HPE Nimble Storage

What do you like best?

The simplicity of the solution stands out. All aspects of the devices are built for reliability and performance. The support is far better than anything we have experienced before, and it truly sets the bar at a new level.

The installation was a breeze, and the maintenance is just as easy. Performing firmware updates is completely automated as is the validation checking, and it will roll back (although this has never happened) an update if it determines any of the steps have failed.

What do you dislike?

Unfortunately it does not perform as a replacement for a NAS, but that is not what it is marketed towards. Put this behind VMware hypervisors and you've got a massively performant system.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

The critical key to a good HPE Nimble implementation is leveraging a trusted Value Added Reseller. While the equipment is very easy to use and intuitive, there are nuances that are not as easy to find which can dramatically improve the performance. Size your controllers accordingly. You don't want to buy an AF1000, for example, only to realize in 6 months you have outgrown it and need new controllers.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Two distinct problems: centralized reliable and fast flash storage for a large array of big database servers, and fast flash storage for a VMware cluster. The DB storage device, due to the number of systems attached and the similarity of the data (replicated data), the Nimble's version of dedupe and compression provided a whopping 84:1 reduction ratio while increasing performance 24% over direct attached spinning storage at 1/3rd the cost.

The VMware solution was simple: fast reliable and redundant storage. It fit the bill like a glove while also provided excellent 14:1 storage reduction.

As a result, the overall management of our infrastructure is simplified to the point where we just expect it to work. Questions to support are quickly answered, and Infosight does all of the work for providing a prediction as to when we will need to expand the devices.