HPE Nimble Storage vs Pure Storage FlashArray comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Feb 22, 2023

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.

  • Ease of Deployment: Both products were described as easy and straightforward to deploy by their reviewers.
  • Features: HPE Nimble Storage is a stable and scalable product with the most useful features for management, deduplication, compression, data mirroring, and backups. The biggest drawback of the product is the lack of several important features, including an active-active controller, auto-fix, and a dynamic alerting system on storage. Reviewers described Pure Storage FlashArray as an easy-to-use product with valuable features for snapshots and management, deduplication, and data compression. The solution needs to increase the amount of storage it offers and improve the features for reporting, replication, and data reduction.
  • Pricing: Users’ estimation of HPE Nimble Storage's price varies, depending on the licensing that they use. The prevailing opinion is that this is a high-end solution. Reviewers of Pure Storage FlashArray like its licensing model but describe the product as expensive.

  • Service and Support: The customer and technical support of both HPE Nimble Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray are rated as good, responsive, and knowledgeable.

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.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE Nimble Storage vs. Pure Storage FlashArray Report (Updated: March 2024).
767,995 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users.""The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone.""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.""The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use.""Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates.""Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution.""Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model.""The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Pros →

"It's easy to use, it's just like 3PAR. I made clusters of 32 hosts with 50 volumes and that took barely an hour. I scripted a lot of it, filled in the names of volumes, the names of servers.""Our virtual admins are able to take control of Nimble and know how to allocate the storage, whenever it is required, thus reducing time.""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.""We like the performance.""In the 20 days that we have been using this solution, it has been stable.""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.""InfoSight. It's AI for the data center. It's very easy, it does a lot of the work for the customer... InfoSight and the whole system, help them to deal with troubleshooting.""There are a lot of redundancies in all the right areas, so it is pretty stable."

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"It is an SSD array that has awesome performance, low submillisecond latency, and does what it is supposed to do. It just works, which is difficult for things to do anymore.""We've had to use tech support on a number of occasions. They did everything remotely and talked us all the way through. They fixed the issue within 30 minutes. Every single time we contact them, they're perfect. I would give their technical support a ten out of ten.""It helps us maintain uptime much better than other solutions we've used in the past, and the support is extremely quick and responsive.""Technical support has been amazing.""We were actually able to do multiple upgrades, including head upgrades and moving between the platforms, M20 and M50, over the years. We have never once lost a ping and have never had an outage due to an OS upgrade or a complete head upgrade.""The reliability is very good.""This is the best all-flash storage array on the market.""It helps to simplify storage. For most of our customers, when they move to Pure Storage, storage becomes an afterthought."

More Pure Storage FlashArray Pros →

Cons
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI.""In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified.""There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features.""We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly.""Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution.""In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models.""I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution.""The software layer has to improve."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Cons →

"I would like to see the network portion of the product improve, especially with some of the things which are coming out from Aruba and HPE. Both are innovating more of an automated networking. I would like to see our Nimble meld into that and do some automated networking.""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.""The only thing that I can really compare Nimble to is all-flash because, right now, Nimble is a hybrid solution. I would like to see them come out with an all-flash alternative.""I would like to see more integrations.""There should be faster interfaces.""A feature that would be a nice addition to the next release would be a filer option. A filer option so that you could connect the sim or NFS or chips like NetApp does for NAS functionality.""The resellers did the implementation of the solution, we did not do it ourselves. We have ten people for the deployment of the solution.""I would like to see greater integration with Microsoft's Hyper-V platform."

More HPE Nimble Storage Cons →

"I would rate this solution an eight. To make it a ten it would have to be a little cheaper.""What it needs to do is work a little closer with solutions, like VMware, so it understands the particular workloads that are on it. Today, it does not understand the applications which are running against it.""If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it.""I want to learn more about command line usage which I have not explored much yet. However, there are many automated solutions for repetitive tasks. I would like to see additional features like performance monitoring, configuring of alerts, and the customization of alert thresholds in the next release.""The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better.""The setup needs to be improved the most. They can do a little more with the user interface, but the setup is what I would like to see made a bit easier.""I would like to see the NAS add-on component become more fault-tolerant than just a single virtual machine running inside the array. I'm unwilling to use it for that reason.""We haven't seen ROI yet."

More Pure Storage FlashArray Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
  • "We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
  • "With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
  • "Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
  • "As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
  • "They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."
  • "Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
  • "The licensing is on a yearly basis."
  • More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "From a price/performance perspective, Nimble simply can’t be beat. From a TCO perspective, the stability alone pays for itself."
  • "Competitive. No licensing. Since everything is included."
  • "It is expensive, but it is worth the “uptime”."
  • "It is cost-effective, which is important for a service provider, because you're competing with hyper-scale providers who do things at extremely large scale, who tend to kill you on price if you're not careful."
  • "It is very pricey. You pay for what you get, and this storage solution is great. It is well worth the cost."
  • "The first two that I bought were incredibly expensive, compared to the last five to seven that I have bought. The price has come way down, and it has been a year or so since we bought one."
  • "If you are a super small company, the product is probably not right for you. It is out of your price range. Anything from mid-SMB up to enterprise, it is absolutely the right product."
  • "If we had stuck with EMC, we would have spent a lot more. We have EMC in-house, we have a bunch of them. Switching to Nimble saved me millions of dollars over the past three years... Nimble fills a need for performance within a budget that is in the sub-million dollar range."
  • More HPE Nimble Storage Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
  • "There is always room for negotiation."
  • "The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."
  • "It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
  • "For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
  • "We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)."
  • "It is a cheaper solution."
  • "Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
  • More Pure Storage FlashArray Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover… more »
    Top Answer:I would rate the solution as an eight out of ten in terms of costliness.
    Top Answer:There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class… more »
    Top Answer:HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one,… more »
    Top Answer:HPE Nimble is a versatile synced WAN San solution. It is easy to use and doesn’t require much training for admins. The… more »
    Top Answer:If a ransomware or enterprise-level attack happens, my infrastructure remains totally secure. If any virtual machine… more »
    Top Answer:Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure… more »
    Top Answer:We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
    Top Answer:We have customers who use a three-year or five-year license. We also have customers who use Evergreen.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
    Nimble Storage
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

    HPE Nimble Storage is a highly effective All-Flash Storage Array solution that aims to enable organizations to reliably store and access their data. Organizations across a wide variety of industries trust Nimble Storage to assist them with all of their data storage-based needs. It both tracks all of the IT architecture that an organization uses and protects that architecture from a variety of digital threats.

    HPE Nimble Storage Benefits

    Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy HPE Nimble Storage include:


    • Increased security. Nimble Storage provides organizations with powerful layers of protection. It leverages predictive analytics powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning to keep businesses from suffering harm related to emerging threats. The AI and ML software identifies threats before they can threaten a user’s data.


    • Reduced costs and increase profits. Businesses that deploy Nimble Storage find that their overhead costs end up being significantly reduced by up to 49%. One of the reasons for this is that Nimble Storage uses a “pay as you go” subscription model which means that users never pay for more storage than they actually need.


    • Ease of use. Nimble Storage is simple for administrators to utilize. They can install it without any kind of outside assistance. It is also simple for the average administrator to manage without specialized training.



    HPE Nimble Storage Features


    • Artificial intelligence. The backbone of Nimble Storage’s IT infrastructure is its AI software. The HPE InfoSight feature makes it so that administrators don’t need to make guesses when managing their data storage. It offers users suggestions as to what they can do to improve their storage performance.


    • Scaling. Nimble Storage gives users the ability to scale their data storage so that it appropriately meets their needs. They can both “scale up” or increase the sheer amount of data that they can store at a given time and “scale out” or increase their ability to perform effectively.


    • Hybrid storage. Nimble Storage has the ability to store data both on the cloud and on-premises so as to meet an organization’s storage requirements. Its multi-cloud feature enables users to seamlessly manage all of their data storage and utilization operations with ease.


    Reviews from Real Users

    HPE Nimble Storage is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its ease of use and its powerful InfoSight analytics feature.

    Andrew B., Head Of Information Technology at Zambia National Building Society, writes, “It's a very easy solution. Whenever I have a question, I find they have already provided a solution for it.”

    Prataparao D., Technical Solution's Consultant for HPE Storage Devices at Karvy Innotech, says, “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.”

    Pure Storage FlashArray is the world’s first enterprise-class storage array that runs exclusively on the nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) protocol for memory access and storage. It represents a totally state-of-the-art type of storage technology. It offers users shared accelerated storage that delivers cutting-edge features in the realms of performance, simplicity, and consolidation. Pure Storage is fresh and modern today and will be for the next decade. Without forklift upgrades or planned downtime, Pure Storage takes the work out of storage ownership and delivers unprecedented customer satisfaction.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is built with simplicity and reliability in mind. The solution can be implemented and optimized in hours, as opposed to other similar solutions that can take days. It has no moving parts, which removes areas where it could potentially be vulnerable to suffering errors. It is highly stable and gives users the ability to manage system shutdowns in a way that  prevents data loss.

    Benefits of Pure Storage FlashArray

    Some of the benefits of using Pure Storage FlashArray include:

    • A much higher level of speed than similar pieces of technology. Pure Storage FlashArray maximizes the speed at which data can be transferred while at the same time minimizing system latencies that might slow the transfer down. Additionally, it offers users quick memory read and data access speeds.

    • A higher bang for your buck in terms of the storage capabilities you get for the money you pay. They are smaller in size than more standard storage technologies, but they offer flash memory, which enables users to store larger amounts of data than the current standard.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Pure Storage FlashArray is a highly effective piece of storage technology which stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its overall robustness and the value that it offers by way of its reliability and ease of use. It provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with this solution. Pure Storage FlashArray’s reliability and ease of use make it a highly valuable solution. 

    PeerSpot user Prabakaran K., a technical consultant at Injazat Data Systems, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."

    PeerSpot user Jason D., a cloud solutions architect at a tech services company, notes three features that make this solution valuable when he writes, "We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."

    Sample Customers
    Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
    Ace Relocation, Atkins Nutritionals, Berkeley Research Group, Canadian International School, City of Hot Springs, Clackamas County, Corona-Norco Unified School District, Ideal Integrations, Linear Technology, P&O Maritime, Retail Apparel Group (RAG), Virtual Radiologic
    Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company25%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Comms Service Provider15%
    Manufacturing Company15%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Comms Service Provider12%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Healthcare Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization54%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Government4%
    Manufacturing Company4%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization31%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise37%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise60%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business34%
    Midsize Enterprise34%
    Large Enterprise32%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise62%
    Large Enterprise25%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise57%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise40%
    Large Enterprise42%
    Buyer's Guide
    HPE Nimble Storage vs. Pure Storage FlashArray
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Nimble Storage vs. Pure Storage FlashArray and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    767,995 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    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.