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Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs Pure Storage FlashArray 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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (7th)
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
25th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pure Storage FlashArray
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
197
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is 2.7%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashArray is 7.0%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Mark Richmond - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Nabeel Sayegh - PeerSpot reviewer
Supercharges enterprise storage by way of highly optimized hardware, comprehensive data management and a feature rich interface.
During their early years, I was a member of Pure's Customer Advisory Board. In addition, when we first adopted Pure, they did not have replication GA yet. We got into their beta testing program and help them work out certain issues with that technology. One weakness I can say the array has, still to this day, is limited control on scheduling snapshots. Depending on the type of replication schedule you are building, you may or may not have control on specifying the start time of a given replication schedule. This is not a very big problem in the grand scheme of things, but something nonetheless that has bothered me about the scheduler in general. Another area for improvement would be automatic host alias creation. Other platforms such as EMC Unity/PowerStore will automatically detect the host name, create a alias for it and associate the logged in HBA's to it. Pure does not do this for you and as a result, requires manual configuration. This can be very time consuming especially when you are deploying a large number of new servers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"I appreciate the performance."
"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"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."
"The value we derive from using it is greater than other alternatives like HPE and Dell."
"The servers are fast and affordable."
"Scalable and stable storage array."
"We are satisfied with the stability."
"The price of this solution is good."
"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 solution offers very good reliable systems and storage for our clients."
"The predictive performance analytics are good."
"At this point, I don't know anything that they could provide in a better way."
"Pure Storage FlashArray simplifies maintenance and management with its intuitive GUI, making storage allocation and other processes easy to understand, even for beginners."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is its high stability level."
"We also use VMware integrations developed by Pure, their plugins in our vCenter environment. They help by allowing our non-technical operations teams to deploy new data stores and resize data stores without me having to involve myself all the time to do those simple tasks."
"FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."
"We also like the compactness, the small footprint. It takes up very little space in a data center and uses little power."
"This is the best all-flash storage array on the market."
 

Cons

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"It is on the expensive side."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"There might be improvements needed in drive throughput as disk speed has been a limitation on Windows servers."
"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."
"The licensing model needs to be revisited. It needs to be simplified."
"The solution should change the licensing model and allow customers to choose features based on their requirements."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series could improve by having a snapshot feature. Additionally, there can be other features added to help restore the data faster."
"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."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"The problem is that we can only make a few groups, around five or six groups. I like groups and we need a lot of them. We had to put all the information in only a few groups and cannot make a more detailed separation of them."
"If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it."
"Going forward, don't complicate things for the customers."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release."
"It is a bit expensive."
"Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"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."
"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."
"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 solution is highly-priced."
"The price of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is good."
"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."
"The price is very reasonable when compared to other solutions."
"Our costs are around $100,000."
"Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"It could always be lower, but it's okay."
"We have seen a reduction in the TCO, because Pure Storage is partnering with Belfrics. This partnership reduces our latency and space."
"Pure came in at a better price point than EMC and performed better than Compellent."
"I don't know the exact cost but it's around $1,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
34%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

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.
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive.
What do you like most about Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?
The product’s quality of service guarantees the performance of each workload.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?
The pricing is cost-effective and less expensive compared to HP servers.
What needs improvement with Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?
There might be improvements needed in drive throughput as disk speed has been a limitation on Windows servers. Althou...
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 do you like most about Pure Storage FlashArray?
We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
Pure Storage FlashArray is a premium product, but the introduction of the C-series has been a strategic move to make ...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
ThinkSystem DM Series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Information Not Available
Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Find out what your peers are saying about Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. Pure Storage FlashArray and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.