"We have been able to consolidate storage into Pavilion. Pavilions are our only SANs because it is a bring your own disk solution. When new drives come out, we are able to take out half of the drives in the system, put in new drives, move our VMs over to the new drives, take the other drives out, and populate those with new drives. Then, we are suddenly twice as dense as we were before. NVMe flash is only going to get denser and cheaper so we can make use of that every couple of years by just throwing newer disks into it at a fraction of the cost of a new SAN."
"The high performance is very valuable, as well as the enterprise reliability features."
"There's lots of flexibility in how we use the resources while also maintaining a small footprint."
"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."
"Stable flash storage platform with good scalability, efficiency, and speed."
"This is a tier three solution and it gives us what we need for archiving and backups."
"I have found Dell EMC Unity XT to be stable."
"Initial setup is a simple process."
"The most valuable features include snapshots, Thin Clones, and deduplication and compression."
"The setup and installation procedures are easy."
"We are happy with the way we have Dell EMC Unity XT configured."
"Last year, I did a DM Series installation with my colleague, and this installation was effortless because we had Lenovo support on the phone, so it was easy to get help if we had any problems."
"Scalable and stable storage array."
"Ability to cluster two storages together with HA availability."
"The solution offers very good reliable systems and storage for our clients."
"The price of this solution is good."
"The rail system that Pavilion uses to mount up into a standard Dell or APC cabinet extends further back than normal rails, and they cover up the zero PDU slot. So, I don't like the rail system that comes with the device. That is my biggest complaint."
"In our current configuration, we can only run the line controllers in high availability, active-standby mode, whereas we would like to see active-active implemented."
"I would like to see the management layer improved."
"It could be improved in the area of management flexibility. For example, I really need to set read-only access for LUNs, and there's no such option with Unity XT."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say its capacity and its connection."
"Having more artificial intelligence tools built into the solution would be a great benefit. This would allow us to see more about the workloads and higher visibility, such as performance degradation."
"They can certainly improve in terms of monitoring."
"I have a problem because between the Unity XT and the PowerMax, sometimes we need another product between these two products. There could be better integrated and the capacity of the size could be larger."
"This solution could be improved by offering containerization. This is something many of my customers are looking for."
"The pre-sales technical support and technical engagement could be made better for this product."
"Dell could improve Unity XT by adding support for NVMe."
"This is an expensive solution."
"I would like Lenovo to add a feature like IBM Easy Tier to DM Series. This is a crucial feature for the customers."
"The licensing model needs to be revisited. It needs to be simplified."
"Many people do not realize that Lenovo has a storage solution, so better marketing from the vendor is needed."
"The Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series was very hard to configure. Installation of the product was very hard. These are its areas for improvement."
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Dell Unity XT is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage Arrays with 29 reviews while Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is ranked 25th in All-Flash Storage Arrays with 5 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is rated 6.0. The top reviewer of Dell Unity XT writes "We can do both block and file storage on one unit without purchasing a separate device". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series writes "Reliable, but has a difficult licensing process and needs more storage". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS), HPE Nimble Storage, HPE 3PAR StoreServ and VMware vSAN, whereas Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is most compared with NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS), IBM FlashSystem, HPE Nimble Storage, Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series and NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. See our Dell Unity XT vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series report.
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