HPE Primera vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Lenovo are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.8, while Lenovo is ranked #22 with an average rating of 9.0. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 3.5% mindshare in AFS, compared to Lenovo’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 60% of Lenovo users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series and HPE Primera compete in enterprise data storage solutions. HPE Primera appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced features and long-term value.

Features: Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is valued for data management capabilities, reliability, and straightforward deployment. HPE Primera is noted for performance, scalability, and superior features for high performance and future scalability.

Room for Improvement: Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series could improve integration capabilities, ease of use, and mixed customer service reviews. HPE Primera could simplify its initial setup, reduce complexity, and shorten deployment times.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series offers straightforward deployment but has mixed customer service reviews. HPE Primera takes longer to deploy but has dedicated support and better overall customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series has a lower setup cost and faster ROI. HPE Primera is more expensive upfront but delivers better long-term ROI and value with its advanced features and scalability.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE Primera vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE Primera vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

September 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 November 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Primera is 3.5%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is 2.1%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HPE Primera	3.5%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.1%
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series	2.1%
Other	93.3%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

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Taufeeq Rauf

Head of IT at NATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL FACILITATION TECHNOLOGIES (PVT.) LTD.

Offers a simple user interface and is useful for data replication

I use HPE Primera for mission-critical applications. My company uses the product as a storage solution for our machines. The availability of HPE Primera in our company is critical for us, considering that we operate in an HA environment where we can't have downtime since we need to deal with cheque clearance for banks. The product's interface is simple to use. I am satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The ease of use of the product's interface has directly had an impact on our company's operations, along with the improvement in the availability and performance of machines. Compared to HPE Primera, I work with a much more reliable storage solution like Dell PowerStore. Compared to HPE Primera, Dell PowerStore's features related to deduplication are very good, and it also offers a physical storage capacity of eight TB, which can be expanded up to forty TB. I would recommend the product to others who plan to use it only after taking into consideration their usage and requirements. From the price and performance point of view, Dell PowerStore is a better choice. I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

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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

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

"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."

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."

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

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

"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"HPE Primera is stable."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to provide the IOPS ratio which is required by a lot of our customers."

"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."

"When taking into account the price, maintenance required, and performance of HPE Primera, it is an effective solution."

"Our customers have given very positive feedback about InfoSign, which is the management software for this solution."

"HPE provides good support through their customer service."

"The greatest advantage is the support when we encounter incidents, as HPE's support is highly responsive."

"One of the most valuable features is the ease of deployment."

More HPE Primera pros

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

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

"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."

"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."

"Scalable and stable storage array."

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

"The most valuable feature of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is its ability to store data well."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series pros

Cons

"The software layer has to improve."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

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

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

"It is on the expensive side."

"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 would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"We would like to have more flash storage and its stability. This is an area of challenge for us."

"Price is always important in Turkey, so HPE could lower the price to keep it competitive. It's not as competitive as other solutions in this market."

"There are certain features that require engineering-level access, which should be accessible to storage admins as well."

"The price of the product is an area of concern. From an improvement perspective, the solution should be made more affordable in terms of price."

"One of the drawbacks of the model we purchased is that it is not running NVMe drives. Even though they say that it is NVMe-ready, it is still on the SSD drives. The model that we purchased has only eight hard drives, and only the ones on the top could work on NVMe. The rest of them are still on the SSD. Its competitors, such as EMC and Pure Storage, are moving or have already moved to NVMe. HPE should improve this solution for NVMe. HPE should also improve IOs in this solution. IOs in HPE are weaker than Hitachi and Pure Storage."

"There really isn't any aspect of the solution that needs improvement for the customer other than its price."

"The solution could prove the reporting."

"Some application solutions can be more acceptable on the HPE Primera site."

More HPE Primera cons

"The Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series was very hard to configure. Installation of the product was very hard. These are its areas for improvement."

"Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series could improve by having a snapshot feature. Additionally, there can be other features added to help restore the data faster."

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

"I would rate the support of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series a four out of five."

"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."

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

"Many people do not realize that Lenovo has a storage solution, so better marketing from the vendor is needed."

"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."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

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

"The product is expensive."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"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."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"There is only a one-time license purchase needed and no additional costs. If HP could reduce the training cost, then that would be advantageous to the seller."

"The tool is expensive. I can say that HPE Primera is one of the costliest tools in the market."

"The license for HPE Primera is all-inclusive."

"HPE Primera is less expensive than HPE Alletra."

"HPE Primera is an expensive product but has competitive pricing."

"The cost is $75,000 for a three-year contract."

"I rate the product's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"From what I see, this is competitively-priced and HPE are doing their best to stay competitive."

More HPE Primera pricing and cost advice

"The solution is highly-priced."

"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'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

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

Comms Service Provider

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	2

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?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

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What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

See all answers

Which would you choose - HPE Nimble Storage or HPE Primera?

HPE Nimble is a versatile synced WAN San solution. It is easy to use and doesn’t require much training for admins. Th...

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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...

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What do you like most about HPE Primera?

For over a year, I have not seen any downtime in the product.

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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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 22% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 31% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs HPE Primera

Compared 26% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE Primera

Compared 7% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs HPE Primera

Compared 1% of the time

More HPE Primera Competitors

NetApp AFF vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 35% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 12% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 9% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 2% of the time

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

October 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Primera

October 2025

Download HPE Primera product report

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

September 2025

Download Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series product report

Also Known As

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

Primera

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

HPE introduces HPE Primera, a new storage platform designed to deliver superior simplicity, availability, and performance for mission-critical applications
HPE Primera advances the HPE Intelligent Data Platform, a portfolio of products and solutions designed to help customers transition from delivering storage to unlocking business value with intelligent data

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

HPE Primera vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

September 2025

Free Report: HPE Primera vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Primera vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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