HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series comparison

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

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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 July 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 HPE 3PAR StoreServ is 3.0%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is 2.5%, down from 2.6% 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.

Uninterrupted upgrades accelerate performance with good support

Muhammad Saqib

System Engineer at Hybrid Tech

I would rate the solution eight out of ten. It should be noted that in Pakistan, some parts are not readily available, and we need to import them from Singapore or other countries. We encountered an issue with a customer where the midplane failed and was not available. We had to wait for several days for a replacement, even in a 24/7 support case. Additionally, we faced motherboard failures in the customer's environment, encountering two motherboard failures simultaneously. We obtained one motherboard immediately, yet had to wait ten days for another. These issues should have been resolved promptly given the 24/7 support level.

Provides good stability and is reliable in terms of performance

Gastone Canali

IT Consultant at Effegibi

The solution is reliable in terms of performance They should include a snapshot feature for the solution. We have been using the solution for two to three years. The solution is stable. We have 60 solution users in our organization. The solution's initial setup process is easy. It takes three…

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is scalable."

"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."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"If there is a problem then the HPE facility will detect it and immediately contact me."

"It runs. I don't have a problem with it. If it needs an update, I can do it in the middle of the day with nobody being the wiser. It is phenomenal in that respect. As a hospital, I get two hours every quarter to reboot things, so it is imperative that nothing goes down."

"We have much better performance than we managed earlier and are now saving lots of space."

"It's pretty stable and scalable. I think we've only had a couple of issues, three disk outages in six years."

"Scalability, because our customer is fast growing and our solution should be able to start very small and grow very quickly."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"We have additional space in the enclosures for additional disks, so we can scale up without any downtime."

"The most valuable features are their tight integration with VMware, their multi-node architecture, and their copy services, such as Peer Persistence."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pros

"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."

"Its initial setup process is easy."

"The solution is very easy to troubleshoot. It's one of the most valuable features. It also doesn't take long to deploy and normally it comes with a three-year warranty."

"This solution is good for virtualization and meets the need for CPU and RAM requirements."

"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is simple to use"

"I would rate the stability of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series as a ten."

"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 highly reliable, especially for block-level storage. It is stable, with minimal downtime and no issues beyond user errors."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series pros

Cons

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

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

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"I would like to have more details on alerting. It is not real granular right now. What It gives you is sort of basic, and we can't do a lot of tweaking on our own. We would like to be able to tweak some of the alerts for our team."

"I would like an easier user interface and setup to help with deployment. There were many areas of the setup where I was like, “Why don't we do it this way?” Therefore, some of the things in the user interface could have been more refined, so you don't have to click in 5000 different places to accomplish one goal. Less clicks means more efficiency."

"HPE gives you how to get everything going, but it would be nice if they could go a little deeper sometimes. That is always the case: To get the value-add, you have to pay for those services."

"The initial setup was complex, due to calculating the amount of performance that we needed for the floor."

"It needs better dedupe. It is hard for all the older generation arrays to put up dedupe because they tend to do the other stuff so much better. They have to keep the stability before any other new feature."

"I would like to see an automatic re-balancing system or functionality for adaptive optimization."

"It's still an older architecture, you've got a lot of physical spinning disks. I would imagine more the memory-based computing is coming."

"I would like to see a little bit more integration from a cloud perspective. In this way, I would have some more flexibility to do more with data, how to store it, and where I have it."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ cons

"The type of connection that is used in Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series should be improved."

"Improvements can be made to the product's performance."

"The features are limited."

"In the next release, I would like to see more functionality. But, again, it is an entry-level product."

"Its performance could be faster."

"There could be a snapshot feature in the solution."

"The product could support advanced software integrations."

"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."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"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."

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

"The product is expensive."

"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."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The tool’s price is higher compared to other products."

"It is a little more money, but it is worth it because it does it better."

"The price of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is reasonable, but buying upgrade licenses are priced very high. There are additional fees."

"As a school, we always have low budgets. We are a nonprofit organization. We do not have too much budget, so we care about prices, discounts, and especially about the product quality. The last 16 years, we have been an HPE customer. We are very much happy with HPE products."

"We have seen ROI. While the costs were quite high at the time of purchase for our environment, the ease of use and the fact that it hasn't failed all the time, working fine, that makes it worth buying."

"You can't get software maintenance from a third party. You have to do it from HPE, which is a letdown."

"Our licensing cost are $32,000 annually."

"It's very reliable and it was cost competitive with other arrays at the time that we purchased it."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is fair and low compared to other products in this category."

"The pricing for this solution is good compared to HP or Dell EMC."

"It is an expensive solution."

"For an all-flash setup, the cost is around $20,000 for a decent configuration."

"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 best thing about this solution is its price, which reduces our costs."

"The solution's price could be better."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user182013

Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at Rubrik

May 1, 2015

Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR

Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a…

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Educational Organization

50%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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

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.

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's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?

HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspectiv...

What do you like most about HPE 3PAR StoreServ?

The compression features are good.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE 3PAR StoreServ?

It is expensive, however, when we compare it to the features provided by HPE, the price-to-performance ratio is very ...

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

The price of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is very good. We chose this type of storage for the performance and the price.

What needs improvement with Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series?

The type of connection that is used in Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series should be improved.

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

I use Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series to replace the old storage in our infrastructure. Additionally, I use it in custom...

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Comparisons

Compared 28% 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 14% 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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HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 22% of the time

HPE Primera vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 21% of the time

HPE MSA vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 7% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 6% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 4% of the time

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Dell PowerStore vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 29% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 14% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 14% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 10% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 9% of the time

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series Competitors

Product Reports

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Download HPE 3PAR StoreServ product report

All-Flash Storage

Download Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series product report

Also Known As

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

HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage

ThinkSystem DE 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

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is an AI-driven storage solution that prevents issues before they occur by learning and adjusting in real time. The solution offers a tier-1 all-flash foundation for mission-critical workloads. HPE 3PAR StoreServ was designed with more than 3M IOPS and consistent sub-ms latency. It aims to transform midrange and enterprise deployments with solutions that scale from a few TBs to more than 20PBs. In addition, the solution is built to modernize data centers and is made to handle unpredictable workloads effortlessly. By implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you gain automated and rapid provisioning, hardware-accelerated deduplication and compression, and a multi-tenant design.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Features

HPE 3PAR StoreServ has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Flexibility: With HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you can easily deploy highly configurable, scale-out storage for multi-tenant workloads.

Always-on availability for your data: HPE 3PAR StoreServ includes an always-on resilient storage infrastructure for your hypervisors and applications. In addition, with Peer Persistence, your virtual machines (VMs), hosts, and data can move freely across data centers rather than being constrained by their physical boundaries.

Fast, scalable performance: HPE 3PAR StoreServ enables you to accelerate consistent mixed-workload performance and also provides necessary QoS levels that are optimized for your highest priority applications.

Performance insights: HPE 3PAR StoreServ helps you gain performance insights in real time, and anticipate as well as prevent issues across the infrastructure stack by utilizing cross-stack analytics.

Flash optimized data protection: With tier-1 data services, multi-tenant security, and copy data management, you can avoid downtime.

Seamless data mobility: HPE 3PAR StoreServ makes it possible for you to not only experience converged data protection, but also experience seamless data mobility services, at flash speed, from the edge to the cloud.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Easy to manage. The web interface to manage the units is a great asset and one that makes managing storage easy.

User-friendly GUI

Exceptionally fast and well-managed replication
Low latency

Hybrid storage gives you the ability to assign different roles to different types of storage arrays inside one enclosure

Both file-level and block-level replication

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the HPE 3PAR StoreServ solution.

A SAN Consultant at a tech services company says, “One of the features that I like the most is the data replication element. The reason I like it is due to the fact that it's pretty clean on replicating data over to a second site. The product stands on its own in heavy enterprise environments. It's easy to make changes without affecting the environment. The solution is very easy to use. The product is very robust and offers very good performance.”

A Storage Manager at a financial services firm mentions, "There are a lot of screens for easy management where you can change some settings. But after a few years, the important settings were better after an upgrade, and all the vendors have other ways to upgrade their systems."

A Senior IT Infrastructure & Data Center Operation Engineer at Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) comments, “The adaptive optimization is the biggest feature in 3PAR. 3PAR is very usable with thin volume because it detects zeros while writing. Every time I tell the hypervisor to make the full provisioning, it makes the volume as simple provisioning in 3PAR, not full provisioning.”

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

The DE All-Flash Series delivers the performance of more than 2,000 15k rpm HDDs, yet requires only 2% of the rack space, power, and cooling. Because it consumes 98% less space and power, DE Series can significantly improve the overall efficiency of your IT operations while continuing to meet your performance requirements.

Lenovo

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC

Information Not Available

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series