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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
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
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
8.4
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pure Storage FlashArray
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
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 August 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Nimble Storage is 2.3%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashArray is 6.6%, down from 7.5% 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

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."
"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"Nimble Storage is a great storage solution which will give you a lot insight on the growth of your storage."
"The deduplication and compression capabilities are powerful."
"The most valuable features are its cost-effectiveness, performance, and its deduplication deficiencies."
"Good architecture and produces a lot of IOPS."
"It's very stable and fast, and I am very happy with the deduplication. It saves a lot of space, which is great."
"Nimble's phone-home capability is decent. The compression, dedupe, and caching are also solid. Generally, I like the simplicity. It's almost a set-and-forget solution."
"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."
"InfoSight has identified controller failures or performance issues."
"I like the speed, and I like the API and how programmable it is."
"The sales and executive support have been outstanding compared to the rest of the market... My upgrade paths have been simple on the Pure... It's a lot simpler to implement and a lot simpler to manage."
"Because we were able to afford to go all flash, we don't manage the tiers, we're not moving data up, and we're not waiting for overnight cycles."
"The console is simple to use. It has good performance. It is easy to install, understand, and manage, with a good ratio of deduplication and compression. It is doing its job."
"The benefits were realized right away. Between the flash array and the compression, you can really see how good it is. Our databases run a lot better now."
"The performance of the storage is just unbelievable."
"We only have storage provisioning, so the provisioning feature is good. The compression and deduplication are good."
"The best feature is consistently lower latency, even when IOPS crank up to over 75K. The product maintains submillisecond response time, which is incredible."
 

Cons

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"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."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"They keep talking about doing one-to-many replication. This is what we'd like to see, just to help with data replication."
"Nimble requires its DNS to work in order to interface with VMware vCenter is a little thorn in my eye, but I am being nitpicky here."
"The large hardware components may be difficult to fit into some standard racks."
"The HPE Nimble Storage could have better integration with monitoring and machine learning system information solutions."
"I’d like to see in-line deduplication extended to Nimble non-flash (called “Hybrid”) arrays, even if it’s only the C500 and higher controllers that support it."
"The scalability could be better."
"Nimble Storage could increase its flexibility by adding more protocol options. Nimble mainly uses fibre channel protocols, whereas many other storage arrays support fibre channel, iCSI, and NFS protocols."
"You could argue that it would be preferable if everything were cheaper in order to save taxpayer money."
"A year ago they promised that they would be able to read through the database encryption with more metric and they have not delivered on that patch, which is significant because it gives us back so much more storage room. We want to be able to read through the encryption."
"Had some issues with Purity not being entirely compatible with VMware ESXi."
"I would like to have an easy way to determine the cost per VM so that I can present a solution to our customers."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions. For example, if I want to use this storage for a backup from the cloud, I want to have integration with the cloud vendors, such as Microsoft, Oracles, or Amazon. It could be available as an API to allow seamless integration. Additionally, the solution could improve by having native integration with a cloud provider, such as VMware or Microsoft, this would reduce the need to use third-party solutions to complete the task."
"The data reduction that we had initially anticipated when we bought Pure and we move over, is way lower than the expected reduction. It depends on the workloads, of course. But that has been a challenge at times."
"A three wave application or multi wave application synchronization would be an improvement."
"I feel like there is too much automation; the user doesn't have any manual input."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"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 support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"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."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"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 pricing is expensive, although we do not pay anything in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"We buy the arrays outright, so we don't pay anything on an ongoing monthly basis for licensing."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable for the features that it provides."
"The solution is a little pricey compared to others on the market."
"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."
"I rate HPE Nimble Storage's pricing an eight out of ten. It can be expensive, especially when considering console ports and renewals."
"It is very pricey. You pay for what you get, and this storage solution is great. It is well worth the cost."
"You get what you pay for. It is expensive, but it really works."
"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
"Pure Storage has not helped us to reduce our licensing costs."
"Pure has been flexible with us on the pricing models."
"It's priced higher than the market."
"I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."
"They have a standardized fee; it's been the same price for 10 years straight. I am happy with the price — I think it's good."
"It is not the cheapest one out there. We're paying yearly, but I'm not 100% sure."
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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
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
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 price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...
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: July 2025.
865,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.