Introducing Nimble Storage at Tech Field Day 3, July 2010

On July 15, 2010, Nimble Storage chose Tech Field Day 3 in Seattle to unveil their company and hybrid storage array product. This video was not released at that time, but should be of some historic interest today for historical reasons following Nimble’s acquisition by HPE. At Tech Field Day 3, company co-founders Varun Mehta and Umesh Maheshwari, along with marketing VP Dan Leary and senior product manager Ajay Singh, introduced Nimble Storage to an audience of independent technologists. They emphasized their deep expertise from companies like NetApp, Data Domain, and Sun, and positioned Nimble as a novel solution aimed at transforming storage for mid-sized enterprises. The team shared their vision of combining primary storage, backup, and disaster recovery into a single, easy-to-manage system optimized for performance and cost.

Nimble’s solution stood out through its unique CASL (Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout) architecture, which utilized flash memory as a cache layered on low-cost SATA disks, enhancing performance while minimizing storage costs. The system provided efficient real-time compression, granular block-level tracking for snapshots, and adaptive cache management to serve frequently accessed data with high performance. This architecture enabled storing up to 60-90 days of compressed snapshots on the primary system, eliminating traditional backup windows and simplifying disaster recovery. The product was designed with ease-of-use in mind, featuring application-defined templates and automated protection policies, making it especially suitable for IT generalists in mid-market organizations who needed simplified SAN management.

By integrating backup and DR functionalities typically handled by separate systems, Nimble claimed it could replace multiple traditional arrays and disk-based backup appliances with a single hybrid box. This consolidation led to significant savings in both upfront costs and ongoing operational complexity. Customers could implement efficient WAN replication using capacity-optimized snapshots without the need for separate dedupe appliances or complex DR solutions. One early adopter, a state government IT shop, reported faster backups, simpler restores, and a dramatic reduction in infrastructure — all while staying within budget. Throughout the presentation, the Nimble team acknowledged competition from tiered flash systems and ZFS-based vendors but emphasized their unique architectural advantages and operational simplicity as key differentiators.