HPE Nimble Storage has very impressive deduplication and compression built into their systems. There is really no need to configure anything as it is taking care of automatically at the firmware layer. If you are not planning on utilizing the replication between partners it may very well suite you to find a less expensive option, but this was a feature that we needed.
We save a lot of money using QNAP for the backup of Virtual machines. We installed a QNAP in the datacenter of our Cloud Provider and the cost of the backup and storage that we use is, at least, 1/10 of the cost that we had in the past. We can choose what kind of drives we can install, so if we want affordable we can use 5400/7200 hard drives, if we need speed we can use SSD drives.
Storage Compression - Get more space for your money. We are saving about 4TB right out now using 20TB of space.
Caching - Built in SSD caching works well. 75% of our data is hitting cache. It would be more, but our application code limits that.
Latency - Latency is very low. Reads and Writes are always below 1ms.
Usage Reporting - Great web portal to see how much space you are taking up and your expected growth pattern.
Easy Setup - Easy to set up new volumes and expand volumes.
Infosight (Web interface) has some neat free features. With VMware and maybe Hyper V you can see your performance on your VMs from the interface. You can see IO, latency, times, etc., that is useful for troubleshooting and performance planning.
Rack Space - One of the main reasons we went with Nimble Storage was for rack space. We had 12U of space being taken up by HP Storage. With only 4U we could double and triple our storage space and save 8U for other things. This prevented us from adding another rack at our data center. Which isn't cheap. It saved us around $1200 a month.
I'd like the GUI to include more information for some of the features such as replication data totals each night. You have to go to the command line for this.
It would be nice to have a feature built into the GUI that would show you the command line equivalent to get the same results you are seeing in the GUI.
Although the intial setup was easy, they could always improve on that portion. During my setup, I did have to do a lot of back and forth with research on their site as to what each setting was that I was setting up. They could have provided some sort of description for each field within the setup that would have made it easier to know what they were having us set up.
Nimble is doing its job well and any issues that do come up cause the Nimble support team to alert us before we would potentially see an impact to our production environment. I do wish we could expand into the unused space in the CS210 shelf which is limited by what I assume is a marketing/sales strategy, but we will likely add shelves moving forward.
Almost perfect, some hoops to jump through after major upgrade, but overall simple and effective. Our storage administrator really likes the integration with vmware as it makes his life easier. Also it was no trouble integrating it with our active directory credentials. The only issue we had was getting the plugin in VMWare going initially.
QNAP NAS's usability is excellent, making it accessible to both beginners and more experienced users. The setup process is straightforward, with clear instructions that guide you through everything. The user interface is intuitive, allowing you to navigate easily between settings, apps, and features. Even with its powerful functionality, such as remote access and advanced file management, it doesn’t feel overwhelming. The mobile apps make it convenient to access files on the go, and everything integrates smoothly. Whether you need basic storage or more advanced features, QNAP balances ease of use with powerful capabilities, making it a highly user-friendly NAS option.
Any time I have had to contact support, they have always been quick to respond, and very efficient in resolving any issues. When an action has been required on our side for a fix, they have been very helpful in explaining step by step what was required, and when replacement parts have been needed, we've had them within 24 hours.
QNAP NAS is a really good product, but I think the best part is the support for the products. Whenever I have a question or imagine something that won't happen, I can ask the support side. When the support engineer understands what I want to do, he does his best.
The Main reason for choosing HPE Nimble Hybrid storage is the Cost. However, even though its not ALL Flash Storage it was still providing the high performance, Latency less than 2 ms, good compression and de-duplication, zeop downtime on software upgrade, good reporting through infosight etc. with all these pros, it didn't make sense to invest on a ALL flash storage thats costs 3 time higher than nimble
QNAP NAS offers several advantages over TrueNAS and Synology. Compared to TrueNAS, QNAP provides a more user-friendly experience, with a simple setup process and intuitive interface, making it ideal for those who don’t want to deal with complex configurations. QNAP also has a robust app ecosystem, offering extensive multimedia, backup, and security features, which are easier to install and manage compared to TrueNAS. Against Synology, QNAP stands out for its greater hardware variety and expandability, with better options for PCIe expansion, memory upgrades, and 10GbE networking. Its hybrid storage approach also combines SSD and HDD caching, offering performance boosts Synology lacks.
Nimble's snapshot capability has saved us several times. It would be hard to estimate the amount of money we would have had to spend, in additional support, without the capability to quickly revert a LUN/VM back to its previous state. Much better than relying on VMware or MS Snapshots.
Having the Nimble has allowed us the capability to build better and faster clusters which in turns as allowed our users to do more work in less time.
Nimble can be expensive to start off with so initially it took a while for our ROI to turn positive.
The NAS Server itself is expandable, so you can develop it instead of changing it whenever you need it. Such as Ram, Network Bandwidth, Disk Capacity.
We have not experienced any hardware malfunctions in these years, the hardware structure is very stable. Even at first, the environment in which we were running the device was not what it should be, but it still did not cause any problems.
We stopped doing investment cost analysis because it looks like it will work until we retire.
