1. Nimble Scale to Fit Patrick Stack – Senior Storage Engineer
Matt Rourke – Enterprise Account Executive

2. Why start a new Storage Systems Company?
Christensen suggests that successful companies can put too much emphasis on customers' current needs, and fail to adopt new technology or business models that will meet customers' unstated or future needs; he argues that such companies will eventually fall behind.

3. 10x faster than traditional storage in less space
Nimble Storage Is:
A public company
10x faster than traditional storage in less space
Scalable: From 12TB to 800TB without downtime.
Leverages current technology such as Multi-Core CPU’s, Flash Drives and a proprietary file system.
All Inclusive Software
InfoSight: A revolutionary support portal for predictive analytics of data usage and growth.
Easy to use: A Modern GUI and the option for self installation.
Reliable: uptime for trailing twelve months.

4. Building Storage for 2014

5. 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
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
Efficient hybrid systems that flexibly leverage flash and disk address all mainstream needs.

6. Flash-Only Is Not the Solution
Media
Workload
Capacity
Cost
Reliability
Flash
Random*
Low 1x
$$$
Early
NL-SAS – 15k rpm
Mixed
Mature
Medium $$
SATA – 7.2k rpm
Mature
Sequential
High $
Flash is indeed very effective at addressing random IO
Hwever disk tends to be better at delivering sequential IO on a per dollar basis.
Also the price differential between flash and disk is between 10-20x (depending on type of flash and type of disk).
Flash as an endpoint of storage is still unproven (data integrity, bit error rates etc) whereas disk has been around a lot longer and is much more mature
Callout at the bottom is what this slide leads upto ie an ideal solution marries the strengths of flash and disk (what we refer to as hybrid)
* Random writes can cause flash wear
Hybrid systems marry the best attributes of flash and disk.
Fundamental to this is flash must be treated as flash, not as a fast HDD

7. Why Do Customers Buy Nimble
Why Do Customers Buy Nimble? Higher Performance than Tier 1 – at the Cost of Tier 3
Legacy Tier (Disk-only)
5 – 15 ms latency
$3k - $6k / TB
Enterprise Features
Snap, Replication, Clone
Legacy Tier (Disk + SSD)
2 – 15 ms latency
$5k - $8k / TB
Enterprise Features
Snap, Replication, Clone
Flash Only
< 1 ms latency
$8k - $15k+ / TB
Enterprise Features?
Nimble Storage
< 1 ms latency
$2k - $3k /TB
Enterprise Features
Snap, Replication, Clone
99.999% Uptime

8. Engineered for Efficiency
2-5x More Usable Capacity/$
2-5x More Performance/$
High capacity disk
Always-on compression, 2:1 real world
High ratio of usable to raw capacity
Arrays measured in “effective capacity”
Responsive flash cache accelerates reads with no RAID overhead
Serialized writes eliminate need for high RPM spindles
25-100k IOPS at sub-2ms latency
DATA PROTECTION
PERFORMANCE
CAPACITY
OPERATIONS
CASL
Integrated Data Protection
Operational Efficiency
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 dramatically enhances operational efficiency through the use of data sciences.
Instant thin snapshots with no performance penalty
Block sharing clones
WAN-efficient replication of compressed snapshots
Snapshot retention for months, not days
Data sciences-based proactive support (InfoSight)
Cloud based monitoring
Predictive analytics–usage, growth
Real time data analysis
Infosight delivers: 90% of cases are auto created and 80% of those are auto closed.

9. CASL - Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout
Data Written to NVRAM (1GB)
Mirrored and application acknowledgement
Data Moves to 12 or 24 GB of DRAM (workbench)
CRC check sums & in-line LZ4 compression (1.5-2X)
Variable-size blocks (unique) enable fast inline compression, saving 30-75%
Elimination of read-modify-write penalty allows compression of all applications
Random data coalesced into 4.5MB sequential stripes
Sequential Stripes written to SATA
Maximize write performance of low-cost, high-density HDDs (100X)
Performance decoupled from disk speed & spindle count
Cache worthy data written to SSD sequentially
Converting random writes to sequential writes minimizes “write amplification”, allowing the use of MLC SSDs
No RAID overhead: Using flash as a read cache avoids the overhead of RAID
Data on flash is compressed, saving space
Metadata in cache accelerates all reads
SSD’s are 100% cache for faster Reads (50X)
Constant light-weight sweeping ensures constant sequential stripes 4K
32K 8K
16K 4K
Active Controller
Passive Controller
1G NVRAM
1G NVRAM
12/24G DRAM
12/24G DRAM
All Data
(4) MLC SSD’s
80G/160/320G
Adaptive Flash Cache
Random Data
(12) SATA
1TB/2TB/3TB
RAID 6+1
Next, let’s look under the covers. Nimble’s unique architecture, CASL, is the enabling technology that makes converged storage and backup possible.
CASL starts with an inline compression engine that compresses data in real time with no added latency, reducing the amount of data stored 2-4x. This is possible because of two key Nimble advantages–
Nimble’s software was designed upfront to leverage the powerful multi-core CPUs used across the Nimble CS-Series array family for instant, high performance compression.
Nimble is the ONLY primary storage array that natively supports variable size blocks. Because data blocks compress at different rates, fixed size blocks become variable sized after compression. This is a critical issue for high performance compression. With fixed size blocks found in other storage architectures, you can only compress data that is offline or rarely accessed.
Next, CASL groups random blocks of data into larger segments before writing it to flash and disk. These fully sequential writes maximize the performance (and lifespan) of flash, which does not handle randomly written data effectively. Sequenced writes also maximize the performance of low RPM drives, which do not like to seek but can handle fast sequential streams. A copy of all active or “hot” data (and even “semi-active” data) is held in the large flash layer, enabling very fast random read performance. Inactive or “cold” data resides only on compressed high-capacity hard drives, further reducing costs. CASL’s intelligent index tracks hot data blocks in real time, adapting to hot spot and application workload changes within milliseconds, while even the most advanced tiered systems require a day or more.
Most primary storage systems support snapshots (point-in-time copies of data). But enterprises are typically limited to keeping a small number of snapshots (a few days or less) because they would otherwise consume too much expensive and limited primary storage capacity. This mandates frequently backing up primary data to a separate disk-based backup system. Because CASL stores compressed, incremental snapshot data on high capacity disk, enterprises can now store days of snapshots cost effectively. As a result, backups and restores take seconds and the separate backup tier can be eliminated, significantly reducing cost and complexity.
Finally, these compressed snapshots are replicated to a remote Nimble array for protection against a site-wide disaster. Nimble replication is up to 30 times more bandwidth efficient than other leading primary storage replication solutions, making primary replication possible even with limited WAN bandwidth.
Snapshots
30+ days

10. Nimble Storage CS-Series Controller Shelf
CS220/G
CS240/G
CS260/G
CS420/G(2)
CS440/G
CS460/G
High Performance (~20K IOPS)
Extreme Performance (~65K IOPS)
Base Raw capacity
8TB
12TB
24TB
36TB
Effective Capacity(1)
4-9 TB
8 – 16TB TB TB
Add on
Shelves
Add 1 shelf
Add up to 3 shelves
Flash Capacity—Base/Max
160 GB
320GB to
1,200GB
640GB
2,400GB
2,400 GB
1,200GB to
Network
4 x 1GbE
6 x 1GbE or 2 x 10GbE + 2 x 1GbE (G models)
The first Nimble products are available in 2 compact, high density configurations. When you click, the animation shows the hot-swappable drives behind the bezel, and the hot swappable controllers.
Nimble arrays come with dual (redundant), hot swappable controllers
All Nimble software features (including NPM, replication, cloning, snapshots) are included in the base price – no a-la carte pricing.
Notes:
1: Effective capacity is usable capacity after no to 2x (or 50%) compression; typical range: 30% to 75%
2: The CS420 model is available in CS420-X2 and CS420-X4 options only
Controller A
Controller B

11. All Inclusive SW Features – No Licensing Costs
Dynamic caching 
Write-optimized data layout 
App-aligned block size 
Universal compression 
Thin provisioning 
Instant-snapshots 
WAN-efficient replication 
Zero-copy clones 
App-integrated backup/profiles 
Non-disruptive scale-to-fit 
Scale-out clustering 
Proactive wellness 
Non-disruptive upgrades 
Remote secure support 
Unified administration 
Multipath/connection manager 
© 2012 Nimble Storage. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.

12. All This While, We Are Partnering
HCL certifications; VAAI, SRM, vCenter Integrations
First storage vendor in Rapid Desktop Program
Joint VDI reference architectures (e.g., branch office)
VMware
UCS Certification
SmartStack: Pre-validated VMware-Cisco-Nimble stack
Cisco
HCL Certifications; Exchange Solution Reviewed Program
VSS, MPIO Integration
Microsoft
CommVault
Integration through Intellisnap Connect Program
Citrix Ready Certification
SmartStack: Pre-validated Citrix-Cisco-Nimble stack
Citrix

13. InfoSight: Storage Lifecycle Simplified
Proactive Wellness
NimbleConnect
Alerting
Peer Insights
Maintenance & Support
Proactive monitoring
Predictive support
Shrink time to problem resolution
Connect with and learn from users, experts worldwide
Be part of a vibrant online community
Learn from real-world deployment data
Forecasting & Planning
Monitoring & Reporting
Infosight Engine unifies and streamlines the user experience across the lifecycle of storage.
Nimble Proactive Wellness delivers the proactive support and alerting required to keep systems up and running.
Nimble Infosight Portal is launching in April and is responsible for providing customers the monitoring/reporting that gives them a handle on their array status across performance, capacity, protection, health, etc . Predictive analytics helps the customers to accurately and intelligently do planning and forecasting.
Nimble Community (also launching in April) provides peer insights and heuristics based best practices helping customers with real information to tune their system ideally.
Infosight Portal
Secure, cloud-based portal
Detailed monitoring & reporting
Proactive planning & forecasting as workloads change

14. Performance
Assets
Support
Wellness
Capacity
Volumes
Performance
Data Protection
Dashboard
Detailed view of IOPS and latency behaviors
Accurate recommendations for CPU and cache needs
With InfoSight, I’m confident I can not only pinpoint storage performance bottlenecks, but know exactly what is necessary to resolve them.
– MulvannyG2, global architectural firm ranked among top 50 worldwide