Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series Reviews

We sell the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE 4000 or 6000 series storage arrays. The clients that we sell the products to are mostly manufacturers and the use case for ThinkSystem is always production for storing and operating their virtual environment, which means the units are almost always used for VMware. It is just typical storage for production and virtual machines.  

It does not improve the way we function as we use it with clients. It gives us another product to offer to fill particular client needs.  

As far as features go, the product does not really have a lot of them. The products we sell are Lenovo's low to mid-range stuff. They are not really feature-laden products with added value that make them stand out from other solutions. The lack of complexity and the lower price — because of that lack of complexity — may be the most valuable features.  

The interface is all good.  

You can not buy a lot of options for these devices. There are a lot of things that it does not do. Some things that it does not do that we would like it to do include easy tiering. If you have got spindles and you want to cache a couple of terabytes of storage on SSD, that would be something we would like to see that, currently, it does not have the capacity to do.  

The thing it comes down to is that Lenovo needs to add some more of the software features that would allow the ThinkSystem line to compete with other products that we sell. Other than that, it is what it is.  

We have had experience with the product for as long as Lenovo has been out with it. I do not know exactly how long that is, but it is maybe seven or eight years.  

I think these Lenovo products are very stable. We generally do not have issues with their products going down.  

ThinkSystem is scalable. Our clients are small top medium-large businesses and within that range, it works well.  

When we had to use them, the technical support was very good. If I had to rate them I would give them an eight-out-of-ten. Maybe they need to work on consistency with response time, but the bigger concern comes down to the actual know-how. A lot of times, we have to defer to IBM for support in order to get an answer.  

We previously used a different solution from IBM.  

The installation and the initial setup for these is very simple.  

The pricing is fine for what the product does.  

The advice that I would you give to others looking into implementing this product is that it is a good product if it fits your needs. Products in this category are not all the same and they all have something unique, but ThinkSystem is a good offer and can work out well if you can work with it to fit the use cases that you have.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product as probably and eight-out-of-ten overall. I would give it that rating because it is a good product. It is stable. It is well supported. It just lacks some depth in the area of features. That ends up not necessarily being a strike against the product because, price-wise, it is a good value. If you want all the bells and whistles, Lenovo wants you to move up the ladder on something else they have to offer.  

The solution is very easy to troubleshoot. It's one of the most valuable features. The solution also doesn't take long to deploy and normally it comes with a three-year warranty.

The solution has the most features if you compare it to other models.

Usually, when a part fails, we have to replace it and it takes a while. It would be better if the part could be available locally here in Kenya so we don't have to wait so long to repair the solution.

If you compare this solution to IBM, there's a feature in IBM that is able to send alerts so that you can be able to place a part order immediately. Lenovo should offer this. It would shorten the process of part replacement.

The solution is very stable. Most of the time the systems are up and running unless there's a big failure, but normally the repairs are done and we can get it up again once that happens.

The scalability of the solution is good. It's very easy to add onto it.

Technical support has been great. We're very satisfied with them.

Compared to other products, the pricing is okay.

We are a seller, and we install and implement the solution.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten. I'd recommend it to others.

We use this solution to house our VMware Virtual Machines. We have three data centers, and I am responsible for troubleshooting the environment. 

We are currently using the on-premise deployment model, although we are starting our migration to AWS. I expect that it will take no more than six or seven months.

This solution is good for virtualization and meets the need for CPU and RAM requirements. It is suitable for mid-range and big business.

I would like to have a better performance from this solution.

In the next release, I would like to see support for Hyper-converged infrastructure.

The stability of this solution is good.

Scalability on rack-mount servers is not as good as with Blade servers.

Technical support for this solution is good but they are not interactive. 

We used a solution from HP before this one.

The initial setup of this solution depends on the design of the environment and the scale of the project. It can be simple, or complicated.

The pricing for this solution is good compared to HP or Dell EMC.

The demand in the market is for hyper-converged, all-in-one virtualization. It is not only for the operating system or hypervisors but also for networking and security. It is about optimum solutions.

This is a solution that I recommend for those who need the basics that can be achieved with a rack mount server.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is highly reliable, especially for block-level storage. It is stable, with minimal downtime and no issues beyond user errors.

The product could support advanced software integrations.

The platform scales well in capacity but does not support performance scaling beyond block-level storage.

I have not encountered any issues with Lenovo support. Their service has been satisfactory, and I have not needed to report any problems.

The solution has the easiest deployment process. It takes approximately one hour for initial setup and configuration.

The product has led to significant time savings, particularly for future upgrades. It can save several hours on configurations due to its automated setup, depending on the size and complexity of the storage.

While it is comparable to other storage solutions in terms of cost, it offers efficiency in configuration and management.

For an all-flash setup, the cost is around $20,000 for a decent configuration.

DE Series is an entry-level product offering affordable performance without advanced features. Competitors may offer more sophisticated options like data compression and cloud integration.

The platform's unique data disk pool feature simplifies storage management.
I recommend it to others and rate it a ten out of ten.