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Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL] 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
7.3
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (22nd)
VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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…
Ramil Cerrada - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution lead at Globe Mobile
Has high-speed data access and processing capabilities, distinguishing it as a leader in its storage solutions category
VIOLIN QV2020 lacks scalability. This affects both the timeframe for installation and the performance of end-users. Additionally, there's a challenge in deploying horizontally, either by deploying between different nodes or adding new ones. We have many customers. 50,000 users are using this solution. It depends on the projects being taken out of the operations team.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the replication of data and the continuous snapshot that we can take from the disc."
"Their REST API is wonderful, well-documented, and easy to use."
"We have seen savings in our storage, and the speed of deployment has gone from several days to a few minutes, reducing backup and restore times from 93 days to minutes and simplifying storage for us."
"In Pure Storage FlashArray, the dedupe and compression are excellent, and performance is good too."
"The all-flash disc is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are management and administration user-friendliness, provisioning, and performance."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is simple and easy to use. It offers protection when removing devices. It has the ability to undo deletes."
"Pure Storage FlashArray simplifies maintenance and management with its intuitive GUI, making storage allocation and other processes easy to understand, even for beginners."
"We have been working with the solution for around a year and so far it has shown itself to be stable."
"I would rate the stability of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series as a ten."
"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."
"The solution is very easy to set up."
"Its initial setup process is easy."
"The solution is very easy to troubleshoot. It's one of the most valuable features. It also doesn't take long to deploy and normally it comes with a three-year warranty."
"My advice to others is that this is a straightforward, detailed documented, and supported solution."
"ThinkSystem is a good offer and can work out well if you can work with it to fit the use cases that you have."
"It’s simple to use hardware to fix performance issues. Our issue is poor coding/queries. This greatly speeded things up. It’s too costly to track down poor programming in applications. The price of a developer’s time to scan through all the coding is high compared to buying Violin."
"VIOLIN QV2020 is the latest in terms of performance. It has high-speed data access and processing capabilities, distinguishing it as a leader in its storage solutions category."
"It has lowered batch times from 14 hours to two hours."
 

Cons

"I would like some performance analytics which go deeper than today. It should be specific to some hosts and applications."
"I would like to see additional features like performance monitoring, configuring alerts, and the customization of alert thresholds."
"Awareness about Pure Storage needs to increase. Currently, people mostly think of Dell and NetApp when it comes to storage."
"It was a little costly."
"Pure Storage's logs could provide more visibility to the end-user. The logging algorithms are different from those of other vendors. For example, Cisco's logs provide extensive troubleshooting data, whereas Pure Storage logs offer limited information. We have to contact support to get more information."
"It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups."
"We haven't seen ROI."
"It needs to improve its price."
"Its performance could be faster."
"ThinkSystem could be better integrated with backup software like Commvault, Veritas, or Symantec."
"You can not buy a lot of options for these devices. There are a lot of things that it does not do."
"Improvements can be made to the product's performance."
"There could be a snapshot feature in the solution."
"The type of connection that is used in Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series should be improved."
"Scalability on rack-mount servers is not as good as with Blade servers."
"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 set up Wi-Fi for storage, and since then, we haven't experienced any interruptions in service."
"VIMM replacement is poorly designed. You have to slide out an entire drawer, remove the cover and then pop out the failed VIMM. I would like to see a front replacement just like with hard disks. This leaves room for error; for example, when you slide it out from the rack, you are moving cables along the cable management arm. This leaves the possibility of accidentally unplugging a cable from the array if it is not seated properly. Also, you might pinch the cables when sliding it back into the server rack."
"VIMM replacement is poorly designed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."
"The pricing is an issue. However, being all-flash, it will always be sort of expensive."
"It is not the cheapest one out there. We're paying yearly, but I'm not 100% sure."
"We do not incur additional costs beyond the licensing fee."
"We have a seen a reduction in TCO. It is definitely a cost-effective solution for us. We have seen ROI."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
"Our Evergreen Storage subscription is supposed to be good when we go to upgrade."
"The pricing for this solution is good compared to HP or Dell EMC."
"The pricing is fair and low compared to other products in this category."
"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 best thing about this solution is its price, which reduces our costs."
"We have a five-year contract for providing support."
"All of the features are bundled together, and you can renew the bundle with all of the features included."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The solution's price could be better."
"They will beat anyone’s price right now. They are struggling and just need to get product out their doors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise151
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
No data available
 

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?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
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...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
ThinkSystem DE Series
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
BlueScope Buildings, GameVil, VRT, IKYU Corporation
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