Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays comparison

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

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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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is 2.2%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 0.6%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

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Mark Richmond

Chief Technology Officer at Next Level Communications

Reliable and fast servers with good support

We use on-premise servers with Lenovo ThinkSystem. We set up Hyper-V and load multiple types of servers including a domain controller, a SQL Server, and application servers The solution provides fast servers that are reasonably priced. We set up RAID ten to ensure drive redundancy, leading to…

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Tayo Olubanke

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The value we derive from using it is greater than other alternatives like HPE and Dell."

"The servers are fast and affordable."

"We are satisfied with the stability."

"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."

"One of the most valuable features of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is the snapshot feature."

"The price of this solution is good."

"Ability to cluster two storages together with HA availability."

"The FlexClone feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series pros

"One of the most valuable features is the overall performance it provides. You're able to throw a pile of IOPS at it and it will handle that without much issue."

"We use it for our VDI environment, and have not had any complaints with it."

"Compared to Dell Unity XT, what I see as an advantage in NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is the fact that it is more scalable...The performance of the product is good."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the performance of the database access."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

"The replication and mirroring features are very good."

"The solution allows us to segregate one storage unit from another."

"The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our data bases."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pros

Cons

"We need better data deduplication."

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

"The software layer has to improve."

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

"It is on the expensive side."

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The tool's pricing is high."

"Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is not stable. If I have sold fifty boxes, about fifty percent of them experienced failure."

"I would rate the support of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series a four out of five."

"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."

"The licensing model needs to be revisited. It needs to be simplified."

"This is an expensive solution."

"Lenovo could have a wider variety of storage solutions in the NAS space."

"Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series could improve by having a snapshot feature. Additionally, there can be other features added to help restore the data faster."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series cons

"Better integration with other brands is important so we would like to see it easier to integrate."

"I’d like to see bigger, faster, better hardware, of course. I think that is the way the hardware is trending anyway; bigger, faster CPU, better software, fewer bugs, all that stuff. T"

"I would like to see higher-capacity drives, as they come out; I have heard that 15 TB are out on a different NetApp series. Getting those on the EFs would be nice."

"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."

"There could be an improvement when it comes to SLA support, it could be faster."

"The management interface, while very reliable, it seems a little old now and could maybe use a little modernization."

"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."

"They could improve overall scalability through performance. Denser capacity, which is doable, it is what the competition is doing."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The solution is highly-priced."

"The solution's pricing is similar to Dell and HPE."

"The price of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is good."

"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."

"NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is an expensive product."

"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."

"The pricing of this solution is competitive with other vendors here in Egypt."

"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."

"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."

"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."

"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."

"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."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

What do you like most about Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?

The product’s quality of service guarantees the performance of each workload.

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 do you like most about NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market.

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...

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Comparisons

Compared 32% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

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NetApp AFF vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 40% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 12% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 12% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 9% of the time

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 34% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 11% of the time

Dell XtremIO vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 9% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

All-Flash Storage

Download Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series product report

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Download NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays product report

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

ThinkSystem DM Series

NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

To meet enterprise storage requirements, ThinkSystem All-Flash DM Series systems provide high performance, superior flexibility, and best-in-class data management. DM Series runs on ONTAP data management software, which gives customers unified storage across block-and-file workloads. It accelerates your business while improving the efficiency, flexibility, and reliability of your IT operations.

Lenovo

The NetApp EF560 all-flash array is an all-SSD storage system for applications that demand extremely high levels of performance and reliability. Requiring just 2U of rack space, the EF560 all-flash array combines extreme IOPS, microsecond response times, and up to 12GBps of bandwidth with leading, enterprise-proven availability features.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays