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HPE Nimble Storage vs NetApp AFF C-Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
232
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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
NetApp AFF C-Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
27th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
3.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 6.6%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Nimble Storage is 3.1%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF C-Series is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray6.6%
HPE Nimble Storage3.1%
NetApp AFF C-Series0.8%
Other89.5%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
TW
IT Consultant at Autonubil System GmbH
Replication and dashboard improve system integration efficiency
It's a good product, but the implementation with the new systems is done via the cloud dashboard from HPE. 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. It was better with the old systems, where I could install and activate without cloud connectivity.
Shailendra Choudhary - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Reliable flash storage has delivered strong data reduction and secured sensitive information
There is still some room for improvement when it comes to scalability, mainly in the interoperability and integration aspects. Every storage vendor has certain limitations, and this is not limited to NetApp; it applies to everyone in the industry. I do not see any other significant areas for improvement with NetApp AFF C-Series at this time. NetApp is working on their roadmap, which is solid, and they are developing certain features that are yet to be released.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Firstly, dedupe is the most valuable feature, hands down, and simplifying storage is also a big win overall."
"I recommend this solution for production because it has good performance and capacity management."
"It makes things ten times easier."
"Now with Pure Storage, our developers work a lot faster and more efficiently which has definitely improved our productivity."
"One of the features that my customers are really interested in is immutable snapshots. There are immutable snapshots to which your applications can be reverted back if you are hit by some kind of ransomware threat or malicious attack. That's kind of a key deal, and it is one of the selling points I use to point out to my customers the value and the features that Pure Storage brings to the table."
"The ease of management is one of the most valuable features of this solution. I would have also said that it's pretty fast but now our SQL servers are starting to beat it up pretty bad."
"Redundancy and the fault tolerance of the platform are the most impressive."
"The stability is very good. I've done destructive testing on it and never had any type of storage outages from it."
"The performance of the solution is excellent."
"HPE Nimble Storage reach 4:1 compression/deduplicate rate, optimizing used space."
"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."
"As an adjunct to our 3PAR platform, which is currently at capacity, it assists us in delaying the renewal of our 3PAR."
"Its speed, ease of use, and it has been completely reliable."
"The most valuable features are its cost-effectiveness, performance, and its deduplication deficiencies."
"The fact that they offer free training is awesome. There are not very many vendors that do that."
"We have seen tremendous ROI, it pays for itself 10 times over in the matter of four years."
"NetApp offers a cost-effective solution with very robust hardware."
"NetApp AFF C-Series is a good product for entry-level flash storage, the system is competitive in terms of pricing, and the value proposition is strong."
 

Cons

"In some cases, we get into very in-depth conversations around the movement of specific data and, what's more, chunk sizes. The documentation lacked any description or information on that."
"On the technical side, the way that the array performs cleanup and garbage collection sometimes pushes it close to 100 percent utilization, causing some stress."
"The solution is not cheap. It's much more expensive than DataCore."
"We haven't seen ROI."
"Organizations with security concerns that prevent cloud utilization would benefit from a wider range of instruments available for offline operation. Currently, the limited selection of on-premise instruments hinders Pure Storage FlashArray's ability to compete effectively with other vendors."
"The price should be lower."
"Larger capacity and more storage ports would be the two things I'd like to see."
"It doesn’t provide enough information on performance analytics. For example, Nimble Storage has Infosight, which provides data; Pure Storage doesn’t have an equivalent."
"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."
"But one area, for which we presented our feedback to Nimble, was how we can centralize, i.e., monitor the multiple arrays in a centralized manner, from a single viewer/single console."
"We have had some stability issues with one array which has happened twice during subsequent software updates but is due to a bad Postgres database."
"I want to see the full integration with OneView. I know they have started it, but I haven't had a chance to look at and evaluate it."
"We face challenges with hardware delivery."
"When we’re setting up the solution, making options available regarding the replication tool mechanism would be ideal."
"More reporting is probably the only thing that is really lacking."
"Its pricing could be better. It's expensive."
"We faced one bug that impacted our NetApp last month, and it took some time to identify the underlying issue."
"There is still some room for improvement when it comes to scalability, mainly in the interoperability and integration aspects."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"In comparison to the competitors, Pure is very price-competitive for the future functionality that it provides."
"You can pay extra for Evergreen support, which gives you free upgrades when new features are introduced."
"In the beginning, we saw that the price is not very good. When we made some compilations about the deduplication and the compression and what the equipment does, including the differentiation of upper management of the storage, the price was not so bad. However, in the beginning, the price was very difficult to justify."
"I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing. It could be improved."
"It is very pricey. You pay for what you get, and this storage solution is great. It is well worth the cost."
"The pricing is better than some of the competitors, such as Dell EMC."
"If you don't go cheap, it is eventually worth it. However, the initial investment is high."
"It is cost-effective, which is important for a service provider, because you're competing with hyper-scale providers who do things at extremely large scale, who tend to kill you on price if you're not careful."
"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."
"Once you purchase the solution, you don't have to buy any license for this Nimble product."
"The solution’s licensing is on a yearly basis."
"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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise160
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise40
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Nimble Storage?
Other storage companies are very expensive, similar to HPE Storage. We choose HPE based on the know-how we have, whic...
What needs improvement with NetApp AFF C-Series?
There is still some room for improvement when it comes to scalability, mainly in the interoperability and integration...
What is your primary use case for NetApp AFF C-Series?
I would recommend NetApp AFF C-Series for various types of companies depending on the use case. A small company, an e...
What advice do you have for others considering NetApp AFF C-Series?
I recommend Dell PowerStore to some of my customers, but usually the differences are taken care of. I focus primarily...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Nimble Storage
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Nimble Storage vs. NetApp AFF C-Series and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.