Dell Unity XT vs HPE Nimble Storage comparison

Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.8. Dell Technologies holds a 10.4% mindshare in AFS, compared to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 3.9% mindshare. Additionally, 96% 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 Unity XT are leading storage solutions with distinct strengths. HPE Nimble Storage seems to have the upper hand in pricing and support, while Dell Unity XT stands out for its advanced features.

Features: HPE Nimble Storage is praised for simplified management, real-time analytics, and efficient performance. Dell Unity XT users appreciate integrated cloud capabilities, scalable architecture, and robust data protection. Dell Unity XT appears to stand out for its comprehensive feature set beneficial for large-scale deployments.

Room for Improvement: HPE Nimble Storage users suggest better scalability options and more advanced integration capabilities. Dell Unity XT users recommend enhancements in reporting capabilities and a more streamlined update process. Both products have room for growth, but user feedback indicates Dell might need more focus on reporting and updates.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HPE Nimble Storage is acknowledged for its straightforward setup process and responsive customer support. Dell Unity XT users find the deployment experience smooth but note occasional complexity with specific configurations. Both products offer strong customer service, though HPE Nimble Storage is recognized for a somewhat more user-friendly deployment process.

Pricing and ROI: HPE Nimble Storage is valued for its cost-effective setup and quick ROI, making it an attractive option for budget-conscious buyers. Dell Unity XT, while perceived as more expensive, offers significant ROI through its powerful features and scalability. Users feel the higher initial investment in Dell Unity XT is justified by long-term benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Nimble Storage Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Nimble Storage

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 10.4%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Nimble Storage is 3.9%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Paul Pearson

Storage and Backup Architect at Concentrix

Works well, is easy to implement, and has upgrade analysis capabilities

We love the product. Pure Storage works really well. The CAT tool and also the ability to upgrade the unit's place grades are great. It allows for in-place control or upgrades. It's a very simple implementation. They have a good tool to analyze upgrades. The stability is good. Technical support has been excellent.

Read full review

Srikanth Purushothaman

DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems

Easy to set up with good data compression technology and useful deduplication

The initial setup is very straightforward. Even upgrading the firmware is very nice. You don't need to shut down. Previously, we used to have a shutdown, and now we hand over to one more processor, upgrade the one processor, and then switch back to this process, and then we'll do the upgrade for the process so there is no downtime. I'd rate the ease of implementation nine out of ten. Since we are holding almost all the data, which are all critical and confidential, the deployment is always on-prem only. It takes a maximum of two to three hours. The solution is almost finalized before ordering. We plan what has to be done, and how many services have to be connected through the HBA. Based on that, the number of fiber ports should have been ordered along with the system. Normally, it comes with two fiber-channel HBA adapters. We used to order with four channels instead of going for a sand switch. We connect three servers directly into process A and process B. Before getting into the server, all the servers should be up and running with the HBA connector with the fiber cable ready. Once we install the server, we will see if the firmware is up-to-date or if it is one month old since the shipment takes at least one or two months before it reaches our hands. If there is any new update, we will check with them to see whether the new firmware is good or if there are any bugs in it. If the support team says there is no bug, it means we will update the firmware and create a pool. If it is a hybrid pool, we'll do a mix and combinations of flash as well as the NSS for the images. For the data, we have only the flash itself, and we use a rate six for the data. Previously, with the regular SaaS drives, we used to have a rate ten; however, with the flash drives, we used to have rate five or rate six only. Normally, in-house inside the rack, we need two people. Otherwise, one engineer itself will do. If it is a flash drive, only one person itself will be enough. If it is three bay drives with 144 TB or 288 TB, then we'll go for one more person to fix inside the rack. Once it is fixed, the installation will be done only by one person. For maintenance, normally, we check the firmware updates within a month, or we check every 30 to 45 days to seek out firmware updates. We provide maintenance to our customers. For other issues, we might call technical support. Most things we can manage.

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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

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

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

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"I appreciate the performance."

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"For me, the most valuable feature is the ease of management."

"It has improved the utilization of our own internal resources and performance across our managed service platform, meeting our customers SLAs."

"On a scale from one to 10, I'd probably give EMC customer support an 11. It's been really good. We do have premium support, which means if we have a problem, it gets solved really quickly."

"All-flash is a game changer. If you need performance, simple operations, and you plan to use it with VMware, it is a good choice."

"Unity's are more easily administrated, so we need fewer people to do the administration. We have less overhead because of that."

"The most valuable feature is the fast cache with functionality rewrite."

"We use it to implement all our VDI solutions."

"We just started doing a bunch of automation where, if an end-user's home directory or departmental share gets filled, I can set certain things through a Unity API so that if it reaches 95 or 98 percent full, it will automatically expand. Now, instead of our getting a ticket and having to go in and do it manually, it does that for us."

More Dell Unity XT pros

"InfoSight provides real-time reporting, it gives you information about your different volumes, how the arrays are being used, I/O, performance in general."

"The deployment is fast."

"The all-flash positions our organization for growth. It is much easier to use, and we do not have to worry about the I/O profile of the workloads that we putting on the array."

"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."

"The replay and IOPS work well."

"I use InfoSight quite a bit. It works well. It allows you to get some insight into what's happening in your environment immediately, instead of having to send things off and having them analyzed and sent back to you."

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

"InfoSight. It's AI for the data center. It's very easy, it does a lot of the work for the customer... InfoSight and the whole system, help them to deal with troubleshooting."

More HPE Nimble Storage pros

Cons

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

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

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

"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."

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"We've got massive issues at the moment with IBM AIX. It's not stable. We have a lot of disk errors, production crashes sometimes."

"The pre-sales technical support and technical engagement could be made better for this product."

"This is a tier-three solution and it gives us what we need for archiving and backups."

"This solution would be improved with the addition of flexible raid volumes."

"I would like to see them add Storage Groups, like we have had in Clariions and VNXs."

"Having more artificial intelligence tools built into the solution would be a great benefit. This would allow us to see more about the workloads and higher visibility, such as performance degradation."

"This solution could be improved by offering containerization. This is something many of my customers are looking for."

"It's very frustrating that it's not backward-compatible with the previous platforms, so it's a struggle for a lot of our customers."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"I would like to see more integrations."

"The most difficult part about Nimble was the fact that it didn't have a standard length."

"I would like to see native network attached storage (NAS) functionality. Our customers are looking for NAS, and Nimble can't give it to them."

"I would like deduplication by default on all the volumes. I still don't understand (or know why) dedupe isn't enabled for the templates out-of-the-box. We have to go in and manually enable it each and every time."

"I’d like to see in-line deduplication extended to Nimble non-flash (called “Hybrid”) arrays, even if it’s only the C500 and higher controllers that support it."

"There is a new version of the Nimble and 3PAR systems called Alletra and they have a lot of new features."

"The scalability could be better."

"I would like to see greater integration with Microsoft's Hyper-V platform."

More HPE Nimble Storage cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

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

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"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."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"It is shipped with all licensed, included for this product range, no need to buy additional licenses"

"Our CAPEX was close to $42,000 and operating costs are below $1000."

"The product’s pricing should be improved."

"While it has a good price to start, they could always make it cheaper."

"The pricing of Dell Unity XT is good."

"What they really like is the easy licensing now - Dell EMC has caught up to a lot of their competitors - based on not having to charge for everything, and they can get everything in one bundle."

"It was easy to order. We are a big Dell shop, so it was easy to purchase and get it in place, then up and running."

"The license is not required, but we must renew the support every year, every two years."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

"I think HPE Nimble Storage is less expensive than Primera and is the best solution for Venezuela."

"My company has opted for HPE GreenLake payment model, meaning the billing is done on a quarterly basis."

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

"Nimble has really met all of our needs and at a price we could afford. It certainly wasn't as expensive as a lot of other all-flash solutions that we could have bought."

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

"The price has room for improvement."

"There are no licensing costs for this solution."

"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."

More HPE Nimble Storage pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Educational Organization

71%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

65%

Computer Software Company

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.

See all answers

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?

After implementation, there are limitations, such as the number of paths, file systems, and replication options. It f...

See all answers

What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?

I saw that you have doubts about what you chose. I have a lot of experience with the constructor, honestly I can reco...

See all answers

What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?

They’re both great solutions and I’ve used both. EMC is being VERY aggressive on pricing which may be the undoing of...

See all answers

What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?

First of all the decision should be taken looking at similar products in terms of capacity and performance. I will sh...

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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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 36% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 42% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 4% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 3% of the time

More Dell Unity XT Competitors

HPE Primera vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 14% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 12% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 12% of the time

VMware vSAN vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 6% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs HPE Nimble Storage

Compared 5% of the time

More HPE Nimble Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

December 2024

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

December 2024

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Nimble Storage

December 2024

Download HPE Nimble Storage product report

Also Known As

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

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

Nimble Storage

Learn More

Pure Storage

Video not available

Dell Technologies

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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.

Dell EMC Unity XT is one of the best all-flash storage arrays on the market today. Dell EMC Unity XT arrays are designed for performance, optimized for efficiency, and built for a multi-cloud world. In addition, they support digital transformation, enabling businesses to reach the full potential of their data capital quickly and easily. Dell EMC Unity’s All-Flash and Hybrid Flash storage platforms provide the performance, efficiency, enterprise-class software, and virtualization integrations required for running a wide range of virtualized applications.

Dell EMC Unity XT Features

Dell EMC Unity XT has many valuable key features, including:

Unified storage flexibility: With Dell EMC Unity XT you can consolidate separate storage platforms into a single Unity XT unified storage system via a simple and intuitive (HTML5) management GUI that also connects you to CloudIQ.
All-inclusive data protection: Dell EMC Unity XT offers a reliable way to protect application data with all-inclusive data protection services, including snapshots, data-at-rest drive encryption, replication, thin clones, and dynamic pools.
Software-defined solutions: Dell EMC Unity XT provides software-defined storage and HA for on-prem and in the cloud solutions.
Multi-cloud alignment: With Dell EMC Unity XT you have the ability to build and manage an effective data-first multi-cloud strategy. It allows you to consolidate public and private cloud resources that align with your business goals.
Metro node: This feature enables automated business continuity with zero RPO and RTO. It also provides greater flexibility through multi-platform support and replication to any array and has zero performance impact on the storage array.
Scalable file system: Dell EMC Unity XT is built with a robust 256TBu file system. The UFS64 file system includes up to 256 independent VMDK clones, 16 thin clones, space efficient snapshots with a simple space reclaim and low IO impact, file system shrink that can reclaim free blocks, simplified Quotas for User, and much more.
DevOps integrations: Dell EMC Unity XT supports the Container Storage Interface (CSI) plugin to run Kubernetes workloads.

Dell EMC Unity XT Benefits

Some of the benefits of using Dell EMC Unity XT include:

High-speed data access
Low latency
Dual-active controller architecture
Multi-cloud
Intuitive user interface
Cost efficient
Solid performance

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Dell EMC Unity XT users.

A Systems Engineering Manager at a manufacturing company says, "It is definitely one of the most robust, solid, well-performing products that I have dealt with. It is set it and forget it, which is pretty amazing." He also mentions, “We can do both block and file storage on one unit without purchasing a separate device.”

Peter S., Senior Technical Specialist at a healthcare company, states, “The most valuable feature is reliability. At the end of the day, it just runs. This solution is easy to work with and easy to maintain.”

PeerSpot user Melvin T., Senior Systems Engineer at Prosperity Bank, explains that the solution is “easy to use and we can add LUNs or space without interruption to end-users. We're able to access it from just about anywhere, as long as we have access to a browser. That feature is really neat because sometimes we will go to a different data center or a different site, and if we need to access it to see a LUN or to see any type of storage, we can do that. That's one of the big takeaways with Unity."

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.”

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

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 Unity XT vs. HPE Nimble Storage

December 2024

Free Report: Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Nimble Storage

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Nimble Storage and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.

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