IBM FlashSystem vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series comparison

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

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"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."

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"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."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

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

"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 feature I find most valuable, is the deduplication, because the nature of the data that we are using in our current environment, has a lot of replicated data."

"The initial setup is straightforward and can be done in an hour and a half by one person."

"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem are performance and security."

"The price-performance ratio is most valuable."

"The most valuable feature is reliability."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is SCM (Storage Class Memory), which has the lowest latency value in the storage industry."

"This solution is really user friendly. It also offers good performance and is highly reliable."

"The initial setup was really straightforward. It was not complex. Deployment took one month, due to the data migration duration."

"The most valuable feature of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is its ability to store data well."

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

"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."

"We are satisfied with the stability."

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

"Ability to cluster two storages together with HA availability."

"The servers are fast and affordable."

"Last year, I did a DM Series installation with my colleague, and this installation was effortless because we had Lenovo support on the phone, so it was easy to get help if we had any problems."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"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."

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

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

"It is on the expensive side."

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

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

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

"This solution needs a management console where we are alerted to issues and can report them, or escalate them through email or another method."

"I would like to have a larger disk. Right now, you can get 57 terabytes in a shelf. Once they get the larger disk and you get larger capacities, it'll be even better."

"I have looked at a few pages of a report I download and I saw a graph there regarding software-defined vendors. IBM is not in a good position on this graph. I know that they are working very hard on this, to make it much better and to get to a level where it's not only hardware but also software to provide a complete solution."

"One area for improvement is in the GUI, where host clusters are not properly dealt with. With Hypervisor host clusters, all hosts must see the same volumes in the same order. Using the concept of a “host-group” has been around (even with IBM) for many years, so why not with the V7000?"

"GUI interface should be enhanced more as there is some issues in copy services."

"The solution is not easy to use and could improve."

"Events/log analysis tools."

"They can include Amazon file system S3 protocol in the upcoming releases. It is a cloud file system. IBM FlashSystem doesn't have this feature in the box for high-end or mid-range. We have got requests for this from customers because we need to use S3 for EDI application storage. At the beginning of every year, IBM releases firmware. When I find any bugs in the firmware during the year, I am unable to find any information from IBM regarding the bug. I need to open a ticket, and the IBM engineering team makes a patch only for me. This patch is not public. By creating a customized patch for a client, they don't really solve the issue for everyone. If multiple users have the same bug, IBM should upload the patch on the official website so that we can download it. IBM FlashSystem has a monitoring tool in the box, but it is not advanced. I need a more advanced tool for more advanced equations and monitoring. All top three storage vendors, that is, EMC, IBM, and Pure Storage, don't have a powerful monitoring tool. To monitor our box to show the statistics for I/Os and latency, I need to pay for extra software. The built-in monitoring storage is not mature enough to handle all requests and generate all reports that I need. They can include the functionality to stretch a cluster natively without using any additional boxes. In addition, there are some features that EMC has integrated with the box. These features are not available in IBM FlashSystem."

"This is an expensive solution."

"I would rate the support of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series a four out of five."

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

"I would like Lenovo to add a feature like IBM Easy Tier to DM Series. This is a crucial feature for the customers."

"There might be improvements needed in drive throughput as disk speed has been a limitation on Windows servers."

"It takes a very long time to enter the management console, as well as to restart the system, and these are things that should be improved."

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

"The tool's pricing is high."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

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

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

"The pricing may be a bit higher than other brands. If you compare the IBM FlashSystems in midrange with Dell EMC in midrange, IBM costs a bit more, but I prefer IBM because it has more specs that I can benefit from."

"The price depends of the technology that our customers need. The price can come at a lower cost but this may increase as storage is added."

"I'd rate the basic licensing and the Virtualize software a ten out of ten, and the extra Spectrum and other an eight out of ten."

"This solution is expensive compared to other solutions."

"Regarding licensing make sure you add at least three years software maintenance from IBM at the beginning, because you will not be able to download firmware updates or any fixes/patches without this."

"The cost is pretty high in terms of licensing. We pay at least $100,000 USD in licensing fees for the storage."

"You purchase it as a bundle and the price is comparable."

"The total storage capacity vs price is still quite high for the IBM Flash Array."

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

"The solution is highly-priced."

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