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Dell Unity XT vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series 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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
227
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell Unity XT
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
22nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.4%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 6.2%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is 1.6%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray7.4%
Dell Unity XT6.2%
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series1.6%
Other84.8%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
NR
TSG Manager at Navigator Systems
Ease of implementation and robust performance enhance multi-OEM support experience
We are limited only to hardware replacement, not administration tasks. We work on AMC products through Annual Maintenance Contracts. We provide support up to the 680 model. The XT680F is a newer model, and we support from 380F to 680F. The FlashSystem 8000 series is all-flash, and there is also a 5000 series flash model. We can compare IBM DS series, including the 8000 series for recommendations. For NetApp, we can recommend the FAS 8000 series.
GP
System Administrator at PORTGUARDIAN.COM SRL
Performance and cost-effectiveness are maximized with seamless setup and significant ROI
I use Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series to replace the old storage in our infrastructure. Additionally, I use it in customer infrastructures to migrate from the old storage to the new one On the M storage, I find the best features to be deduplication and compression. On the DE storage, the most…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Using this solution has improved our consolidation ratio and it saves us a lot of space."
"It helps simplify storage. When you're running Pure all-flash, you don't have to do a lot of the old Oracle best practices. You don't have to worry about putting log files on a different disk channel than the data files, and those types of issues... That has made it vastly easier to do large volumes, rapid provisioning in databases, without taking a performance hit."
"We have tons of capacity on it."
"It's a great return on investment, based on the mission."
"It's extremely stable and has good performance."
"We transferred our old architecture from hyper storage to all-flash storage, which made our business faster and more connected to our customers."
"Their technical support is excellent. It's the best out of any of the vendors we work with."
"Overall, Pure Storage FlashArray has never let us down in front of customers so far."
"Their product is stable."
"We can get to our applications faster."
"The Unisphere management interface: We are very familiar with it. It manages all the EMC devices that we have. Management is easy because it is part of Unisphere, which is self-learning."
"The most valuable feature is the performance. It's still an all-flash array at a good price point."
"It has good performance."
"Delivers High IOPS, but more important, low latency as this is the most important part for our usage."
"The most valuable features are its performance and simplicity."
"Unified block and file storage without the need of control stations and data movers. This simplifies administration and deployment and requires less rack space."
"The solution is very easy to set up."
"ThinkSystem is a good offer and can work out well if you can work with it to fit the use cases that you have."
"We have had a very good experience with customer service and support, as they answer questions very fast and resolve our issues."
"ThinkSystem's storage performs well, and the price per gigabyte is good, especially on SSD solutions. It's also easy to use."
"This solution is good for virtualization and meets the need for CPU and RAM requirements."
"The solution is very easy to troubleshoot, it doesn't take long to deploy, normally comes with a three-year warranty, and has the most features if you compare it to other models."
"We have been working with the solution for around a year and so far it has shown itself to be stable."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is cost-effective; there is no license, all of the features are bundled together, and you can renew the bundle with all of the features included."
 

Cons

"I would like to see the NAS add-on component become more fault-tolerant than just a single virtual machine running inside the array."
"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."
"Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases."
"We have not had a good experience with the IBM device."
"I would like to see box-to-box encryption on replication included in the next release."
"The price should be lower."
"I would like to see more cloud integration."
"I would rate this solution an eight. There's always room for improvement, nobody is perfect to get a ten out of ten."
"There is an issue with data duplication occurring on the flash memory. It should be improved. Timely updates and upgrades to the latest versions would be great."
"I would like to see better compression, better dedupe. It's not nearly as good as what is built into the XtremIO. I understand why that is the case, but if they can take some of that technology and leverage that a little bit better in the Unity array, that would be great."
"Last (and I understand that it has a low chance of being implemented) the copy services currently are redirect on write. It would be great if the administrator could choose between redirect on write and copy on write, when configuring copy job."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the deduplication part, because for large deduplications, you need an extra appliance to do it in order to avoid having problems in performance. I think that could be improved, because everything should be included in the product, not with an appliance from the outside."
"Support and licensing are big things, in the end, that needs improvement."
"The interface and configuration could improve."
"Yes, we had an issue in January with a Service Processor rebooting unexpectedly."
"The interface can be a little challenging for someone new."
"It is really entry-level. In the next release, I would like to see more functionality."
"ThinkSystem could be better integrated with backup software like Commvault, Veritas, or Symantec."
"Usually, when a part fails, we have to replace it and it takes a while."
"The difficult part comes when dealing with the host. You have to enable multi-pathing and other aspects that are needed for proper configuration. I don't know if there is room for a more hyper-conversion structure to work with, but this would be easier."
"While it is a reliable product, it could be improved. It would be useful to have structured solutions replicated to other sites."
"The features are limited."
"You can not buy a lot of options for these devices. There are a lot of things that it does not do."
"Improvements can be made to the product's performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It could always be lower, but it's okay."
"It was less expensive than some of the alternatives. It's not as though it was a premium price to get that kind of quality. It's a very competitive product from a price perspective..."
"We would like them to improve the pricing, so we could put them to use some more product, like backup or long-term storage. In the future, if the price goes down, then we could buy different types of products."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The price was more favorable than Dell EMC."
"The best features come included without any additional cost."
"The price is too high."
"There should be quite a bit of reduction of TCO with just licensing (and stuff) because we run the VM environment off it."
"We purchased a five-year warranty."
"We have to apply for a license for each system."
"It is an average priced solution."
"The price of Dell Unity XT could improve. However, it is a one-time purchase."
"Here is our major complaint with pricing. Dell EMC comes to us and gives us a price. We are like, "Well, this doesn't even compare to what we got on the last project." We say, "No, you should bring it down to this level." Then, they come back again and we are sort of in the middle again. I am like, You already sold us other stuff at a better price. We are not going to just say, 'Yes,' because we are out of time.""
"This unit is one of the cheapest storage all-flash arrays in the market and it does well for what it is intended. It can be combined for both file and block storage."
"With the large Unity that we bought, it has saved us about one and a half rack space. That's our return on investment on our flash array. We also need less Fibre Channel connectivity."
"There is not a license required for the use of the solution. We purchased a maintenance contract."
"The pricing for this solution is good compared to HP or Dell EMC."
"The pricing is fair and low compared to other products in this category."
"The solution's price could be better."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The best thing about this solution is its price, which reduces our costs."
"For an all-flash setup, the cost is around $20,000 for a decent configuration."
"We have a five-year contract for providing support."
"All of the features are bundled together, and you can renew the bundle with all of the features included."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business69
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise157
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise96
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I do not have any improvements at the moment; I like how it is. I have nothing to add about needed improvements.
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...
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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series?
The price of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is very good. We chose this type of storage for the performance and the price.
What needs improvement with Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series?
The type of connection that is used in Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series should be improved.
What is your primary use case for Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series?
I use Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series to replace the old storage in our infrastructure. Additionally, I use it in custom...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
ThinkSystem DE Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,563 professionals have used our research since 2012.