Case Study: Imagine Learning

For Imagine Learning, a developer of educational software that helps children learn to read, storage is a repository for source code for the educational activities and the audio and video animations that bring learning to life. But when Jared Call, director of IT for Imagine, spotted an article titled "Jack Be Nimble," it was not during a pursuit of lessons to be learned from a child's nursery rhyme. In fact, the article from a professional journal on information technology made reference to the CS-Series flash-optimized storage and backup array from Nimble Storage.

After a quick read, Call says he was intrigued. Nimble's deft handling of storage snapshots and the ability to create instant, zero-copy clones of snapshots, he believed, could help Imagine Learning create entirely new storage volumes in minutes without increasing storage consumption.

As an example, Call says, Imagine first purchased a 16 TB Nimble CS220 flash-optimized storage array, followed closely by two 32 TB CS240 arrays—designating the first CS240 for primary storage and the second as a replication partner at an offsite location. Within days his team had moved the majority of data from their legacy system to the CS240s and initiated a snapshot schedule.

"We don't need to do regular full off-site backups, because each snapshot can be treated as its own full data set. I can go to any one of those snapshots, and it has pointers to all of the new data as well as pointers to all of the data that's unchanged. And I can convert a snapshot into functionally a stand-alone volume that is complete from the time the snapshot was taken."

Data Protection Made Easy

Snapshots are essential as a daily or even hourly alternative to full backups, says Call. "A backup of 15 terabytes takes time, and, during that time, our storage systems were really busy. In the past, if employees needed access to that data during backup periods, the server became a resource under contention."

But with the move to Nimble, he adds, his team has simplified its backup architecture, and today backups have no perceptible effect on user productivity. "It was great for us to find a device capable of providing primary storage, snapshotting and offsite replicated backups, all in one easy system."

"We can be comfortable and feel secure that the off-site backups are up to date, and happening automatically and with full redundancy," he said. "When you compare Nimble with other disk-based backup and disaster recovery products that I've been able to find, it's very effective and very competitive in terms of pricing, and it's so easy to use."

High Performance, Low Cost

Call says that an original goal of the move to Nimble was to provide VMware shared storage and clustered file storage for a Microsoft SQL Server. "The database servers that we are transitioning from are on a RAID Zero array of solid state drives. At times, depending on the reports we are running, we really pushed the performance of those drives, but what we could achieve was never enough."

"Competitors could not provide the IOPS that we require at a budget for which the Nimble arrays are providing high IOPS. But there's more to consider. On the OPEX side, we no longer needed to dedicate any time to backups for main file storage. That saved us a lot of time."

He adds that for performance considerations he also has to weigh the cost in lost productivity during downtime. "If we were to experience downtime on a workday, that would be a major problem. We would have a couple hundred people with no email and with no access to server-based documents."

And so when you make a storage decision, according to Call, you must absolutely consider redundancy. "With Nimble, we're protected through redundant controllers and power supplies. And we never lose performance or access during maintenance upgrades. The tools provided with a Nimble array make it possible to even upgrade firmware with no downtime whatsoever."

All About the GUI

Levy Call becomes animated in discussions of what a storage command console, or GUI, should be. "First, let me say what a GUI should not be: At a trade show, a storage competitor showed me its user interface. Essentially they had taken every available option from a command line, put a button on it, and placed those buttons on a series of web pages. But it wasn't any simpler; there wasn't any more automation or any coalescing of tasks." For Call, what a GUI should be, and quickly became, was a means of handling the "squeaky wheels" within his organization – those requiring evidence that the company was getting top performance from its storage systems. "The Nimble Command Console gives me a dynamic view of our entire storage operations." "Today, I don't get any questions about performance. And, for IT, Nimble is a part of our infrastructure that just works. Rarely do we need to focus on the GUI, unless, for example, it's time for a firmware upgrade." He says that his team has also benefitted from alerts provided by the Nimble command console. "During the initial setup, we wanted to have the cables routed in a certain way and identified with specific colors according to the function of each cable. As we moved cables around, we would get immediate notifications of lost connectivity, and, of course, we expected that. But it's reassuring to know that alerts are doing exactly what we expect them to."

No Storage Admins

One of the first things that Call noted about deployment of the Nimble array was the simplicity of management. "I'm an IT guy, and I had been worried about how much time I would need to spend on learning how to become a storage administrator. But after a thirty-minute demo, I came away with a distinct impression that this is something I could manage. None of this seemed really hard."

"I have three other people on my team who, with no training other than literally a five-minute introduction, today create volumes, adjust volumes, create protection policies and set up replications. And we don't need a storage administrator."

Still, he says, ease of use goes hand-in-hand with vendor support. "The support from Nimble has been stellar. Our Nimble field engineers are knowledgeable, available, eager and willing to walk us through any aspect of Nimble operations. I've received similar comments from three of my team members. The Nimble engineers deserve a raise, a bonus, and some days off!"