Dell Unity XT vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series comparison

Dell Technologies and Lenovo are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.6, while Lenovo is ranked #22 with an average rating of 10.0. Dell Technologies holds a 5.9% mindshare in AFS, compared to Lenovo’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Lenovo users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Dell Unity XT and Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series are two competing storage solutions. Dell Unity XT is preferred for its robust software capabilities, while Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is appreciated for its hardware reliability and scalable performance.

Features: Dell Unity XT users value its comprehensive data management features, strong integration with cloud services, and robust software functionalities. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is praised for its high throughput, effective data protection mechanisms, and scalable performance.

Room for Improvement: Dell Unity XT users suggest improvements in hardware upgrade processes, need for faster support responses, and better hardware reliability. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series feedback indicates a demand for more intuitive monitoring tools, better documentation, and improved user guidance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell Unity XT is highlighted for its relatively straightforward deployment, but has mixed reviews regarding customer service efficiency. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is recognized for quick and flexible deployment options, receiving positive feedback for responsive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Dell Unity XT is perceived as costly, but users believe it offers good long-term ROI due to its comprehensive feature set. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is favored for its competitive pricing and immediate performance benefits, delivering a quicker ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Unity XT vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

March 2026

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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

Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.6%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 5.9%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is 1.8%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dell Unity XT	5.9%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.6%
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series	1.8%
Other	90.7%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

Read full review

Deepak Kannan

Sales Account Manager - BFSI Sector at Frontier Business systems

Customer needs are addressed effectively with collaborative sales and service support

Recently, customers have been asking for a cloud tiering option in storages. Some Dell storages do not have cloud tiering, which is an optional commercial feature. NetApp's FSA model 2750 comes with an inbuilt cloud tiering option. In the future, if Dell storages include this option, especially for Unity, it would help us target SME or medium enterprises for quicker closures and support the sales team.

Read full review

Giorgio Pozzi

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…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"It has good, reliable, and fast storage."

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

"Using this solution has benefitted us operationally by making us more efficient."

"We generally always advise people to make the choice to go with Pure Storage because they won't regret it."

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

"The administration and the stability are very good."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

More Everpure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"There are some alternatives, but what we've found, working with our partners, for mid-range storage it's probably the best one you could choose."

"I like Unity XT's software-defined storage. It's a new feature that isn't widely used yet, but customers are impressed with it."

"They find the performance amazing from what they're coming from."

"The return on the investment was simply speeding up our entire vSphere stack, which allowed our developers and engineers to get their workloads done faster and simpler."

"Stable flash storage platform with good scalability, efficiency, and speed."

"For me, the most valuable feature is the ease of management."

"It hasn't missed a beat; we haven't had any issues with it whatsoever, speed has been great, it does everything we need, there has been no downtime, and with built-in redundancy upon redundancy I feel very confident with it."

"We saved money by moving off old storage and we gained extra capacity and speed."

More Dell Unity XT pros

"This solution is good for virtualization and meets the need for CPU and RAM requirements."

"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is quite an elementary box, no frills; it does not have all the functionality of the DM but it is acceptable, it does its task, and it integrates pretty well."

"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is simple to use"

"The solution's initial setup process is easy."

"Fewer features is not necessarily a negative as it leads to simpler operation and lower price."

"ThinkSystem's storage performs well, and the price per gigabyte is good, especially on SSD solutions. It's also easy to use."

"I would rate the stability of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series as a ten."

"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is quite an elementary box, no frills. It does not have all the functionality of the DM but it is acceptable, it does its task. It integrates pretty well."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series pros

Cons

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

"Pure is not flexible on your datapak expansions. You're locked into a certain amount of storage."

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

"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."

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

More Everpure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"I don't know where the hybrid cloud might be going or what connectivity there is between what was recently released as far as AWS and being able to manage both of them."

"I think Dell EMC should be more careful in appointing partners, and they need to have better control over their partners. And if their partner has some problems with them, we should not suffer."

"It could be improved in the area of management flexibility. For example, I really need to set read-only access for LUNs, and there's no such option with Unity XT."

"It's very frustrating that it's not backward-compatible with the previous platforms, so it's a struggle for a lot of our customers."

"This product lacks deduplication and compression at the current version 4.1.0. LACP is not available for iSCSI either."

"The pricing is a bit higher than expected, and this is an area where I see room for improvement."

"Technical support has gotten worse since the merger, for example, response time to SR creation."

"What I'd like to see is a little more detail on the networking side. I can go into where it's showing me the replication, but when I go into the network it just gives me broad-based information. I don't know which replication job is actually feeding it. I have to go in and rely on other apps."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"ThinkSystem could be better integrated with backup software like Commvault, Veritas, or Symantec."

"While it is a reliable product, it could be improved. It would be useful to have structured solutions replicated to other sites."

"Scalability on rack-mount servers is not as good as with Blade servers."

"The features are limited."

"The difficult part comes when dealing with the host. You have to enable multi-pathing and other aspects that are needed for proper configuration."

"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."

"Its performance could be faster."

"The type of connection that is used in Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series should be improved."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."

"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."

"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."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

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

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"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."

More Everpure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Most licenses for the solution are free but upgrades are available when adding additional software or storage."

"I rate Dell Unity XT’s pricing a nine out of ten."

"We looked at HPE Nimble but the price of the Unity XT was very good compared to the competition."

"It scales, but then you have to buy additional stuff."

"Compression is making a difference towards the amount of hardware that we need to purchase."

"The flexibility is important. We still have a lot of customers that have a use case for non-flash, yet you can also build the flash version as well."

"The solution’s pricing is competitive."

"It is shipped with all licensed, included for this product range, no need to buy additional licenses"

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

"The price of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is a one-time purchase. There is a global price list available to find the price of the solution."

"The pricing is fair and low compared to other products in this category."

"The solution's price could be better."

"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."

"The pricing for this solution is good compared to HP or Dell EMC."

"For an all-flash setup, the cost is around $20,000 for a decent configuration."

"The best thing about this solution is its price, which reduces our costs."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	62
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	94

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	3

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?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

See all answers

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...

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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...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series?

The type of connection that is used in Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series should be improved.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

TrueNAS X-Series vs Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 4% of the time

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Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 28% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 14% of the time

Everpure FlashArray vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 10% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

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Dell PowerStore vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 18% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 9% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 9% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 7% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 5% of the time

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

April 2026

Download Everpure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

April 2026

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

March 2026

Download Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series product report

Also Known As

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

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

ThinkSystem DE Series

Overview

Everpure FlashArray X NVMe delivers high performance, reliability, and low latency, making it ideal for block storage in private cloud infrastructures and mission-critical applications.

Boasting robust data reduction, high availability, and seamless scalability, Everpure FlashArray X NVMe supports databases, VMware environments, and machine learning analytics. Known for its intuitive interface, superior support, volume snapshots, and AI-powered analytics, it efficiently manages storage needs, often deployed to replace outdated systems. Users highlight its simplistic management and easy configuration, although opportunities exist to enhance pricing, replication features, VNC integration, and storage capabilities.

What are the key features?

Data Reduction: Effective compression and deduplication improve storage efficiency.
Seamless Scalability: Easily scales to meet growing demands without downtime.
Volume Snapshots: Quickly create snapshots for data protection and recovery.
VMware Compatibility: Integrates smoothly with VMware environments for optimal performance.
AI-Powered Analytics: Provides insights for enhanced storage management and efficiency.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Low Latency and High Availability: Ensures rapid data access and uninterrupted service.
Easy Management: Intuitive interface simplifies configuration and monitoring.
Evergreen Model: Continuous upgrades without disruptive migrations.
Enhanced Support: Reliable service and support for critical applications.

Organizations in industries such as finance and healthcare implement Everpure FlashArray X NVMe to bolster data performance and reliability. They leverage its integration capabilities with Oracle databases and SQL workloads, supporting machine learning and virtualization. It's often chosen to upgrade legacy storage systems, ensuring high availability and speed for demanding environments.

Everpure (formerly Pure Storage)

Dell EMC Unity XT is one of the best all-flash storage arrays on the market today. Dell EMC Unity XT arrays are designed for performance, optimized for efficiency, and built for a multi-cloud world. In addition, they support digital transformation, enabling businesses to reach the full potential of their data capital quickly and easily. Dell EMC Unity’s All-Flash and Hybrid Flash storage platforms provide the performance, efficiency, enterprise-class software, and virtualization integrations required for running a wide range of virtualized applications.

Dell EMC Unity XT Features

Dell EMC Unity XT has many valuable key features, including:

Unified storage flexibility: With Dell EMC Unity XT you can consolidate separate storage platforms into a single Unity XT unified storage system via a simple and intuitive (HTML5) management GUI that also connects you to CloudIQ.
All-inclusive data protection: Dell EMC Unity XT offers a reliable way to protect application data with all-inclusive data protection services, including snapshots, data-at-rest drive encryption, replication, thin clones, and dynamic pools.
Software-defined solutions: Dell EMC Unity XT provides software-defined storage and HA for on-prem and in the cloud solutions.
Multi-cloud alignment: With Dell EMC Unity XT you have the ability to build and manage an effective data-first multi-cloud strategy. It allows you to consolidate public and private cloud resources that align with your business goals.
Metro node: This feature enables automated business continuity with zero RPO and RTO. It also provides greater flexibility through multi-platform support and replication to any array and has zero performance impact on the storage array.
Scalable file system: Dell EMC Unity XT is built with a robust 256TBu file system. The UFS64 file system includes up to 256 independent VMDK clones, 16 thin clones, space efficient snapshots with a simple space reclaim and low IO impact, file system shrink that can reclaim free blocks, simplified Quotas for User, and much more.
DevOps integrations: Dell EMC Unity XT supports the Container Storage Interface (CSI) plugin to run Kubernetes workloads.

Dell EMC Unity XT Benefits

Some of the benefits of using Dell EMC Unity XT include:

High-speed data access
Low latency
Dual-active controller architecture
Multi-cloud
Intuitive user interface
Cost efficient
Solid performance

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Dell EMC Unity XT users.

A Systems Engineering Manager at a manufacturing company says, "It is definitely one of the most robust, solid, well-performing products that I have dealt with. It is set it and forget it, which is pretty amazing." He also mentions, “We can do both block and file storage on one unit without purchasing a separate device.”

Peter S., Senior Technical Specialist at a healthcare company, states, “The most valuable feature is reliability. At the end of the day, it just runs. This solution is easy to work with and easy to maintain.”

PeerSpot user Melvin T., Senior Systems Engineer at Prosperity Bank, explains that the solution is “easy to use and we can add LUNs or space without interruption to end-users. We're able to access it from just about anywhere, as long as we have access to a browser. That feature is really neat because sometimes we will go to a different data center or a different site, and if we need to access it to see a LUN or to see any type of storage, we can do that. That's one of the big takeaways with Unity."

Dell Technologies

The DE All-Flash Series delivers the performance of more than 2,000 15k rpm HDDs, yet requires only 2% of the rack space, power, and cooling. Because it consumes 98% less space and power, DE Series can significantly improve the overall efficiency of your IT operations while continuing to meet your performance requirements.

Lenovo

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

March 2026

Free Report: Dell Unity XT vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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