We performed a comparison between HPE Nimble Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, HPE Nimble Storage came out ahead of Pure Storage FlashArray. Although the two products have a similar ease of deployment, pricing, and quality of service and support, Pure Storage FlashArray requires more improvements in its capacities and features.
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"They do a good job of helping people do storage in a very simple way."
"The most valuable features are the duplication and compression traffic. We have second storage that we can use for the synchronization of data between the data centers."
"HPE Nimble Storage uses the InfoSight platform and it is useful because we can identify the faults and can analyze the performance. It has many other features. This feature is the best that I have observed from HPE Nimble Storage."
"HPE Nimble Storage is very stable and performs well."
"Performance Integration with Commvault"
"Definitely ease-of-use. I've experienced many different arrays out there and Nimble is definitely there."
"Not only is it high performing, but it is also more compact and fits better in our storage arrays than equipment from other storage providers."
"Our virtual admins are able to take control of Nimble and know how to allocate the storage, whenever it is required, thus reducing time."
"Pure Storage FlashArray's overall speed is its most valuable feature."
"Because we were able to afford to go all flash, we don't manage the tiers, we're not moving data up, and we're not waiting for overnight cycles."
"As soon as we introduced our first Pure Storage FlashArray, the first benefit was at least twice the performance increase. Our production databases simply ran twice as fast with no other change."
"It's just very easy for general block storage."
"The stability and performance are the best things about the solution."
"Our storage phones home. It is smart and intelligent in that aspect, which has been huge for us. We don't have to be storage administrators."
"Support has been helpful."
"Redundancy and the fault tolerance of the platform are the most impressive."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"It is on the expensive side."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"There is no active-active controller, which means that we can only have one controller online at a time."
"We would like there to be more enhanced features."
"I would like deduplication by default on all the volumes. I still don't understand (or know why) dedupe isn't enabled for the templates out-of-the-box. We have to go in and manually enable it each and every time."
"The solution could reduce its price."
"Nimble Storage could increase its flexibility by adding more protocol options. Nimble mainly uses fibre channel protocols, whereas many other storage arrays support fibre channel, iCSI, and NFS protocols."
"The resellers did the implementation of the solution, we did not do it ourselves. We have ten people for the deployment of the solution."
"The amount of firmware updates released seem excessive."
"The solution should allow for easier configurations."
"This product has only two active controllers, whereas other solutions can have more. This is something that needs to improve."
"The price could be better."
"They could improve the price."
"From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable."
"It was not proactive communication."
"We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform. The idea is that they would run a basic NFS or CIF share from the controllers. FlashBlade is the powerhouse for File and Object storage, but if you don't need all that power, a lightweight file function would make FlashArrays more versatile."
"It is a bit expensive."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve by being more secure."
HPE Nimble Storage is ranked 5th in All-Flash Storage with 117 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. HPE Nimble Storage is rated 9.0, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of HPE Nimble Storage writes "Beneficial management software, straightforward installation, and good support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". HPE Nimble Storage is most compared with Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, HPE Primera and VMware vSAN, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, IBM FlashSystem, VMware vSAN and Dell Unity XT. See our HPE Nimble Storage vs. Pure Storage FlashArray report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.