Dell SC Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series comparison

Dell Technologies and Lenovo are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #17 with an average rating of 9.0, while Lenovo is ranked #21 with an average rating of 9.0. Dell Technologies holds a 0.8% mindshare in AFS, compared to Lenovo’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 60% of Lenovo users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Dell SC Series and Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series offer competitive storage solutions. Pricing and support favor Dell SC Series; however, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series stands out for its advanced features, justifying the higher cost.

Features: Dell SC Series offers automated data storage management, efficient migration tools, and intuitive data optimization. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series provides robust data protection, scalable architecture, and advanced data management capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Dell SC Series needs better integration flexibility, more intuitive management tools, and enhanced user interface design. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series could improve its initial setup process, reduce complexity, and simplify configuration protocols.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell SC Series is known for straightforward deployment and reliable customer service. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, while somewhat complex during setup, compensates with highly responsive support.

Pricing and ROI: Dell SC Series is cost-effective with quick ROI due to lower setup costs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, despite a higher price, provides long-term ROI through advanced features and extended benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell SC Series vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

June 2025

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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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 0.8%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is 2.2%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

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Steven McClendon

Data Center Server & Storage Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Superior platform with excellent snapshots and cost-saving auto-tiering

I'm a big fan of the SC Series platform. Its feature set is superior to some of the other platforms. The snapshots on SC are excellent, allowing for multiple snapshot schedules for any one system. The auto-tiering functionality intelligently moves new data to the highest performance tier and then progresses it down to less expensive tiers over time, providing cost savings for customers.

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Mark Richmond

Chief Technology Officer at Next Level Communications

Reliable and fast servers with good support

We use on-premise servers with Lenovo ThinkSystem. We set up Hyper-V and load multiple types of servers including a domain controller, a SQL Server, and application servers The solution provides fast servers that are reasonably priced. We set up RAID ten to ensure drive redundancy, leading to…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"Customers are most impressed with SC's provisioning because you don't need to buy a large amount of storage upfront. It's pay-as-you-grow. It also has solid compression and duplication features."

"The most valuable features are the with back-end dedupe, and the thin nodes. For a 20TB or 60TB, we're using almost a one-to-two ratio."

"I think that Dell EMC is one of the best technical support services in Ukraine."

"One time, we had a drive fail and we were notified before we even saw it on the device."

"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 flexibility of this solution has been valuable for our business."

"The performance benefits weren't surprising, we expected that. What we didn't expect were the densification benefits that we got out of going all-flash. We're able to put more applications on the arrays because of how all-flash performs. The way some of the application profiles have responded to all-flash has been really pleasing."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to replicate. We are running a financial company and it needs to be available 24/7. We can't afford any downtime."

More Dell SC Series pros

"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."

"The value we derive from using it is greater than other alternatives like HPE and Dell."

"The FlexClone feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."

"The price of this solution is good."

"Ability to cluster two storages together with HA availability."

"The solution offers very good reliable systems and storage for our clients."

"We are satisfied with the stability."

"The servers are fast and affordable."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series pros

Cons

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

"It is on the expensive side."

"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"Compellent comes in the form of a component that's not true of a unified storage platform."

"It would be helpful if the solution offered higher performance, at least on the back end."

"We had times that we needed a file service solution. We've used FluidFS, but it's a solution that is being transitioned out."

"I don't think the solution is very scalable."

"While the price is competitive, in the next release it would be better if they could reduce the fees."

"The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series."

"Some menus aren't so intuitive."

"This product should be a lot more user-friendly."

More Dell SC Series cons

"The licensing model needs to be revisited. It needs to be simplified."

"There might be improvements needed in drive throughput as disk speed has been a limitation on Windows servers."

"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."

"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."

"I would like Lenovo to add a feature like IBM Easy Tier to DM Series. This is a crucial feature for the customers."

"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."

"Lenovo could have a wider variety of storage solutions in the NAS space."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"The product is expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"It's absolutely affordable. Again, not having to do a forklift upgrade like some of the others have had to do in the past, it's very affordable for our customers and they continue to buy."

"There are costs involving the solution, vendor fees and product safety which are additional."

"Support typically depends on the array. It can range anywhere from $7,000 to a couple of hundred thousand dollars."

"We have found it to be affordable. Comparing the cost with other hardware, it seems to be right in line with the compute and the storage that we get with it."

"The SC Series was priced fairly. I wouldn't call it either expensive or cheap because we had a very tight budget, so if they were able to fit in that type of budget, they met our expectations."

"Always keep in mind, this is not just a enclosure with disks is a complete SAN as a service. There is software, license, and storage in one single solution."

"This product is too expensive compared to others, and I don't see any value in using it."

"The pricing of this solution is competitive."

More Dell SC Series pricing and cost advice

"The solution's pricing is similar to Dell and HPE."

"The solution is highly-priced."

"The price of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is good."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

22%

University

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

22%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

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What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

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What do you like most about Dell SC Series?

I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell SC Series?

Cost considerations are crucial when choosing between solutions like Dell and NetApp. Sometimes Dell offers better pe...

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What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?

In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage. If I want...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?

There are extra expenses beyond the standard licensing fee for features such as replication and deduplication, which ...

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What needs improvement with Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?

The deployment process of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is very complicated compared to previous GUI systems. Many cus...

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What is your primary use case for Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?

My primary use case for Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series ( /products/lenovo-thinksystem-dm-series-reviews ) is for storag...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 29% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 19% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

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Dell PowerStore vs Dell SC Series

Compared 60% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell SC Series

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell SC Series

Compared 9% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell SC Series

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell SC Series

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell SC Series Competitors

NetApp AFF vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 39% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 14% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 7% of the time

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

June 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

June 2025

Download Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

SC Series Storage, Compellent

ThinkSystem DM Series

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

Dell EMC SC Series arrays provide a unified platform for the ultimate in performance, adaptability and machine-driven efficiency. SC Series software delivers modern features that help you meet aggressive workload demands using the fewest drives necessary. With an open, future-ready design, SC Series storage integrates seamlessly with applications and infrastructure, enabling you to scale on a single platform and add capabilities without forklift upgrades.

Dell Technologies

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.

Lenovo

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

June 2025

Free Report: Dell SC Series vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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