1. Nimble Storage Overview with Cisco UCS
May 2013

2. Nimble Storage Debuts as a Visionary on Magic Quadrant
Nimble Storage was recognized as a visionary based on its innovative Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout (CASL) architecture, post-sales support and strategic alliances.
On the Magic Quadrant for General-Purpose Disk Arrays
Improvements in scalability, availability, performance and functionality of midrange storage systems have blurred the boundaries between network- attached, midrange and high-end storage systems. This Magic Quadrant will help IT leaders understand storage vendors' strategies and market strengths.
Gartner “Magic Quadrant for General-Purpose Disk Arrays” by Stanley Zaffos, Roger W. Cox, Valdis Filks (21 March 2013)
This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Nimble Storage. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
DO NOT MODIFY. THIS IS AS PER GARTNER’S APPROVED TEMPLATE

3. Transformation in Storage Models with Flash
Tape, High- Capacity Disk
Modular
Monolithic
LEGACY
Archives
OLTP
SQL Server
Exchange
VDI
SharePoint
Web/File/Print
Mainstream Applications
Real-Time Analytics
Cloud
Hybrid Flash-Optimized
MODERN
Flash in Server
All-Flash Arrays
NEED FOR FLASH
Efficient hybrid systems that can flexibly vary flash and disk address all mainstream needs.
Next part of the positioning gets into workloads and how these were addressed in the pre-flash era.
Point to note is that both the top and bottom tier of workloads are nichey in nature. Bulk of the mainstream workloads are in that middle chunk.
We believe the top tier will move to flash resident on server or all flash arrays. These are workloads that demand us latencies and >1M IOPS. Cost economics is not a major factor here.
Long term archival and retention will likely move more to the cloud moving forward.
The middle chunk is best addressed by hybrid flash optimized storage. Specifically the performance demands of the workloads vary – eg VDI/OLTP much more performance centric vs Sharepoint.
Bottomline: if you can architect a system which allows you to flexibly vary performance, you can cater to the needs of all mainstream workloads with a single storage architecture

4. Storage Architectures–The Engine Powering Storage
Architected to use disk only; overlaying flash on top results in partial solution
Today’s Storage Architectures
Purpose-built, Performance Hybrid
Designed from the ground up to leverage the best of flash and disk
Eliminates compromise between performance, capacity, and data management
Part 3 of the positioning:
All storage vendors offer flash optimized storage however not all flash optimized storage is created equal.
A majority of the ones offered by incumbents layers on flash over an architecture optimized for spinning disk. The improvements you gain are marginal at best.
If otoh, you can architect a file system from a clean slate, you have the ability to leverage the best of flash and disk and deliver the performance, capacity, and intelligent data management delivering a well-rounded solution.

5. Engineered for Efficiency
High capacity disk
Always-on compression
High ratio of usable to raw capacity
2-5x More Usable Capacity/$
Responsive flash cache accelerates reads with no RAID overhead
Serialized writes eliminate need for high RPM spindles
2-5x More Performance/$
DATA PROTECTION
PERFORMANCE
CAPACITY
SCALING
CASL
Thin snapshots with no performance penalty
Retention for months, not days
WAN-efficient replication
Instant Backups & Restores
Scale just performance, just capacity, or both
Scale with zero downtime
Scaling at the Lowest Incremental Cost
This slide may or may not be suitable for all audience types. If audience not familiar with CASL, skip.
The core mission for Nimble is to deliver efficiency. Nimble is “engineered for efficiency”
This goes beyond just capacity savings. On the capacity front, talk about use of high capacity disk, always on compression and the ability to minimize overhead and deliver more usable to raw capacity
Next we move onto performance. Talk about how CASL uses flash very effectively as cache eliminating RAID and write endurance overheads. Further, we are able to squeeze very high write performance from low rpm spindles
On the data protection front, snapshots are very efficient from both a storage consumption as well as performance standpoint. Retaining snapshots for longer periods eliminates/mitigates the inefficiencies customers have to tolerate from legacy backup models. Finally replication is very efficient, only deltas go across.
Lastly Nimble scaling epitomizes efficiency. The notion is one where you only grow (performance or capacity) what you need and when you need it AT THE LOWEST INCREMENTAL COST.

6. Gain High Performance and Capacity Savings
Accelerate
Protect
Empower
Actual results across all Nimble customers deploying ESX workloads
Disk-based Systems
5-10 ms
0.5 ms
Faster Performance…
AVERAGE READ LATENCY
AVERAGE COMPRESSION
Actual results across all Nimble customers deploying SQL server workloads
2.03X
…without Sacrificing Capacity
AVERAGE WRITE LATENCY
Actual results across all Nimble customers
Tiered Systems with Flash
1-4 ms
0.67 ms
“The IOPS we’re achieving with the Nimble array has proven game-changing for our development team.” – Ethan Erchinger, VP of Operations, Plaxo
“In an IOmeter test of the CS220, the Nimble out performed EMC by a factor of to 10 in IOPS, latency, and Mbps”
Community
“With inline compression alone, we’ve freed up 7.48TB of space. Imagine what we can do with that.”
– Calvin Levy, Florida Blood Services
We introduce each of the pillars here. This talks to what we deliver under accelerate.
Take a few minutes here to explain what is being showcased. Specifically talk to how Nimble gathers comprehensive telemetry data on install base systems .
What we are showing is real customer data culled from install base of over 1000 systems – not empty marketing claims
Nimble delvers sub-ms latencies contrasted against the many ms that disk-based systems incur. Similarly on the write latencies as well.
use the quotes to illustrate the metrics
Talk about how w deliver this performance while at the same time, delivering significant capacity savings

7. Simplify Backups, Protect More
Accelerate
Protect
Empower
Actual results across all Nimble customers running SQL workloads
63%
Protect More Often
CUSTOMERS WITH HOURLY RPOs
CUSTOMERS RETAINING SNAPSHOTS MORE THAN 1 MONTH
47%
Actual results across all Nimble customers running SQL workloads
Protect Longer
Actual results across all Nimble customers
Protect More
WORKLOADS REPLICATED FOR DR
51%
10%
Industry Average (Source: IDC)
“The Nimble backups are extremely fast and non-disruptive – they don’t impact our application or storage performance at all.”
– Steve Tuscher, Director of Information Technology, Grocery Outlet
“With Nimble it takes, literally, a couple clicks of the mouse to establish a backup schedule and meet our data retention policy.”
– Mike Brester, System Administrator, Mulvanny G2 Architecture
“When you compare Nimble with other disaster recovery products, it’s very effective and very competitive in terms of pricing, and it’s so easy to use.”
– Jared Call, Director of IT, Imagine Learning
Customers can protect more often with Nimble. Well over half of our SQL customers snapshot hourly.
These customers are also able to protect for longer by keeping these snapshots around, sometimes for more than a month.
Finally, Nimble makes DR affordable – over half the workloads running on Nimble are DR protected – contrast against the industry average of 10% that is normally considered DR worthy.
Make sure to use customer quotes below the infographics to reinforce above points

8. –Mariyah Epich Serratos, City of Cupertino
Simplify and Go Beyond
Accelerate
Protect
Empower
2 Line Items
NUMBER OF LINE ITEMS PER QUOTE
Easy to Purchase
3 PAGES
PERCENT OF SUPPORT CASES RESOLVED WITH AUTOMATED SYSTEM
Actual results across all Nimble customers
70%
Easy to Maintain
Easy to Upgrade
PERCENT OF SYSTEMS UPGRADED WITHOUT DOWNTIME
99.9%
Actual results across all Nimble customers
“It was really refreshing to see Nimble’s
quote was one line item on my purchase
order.  It just all came bundled in there.   All the things I needed and then some.”
–Mariyah Epich Serratos, City of Cupertino
“This isn't hard enough! I need thick manuals, on-site field engineers, a complicated support web site, a-la- carte licensing charges, complicated spreadsheets to document configurations, maybe even a storage specialist! Something is very wrong here."  –Russell Roberts, Premier Medical Group
“Just ran the firmware update. It could not have possibly gone smoother. One click to download, one click to update. Watched a live VM during the 8-minute process which never disconnected.” –Kenneth Libeson, Meritage Group
Nimble simplifies the user experience across the lifecycle.
Purchasing Nimble is a snap. All features are included in base product – contrast against other vendor offerings where there are multiple software licenses and SKUs in the mix.
Nimble is truly easy to maintain. Through active monitoring, Nimble support opens customer cases before the customer is even aware of these. 70% of these cases are resolved automatically.
Nimble systems can be upgraded non-disruptively, yet another element of future proofing.
Make sure to use customer quotes to illustrate these points

9. SmartStack Solutions with Cisco UCS

10. Cisco Alliance Update UCS Storage Certification
Storage support matrix posted on Cisco.com
UCS B-series and C-series
VMware, Windows, Linux
iSCSI Boot, Appliance port mode, etc.
Includes M81KR (Palo) and VIC 1240 adapters
Reference Architectures
Nimble arrays in Cisco Demo Labs
13 installs
12 planned/scheduled
Customer events
VDI Boot Camp Series w/VMware
May 17 Star Trek 2 movie premiere
© 2012 Nimble Storage. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.

11. Nimble Storage SmartStack
Solutions for a variety of workloads
Desktop and Server Virtualization
Databases and Business Applications
Messaging and Collaboration
Leverage Nimble Storage’s rich partner eco-system
Virtualization, Applications, Data Protection, Compute & Networking
© 2013 Nimble Storage. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.

12. Nimble Storage SmartStack for VDI with Cisco and VMware
A joint 1,000-seat VDI reference architecture using Cisco UCS servers, Nimble Storage CS-Series Arrays and VMware vSphere and View Software
Delivers
High density of virtual desktops per unit of rack space
Rapid provisioning
Rapid response time even during peak IO’s (such as during a boot storm)
Lower deployment risk
Linear scalability
© 2013 Nimble Storage. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.

13. Nimble SmartStack for VDI with Cisco and Citrix
A joint 1,500-seat VDI reference architecture using Cisco UCS servers, Nimble Storage CS-Series Arrays and Citrix XenDesktop on VMware vSphere
Delivers
High density of virtual desktops per unit of rack space
Rapid provisioning
Rapid response time even during peak IO’s (such as during a boot storm)
Lower deployment risk
Linear scalability
© 2012 Nimble Storage. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.

14. Nimble SmartStack for VDI with Cisco and Citrix
Cisco UCS B-Series Servers
1500 Win7 Virtual desktops
10x B230 M2 Servers
2x B200 M3 Servers
VDI + Windows infrastructure
2x B200 M2
2x Fabric Interconnect
Nimble Storage CS440G-X4
24TB of disks and 2.4 TB of Flash SSDs
Citrix XenDesktop 5.6
VMware vSphere 5.0u1
Login VSI
2x B230 M2 Servers

15. Nimble Storage for Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track
Fast Track Validated Design for 75 VMs (Small Biz Config)
Flash-optimized hybrid Nimble Storage CS-Series
Flexible Cisco UCS C-Series rack mount servers
Nimble Storage delivers:
Performance and storage efficiency for virtualized workloads in compact form factor
Accelerated private cloud deployments with less risk
Non-disruptively and independently scaling to fit growing performance and capacity needs
With Hyper-V
© 2012 Nimble Storage. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.

16. Nimble Storage SmartStack for MS Windows with Cisco and Microsoft
Published a joint end-to-end smart stack reference architecture with Cisco and Microsoft
Efficiently deliver cost-effective virtual machines without a large upfront investment
Lower risk of deployments and improve probability of success
Scale to fit application needs by scaling performance and capacity independently
Configuration for 75 VMs
Cisco 2 to 4 UCS C220 M3 Servers with Fabric Extenders and Fabric Interconnect
Nimble Storage CS220G (3U)
12TB of disks with 320GB of Flash
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V
2-4x
Cisco UCS
C220 M3
Nimble Storage
CS220G
VM Volumes
10GbE
Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect and Fabric Extender
Boot Volumes
With Hyper-V
© 2012 Nimble Storage. All Rights Reserved.

17. University of Colorado Boulder Housing and Dining Services
ENVIRONMENT
VDI environment supporting 500 staff members accessing 25 business critical systems and 155 separate databases
CHALLENGES
Desktops and workstations were expensive procure, difficult to manage and consumed too much power
Previous solutions lacked stability, ease of use, performance and scalability
CISCO, NIMBLE STORAGE AND VMWARE BENEFITS
Cut overall costs of desktop computing by 70%
Helped contribute to CU-Boulder’s environment goals by cutting power consumption by 80% and allowing for remote work
Accelerated new deployments from days to hours
Improved user experience and delivered the performance of all flash arrays at 1/10th the cost.
“For any enterprise or educational institution considering a move to a virtualized desktop environment, I would strongly recommend the integrated VMware View, Cisco UCS, and Nimble CS-Series solution. The combined power and performance of these three leaders in virtualization, compute, and storage is unbeatable.”
We’ll be looking at the first of the three value props. Most customers are reconciled to making trade-offs of performance vs capacity efficiency. Nimble takes away the OR from the equation.
Here is what Nimble customers have to relate:
RPI Print:
based out of Seattle and is one of Inc5000 fastest growing companies and are a make-on-demand producer of private label personalized photo books, greeting cards and stationery products.  
The holiday season also creates unique challenges for IT at RPI.  The amount of work received during peak season is 400% more than the rest of the year.   This creates intense demands on our storage and networking infrastructures.
For the first time since deploying Nimble RPI did not have to worry about the storage environment scaling with customer demand according to Matt Anderson, Director of IT at RPI Print.
San Diego Convention Center:
For SDCC, storage virtualization was emerging as a viable technology for reducing both capital and operating expenditures, but four servers were playing host to 50 virtual machines and application performance had dropped precipitously. That’s when IT execs put a Nimble CS220 converged storage array to the test. In a matter of weeks after adoption of the Nimble array, performance issues had vanished and costs were once again under control per Eric Myers, network engineer at SDCC.

18. Virtacore ENVIRONMENT CHALLENGES CISCO UCS+NIMBLE BENEFITS
Currently manage more than 10,000 virtual environments in state-of-the-art Tier 3 Equinix data centers globally, delivered via public, private, and hybrid clouds.
CHALLENGES
Consolidating multiple datacenters to a single location in VA
Onboarding new customers took too long
Growing customer base exposed performance limitations of existing server and storage hardware
CISCO UCS+NIMBLE BENEFITS
Reduced customer deployment times from days to 30 minutes
Customer saw application response times cut in half, compared to their in-house infrastructure
Virtacore beat out larger competitors to deploy VMware vCloud, based on the speed and performance of UCS+Nimble
Rolling out Cisco+Nimble+VMware architecture to Midwest and West datacenters, with Europe to follow
“Given the high profile nature of
our clients and our commitment
to delivering the highest level
of service, we couldn’t afford to
have any surprises. Despite our
best efforts to find weaknesses,
the Nimble Storage systems
consistently performed above and
far beyond our expectations.”