Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Dell PowerStore vs HPE Nimble Storage comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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 FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell PowerStore
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
119
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), NAS (1st), Enterprise SAN (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
HPE Nimble Storage
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
10th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.3
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 16.8%, up from 16.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Nimble Storage is 2.4%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
Hassan_Zaki - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrated AI and clustering enhance storage operations effectively
I promote and recommend Dell PowerStore for all workloads to my clients and customers. Most of my customers have one appliance per site. Approximately 80% of my customers have Dell PowerStore implemented in their data centers. We always use CLS as another Dell solution for cybersecurity and data security. The CLS is integrated with the Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain, not with Dell PowerStore. Windows, Linux, and some customers use Red Hat or SUSE. We have many operating systems working with Dell PowerStore in the same environments and data centers. CloudIQ and Storage IQ are used by some customers, but Apex AIOps has not been widely adopted yet. Dell PowerStore has integration with VMware and Kubernetes. Most workloads work fine and have very good integration with Dell PowerStore, except for one or two specific workloads in the market. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell PowerStore a nine.
Ajit Pratap Kundan - PeerSpot reviewer
A tool that offers protection against ransomware and other enterprise-level attacks
HPE Nimble Storage's cost is very high, making it one of its downsides. HPE Nimble Storage's cost is very high compared with any HCI solutions, like HPE's SimpliVity, Nutanix, VMware, or Dell VxRail. A person requires a special skill set to operate HPE Nimble Storage because there are hardly any solutions similar to Nimble Storage in the market. The product's support can be made faster and more responsive if HPE trains its partners in such a way that they acquire more expertise on Nimble Storage through the training sessions. HPE Nimble Storage is dependent on only VMware vSphere Hypervisor. In the future, HPE has to make Nimble Storage feasible with other hypervisors like Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix Acropolis, and RHEV, meaning it should be hypervisor agnostic.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"The latency is good."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"We used Cloud IQ. The central management and outside support functionality were great since we had systems all over the world."
"This solution is highly flexible and offers efficient online compression capabilities."
"Dell PowerStore's compression and deduplication technologies are a big help for our organization."
"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature is the unwavering performance."
"I assess customer service and technical support as very good."
"For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance."
"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."
"Updates are very easy to do when the customer is connected to the internet."
"The management software that runs in the cloud is called InfoSight and it is very good. It is similar to machine learning software that monitors your hardware."
"HPE Nimble Storage is a very organized and customer-oriented tool."
"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."
"InfoSight - analytics sight that collects data for all Nimble arrays deployed"
"Nimble's support is awesome and one of the best. You sort of get a Tier 3 plus guy every time that you call, no matter if it is a Tier 0 issue. This is super helpful in case we ever have problems."
"Their remote management and understanding when things are starting to go wrong and their ability to fix them before the customer even knows, this has been a big positive when a customer makes the decision to go with Nimble"
 

Cons

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"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."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"You cannot delegate permissions."
"The cost of technical support is high."
"It doesn't support SSD or Flash."
"We would consider this solution if the pricing is competitive with other options, as it offers a very good solution. However, the current price is slightly higher than the competition."
"There could be better reporting."
"Dell PowerStore is too expensive, and it could be less complicated. It isn't as user-friendly as other options, especially regarding the user interface."
"Dell PowerStore doesn't really have a lot of advantages over other products. It has no special features technically. Other products have better management and analytics features."
"The support team doesn't always provide adequate assistance. So, there is room for improvement in the support."
"I'd also like to see them incorporate tools that let me get granular with the VMs. I want to see an individual VM, I want to Snapshot and recover an individual VM."
"I think the scalability of HPE Nimble Storage could be improved."
"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'd like to see more granular quality of service rules. Currently, I think currently there's not much room for maximum IOPS, but there's not an option for minimum IOPS for a given volume."
"They keep talking about doing one-to-many replication. This is what we'd like to see, just to help with data replication."
"I’d like to see in-line deduplication extended to Nimble non-flash (called “Hybrid”) arrays, even if it’s only the C500 and higher controllers that support it."
"We are doing a hybrid and are moving some machines to Microsoft Azure to run in hybrid mode. We are checking the availability of extra software-defined storage so that we can configure it."
"HPE does not have suffficient storage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"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."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"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."
"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."
"Licensing is very simple. Everything is included in the basic license. There are no concerns about having to pay to add a feature. Everything is there."
"It is easy to work with Dell from the licensing perspective."
"We purchased it with a five-year warranty."
"The licensing for this solution is good and is in the mid-range tier."
"The software features are included in the pricing without any additional purchase requirements."
"The pricing rates at seven out of ten as it is considered overpriced. Entry-level models are reasonably priced, starting around $30,000 for a base model with 6 drives. However, upgrades become costly - adding 6 additional drives can cost another $30,000."
"The solution is expensive."
"With compression, we were able to have a solution within our company's budget. We include a clause in the contract with Dell that states if the compression ratio is not met, we will adjust the workload accordingly."
"From a price/performance perspective, Nimble simply can’t be beat. From a TCO perspective, the stability alone pays for itself."
"The pricing is better than some of the competitors, such as Dell EMC."
"We have seen tremendous ROI. It pays for itself 10 times over in the matter of four years."
"Nimble Storage is too expensive for our enterprise customers."
"Performance per dollar, when we looked at it, was the highest that we could get for what we needed."
"There are no licensing costs for this solution."
"My company has opted for HPE GreenLake payment model, meaning the billing is done on a quarterly basis."
"Our hybrid solution could do with some more competitive pricing and more scaled-down deployments. Already, the smallest one is too much for us. We would flourish by having a smaller unit."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
860,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
37%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated managem...
What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell of...
How does HPE Nimble Storage compare to VxRail?
HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one, z...
Which would you choose - HPE Nimble Storage or HPE Primera?
HPE Nimble is a versatile synced WAN San solution. It is easy to use and doesn’t require much training for admins. Th...
What do you like most about HPE Nimble Storage?
The solution's predictive analytics is good. It helps to save costs.
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
PowerStore
Nimble Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Information Not Available
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. HPE Nimble Storage and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.