We performed a comparison between HPE Nimble Storage and NetApp AFF based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."This solution has improved our organization. In the past, we had reports that were taking up to two hours and after switching to SSD storage the overall processing power dropped to half an hour. The end users saw an immediate performance gain."
"We have tons of capacity on it."
"They have really good baked in analytics to show you trends for growth history, so it does help with future planning for data growth."
"The speed of the Pure FlashArray is very, very fast and nothing in the market can compare to it."
"The deduplication and compression rates are beyond impressive."
"All updates, upgrades, and hardware work are all performed on-line with no impact."
"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."
"The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"The valuable features include encryption of data, hybrid performance, firmware updates, and overall simplicity."
"We have found the advantage of it is the easy, rapid setup, but also that it is very easy to manage."
"InfoSight provides real-time reporting, it gives you information about your different volumes, how the arrays are being used, I/O, performance in general."
"I have added expansion shelves on several of them. It is simple to do. You plug it in, you attach two cables, then you press one button, like "Add", and that is all you have to do."
"The most valuable feature is data mirroring."
"We get storage access without the need for more human monitoring of those resources."
"We use a platform as a service and have multiple application vendors who comprise that platform. There are moments when those application vendors put the blame on us. By working in InfoSight, I am able to say, "No, it is not us." I can actually provide proof, either by using screenshots or through reporting."
"InfoSight is a valuable feature."
"It's very stable. It's always there when we need it. With the Dual Controller, if one drops out, the other one comes right online. We don't use any iSCSI so there is a little bit of a latency break but, over the NFS, we don't notice that switch-on. We can do maintenance in the middle of the day, literally rip a whole controller out of the chassis, and do what we need to do with it."
"Other manufacturers claim simplicity. In fact, frankly, they do have an advantage in that regard, however, they don't have the functionality. If you were to compare one of those products to NetApp, head to head from a feature perspective, NetApp would wind up in the top 10."
"Our architecture has historically relied on RDMs, so AFF has enabled us to easily migrate from our old EMC PowerMax to the new NetApp. It's been pretty smooth. We have a lot of SAP servers in our environment, so performance is critical for us."
"We reduced our floor space by reducing 44 racks units to four rack units. It has helped us with our data center economies of scale. It reduces our support costs too, which is great."
"NetApp AFF is very good at cleaning up your storage."
"The most valuable features are the IO performance that we get, the cluster part, and the increased workload and performance with the SSDs."
"Things that have been really useful, of course, are the clustering features and being able to stay online during failovers and code upgrades; and just being able to seamlessly do all sorts of movement of data without having to disrupt end-users' ability to get to those files. And we can take advantage of new shelves, new hardware, upgrade in place. It's kind of magic when it comes to doing those sorts of things."
"It's helping to leverage data. The storage is being utilized to implement larger, complex file sizes."
"There are scenarios with very specific functionality around VMware integration particularly to do with the way we'd like to manage LUNs in VMware. The tools are pretty good but there's room for improvement there."
"The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features."
"I would like to see support for NVMe, end-to-end."
"I would like to see them lower the costs."
"We need to add more storage in Pure Storage FlashArray with the cluster mode activated for us to have better performance."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"If they could make it cheaper, that would be something."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions. For example, if I want to use this storage for a backup from the cloud, I want to have integration with the cloud vendors, such as Microsoft, Oracles, or Amazon. It could be available as an API to allow seamless integration. Additionally, the solution could improve by having native integration with a cloud provider, such as VMware or Microsoft, this would reduce the need to use third-party solutions to complete the task."
"The quality of technical support depends on which member of the support team you speak with."
"Scalability, in terms of being able to scale out, is not easy and should be improved."
"HPE Nimble Storage could be improved with some critical application or servers."
"The solution should allow for easier configurations."
"Pure Storages have some option, which allows us the ability to directly download that host inventory and volume report. We can receive everything directly generated from the storage itself. We do not need to use some other web browser or something. If HPE Nimble Storage could do the same it would be a benefit."
"We would like there to be more enhanced features."
"HPE Nimble Storage's cost is very high, making it one of its downsides."
"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."
"Customer service is one area of the product line where I would love to see improvement. I have had several vendor experiences with NetApp where I faced challenges in the initial call trying to navigate the requirements of the service level expectation. Their response could be better improved. However, the final result is great. It is just the initial support level where improvement would help to effectively solve problems."
"In terms of what needs improvement, I would like to see more consistency with the UI. It seems to change every few versions. The menus can be in a completely different place."
"The support documentation has room for improvement."
"It's a little behind on security. It's starting to get into multi-factor authentication, they just started to introduce it but not for all products."
"We currently use some thin provisioning for our planning system, but we will probably move away from thin provisioning because our Solaris planning system actually has some issues with the thin provisioning and way Solaris handles it, since Solaris uses a ZFS file system. The ZFS file system doesn't like the thin provisioning changing things and it brings systems down, which is bad."
"I think for us, improvement would probably be the changes in how the flash is actually used inside the system and how we manage the actual disk and stripes within the system."
"I think adding more features to make it more cloud enabled will help us with cloud tiering and simplify the whole cloud operations when it's integrating with our on-prem AFF products. That is one area where we would like to see more improvements from NetApp."
"The Bezels need improvement."
HPE Nimble Storage is ranked 5th in All-Flash Storage with 119 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews. HPE Nimble Storage is rated 9.0, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of HPE Nimble Storage writes "Beneficial management software, straightforward installation, and good support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". HPE Nimble Storage is most compared with Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, HPE Primera, VMware vSAN and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN and HPE Primera. See our HPE Nimble Storage vs. NetApp AFF report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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