Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

Lenovo and Pure Storage are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Lenovo is ranked #25 with an average rating of 8.0, while Pure Storage is ranked #17 with an average rating of 9.0. Lenovo holds a 2.7% mindshare in AFS, compared to Pure Storage’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 60% of Lenovo users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Pure Storage users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Pure Storage FlashBlade and Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series are top contenders in the data storage market. Pure Storage FlashBlade has an edge in deployment simplicity, while Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series stands out for its feature richness, making it worth the investment despite higher setup costs.

Features: Pure Storage FlashBlade features high performance, scalability, and simplified management. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series offers extensive data management capabilities, versatility, and unmatched backup solutions.

Room for Improvement: Pure Storage FlashBlade needs better integration capabilities, enhanced advanced analytics, and optimized disaster recovery options. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series should improve administrative complexity, cost structure, and user interface simplification.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Pure Storage FlashBlade is known for straightforward deployment and reliable customer support. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series involves a more complex setup with varied satisfaction in customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Pure Storage FlashBlade offers favorable setup costs and strong ROI. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, although more expensive, delivers high value with comprehensive features and satisfactory ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

January 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 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 FlashBlade is 2.2%, up from 2.0% 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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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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Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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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 Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."

"The latency is good."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."

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

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The price of this solution is good."

"It has been a perfect fit for the workload that our customer is doing."

"Scalable and stable storage array."

"We are satisfied with the stability."

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

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

"The servers are fast and affordable."

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

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series pros

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

Cons

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

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

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

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

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

"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."

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

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

"The licensing model needs to be revisited. It needs to be simplified."

"I would like Lenovo to add a feature like IBM Easy Tier to DM Series. This is a crucial feature for the customers."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series cons

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"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."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The solution is highly-priced."

"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 of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is good."

"The solution's pricing is similar to Dell and HPE."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

38%

Computer Software Company

10%

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive.

See all answers

What do you like most about Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?

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

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 38% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

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NetApp AFF vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 38% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 12% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 11% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 10% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 2% of the time

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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 13% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 12% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

December 2024

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

January 2025

Download Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series product report

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

December 2024

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Also Known As

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

ThinkSystem DM Series

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Pure Storage

Lenovo

Pure Storage

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.

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.

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Buyer's Guide

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

January 2025

Free Report: Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

Find out what your peers are saying about Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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