We performed a comparison between Dell SC Series and Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series 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."I like its speed. It has all the features that I need."
"They have really good baked in analytics to show you trends for growth history, so it does help with future planning for data growth."
"It does efficient work of storing data while still delivering the performance that you would normally expect from a higher priced solution."
"It reduces space and the polar consumption. It also accelerates the application."
"Access speed and power consumption are most valuable."
"The stability and performance are the best things about the solution."
"This solution has improved our organization in the way that we used to see latency but now with this solution we don't. It also has good performance. Latencies have come down for our performance in the SQL databases. We can put a lot more in a lot less in terms of space savings. We also save data center space have good deduplication."
"It simplifies storage."
"It is easy to use, expand the hard drives, add storage, and set up replication."
"Its leading feature is the price-performance ratio, which is very good."
"It had many features, like a snapshot, replication, on-the-file RAID levels, mix-and-match files, those kinds of things."
"The user interface is good, I would rate it a nine out of ten."
"There's some new stuff coming with 7.3, which just got released, where they're spreading the sparing across the whole array, rather than having a dedicated spare disk, and have it sit there and do nothing until one of them dies, and then it kicks in - and having to rebuild all of that. Now, they'll do the sparing across all the disks and they say that is going to add not only space but performance to the array, with 7.3."
"The Dell support is helpful and the response is quick. The agents' knowledge is very good."
"It's very scalable, especially with federation. If you outgrow the number of spindles that a unit can support, depending on the model, you can go into federation."
"One of the most valuable features is the capability to switch between all-flash to hybrid, which have have actually done for one of our arrays. We started with the hybrid, with the limited if I'm not mistaken, and then over a period of time, we swapped all the hybrids with the SSDs. This was one of the big features because it gave us the capability to not stick with just one kind of media. Secondly, since it has sorted clustering, we were able to bring in the newer boxes and have it all clustered together. These were the two main features that we really looked into, which benefited our use case from an expansion/growth perspective. Another valuable feature is the ease of management."
"We are satisfied with the stability."
"The price of this solution is good."
"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."
"Ability to cluster two storages together with HA availability."
"The solution offers very good reliable systems and storage for our clients."
"Scalable and stable storage array."
"The FlexClone feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The product’s quality of service guarantees the performance of each workload."
"I like what they're doing, but some of my customers complain that they do not have all the bells and whistles and knobs to fine-tune workloads that some of the competitors have. In my opinion, that's good. All customers don't have dedicated storage gurus, and they can get themselves into trouble if they fine-tune too many of those high-performance knobs, but they do get knocked down. Pure Storage takes a hit in the minds and opinions of some of the customers because they cannot customize things as much as compared to a legacy storage provider's appliance such as NetApp, Dell EMC, or even HPE. I personally think 95% of my customers are better off letting the system fine-tune itself. That was something that you needed to do 12 or 15 years ago, but now with all-flash, the technology can handle what it needs to handle. Customers just end up shooting themselves in the foot if they are tweaking too many default settings."
"In the next release, I would like to see file-level encryption."
"We've had it in place for about a year and a half and have had zero complaints, other than that box-to-box replication is not encrypted."
"In the next release of the solution I would like to see Vormetric native block encryption."
"I would like to have an easy way to determine the cost per VM so that I can present a solution to our customers."
"Going forward, don't complicate things for the customers."
"Areas for improvement would be the financial operations. In the next release, I would like to see a NAS protocol included."
"We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform. The idea is that they would run a basic NFS or CIF share from the controllers. FlashBlade is the powerhouse for File and Object storage, but if you don't need all that power, a lightweight file function would make FlashArrays more versatile."
"The lower model, the 3000, should have duplication. It doesn't right now. It's only from 5000 that this is offered, but it depends on the performance. It could be they don't offer it on lower models because the duplication is too much of a burden to the performance."
"The initial setup is somewhat complex and should be made simpler to do."
"I would like to see higher compression, dedupe, faster I/O, and bigger drives."
"The cost of the solution could be better."
"From a performance point of view, it's getting a bit old."
"In some customer cases, customers experienced more performance or latency."
"Overall, I'd like to see more synergy between Dell EMC's higher-tier platforms and their mid-tier platforms. What I have said, constantly, to my partners at Dell EMC is that the clear articulation of the path is really important to us. In that vein, what I'd also like to see is, with the migration strategy that's built into this product, a lot more attention paid to Dell's - in particular - legacy platforms and how we get from some of our legacy EMC platforms onto this platform with a straight-through migration and scaling strategy, not host-based migrations and not piecemeal... Dell EMC would do well to focus more on my ability to skip a generation, rather than having me take individual hops because I can't greenfield my way into a software-defined data center fast enough. This journey of multiple hops is not helpful."
"While the price is competitive, in the next release it would be better if they could reduce the fees."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The solution should change the licensing model and allow customers to choose features based on their requirements."
"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."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series could improve by having a snapshot feature. Additionally, there can be other features added to help restore the data faster."
"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."
"The licensing model needs to be revisited. It needs to be simplified."
"I would rate the support of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series a four out of five."
Dell SC Series is ranked 24th in All-Flash Storage with 49 reviews while Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is ranked 21st in All-Flash Storage with 10 reviews. Dell SC Series is rated 8.4, while Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is rated 7.4. The top reviewer of Dell SC Series writes "Automated architecture that proactively optimizes your database ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series writes "Simple deployment, stores data well, but missing features". Dell SC Series is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Huawei OceanStor and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is most compared with NetApp AFF, Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series, Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore and NetApp FAS Series. See our Dell SC Series vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series report.
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