We performed a comparison between Dell PowerStore and Lenovo ThinkSystem DE 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."This solution helps accelerate demanding enterprise applications. VMware workloads, the database, and Oracle Solaris are hosted on AFF, which means that our primary priority workloads are on AFF and that the secondary ones are on FAS. That includes the SAN national cloud."
"Snapshots, snap clones, backups, flexibility, and agility are valuable features. I like that NetApp AFF is easy to use. We can automate everything for our backups and use cases. It's fast and simple, and provides storage to all of our VMware ESX hosts. It expands easily as well."
"It also helps to accelerate databases in our environment. First of all, there is the reliability of things staying online and the small response time as well, from the MetroCluster, for all of the data that we're serving; and the applications are talking to the MetroCluster. It provides a very fast response time."
"The performance is outstanding when it's all Flash. That's the biggest bang for the buck that we get."
"I like some basic features like Snapshot, FlexClone, and advanced features such as SnapMirror, and SnapVault. They also recently enhanced the market with Cloud Volumes ONTAP. I think that NetApp is a very good product."
"The most valuable features are the performance and the storage efficiency, due to the compression and deduplication... The efficiency is very important because we can buy fewer disks for more data."
"The Snapshots and just the overall flexibility of the product have been great."
"In terms of the footprint, it is far more efficient. It has smaller, higher-capacity drives than our older unit. In terms of space, power, and cooling, it has simplified things."
"When compared to Pure Storage, Dell PowerStore's cost was quite attractive."
"The most valuable features of Dell PowerStore are the support for NVMe and SCM, which provides end-to-end performance and high IOPS, minimizing latency. It is a full-fledged storage solution."
"For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance."
"The support is very good."
"PowerStore is easy to use. All the drives use soft encryption. To upgrade it, you download the app, and it runs by itself. It's very easy to deploy, share, and create volumes."
"Dell EMC PowerStore is scalable."
"I like the performance of the PowerStore. When you talk about PowerStore, it's mainly about flash systems and high-end IOPS. The 1000T is a midsize box, in terms of the way the vendor positions it, but it is more than enough for our needs."
"The solution is extremely stable."
"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."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is simple to use"
"The solution is very easy to set up."
"ThinkSystem's storage performs well, and the price per gigabyte is good, especially on SSD solutions. It's also easy to use."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is quite an elementary box, no frills. It does not have all the functionality of the DM but it is acceptable, it does its task. It integrates pretty well."
"We have been working with the solution for around a year and so far it has shown itself to be stable."
"When it comes to the cloud, they might need to improve in terms of making it clear why someone would use a NetApp solution over cloud-made storage."
"It can get a little expensive if you need to add more disks. The cost is a pain point for us, especially in terms of expansion."
"NetApp should offer more training so everyone can learn about the products. Other vendors have a lot of training options. It would be great if NetApp would highlight how to use the features more so that every admin or person can gain more knowledge about this technology."
"When it comes to the connectivity on the back end, where the hardware is concerned—the cabling and the like—it could also be simplified to ease the communication between the nodes and between the other components of the infrastructure. I still find that a little bit complicated."
"Some of the graphical user interface changes in the later versions of NetApp have not been as good as the older ones, like in the 9.5 era."
"For ONTAP, in general, the deduplication ratio and Snapshot limitation are areas that need improvement. There is a global limitation on the number of Snapshots or clones that can be spun off of a particular Snapshot. If those limitations are increased, it might be helpful."
"The NetApp support could be better."
"During the initial setup, you need to know what you are doing."
"The only area I can highlight for improvement is that the 4:1 data reduction target has not been reached. This may be due to an issue with Dell EMC's initial analysis of data compression. As a result, we have had to add new physical disks to reach our goal of total available disk space."
"It's also only supported with a limited amount of switches."
"More demonstration and training options are needed."
"Could be improved by including a synchronizing feature for the file systems."
"There is no Synchronize replication feature on the storage."
"The price is on the higher side."
"Where the system needs to improve is by adding more enterprise features like replication on other sites. We would also like it to be much more aligned with the VMware version. For example, today we have two different versions of VMware ESXi running to keep the PowerStore online. It would be better if the software cycling was faster."
"I do not like having to use VPLEX for synchronous replication, as opposed to having the store software built-in."
"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."
"The solution could be more scalable, although it suits our present needs."
"ThinkSystem could be better integrated with backup software like Commvault, Veritas, or Symantec."
"Improvements can be made to the product's performance."
"It would be useful to have structured solutions replicated to other sites."
"In the next release, I would like to see more functionality. But, again, it is an entry-level product."
Dell PowerStore is ranked 1st in All-Flash Storage with 26 reviews while Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is ranked 18th in All-Flash Storage with 6 reviews. Dell PowerStore is rated 8.6, while Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Dell PowerStore writes "Saves us power and floor space, and we can quickly assign new data stores for our developers' VMs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series writes "High availability, helpful documentation, and responsive support". Dell PowerStore is most compared with Dell Unity XT, Pure Storage FlashArray, IBM FlashSystem, Dell PowerMax NVMe and NetApp NVMe AFF A800, whereas Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is most compared with Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, IBM FlashSystem, HPE Nimble Storage, Dell Unity XT and HPE 3PAR StoreServ. See our Dell PowerStore vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series report.
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