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 features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"We have seen our average latency go from four milliseconds to point four. Therefore, we are getting 10 times better performance down to the end user on everything. We have seen an increase in our IOPS by ten times."
"The fact that you can manage the requirements is one the most valuable features of HPE Nimble Storage. The other is the rapid deployment time."
"It has allowed us to upgrade our DMS to the latest version and reuse the older array as the DR storage for VMware SRM."
"The setup was very, very simple. When we got our AF5000, no kidding, we had it up in production within two hours"
"The most valuable feature is the management of Nimble Storage, InfoSight. This is like a cloud. That's really a very nice feature. I think that's the only reason to buy Nimble Storage."
"The most useful features are high availability and the storage snapshot backup functionality."
"HPE Nimble Storage is quick to release updates that fix bugs or problems and the failover has been good."
"I have found the convergence rate and deduplication the most valuable features."
"The performance of the storage is just unbelievable."
"It's actually very stable"
"I like FlashArray's ActiveCluster as well as its snapshot and cloning capabilities."
"The deduplication and compression rates are beyond impressive."
"Technical support is excellent. I've had very good responses from technical support. We had a couple of cases where we needed support. Some of the communications were purely over email and some has been an actual call to the service desk."
"Having fast storage allows actual servers to perform in high capacity so we don't have slowdowns on our applications."
"They are quite responsive and our local team was pretty good."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the all-flash storage performance, low latency, and efficiency of their de-duplication technology. Additionally, the ease of use is good compared to other storage systems. The features in data protection, snapshotting, and replication between data centers and sites are superior to other solutions."
"It is on the expensive side."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"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."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"There should be faster interfaces."
"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 dashboard can be improved."
"I would like to see more integrations."
"I would like to see native network attached storage (NAS) functionality. Our customers are looking for NAS, and Nimble can't give it to them."
"I don't think it is officially released yet, but the main reason that we chose Nimble is because of the sync rep feature. So, I would like to see that further evolve. This feature will be essential for our setups."
"The solution could reduce its price."
"HPE Nimble Storage's cost is very high, making it one of its downsides."
"We did have one hiccup with the integration of vCenter. When we were installing Pure Storage, we were using vCenter 6.7, which defaults to the HTML5 Web Client. The current plugin for Pure Storage doesn't show up in that client at all. You have to go and use the legacy FlexFlash client to see the Pure Storage plugin in vCenter."
"Its price needs improvement. Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"The solution is not cheap."
"Having something native in the Pure Storage ecosystem would make it integrated and in one single company, and we wouldn't have to work with multiple organizations."
"They could improve the price."
"The scalability of the solution is not as good as it probably could be."
"The GUI is simplistic and basic. I feel like it's explanatory, but not enough, it needs a little more to it."
"We haven't seen ROI yet."
HPE Nimble Storage is ranked 5th in All-Flash Storage with 119 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.