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Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs VMware Software Defined Storage comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
119
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (8th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (2nd), Public Cloud Storage Services (3rd), File and Object Storage (3rd), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
VMware Software Defined Sto...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (16th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
NISHANTPANCHAL - PeerSpot reviewer
Principle Technical Specialist at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Unified storage has simplified private cloud operations and delivers strong security and ROI
Regarding areas for improvement, I think Data Lens could be enhanced from Nutanix's side, but it has been a long time since I logged into that console, so I do not remember much. It is a SaaS-based offering on the Nutanix portal. It is not something you deploy on-premises; it is not on-prem access. You connect your cluster to the SaaS-based Nutanix and then access the Lens console. I need to check it since it has been almost two or three months since I logged in. Nutanix Enterprise AI actually needs to improve a lot if I compare it with any other product such as NVIDIA and other offerings in the market. Nutanix Enterprise AI still requires a lot of work. I did not check that in much detail technically, but whatever I thoroughly checked, it still lags behind in many features. When it comes to AI-related features, I think the ecosystem of Nutanix is not as big as NVIDIA because NVIDIA has its own inferencing system and model training platform such as NeMo, NeMoTron, and others. Nutanix does not have such things. It can be built using NVIDIA CUDA libraries, but what I saw when I was testing the product is that you can run NVIDIA NeMo and PyTorch and two other things, but as a software, Nutanix does not have an end-to-end platform. That is something Nutanix should focus on.
Mohammad Jundiah - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at Qatar Datamation Systems
Data security and performance excel but integration and licensing need improvement
I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery.  Additionally, I worked with VMware Software Defined Storage both internally and with partners to consolidate servers into one solution The most valuable features of VMware Software…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"VMware has benefited our IT organization because we're 100% VMware, everything is running on it."
"Do it. I have zero reservations about recommending Pure to anyone who is looking for some really good all-flash."
"Data reduction and compression. Sub millisecond latency."
"The most valuable features are the ease of use and support."
"One of the lesser sung advantages was when we started running our interface engine on Pure Storage. The ability to process messages and pass them through in our organization skyrocketed purely because of a disk that I owned which we were getting out of Pure Storage."
"Pure gives us better compression, it's easier to manage, a lot less hands-on."
"We actually originally went with a competitor's product, and after about eight months, a lot of wrangling, had them buy it back from us, and then we bought a similar Pure Storage product, and it's just been great."
"The data reduction technology part of the scalability has been impressive, like its ability to host additional workloads, volumes of data, and databases."
"The most valuable feature is the storage density of the nodes. We went with the HP's low-density nodes."
"I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) a ten out of ten."
"Since I started working with Nutanix, the only consistent thing I can identify as key is simplicity."
"I would rate Nutanix Unified Storage a ten out of ten."
"Nutanix Unified Storage is easy for end users to access. They can use it like any other drive on their systems. We have mapped it in the user system so they can scan files and store them. They can use it just like an Android drive."
"The real-time alerts generated by this system enable us to swiftly address and mitigate such threats."
"I rate the overall solution ten out of ten."
"My experience with using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for data-intensive workloads is that we have many SQL Servers and they perform much better than they did when we used hybrid converged previously."
"The single management panel is the main feature that is wonderful for the customer."
"VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption."
"The best part of the solution is that you can actually scale up to a large number of operating systems without the requirement of additional hardware, which is the biggest advantage."
"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."
"The solution is simple to configure and provides good performance and less footprint."
"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to deploy and the support is really good."
"The technical support is awesome."
"The product is user-friendly from an administrative standpoint and very easy to use."
 

Cons

"The price of the Pure Storage Flash Array is too high and there needs to be more contract clarity."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has not helped decrease the total cost of ownership."
"From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"I would like to see data tiering to AWS."
"Larger capacity and more storage ports would be the two things I'd like to see."
"Had some issues with Purity not being entirely compatible with VMware ESXi."
"Reports of performance and LUN utilization could be improved."
"Unified Storage failed to fulfill our object storage requirements."
"The GUI is easy to use, but it's complex to do tasks from the command line. That is one way they could simplify things for the engineers. People tend to use a graphical interface more than the command line interface. If anything goes wrong, we need to do troubleshooting from the CLI. It would be nice if there were more ways to fix issues within the GUI."
"Licensing cost of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is higher for smaller organizations."
"I acknowledge that the price of the product can be too high, and it would be beneficial if pricing were more flexible for end users."
"There is some confusion in the reporting when I have to create the report for statistics. I find it is not so user-friendly."
"The problem is that we need to invest a lot of money to get AI, and therefore, we are not going to purchase AI right now."
"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."
"Managing other storage infrastructure on Nutanix Files Storage is an area for improvement. In particular, I want to add other forms of storage from different vendors not currently in Nutanix Files Storage, to the file server, for better management."
"It's easy to scale and expand but the main catch is the cost. It's expensive."
"Simplifying the licensing model and making it cheaper would improve the solution."
"There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages."
"I'd like to see improved hardware compatibility"
"It doesn't have the ability to be deployed on any kind of hardware and network connectors."
"The license model of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The cost of the product is where an improvement could be made. It's generally very expensive and requires a lot of architecture that needs to be designed according to specific situations."
"The solution has some limitations in terms of replication to remote sites or cloud infrastructure, which need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no licensing fees aside from the support."
"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it. A little bit better pricing would be great."
"We have seen a reduction in the TCO, because Pure Storage is partnering with Belfrics. This partnership reduces our latency and space."
"We consume it as a service, and that's actually something we really like, or at least I really like from the technical perspective. That's because it means there is no hassle when we need to upgrade arrays to add capacity. We just interact directly with technical counterparts, and we say, "Hey, we're filling up," and they say, "All right, here's another data pack." They ship it in, and we install it. So, the as-a-service model has worked very well. Given the outstanding data reduction rates, it has improved our profitability because we're selling allocated volumes as part of the cloud service or recovering those costs from our tenants. It is very efficient, but that has offset the premium price. It started out that way, but over time, as we've added capacity, the price per gig has gone down a lot because we have a lot of it."
"It is a cheaper solution."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"Our Evergreen Storage subscription is supposed to be good when we go to upgrade."
"Dell and Pure Storage offer competitive pricing, but Pure Storage might have a slight advantage."
"It's competitive and attractive for moving things to it and then prioritizing those newly freed up resources for something else."
"I assume Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has helped reduce our total cost of ownership."
"It is competitive with other vendors, but you get more for your dollars. It is fairly priced, but not cheap."
"The product has an annual licensing fee."
"Compared to other solutions, NUS is cost-effective and efficient. It also has good performance."
"Its pricing is good to okay. It is not super inexpensive, but it is still competitive. Everything could always be lower."
"While the price may not be the most affordable, I believe it offers good value for the benefits it provides."
"The product is pricey."
"A single socket costs you around US $6,000 for three years. At a minimum, you have a three load cluster for a medium or enterprise-scale company. It can get quite expensive because you're likely to need four to six sockets on the other side. It comes to around $30,000."
"VMware Software Defined Storage is a slightly expensive solution."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The product is quite expensive and is among the most expensive for this type of solution."
"I believe there is a yearly licensing fee of around $2000 - $5000. I don't think there are additional costs above that but it depends on the type of infrastructure you're booting."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.
913,076 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise69
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?
The pricing for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is subscription-based with capacity-based licensing and has moderate to...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?
One area for improvement I noticed while using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is expanding advanced analytics and pred...
What advice do you have for others considering Nutanix Unified Storage?
My advice for others looking into using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is to clearly understand your storage requireme...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Software Defined Storage?
The price of VMware Software Defined Storage is on the pricey side, rated four out of five in cost. There is room for...
What needs improvement with VMware Software Defined Storage?
There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages. More automation, such as using Playbook on Ansibl...
What is your primary use case for VMware Software Defined Storage?
I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery. Ad...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
VMware SDS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Helse Nord, Sky
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs. VMware Software Defined Storage and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,076 professionals have used our research since 2012.