Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

Nutanix and Pure Storage are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. Nutanix is ranked #4 with an average rating of 9.0, while Pure Storage is ranked #6 with an average rating of 9.0. Additionally, 98% of Nutanix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Pure Storage users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Pure Storage FlashBlade and Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are advanced storage solutions targeting data management. Based on user reviews, Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has the upper hand in deployment flexibility and customer service, while Pure Storage FlashBlade is more competitive regarding ROI and setup costs.

Features: Pure Storage FlashBlade offers high-performance computing, scalability, and ease of integration with existing infrastructure. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has software-defined storage capabilities, efficient data management, and robust data protection. NUS is preferred for its advanced data management features in complex environments.

Room for Improvement: Pure Storage FlashBlade needs better support for more data protocols and an improved management interface. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) requires simplified licensing models and improved integration with third-party tools. Both products need refinement in their respective areas but NUS's integration improvement takes precedence.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Pure Storage FlashBlade is recognized for its straightforward deployment process and efficient customer service. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) provides deployment flexibility with adaptable architecture and superior customer service, placing it ahead in this category.

Pricing and ROI: Pure Storage FlashBlade users find setup costs reasonable with satisfactory ROI due to high performance. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) may have higher upfront costs but users report substantial ROI from advanced features and efficient operation, offsetting initial expenditures.

To learn more, read our detailed Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

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

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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Juan-Contreras

System Administrator at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees

Ensures streamlined management, simplified infrastructure, and efficient data handling

It has effectively managed our unstructured data, including audio and video files. We've experienced smooth operations without any complaints regarding uploading or downloading videos. While video usage isn't as frequent, we primarily utilize it for downloading videos related to specific incidents for administrators or our police department. We've encountered no issues uploading files of any kind. Transitioning from VMware to Nutanix has highlighted the overall flexibility of Nutanix's platform. Unlike VMware's three-tier system, Nutanix simplifies the learning curve by streamlining operations. The update process, in particular, has been favorable, with no critical issues encountered. The resiliency of Nutanix hasn't been thoroughly tested in our environment so far. However, I routinely check fault tolerance settings to ensure they meet our requirements. During the update process, I've observed critical errors occur as hosts restart, but Nutanix's self-healing mechanism handles these issues seamlessly. The benefit of using Nutanix is evident in several ways. Firstly, we've effectively compressed our storage while significantly expanding our overall storage pool. Previously, our service had a capacity of twenty-five terabytes, but with Nutanix, we've scaled up to a hundred and twenty terabytes physically and approximately fifty terabytes logically. This expansion has been accompanied by noticeable improvements in performance, particularly with reduced latency and IOPS well within the boundaries of our equipment. All our resources are centralized in a single location for managing and running storage: our data center. We operate three Nutanix nodes within this center, effectively managing everything from one central location. We don't have any other locations outside of our data center running a Nutanix cluster. Nutanix's capability to eliminate silos within our organization's storage infrastructure was discussed during our recent call with the engineer. Although we haven't explored this feature extensively yet, there's a forthcoming project where we anticipate leveraging it.One thing I'd appreciate is having a desktop application similar to what VMware offered. With VMware, I could download a separate client program onto my computer, allowing me to log in directly rather than accessing the host through a browser.

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Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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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

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"The solution is scalable."

"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."

"I appreciate the performance."

"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 high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The capacity is very good. They use fewer nodes than before. Each node is isolated with the CPU with the performance. It is a cluster node but works separately, so the performance will be tripled."

"The product is good, easy to upgrade, easy to use, and user-friendly."

"The most important point is the simplicity of the API integration. We can leverage the API integrations and connect our hybrid-cloud network environment with Nutanix's cloud storage."

"I appreciate its storage licensing model, as it offers flexibility."

"The benefit that our clients see is the security of the whole Nutanix platform where they have simplified usage."

"Nutanix Unified Storage is a simple, user-friendly, and stable solution."

"The management interface is great and you have handy access to several details about your file shares."

"The solution's most valuable features are its support and speed."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pros

"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."

"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."

"It's very easy-to-use."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

"The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

Cons

"It is on the expensive side."

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

"We need better data deduplication."

"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."

"The software layer has to improve."

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

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"Nutanix should improve the one-click upgrade. There are a lot of dependencies on third-party licenses and HP hardware we use internally. The one-click upgrade fails sometimes."

"Its interface is very simplistic. It is a good thing for people because of the ease of use, but at times, I find it too simplistic. It is hard to find advanced options. They should eventually expand it and provide additional drop-down lists or menus with advanced feature sets."

"Customer service is more difficult to call and they do not responding as much as, for example, DataCore. It's not the same level of satisfaction compared to DataCore. Responses could be faster."

"The solution should keep adding new features to be competitive in the market."

"Managing other storage infrastructure on Nutanix Files Storage is an area for improvement. In particular, I want to add other forms of storage from different vendors not currently in Nutanix Files Storage, to the file server, for better management."

"The current hardware is not as dense as it could be. In our deployment, we have 2 PB per site, and we have to have 24 nodes. That's a lot of cabling and network ports that we use up. More dense nodes would be better."

"The product needs to work a bit more on its ransomware detection capabilities."

"There are some processes, like if I like to change the data storage to another place, I have to use CLI, and I don't like it since I believe that it could have been simpler in GUI."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cons

"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."

"The solution is expensive."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

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

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

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"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."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The licensing model the tool has is cheaper than an HCI storage solution."

"The solution is highly-priced."

"It is not too high for what we are using."

"The solution's pricing is fair."

"With all of the Nutanix equipment, the licensing is expensive. We operate in the enterprise space, but we're a midsized company. At times, the price tag is a little bit shocking for a company with only 35 employees. We're not a Fortune 500 company, but we deal with Fortune 500 drug and energy companies. We have to play in that enterprise space if we're going to have enterprise customers. I'm very price-conscious, but I understand that if I want the best, I've got to pay the price."

"For clients running Nutanix, the licensing cost for Files is a small add-on cost."

"Its pricing is good to okay. It is not super inexpensive, but it is still competitive. Everything could always be lower."

"Nutanix Unified Storage is competitively priced. There aren't any competitors that can do much better for the same price."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pricing and cost advice

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"The product is very expensive."

"The price is a little high."

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"The price could be cheaper."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

32%

Educational Organization

21%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

33%

Computer Software Company

11%

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.

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?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?

Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?

Nutanix Unified Storage isn't expensive.

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What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?

The dashboard could be more customizable

See all answers

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 32% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 19% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 18% of the time

MinIO vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Storage Fusion vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 5% of the time

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Competitors

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Supermicro SuperBlade vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 2% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

March 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

March 2025

Download Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) product report

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

March 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Also Known As

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

Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage

No data available

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

Nutanix Unified Storage provides high availability and seamless cloud platform integration, ensuring robust redundancy, scalability, and streamlined management. It supports hybrid cloud connectivity, enhancing storage security and performance.

Nutanix Unified Storage is designed for effective data protection across block, file, and object storage, offering features like ransomware detection and a centralized management interface through Prism Central. Users gain improved SLAs and IT cost savings through its efficient performance. Despite its user-friendly interface, there is a demand for enhanced security measures such as Multi-Factor Authentication and DLP. While its resilience is notable, users seek improvements in protocol compatibility, storage capabilities, pricing, and support processes.

What are the most important features of Nutanix Unified Storage?

User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies storage management and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures continuous operation and reliability.
Seamless Cloud Integration: Compatible with platforms like Azure and AWS.
Robust Redundancy: Protects data against hardware failures.
Scalable Architecture: Easily adapts to growing data storage needs.
Ransomware Detection: Enhances data protection measures.

What benefits and ROI might users find in reviews?

Improved SLAs: Increased service reliability and performance.
IT Cost Savings: Reduces expenses through efficient resource use.
Enhanced Security: Stronger data protection and reduced risk.
Centralized Management: Easier control and monitoring from one dashboard.

Industries implement Nutanix Unified Storage for tasks such as file storage, database performance improvement, and storage solution consolidation. Companies deploying virtual machines, securing against ransomware, connecting hybrid clouds, and backing up data find it useful. It supports workloads like Citrix VDI, Kubernetes, and research data, assisting many organizations migrating from legacy storage for better cost efficiency and reduced data center footprints.

Nutanix

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

April 2025

Free Report: Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

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