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Kaminario K2 [EOL] vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM 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
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
Kaminario K2 [EOL]
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (23rd)
 

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.
Engineerdb78 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
A solution with a simple configuration and good stability but it's quite expensive
Access to technical support should be improved for our region. Technical support is good, but they're very hard to access. When we have a problem with this storage, it's usually related to a very bad configuration. All-Flash Storage is very, very expensive. They are important solutions so I don't really have any ideas about how to rectify this. The device could use better monitoring tools.
CA
Service manager at Crescent Technologies
Complicated deployment and poor support persist, affecting overall satisfaction
The deployment process of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is very complicated compared to previous GUI systems. Many customers have lost data while configuring it, indicating a need for improvement. The after-sales service is also very poor. Furthermore, it does not offer basic features like deduplication, and the service is generally considered to be very bad.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most important feature of any storage array is its reliability, measured by its uptime."
"We are very happy with the data deduplication and compression ratio that we have on the platform."
"My favorite feature about Pure Storage FlashArray is definitely the simplicity; in one word, it's simple to install, simple to upgrade, simple to maintain, and simple to manage."
"We noticed a dramatic increase in application performance when moving it from NetApp to Pure Storage."
"Like I tell everybody else that I deal with, if you want to focus your time on doing more valuable things for your company, and you deal with storage on a day-to-day basis like I do, the best thing you can do is put Pure in your environment."
"Even if they weren't one of the fastest arrays in the entire industry, I would use them for their support model and ease of use."
"They can provide a lot of performance, so there is not a lot of difference, but efficiency is something customers value because the compression can be up to twice of the second competitor."
"The support from Pure Storage Flash Array is amazing."
"It has a very good duplication rate; very, very good."
"Improved performance by more than 50x on our application."
"Latency is definitely the big key for us."
"Our holdup was disk I/O, so we did a PoC with Kaminario and we reduced build times down to fifteen minutes for a full build from two hours."
"I think this product hits all the big features of all the SANs that are out there, all the storage vendors that are out there and more."
"It provides a full feature set without separate licensing (deduplication, compression, snapshot, asynchronous replication, stable performance, etc.)."
"The increased performance is many times above our previous array performance in all metrics. Integration with vSphere features is also a definite plus."
"So coupled with the simplicity, performance, and just absolute ease of use of the management of it, I don't know why anyone wouldn't buy it."
"It has been a perfect fit for the workload that our customer is doing."
"The servers are fast and affordable."
"In summary, this is a good product and is one that I recommend."
"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."
"Ability to cluster two storages together with HA availability."
"Lenovo offers a good variaty of Storage Systems. Starts with DS, then DE and the most sophisticated version - DM-Series."
"My advice is to try it, because I think DM Series is a scalable all-in-one system with unified block and file storage and cloud tiering."
"In this solution, I like the option of clustering two storages together and that there can be HA availability."
 

Cons

"It would be nice to have a better view of the allocated capacity on their Platform as a Service solution because we have to do some manual calculations to understand how much we are going to pay every month to use the storage that is allocated."
"We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform. The idea is that they would run a basic NFS or CIF share from the controllers. FlashBlade is the powerhouse for File and Object storage, but if you don't need all that power, a lightweight file function would make FlashArrays more versatile."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"I can't see where they can make anything better, unless, of course, they lower their prices even more."
"It's not so scalable. It's got moderate scaling capabilities right now. The clustering technology needs a bit of work, they need to improve that."
"The capability from Pure as far as sharing out files and things of that nature is a little bit lacking."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services."
"I want to improve the overall service level of the solution."
"On the road map, I'm hoping to see Active Directory integration. Right now, you still have to use a local admin account to log in and manage everything."
"A single pane of glass to monitor/manage multiple arrays would be helpful."
"I would like to see them work with Cisco, so it comes off the FIs, instead of having to go through my 10-gig network."
"I would like them to improve the look of the product’s external casing and shelves."
"I would like to see LDAP for the management panel; I've been notified they might be currently working on it."
"The interface look and feel could be improved."
"I would like them to come down in price."
"I think it should have better performance with small files. With big data, its performance is top notch, but it is difficult to load small files."
"The licensing model needs to be revisited. It needs to be simplified."
"The tool's pricing is high."
"The solution should change the licensing model and allow customers to choose features based on their requirements."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The solution needs a simpler licensing theme around the DM series."
"I would rate the support of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series a four out of five."
"Many people do not realize that Lenovo has a storage solution, so better marketing from the vendor is needed."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is not stable. If I have sold fifty boxes, about fifty percent of them experienced failure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."
"There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
"The pricing is an issue. However, being all-flash, it will always be sort of expensive."
"In the beginning, we saw that the price is not very good. When we made some compilations about the deduplication and the compression and what the equipment does, including the differentiation of upper management of the storage, the price was not so bad. However, in the beginning, the price was very difficult to justify."
"The price, in general, is around $100,000, however, I know it costs more."
"The license for Pure Storage FlashArray includes the support and there are no additional payments that are needed. This is not an inexpensive solution, you need to understand the value of your data before you use a backup solution."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"Kaminario is very competitive on price. They also have a pay per TB model."
"The licensing is all-inclusive."
"The "extra" costs associated with features and options that are available off the shelf with Kaminario, make their value proposition extremely competitive."
"I would like them to come down in price. It is as expensive as EMC, Hitachi, and other major vendors."
"Licensing is very straightforward. The cost was considerably lower than other products we looked at."
"The Kaminario setup is simple and there are no hidden licensing fees so this area is a relief."
"All features are provided in the licensing. The cost of Kaminario was less than the cost of a hybrid array."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Construction Company
15%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
 

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?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?
There are extra expenses beyond the standard licensing fee for features such as replication and deduplication, which ...
What needs improvement with Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?
The deployment process of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is very complicated compared to previous GUI systems. Many cus...
What is your primary use case for Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?
My primary use case for Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series ( /products/lenovo-thinksystem-dm-series-reviews ) is for storag...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
ThinkSystem DM Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Wargaming.net, El Rio Community Health Center, ECN, SpotOption, Ashkelon College, Clearwater Analytics, Intigua, Cobb EMC Customer Case Study
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