Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs VMware Software Defined Storage comparison

Nutanix and Broadcom are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Nutanix is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7, while Broadcom is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.3. Nutanix holds a 4.1% mindshare in SDS, compared to Broadcom’s 1.9% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Nutanix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

VMware Software Defined Storage and Nutanix Unified Storage compete in the enterprise storage market. Nutanix has the upper hand due to its integrated approach combining storage, computing, and networking, well-suited for modern enterprise needs.

Features: Nutanix Unified Storage offers a hyper-converged infrastructure providing a streamlined solution that simplifies management and optimizes performance. It unifies storage across different machines, increasing flexibility and scalability. Nutanix also ensures high availability and makes data management user-friendly with its self-service capabilities. VMware Software Defined Storage provides scalability and integrates well with existing infrastructures. Its redundancy protects against data corruption while ensuring flexibility during scaling, offering a comprehensive approach to infrastructure integration.

Room for Improvement: Nutanix can improve its data protection features, ensuring more efficient responses to security threats and refining its configuration options. Additionally, better integration with other platforms could enhance its versatility. Cost-effective scaling options should also be considered. VMware SDS could work on improving initial setup simplicity and configuration processes. Enhancing compatibility with a broader range of hardware might offer users more adaptability and ease of use. Pricing model transparency is another area for potential enhancement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware supports flexible deployment allowing customization to specific requirements, which is advantageous for businesses with unique needs. Nutanix focuses on simplicity and quick deployment and is praised for its strong customer support. Its straightforward setup ensures a faster time-to-value, appealing to businesses prioritizing efficiency.

Pricing and ROI: VMware SDS offers a flexible pricing structure suitable for varying budgets, though initial setup may be costly. This flexibility may accommodate different business sizes and financial plans. Nutanix Unified Storage potentially involves a larger upfront investment but provides long-term ROI benefits via reduced operational complexity. The comprehensive nature of Nutanix’s solution often leads to greater long-term value, attributing higher returns on the investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs. VMware Software Defined Storage Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

December 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 Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 4.1%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Software Defined Storage is 1.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)	4.1%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.3%
VMware Software Defined Storage	1.9%
Other	90.7%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström

IT Manager at Regin Dalarna

Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades

In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

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Amarnath Charugundla

System Engineer at Tata Consultancy

Unified management and cost-effectiveness lead to positive experiences and future savings

Improvement is necessary wherein the memory or storage should not breach 90%, because if breached, it becomes unmanageable. We have to set alerts or CPU triggering for 95% for the first warning. Other activities on nodes or file systems should be properly maintained. We must monitor the dashboard for P1, P2 alerts in the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) file share system including SMB, NFS, objects, and blocks. Attention should be maintained for any alerts such as CPU, memory, and RAM alerts, as exceeding these creates issues within teams. If triggered to 95% and forgotten, it crosses the SLA breach, causing disturbances to application, web, and platform teams. Continuous monitoring on the Nutanix dashboard is essential. Even a highly experienced person in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cannot provide a 10 rating out of 10 because it is a vast system. I would rate it eight from my perspective.

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MohammadJundiah

Solutions Architect at Logicom Sales Inc

Data security and performance excel but integration and licensing need improvement

I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery. Additionally, I worked with VMware Software Defined Storage both internally and with partners to consolidate servers into one solution The most valuable features of VMware Software…

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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 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."

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."

"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."

"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"My opinion is that this solution has very good stability."

"The most valuable features of the solution are high availability and synchronization to another location."

"It is more stable and scalable compared to the Windows file server."

"Redundancy and availability are valuable. We have several nodes, so it stays up, and there is redundancy. Then there is availability."

"Nutanix technical support is excellent, with swift responses based on priority."

"They have well-documented best practices and the interface is good."

"The deployment was very easy."

"I strongly recommend Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) to all users as a modern cloud computing system, offering significant cost savings for clients, customers, and vendors while providing excellent cloud infrastructure operations."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pros

"This is an easy-to-use product for adding flexibility to your storage solution."

"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."

"The solution is simple to configure and provides good performance and less footprint."

"VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption."

"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."

"The best part of the solution is that you can actually scale up to a large number of operating systems without additional hardware."

"The single management panel is the main feature that is wonderful for the customer."

"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to deploy and the support is really good."

Cons

"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."

"I have not seen ROI."

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"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 features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."

"The speed could be improved."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"A centralized file share permissions console might be useful for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). Getting in and directly managing permissions instead of using the snap-in from Windows itself might be something to consider, but that's a small thing."

"For me, personally, it's a little bit slow because there's so much stuff in the underlying layers that even after talking with Nutanix support, I couldn't really grasp it."

"The solution is very expensive."

"Lowering the price would improve this product."

"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) needs improvement, particularly for firmware upgrades, as sometimes updates take a whole day and it can be unclear whether the issue is with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) or the hardware, requiring us to reconfigure everything, which is a main point we want consolidated into one solution."

"The solution should increase its storage capabilities."

"Pain points are just in the management and understanding of how the functions work."

"For P1 and P2 alerts in the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) file share system, including SMB, NFS, objects, or blocks, we must maintain vigilant monitoring. This is crucial because system downtime can disturb the entire ecosystem and impact all applications."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cons

"The performance is not as good as some competing products and reporting can be improved."

"Simplifying the licensing model and making it cheaper would improve the solution."

"The license model of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"It doesn't have the ability to be deployed on any kind of hardware and network connectors."

"I'd like to see improved hardware compatibility"

"There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages."

"The solution has some limitations in terms of replication to remote sites or cloud infrastructure, which need improvement."

"VMware Software Defined Storage should include a shared database on a standard version."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"The price could be cheaper."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

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

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

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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

"I'm happy with the cost and licensing because I don't have big volumes."

"I am not the one who makes the calls, but it seems to me that it was very competitive. Other solutions would have required dedicated hardware, so an additional CapEx has to be put in place. In that sense, it was definitely a more competitive option to go with Nutanix Files."

"Compared to other solutions, NUS is cost-effective and efficient. It also has good performance."

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

"It's not the cheapest solution. It's in line with other solutions, but it offers features that the competitors don't have at any price point, especially with regard to analytics and ransomware prevention. No one else has any sort of object-based storage available. Nutanix Unified Storage is a lot more feature-rich. This is a situation where you get what you pay for."

"The licensing currently works based on a software license. If we have files, volumes, and other licenses combined, that would be more valuable. I don't want to go for a separate license for files and a separate license for volumes. We have unified storage, so the licensing should also be unified. That would be helpful."

"I assume Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has helped reduce our total cost of ownership."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pricing and cost advice

"The product is quite expensive and is among the most expensive for this type of solution."

"A single socket costs you around US $6,000 for three years. At a minimum, you have a three load cluster for a medium or enterprise-scale company. It can get quite expensive because you're likely to need four to six sockets on the other side. It comes to around $30,000."

"The solution is very expensive."

"I believe there is a yearly licensing fee of around $2000 - $5000. I don't think there are additional costs above that but it depends on the type of infrastructure you're booting."

"VMware Software Defined Storage is a slightly expensive solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	30
Large Enterprise	64

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	6

Questions from the Community

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?

Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...

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.

See all answers

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

It is very cost-effective compared to the traditional environment. With new hardware, it's a long-term investment but...

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What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?

To improve Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), cost is always an issue for every company, especially when we talk about la...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Software Defined Storage?

The price of VMware Software Defined Storage is on the pricey side, rated four out of five in cost. There is room for...

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Software Defined Storage?

There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages. More automation, such as using Playbook on Ansibl...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Software Defined Storage?

I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery. Ad...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 18% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 2% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 8% of the time

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

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 5% of the time

IBM Storage Fusion vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 3% of the time

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 24% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 18% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 15% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 10% of the time

More VMware Software Defined Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

January 2026

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

January 2026

Download Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Software Defined Storage

January 2026

Download VMware Software Defined Storage product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

VMware SDS

Overview

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

Nutanix Unified Storage offers seamless scalability and high availability with a user-friendly interface, supporting multi-protocol operations while integrating effortlessly with cloud platforms. It enhances performance and security with features like ransomware protection and advanced data management.

Nutanix Unified Storage streamlines storage management by consolidating infrastructure and optimizing virtualization. It reduces operational complexity and enhances performance across diverse workloads. Despite feedback on integration challenges and suggestions for improving pricing, API capabilities, and security, it remains a key choice for dependable storage solutions. Calls for streamlined implementation and enhanced AI capabilities reflect its potential to better support evolving organizational strategies, driving cost efficiency and data accessibility.

What are the key features of Nutanix Unified Storage?

Intuitive Interface: Simplifies management with easy navigation.
High Availability: Ensures minimal downtime and reliable performance.
Seamless Scalability: Adapts to increasing data requirements effortlessly.
Multi-Protocol Support: Facilitates comprehensive operations across different systems.
Advanced Security: Offers ransomware protection and secure data backup.
Cloud Integration: Allows smooth interaction with cloud platforms.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Operational Efficiency: Reduced complexity through streamlined management.
Cost Optimization: Achieved via data compression and consolidation.
Enhanced Data Visibility: Improved insights with advanced data lens.
Performance Improvement: Significant uplift in workload handling and database performance.
Scalable Infrastructure: Enables growth and adaptation to changing demands.

In industries, Nutanix Unified Storage is deployed to centralize storage needs, improve database efficiency, and enhance file sharing and security. Organizations use it to consolidate infrastructure, support virtualization, optimize costs, and facilitate virtual machine hosting. It's instrumental in scalable object storage, ransomware protection, integrating legacy systems, and catering to critical applications.

Nutanix

VMware software-defined storage is a simple, yet intelligent, storage data center architecture that aligns with business and application demands—eliminating static, purpose-built and inefficient hardware with dynamic, agile and automated solutions.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

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

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

Helse Nord, Sky

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

December 2025

Free Report: Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

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