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DDN IntelliFlash vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
DDN IntelliFlash
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
31st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (15th)
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
21st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 6.9%, up from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DDN IntelliFlash is 1.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is 1.6%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray6.9%
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series1.6%
DDN IntelliFlash1.6%
Other89.9%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Anil Rahulwar - PeerSpot reviewer
L3 Storage Engineer at Capgemini
Good customer service and support and suitable for large environments
It is very easy to install. Users don't need to remember anything while deploying IntelliFlash because everything will be taken care of by tech support. They can easily modify the installation or change the password with the help of the tech support. It is very easy to integrate IntelliFlash with other solutions. We have plugins that can be integrated with other solutions. It will require maintenance. It is the same as any other storage solution: updates and upgrades, firmware upgrades, and drive upgrades.
GP
System Administrator at PORTGUARDIAN.COM SRL
Reliable synchronous replication has protected our infrastructure and improved disaster recovery
I do not have anything else to add about how I'm using Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series beyond what I have already discussed. I do not have comprehensive information about all the features, but I can say that we have obtained many performance benefits from the storage using SSD Enterprise disk. Regarding Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series's AI capabilities, I think the best practice is to use it with double factor authentication and AI integration. I believe the accuracy and reliability of output for Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series are very good, but I do not have detailed information; I would need to think deeply and try to understand more thoroughly on the web interface to provide more specific feedback. My advice for others looking into using Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is to seek a stable infrastructure with a standard price—not a high price, not a low price, but a standard price with high performance. My overall rating for this product is 10.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Despite the overuse of buzzwords and re-classifications, the storage industry has actually seen dramatic improvements over the last 3-4 years."
"Its array houses our entire production environment."
"One valuable feature of the Pure Storage FlashArray is its Flash-based architecture, which provides a significant advantage."
"This is a very good product at a very good price, with very good support."
"Their support is top-notch, and their NPS scores reflect this."
"It has been very stable. I have not seen or heard of downtime storage issues after moving over to it."
"The initial setup was really straight forward."
"The ease of management is one of the most valuable features of this solution. I would have also said that it's pretty fast but now our SQL servers are starting to beat it up pretty bad."
"Data Compression: Up to 80% space reduction in the database"
"It has cut batch job runtime in half, so we're seeing performance improvement throughout the organization."
"Tegile All-Flash Storage Arrays deliver maximum performance, high density, compelling economics and it is ideal for latency-sensitive, business-critical workloads such as online transaction processing, real-time analytics, decision support, and data warehousing."
"Once we got this solution in there, we were able to get the reporting down from eight hours to under 20 minutes."
"Ease of Use: Someone can learn it in only few hours Performance: Easy Tier is doing miracles Data Compression: Up to 80% space reduction in the database"
"It's very fast. We were seeing read latencies of less than one millisecond. It is robust."
"We use IntelliFlash products for larger environments, like Qatar Airways."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The most valuable features of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series are the dual controllers, available installation documentation, and the option of multiple host bus adapter interfaces."
"The solution is very easy to troubleshoot, it doesn't take long to deploy, normally comes with a three-year warranty, and has the most features if you compare it to other models."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is cost-effective; there is no license, all of the features are bundled together, and you can renew the bundle with all of the features included."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series has impacted my organization positively, and I would estimate approximately 90% improvement."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is highly reliable, especially for block-level storage. It is stable, with minimal downtime and no issues beyond user errors."
"Its initial setup process is easy."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is simple to use"
"We have been working with the solution for around a year and so far it has shown itself to be stable."
 

Cons

"The problem is that we can only make a few groups, around five or six groups. I like groups and we need a lot of them. We had to put all the information in only a few groups and cannot make a more detailed separation of them."
"I would like to see the NAS add-on component become more fault-tolerant than just a single virtual machine running inside the array. I'm unwilling to use it for that reason."
"Some of the issues are that it's probably not on a par with other large storage enterprise type products."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current. I think it's bundled with the deduplication and other compression factors. We need more user interfaces for forecasting in this software and more interfaces need to be integrated with this array management tool."
"I would rate this solution an eight because we have had outages. The commit times went very high in the database. The whole array went down so our customers were down for around eight hours. This was a very big outage which could have been our fault because we didn't do the upgrade in time."
"I would like some performance analytics which go deeper than today. It should be specific to some hosts and applications. This would be good."
"I think the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray is the major issue because all the great things come with the price, and a lot of customers simply are not willing to accept it."
"In future releases, I look forward to more AI features."
"Snapshots are not as easy to access as on a NetApp device."
"It only keeps one hour of real-time data without the ability to do deep analysis of each element."
"It's annoying that if you turn on SMB3 (as opposed to the earlier CIFS protocol), then it is not possible to access a file store using a mixture of SMB and NFS."
"I would say it's somewhat scalable, maybe not so much as some of the competition, but we don't really care."
"Performance is horrible now. Our original intent was to buy new storage in about two years. But since it became a critical urgency for us, we decided to purchase a new one in two or three months."
"They need to offer better integration for a virtual platform to enable you to create hyper-converged solution."
"Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible."
"The features are limited."
"Scalability on rack-mount servers is not as good as with Blade servers."
"You can not buy a lot of options for these devices. There are a lot of things that it does not do."
"In the next release, I would like to see more functionality. But, again, it is an entry-level product."
"While it is a reliable product, it could be improved. It would be useful to have structured solutions replicated to other sites."
"Its performance could be faster."
"Usually, when a part fails, we have to replace it and it takes a while. It would be better if the part could be available locally here in Kenya so we don't have to wait so long to repair the solution."
"The difficult part comes when dealing with the host. You have to enable multi-pathing and other aspects that are needed for proper configuration. I don't know if there is room for a more hyper-conversion structure to work with, but this would be easier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
"The price-to-performance is good. I looked at Pure about three to four years back, but the price-to-performance wasn't right for us. Now, it's right."
"In comparison to the competitors, Pure is very price-competitive for the future functionality that it provides."
"It's a good price point and it's a solid product for the price."
"There is always room for negotiation."
"Pure Storage has not helped to reduce our HANA licensing costs."
"It could always be lower, but it's okay."
"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."
"I think we pay around 100 grand per year for three arrays or four arrays."
"I recommend the full bundle software in order to have all the functionality. It is more expensive to purchase it one by one."
"For an all-flash setup, the cost is around $20,000 for a decent configuration."
"The solution's price could be better."
"All of the features are bundled together, and you can renew the bundle with all of the features included."
"The pricing is fair and low compared to other products in this category."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The price of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is a one-time purchase. There is a global price list available to find the price of the solution."
"We have a five-year contract for providing support."
"The pricing for this solution is good compared to HP or Dell EMC."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Construction Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is very good because we are a Lenovo partner. For installation ...
What needs improvement with Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series?
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series can be improved with a 25 gigabyte connection or 100 gigabyte connection.
What is your primary use case for Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series?
My main use case for Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is storage for our infrastructure and replica with another data cen...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Tegile, IntelliFlash N-Series, IntelliFlash T-Series, IntelliFlash HD-Series
ThinkSystem DE Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Bank of Stockton, Barnsley College, Boyes Turner, Brigham Young University
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about DDN IntelliFlash vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.