IBM FlashSystem vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series comparison

IBM and Lenovo are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.5, while Lenovo is ranked #25 with an average rating of 8.7. IBM holds a 6.7% mindshare in AFS, compared to Lenovo’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 60% of Lenovo users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

IBM FlashSystem and Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series are leading storage solutions with distinct strengths. IBM FlashSystem has a slight edge in pricing and support, while Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series offers superior features, making it a worthy investment.

Features: IBM FlashSystem users value its integrated data protection, high performance, and scalability. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series users appreciate its comprehensive data management, ease of integration with cloud services, and efficient storage solutions.

Room for Improvement: IBM FlashSystem users note the need for more intuitive management tools, better documentation, and improved usability. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series users suggest improvements in technical support response times, software reliability, and further optimizations for stability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM FlashSystem is praised for its straightforward deployment process and reliable customer service. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series receives positive feedback for its deployment process but has mixed reviews regarding customer service response times.

Pricing and ROI: IBM FlashSystem is favored for its competitive setup costs and strong ROI, delivering excellent performance at a manageable price point. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is seen as expensive initially, but users recognize the return on investment through its advanced features and robust performance.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM FlashSystem vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

April 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 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 is 6.7%, down from 6.8% 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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Raanan Sitton

Vice President Sales at BELOCAL LTD

Offers cost-effective storage for small companies with budget constraints

IBM FlashSystem 5300 is offered at a very low cost in Israel, which is advantageous for small companies. However, other features like deduplication and compression do not perform effectively. The price sensitivity makes it a viable option for clients with budgetary constraints, as it allows us to secure deals based on the cost rather than advanced performance.

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

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"IBM FlashSystem is flexible, quick, and has a solid design."

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

"The valuable features of IBM FlashSystem include flash copy mapping, which is a procedure to collect instant point-in-time data for testing real data."

"IBM's technical support do excellent work."

"IBM FlashSystem is a stable solution."

"They have a virtualization feature and, even if you do not want to buy that feature, you can have it as a trial for two to three months. If you have another brand of storage from another company, you can use this tool to transfer all your data from the old system to the new Storwize system, which really shortens the migration time."

"I like most of the features. Its speed, performance, and availability are valuable. We are implementing the data reduction technology the most."

"The speed, performance, and stability are the best features of IBM FlashSystem."

More IBM FlashSystem pros

"The servers are fast and affordable."

"We are satisfied with the stability."

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

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

"Scalable and stable storage array."

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

"The solution offers very good reliable systems and storage for our clients."

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

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series pros

Cons

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

"The software layer has to improve."

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

"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."

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

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The pricing needs to be more competitive."

"I know they have a flashcopy manager, but it is extra software, an additional license, and some customers don't like to add addition costs to their infrastructure. If IBM could create, or include snapshot management within the GUI, that would really be helpful."

"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."

"The design is a little old-fashioned and could be updated. The rack is very primitive and designed in an older style."

"The solution is quite expensive. That's one of the downsides to using it."

"The solution is not easy to implement. It takes a lot of time to study the product and it's a little complicated in general."

"Additional licenses might be added for the fundamental licenses, such as those for copying and flash copies."

"The ease of installation should be improved. We had issues with the configuration model."

More IBM FlashSystem cons

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

"Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series could improve by having a snapshot feature. Additionally, there can be other features added to help restore the data faster."

"Many people do not realize that Lenovo has a storage solution, so better marketing from the vendor is needed."

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

"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."

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

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"I price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable and competitive."

"They've been much more aggressive in the last five, six years than they were before that."

"The cost of the IBM FlashSystem is lower than the HPE solution."

"We have no issues with the price as it is very competitive."

"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."

"I would rate the pricing of this solution a four out of five."

"The price of IBM FlashSystem is a little high because you pay a premium because the solution is from IBM. We had paid for the SLA prior to using the solution."

"There are no licensing fees, it is a one-time purchase of the IBM FlashSystem."

More IBM FlashSystem pricing and cost advice

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

"The solution is highly-priced."

"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."

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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

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

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.

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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.

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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 ...

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What do you like most about IBM FlashSystem?

It is simple to make an update.

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

Many factors affect purchasing directly from IBM, often involving a multi-step process. Customers, especially in bank...

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What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem?

The GUI needs some improvement. An additional function that could be helpful is reducing the time it takes to delete ...

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What do you like most about Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?

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

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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 ...

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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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Comparisons

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Compared 32% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

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Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 24% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 6% of the time

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NetApp AFF vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

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

NetApp NVMe AFF A800 vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 2% of the time

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

March 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem

April 2025

Download IBM FlashSystem product report

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

April 2025

Download Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series product report

Also Known As

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

IBM Storwize

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 products are enterprise computer data storage systems that store data on flash memory chips. Unlike storage systems that use standard solid-state drives, IBM FlashSystem products incorporate custom hardware based on technology from the 2012 acquisition of Texas Memory Systems. This hardware provides performance, reliability, and efficiency benefits versus competitive offerings.

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

Celero, Friedhelm Loh Group, Clarks, Mingkang Natregro Health Food Group, Sofia, Etisalat Fights Fraud, UF Health Shands Hospital, Generali, Elecon Engineering Company Limited, Ventiv , Technology, CPFL Energia, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., SciQuest, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, Paddy Power, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Interconnect Services, Severstal IP-Only AB, PVU Group GmbH

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Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

April 2025

Free Report: IBM FlashSystem vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM FlashSystem vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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