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HPE Nimble Storage vs Pure Storage FlashArray 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
HPE Nimble Storage
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
10th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.3
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pure Storage FlashArray
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
199
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 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 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashArray is 6.4%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Q&A Highlights

Julia Miller - PeerSpot reviewer
May 04, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
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.
Nabeel Sayegh - PeerSpot reviewer
Supercharges enterprise storage by way of highly optimized hardware, comprehensive data management and a feature rich interface.
During their early years, I was a member of Pure's Customer Advisory Board. In addition, when we first adopted Pure, they did not have replication GA yet. We got into their beta testing program and help them work out certain issues with that technology. One weakness I can say the array has, still to this day, is limited control on scheduling snapshots. Depending on the type of replication schedule you are building, you may or may not have control on specifying the start time of a given replication schedule. This is not a very big problem in the grand scheme of things, but something nonetheless that has bothered me about the scheduler in general. Another area for improvement would be automatic host alias creation. Other platforms such as EMC Unity/PowerStore will automatically detect the host name, create a alias for it and associate the logged in HBA's to it. Pure does not do this for you and as a result, requires manual configuration. This can be very time consuming especially when you are deploying a large number of new servers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"The solution is scalable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"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."
"InfoSight, for sure, has been the best feature so far."
"We get storage access without the need for more human monitoring of those resources."
"If a ransomware or enterprise-level attack happens, my infrastructure remains totally secure. If any virtual machine gets damaged or collapses, we have built a backup solution, which will take a minute to restore the same version of HPE Nimble Storage in our company."
"The interaction with VMware is most valuable."
"It is easy to use. Not too complicated."
"We have found the advantage of it is the easy, rapid setup, but also that it is very easy to manage."
"This solution has given us reliability that is evident by the fact that it has been running for five years with virtually no hiccups."
"We have seen our average latency go from four milliseconds to point four. Therefore, we are getting 10 times better performance down to the end user on everything. We have seen an increase in our IOPS by ten times."
"The top-tier support and reliable storage are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The solution has probably reduced my power use substantially."
"The ease of use. That's what our customers love. They say it's very easy, they don't need special training, they don't need to call us or any other company or integrator to help them do their job. That's the main reason they purchase Pure."
"The product cheaper compared to other solutions concerning the technology that they are using."
"The best feature is consistently lower latency, even when IOPS crank up to over 75K. The product maintains submillisecond response time, which is incredible."
"The scalability options are very nice because you can scale it much better and faster. The scalability was there in the previous environment also, but this is far better than what we had before. It basically helps the user in case they are looking for more storage. We can scale it much faster."
"Processes that used to take 40 minutes to two hours can be completed in five minutes."
"The most valuable feature is its upgradeability."
 

Cons

"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"The software layer has to improve."
"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."
"In the future, I would like to see a lower-end model that has Peer Persistence functionality."
"There is a new version of the Nimble and 3PAR systems called Alletra and they have a lot of new features."
"Web GUI should be HTML5."
"The solution needs to be an active-active controller."
"They keep talking about doing one-to-many replication. This is what we'd like to see, just to help with data replication."
"I would like to have more administrative rights, for example, root-level administrative rights to the underlying OS of the storage array. We want more access to the kind of underlying infrastructure of the storage array rather than relying on support. However, most companies are looking to have more managed solutions which is the opposite direction of what I want."
"The most difficult part about Nimble was the fact that it didn't have a standard length."
"I'd also like to see them incorporate tools that let me get granular with the VMs. I want to see an individual VM, I want to Snapshot and recover an individual VM."
"I would like to see data tiering to AWS."
"There is not a great need for improvement, but better pricing could be beneficial."
"There's always an opportunity for new feature functionality."
"A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad."
"The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality."
"The initial setup was a little complex. We had some initial issues with the design and had to help correct some of the white papers for it, but it wasn't your standard use case."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services. There are increasingly more and more services coming out from AWS but there are also certain constraints where we can't move everything over to a cloud as well. We would like for things that are on-premise to be easily integrated with AWS."
"The time-to-market could be better at times, but I think that's true for all vendors of hardware."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"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."
"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."
"HPE Nimble Storage is more expensive than some of the other solutions, such as Pure Storage. They charge more for every feature than other vendors."
"Performance per dollar, when we looked at it, was the highest that we could get for what we needed."
"HPE Nimble Storage didn't require a license at the time."
"We pay a one-time fee for terabyte licenses, and the support is paid yearly."
"We are paying for the licensing yearly."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive and ten is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing ten out of ten."
"The price is negotiable and when we first received the quote it was expensive, but after dealing with them and receiving a discount, the price is reasonable."
"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."
"In comparison to the competitors, Pure is very price-competitive for the future functionality that it provides."
"The price, in general, is around $100,000, however, I know it costs more."
"Pure has been flexible with us on the pricing models."
"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"It is light years beyond anything else with the same price point."
"There is always room for negotiation."
"The price of the Pure Storage Flash Array is too high and there needs to be more contact clarity. We went with the Evergreen plan and I don't have clarity on what am I supposed to pay each year or every three years. There was not much contract clarity."
"The best features come included without any additional cost."
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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…
 

Answers from the Community

Julia Miller - PeerSpot reviewer
May 4, 2020
May 4, 2020
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 volu...
2 out of 10 answers
AC
Jun 28, 2018
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.
TC
Jun 28, 2018
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.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
60%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
3%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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 needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
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.
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 do you like most about Pure Storage FlashArray?
We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I don't have the billing details right now, but the pricing is high.
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
Nimble Storage
No data available
 

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
Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Nimble Storage vs. Pure Storage FlashArray and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.