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HPE Nimble Storage vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

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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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
1.0
Organizations reduced costs and improved performance with Pure FlashArray X NVMe, achieving quick ROI and efficient resource management.
Sentiment score
2.5
HPE Nimble Storage boosts performance, reduces downtime and costs, enhancing speed, efficiency, and satisfaction among users across sectors.
Sentiment score
6.7
IBM FlashSystem offers easy migration, improved performance, seamless integration, cost efficiency, and quick ROI, enhancing user satisfaction.
By opting for the gold subscription every three years, you get a free upgrade to the latest controller release.
If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.
The solution can comfortably be stretched from five to seven years without any failures, ensuring a long-lasting return.
We have seen return on investment compared to other OEMs, which took approximately three years after implementing IBM FlashSystem.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe's technical support is praised for responsiveness, despite occasional follow-up issues, earning high customer satisfaction.
Sentiment score
8.4
HPE Nimble Storage is praised for responsive, effective support, proactive issue resolution, and knowledgeable engineers, enhanced by InfoSight integration.
Sentiment score
7.0
IBM FlashSystem support reviews are mixed, with praise for response speed but criticism for regional expertise and complex escalations.
We also had one outage where a controller of one of the products had failed and had to be replaced on-site.
Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.
Pure has good storage.
They are very fast in resolving any issues.
Customers of alternatives like Dell and Hitachi enjoy more reliable and comprehensive support services directly from vendors rather than third-party subsidiaries.
I rate the technical support from IBM as a ten.
IBM customer support is responsible, efficient, and responsive, though it is expensive.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers scalable storage with low latency, easy upgrades, though capacity customization and high costs are noted.
Sentiment score
8.2
HPE Nimble Storage provides scalable, modular solutions to expand capacity and performance efficiently, despite limitations compared to top-tier competitors.
Sentiment score
7.3
IBM FlashSystem is praised for its scalable, flexible expansion, suiting diverse enterprises and integrating well with current systems.
It is highly scalable.
It is suitable for both medium-sized and enterprise businesses.
It hasn't broken down anytime in the last six to seven years, despite hurricanes, earthquakes, and power outages.
It can adapt to our customers' needs very well.
There are no issues with performance and latency.
For larger enterprises, scalability is an issue as the price becomes prohibitive.
The problem arises when migrating data to a later IBM FlashSystem version due to issues with firmware compatibility.
The scalability of IBM FlashSystem is exceptional, and I rate it as a nine.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Pure Storage offers exceptional stability and reliability with outstanding support, consistently achieving high user ratings for performance and service.
Sentiment score
7.7
Users praise HPE Nimble Storage for reliability and minimal downtime, with efficient support quickly resolving rare hardware issues.
Sentiment score
7.6
IBM FlashSystem is generally stable and reliable; however, some users experience issues due to specific configurations or hardware conditions.
During the eight years, there have been no problems such as hardware failure or stopping.
I would rate the stability of the solution as a ten out of ten.
I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.
Support resolves problems normally within one or two hours, which is very good.
Sometimes their first and second-tier engineers cannot solve the problem effectively and need to escalate to the third-tier engineer.
Customers have infrastructure that is 100% stable.
The firmware and software engine have fewer bugs, which enhances operational efficiency.
 

Room For Improvement

Pure FlashArray X requires cost-effective improvements in UI, integration, cloud features, multitenancy, analytics, backup, AI, and scalability.
HPE Nimble Storage users seek better scalability, pricing, integration, and interface enhancements, along with active-active arrays and improved replication.
IBM FlashSystem needs improvements in capacity, GUI, support, data reduction, cloud integration, and stability for better competitiveness.
We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.
I'm eagerly anticipating the roadmap's promise of introducing multiple controllers, which could significantly boost scalability and resilience.
We mostly rely on long-term releases. We don't need the most up-to-date features, but we need a reliable environment.
I can't activate the system without a cloud connection, which is a bit laggy if I don't have the right firewall settings, making it take longer to implement the storage.
Currently, customers need to buy everything together to update, and a little more flexibility would be good for both the customer and the reseller.
Despite marketing promises, these features do not function effectively and can impact performance.
There is room for improvement in the troubleshooting part, specifically related to IBM Spectrum for Insight.
An additional function that could be helpful is reducing the time it takes to delete volumes, especially if they are compressed or deduplicated.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers see Pure FlashArray X NVMe as a justified premium investment due to performance and comprehensive licensing.
HPE Nimble Storage offers competitive all-inclusive pricing, justifies high initial costs with performance, and saves in high IOPS environments.
IBM FlashSystem pricing is competitive but can be higher; users stress evaluating total costs, including software and support.
While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.
The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.
I would give it a nine out of ten in terms of costliness.
Other storage companies are very expensive, similar to HPE Storage.
To install or upgrade any software features, the cost is high, which makes it challenging for smaller companies who do not require advanced features like deduplication or compression typically needed by larger organizations.
 

Valuable Features

Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers exceptional performance, reliability, scalability, and seamless VMware integration, enhancing workload efficiency and user experience.
HPE Nimble Storage offers ease of use, integration, high performance, scalability, proactive analytics, reliability, and excellent support.
IBM FlashSystem, known for high performance and reliability, excels in storage virtualization and advanced features, enhancing data efficiency.
Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator.
The platform's robust features include excellent sustainability tracking, and a comprehensive dashboard offering insights into IOPS, bandwidth, performance, and virtual activities.
Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.
It's very fast and simple to implement for us as a system integrator.
The positive aspects of HPE Nimble Storage include very easy cloud management to identify problems, and it also has the capability to forecast performance in the future.
There is a significant amount of data reduction, achieving a ratio of one to three.
There is built-in compression, a data reduction feature, and artificial intelligence-driven insights that calculate warnings and errors to redirect to customers automatically.
When integrated properly into the environment and configured according to the guidelines, it provides a very solid infrastructure that does the job on demand.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
HPE Nimble Storage
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
12th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM FlashSystem
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
NAS (5th), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (3rd)
 

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 IBM FlashSystem is 6.5%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE Nimble Storage2.3%
IBM FlashSystem6.5%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe1.0%
Other90.2%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.
OmarIsmail1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers high performance and dependable support for fast storage needs
The most valuable feature of IBM FlashSystem is its robust back code. When integrated properly into the environment and configured according to the guidelines, it provides a very solid infrastructure that does the job on demand. Additionally, IBM FlashSystem offers competitive pricing and reliable performance. The hardware is dependable, ensuring that it functions effectively when the setup is done correctly.
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Comparison Review

it_user277539 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 30, 2015
Hybrid storage, all-flash storage, and hyper-converged products offer software capable of running on commodity hardware, providing a better end-user experience at a reduced price.
Originally posted at https://www.freeitdata.com/ Over the last 15 years, the storage industry has primarily been dominated (market share) by six companies, EMC, NetApp, IBM, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), HP and Dell. In 2013, these six companies made up approximately 85% of all storage sold in the…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise40
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise57
 

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 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...
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 ...
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.
What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem?
Some improvements are required in IBM regarding response time and resolution time, though not about competence. Produ...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
Nimble Storage
IBM Storwize
 

Overview

 

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
Celero, Friedhelm Loh Group, Clarks, Mingkang Natregro Health Food Group, Sofia, Etisalat Fights Fraud, UF Health Shands Hospital, Generali, Elecon Engineering Company Limited, Ventiv , Technology, CPFL Energia, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., SciQuest, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, Paddy Power, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Interconnect Services, Severstal IP-Only AB, PVU Group GmbH
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Nimble Storage vs. IBM FlashSystem and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
866,391 professionals have used our research since 2012.