Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series offers simplicity and ease of use, making it ideal for mid to large businesses. It provides virtualization support, reliability, and comes with dual controllers and integrated storage, all at a competitive price point.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series | 1.6% |
| Dell PowerStore | 10.2% |
| NetApp AFF | 7.8% |
| Other | 80.4% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 10 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 3 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 128 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 75 |
| Large Enterprise | 129 |
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series stands out with its focus on cost-effective performance for mid to large enterprises. It supports virtual environments like VMware and widely used applications such as Oracle SQL Server and SAP. The system is designed for quick deployment and easy maintenance with minimal downtime, providing a reliable block-level storage experience. While it offers impressive features, there's a need for improvements in scalability, hyper-converged infrastructure support, structured replication, and to expand connections. Enhancements in backup software integrations and the introduction of a snapshot feature could enrich the user experience.
What are the key features of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series?Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is primarily deployed in industries like manufacturing, small business, and database systems. It supports video surveillance archiving and production storage. On-premises deployments are common for virtual machine storage and infrastructure replacement, with some transitioning to cloud environments like AWS.
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series was previously known as ThinkSystem DE Series.
| Author info | Rating | Review Summary |
|---|---|---|
| System Administrator at PORTGUARDIAN.COM SRL | 4.5 | I use the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series to replace old storage and for customer infrastructure migrations. Its standout quality is performance, although the connection type needs improvement. The switch from Dell was driven by Lenovo’s ROI of thirty thousand euros. |
| IT Consultant at Effegibi | 4.0 | I find the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series to be reliable in performance, though it could benefit from a snapshot feature. Overall, my experience is positive, but the lack of additional features is something that could be improved. |
| IT Departmant - System Administration at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees | 4.5 | I use Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series for VMware production and backup. It's been stable for a year, though I wish it were more scalable and had better VMware integration. Overall, I recommend this on-premises solution, rating it 9/10. |
| Solutions Developer at Next Dimension Inc. | 4.0 | We find the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE series stable and scalable for production VMware, offering good value due to its simplicity and lower price. However, it lacks advanced features like easy tiering, needing more software to compete better. |
| Company Owner at UTCBim Bilgisayar Hizmetleri | 5.0 | I found the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series to be excellent for its storage features in applications, though its performance could be improved for quicker execution. I didn't switch from or consider any other solutions, and I didn't use a cloud provider. |
| Project Analysis, Design & Implementation at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees | 4.0 | I rate the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series 8/10, appreciating its dual controllers, documentation, and high availability. While initial setup is straightforward, host configuration, especially multi-pathing, is the difficult part. |
| IT Consultant at Atena Tecnologia em Informatica LTDA | 4.0 | I use this solution for VMware, finding it affordable, stable, and easy to manage with great support. While scalable, I think performance and snapshot features need improvement. I rate it 8/10. |
| It consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees | 3.5 | I use Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series for archiving and backups. It's an elementary, entry-level solution that integrates well and performs its task acceptably, earning a 7/10 for its straightforward nature. |
| Company Owner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees | 4.5 | I find ThinkSystem offers good performance and price, is easy to use, stable, and scalable. Support is good, but better integration with backup software like Commvault would improve it. I rate it 9/10. |
| Senior IT Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees | 4.5 | I use Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series for VM workloads and block storage. It's simple, stable, cost-effective, and easy to manage with good support. I'd recommend it, rating it 9/10, though replication could be enhanced. |
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 valuable feature, in my opinion, is the performance.
I have been using Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series for more or less eight months.
I would rate the stability of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series as a ten.
Regarding scalability, Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is the highest. I rate it as a nine.
We swapped from Dell to Lenovo. The last time we talked, I mentioned that we work with Lenovo and not with Dell because we dismissed the Dell infrastructure.
The initial setup of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series was very easy, very easy, very easy. It was plug and play.
The return on investment from Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is thirty thousand euros.
The price of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is very good. We chose this type of storage for the performance and the price.
Based on my experience, I would recommend Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series to others because it is the best for price-performance. Overall, I rate Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series a nine.
The solution is reliable in terms of performance.
They should include a snapshot feature for the solution.
We have been using the solution for two to three years.
The solution is stable.
We have 60 solution users in our organization.
The solution's initial setup process is easy. It takes three days to one week to complete.
We take help from consultants to integrate the solution with the production system. Their team consists of four to seven technical and administration executives.
The solution's price could be better.
I recommend the solution to others and rate it an eight out of ten.
We use the DE series, the 2000 and DE4000. It's DE, All-Flash storage.
We use Lenovo with the VMware solution. We have VMware with virtual machines and the production storage is the Lenovo DE4000 Hybrid. The solution for backup is Lenovo Storage 2000.
For the moment, we use the solution in respect of our three hosts, for VMware and for storage.
The VMware should be addressed and the solution should have more storage, although I am not in need of the latter or of any other product at present.
The solution could be more scalable, although it suits our present needs.
We have been using Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series for around one year.
We have been working with the solution for around a year and so far it has shown itself to be stable.
As we employ the VMware for three hosts, we are not able to scale it too much. But, for our present needs it is scalable.
The solution could be more scalable and I believe we could increase certain resources should the need arise.
Our use of the solution is fairly recent and we have not yet had occasion to utilize technical support.
We worked with Dell EMC storage Healthcare for around five years.
We also used Buffalo TeraStation for additional backup. I am referring to PowerVault storage array.
We have the two Lenovo hosts for production, the storage being connected with fiber channels. We also have another host Lenovo with the storage backup.
Installation and deployment lasted around a week-and-a-half.
When it comes to the deployment, there are around seven members who make up the IT team, the data center containing only two.
We have a five-year contract for providing support. I am not aware of other licensing costs and do not believe there are any.
There are 1,000 users in our organization who are making use of the solution.
I would recommend this solution to others.
Based on my experience thus far, I rate Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series as a nine out of ten.
We sell the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE 4000 or 6000 series storage arrays. The clients that we sell the products to are mostly manufacturers and the use case for ThinkSystem is always production for storing and operating their virtual environment, which means the units are almost always used for VMware. It is just typical storage for production and virtual machines.
It does not improve the way we function as we use it with clients. It gives us another product to offer to fill particular client needs.
As far as features go, the product does not really have a lot of them. The products we sell are Lenovo's low to mid-range stuff. They are not really feature-laden products with added value that make them stand out from other solutions. The lack of complexity and the lower price — because of that lack of complexity — may be the most valuable features.
The interface is all good.
You can not buy a lot of options for these devices. There are a lot of things that it does not do. Some things that it does not do that we would like it to do include easy tiering. If you have got spindles and you want to cache a couple of terabytes of storage on SSD, that would be something we would like to see that, currently, it does not have the capacity to do.
The thing it comes down to is that Lenovo needs to add some more of the software features that would allow the ThinkSystem line to compete with other products that we sell. Other than that, it is what it is.
We have had experience with the product for as long as Lenovo has been out with it. I do not know exactly how long that is, but it is maybe seven or eight years.
I think these Lenovo products are very stable. We generally do not have issues with their products going down.
ThinkSystem is scalable. Our clients are small top medium-large businesses and within that range, it works well.
When we had to use them, the technical support was very good. If I had to rate them I would give them an eight-out-of-ten. Maybe they need to work on consistency with response time, but the bigger concern comes down to the actual know-how. A lot of times, we have to defer to IBM for support in order to get an answer.
We previously used a different solution from IBM.
The installation and the initial setup for these is very simple.
The pricing is fine for what the product does.
The advice that I would you give to others looking into implementing this product is that it is a good product if it fits your needs. Products in this category are not all the same and they all have something unique, but ThinkSystem is a good offer and can work out well if you can work with it to fit the use cases that you have.
On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product as probably and eight-out-of-ten overall. I would give it that rating because it is a good product. It is stable. It is well supported. It just lacks some depth in the area of features. That ends up not necessarily being a strike against the product because, price-wise, it is a good value. If you want all the bells and whistles, Lenovo wants you to move up the ladder on something else they have to offer.
The solution provides the best storage features for applications.
The solution's performance could be faster.
We have been using the solution for ten years.
It is a scalable solution. We have five customers using it.
The solution's technical support is good.
The solution's initial setup process is easy and takes two hours to complete. It requires one manager for deployment and maintenance.
The solution is expensive. Our customers purchase a yearly license for it.
I recommend the solution to others and rate it as a ten.
I do the initial configuration of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series and then the customer manages the whole storage solution.
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.
I have been using Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series for approximately two years.
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series has high availability.
I have read and I have seen the expansion modules of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series, but I haven't yet used any of them because there's no need.
I have three or four customers that are using these systems, but I have no personal experience with the solution.
The support from Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is very good. We have good support here in Greece because Lenovo has a presence here.
The initial setup of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series was straightforward and we did not have any problems. The storage of the array takes approximately half an hour to implement.
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.
We do the deployment of the solution in-house, we are the installers and resellers.
For the deployments that I have done, we have not needed more than one engineer to complete the work. However, the amount of people required depends on the environment and other factors.
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.
There are additional licenses if you want some of the extra features, such as Snapshotting. The standard licenses are typically enough for on-premise or cloud deployments. I have not used the data centers that might use the premium licenses.
This solution is similar to other major vendors.
My advice to others is that this is a straightforward, detailed documented, and supported solution.
I rate Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series an eight out of ten.
We use this solution primarily for VMware, where we have three servers and storage of the VMs. The solution is deployed on-premises.
The best thing about this solution is its price, which reduces our costs. Additionally, this solution's ease of configuration and management are valuable features.
Improvements can be made to the product's performance.
We have been using this solution for approximately two years. Currently, we use DE 2000H, specifically series J3026371.
The solution is stable.
The solution is scalable. Approximately 300 people are using it in our organization.
We have had a very good experience with customer service and support. They answer questions very fast and resolve our issues.
The solution is very easy to set up.
The solution license costs us a one-time payment of 10,000.
I rate this solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good, but it could be improved by including features like snapshots to make it more efficient.
We use Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series for video surveillance. The DE, particularly, is for archiving targets, backing up targets, and, to a degree, virtualization.
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 not a mainstream product for us. It is a product that Lenovo obtained through NetApp. NetApp owns Engenio, the whole LSI company. We have been dealing with them for many years. It's a nice product, nothing strange, nothing wow.
The DE is a very elementary array, just an entry-level product.
I have been using Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series since Lenovo has had their relationship with NetApp - so for a couple of years.
We sell it. We are a distributor for them.
All the storage arrays are stable.
It is scalable.
We have about 20 clients that are using the Lenovo ThinkSystem solution.
Their support is fine. It's good.
The initial setup is straightforward. It is fine.
It takes about an hour or hour and a half for a DE.
The price is fine. It is all included. Most of these arrays are all-inclusive nowadays.
I recommend Lenovo DE Series to other users who want to start using it in the right space.
On a scale of one to ten, I would say Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is around a seven. It is really entry-level.
In the next release, I would like to see more functionality. But, again, it is an entry-level product, that's why it's a seven, because it is a really elementary, entry-level product. It's not a mid-range array, it's very elementary. It's meant to be. That's the design.
ThinkSystem is mostly for application systems and database systems like Oracle SQL Server. We also sometimes use it for SAP environments.
ThinkSystem's storage performs well, and the price per gigabyte is good, especially on SSD solutions. It's also easy to use.
ThinkSystem could be better integrated with backup software like Commvault, Veritas, or Symantec.
We have been partnered with Lenovo for eight or nine years. We started selling the DE Series when Lenovo released it, so it's been about three years.
ThinkSystem is highly stable.
ThinkSystem has considerable scalability.
Technical support is responsive. IBM provides support for Lenovo storage in Poland, and it's very good.
Deploying ThinkSystem is simple. Our engineers take care of it. Deployment can take five to 10 days and requires three engineers.
The cost of the license is per terabyte.
I rate ThinkSystem DE Series nine out of 10.
We use Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series for small businesses, primarily for VM workloads, as well as for block storage.
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is simple to use. It is also simple to manage.
While it is a reliable product, it could be improved.
It would be useful to have structured solutions replicated to other sites.
I have been working with Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series for two years.
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is a stable solution.
It is scalable in our targets, but scalability is not important with these types of solutions.
The technical support is very good.
I'm familiar with HPE 3PAR and HPE Nimble Storage. I used to work with both of them in my previous company approximately six years ago.
We are now Dell and Lenovo partners, and I have switched to their technology.
We work with Dell Unity and Unity HC for PowerStore. We also work with the new series of Lenovo, DE, and DM.
It is simple to install.
It took approximately half a day to deploy.
We completed the implementation ourselves.
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is cost-effective.
There is no license. All of the features are bundled together, and you can renew the bundle with all of the features included.
We are consultants, and this is a solution that we would recommend to others.
I would rate Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series a nine out of ten.
