Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers Reviews

We use this solution for virtualization purposes. We are running a huge amount of different VM's on them.

The usage of the server itself, the hardware specs of the specific models is more than enough for the project or projects' needs. The controllers which were used, or the hardware (HDDs or solid drives from Lenovo, which are used in this hardware) are more than enough for our project needs. Overall, the general configuration of the server, the system, truly covers the project needs.

Most of our projects come with a pretty heavy workload. The server itself covers all of the bases — my clients are really happy with it.

For example, one of the projects is from a medical laboratory company that provides services for medical institutions. There are a lot of workload calculations and Rack Servers covers the mix.

HP and Dell servers have multi-house technology that is really easy to use. We don't experience any problems with logging or gathering hardware information. The rest of the technical and software stuff is absolutely the same no matter the manufacturer. So, from a technical perspective, it is the same.

The general purpose of this hardware is the same, the functionality is the same, it just goes by a different name. As I mentioned, the stability of the server itself is a benefit for me; it's more reliable now.

From my perspective, from my case usage, I wouldn't say that I have seen a lot of space for a general upgrade of the system. The technology is constantly developing. It's just a matter of the client or customer getting the most high-end service for a long period of time — for example, one or two years. In three years, this technology will be old and there will be new technology available. Presently, I wouldn't say that there is space for much improvement on the current servers.

Technology is developing continuously. We are getting new high-end drives and so on. Technology development does not simply stop in its tracks, waiting until you adopt that server right now — in three to five years, it will be obsolete. You will be still able to buy some hardware in order to upgrade it because the platform itself is universal, but it's up to you whether you buy something old or something new and upgrade it.

I have been using this solution for more than six years.

I would say the stability of the system itself would be the biggest advantage. I have worked with other manufacturers — Firmware for example — and they are not so stable.

Your budget determines the scalability. It's absolutely scalable and you can upgrade the platform with the hardware you are planning to use.

I have used their support from time to time, in some cases when I was unable to find immediate information. I don't remember if I contacted them directly or just used their website to gather information. There are a lot of cases where you can just find everything you need on their website.

I would give their technical support a rating of nine.

From an administrative perspective, the initial setup is absolutely straightforward. From a user's perspective, it not so straightforward if you want to add some features. The old servers don't have the stability needed to manage the storage from the remote management tool; it's not really comfortable, but still usable. It's absolutely fine when setting up the server.

The basic setup takes less than one hour. It depends on where the servers are deployed from and how ready the server is. I mostly work remotely, so I am not hands-on with the server. Deployment is just a matter of the network and how it was prepared previously. At minimum, deployment takes one hour.

Whether we use a deployment plan depends on the customer and their needs.

The person who will be deploying the server should get the basic information on the needs of the project first, and compare it to the hardware specifications that this specific hardware or any specific hardware will provide. If there is a level for any upgrade, it's absolutely fine. The person should be looking for a solution that will cover the needs of the project with more than a difference of 100% for the future. The projects will increase the size of it, so the server should cover the current needs of the projects, plus 100%.

Our customers absolutely see a return on their investment with Lenovo Rack Servers.

The price in comparison, for example, to deploying a cloud solution on a cloud platform, is fully coverable in terms of deploying the same solution on personal hardware. So yes, it's coverable.

I don't really remember the prices for the servers but in comparison with the bigger players on the market, their prices are fine with me. They are not ideal because clients will always want a lower price. Regarding the licensing, I don't have any information on that because I wasn't facing any cases where we needed additional licensing on the servers.

The general usage of the hardware itself is a level of education that you get during the process of the initial setup and further maintenance of the servers. That alone is very valuable. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine. I cannot give it a higher rating because the perfect solution does not exist.

Across my company's verticals, we cater to businesses in the BFSI and media industries. We deployed IBM servers under xSeries to serve these industries. We deployed over a thousand servers for rendering purposes at one customer's place. Our servers were sold to banking sites, payment gateway sites, small SME sectors, and large enterprise-sized customers. These servers were utilized for processing, OLTP, and OLAP.

The Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers have incorporated much of the technology from IBM, including several patent innovations. One is Predictive Failure Analysis (PFA), a feature that highly benefits customers, allowing them to determine failing parts and components. Additionally, Lenovo has introduced Lenovo XClarity and XClarity Orchestrator, tools that enable the management of multiple servers on a single console. The solution can be easily deployed and configured, and it can take care of the health of your servers. A feature known as Call Home alerts the service center in case of failing components. One of the main advantages of this tool is its ease of use, as it is a GUI-based tool needing a simple and easy configuration. These features are among the most important advantages of this solution.

To be frank, the technical support from Lenovo's team needs improvement. There seems to be a lack of support, and it is important for Lenovo to address this issue.

I believe that it is important to provide more details about the issue. Sometimes, we have noticed that our workloads are not performing well due to server issues. It would be helpful to have a dashboard to identify these issues and explain why the server is not performing well. This is because the cause of the issue may vary depending on the application and process being used. For instance, customers have complained that after implementing a new server, the workloads are not performing as they did before. A dashboard that can identify these issues and provide relevant information can help address these concerns. In real-time, we should get an application to monitor the CPU, RAM, and hard disk. Though Lenovo offers XClarity software to its users, it just predicts the failures and does analyze the hardware. I believe a dashboard similar to the one in a car is necessary for real-time monitoring, including performance monitoring metrics. It would be helpful if the dashboard could indicate any potential issues in advance, just like how the lights in a car glow to indicate a fault area.

I have been using Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers for two decades. Also, my company has a partnership with Lenovo.

It is a stable solution. As the authorized service providers for Lenovo and IBM, we are responsible for addressing all calls related to breakdowns. However, these days we no longer receive any such calls from customers.

It is a scalable solution.

The time that Lenovo's technical support team takes to provide a resolution to the issues we face needs improvement. In today's world, automated answers have made it possible to receive timely responses even when sending an email. With Lenovo, our major concern is the response time and the time it takes to provide a resolution. Also, there were instances when the technical support team failed to resolve our issues.

The solution's initial setup process was straightforward.

In India, the solution is cheap compared to its competitors.

For those planning to use the solution, I advise them first to check their actual requirements. Then, they should learn from their team which product they are most comfortable with since adaptability is key. Adaptability may vary from person to person and from organization to organization. For example, if your existing team is accustomed to Dell and I introduce Lenovo to them, it may feel like an intrusion. In short, people's adaptability differs. Most system failures are due to humans, as we don't always follow proper procedures and steps to operate the solution. Based on my experience, the system never fails, and humans fail to operate the tool properly. With that being said, I recommend the solution to others. 

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

I like everything about this solution. It is a very good server, with excellent availability. The size of the power is adequate and the low heating is beneficial. 

I would like the solution to be improved by having more advanced utilities. 

I have used the solution for approximately six years. 

The solution is scalable. 

We have had the chance to contact technical support and it was good. 

The initial setup of the solution was straightforward, it was very easy.

The price of the solution is very expensive when compared to other solution like HP or Dell.

I have evaluated similar products to this solution from HP and Dell. 

I rate Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers an eight out of ten. 

I am super happy with the product. The product is very user-friendly. It performs well.

Upgrading firmware is easier in Dell than in Lenovo.

I have been using the solution for eight months.

The tool is stable. Predictive Failure Analysis detects issues beforehand. It’s very interesting.

We might increase the usage of the product in the future. Around 100 people access the infrastructure. Our system administrators manage multiple solutions.

We contact our system integrators if we have any issues.

We were using blade servers along with Lenovo. The blade servers were old, so we chose to work only on Lenovo Rack Servers.

Lenovo is more reliable than Dell.

People from Dell came to us and told us about some features that are a little bit easier in Dell. Overall, I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We're using this product for a document management system. We are using the latest version of this solution.

It's deployed on-prem. Almost all our employees are using servers DMS. It's about 80 people.

It's very power-efficient and allows you to access the rack server directly without accessing the operating system on that server. They use XClarity Controller to access the server and monitor the status of the server.

I have been using this product since 2018.

It's stable. I have a few notification alerts about PCI cards but it's rare.

It's very scalable. If we need to, we can easily scale up this type of server.

Technical support is good. We call them, discuss the problem, and in that short period of time, we find the solution.

It's very easy to set up and energy-efficient. It's very compact and has enough connections on the front and back of the rack. I'm very satisfied with this product.

We have one rack with five rack servers and some data storage, so physical deployment takes one day.

Other solutions are a little bit more expensive than Lenovo. Lenovo has a good price for that purpose. I don't know the exact amount of money, but when I compared it to Dell or HPE, Lenovo was the best when it comes to price and equipment.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10. There's always the possibility of making something better.

It is a large VMware virtualization environment on which our students and researchers are running all the machines.

We appreciate the stability and easy mountings of all the machines. We have some direct connections with IBM, Lenovo, and other companies, and we get close support from them.

It is quite an expensive product. Its price can be improved.

I have been using this solution for a year.

It is very stable.

It is scalable. We have 1,000 users. They are our students and researchers. We plan to keep on using this solution. 

We have some direct channels there. We also have a Lenovo mainframe at our site for demonstration purposes, and we have some direct connection with the engineers.

The initial setup was straightforward. The deployment duration varies because sometimes the students are deploying it, and they take a little longer. Normally, it is quite fast.

I am a part of the consulting team and a lecturer at the University. The implementation is done by some assistants to teach the students. We have four to five full-time people for its deployment and maintenance. 

It is too expensive. Because we are a university and we have to look for our money, many times we buy some refurbished machines or equipment at reasonable prices from IBM or Lenovo. We are a little bit limited in terms of money, and we buy as much as we can. If they were cheaper, we would buy more.

I would recommend this solution to others. I would rate Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers a nine out of ten. It is just the price that lowers it to nine.

We started adding servers to our central offices, and we considered HP devices, but we found Lenovo was a better choice for us. 

It performs really well, and the price is cheaper than other solutions. They are extremely reliable. 

The management troubles us a bit. We also had some issues getting VMware to run on the Lenovo servers. We were told to go to HP but we stuck with Lenovo. 

I would like to see the management port improved. We do use XClarity, which is from Lenovo, but it still needs an upgrade. It is difficult to work with and it would be beneficial for Lenovo to improve this.

The stability is great.

This is a scalable product. When considering discs to servers, it is very reliable.

We have another party that handles our tech support issues.

About eight years ago, IBM was our preferred supplier. They were also the cheapest. We switched because IBM sold their hardware service to Lenovo.

At one point, we also considered Intel servers, but we still stayed with Lenovo.

It was complex to get this started because the Lenovo and VMware are not very compatible. We had to get some updates in order for it to be implemented.

It is the cheapest solution we have seen on the market.

When considering a vendor, I always consider reliability and cost. 

It's a large virtualization environment where our students and our researchers have all the machines running and it's realized with VMware.

We appreciate the stability of all the machines.

The easy mountings are convenient. 

We have some direct connections to IBM and Lenovo, as well as other companies. They offer us very good manufacturer support. Technical support has been very good and we've been satisfied with the level of service we get.

The solution is very simple to install.

There are so many features, it's difficult to even use them all. Therefore, I don't believe there are any features that are lacking.

From our side, our budgets are really not there. The availability of cash is a little bit limited. We buy as much as we can, If it was less expensive, we could buy more.  

I deal with this solution about once a year.

The solution is stable. It's very reliable. There aren't glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution can scale quite easily. If you need to expand it, you can do so rather easily.

We have about 1,000 people on the servers that we have. They are all students and researchers.

We'll continue to use this product going forward.

We've had a good experience with technical support. We have some direct channels there. With Lenovo, we also have a mainframe on our site for demonstration purposes. We are lucky to have a direct connection to the engineers.

The initial setup is not complex. It's very straightforward.

Deployment times vary. If students are doing it, it might take a little bit longer, however, if we handle it ourselves, we can do it relatively quickly.

It's difficult to count how many people we have on deployment and maintenance duties as they're all part-time. We have about four to five full-time equivalents.

I am part of the consulting team. The work is done by some assistants or to teach a student as I'm a lecturer at the University.

The cost is a bit pricey. We'd buy more from them if we could, however, we are on a limited budget.

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with Lenovo.

Normally, we are not using the latest version of the solution due to the fact that they are too expensive. We are a university and we have to look for how much money we use. Therefore, often we end up buying some refurbished machines or some equipment from IBM, from Lenovo, etc., which we get at reasonable prices.

Everything is on-premises and we have our own private cloud with these machines.

I'd recommend the solution to other organizations. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I'd rate it at a nine.