IBM FlashSystem vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) comparison

IBM and Nutanix are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.5, while Nutanix is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.8. IBM holds a 6.6% mindshare in AFS, compared to Nutanix’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 99% of Nutanix users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

IBM FlashSystem and Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are leading contenders in the enterprise storage market. IBM FlashSystem is rated higher for features and pricing, while Nutanix Unified Storage stands out in deployment and customer service.

Features: IBM FlashSystem users value its high performance, data reduction capabilities, and integration ease. Nutanix Unified Storage users appreciate its scalability, consolidated management, and versatile workload support.

Room for Improvement: IBM FlashSystem users suggest enhancing its replication capabilities, simplifying licensing, and improving analytics. Nutanix Unified Storage users recommend better analytics, reducing node size, and enhancing hardware optimization.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM FlashSystem is praised for its smooth deployment process but requires consistent support. Nutanix Unified Storage is noted for its straightforward setup and excellent customer service.

Pricing and ROI: IBM FlashSystem users feel it provides strong ROI due to its competitive pricing and performance. Nutanix Unified Storage users recognize good ROI but indicate higher upfront costs.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM FlashSystem vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

April 2025

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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

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 IBM FlashSystem is 6.6%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

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.

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Raanan Sitton

Vice President Sales at BELOCAL LTD

Offers cost-effective storage for small companies with budget constraints

IBM FlashSystem 5300 is offered at a very low cost in Israel, which is advantageous for small companies. However, other features like deduplication and compression do not perform effectively. The price sensitivity makes it a viable option for clients with budgetary constraints, as it allows us to secure deals based on the cost rather than advanced performance.

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Vishnu Mohan

Service Delivery Manager Cloud and DCO at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Centralized management and high resiliency streamline data storage with immediate benefits and scalability

The most effective features of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for us are about making multiple copies of our data across hardware nodes, ensuring that if there is a hardware failure, we still don't lose our data, which I think is the most important. Also, they have a file solution that is good for file shares, and that is of value to us. The switch from solutions such as IBM to Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) was driven by the need for different skill sets for a separate storage team and separate compute team. Maintaining these old devices was getting prohibitively high, so consolidating everything onto Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) made sense and allowed one set of Nutanix engineers to manage the entire estate.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"The solution is scalable."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"They have a virtualization feature and, even if you do not want to buy that feature, you can have it as a trial for two to three months. If you have another brand of storage from another company, you can use this tool to transfer all your data from the old system to the new Storwize system, which really shortens the migration time."

"Installing FlashSystem is very easy. It takes less than half an hour, and I can handle it all myself."

"IBM FlashSystem 5300 is offered at a very low cost in Israel, which is advantageous for small companies."

"The valuable features are high availability, compression, and a failover mechanism. It's a very highly available storage solution."

"We are a 100% satisfied with the stability of the solution."

"The power systems are very reliable if you are running 24/7 operations. For ongoing mission-critical applications, it's the best solution."

"IBM FlashSystem has been stable in our operations."

"Ability to manage third-party arrays and virtualise them: One screen to control multiple arrays. Simplified administration."

More IBM FlashSystem pros

"Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution a seven."

"The reliability and stability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is good, and the disaster recovery component is something impressive for this product."

"Whenever we have some necessity in terms of capacity and expansion of infrastructure, it's like a Lego system where they can just place in some more nodes and our needs are met."

"The benefit that our clients see is the security of the whole Nutanix platform where they have simplified usage."

"The product's initial setup phase was simple."

"The life cycle managers of the PCMs are very impressive, and I like them. They make our lives easy when managing patches and security updates when they come in. A life cycle manager helps to consolidate different vendors."

"The reliability and stability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are very good, and after almost four or five years of usage, we haven't encountered significant issues."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pros

Cons

"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."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

"We need better data deduplication."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"There is room for improvement in the troubleshooting part, specifically related to IBM Spectrum for Insight."

"I have looked at a few pages of a report I download and I saw a graph there regarding software-defined vendors. IBM is not in a good position on this graph. I know that they are working very hard on this, to make it much better and to get to a level where it's not only hardware but also software to provide a complete solution."

"Our model does not support compression or deduplication."

"The interface could improve in IBM FlashSystem."

"We use some open-source tools for monitoring, such as Grafana and it should be bundled along with IBM FlashSystem."

"The GUI needs some improvement."

"Their technical support needs improvement in terms of reachability for the clients and response times. They should be more responsive and have more online platforms for support. They should make more technical information available online. There could be some kind of documentation community."

"I think the only thing the developers can look at, is that it is limited to 25 gigabytes currently. In the next release they might want to increase that."

More IBM FlashSystem cons

"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) can be improved in the area of big data workloads, as we still need to improve performance there."

"The solution's monitoring and security features could be improved."

"Perhaps when it comes to deploying NUS virtual machines on top of CVMs, it should not be necessary for it to be in all of them or they should require fewer resources on the servers."

"I have heard that there have been latency problems."

"The solution is very expensive."

"There is potential to push this product more since it's not common in the market. They could increase their marketing efforts."

"Since it's part of Prism, I might suggest integrating the management console into Prism instead of having a separate console; that's the only change I would recommend, and it's not a significant issue."

"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) sits in a good place for us. The biggest improvement would be to make it more cost-effective from a storage node and storage perspective, so that the solution isn't such a question when it comes to cost-prohibitiveness versus potentially other vendors."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"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."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"IBM V7000 has a new license and price structure which provides intuitive licensing based on the functions customers wish to enable and use the most."

"I would rate the pricing of this solution a four out of five."

"I'd rate the basic licensing and the Virtualize software a ten out of ten, and the extra Spectrum and other an eight out of ten."

"Its price is very good."

"The cost is pretty high in terms of licensing. We pay at least $100,000 USD in licensing fees for the storage."

"If five is a good price and one is a high price, I would rate the price a two or three out of five."

"The pricing may be a bit higher than other brands. If you compare the IBM FlashSystems in midrange with Dell EMC in midrange, IBM costs a bit more, but I prefer IBM because it has more specs that I can benefit from."

"We have no issues with the price as it is very competitive."

More IBM FlashSystem pricing and cost advice

"Nutanix's pricing is definitely much better when compared to other storage providers. That was one of the main reasons we switched to this platform."

"The cost of Nutanix Unified Storage can be prohibitive for some small and medium-sized businesses, making it challenging for them to adopt the product."

"Compared to other solutions, NUS is cost-effective and efficient. It also has good performance."

"I'm happy with the cost and licensing because I don't have big volumes."

"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."

"It is not too high for what we are using."

"The pricing is fair."

"I am not the one who makes the calls, but it seems to me that it was very competitive. Other solutions would have required dedicated hardware, so an additional CapEx has to be put in place. In that sense, it was definitely a more competitive option to go with Nutanix Files."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

32%

Educational Organization

17%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

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.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM FlashSystem?

It is simple to make an update.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem?

Many factors affect purchasing directly from IBM, often involving a multi-step process. Customers, especially in bank...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem?

The deduplication technology in IBM FlashSystem needs significant improvement. Other vendors like NetApp ( /products/...

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What do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?

Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?

I heard that VMware is costlier than Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). Previously, I worked with a Nutanix partner, so I...

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What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?

There are some techniques in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) that need to be improved. Sometimes, processes get stuck o...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 30% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 18% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

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Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 22% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp AFF vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 6% of the time

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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 17% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 16% of the time

MinIO vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 6% of the time

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

May 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem

May 2025

Download IBM FlashSystem product report

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

May 2025

Download Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

IBM Storwize

Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

IBM FlashSystem products are enterprise computer data storage systems that store data on flash memory chips. Unlike storage systems that use standard solid-state drives, IBM FlashSystem products incorporate custom hardware based on technology from the 2012 acquisition of Texas Memory Systems. This hardware provides performance, reliability, and efficiency benefits versus competitive offerings.

IBM

Nutanix Unified Storage provides high availability and seamless cloud platform integration, ensuring robust redundancy, scalability, and streamlined management. It supports hybrid cloud connectivity, enhancing storage security and performance.

Nutanix Unified Storage is designed for effective data protection across block, file, and object storage, offering features like ransomware detection and a centralized management interface through Prism Central. Users gain improved SLAs and IT cost savings through its efficient performance. Despite its user-friendly interface, there is a demand for enhanced security measures such as Multi-Factor Authentication and DLP. While its resilience is notable, users seek improvements in protocol compatibility, storage capabilities, pricing, and support processes.

What are the most important features of Nutanix Unified Storage?

User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies storage management and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures continuous operation and reliability.
Seamless Cloud Integration: Compatible with platforms like Azure and AWS.
Robust Redundancy: Protects data against hardware failures.
Scalable Architecture: Easily adapts to growing data storage needs.
Ransomware Detection: Enhances data protection measures.

What benefits and ROI might users find in reviews?

Improved SLAs: Increased service reliability and performance.
IT Cost Savings: Reduces expenses through efficient resource use.
Enhanced Security: Stronger data protection and reduced risk.
Centralized Management: Easier control and monitoring from one dashboard.

Industries implement Nutanix Unified Storage for tasks such as file storage, database performance improvement, and storage solution consolidation. Companies deploying virtual machines, securing against ransomware, connecting hybrid clouds, and backing up data find it useful. It supports workloads like Citrix VDI, Kubernetes, and research data, assisting many organizations migrating from legacy storage for better cost efficiency and reduced data center footprints.

Nutanix

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

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

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

April 2025

Free Report: IBM FlashSystem vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

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