Nimble Storage Overview with Cisco UCS May 2013

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

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

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.

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.

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 7 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

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

–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

SmartStack Solutions with Cisco UCS

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 30-60 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.”