Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs SolidFire comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series and SolidFire 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.
To learn more, read our detailed Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. SolidFire Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable feature is that maintenance is free.""The most valuable feature is it never goes down. We can expand and create volumes.""The most valuable features are the replication of data and the continuous snapshot that we can take from the disc.""It's simple, powerful, and ready to use.""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.""It has good stability for our company.""It is all-flash. This makes it a lot faster than the rest of what we have, as it is able to drive high I/O loads, which is big for us.""All updates, upgrades, and hardware work are all performed on-line with no impact."

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"The FlexClone feature is the solution's most valuable aspect.""The solution offers very good reliable systems and storage for our clients.""Scalable and stable storage array.""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 product’s quality of service guarantees the performance of each workload.""The price of this solution is good.""The most valuable feature of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is its ability to store data well."

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"The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential.""Templates are already predefined for it. If you're coding it up, it will take two days. You can pick up a template right there from the API, and it just works for you. Implementation done in 10 minutes.""The system efficiency is excellent overall.""If we get complaints about any kind of performance metric issues, whether it's storage related or something on the virtual side, we use it to pinpoint what the actual issue is.""It's got full API functionality and the performance is pretty steady.""SolidFire is one of the products that does have great APIs right out-of-the-box. It works great. The tools and the other stuff seem to work a little better right out-of-the-box than the ONTAP stuff does, C-Mode.""SolidFire provides seamless performance across your storage system when you need to scale up. Other storage systems do not do that.""Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

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Cons
"We haven't seen ROI yet.""In the next release I would like to see integration into other third-party player providers like Google.""Its price needs improvement. Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution.""I would like to see some improvements on the FlashBlade side around the CIFS space support. I am not super familiar with all the different NAS protocols that they run on their box, but there could be some improvements made on SMB CIFS side.""The initial setup was a little complex. We had some initial issues with the design and had to help correct some of the white papers for it, but it wasn't your standard use case.""There was some complexity in the initial setup.""I'd like to see a move towards individual VMs for what the performance of each VM is in a VD infrastructure. I can see the overall volume, but I would love to see things in a more granular level on the VM side.""We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."

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"I would like Lenovo to add a feature like IBM Easy Tier to DM Series. This is a crucial feature for the customers.""This is an expensive solution.""Many people do not realize that Lenovo has a storage solution, so better marketing from the vendor is needed.""I would rate the support of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series a four out of five.""The solution should change the licensing model and allow customers to choose features based on their requirements.""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.""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."

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"The inclusion of more protocols and interfaces would make it easier to integrate with other products.""One of the challenges we faced while using SolidFire was that the product line that we were using in our company was discontinued.""The scalability of HCI or SolidFire as such isn't a concern, but when you compare it to PowerMax or NetApp AFF series devices, scalability is a concern because it's only the drives that are connected to the nodes. We don't have any shelf connectivity.""I would like to see integration with the cloud, number one. Being able to spin SolidFire in the cloud.""For example, the ease of use with the reporting. Right now it's not impossible, but you have to know Sequel. It's a little time consuming to get those customized reports in there.""We had some false positives, power supplies failing, and that's really been about it. We had a couple of glitches during some upgrade processes but nothing that was really concerning to us.""When you set up the nodes, we have to serial into each one of these nodes to configure the IP ranges. It's still very easy, but it's time consuming.""SolidFire could improve in terms of hardware robustness."

More SolidFire Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
  • "There is always room for negotiation."
  • "The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."
  • "It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
  • "For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
  • "We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)."
  • "It is a cheaper solution."
  • "Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
  • More Pure Storage FlashArray Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Lenovo offers two software tiers for the DM Series: basic and premium. If you need more features like the MetroCluster, you must buy the premium version. You can stick to the basic software if you don't need MetroCluster or features like asynchronous replication. That makes DM Series a little cheaper."
  • "The price of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is good."
  • "The solution is highly-priced."
  • More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We would probably use SolidFire more, except we're getting more bang for our buck with our purchases of ONTAP right now, and the deal we made with NetApp, so it's more of just a cost decision"
  • "The price of this solution is more expensive than others."
  • "Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."
  • "On a scale where one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the solution between three and four. It is an expensive solution."
  • "It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for what you get."
  • More SolidFire Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure… more »
    Top Answer:We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
    Top Answer:We have customers who use a three-year or five-year license. We also have customers who use Evergreen.
    Top Answer:The product’s quality of service guarantees the performance of each workload.
    Top Answer:The solution is highly-priced. I rate the pricing a six or seven out of ten.
    Top Answer:A lot of customers do not need all the features in the solution. However, we can only buy the solution as a bundle with… more »
    Top Answer:The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance… more »
    Top Answer:It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for… more »
    Top Answer:There is room for improvement with a focus on creating a centralized storage system, functioning similar to AWS. This… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    ThinkSystem DM Series
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray is the world’s first enterprise-class storage array that runs exclusively on the nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) protocol for memory access and storage. It represents a totally state-of-the-art type of storage technology. It offers users shared accelerated storage that delivers cutting-edge features in the realms of performance, simplicity, and consolidation. Pure Storage is fresh and modern today and will be for the next decade. Without forklift upgrades or planned downtime, Pure Storage takes the work out of storage ownership and delivers unprecedented customer satisfaction.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is built with simplicity and reliability in mind. The solution can be implemented and optimized in hours, as opposed to other similar solutions that can take days. It has no moving parts, which removes areas where it could potentially be vulnerable to suffering errors. It is highly stable and gives users the ability to manage system shutdowns in a way that  prevents data loss.

    Benefits of Pure Storage FlashArray

    Some of the benefits of using Pure Storage FlashArray include:

    • A much higher level of speed than similar pieces of technology. Pure Storage FlashArray maximizes the speed at which data can be transferred while at the same time minimizing system latencies that might slow the transfer down. Additionally, it offers users quick memory read and data access speeds.

    • A higher bang for your buck in terms of the storage capabilities you get for the money you pay. They are smaller in size than more standard storage technologies, but they offer flash memory, which enables users to store larger amounts of data than the current standard.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Pure Storage FlashArray is a highly effective piece of storage technology which stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its overall robustness and the value that it offers by way of its reliability and ease of use. It provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with this solution. Pure Storage FlashArray’s reliability and ease of use make it a highly valuable solution. 

    PeerSpot user Prabakaran K., a technical consultant at Injazat Data Systems, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."

    PeerSpot user Jason D., a cloud solutions architect at a tech services company, notes three features that make this solution valuable when he writes, "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."

    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.

    SolidFire delivers all five core elements needed to deliver newfound storage agility to your next generation data center and beyond. With SolidFire you can deploy new applications and capabilities faster, provide more agile and scalable infrastructure, increase application performance and predictability, enable automation and end-user self-service and raise operational efficiency and reduce cost.

    Sample Customers
    Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
    Information Not Available
    California Public Utilities Commission, RFA, 1&1, Ultimate Software , Endicia, ezVerify, MercadoLibre, Sungard Availability Services, ServInt, Elastx, Hosted Network, Colt, Crucial, iWeb, Datapipe, Databarracks
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization31%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company22%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider27%
    Retailer20%
    Pharma/Biotech Company7%
    Transportation Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Real Estate/Law Firm6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise57%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise40%
    Large Enterprise42%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business62%
    Midsize Enterprise8%
    Large Enterprise31%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise48%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise53%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise67%
    Buyer's Guide
    Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. SolidFire
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. SolidFire and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is ranked 21st in All-Flash Storage with 10 reviews while SolidFire is ranked 19th in All-Flash Storage with 33 reviews. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is rated 7.4, while SolidFire is rated 8.2. 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 SolidFire writes "A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance". Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is most compared with NetApp AFF, Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series, Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore and NetApp FAS Series, whereas SolidFire is most compared with NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore and VMware vSAN. See our Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. SolidFire report.

    See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.

    We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.