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Cohesity SmartFiles vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Ranking in File and Object Storage
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (16th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th)
Cohesity SmartFiles
Ranking in File and Object Storage
18th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Ranking in File and Object Storage
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (5th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), Public Cloud Storage Services (5th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.7%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cohesity SmartFiles is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 3.0%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File and Object Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)3.0%
Pure Storage FlashBlade5.7%
Cohesity SmartFiles0.5%
Other90.8%
File and Object Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us
The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.
SM
Enables effective data management with reliable backup and recovery
Cohesity SmartFiles aids in data management with features like full-text search through indexed documents. The architecture supports backup, ransomware awareness, and data management on a converged platform, offering triple-protocol access (NFS, CIFS, and S3) while facilitating gradual improvements in access rights management. It allows for redundant setups, with automated backup and recovery options in a cloud environment.
Amarnath Charugundla - PeerSpot reviewer
Unified management and cost-effectiveness lead to positive experiences and future savings
Improvement is necessary wherein the memory or storage should not breach 90%, because if breached, it becomes unmanageable. We have to set alerts or CPU triggering for 95% for the first warning. Other activities on nodes or file systems should be properly maintained. We must monitor the dashboard for P1, P2 alerts in the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) file share system including SMB, NFS, objects, and blocks. Attention should be maintained for any alerts such as CPU, memory, and RAM alerts, as exceeding these creates issues within teams. If triggered to 95% and forgotten, it crosses the SLA breach, causing disturbances to application, web, and platform teams. Continuous monitoring on the Nutanix dashboard is essential. Even a highly experienced person in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cannot provide a 10 rating out of 10 because it is a vast system. I would rate it eight from my perspective.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."
"It performs well and it is also very fast."
"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."
"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."
"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."
"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."
"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."
"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."
"Cohesity SmartFiles aids in data management with features like full-text search through indexed documents."
"From an analytics perspective, the best aspect of Unified Storage is its locality. When you read data, you want to know that you're only reading data from the particular local storage node. It's also critical to access the data as quickly as possible from that. From a business perspective, the most important thing is ease of use. Having a combination of compute and storage makes it much easier to manage."
"I rate Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) nine point five to ten, as it's easy to manage, scalable, has great performance, and includes advanced features."
"The product's initial setup phase was simple."
"The most valuable features are the interface and support."
"Nutanix has the best customer support in town."
"The most valuable feature is the easy interface."
"We appreciate how Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) performs very well. We appreciate being able to have the duplication of the data to a secondary location."
"The best features of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are its excellent performance; comparing it with other vendors, there's no need for expertise as with other storage solutions."
 

Cons

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."
"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."
"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."
"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."
"The speed could be improved."
"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."
"I would like to see more deduplication."
"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."
"Users must remember that running DataProtect and files on the same cluster could threaten access if there is a platform failure. It's not suitable for applications needing high I/O or low latency."
"We have some problems with Nutanix Unified Storage's support because they asked us to change our hardware."
"It would be beneficial if there were a migration tool for the new way of syncing data for data protection."
"The graphical user interface could provide more detail. It would be nice if we could click on the service and get some expanded definitions of them. When hiring new people, it's difficult to teach them how everything works, but if they can access everything, they can teach themselves."
"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) can be improved in the area of big data workloads, as we still need to improve performance there."
"Some of the new features in the tool cannot be used with just one click, as was possible in the past."
"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) needs improvement in compatibility with Windows solutions."
"Its interface is very simplistic. It is a good thing for people because of the ease of use, but at times, I find it too simplistic. It is hard to find advanced options. They should eventually expand it and provide additional drop-down lists or menus with advanced feature sets."
"Nutanix could improve the ability to track user actions, such as identifying who deleted a folder."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."
"The price is a little high."
"Our licensing is renewed annually."
"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."
"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."
"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."
"The product is very expensive."
Information not available
"It is competitive with other vendors, but you get more for your dollars. It is fairly priced, but not cheap."
"My company is in Brazil, and making the payments in dollars is tough for our organization."
"The price of the license is expensive when comparing it to traditional storage."
"Nutanix Unified Storage is competitively priced. There aren't any competitors that can do much better for the same price."
"We are Nutanix partners, so it is pretty good. With the free terabyte that comes with the Nutanix clusters, we have started to build proposals for the clients. The price adjustment with the new policy of Nutanix Unified Storages seems attractive. Let us see if it has results."
"In the manufacturing industry, we operate under very lean principles where costs are heavily scrutinized. There was some initial hesitation, but the performance we've experienced since switching to the Nutanix platform, along with the peace of mind from having confidence in our platform to not give us issues that keep us up at night, has smoothed over much of that scrutiny."
"It's not the cheapest solution. It's in line with other solutions, but it offers features that the competitors don't have at any price point, especially with regard to analytics and ransomware prevention. No one else has any sort of object-based storage available. Nutanix Unified Storage is a lot more feature-rich. This is a situation where you get what you pay for."
"I hope that it will stay the way it is. We have seen the changes in VMware and what happened to them. I have heard that Nutanix will raise the prices, but I hope that they will not do that."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
No data available
Computer Software Company
30%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise20
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise63
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cohesity SmartFiles?
SmartFiles is an economical solution, priced per terabyte on the backend. Initial setup and licensing costs align wit...
What needs improvement with Cohesity SmartFiles?
Users must remember that running DataProtect and files on the same cluster could threaten access if there is a platfo...
What is your primary use case for Cohesity SmartFiles?
Our customers use Cohesity SmartFiles ( /products/cohesity-smartfiles-reviews ) in conjunction with Cohesity SpanFS (...
What do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?
Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?
It is very cost-effective compared to the traditional environment. With new hardware, it's a long-term investment but...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?
The cybersecurity features are used for protecting unstructured data against threats such as ransomware.
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
1. Acer 2. Adobe 3. AIG 4. Airbus 5. Allstate 6. Amazon 7. American Express 8. Aon 9. Apple 10. ATT 11. Autodesk 12. Bank of America 13. Barclay's 14. Bayer 15. BlackRock 16. Boeing 17. BNP Paribas 18. Cisco 19. Coca-Cola 20. Comcast 21. Dell 22. Deutsche Bank 23. Equinix 24. ExxonMobil 25. Ford 26. GE 27. Google 28. HP 29. IBM 30. Intel 31. JPMorgan Chase 32. Kroger
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Nutanix, Dell Technologies and others in File and Object Storage. Updated: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.