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Dell PowerMax NVMe vs HPE Nimble Storage 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)
Dell PowerMax NVMe
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (3rd)
HPE Nimble Storage
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
12th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.3
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax NVMe is 4.0%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Nimble Storage is 2.7%, down from 6.4% 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.
Haseeb Khalid Sheikh - PeerSpot reviewer
End-to-end NVMe capabilities helps improve availability, performance, and capacity
The solution's most valuable feature is the data reduction ratio. You can store a 5:1 ratio of your data in Dell PowerMax NVMe. For example, if you have 200 terabytes of usable capacity, you can save up to five times of data on that capacity. That means you can save one petabyte of data on just 200 terabytes of usable capacity. The solution's end-to-end NVMe capabilities have improved our operations. Everything is fast, and you don't have to map your storage to old hybrid storage technologies. Our organization has experienced positive change, and the solution has improved our uptime, availability, performance, and capacity.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."
"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"The solution's technical support was good, and it is one of the tool's main advantages."
"We are most interested in cloud utilization."
"It is a very stable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"It is a true, stable product."
"The performance is very good on our servers. It's superior. And the QoS capabilities for providing work congestion protection are also important because about 99 percent of our servers are production servers."
"The uptime is the most valuable feature."
"The support team was very cooperative and responsive."
"The tool is a fast-performing asset. It can perform millions of transactions within a second. I like the tool's architecture as well."
"The deduplication and compression capabilities are powerful."
"VMware integration, why is pretty self-explanatory."
"The replay and IOPS work well."
"The interaction with VMware is most valuable."
"InfoSight, for sure, has been the best feature so far."
"The solution is scalable."
"We use a platform as a service and have multiple application vendors who comprise that platform. There are moments when those application vendors put the blame on us. By working in InfoSight, I am able to say, "No, it is not us." I can actually provide proof, either by using screenshots or through reporting."
"They do a good job of helping people do storage in a very simple way."
 

Cons

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"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."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"The GUI interface is very complicated and could be improved by streamlining the number of steps in the process."
"PowerMax's software is highly stable, but we faced two hardware issues in one year. We had a failure of the storage director module, and the physical disk failed on another occasion. Dell EMC should improve its hardware quality."
"The solution does not use new versions of OS and patches. Its installation is also difficult. The solution is not as fast as other storage in the market."
"The initial setup process is difficult."
"If you go to Pure or you go to NetApp, they deliver in one month. If you go to Dell or HP, they will take up to six months for delivery. This is not a business model for today."
"I would like a more informative CloudIQ for iOS. What you can see via the web UI significantly differs from what you can see via the web application."
"They should work with the storage engineers to better tweak the management tools to give them improved visibility into their data."
"If the solution had more power-saving capabilities, it would be quite nice."
"An area that needs improvement is extending the life of the device after five years."
"Its pricing could be better. It's expensive."
"The quality of technical support depends on which member of the support team you speak with."
"Scalability, in terms of being able to scale out, is not easy and should be improved."
"The scalability could be better."
"There is no active-active controller, which means that we can only have one controller online at a time."
"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 want it to be an active-active array. Nimble would be great as an active-active array because then everything checks out. It would give a feeling of comfort."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"The pricing is comparable to other vendors."
"I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe a five out of ten for pricing."
"The pricing might be a bit high for small organizations, so it's more suitable for larger enterprises."
"The cost is expensive. While VMAX now has good pricing, PowerMax is a little expensive."
"The price is really high."
"Our costs for the product are three million."
"From reclaiming data center space which is so tightly constrained these days, it will pay for itself in a short amount of time, which is fantastic. Anything we can do to get more out of our current physical data center space helps us a ton, and PowerMax has helped enable that."
"One area for improvement, one that everybody always comes to, is price... it's still quite expensive to purchase these big arrays... For us, the pricing doesn't make Dell EMC uncompetitive."
"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."
"The solution is a little pricey compared to others on the market."
"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."
"I believe the array, maintenance, and everything totaled around $140,000 dollars."
"Once you purchase the solution, you don't have to buy any license for this Nimble product."
"If you are a super small company, the product is probably not right for you. It is out of your price range. Anything from mid-SMB up to enterprise, it is absolutely the right product."
"There is a monthly fee to use the solution."
"Nimble Storage is too expensive for our enterprise customers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
69%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
3%
Financial Services Firm
3%
 

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's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell of...
What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?
First, it's an enterprise storage solution. This is very important for us. Another important feature is replication.
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.
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax
Nimble Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Rackspace, Open Line
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. HPE Nimble Storage and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.