I recommend HPE Nimble Storage. That's one of the reasons I favor it.

The performance is good, but it can depend on the specific data or database. Typically, companies using HPE Nimble Storage fall within a certain range. Overall, that's a strong aspect of the solution.

HPE Nimble Storage's predictive analytics are adequate, but not exceptional.

I have been using it for a couple of months. But it has been in my company even before I joined. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. I had some issues. 

The customer service and support are good. 

The initial setup was straightforward. When we deployed it, we used HPE Synergy for computing and HPE Nimble Storage for cloud storage. 

We also integrated a backup server into the bundle. Once everything was connected, we were able to start using it.

In general, I would rate it a nine out of ten. I would recommend using it since it is HPE product. 

It's important to first determine your priorities. When deciding to use HPE Nimble Storage, consider whether you need an all-flash solution or a hybrid option. 

They offer both types, so you can choose based on your requirements. That flexibility is a key advantage for customers.e 

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. 

It's a fairly standard nimble storage array.

We use HPE Nimble Storage as our typical SAN for virtual environment storage and shared storage.

The most valuable features are its cost-effectiveness, performance, and its deduplication deficiencies.

You could argue that it would be preferable if everything were cheaper in order to save taxpayer money. While that would be nice, they are comparable to what else is available on the market and they are competitive.

We have been working with HPE Nimble Storage for 18 months.

HPE Nimble Storage is a stable product.

HPE Nimble Storage is a scalable solution.

We currently serve up to 375 users. There is also one primary administrator and two secondary administrators.

My recollection is that there was a question in the beginning, and we contacted technical support; everything was fine. Excellent.

Previously, we were using Dell EqualLogic's PS series. We have since removed that from our environment and moved to another storage platform. We switched to the other platform in late 2020. We switched to HPE Nimble Storage.

The initial setup wasn't particularly difficult.

We simply migrated storage volumes from the EqualLogic's, had new ones built in the nimble array, and shifted everything over. There was nothing out of the ordinary.

It does not require a lot of maintenance.

I believe the array, maintenance, and everything totaled around $140,000 dollars.

Certainly, in comparison to what we would have had to consider in order to achieve an equivalent storage capacity with the EqualLogic's end of life, we would have had to migrate to EMC or another platform. It was going to be at least $200,000, and most likely closer to $300,000.

We don't have any extraordinary requirements. We simply require a large amount of shared storage. It's perfectly functional. 

It integrates well with VMware, as do the majority of the products. We are not doing anything exceptional.

I would rate HPE Nimble Storage a ten 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.

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.

We are using it for our high availability cluster.

It's very stable and fast, and I am very happy with the deduplication. It saves a lot of space, which is great.

We are doing a hybrid and are moving some machines to Microsoft Azure to run in hybrid mode. We are checking the availability of extra software-defined storage so that we can configure it.

We have been using this solution for four years.

It is a stable solution.

It is scalable, and we have 600 active users.

We have Lenovo SAN Storage, but it's very slow and is not recommended. The deduplication is not smooth as well. Nimble is the best solution.

The set up is very straightforward, and everything was smooth. Our cluster was managed, and we didn't have any issues.

We have never done any maintenance for the last four years, and even the power supply has been working fine. Everything has been in good condition for four years.

We don't require a license. If we used HPE InfoSight, then we would require a license, but for our needs, we don't need one.

If you want deduplication storage, HPE Nimble Storage is the solution for you, and if you want to run a unit for storage, then Nimble is the best. For deduplication, it is very nice because it dedupes every file you create. You will save storage space. I would give this solution an eight out of ten.

We use the solution as VMware SRM’s database storage.

The tool’s support is feasible.

The solution’s stability could be better. The tool’s pricing is high and depends on the partner.

I have been using the solution for two to three years.

I would rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten. The solution is quite stable. We rarely have issues with storage.

The tool is almost scalable. We have one to two users for the solution.

HPE’s support is good. They respond fast.

Positive

The product’s initial setup is straightforward. The initial setup was done by HPE. We manage the solution’s storage and maintenance.

We are the solution’s integrators. 

We have seen ROI with the tool’s use.

The solution’s licensing is on a yearly basis.

I would rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. We require one technical engineer for the product’s maintenance.