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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
224
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

"I used to have to manually sync storage from server to server, for multiple clusters and database storage for disaster recovery but now, that's all automated."
"Data deduplication features make it easier to manage storage and forecast growth."
"The connections are a lot faster than what we had in the past. One InfiniBand does what we did on all of our Fibre Channels."
"It's simple, powerful, and ready to use."
"The most valuable features are extremely low latency, high IOPS with VMware, inline deduplication and compression."
"The ease of management is one of the most valuable features of this solution. I would have also said that it's pretty fast but now our SQL servers are starting to beat it up pretty bad."
"On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the most comfortable pricing, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"This improves our organization because we can just set it up and we forget about it, everything works, and we do not need to worry about storage or bandwidth issues."
"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."
"We have been working with the solution for around a year and so far it has shown itself to be stable."
"The most valuable features of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series are the dual controllers, available installation documentation, and the option of multiple host bus adapter interfaces."
"The solution is very easy to set up."
"This solution is good for virtualization and meets the need for CPU and RAM requirements."
"Fewer features is not necessarily a negative as it leads to simpler operation and lower price."
"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."
"I would rate the stability of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series as a ten."
"NetApp is also a very stable company that offers various storage options at the highest level of build and reliability."
"Data consolidation and visualization."
"Adaptive balancing is a valuable feature."
"The SnapMirror is a good tool because, as long as you're going NetApp to NetApp, it's ultimately the fastest way to move data. We replicate everything to another site for disaster recovery."
"The solution is stable."
"It is good to have a unified storage where you can have block and file level protocols."
"This solution provides us with easy management and great vendor support."
"It just works, and when some drives go into failure status, it’s just a prediction of drive failure, letting us know when to get the drives replaced."
 

Cons

"There are a lot of things to improve."
"The technical support is okay, but could be improved."
"I would like to see more detailed reporting on the data. However, it would be nice to know what are the exact VMs usage after deduplication and/or what that VMs actual latency and bandwidth is, outside of VMware."
"Pure Storage takes a hit in the minds and opinions of some of the customers because they cannot customize things as much as compared to a legacy storage provider's appliance such as NetApp, Dell EMC, or even HPE."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve by being more secure."
"I think the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray is the major issue because all the great things come with the price, and a lot of customers simply are not willing to accept it."
"Pure Storage can improve FlashArray by providing more logging visibility to customers. Currently, there is no log visibility."
"There's always an opportunity for new feature functionality."
"Improvements can be made to the product's performance."
"In the next release, I would like to see more functionality. But, again, it is an entry-level product."
"It is really entry-level. In the next release, I would like to see more functionality."
"The features are limited."
"There could be a snapshot feature in the solution."
"The type of connection that is used in Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series should be improved."
"The difficult part comes when dealing with the host. You have to enable multi-pathing and other aspects that are needed for proper configuration. I don't know if there is room for a more hyper-conversion structure to work with, but this would be easier."
"Its performance could be faster."
"I have a very small feature request: more automation of the expanding aggregates and discs."
"The high cost of the product is an area of concern, so from an improvement perspective, the tool needs to be made cheaper."
"Dedicated storage efficiency accelerators could improve the overall performance of the system."
"NetApp FAS Series could improve by being more secure."
"The user interface could be improved."
"There is room for improvement in deployment and configuration processes."
"The solution can improve on the replication features."
"Interfacing with the cloud environment could be better. I want to be able to move some cloud volume and integrate it seamlessly with my home on-premise storage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm good with the licensing. Of course, pricing can always be less... It's actually not a bad pricing model, considering I don't have to rip-and-replace."
"The price-to-performance is good. I looked at Pure about three to four years back, but the price-to-performance wasn't right for us. Now, it's right."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership."
"The best features come included without any additional cost."
"It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
"Pure came in at a better price point than EMC and performed better than Compellent."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could always improve. They are still more expensive than some alternative offerings. Cost is always a concern and when there is a battle they tend to be more expensive."
"We have a five-year contract for providing support."
"The pricing for this solution is good compared to HP or Dell EMC."
"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."
"The pricing is fair and low compared to other products in this category."
"The best thing about this solution is its price, which reduces our costs."
"It is an expensive solution."
"All of the features are bundled together, and you can renew the bundle with all of the features included."
"The product is on the expensive side."
"it’s not an inexpensive solution and it may not be for the cost-sensitive customer."
"It is expensive."
"The price, compared to competitors, is quite high."
"NetApp FAS Series' pricing is competitive."
"I don't recall the price, but in general, pricing can always be better."
"Cost effective storage for all performance levels (including all-flash)."
"The NetApp FAS series price is very competitive compared to other solutions on the market it is a good choice."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction 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 Business69
Midsize Enterprise37
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.
895,891 professionals have used our research since 2012.