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Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs NetApp AFF 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 X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
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
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
314
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray X NVMe is 2.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is 1.7%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 8.6%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp AFF8.6%
Everpure FlashArray X NVMe2.0%
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series1.7%
Other87.7%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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…
KennethEtsula - PeerSpot reviewer
Presales Manager at Spartec
Offers seamless installation and efficient data handling with robust support
NetApp AFF provides an all-flash storage solution for unified SAN solutions, supporting both SAN and NAS functionalities. Data reduction capabilities such as deduplication, compression, and compaction are standard features included with the license in NetApp AFF. With the storage efficiency from a NetApp AFF installation, users can manage substantial data running on all-flash. The features such as compaction and compression provide storage efficiency guarantees in an all-flash environment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has good, reliable, and fast storage."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."
"Being able to have broken files on-site on the same appliance is quite useful."
"The administration and the stability are very good."
"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."
"Using this solution has benefitted us operationally by making us more efficient."
"This solution is good for virtualization and meets the need for CPU and RAM requirements."
"ThinkSystem is a good offer and can work out well if you can work with it to fit the use cases that you have."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is simple to use"
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is highly reliable, especially for block-level storage. It is stable, with minimal downtime and no issues beyond user errors."
"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."
"ThinkSystem's storage performs well, and the price per gigabyte is good, especially on SSD solutions. It's also easy to use."
"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, and it's also easy to use."
"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression, so we get more out of our storage."
"This solution helps accelerate demanding enterprise applications. VMware workloads, the database, and Oracle Solaris are hosted on AFF, which means that our primary priority workloads are on AFF and that the secondary ones are on FAS. That includes the SAN national cloud."
"AFF works well for VMware storage."
"Before this solution, we had a lot of performance issues, and with this tool, we were able to nail them down to at least 20-30% performance gain."
"NetApp AFF handles tier-one workloads, including home drives, departmental shares, group shares, and application shares."
"We tested it; it was a lot faster, and we expect a significant workload increase from our previous-generation platforms."
"Our organization has improved because this solution provides a Highly Available storage system with DR configurations, deployed across two data centers."
"AFF has opened our eyes in a different light of how storage value works. In the past, we looked at it more as just a container where we could just dump our customer dBms and let the customers use it in terms of efficiency. Today, to be able to replicate that data to a different location, use that data to recover your environment or be able to have the flexibility with the solution and data. These are things which piqued our interest. It's something that we're willing to provide as a solution to our customers."
 

Cons

"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."
"It is on the expensive side."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."
"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."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"The type of connection that is used in Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series should be improved."
"Scalability on rack-mount servers is not as good as with Blade servers."
"It is really entry-level. In the next release, I would like to see more functionality."
"It would be useful to have structured solutions replicated to other sites."
"The product could support advanced software integrations."
"Usually, when a part fails, we have to replace it and it takes a while."
"Improvements can be made to the product's performance."
"While it is a reliable product, it could be improved. It would be useful to have structured solutions replicated to other sites."
"AFF could introduce different subscriptions on the platform."
"To be more competitive in the industry, they can develop deduplication, compression, and smarter features in the same array instead of all-flash."
"Cleaning up false positives on alerts. We get a lot of those."
"NetApp is a little more on the expensive side, so it'd just have to fit whatever that they're trying to do, whatever their company is."
"There were some unfortunate growing pains initially with the A800. Our problem was related to compatibility issues with the active optical transceivers, and it caused an outage within our data center."
"That's what we run into a lot. Our datacenters have a need for more flexible cabling and NetApp has very strict guidelines on what kind of cables you use."
"There are two areas that I think NetApp needs to improve upon, pricing structure and support."
"NetApp AFF could improve SAN storage because it feels as if it was not put together at the beginning, it functions as an afterthought. Additionally, the cloud features could be more mature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"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."
"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 have a five-year contract for providing support."
"The best thing about this solution is its price, which reduces our costs."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is fair and low compared to other products in this category."
"For an all-flash setup, the cost is around $20,000 for a decent configuration."
"The pricing for this solution is good compared to HP or Dell EMC."
"All of the features are bundled together, and you can renew the bundle with all of the features included."
"The solution's price could be better."
"NetApps offers a lot of different options. Just take your time and work with the consulting teams. Lay out what your needs are to ensure you are purchasing what will help you be successful."
"The price to performance ratio with NetApp is unmatched by any other vendor right now."
"The pricing is competitive when we compare it to other products."
"I am comfortable with the pricing, which is fair compared to others."
"All features are included in the license, whereas with an EMC solution, you have to pay separately for extra terabytes."
"NetApp AFF's pricing is competitive. It is not expensive or cheap. The tool's pricing is based on configurations and can cost around 150-160 dollars for 70 TB of storage."
"NetApp is getting too expensive."
"I think the pricing and licensing are a little high, but compared to those of other storage vendors, it's within reason. After the three-year prepay, the extended warranty is a little expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user186357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect with 51-200 employees
Jan 28, 2015
NetApp vs. XtremIO
Is there another storage platform as feature rich as NetApp FAS? I think it is fair to say that NetApp FAS running Clustered Data ONTAP is a very feature rich platform – the move to the clustered version of ONTAP has brought many next-generation features including Scale-out and Non-disruptive…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise242
 

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?
The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...
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 ...
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...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
Well, Is one thing NetApp Storage has vs other brand is the mix of protocol CIFS with NFS booth working together in t...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended c...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matt...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X, Pure FlashArray X NVMe
ThinkSystem DE Series
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Information Not Available
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,510 professionals have used our research since 2012.