HPE Nimble Storage vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.5, while IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.4. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 2.4% mindshare in AFS, compared to IBM’s 6.5% mindshare. Additionally, 99% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of IBM users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

HPE Nimble Storage and IBM FlashSystem are both advanced data storage solutions competing in the tech market. Based on user reviews, HPE Nimble Storage has an edge in pricing and support, while IBM FlashSystem leads in extensive features.

Features: HPE Nimble Storage is noted for easy scalability, strong performance analytics, and cost-effectiveness. IBM FlashSystem stands out with high-speed performance, expansive data protection capabilities, and robust features suitable for complex environments.

Room for Improvement: HPE Nimble Storage users want better integration options, enhanced firmware updates, and improved scalability. IBM FlashSystem users request better cost management, more intuitive configurations, and easier firmware updates.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HPE Nimble Storage is reported as straightforward to deploy with effective customer service. IBM FlashSystem, while more complex to deploy, benefits from comprehensive documentation and robust support resources.

Pricing and ROI: HPE Nimble Storage is seen as cost-effective with favorable ROI. IBM FlashSystem, despite higher setup costs, delivers strong ROI due to its advanced capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE Nimble Storage vs. IBM FlashSystem Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE Nimble Storage vs. IBM FlashSystem

July 2025

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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 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 HPE Nimble Storage is 2.4%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FlashSystem is 6.5%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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.

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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.

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OmarIsmail1

Infrastructure Technical Specialist II at Clicks Group

Offers high performance and dependable support for fast storage needs

The most valuable feature of IBM FlashSystem ( /products/ibm-flashsystem-reviews ) 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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

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

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

"The solution is scalable."

"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."

"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"They have really thought through their solution. They've covered everything."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

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

"The most valuable feature is the management of Nimble Storage, InfoSight. This is like a cloud. That's really a very nice feature. I think that's the only reason to buy Nimble Storage."

"We have found the advantage of it is the easy, rapid setup, but also that it is very easy to manage."

"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."

"Scalability is another reason we chose to go with Nimble: upgrading to another storage array. If we need higher capacity or throughput, we can just replace controllers, we don't have to replace or forklift-upgrade the whole chassis."

"The most valuable features are the duplication and compression traffic. We have second storage that we can use for the synchronization of data between the data centers."

More HPE Nimble Storage pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is SCM (Storage Class Memory), which has the lowest latency value in the storage industry."

"We've found the solution to be very stable so far."

"Ability to manage third-party arrays and virtualise them: One screen to control multiple arrays. Simplified administration."

"This solution is convenient, user-friendly, convenient and reliable."

"IBM FlashSystem is a flexible solution with plenty of features."

"The power systems are very reliable if you are running 24/7 operations. For ongoing mission-critical applications, it's the best solution."

"FlashSystem offers proven technology in a compact package."

"The performance of the All-Flash System is very good. There is more enhanced performance and data production in the solution, which I appreciate."

More IBM FlashSystem pros

Cons

"The software layer has to improve."

"We need better data deduplication."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"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 Nimble Storage should improve its latency. It is expensive."

"A feature that would be a nice addition to the next release would be a filer option. A filer option so that you could connect the sim or NFS or chips like NetApp does for NAS functionality."

"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."

"The amount of firmware updates released seem excessive."

"I want it to be an active-active array. Nimble would be great as an active-active array because then everything checks out. It would give a feeling of comfort."

"HPE does not have suffficient storage."

"The large hardware components may be difficult to fit into some standard racks."

More HPE Nimble Storage cons

"There is room for improvement in the troubleshooting part, specifically related to IBM Spectrum for Insight. Customers are uncomfortable with remote access, which affects automated remote support."

"I think the only thing the developers can look at, is that it is limited to 25 gigabytes currently. In the next release they might want to increase that."

"The marketing could be improved."

"Product support is restricted to IBM only. It must be decentralized to IBM partners as well."

"The initial setup is complex."

"In IBM FlashSystem, data reduction is an area with shortcomings where improvements can be made in the future."

"One area for improvement is in the GUI, where host clusters are not properly dealt with. With Hypervisor host clusters, all hosts must see the same volumes in the same order. Using the concept of a “host-group” has been around (even with IBM) for many years, so why not with the V7000?"

"The GUI needs some improvement. An additional function that could be helpful is reducing the time it takes to delete volumes, especially if they are compressed or deduplicated."

More IBM FlashSystem cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The price has room for improvement."

"Nimble Storage is too expensive for our enterprise customers."

"It's expensive. It could be cheaper. I'd rate it a five out of ten in terms of pricing. We're on a yearly licensing. I haven't come across any additional costs. We just paid for three-year support."

"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."

"If we had stuck with EMC, we would have spent a lot more. We have EMC in-house, we have a bunch of them. Switching to Nimble saved me millions of dollars over the past three years... Nimble fills a need for performance within a budget that is in the sub-million dollar range."

"It is more expensive than one of its competitors."

"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."

"It is very pricey. You pay for what you get, and this storage solution is great. It is well worth the cost."

More HPE Nimble Storage pricing and cost advice

"I price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable and competitive."

"This solution is expensive compared to other solutions."

"The cost is pretty high in terms of licensing. We pay at least $100,000 USD in licensing fees for the storage."

"You purchase it as a bundle and the price is comparable."

"The solution requires a license and could be less expensive."

"Our customers would like IMB FlashSystem to be less expensive."

"The pricing has been very competitive for the last few years. IBM got to the point where they changed the pricing model and we feel very comfortable with the pricing. It's very competitive. Over the last two years, IBM has been coming up with all kinds of interesting promos, especially for the SMB systems. That makes it very competitive price-wise and in terms of performance..."

"The tool is cost-efficient."

More IBM FlashSystem pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user277539

Vice President, Products and Services with 51-200 employees

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

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.

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

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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What do you like most about HPE Nimble Storage?

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

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What do you like most about IBM FlashSystem?

It is simple to make an update.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem?

Many factors affect purchasing directly from IBM, often involving a multi-step process. Customers, especially in bank...

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What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem?

The deduplication technology in IBM FlashSystem needs significant improvement. Other vendors like NetApp ( /products/...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 28% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 19% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell Unity XT vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 16% of the time

HPE Primera vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 15% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 9% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 3% of the time

More HPE Nimble Storage Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 22% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 9% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp AFF vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM FlashSystem Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

June 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Nimble Storage

July 2025

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Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem

July 2025

Download IBM FlashSystem product report

Also Known As

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

Nimble Storage

IBM Storwize

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

IBM FlashSystem products are enterprise computer data storage systems that store data on flash memory chips. Unlike storage systems that use standard solid-state drives, IBM FlashSystem products incorporate custom hardware based on technology from the 2012 acquisition of Texas Memory Systems. This hardware provides performance, reliability, and efficiency benefits versus competitive offerings.

IBM

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

Buyer's Guide

HPE Nimble Storage vs. IBM FlashSystem

July 2025

Free Report: HPE Nimble Storage vs. IBM FlashSystem

Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Nimble Storage vs. IBM FlashSystem and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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