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Lenovo ThinkSystem DM 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
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
28th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
29th
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 November 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 6.4%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is 1.7%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 1.5%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray6.4%
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series1.7%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays1.5%
Other90.4%
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.
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.
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

"Their support is top-notch, and their NPS scores reflect this."
"It's a great return on investment, based on the mission."
"Simplicity and reliability are the most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray."
"I would recommend Pure Storage, as it is well-established."
"While all these products have their own uses, Pure Storage FlashArray is in a market of its own."
"It saved a lot of space, as far as physical space in our data center."
"You can get your storage access within two minutes, which is great, because it is a lot quicker for our team to get the servers up and running."
"Its array houses our entire production environment."
"The most valuable feature of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is its ability to store data well."
"The Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is a stable storage system."
"It has been a perfect fit for the workload that our customer is doing."
"The product’s quality of service guarantees the performance of each workload."
"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."
"The Lenovo ThinkSystem is used for everything in our company from ERP to BI, for production, PLM, CAD for designing, and everything else."
"In this solution, I like the option of clustering two storages together and that there can be HA availability."
"Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market."
"Rapid deployment, easy integration management and cloning of areas."
"The hardware and software of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are easy for us to use."
"Its performance is most valuable. This solution is much faster than other as well as older storage solutions. The performance of the system is very good. We are getting 50 times better experience than the older storages. We are using AFF 300. It also has native cloud integration and most of the features."
"I would recommend it. It is very stable, fast, and offers good support."
"The management software is very good."
"This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs."
"We know this solution's software, hardware devices, and support are very good."
 

Cons

"Awareness about Pure Storage needs to increase. Currently, people mostly think of Dell and NetApp when it comes to storage."
"Going forward, don't complicate things for the customers."
"The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers."
"The technical support is okay, but could be improved."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services. There are increasingly more and more services coming out from AWS but there are also certain constraints where we can't move everything over to a cloud as well. We would like for things that are on-premise to be easily integrated with AWS."
"Currently, the solution fails to support file screening."
"We haven't seen ROI."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve by being more secure."
"I would like Lenovo to add a feature like IBM Easy Tier to DM Series. This is a crucial feature for the customers."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series could improve by having a snapshot feature. Additionally, there can be other features added to help restore the data faster."
"The Lenovo DM Series is an excellent storage product, but I think it isn't competitive with other companies like Dell EMC and IBM because IBM products are very cheap and have more features."
"The licensing model needs to be revisited. It needs to be simplified."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is not stable. If I have sold fifty boxes, about fifty percent of them experienced failure."
"It takes a very long time to enter the management console, as well as to restart the system, and these are things that should be improved."
"I would rate the support of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series a four out of five."
"The solution needs a simpler licensing theme around the DM series."
"Monitoring and management handling in enterprise environments could be improved."
"A little more manageability, a simpler management interface. It's not necessarily that it's way overly complex. It's just that it's not as easy as the FAS series."
"Here in Egypt, we do not have an official office or central point of support."
"The EF-Series is not the most scalable solution."
"As far as the manageability, being able to port between the two and have to do less training in-house from a customer point of view, that would be the part to improve."
"When it's a software-related issue, it is difficult to find an engineer that can help you."
"Things like the FlexClones, SnapVault, SnapMirror, all of that. Some of it's available on the EF series, but we like what we have in the FAS system."
"Their problems are on the software and the controlling of the storage where they lack segmentation and federation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray is reasonable."
"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"While more expensive than NetApp, Pure Storage FlashArray offers superior performance that often justifies the higher cost and adds value overall."
"We have seen a reduction in TCO."
"I'm good with the licensing. Of course, pricing can always be less... It's actually not a bad pricing model, considering I don't have to rip-and-replace."
"There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
"Dell and Pure Storage offer competitive pricing, but Pure Storage might have a slight advantage."
"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."
"The solution is highly-priced."
"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."
"The cost of our license is approximately $200,000 over three years for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. There can be additional costs for storage. For example, if you want to have eight terabytes."
"They provide licenses upon purchase, so there's no need for additional licenses. Regarding additional expenses apart from the standard licensing fees, such as for support or maintenance, there aren't any. Updates take around twenty to thirty minutes, including rebooting the systems, and we haven't faced any problems with the NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We utilize various other storages like Fujitsu, IBM, and Dalian SIP, but the NetApp EF-Series stands out as we've had no issues throughout the entire year of usage."
"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."
"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."
"It's a lot cheaper than what the other vendors have for the same type of environment. It saves us money."
"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."
"The pricing of this solution is competitive with other vendors here in Egypt."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
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?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
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...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
ThinkSystem DM 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 DM Series vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.