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HPE Nimble Storage vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays 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
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
28th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
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 HPE Nimble Storage is 2.7%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 0.6%, down from 0.6% 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.
Tayo Olubanke - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers flexibility and top-notch technology
You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."
"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."
"The capacity for data storage and compression is good."
"The most valuable features are the duplication and compression traffic. We have second storage that we can use for the synchronization of data between the data centers."
"There are a lot of redundancies in all the right areas, so it is pretty stable."
"The storage capacity efficiency is phenomenal. It is off the charts in comparison to the compression ratios that we got before. We are able to save a lot more to the device."
"I have added expansion shelves on several of them. It is simple to do. You plug it in, you attach two cables, then you press one button, like "Add", and that is all you have to do."
"The solution's uptime is fantastic. It's 100 percent. In addition, Nimble's storage capacity efficiency is very effective."
"The quality of the service and management tools let us make contractual guarantees for storage performance for customers. That's something we couldn't do before."
"The solution is quite scalable."
"The hardware and software of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are easy for us to use."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The product's initial setup phase can be managed easily and completed in 20 to 30 minutes. It is one of the fastest storage tools that you can implement."
"I like the performance aspect of EF Series. It basically provides everything that we are looking for as a solution, very low latency and very high performance."
"The management software is very good."
"Some of the valuable features include MetroCluster switchover, in terms of disaster recovery, it is easy to use, and flexible."
"The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our data bases."
"Compared to Dell Unity XT, what I see as an advantage in NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is the fact that it is more scalable...The performance of the product is good."
 

Cons

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"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."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."
"The HPE Nimble Storage could have better integration with monitoring and machine learning system information solutions."
"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."
"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."
"Pure Storages have some option, which allows us the ability to directly download that host inventory and volume report. We can receive everything directly generated from the storage itself. We do not need to use some other web browser or something. If HPE Nimble Storage could do the same it would be a benefit."
"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."
"It would be ideal if all these enterprise-class high-performance products would come at a cheaper price."
"It was a bit expensive."
"HPE Nimble Storage should improve its latency. It is expensive."
"There could be better integration with some of our Cisco products."
"The dashboard could be simplified."
"It was difficult to implement and lacks some additional features that would be useful, but as a solution fits a particular need for our organization."
"I would like to have the ability to replicate data between All Flash and other NetApp storage systems."
"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."
"The only major drawback is the replication between EF-Series units."
"I would like to see higher-capacity drives, as they come out; I have heard that 15 TB are out on a different NetApp series. Getting those on the EFs would be nice."
"They could improve overall scalability through performance. Denser capacity, which is doable, it is what the competition is doing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"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."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"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."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."
"HPE Nimble Storage didn't require a license at the time."
"We have seen tremendous ROI. It pays for itself 10 times over in the matter of four years."
"I think HPE Nimble Storage is less expensive than Primera and is the best solution for Venezuela."
"It's expensive. It could be cheaper. I'd rate it a five out of ten in terms of pricing. We're on a yearly licensing. I haven't come across any additional costs. We just paid for three-year support."
"We pay a one-time fee for terabyte licenses, and the support is paid yearly."
"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."
"There is a one-time price for hardware, and with the software support, everything is included, such as software upgrades. The licensing of the solution is included in the cost of the hardware and the support is an extra cost. We have purchased support on an annual basis, but you can purchase support up front for up to seven years. We usually buy five years and near the time of the expiry, we sometimes extend it."
"I rate HPE Nimble Storage's pricing an eight out of ten. It can be expensive, especially when considering console ports and renewals."
"The price point for EF is considerably lower than the alternatives."
"They provide licenses upon purchase, so there's no need for additional licenses. Regarding additional expenses apart from the standard licensing fees, such as for support or maintenance, there aren't any. Updates take around twenty to thirty minutes, including rebooting the systems, and we haven't faced any problems with the NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We utilize various other storages like Fujitsu, IBM, and Dalian SIP, but the NetApp EF-Series stands out as we've had no issues throughout the entire year of usage."
"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."
"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."
"he price point that we're getting is very competitive in the market. Since we are buying in such a large quantity, they gave us a huge discount."
"It's a lot cheaper than what the other vendors have for the same type of environment. It saves us money."
"They need to improve its pricing. The storage market is dying. So, they need to improve the price because it should reach all people. NetApp is one of the top ones, and they are charging a little bit of royalty as compared to other storage solutions."
"One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to renew the license."
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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
18%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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 do you like most about NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to rene...
What needs improvement with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's supp...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
Nimble Storage
NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series
 

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
RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Nimble Storage vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,253 professionals have used our research since 2012.