We performed a comparison between Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series and NetApp AFF based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."
"The most valuable features of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series are the dual controllers, available installation documentation, and the option of multiple host bus adapter interfaces."
"This solution is good for virtualization and meets the need for CPU and RAM requirements."
"The solution is very easy to set up."
"Its initial setup process is easy."
"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. It integrates pretty well."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"Fewer features is not necessarily a negative as it leads to simpler operation and lower price."
"ThinkSystem's storage performs well, and the price per gigabyte is good, especially on SSD solutions. It's also easy to use."
"ActiveIQ is the most valuable feature. It's a central point for me to be able to kick into everything every day. I log in first thing and make sure there are no issues, and it helps me with my day-to-day."
"Previously we had migrated from Dell EMC and we had a lot of difficulties moving data around. Now, if we need to move it to any slower storage, we can move it with just a vault move within the cluster. Even moving data between clusters is extremely simple using SnapMirror. The mobility options for data in All Flash FAS have been awesome."
"The scale up version of it is the most valuable feature. You can go to 24 nodes, which is very cool."
"The most valuable features are the IO performance that we get, the cluster part, and the increased workload and performance with the SSDs."
"The performance of NetApp AFF allows our developers and researches to run models and their tests within a single workday instead of spreading out across multiple workdays."
"It has improved performance for our enterprise applications, data analytics, and VMs. These improvements are a result of all-flash, throughput, reliability, compression, etc."
"Regarding features, SnapMirror is one we depend on right now. It helps us provide snapshots to the customers on request. There are many scenarios in which we might take snapshots in various daily use cases. We trigger the snapshots, which gives us a sense of security because we know we have this technology in place if something happens."
"We are spending less time putting out fires, so there's a tangible benefit right there."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"In the next release, I would like to see more functionality. But, again, it is an entry-level product."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to see support for Hyper-converged infrastructure."
"ThinkSystem could be better integrated with backup software like Commvault, Veritas, or Symantec."
"The solution could be more scalable, although it suits our present needs."
"The features are limited."
"Improvements can be made to the product's performance."
"There could be a snapshot feature in the solution."
"I think adding more features to make it more cloud enabled will help us with cloud tiering and simplify the whole cloud operations when it's integrating with our on-prem AFF products. That is one area where we would like to see more improvements from NetApp."
"I would like to see NetApp improve more of its offline tools and utilities."
"I would like them to roll in global monitoring instead of having to buy another product for it."
"We installed NetSender to test it. I think it could be a good solution. It is very small now, but will probably become bigger in the next few months to years."
"One minor improvement could be making scale-up solutions with AFF more cost-effective compared to scale-out options."
"I need faster Fibre Channel over Ethernet. They top out at 10GBs today and I would like that to go to 40 or 100."
"There are no pNFS with VMware VVOLs."
"The Bezels need improvement."
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is ranked 19th in All-Flash Storage with 11 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 281 reviews. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is rated 8.6, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series writes "Provides good stability and is reliable in terms of performance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Pure Storage FlashArray and HPE Primera. See our Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs. NetApp AFF report.
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