HPE Nimble Storage vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2023
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
HPE Nimble Storage
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
5th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
119
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM FlashSystem
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
NAS (5th), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Nimble Storage is 3.4%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FlashSystem is 7.2%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
Unique Categories:
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
3.9%
No other categories found
NAS
6.6%
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
17.9%
 

Featured Reviews

DA
May 21, 2021
Reasonably priced, scales well, and offers good stability
We primarily use the solution for cluster applications and databases. We use the solution on the DBA and those that use double machines Being able to have broken files on-site on the same appliance is quite useful. The newer version of NVME has a really noticeable difference in quality versus the…
MT
Mar 10, 2023
Great deduplication, very stable, and keeps my machines up and running
I use HPE Nimble Storage for Hyper-V clusters. I'm using the latest OS and the latest firmware. I keep them updated It keeps my machines up and running. For deduplications, it's a pretty good machine. Deduplication is probably the most valuable feature. It's very easy to set up. It's very…
Marko M - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 23, 2023
Very stable and easy to configure or use
Our company uses the solution for central storage. Every person in our company is served by and accesses the solution.  We also resell the solution to small business customers.   The solution is very easy to configure and use.  The solution's pricing is a bit high.  I have been using the…

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 feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The latency is good."
"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."
"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."
"Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"The fact that they offer free training is awesome. There are not very many vendors that do that."
"Definitely ease-of-use. I've experienced many different arrays out there and Nimble is definitely there."
"They could probably improve an organization with just about anything. It is all a matter of ease of use, ease of the implementation, etc."
"The solution is scalable."
"Nimble Storage is a great storage solution which will give you a lot insight on the growth of your storage."
"It has totally taken away a layer of time and effort, management-wise, from two engineers to give that time back into developing more solutions. It has provided us essentially with a platform to go away and be more creative, knowing that that is stable and can do whatever we chuck at it."
"I have added expansion shelves on several of them. It is simple to do. You plug it in, you attach two cables, then you press one button, like "Add", and that is all you have to do."
"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."
"IBM FlashSystem has an easy to use GUI, similar to the IBM Storewize family, which make it one of the best flash storage systems in the market."
"Speed (IOPS/second) – It is most vital for applications that need low latency and high speed for transferring the data."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is replication...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The initial setup was really straightforward. It was not complex. Deployment took one month, due to the data migration duration."
"The technical support for this solution is good. They used to help us when the motherboard of Power Systems broke. Their response times are really fast."
"IBM FlashSystem is a powerful effective storage solution. Additionally, it is user-friendly, anyone can use it."
"The maintenance service and support from IBM is very good."
"Installing FlashSystem is very easy. It takes less than half an hour, and I can handle it all myself."
 

Cons

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this 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."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"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."
"The software layer has to improve."
"I would like to have integration into cloud providers, apart from HPE."
"I would like to see an added feature to auto-fix, or a dynamic alerting system on storage."
"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."
"HPE Nimble Storage's cost is very high, making it one of its downsides."
"More reporting is probably the only thing that is really lacking. It would be helpful to go to the business and say, "This is how we've evolved with our solution, and this is why we need more." Being able to put forward a business case with data to back it up, essentially."
"There is no active-active controller, which means that we can only have one controller online at a time."
"I would like to see the network portion of the product improve, especially with some of the things which are coming out from Aruba and HPE. Both are innovating more of an automated networking. I would like to see our Nimble meld into that and do some automated networking."
"I would like deduplication by default on all the volumes. I still don't understand (or know why) dedupe isn't enabled for the templates out-of-the-box. We have to go in and manually enable it each and every time."
"We had issues when attempting to do a flash, we hope to resolve it soon."
"This product lacks some of the options we wanted. For example, expansion was difficult and it required a lot of patching to be done."
"The generic functionality of IBM FlashSystem, IBM always dismisses using file share or sharing protocols inside their storage hardware, and they only focus on the block-level storage."
"The Data Reduction Pools (DRP) support could be better."
"The solution has a low number of NVME host attachments at 16 per IO group over the fiber channel."
"The pricing could be improved, but I think it's getting better and better with each version. IBM needs to implement NAS storage again, as this is a big flaw. Dell EMC is very good at this and if you compared them based on NAS storage, Dell EMC would win right away. IBM's solution for NAS storage is very complicated. We don't have a storage box that provides file sharing from itself, we have to put software on it and go through a whole complicated process. It should be simplified."
"We use some open-source tools for monitoring, such as Grafana and it should be bundled along with IBM FlashSystem."
"The support could improve by allowing you to speak to someone when you call rather than them calling you back. However, once we do have contact with one of their technicians they are excellent."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"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."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"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."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"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."
"We pay a one-time fee for terabyte licenses, and the support is paid yearly."
"Performance per dollar, when we looked at it, was the highest that we could get for what we needed."
"There is a monthly fee to use the solution."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable for the features that it provides."
"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."
"The pricing is expensive, although we do not pay anything in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"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."
"From a price/performance perspective, Nimble simply can’t be beat. From a TCO perspective, the stability alone pays for itself."
"Overall the price of the solution is expensive and this includes the license."
"The integration is already included in the license cost of IBM FlashSystem. The integration is very easy. You get the IBM storage core with all software, firmware, and upgrades. EMC provides the features in the box, but they are not free for customers. There is a licensing cost for features. We have yearly licensing, but IBM has also provided a new option where you pay as you go. They provide a big box, and I pay, for example, for 10 terabytes. If I exceed 10 terabytes, IBM will charge for the new storage after 10 terabytes. It is a good opportunity in the market for using the storage as a cloud and paying as you go."
"The price is a little bit high so is rated a six out of ten."
"We have no issues with the price as it is very competitive."
"They've been much more aggressive in the last five, six years than they were before that."
"I would rate the pricing of this solution a four out of five."
"The price of IBM FlashSystem is a little high because you pay a premium because the solution is from IBM. We had paid for the SLA prior to using the solution."
"Our customers would like IMB FlashSystem to be less expensive."
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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
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
59%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Government
4%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
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 se...
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products ...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem?
I rate the pricing a three out of ten. The tool is cost-efficient. The prices are good.
What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem?
Customization features must be improved.
 

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 2024.
793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.