On August 19th, 2020 the following Telephone interview was made with Mr. Akinkunmi Ogunsola, Head, Cloud Services at MainOne. The purpose of this session was to get the customer’s professional feedback regarding the Company’s experience with HPE Nimble Storage which is the platform on which one of their cloud systems presently runs, and also serves as a backup in one of their production sites.
The following conversation took place as regards the HPE Nimble Storage, an HPE predictive flash storage technology:
Question 1:
The HPE Nimble Storage is presently an intrinsic part of MainOne’s Cloud infrastructure, running as a backup and then is also the primary platform on which your MS WAP Cloud runs. Can you give us some insight on your company’s experience in the area of Back-up before and after the introduction of this HPE machine into your IT environment?
Answer: Initially, in the MainOne Cloud environment system backups had been carried out on two separate platforms. In time, what we wanted was to create a centralized backup solution, and so we specifically picked the HPE Nimble Storage for 3 reasons:
1. It’s very easy to operate: We like the fact that it analyzes itself; lets us know if there’s likely to be a problem in the future (trends) and comes with a UI that’s very easy to use.
2. Its superior compression and deduplication: For backups, this has had tremendous benefits.
3. Excellent after Sales Support.
The results have been excellent. Presently, migration from our previous system on to the HPE Nimble Storage is on-going and we are seeing as much as a 5X reduction in raw storage.
We are also seeing improved I/O from the machine in comparison to our previous devices. This results in faster backups and shorter backup windows which can be attributed to the superior performance perspective and IO response from this storage device.
Question 2:
On a scale of 1 to 5, how do you rate our data management when referring to deduplication and compression?
Answer: I would give it a 5. Allow me to paint a clearer picture, about four years ago we had an issue with one of our storage systems which was for our production platforms. This resulted in the purchase and installation of the first HPE Nimble Storage, and once in set-up we immediately began to realize capacity savings of up to 2.4X. The performance benefit was just as impressive.
Question 3:
You already made mention of support on the HPE Nimble Storage. Am I correct to say “MainOne is being provided optimal service in this regard”?
Answer: Yes, absolutely. The first time we bought into the technology, there was a lot of speculation because the purchase was made probably about three months before Nimble was acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Support was a concern and so we did a lot of analysis and searched for reference sites in the form of local businesses that already had the device running in their IT environment.
Our major concern in HPE acquiring Nimble was the transition of support services. When it comes to maintaining standard processes behind IT machinery during transitional phases, it is not unusual for balls to drop between the OEMs. This did not happen and HPE continues to this day to provide seamless support on the HPE Nimble Storage.
In a nutshell, I am satisfied with our experience so far with running the HPE Nimble Storage in our infrastructure as backup, and the primary storage platform upon which our Windows Azure Pack platform operates.
Question 4:
Finally, rating from a scale of 1 to 5, would you recommend the HPE Nimble Storage technology to another organization or for other IT related projects within your organization?
Answer: Another definite 5. Though my decision to recommend the technology would also have to be informed by the details of the project and whether the technology would be suitable in that context. However, hands down HPE Nimble Storage has proven to be manageable and provides the appropriate technology needed in its capacity as an enterprise storage solution. I would most likely use it again.
The HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is a disaggregated hyperconverged platform that delivers the simplicity of HCI with the flexibility of converged. This platform integrates hyperconverged control with the world’s best-selling server, HPE ProLiant, and the self-managing experience of HPE Nimble Storage. We have a ton of amazing testimonials about the flexibility of the HPE Nimble Storage. What is your experience with storage platforms? Kindly leave us a feedback in the form below.
Get your business ahead with the HPE Nimble Storage. Send us an email to info.ng@selectium.com today, let us get started.
