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Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
219
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (22nd)
NetApp FAS Series
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (4th), NAS (3rd), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
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…
Srikanth Purushothaman - PeerSpot reviewer
DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems
Has supported long-term data protection and backup while requiring better part availability and pricing options
For monitoring purposes, we normally use flash access storage exclusively. We utilize a hybrid system because we need performance, combining NL-SAS for the volume and SAS flash to use as a fast cache system that provides more IOPS. We normally implement RAID 10, which we prefer over RAID 6's n plus 2 combinations. We utilize it for data redundancy, even with write intensity on. Regarding the unified storage architecture for NetApp FAS Series, we normally opt for exclusivity unless budget constraints exist. Our IOPS are very high, reaching somewhere about 50k to 150k or 1.150k. The high performance ensures minimal latency. An advantage we've seen with NetApp FAS Series is that snapshots provide very rapid backup and fast recovery. We basically use snapshots for data protection as first-level protection, with deduplication between the two storages serving as second-level protection.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The first set up we had was really straight forward and simple."
"Data deduplication features make it easier to manage storage and forecast growth."
"The sales and executive support have been outstanding compared to the rest of the market... My upgrade paths have been simple on the Pure... It's a lot simpler to implement and a lot simpler to manage."
"It simplifies building out the storage."
"Biggest lesson learned: Why didn't I switch sooner?"
"It has improved my organization because now have lower latency, we get fewer complaints from customers, and we see a constant response time."
"The administration is very easy and quite minimal, the performance is very good, the installation is pretty straightforward, and technical support is good."
"We were previously on legacy storage systems, and after moving to Pure Storage, our stability and performance both drastically improved."
"The solution is very easy to troubleshoot, it doesn't take long to deploy, normally comes with a three-year warranty, and has the most features if you compare it to other models."
"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"
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"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."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is highly reliable, especially for block-level storage. It is stable, with minimal downtime and no issues beyond user errors."
"We have had a very good experience with customer service and support, as they answer questions very fast and resolve our issues."
"The solution is very easy to troubleshoot. It's one of the most valuable features. It also doesn't take long to deploy and normally it comes with a three-year warranty."
"The solution is highly stable, and NetApp FAS Series is stable in production storage and for the high-density volume services."
"Snap mirror as it gives us a way to snap to our two disaster recovery sites to instantaneously bring up VMs Dedupe helps us to save a lot on OS files for VMs"
"It has a very good implementation of the Active Directory services, so implementation into a Windows network is easy."
"They are very satisfied with NetApp and continue to use NetApp and upgrade to new solutions."
"Clone – we updated to Dynamix AX 2012, and not a week has gone by that we haven’t fired up a clone to test a user, code, etc."
"You really can't go wrong with NetApp products, They perform well, are rock solid, offer good space saving technologies, and the support is above par."
"It changed the way we do Disaster Recovery (DR) around NetApp replication."
"Flash cache is a great product."
 

Cons

"Some services could be inserted directly into the SAN, so Pure Storage could complete with the HyperFlex."
"The GUI is simplistic and basic. I feel like it's explanatory, but not enough, it needs a little more to it."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve some aspects. There are certain features that are good and there are some features that I see some issues with at the technical level."
"It took us a year to get it to stabilize and to get the best out of Pure."
"I would love for them to have a hyper-converged solution."
"We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform."
"The only time that we had problems with it was that there was a bug in the VVol implementation but, outside of that, it has been flawless."
"The price could be better."
"While it is a reliable product, it could be improved. It would be useful to have structured solutions replicated to other sites."
"The type of connection that is used in Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series should be improved."
"There could be a snapshot feature in the solution."
"Improvements can be made to the product's performance."
"In the next release, I would like to see support for Hyper-converged infrastructure."
"ThinkSystem could be better integrated with backup software like Commvault, Veritas, or Symantec."
"It would be useful to have structured solutions replicated to other sites."
"It is really entry-level. In the next release, I would like to see more functionality."
"The adoption of flash by NetApp has also been lagging behind the trendsetters, like TMS, Nimble, and others."
"When getting new hardware, always tell the account manager that you are also considering other brands. They will be forced to adjust the price lower."
"A big problem with physical appliances is that updating them can be a bit burdensome."
"We no longer have OEM support in South Africa which is not helpful, it can be difficult. They should add an office back to the country because it was better."
"The only improvement to this solution that I can propose is for NetApp to make the price more attractive."
"The performance needs to be improved."
"There is no NetApp infrastructure set up here in Greece."
"It's hard to find in-person training that fits our schedule in our area. They offer a lot of online training, but we need somewhere to go because we can't really get away from the office."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The best features come included without any additional cost."
"The licensing is $100,000."
"The pricing is very attractive and it delivers performance for the money."
"It is cost-effective because after buying a subscription, they provide a service to upgrade hardware for free. They are providing so many features. When you consider the features provided, it is cost-effective."
"The price of the solution is not expensive."
"Pricing is moderate. It is neither cheap nor expensive."
"We have seen a reduction in the TCO, because Pure Storage is partnering with Belfrics. This partnership reduces our latency and space."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"For an all-flash setup, the cost is around $20,000 for a decent configuration."
"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."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is fair and low compared to other products in this category."
"All of the features are bundled together, and you can renew the bundle with all of the features included."
"The best thing about this solution is its price, which reduces our costs."
"The pricing for this solution is good compared to HP or Dell EMC."
"We have a five-year contract for providing support."
"We purchased it for four years, and it wasn't expensive. It was reasonable. Every company has a different agreement with NetApp. We got everything we wanted with all the bells and whistles and all the features and functionalities."
"It’s difficult for us to get money, so make sure you get everything in order, because there’s no going back and saying “oh, I missed this or that”, so make sure you plan well and well in advance."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive. We pay a one-time purchase price."
"The price it not low, but comparing features to other vendors, the price can be balanced."
"The scalability is pretty good, but it's too expensive."
"it’s not an inexpensive solution and it may not be for the cost-sensitive customer."
"Low-priced product, but pricing could still be made more attractive."
"NetApp FAS Series is a reasonably high-priced solution, partially because we select the configuration that duplicates the entire system."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise156
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
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...
Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?
Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?
I do not handle the pricing part of NetApp FAS Series since it is managed by the sales team.
What needs improvement with NetApp FAS Series?
There is room for improvement when it comes to response time and first-level support quality. If a new feature needs ...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
ThinkSystem DE Series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College
Find out what your peers are saying about Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.