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HPE Nimble Storage vs IBM FlashSystem 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)
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
IBM FlashSystem
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
NAS (4th), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (4th)
 

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 HPE Nimble Storage is 2.7%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FlashSystem is 6.7%, down from 6.8% 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.
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.
Raanan Sitton - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers cost-effective storage for small companies with budget constraints
IBM FlashSystem 5300 is offered at a very low cost in Israel, which is advantageous for small companies. However, other features like deduplication and compression do not perform effectively. The price sensitivity makes it a viable option for clients with budgetary constraints, as it allows us to secure deals based on the cost rather than advanced performance.

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."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"Deduplication and compression."
"InfoSight has helped us resolved an issue where the snapshots were growing too big."
"There are a lot of redundancies in all the right areas, so it is pretty stable."
"HPE Nimble Storage is very stable and performs well."
"Regarding their support, you always get through to somebody who knows exactly what they're talking about."
"They have really thought through their solution. They've covered everything."
"Performance Integration with Commvault"
"InfoSight - analytics sight that collects data for all Nimble arrays deployed"
"It's very easy to manage."
"The feature I find most valuable, is the deduplication, because the nature of the data that we are using in our current environment, has a lot of replicated data."
"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression, which together, enable you to have more space."
"Stability-wise, this solution is fine."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is compression."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is replication...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"IBM FlashSystem is a flexible solution with plenty of features."
"IBM FlashSystem is a stable solution."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"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."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"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."
"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"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."
"If they could reduce the cost, that would be ideal."
"The only thing that I can really compare Nimble to is all-flash because, right now, Nimble is a hybrid solution. I would like to see them come out with an all-flash alternative."
"When we’re setting up the solution, making options available regarding the replication tool mechanism would be ideal."
"I would like to see an added feature to auto-fix, or a dynamic alerting system on storage."
"There is no active-active controller, which means that we can only have one controller online at a time."
"The solution could improve by having more granularity. For example, having the ability to go deeper into specific IO channels or specific latency issues that can happen would be a benefit. HPE has this ability on their side but it would be useful to have it on our side."
"There are customers who want to do some different things with the Microsoft Resilient File System. There are some customers who want to do different types of connectivity. I do not know if I would call that an improvement, necessarily, because if you want that, you should get a different product."
"I would like to see greater integration with Microsoft's Hyper-V platform."
"There could be some extra features added."
"It has room for improvement in the area of stability."
"The design is a little old-fashioned and could be updated. The rack is very primitive and designed in an older style."
"Our model does not support compression or deduplication."
"The solution is quite expensive. That's one of the downsides to using it."
"Sometimes the performance is effective but it gets resolved in the process."
"The installation is not easy. You need to have extensive knowledge to handle it."
"The GUI needs some improvement. An additional function that could be helpful is reducing the time it takes to delete volumes, especially if they are compressed or deduplicated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"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."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"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."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"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 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."
"Nimble Storage is too expensive for our enterprise customers."
"It is a CAPEX investment. Over the anticipated lifespan, I would say the pricing is $10,000 a month."
"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."
"My company has opted for HPE GreenLake payment model, meaning the billing is done on a quarterly basis."
"Once you purchase the solution, you don't have to buy any license for this Nimble product."
"It is expensive, but it is worth the “uptime”."
"If we had stuck with EMC, we would have spent a lot more. We have EMC in-house, we have a bunch of them. Switching to Nimble saved me millions of dollars over the past three years... Nimble fills a need for performance within a budget that is in the sub-million dollar range."
"I'd rate the basic licensing and the Virtualize software a ten out of ten, and the extra Spectrum and other an eight out of ten."
"This is an expensive product and if the price were reduced it would be better."
"The tool is cost-efficient."
"The price of IBM FlashSystem is a little high because you pay a premium because the solution is from IBM. We had paid for the SLA prior to using the solution."
"The price depends of the technology that our customers need. The price can come at a lower cost but this may increase as storage is added."
"The price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable."
"Overall the price of the solution is expensive and this includes the license."
"I find the pricing of the solution to be very reasonable."
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Comparison Review

it_user277539 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 30, 2015
Hybrid storage, all-flash storage, and hyper-converged products offer software capable of running on commodity hardware, providing a better end-user experience at a reduced price.
Originally posted at https://www.freeitdata.com/ Over the last 15 years, the storage industry has primarily been dominated (market share) by six companies, EMC, NetApp, IBM, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), HP and Dell. In 2013, these six companies made up approximately 85% of all storage sold in the…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
69%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Manufacturing Company
3%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

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 ...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem?
Many factors affect purchasing directly from IBM, often involving a multi-step process. Customers, especially in bank...
What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem?
The GUI needs some improvement. An additional function that could be helpful is reducing the time it takes to delete ...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
Nimble Storage
IBM Storwize
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
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
Celero, Friedhelm Loh Group, Clarks, Mingkang Natregro Health Food Group, Sofia, Etisalat Fights Fraud, UF Health Shands Hospital, Generali, Elecon Engineering Company Limited, Ventiv , Technology, CPFL Energia, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., SciQuest, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, Paddy Power, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Interconnect Services, Severstal IP-Only AB, PVU Group GmbH
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Nimble Storage vs. IBM FlashSystem and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.