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Dell Unity XT vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell Unity XT
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
196
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
25th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 7.3%, down from 10.2% 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 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Syed Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient data replication and fast IOPS have improved operational performance
Dell and a partner jointly implemented this solution in Auvink. We installed the Flash, which makes our IO operations fast and efficient. Replication is available, allowing us to replicate data simultaneously from one site to another. All-flash technology and vTXT enhance speed, and the IOPS are faster. The cache's IOPS are much better. Snapshots provide a unique feature for testing and make management more comfortable and easy. The platform is multi-supported and certification is more convenient and easy to manage.
Mark Richmond - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"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."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"The flash aspects of the Unity make it incredibly fast. The fact that you get that much storage directly on what is basically a 3U box to us, that density has been really useful."
"The solution is so easy to manage that I forget it is there."
"The product has helpful local technical support."
"Scalability is good."
"It has a very intuitive web console that runs in HTML5 and makes navigation and administration fairly easy."
"It has helped us be able to use less administrators per device or system. Therefore,we are more streamlined."
"It is definitely one of the most robust, solid, well-performing products that I have dealt with. It is set it and forget it, which is pretty amazing."
"It is scalable. We can add additional tools if we need to expand it."
"The servers are fast and affordable."
"Scalable and stable storage array."
"One of the most valuable features of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is the snapshot feature."
"It has been a perfect fit for the workload that our customer is doing."
"The price of this solution is good."
"The solution offers very good reliable systems and storage for our clients."
"Ability to cluster two storages together with HA availability."
"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."
 

Cons

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."
"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"Software updates have to be downloaded to the root of the device. This pushes the available space to 95% utilization."
"I miss storage groups. Now, if I have to add a LUN to a cluster, multiple host, I have to know which host is in that cluster. I have to write it down and that makes it hard. In VNX and earlier, I could simply put a LUN on a storage group and every host in the group had the LUN. This lack bothers me a lot because it takes a lot of time and mistakes are made. Sometimes, a Hyper-V host gets a VMware LUN and vice-versa. Not good."
"Data replication needs improvement as the future roadmap for RecoverPoint appliance is not there."
"The support portal needs fixing. Accessing a service request on the support portal seems to be a bit difficult, as opposed to just calling the 800 number."
"I would like better monitoring capabilities: more historical data with more insight into the performance for the database. We now use a separate tool for it. Therefore, it would be nice if we could have that straight from the tool."
"The interface can be a little challenging for someone new."
"Scalability of this solution could be improved."
"The only challenge I've ever had was with a Drive firmware upgrade."
"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."
"The tool's pricing is high."
"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."
"The solution should change the licensing model and allow customers to choose features based on their requirements."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is not stable. If I have sold fifty boxes, about fifty percent of them experienced failure."
"The Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series was very hard to configure. Installation of the product was very hard. These are its areas for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"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."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."
"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
"From an ROI perspective, I'll put it this way: When we've tried to buy other SANs, the Unity ROI makes it impossible to buy them. So usually, the only time we buy another SAN is when the ROI isn't a factor, because Unity can't do the job. From an ROI perspective, it's great because it beats everything else out. We've tried to look at other options but, at the end of the day, when you price it out, the Unity wins."
"Because of the attractive price, we were able to get rid of more expensive arrays, standardize, and get rid of a lot of spinning disks. We also got rid of more expensive flash that we weren't properly utilizing."
"It is an average priced solution."
"The Dell EMC Data Protection license covers everything, like a one stop shop. All our options are covered."
"I rate Dell Unity XT’s pricing a nine out of ten."
"While it has a good price to start, they could always make it cheaper."
"The pricing is reasonable. We're using the Flex on Demand pricing. It's really good for us when we pay for what we use. It made it easy to get it inside since it's an OpEx and instead of CapEx expense."
"The price in our country is very expensive and some of our customers opt for lower-cost alternatives."
"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 solution is highly-priced."
"The solution's pricing is similar to Dell and HPE."
"The price of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
67%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Government
3%
Computer Software Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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.
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 ...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
I saw that you have doubts about what you chose. I have a lot of experience with the constructor, honestly I can reco...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
They’re both great solutions and I’ve used both. EMC is being VERY aggressive on pricing which may be the undoing of...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
First of all the decision should be taken looking at similar products in terms of capacity and performance. I will sh...
What do you like most about Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series?
The product’s quality of service guarantees the performance of each workload.
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 ...
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...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
ThinkSystem DM Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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