We compared NetApp AFF and Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Users praise NetApp AFF for exceptional performance, scalability, and efficient data management with positive ROI. In contrast, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is valued for powerful performance, reliability, and robust data protection. NetApp AFF receives high marks for customer service, pricing, and integration, while improved performance and a more user-friendly interface are needed. On the other hand, the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series could benefit from enhancements in performance, stability, scalability, and user-friendliness.
Features: Key differences: - NetApp AFF: emphasizes exceptional performance, efficient data management, high availability, and integration with various applications and systems. - Lenovo ThinkSystem DM: focuses on powerful performance, reliable storage capabilities, ease of management, impressive scalability, and robust data protection.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for NetApp AFF is straightforward and does not pose difficulties. User feedback suggests that the pricing is competitive and offers good value. On the other hand, the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series has a reported fairly straightforward and hassle-free setup cost. Users are satisfied with the flexibility and options available in terms of licensing., The ROI of NetApp AFF was positive and impressive, with increased productivity, efficiency, data storage capabilities, reliability, and performance. It seamlessly integrates with existing infrastructure and offers enhanced data protection. On the other hand, the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series also provided a profitable ROI.
Room for Improvement: NetApp AFF could benefit from improvements in performance optimization, integration, software functionality, scalability, complexity, and user-friendly interface. Meanwhile, the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series needs enhancements in performance, stability, scalability, expandability, user interface, reliability, and support.
Deployment and customer support: Based on user reviews, the duration required for establishing a new tech solution can vary greatly for both NetApp AFF and Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series. Some users of NetApp AFF spent three months on deployment and an additional week on setup, while others required only a week for both phases. Similarly, users of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series reported spending three months on deployment and a week on setup, but some also stated that they needed one week for both phases. The reviews emphasize the importance of considering deployment and setup as separate phases for both products, but also suggest that these terms may refer to the same period and should be evaluated together., NetApp AFF's customer service excels with highly praised assistance, prompt response times, and helpful guidance. Users value the reliability and professionalism displayed. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series also receives positive feedback, with users appreciating the responsiveness and knowledgeable support provided.
The summary above is based on 50 interviews we conducted recently with NetApp AFF and Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"It is fast and reliable. It works."
"It simplifies building out the storage."
"Very efficient storage"
"The solution is very reliable."
"It's reduced our overhead management time on storage, since it is so simple to get in and just provision a volume, present it to the host, and then you are done."
"As soon as we introduced our first Pure Storage FlashArray, the first benefit was at least twice the performance increase. Our production databases simply ran twice as fast with no other change."
"The best feature is consistently lower latency, even when IOPS crank up to over 75K. The product maintains submillisecond response time, which is incredible."
"The management features are well organized and they have a very good dashboard."
"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."
"We are satisfied with the stability."
"Ability to cluster two storages together with HA availability."
"The solution offers very good reliable systems and storage for our clients."
"The product’s quality of service guarantees the performance of each workload."
"The most valuable feature of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is its ability to store data well."
"Last year, I did a DM Series installation with my colleague, and this installation was effortless because we had Lenovo support on the phone, so it was easy to get help if we had any problems."
"Scalable and stable storage array."
"NetApp AFF is based on Unix, which makes it secure."
"The solution’s thin provisioning has allowed us to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. We use thin provisioning for everything. We use the deduplication compression functionality for all of our NetApps. If we weren't using thin provisioning, we'd probably have two to times more storage on our floor right now than we do today."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"The speed, inline deduplication, and compression are really nice. It's also just easy to manage. We use Snapshot and SnapMirror offsite, which give us some good recovery options."
"We found AFF systems very competitive in terms of performance, storage efficiency, feature richness, and scalability."
"MetroCluster provides business continuity and is a critical part of our contingency setup."
"My favorite part is all-flash solid drives. All of my applications are running on an all-flash array. Before, we used to get too many severity tickets on performance, but as soon as we migrated everything to an all-flash array, our critical applications are at top performance."
"With the new version, they have the FabricPool which works for me. I can extend the hyperscaler storage."
"As long as they always improve on IOPS speed, that's all we're really looking for. The faster the storage can be the more we can do speed of application and speed of use."
"Beyond a certain amount of petabytes, you have to have a separate system. Basically, it's not infinitely scalable."
"In the next release of the solution I would like to see Vormetric native block encryption."
"I think replication is one area that still needs improvement. Earlier, Pure Storage FlashArray only had IP-based replication. There was no API-based replication, but they have enhanced the feature now. However, they need to work on API replication for C-type of arrays."
"It took us a year to get it to stabilize and to get the best out of Pure."
"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."
"In the next release I would like to see integration into other third-party player providers like Google."
"Larger capacity and more storage ports would be the two things I'd like to see."
"I would rate the support of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series a four out of five."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The licensing model needs to be revisited. It needs to be simplified."
"The solution should change the licensing model and allow customers to choose features based on their requirements."
"The solution needs a simpler licensing theme around the DM series. The problem is if you only need one of the features, you still have to buy the whole thing. The licensing needs to be more granular or flexible so you have the option to only license FlexCone or Inline Compression features."
"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 like Lenovo to add a feature like IBM Easy Tier to DM Series. This is a crucial feature for the customers."
"The Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series was very hard to configure. Installation of the product was very hard. These are its areas for improvement."
"The dashboard needs improvement. The dashboard needs some uplift"
"Some of the graphical user interface changes in the later versions of NetApp have not been as good as the older ones, like in the 9.5 era."
"I don't work on the technical side of things, so it's hard for me to highlight areas of improvement, but maybe the price could be a little better."
"We have had issues with CIFS presentations and outages, so if that was removed, we could do seamless upgrades without affecting CIFS presentations. That would be an advantage. That's about the only improvement I can think of."
"We have had customers asking about S3 support for a while now. I heard that is coming in one of the next versions. So, I would like to see S3 targeted support on the FAS system."
"The support documentation has room for improvement."
"Tech support is a place where there is room to improve the product experience. The response time when they are busy is not very good."
"Its technical support could be better."
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is ranked 21st in All-Flash Storage with 10 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is rated 7.4, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series writes "Simple deployment, stores data well, but missing features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is most compared with Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series, Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, IBM FlashSystem and NetApp FAS Series, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, VMware vSAN, NetApp FAS Series and VAST Data. See our Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. NetApp AFF report.
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