HPE Nimble Storage vs HPE Primera comparison

HPE Nimble Storage and HPE Primera are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. HPE Nimble Storage is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.4, while HPE Primera is ranked #10 with an average rating of 7.8. HPE Nimble Storage holds a 2.3% mindshare in AFS, compared to HPE Primera’s 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 99% of HPE Nimble Storage users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of HPE Primera users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

HPE Nimble Storage and HPE Primera are both in the storage systems category. HPE Nimble Storage seems to have the upper hand due to ease of use and cost-efficiency, while HPE Primera stands out with advanced features and performance.

Features: HPE Nimble Storage users value InfoSight predictive analytics, easy scalability, and integrated data protection. HPE Primera is recognized for robust performance, lower latency, and superior resiliency.

Room for Improvement: HPE Nimble Storage needs better performance during high I/O operations, enhanced integration with third-party tools, and more advanced features. HPE Primera could be more user-friendly, have better documentation for complex configurations, and offer simpler management options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HPE Nimble Storage deployment is straightforward with excellent customer service support. HPE Primera deployment is more complex but manageable with proper vendor assistance.

Pricing and ROI: HPE Nimble Storage is praised for lower setup costs and positive ROI due to efficient performance and lower total cost of ownership. HPE Primera, though more expensive, offers significant ROI through enhanced performance and reduced downtime.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE Nimble Storage vs. HPE Primera Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE Nimble Storage vs. HPE Primera

September 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 867,676 peers since 2012

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

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Nimble Storage is 2.3%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Primera is 3.7%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HPE Primera	3.7%
HPE Nimble Storage	2.3%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.0%
Other	93.0%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

Read full review

Ajit Pratap Kundan

PreSales Lead- Government & Defense at Accops Systems Pvt Ltd

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.

Read full review

Taufeeq Rauf

Head of IT at NATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL FACILITATION TECHNOLOGIES (PVT.) LTD.

Offers a simple user interface and is useful for data replication

I use HPE Primera for mission-critical applications. My company uses the product as a storage solution for our machines. The availability of HPE Primera in our company is critical for us, considering that we operate in an HA environment where we can't have downtime since we need to deal with cheque clearance for banks. The product's interface is simple to use. I am satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The ease of use of the product's interface has directly had an impact on our company's operations, along with the improvement in the availability and performance of machines. Compared to HPE Primera, I work with a much more reliable storage solution like Dell PowerStore. Compared to HPE Primera, Dell PowerStore's features related to deduplication are very good, and it also offers a physical storage capacity of eight TB, which can be expanded up to forty TB. I would recommend the product to others who plan to use it only after taking into consideration their usage and requirements. From the price and performance point of view, Dell PowerStore is a better choice. I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"I appreciate the performance."

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

"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."

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The all-flash positions our organization for growth. It is much easier to use, and we do not have to worry about the I/O profile of the workloads that we putting on the array."

"It's very stable and fast, and I am very happy with the deduplication. It saves a lot of space, which is great."

"Updates are very easy to do when the customer is connected to the internet."

"HPE Nimble Storage is very stable and performs well."

"InfoSight has allowed us to centralize our management, understanding how it correlates to the array. It has identified a network issue in the network configuration of ESXi hosts. It enables us to get servers back up faster by 25 percent."

"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."

"The valuable features include encryption of data, hybrid performance, firmware updates, and overall simplicity."

"It has allowed us to upgrade our DMS to the latest version and reuse the older array as the DR storage for VMware SRM."

More HPE Nimble Storage pros

"HPE Primera is used for shared storage."

"HPE Primera is quite a stable storage system that provides good provisioning and allows for the changing of partition sizes."

"When taking into account the price, maintenance required, and performance of HPE Primera, it is an effective solution."

"One of the most valuable features is the ease of deployment."

"The most valuable feature of HP Primera is that you don't have to buy an additional product for application replication. It's a stable product. The tool is scalable. I recommend HPE Primera because it's one of HP's most stable product."

"There has been a lot of changes in HPE Primera OS, and most of the time any package related to it is simple to upgrade. It does not require any support for the operation. The customer can easily deploy any code directly from the GUI which is very good. Additionally, we have individual storage we can allocate and easily manage."

"The performance of the solution is good."

"Our customers have given very positive feedback about InfoSign, which is the management software for this solution."

More HPE Primera pros

Cons

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"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."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

"It is on the expensive side."

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"There is no active-active controller, which means that we can only have one controller online at a time."

"When we’re setting up the solution, making options available regarding the replication tool mechanism would be ideal."

"They are hard to understand us when we request their support. It's not a significant problem, but sometimes their first and second-tier engineers cannot solve the problem effectively and need to escalate to the third-tier engineer, who is quite worse in terms of understanding our problem."

"The quality of technical support depends on which member of the support team you speak with."

"The amount of firmware updates released seem excessive."

"Its pricing could be better. It's expensive."

"The way the market is going, supporting NVMe storage would be useful as a step up."

"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."

More HPE Nimble Storage cons

"The IOPS and throughput could be better. That's the only drawback compared to other vendors."

"Price is always important in Turkey, so HPE could lower the price to keep it competitive. It's not as competitive as other solutions in this market."

"HPE Primera is not good enough as a storage solution as it does not provide a good NAS storage."

"There really isn't any aspect of the solution that needs improvement for the customer other than its price."

"The product’s price needs improvement."

"The solution could prove the reporting."

"The reporting console can be improved with out of the box reports."

"We've encountered issues in the past where maintaining a read-only state is essential to prevent data encryption when VPN access is impacted."

More HPE Primera cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"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."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"There is a one-time price for hardware, and with the software support, everything is included, such as software upgrades. The licensing of the solution is included in the cost of the hardware and the support is an extra cost. We have purchased support on an annual basis, but you can purchase support up front for up to seven years. We usually buy five years and near the time of the expiry, we sometimes extend it."

"Performance per dollar, when we looked at it, was the highest that we could get for what we needed."

"We pay a one-time fee for terabyte licenses, and the support is paid yearly."

"There are no licensing costs for this solution."

"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."

"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."

"The solution’s pricing is reasonable for the features that it provides."

More HPE Nimble Storage pricing and cost advice

"It is basically in the mid-range of the price. It is not cheaper than Hitachi, but it is cheaper than Pure Storage. There are no additional costs. Everything was taken care of in the price."

"HPE Primera is less expensive than HPE Alletra."

"There is only a one-time license purchase needed and no additional costs. If HP could reduce the training cost, then that would be advantageous to the seller."

"Because it has high availability, the cost is above average. The cost depends upon the sizing, and every customer has a different size. It is slightly above average in terms of cost compared to its competitors, but the value add was that they could know what their maintenance cost was going to be going forward. They knew what their renewal or expansion costs would be."

"The solution’s pricing is affordable and worth the money."

"From what I see, this is competitively-priced and HPE are doing their best to stay competitive."

"The cost is $75,000 for a three-year contract."

"It’s a reasonable choice. When compared to other options, we've found it to be accessible and within our means."

More HPE Primera pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	42
Large Enterprise	40

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	12

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about HPE Nimble Storage?

The solution's predictive analytics is good. It helps to save costs.

See all answers

What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?

HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspectiv...

See all answers

What do you like most about HPE Primera?

For over a year, I have not seen any downtime in the product.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Primera?

I cannot recall the exact figures for pricing from memory, but it seems to be an acceptable and reasonable price.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 24% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

TrueNAS X-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 4% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell Unity XT vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 14% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 8% of the time

More HPE Nimble Storage Competitors

HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 35% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs HPE Primera

Compared 24% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE Primera

Compared 7% of the time

NetApp AFF vs HPE Primera

Compared 4% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs HPE Primera

Compared 4% of the time

More HPE Primera Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

August 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Nimble Storage

September 2025

Download HPE Nimble Storage product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Primera

September 2025

Download HPE Primera product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

Nimble Storage

Primera

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.

Pure Storage

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.”

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

HPE introduces HPE Primera, a new storage platform designed to deliver superior simplicity, availability, and performance for mission-critical applications
HPE Primera advances the HPE Intelligent Data Platform, a portfolio of products and solutions designed to help customers transition from delivering storage to unlocking business value with intelligent data

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

HPE Nimble Storage vs. HPE Primera

September 2025

Free Report: HPE Nimble Storage vs. HPE Primera

Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Nimble Storage vs. HPE Primera and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our HPE Nimble Storage vs. HPE Primera 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.