HPE Nimble Storage vs Pure Storage FlashArray comparison

These are my experiences with both storage arrays:

Nimble has recently been bought by HP so it’s future is uncertain
Both are able to snapshot and replicate to another SAN of the same brand
PURE does not need to integrate with vSphere for Snapshots, Nimble has to integrate with vSphere to snapshot VM’s with SQL server installed which can cause errors with snapshots and causes some storage volume limitations
Nimble has iSCSI toolkits for Windows and Linux to make setting up multi-pathing and setting up new connections easier, PURE does not
PURE is more expensive
PURE has much higher IOPS due to the all flash array
PURE has better data reduction through compression and deduplication
PURE has a longer lifespan with their highest level of support that will replace the entire SAN as it becomes obsolete
The Nimble user interface seems to be more intuitive from my perspective
Nimble firmware upgrades can be performed by IT staff
PURE support has to perform the firmware upgrades for you

Overall I would choose PURE over Nimble.

At a high level, you really can't go wrong with either array as both Nimble and Pure deliver phenomenal performance. As one user has correctly indicated, the Infosight that Nimble offers is probably the single biggest reason for a lot of its success. It leverages machine learning in the background and provides deep insight into storage usage and performance. HPE’s acquisition of Nimble was primarily for Infosight which is now available on 3PAR boxes as well and will also be available on Simplivity as well in the future. Now from an architecture perspective, Nimble uses CASL which is very write optimized and was originally intended for hybrid arrays. It has been adapted to fit all flash offerings and in many cases gives almost ridiculously low write latencies ranging in the sub-milliseconds. Pure is one of the pioneers of the entire AFA market and has been a thought leader from day one. Pure offers similar data efficiency (inline dedupe and compression) and writes data initially to NVRAM and then destages it onto SSD for very solid and predictable performance. Both products again have very strong replication suites as well. One point to note would be the following. From experience what I have seen is that sizing Nimble is very very important as scaling is generally much more complex. So initial sizing becomes crucial from a controller perspective. Most importantly and the one that I find most important is that both offer very strong guarantees/warranty. For example Nimble’s 6 9’s guarantee is crucial and comes with all models/arrays. Pure has the “love your storage” guarantee and more importantly has something called as the evergreen warranty which I believe is pretty cool. You would want to explore these but in summary you really can't go wrong with either as they are both field proven. What I would suggest is to explore the use case and match feature sets accordingly and then make a choice. Of course commercials will come into play.Tks

As a user of both Nimble and Pure, I would find it very hard to select a winner between the two. I totally agree with Shu that it really is a "Chevy versus Ford" comparison. Both are very easy to use, both have brilliant diagnostics and performance monitoring. It probably comes down to price and support capability. Whilst Nimble has Hybrid and Flash-only offerings, Pure Storage is just pure flash. Both vendors claim very high compression and de-dup ratios. Both can match their claims.

I feel this is akin to a "Ford" vs "Chevy" debate; both are quality products but it depends on personal preference. Both Nimble and Pure have roughly the same performance characteristics, ease of use and installation and similar feature set.

However, I recently installed a Nimble AF1000 in our data center and am really impressed with it. It took almost no time to set up, has a very intuitive interface and is handling our applications extremely well (although, in all honesty, we're not really overtaxing it).

What really sells Nimble for me, however, is InfoSight. It's easy of navigate and presents a wealth of analytics data. The analytics aren't just limited to the storage...I can get a very comprehensive view of my hosts and network performance. We also were able to architect a D/R solution for one of our clients with only their InfoSight data. It was comprehensive enough to give us everything we needed to develop our architecture.

Hands down Pure Storage over Nimble. The main reasons I choose Pure are for all the capabilities and benefits. The deduplication and compression capabilities of Pure wins it for me. If you have an extensive workload, this is the choice you want to make. Other benefits would be the Forever Flash M&S. Pure offers to replace the hardware and software forever and upgrade the controllers every three years forever at the same price you first purchased... you guessed it forever. That means that your CAPEX remains lean and expected forever. This is the hassle free choice financially and the best choice technically for our ever growing and changing IT environment.

For me, the possibility to have a hybrid storage in the same platform as the pure flash is the defining advantage of Nimble.

A big + for Pure from my point of view is the HA Active/Active Metrocluster Feature. I think it is more important for the european Market. But for us it is a must although you are loosing a bit performance.

This is anonymous feedback. I don’t want my name plastered all over the internet, but this is my opinion.

Neither..both have their challenges. I’d recommend NetApp.

I wouldn’t put Nimble in the Enterprise storage category. My bigger concern is with HP. What are they doing to innovate? How does this play with the other HP solutions. When will they go through a SKU rationalization process and will Nimble make it out? Will it ever be in the same category as Enterprise.

Pure’s storage efficiencies are good, but they’re based on usable capacity and their Raw to usable number is terrible. They get about 60-62%. So 100 TB of raw is about 62 TB usable. They have to get 3:1 just to keep up with everyone else getting 2.5:1. And make sure you read the terms and conditions of the contract, they’ll claim 5:1, but won’t stand behind it. It all comes down to the data. You can only dedup/compress so much. Overall, it’s marketing and isn’t as great as they sell it.

Where is the cloud integration with both of these? Hybrid cloud is the future for everyone and neither of these solutions have good options.