Compare Dell EMC Unity XT vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series
Dell EMC Unity XT is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage Arrays with 63 reviews while Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is ranked 17th in All-Flash Storage Arrays with 5 reviews. Dell EMC Unity XT is rated 8.6, while Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is rated 7.2. The top reviewer of Dell EMC Unity XT writes "Hits a sweet spot for us between price point and the amount of storage and performance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series writes "Reliable, but has a difficult licensing process and needs more storage". Dell EMC Unity XT is most compared with Pure Storage FlashArray, HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and Dell EMC XtremIO, whereas Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is most compared with Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series, IBM FlashSystem, Nimble Storage, HPE 3PAR Flash Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Dell EMC Unity XT vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series report.
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 Find out what your peers are saying about Dell EMC Unity XT vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series and other solutions. Updated: July 2020. 430,988 professionals have used our research since 2012. | ||||||
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros | ||
Things that have been really useful, of course, are the clustering features and being able to stay online during failovers and code upgrades; and just being able to seamlessly do all sorts of movement of data without having to disrupt end-users' ability to get to those files. And we can take advantage of new shelves, new hardware, upgrade in place. It's kind of magic when it comes to doing those sorts of things. The ease of use, the SnapMirror capabilities, the cloning, and the efficiencies are all good features. We are using the AQoS operating system, which allows us to get a lot more out of our AFF systems. The most valuable features are the ease of administration and configuration, as well as the speed of deployment. The most important features are the IOPS and the ease of the ONTAP manageability. Before we implemented AFF, Oracle was running on a traditional storage spindle and at a very low speed with high latency, and the database was not running very well. After we converted from the spinning disk to the all-flash array, it was at least four times faster to access the volume than before. The most valuable features of the solution are speed, performance, and reliability. The most valuable feature is speed. | This product is perfect for small, and mid-range customers who need to pay less, but still, get enterprise-level capabilities. This solution makes it easy to manage storage, provision new workloads, and scale-up. The All-Flash models are pretty fast for the vast majority of our remote workloads. We use replication for disaster recovery (DR), making our DR process much easier. It has reduced complexity. We have resolved IT challenges with this solution. It sped up our environment. We went from spinning disk to all-flash, which reduced our footprint. It has good performance. We can get almost real-time response times. | The solution offers very good reliable systems and storage for our clients. Ability to cluster two storages together with HA availability. We are satisfied with the stability. We prefer the SR650 server system. This version fits our customers' needs best. That's the latest update that we can try to give them. The FlexClone feature is the solution's most valuable aspect. |
Cons | ||
One of the areas that the product can improve is definitely in the user interface. We don't use it for SAN, but we've looked at using it for SAN and the SAN workflows are really problematic for my admins, and they just don't like doing SAN provisioning on that app. That really needs to change if we're going to adopt it and actually consider it to be a strong competitor versus some of the other options out there. There are little things that need improvement. For example, if you are setting up a SnapMirror through the GUI, you are forced to change the destination name of the volume, and we like to keep the volume names the same. The quality of technical support has dwindled over time and needs to be improved. On the fiber channel side, there is a limit of sixteen terabytes on each line, and we would like to see this raised because we are having to use some other products. The certification classes are good, but they don't cover enough of the material, and the exams only test on what is covered in class. The monitor and performance need improvement. Right now we are using the active IQ OnCommand Unified Manager, but we also have to do the Grafana to do the performance and I hope we will be able to see the improvement of the active IQ in terms of the performance graph. It should also be more detailed. 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. The price of NVMe storage is very expensive. | This product needs to have better integration with enterprise backup solutions and archiving devices. This solution would be improved with the addition of flexible raid volumes. We would like to see the concept of Storage Groups brought back to this product line. I haven't seen the roadmap for this solution. It is missing some features, like deduplication. Because we can do synchronous replication between the two sites, this made the setup challenging for this piece. They did not know how to set this up initially. We ended up having to do bidirectional synchronous replication. I would like them to continue to build on the solution and expand on the functionality, like replication. We'd like to see a cheaper version of an all-flash array in that footprint. | The licensing model needs to be revisited. It needs to be simplified. This is an expensive solution. 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. Technical support could be improved for this solution. 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. |
Pricing and Cost Advice | ||
It's expensive. it's in the hundreds of thousands. It's beneficial, but at times, I feel compared to other vendors, we are paying a premium for the licensing that other vendors include. The price to performance ratio with NetApp is unmatched by any other vendor right now. The pricing is not a lot considering what you get and it bundles hardware and licensing. Comparing this solution to others it may seem expensive, but the price to performance for NetApp is greater. We would like it to be free. One of the reasons we like this solution is that all of the features are included with the one license. We don't like the cost. We would like to buy more. It definitely reduces costs because it simply takes less power to run these systems. While the SSDs don't take power, they are in general very big right now. So, the running cost has decreased for a lot of our customers. | Our CAPEX was close to $42,000 and operating costs are below $1000. Our costs are roughly $200,000 a year. The solution is extremely functional for the price that we pay for it. It is worth the investment. We purchased a five-year warranty. Compression is making a difference towards the amount of hardware that we need to purchase. The return on the investment was simply speeding up our entire vSphere stack, which allowed our developers and engineers to get their workloads done faster and simpler. We were experiencing VM snapshot times of 45 minutes to two or three hours, and it shrunk it down to under five minutes. It scales, but then you have to buy additional stuff. With the large Unity that we bought, it has saved us about one and a half rack space. That's our return on investment on our flash array. We also need less Fibre Channel connectivity. | We can try to make a good offer for our customers, but in Turkey the difference between the dollar and Turkish lira is very high. Pricing is the hardest part of my job, because the price is very high for our customers. We try hard to make the price low for our customers. |
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Also Known As | ||
| NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS | EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity | ThinkSystem DM Series |
Learn | ||
| NetApp | Dell EMC | Lenovo |
Overview  | ||
NetApp AFF8000 All Flash FAS systems combine all-flash performance with unified data management from flash to disk to cloud. Leverage the Data Fabric to move data securely across your choice of clouds—enabled by Cloud ONTAP™ and NetApp Private Storage for Cloud. Plus, you get the industry’s most efficient and comprehensive integrated data protection suite, on premises or in the cloud. | Dell EMC Unity, powered by Intel Xeon processors, delivers the ultimate in simplicity and value, enabling your organization to speed deployment, streamline management and seamlessly tier storage to the cloud. Dell EMC Unity’s All-Flash and Hybrid Flash storage platforms optimize SSD performance and efficiency, with fully integrated SAN and NAS capabilities. Cloud-based storage analytics and proactive support keep you available and connected. | 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. |
Offer | ||
Learn more about NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) | Learn more about Dell EMC Unity XT | Learn more about Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series |
Sample Customers | ||
| Acibadem Healthcare Group, AmTrust Financial Services, Citrix Systems, DWD, Mantra Group | Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre | Information Not Available |
Top Industries | ||
Healthcare Company16% Financial Services Firm13% Energy/Utilities Company9% Retailer8% Computer Software Company38% Manufacturing Company16% Comms Service Provider10% Media Company4% | Financial Services Firm21% Healthcare Company16% Manufacturing Company14% Energy/Utilities Company5% Computer Software Company41% Comms Service Provider13% Media Company5% Government5% | Computer Software Company35% Comms Service Provider15% Legal Firm12% Real Estate/Law Firm7% |
Company Size | ||
Small Business12% Midsize Enterprise12% Large Enterprise76% Small Business26% Midsize Enterprise6% Large Enterprise69% | Small Business25% Midsize Enterprise26% Large Enterprise49% Small Business28% Midsize Enterprise38% Large Enterprise34% | No Data Available |
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell EMC Unity XT vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series and other solutions. Updated: July 2020.
430,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.
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