Dell PowerMax NVMe vs HPE Nimble Storage comparison

Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.6, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.5. Dell Technologies holds a 3.9% mindshare in AFS, compared to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 99% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

HPE Nimble Storage and Dell PowerMax NVMe offer advanced storage solutions. Dell PowerMax NVMe is considered superior due to its performance and reliability, which users find worth the investment.

Features: HPE Nimble Storage is praised for its integrated data protection, efficient storage utilization, and seamless scalability. Dell PowerMax NVMe stands out with its high performance, low latency, and advanced machine learning capabilities. Users note Dell PowerMax NVMe's superior speed and data efficiency.

Room for Improvement: HPE Nimble Storage users point out the need for improved cloud integration and more robust analytics. Dell PowerMax NVMe users suggest enhancements in ease of use and simplification of management. Both products require more intuitive configuration, but Dell PowerMax NVMe's complexity is a bigger concern.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HPE Nimble Storage has a straightforward deployment and responsive customer support. Dell PowerMax NVMe, although more complex to set up, benefits from comprehensive documentation and strong technical support. Users find HPE Nimble Storage quicker to deploy, while Dell PowerMax NVMe's customer service is highly effective in resolving issues.

Pricing and ROI: HPE Nimble Storage is recognized for its cost-effectiveness and quicker ROI. Dell PowerMax NVMe, though more expensive, delivers robust performance that justifies the higher cost, with users noting a significant long-term ROI. Pricing may deter some users initially, but Dell PowerMax NVMe's advanced features and reliability can provide better value over time.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. HPE Nimble Storage Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. HPE Nimble Storage

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 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 Dell PowerMax NVMe is 3.9%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Nimble Storage is 2.5%, down from 6.1% 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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Haseeb Khalid Sheikh

Senior Manager Enterprise Solutions at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

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.

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Ajit Pratap Kundan

PreSales Lead- Government & Defense at Accops Systems Pvt Ltd

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.

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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

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."

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

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

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

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The response time, compared to XtremIO, is far better."

"It was easy for teams to pick up the technology with very limited exposure and training, then implement and support it."

"This platform is reliable in supporting our data availability. We now have a higher performing platform and have been able to consolidate our workloads into one single platform."

"It allows us to protect our data using different data centers and replicate bi-directionally between our two main data centers."

"The best feature is the protection - PowerMax NVMe is volume-based and replicates data, so it's very comfortable for us to use."

"We are most interested in cloud utilization."

"Dell PowerMax NVMe has been a significant enhancement for data handling in my industry. Its improved security features and data calculation capabilities make it a valuable solution for our customers. The most critical feature of Dell PowerMax NVMe for performance enhancement is its strong network support and integration with other vendors, along with its efficient use of hardware components like CPU and memory. Data reduction technologies in PowerMax have been highly beneficial for our company, allowing us to optimize storage and reduce costs by consolidating files"

"The compression and deduplication are the most valuable features because of the cost savings."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pros

"Any updates are just part of your subscription, so you don't have to buy add-ons for new features. You're continually adding value to it."

"Good architecture and produces a lot of IOPS."

"We have found the advantage of it is the easy, rapid setup, but also that it is very easy to manage."

"The most valuable feature is InfoSight, and the ability that InfoSight gives you, from insight within your environment to what is going on at the storage layer."

"HPE Nimble Storage is a very organized and customer-oriented tool."

"It's very stable and fast, and I am very happy with the deduplication. It saves a lot of space, which is great."

"VMware integration, why is pretty self-explanatory."

"If a ransomware or enterprise-level attack happens, my infrastructure remains totally secure. If any virtual machine gets damaged or collapses, we have built a backup solution, which will take a minute to restore the same version of HPE Nimble Storage in our company."

More HPE Nimble Storage pros

Cons

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

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

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

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

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."

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

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"There is room for improvement in adjusting into the existing infrastructure easily without much of the technical contribution."

"The initial setup could be easier."

"Dell needs to offer more midrange storage options with enterprise-class features similar to the PowerMAX."

"The REST API needs improvement. We are a very big automation company, and this would be big for us."

"Dell PowerMax or Symmetrix is a block-level storage and unified storage, supporting both NAS and SAN. One area for improvement would be integration with public cloud services."

"There are so many configurations in the tool that cannot be done by anyone who is not a Dell personnel."

"There are some stability issues that we just recently experienced. We hope the next release will solve these problems."

"Remove the need for physical or hardwired virtual servers to run consistency groups, instead make the expensive array controllers handle that."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe cons

"HPE Nimble Storage provides only SAN-based storage and does not support NAS-based storage."

"I would like to have more administrative rights, for example, root-level administrative rights to the underlying OS of the storage array. We want more access to the kind of underlying infrastructure of the storage array rather than relying on support. However, most companies are looking to have more managed solutions which is the opposite direction of what I want."

"I have problems with the next servicer. For example, I have a new device and it needs to connect to Nimble."

"The large hardware components may be difficult to fit into some standard racks."

"The stability can be improved."

"I want to see the full integration with OneView. I know they have started it, but I haven't had a chance to look at and evaluate it."

"It was a bit expensive."

"The resellers did the implementation of the solution, we did not do it ourselves. We have ten people for the deployment of the solution."

More HPE Nimble Storage cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"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."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"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."

"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."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The price is okay."

"I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe a five out of ten for pricing."

"The price is really high."

"Its price is competitive, but they need to have a different price for West Africa. They can do better with the price point to allow us to scale even more. We wanted to migrate our entire storage infrastructure to PowerMax, which would require us to buy more capacity, and from the price point, it didn't attract us."

"The cost has room for improvement."

"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."

"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."

"Since Dell PowerMax NVMe is an enterprise storage, its price is premium."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Competitive. No licensing. Since everything is included."

"The pricing is expensive, although we do not pay anything in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"There are no licensing costs for this solution."

"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."

"HPE Nimble Storage didn't require a license at the time."

"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."

"It is a CAPEX investment. Over the anticipated lifespan, I would say the pricing is $10,000 a month."

"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."

More HPE Nimble Storage pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

67%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

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.

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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 ...

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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...

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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.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

Dell offers various pricing models, including a pay-as-you-go option where storage is provided without upfront charge...

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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...

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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...

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What do you like most about HPE Nimble Storage?

The solution's predictive analytics is good. It helps to save costs.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 31% 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

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 28% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell PowerMax NVMe Competitors

HPE Primera vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 17% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 12% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 11% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 2% of the time

More HPE Nimble Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

April 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe

May 2025

Download Dell PowerMax NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Nimble Storage

April 2025

Download HPE Nimble Storage product report

Also Known As

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

Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

Nimble 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

Dell PowerMax is the industry’s most secure mission-critical storage platform. With NVMe Dynamic Fabric technology, PowerMax breaks from traditional storage limitations, enabling seamless integration with cloud-native and legacy applications. Designed with a powerful scale-up and scale-out architecture, PowerMax supports mission-critical applications at scale with zero downtime and ultra-low latency. The latest PowerMaxOS 10 release harnesses AI-driven efficiencies for trusted performance, capacity, and security. By choosing PowerMax, you can trust in a secure, intelligent, and always modern storage solution that unlocks the full potential of your data to drive business success.

Dell Technologies

HPE Nimble Storage is a highly effective All-Flash Storage Array solution that aims to enable organizations to reliably store and access their data. Organizations across a wide variety of industries trust Nimble Storage to assist them with all of their data storage-based needs. It both tracks all of the IT architecture that an organization uses and protects that architecture from a variety of digital threats.

HPE Nimble Storage Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy HPE Nimble Storage include:

Increased security. Nimble Storage provides organizations with powerful layers of protection. It leverages predictive analytics powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning to keep businesses from suffering harm related to emerging threats. The AI and ML software identifies threats before they can threaten a user’s data.

Reduced costs and increase profits. Businesses that deploy Nimble Storage find that their overhead costs end up being significantly reduced by up to 49%. One of the reasons for this is that Nimble Storage uses a “pay as you go” subscription model which means that users never pay for more storage than they actually need.

Ease of use. Nimble Storage is simple for administrators to utilize. They can install it without any kind of outside assistance. It is also simple for the average administrator to manage without specialized training.

HPE Nimble Storage Features

Artificial intelligence. The backbone of Nimble Storage’s IT infrastructure is its AI software. The HPE InfoSight feature makes it so that administrators don’t need to make guesses when managing their data storage. It offers users suggestions as to what they can do to improve their storage performance.

Scaling. Nimble Storage gives users the ability to scale their data storage so that it appropriately meets their needs. They can both “scale up” or increase the sheer amount of data that they can store at a given time and “scale out” or increase their ability to perform effectively.

Hybrid storage. Nimble Storage has the ability to store data both on the cloud and on-premises so as to meet an organization’s storage requirements. Its multi-cloud feature enables users to seamlessly manage all of their data storage and utilization operations with ease.

Reviews from Real Users

HPE Nimble Storage is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its ease of use and its powerful InfoSight analytics feature.

Andrew B., Head Of Information Technology at Zambia National Building Society, writes, “It's a very easy solution. Whenever I have a question, I find they have already provided a solution for it.”

Prataparao D., Technical Solution's Consultant for HPE Storage Devices at Karvy Innotech, says, “HPE Nimble Storage uses the InfoSight platform and it is useful because we can identify the faults and can analyze the performance. It has many other features. This feature is the best that I have observed from HPE Nimble Storage.”

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. HPE Nimble Storage

April 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. HPE Nimble Storage

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