Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs SolidFire comparison

Sponsored
 

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)
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), Public Cloud Storage Services (6th), File and Object Storage (4th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
SolidFire
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
31st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolidFire is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

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.
Juan-Contreras - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensures streamlined management, simplified infrastructure, and efficient data handling
It has effectively managed our unstructured data, including audio and video files. We've experienced smooth operations without any complaints regarding uploading or downloading videos. While video usage isn't as frequent, we primarily utilize it for downloading videos related to specific incidents for administrators or our police department. We've encountered no issues uploading files of any kind. Transitioning from VMware to Nutanix has highlighted the overall flexibility of Nutanix's platform. Unlike VMware's three-tier system, Nutanix simplifies the learning curve by streamlining operations. The update process, in particular, has been favorable, with no critical issues encountered. The resiliency of Nutanix hasn't been thoroughly tested in our environment so far. However, I routinely check fault tolerance settings to ensure they meet our requirements. During the update process, I've observed critical errors occur as hosts restart, but Nutanix's self-healing mechanism handles these issues seamlessly. The benefit of using Nutanix is evident in several ways. Firstly, we've effectively compressed our storage while significantly expanding our overall storage pool. Previously, our service had a capacity of twenty-five terabytes, but with Nutanix, we've scaled up to a hundred and twenty terabytes physically and approximately fifty terabytes logically. This expansion has been accompanied by noticeable improvements in performance, particularly with reduced latency and IOPS well within the boundaries of our equipment. All our resources are centralized in a single location for managing and running storage: our data center. We operate three Nutanix nodes within this center, effectively managing everything from one central location. We don't have any other locations outside of our data center running a Nutanix cluster. Nutanix's capability to eliminate silos within our organization's storage infrastructure was discussed during our recent call with the engineer. Although we haven't explored this feature extensively yet, there's a forthcoming project where we anticipate leveraging it.One thing I'd appreciate is having a desktop application similar to what VMware offered. With VMware, I could download a separate client program onto my computer, allowing me to log in directly rather than accessing the host through a browser.
Ramil Cerrada - PeerSpot reviewer
A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance
The most significant benefit lies in its exceptional performance, driven by its Flash-based architecture. This enhances routing speed and, consequently, database performance. The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"The solution is scalable."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"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."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"I appreciate the performance."
"The scalability, ease of use, and technical support are the most valuable features of Nutanix Unified Storage."
"The customer service executives of all Nutanix products are active and responsive."
"Nutanix Unified Storage is easy to use. New employees are able to come up to speed fairly quickly with regard to the day-to-day administration processes."
"The most valuable features of Nutanix Unified Storage are the unified dashboard and the ease of administration."
"The best Nutanix Unified Storage features are its recovery and data speeds. It has resolved the issue of accessing information quickly."
"The solution is simple and robust."
"It gives more security that the data isn't going to get lost."
"I rate Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) a ten out of ten."
"The square footage for doing development is at a premium when dealing with government networks. To be able to put a lot of IOPS in a lot of high-speed performing drives in a very small location which requires very little HVAC with very little power, it is very valuable to us."
"I would say in terms of architecture and in terms of functionality, the product is quite good."
"If you buy the solution for its specific purpose it will work well."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"SolidFire has seamless performance for the nodes and extensions. I also like the tool’s scalability. The product’s performance does not get affected when we scale either up or down. This is not the case with other products."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability."
"The simplicity of it."
"The dashboard is such that you don't need to be a storage expert to administer it."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"We need better data deduplication."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"The software layer has to improve."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"With all of the Nutanix equipment, the licensing is expensive. We operate in the enterprise space, but we're a midsized company. At times, the price tag is a little bit shocking for a company with only 35 employees."
"The interface is not logical. It should be a little simpler."
"Nutanix should improve the one-click upgrade. There are a lot of dependencies on third-party licenses and HP hardware we use internally. The one-click upgrade fails sometimes."
"I have heard that there have been latency problems."
"The licensing terms are restrictive, as they go by terabyte cost."
"The current hardware is not as dense as it could be. In our deployment, we have 2 PB per site, and we have to have 24 nodes. That's a lot of cabling and network ports that we use up. More dense nodes would be better."
"It is challenging to configure access control settings."
"Nutanix could improve the ability to track user actions, such as identifying who deleted a folder."
"I think there is room for improvement needed with its storage capability. A bigger node is needed."
"The scalability of HCI or SolidFire as such isn't a concern, but when you compare it to PowerMax or NetApp AFF series devices, scalability is a concern because it's only the drives that are connected to the nodes. We don't have any shelf connectivity."
"The inclusion of more protocols and interfaces would make it easier to integrate with other products."
"I would like to see integration with the cloud, number one. Being able to spin SolidFire in the cloud."
"Though it is a stable solution, its users may face some security issues at times...The security provided by the solution is one area that can be improved."
"We have a large fiber channel infrastructure, and that's one area that we haven't seen implemented in SolidFire, its more iSCSI."
"SolidFire should start from two nodes instead of the four nodes. That's the only thing. In a lot of solutions, we have to use four nodes, that's the better thing. But as a starting point, two is better. That's why their starting point is expensive."
"They could make the mNode more user-friendly. Now you need to configure and add nodes by CLI and it’s not really easy to manage. If they created a web interface to do the management of the mNode, that would be great!."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."
"From what I hear from the management, Nutanix Unified Storage has comparatively decent pricing."
"I find Nutanix Files Storage competitively priced, even its feature set. Its price is seven out of ten."
"I hope that it will stay the way it is. We have seen the changes in VMware and what happened to them. I have heard that Nutanix will raise the prices, but I hope that they will not do that."
"Nutanix Unified Storage isn't expensive."
"The solution's pricing is better compared to other products."
"It's not the cheapest solution. It's in line with other solutions, but it offers features that the competitors don't have at any price point, especially with regard to analytics and ransomware prevention. No one else has any sort of object-based storage available. Nutanix Unified Storage is a lot more feature-rich. This is a situation where you get what you pay for."
"The solution is highly-priced."
"The price of this solution is more expensive than others."
"On a scale where one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the solution between three and four. It is an expensive solution."
"We would probably use SolidFire more, except we're getting more bang for our buck with our purchases of ONTAP right now, and the deal we made with NetApp, so it's more of just a cost decision"
"It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for what you get."
"Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
850,043 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
33%
Educational Organization
19%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Financial Services Firm
38%
Computer Software Company
19%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
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 ...
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.
What do you like most about SolidFire?
The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance w...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolidFire?
It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay fo...
What needs improvement with SolidFire?
There is room for improvement with a focus on creating a centralized storage system, functioning similar to AWS. This...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
California Public Utilities Commission, RFA, 1&1, Ultimate Software , Endicia, ezVerify, MercadoLibre, Sungard Availability Services, ServInt, Elastx, Hosted Network, Colt, Crucial, iWeb, Datapipe, Databarracks
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs. SolidFire and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,043 professionals have used our research since 2012.