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.
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the all-flash storage performance, low latency, and efficiency of their de-duplication technology. Additionally, the ease of use is good compared to other storage systems. The features in data protection, snapshotting, and replication between data centers and sites are superior to other solutions."
"The code upgrades are very smooth."
"The deduplication and compression rates are beyond impressive."
"It simplifies building out the storage."
"The first year, we started out with one or five terabytes and it took what was 20 terabytes of storage down to less than one terabyte."
"Running SAP on Pure Storage helps a lot without doing any further tuning to improve application performance. Our internal clients are happy."
"The solution offers amazing performance."
"We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."
"The price of this solution is good."
"Scalable and stable storage array."
"The product’s quality of service guarantees the performance of each workload."
"The solution offers very good reliable systems and storage for our clients."
"The most valuable feature of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is its ability to store data well."
"The FlexClone feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to do QoS."
"The most important features are the IOPS and the ease of the ONTAP manageability."
"The performance is the most valuable feature."
"The performance. The flash performance helps move data pretty fast."
"I actually did major projects where we used NetApp storage for some government agencies, and we were able to keep the storage where the government or the customer is able to own the storage while using AWS as their computing. That part was helpful to the customer."
"The most valuable features are the IO performance that we get, the cluster part, and the increased workload and performance with the SSDs."
"Our architecture has historically relied on RDMs, so AFF has enabled us to easily migrate from our old EMC PowerMax to the new NetApp. It's been pretty smooth. We have a lot of SAP servers in our environment, so performance is critical for us."
"This solution makes everything a lot faster. The time to move data around, boot and migrate VMs is much faster."
"If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it."
"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."
"They could improve the price."
"It's not so scalable. It's got moderate scaling capabilities right now. The clustering technology needs a bit of work, they need to improve that."
"I would love for them to have a hyper-converged solution."
"CIFS and SMB Shares cannot be mounted directly."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"They have a product, FlashBlade, which is their object storage integration, and that's something that we haven't integrated with yet. This might be an area for additional focus as it would play into scalability, because the very nature of object storage is that it's infinitely scalable."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The solution should change the licensing model and allow customers to choose features based on their requirements."
"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 Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series was very hard to configure. Installation of the product was very hard. These are its areas for improvement."
"I would rate the support of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series a four out of five."
"I would like Lenovo to add a feature like IBM Easy Tier to DM Series. This is a crucial feature for the customers."
"The licensing model needs to be revisited. It needs to be simplified."
"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."
"One minor improvement could be making scale-up solutions with AFF more cost-effective compared to scale-out options."
"AFF could introduce different subscriptions on the platform."
"NetApp could focus even more on the configuration."
"I come tech support with difficulty because I installed NetApp for many years I know what to expect when I call. When I don't get their support tech that I'm expecting and I'm trying to get to the right one, it can get very frustrating for me personally, trying to all-flash push my way into the right person. NetApp has the right people, it's just a matter of getting to them."
"Going forward, I would like improvement in the response latencies, capacity size, cache, and controller size."
"I would like to see a little more flexibility in customizing some of the SnapMirror stuff. We have been having a little trouble and, in the first round with tech support, they say, "Well, this is how we do it." It's not exactly throttled but it's limited in the number of connections it makes. We would like to be able to tweak that, to increase it a little bit, because we don't have half a dozen large areas that we are protecting, we have more like 40 or 50 areas. They run into each other a little bit and I don't want to spend time on them."
"We should be able to manage NetApp AFF as per the desired usage and needs."
"We have been seeing some challenges around the application layer implementation. We are having some teething problems now with the cooperation between the application layer and backups to things, like SnapCenter. This may be a question of product maturity."
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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