IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series comparison

IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

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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

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 IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is 2.2%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

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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Mohamed-Hassan

Microfinance at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Steady performance, responsive support, and high availability

If we add a shell, the scalability depends on a legacy protocol and not the IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe which is a setback. At the previous bank, I worked at we had approximately 9,000 users. We are using the solution at its full capacity. I rate the scalability of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe a seven out of ten.

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Mark Richmond

Chief Technology Officer at Next Level Communications

Reliable and fast servers with good support

We use on-premise servers with Lenovo ThinkSystem. We set up Hyper-V and load multiple types of servers including a domain controller, a SQL Server, and application servers The solution provides fast servers that are reasonably priced. We set up RAID ten to ensure drive redundancy, leading to…

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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

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"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."

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is easy to use and comes with good performance."

"The solution is more available for IOPS warehousing, resolving issues, and reporting than other products."

"It's easy to use, has good stability, and many features."

"The storage serves the virtual environment. Most of our applications run in the virtual environment, and it serves nearly 30% of the bank's capacity."

"What I like about the product are its high availability, maximum efficiency in performance, and its ability to handle a high level of I/O operations."

"Its ease of use, performance, and hardware compression is very useful feature."

"The FlashCore modules support more value to the architecture due to their unique characteristics."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its upgrades, as we don't have to do much homework because of its different controllers."

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe pros

"The FlexClone feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."

"One of the most valuable features of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is the snapshot feature."

"The value we derive from using it is greater than other alternatives like HPE and Dell."

"It has been a perfect fit for the workload that our customer is doing."

"The servers are fast and affordable."

"The most valuable feature of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is its capability to tier to the cloud, such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS. Additionally, the integration is good and they are user-friendly."

"The price of this solution is good."

"Scalable and stable storage array."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series pros

Cons

"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."

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

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

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

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

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is an expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved."

"IBM's support is not good. I experienced a big problem where I opened the console IBM Storage and would see that something was broken. I called the call centers, and I said, "I have a problem. My drive is not working." They want me to give them the serial number, I gave it to them and they told me "I cannot find your product. Your product is not here.""

"I'd like to be able to connect to tape drives behind the storage device to back up the tape if need be. We have all of our storage running in all-flash, and we make a copy on tape. Currently, when we want to hook up tape drives, we have to add some extra equipment, which is a little bit complex. We want IBM to add a feature where we could install a tape into the storage so that we can connect it through a single pane of glass. We'd like to have a feature in the IBM flash storage system so that we can connect backup tape drives through the IBM storage system and we can manage the backup tape from the storage system."

"The tool's architecture is complex. It also needs to add data utilization reports."

"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is currently at the end of its lifespan and will soon become obsolete in the markets."

"The solution's compression needs to be improved, as it's not the best."

"I would like to have replication functionality built directly in the product, rather than having to use a separate device for this."

"There could be a possibility of not requiring to buy a new box while upgrading to a newer version."

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe cons

"The tool's pricing is high."

"The licensing model needs to be revisited. It needs to be simplified."

"Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is not stable. If I have sold fifty boxes, about fifty percent of them experienced failure."

"Lenovo could have a wider variety of storage solutions in the NAS space."

"The Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series was very hard to configure. Installation of the product was very hard. These are its areas for improvement."

"The solution needs a simpler licensing theme around the DM series. The problem is if you only need one of the features, you still have to buy the whole thing. The licensing needs to be more granular or flexible so you have the option to only license FlexCone or Inline Compression features."

"This is an expensive solution."

"The solution should change the licensing model and allow customers to choose features based on their requirements."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM 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."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

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

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

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

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Compared to other solutions, the cost of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is reasonable, with a one-time payment of around $70,000. However, additional support is available for $25,000 for three years. The overall maintenance cost is steep."

"Compared to its competitors, IBM's offering is the most cost-effective."

"There are pricing options from the mid-rand to the high-range, of which the suitability depends upon the requirements."

"The solution is priced well."

"Price-wise, the solution offers excellent pricing to its users. In short, the prices offered by the solution are competitive compared to similar solutions."

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing an eight."

"It's a lot less costly than cloud storage. People get surprised by the cost of cloud storage, which is extremely expensive and four or five times the cost of storage on-premises. People don't realize what they're spending on storage until they start getting bills from Amazon, Microsoft, and others. This is a good way to reduce your cloud storage expenses."

"The price of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMele can be considered affordable when taking into account the operating system that is required for it to function properly. This operating system, which is licensed by IBM, may carry a higher cost, but it is worth the investment for larger corporate entities, such as insurance companies, Fortune Five companies, and banks, who make up a significant portion of their target market. The FlashSystems are designed for larger corporations and multinational enterprises, and may not be the most cost-effective solution for smaller businesses."

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The solution's pricing is similar to Dell and HPE."

"Lenovo offers two software tiers for the DM Series: basic and premium. If you need more features like the MetroCluster, you must buy the premium version. You can stick to the basic software if you don't need MetroCluster or features like asynchronous replication. That makes DM Series a little cheaper."

"The solution is highly-priced."

"The price of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is good."

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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

21%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Comms Service Provider

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.

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.

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 ...

What do you like most about IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?

The storage serves the virtual environment. Most of our applications run in the virtual environment, and it serves ne...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?

The tool is expensive, though I do not know the specific licensing costs.

What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?

The solution's compression needs to be improved, as it's not the best. Furthermore, support from the partner could al...

What do you like most about Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?

The product’s quality of service guarantees the performance of each workload.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?

There are extra expenses beyond the standard licensing fee for features such as replication and deduplication, which ...

What needs improvement with Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?

The deployment process of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is very complicated compared to previous GUI systems. Many cus...

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Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

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Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 36% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 31% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 18% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

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Compared 39% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 12% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 12% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Download IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe product report

All-Flash Storage

Download Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series product report

Also Known As

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

IBM FlashSystem 9100, FlashSystem 9100

ThinkSystem DM Series

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

IBM FlashSystem 9100 combines the performance of flash and Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) end-to-end with the reliability and innovation of IBM FlashCore technology and the rich features of IBM Spectrum Virtualize - all in a powerful 2U enterprise-class storage system. Providing intensive data driven multicloud storage capacity, FlashSystem 9100 is deeply integrated with the software defined capabilities of IBM Spectrum Storage allowing you to easily add in the multicloud solutions that best support your business.

IBM

To meet enterprise storage requirements, ThinkSystem All-Flash DM Series systems provide high performance, superior flexibility, and best-in-class data management. DM Series runs on ONTAP data management software, which gives customers unified storage across block-and-file workloads. It accelerates your business while improving the efficiency, flexibility, and reliability of your IT operations.

Lenovo

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series