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Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays 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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
22nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
24th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.4%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is 1.6%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 1.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray7.4%
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series1.6%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays1.3%
Other89.7%
All-Flash Storage
 

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.
GP
System Administrator at PORTGUARDIAN.COM SRL
Performance and cost-effectiveness are maximized with seamless setup and significant ROI
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…
Tayo Olubanke - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at GCET
Offers flexibility and top-notch technology
You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Pure FlashArray is that it's user-friendly, easy to manage, and very flexible."
"This solution has improved my organization because it has good performance."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is a good product with minimal management requirements once set up correctly and helped reduce our storage footprint from EMC."
"Pure Storage FlashArray simplifies maintenance and management with its intuitive GUI, making storage allocation and other processes easy to understand, even for beginners."
"It is easy to manage. You don't have to have the same people who used to manage the Dell EMC arrays because the solution is more intuitive."
"Pure Storage is an amazing solution."
"What I appreciate most about Everpure FlashArray is that it performs compression and deduplication fantastically."
"It allows engineers to focus on other things rather than doing the more manual tasks. It automates tasks, so the ease of use is extreme. It simplifies the storage."
"This solution is good for virtualization and meets the need for CPU and RAM requirements."
"Fewer features is not necessarily a negative as it leads to simpler operation and lower price."
"The solution is very easy to troubleshoot, it doesn't take long to deploy, normally comes with a three-year warranty, and has the most features if you compare it to other models."
"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, and it integrates pretty well."
"We have had a very good experience with customer service and support, as they answer questions very fast and resolve our issues."
"I would rate the stability of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series as a ten."
"The solution is very easy to set up."
"ThinkSystem's storage performs well, and the price per gigabyte is good, especially on SSD solutions, and it's also easy to use."
"It's still worth purchasing as the support is good and also the performance is very good."
"This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs."
"You can't beat it for the price."
"Our batch processing time went down from 14 hours to seven hours with this solution."
"At the end of the day, low latency was what geared us towards the EF."
"The most valuable feature is its speed; we had a bake off with another product in our data center, and it blew it away, without any question, being about 100% faster than the XtremIO, just pure speed."
"The management software is very good."
"When you are dealing with a virtual machine or on-premise, one of the in-demand storage is NetApp."
 

Cons

"The initial setup was a little complex. We had some initial issues with the design and had to help correct some of the white papers for it, but it wasn't your standard use case."
"In Pure Storage FlashArray, the area with room for improvement is local MFA login."
"We would always like to see higher performance, and lower pricing is always better."
"I would like to see them lower the costs."
"If there is one thing that I did not appreciate about Pure, it is that between the two different lines, which would be FlashBlade and Everpure FlashArray, there is no easy way to migrate LUNs as far as being able to replicate across those platforms."
"In terms of improvement, Everpure FlashArray could have more attractive UI/UX design compared to other solutions."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions."
"If they could make it cheaper, that would be something."
"You can not buy a lot of options for these devices. There are a lot of things that it does not do."
"Its performance could be faster."
"The product could support advanced software integrations."
"The type of connection that is used in Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series should be improved."
"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."
"ThinkSystem could be better integrated with backup software like Commvault, Veritas, or Symantec."
"There could be a snapshot feature in the solution."
"The solution could be more scalable, although it suits our present needs."
"For us, in our country, the solution is a bit expensive."
"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."
"The EF-Series is not the most scalable solution."
"They could improve overall scalability through performance. Denser capacity, which is doable, it is what the competition is doing."
"The solution's technical support is not as good as it is supposed to be since you have to push them to get support."
"The solution should really build out a more hyper-converged product."
"This solution does not have any compression or deduplication."
"We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In comparison to the competitors, Pure is very price-competitive for the future functionality that it provides."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership."
"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it. A little bit better pricing would be great."
"Because the price is a bit higher than other products, the data reduction equalizes the price with amount of the data reduction."
"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."
"The guaranty that Pure Storage provides when you purchase it doesn't meet the overall capacity needs to provide extra storage, if needed. Thus, it is not meeting our expectations."
"There are no licensing fees or other costs."
"Pure has been flexible with us on the pricing models."
"For an all-flash setup, the cost is around $20,000 for a decent configuration."
"The pricing is fair and low compared to other products in this category."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The best thing about this solution is its price, which reduces our costs."
"All of the features are bundled together, and you can renew the bundle with all of the features included."
"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."
"The pricing for this solution is good compared to HP or Dell EMC."
"The solution's price could be better."
"They need to improve its pricing. The storage market is dying. So, they need to improve the price because it should reach all people. NetApp is one of the top ones, and they are charging a little bit of royalty as compared to other storage solutions."
"NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is an expensive product."
"Cheaper pricing is always good. NetApp has been doing everything the right way. They've been figuring out things really well, going in the right direction."
"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."
"One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to renew the license."
"Its cost-effectiveness is a major selling point. Compared to other storage vendors, the EF-Series offers excellent value for its price. It's truly a leading product in the industry."
"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."
"The pricing of the solution is expensive, considering the initial investment required...At the end of the product's life cycle, it could get cheaper, but the initial investment in NetApp makes it one of the most expensive solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Performing Arts
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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 Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
 

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 have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series?
The price of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is very good. We chose this type of storage for the performance and the price.
What needs improvement with Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series?
The type of connection that is used in Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series should be improved.
What is your primary use case for Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series?
I use Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series to replace the old storage in our infrastructure. Additionally, I use it in custom...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to rene...
What needs improvement with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's supp...
What is your primary use case for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
There are so many things to talk about around the use cases associated with the tool. There are so many reasons why I...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
ThinkSystem DE Series
NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation
Find out what your peers are saying about Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.