We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe and Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The most valuable features in Pure Storage FlashArray are deduplication and active cluster."
"We find the ease of usability and setup valuable."
"Their technical support is excellent. It's the best out of any of the vendors we work with."
"The solution is very reliable."
"Having an intuitive user interface to get things running is great."
"This solution is very scalable."
"Has also helped simplify storage for us. The other person we put in there, took about a week to implement. And we had both arrays set up within around four hours with a thirty minute drive time between the two locations."
"The ease of management is one of the most valuable features of this solution. I would have also said that it's pretty fast but now our SQL servers are starting to beat it up pretty bad."
"The storage serves the virtual environment. Most of our applications run in the virtual environment, and it serves nearly 30% of the bank's capacity."
"The solution is more available for IOPS warehousing, resolving issues, and reporting than other products."
"It is a very stable solution."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is one of the leading storage systems in the world...I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten."
"The high performance and high availability improved our overall processes."
"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe are its steady performance and usefulness in high-traffic environments."
"A key feature is that compared to storage systems that we've been familiar with over decades, IBM simply does not fail. The reason is that IBM is the only manufacturer that engineers its own flash module, and there is a key architectural difference from everything else that we have seen in the market. The difference is that the flash module has the computational capability, which allows reliability and capacity enhancements to be uploaded from the main controllers and run in each module. So, each of the flash drives becomes its own little storage system, and that is extremely effective architecture. In this field, with this type of system, IBM has made a statement. They've never had one of these modules cause an outage. So, the failure rates on these things are just in a whole different universe from what we were accustomed to."
"It's easy to use, has good stability, and many features."
"The most valuable features of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series are the dual controllers, available installation documentation, and the option of multiple host bus adapter interfaces."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"This solution is good for virtualization and meets the need for CPU and RAM requirements."
"Its initial setup process is easy."
"ThinkSystem's storage performs well, and the price per gigabyte is good, especially on SSD solutions. It's also easy to use."
"We have been working with the solution for around a year and so far it has shown itself to be stable."
"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."
"Fewer features is not necessarily a negative as it leads to simpler operation and lower price."
"Some services could be inserted directly into the SAN, so Pure Storage could complete with the HyperFlex."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see automated copy data management for SQL Server."
"The scalability of the solution is not as good as it probably could be."
"I like what they're doing, but some of my customers complain that they do not have all the bells and whistles and knobs to fine-tune workloads that some of the competitors have. In my opinion, that's good. All customers don't have dedicated storage gurus, and they can get themselves into trouble if they fine-tune too many of those high-performance knobs, but they do get knocked down. Pure Storage takes a hit in the minds and opinions of some of the customers because they cannot customize things as much as compared to a legacy storage provider's appliance such as NetApp, Dell EMC, or even HPE. I personally think 95% of my customers are better off letting the system fine-tune itself. That was something that you needed to do 12 or 15 years ago, but now with all-flash, the technology can handle what it needs to handle. Customers just end up shooting themselves in the foot if they are tweaking too many default settings."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"We need to add more storage in Pure Storage FlashArray with the cluster mode activated for us to have better performance."
"Most of our upgrades have not been as smooth as they should have been."
"With scalability, I have run into a little problem with our last upgrade. There were some undocumented limitations to the number of drives that our controller could run on. So, instead of putting in a new data pack as we had anticipated, we had to keep adding and removing to get up to the capacity that we needed to be. What should have been a one day process (or a few hours) turned into a month and a half process."
"The efficacy of the GUI in IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe could be enhanced, and it would be beneficial to include a feature that can prevent ransomware attacks."
"The ZIO interface could be improved."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is an expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved."
"The tool's architecture is complex. It also needs to add data utilization reports."
"The solution's compression feature could be better."
"The storage system itself should have built-in capabilities for different ransomware attacks."
"The pricing should be more competitive."
"IBM is currently not offering volume-based encryption or compression, while other brands or IBM's competitors are doing it."
"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."
"The solution could be more scalable, although it suits our present needs."
"In the next release, I would like to see support for Hyper-converged infrastructure."
"The features are limited."
"ThinkSystem could be better integrated with backup software like Commvault, Veritas, or Symantec."
"Improvements can be made to the product's performance."
"Usually, when a part fails, we have to replace it and it takes a while. It would be better if the part could be available locally here in Kenya so we don't have to wait so long to repair the solution."
"In the next release, I would like to see more functionality. But, again, it is an entry-level product."
IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is ranked 13th in All-Flash Storage with 19 reviews while Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is ranked 20th in All-Flash Storage with 11 reviews. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is rated 8.8, while Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe writes "Steady performance, responsive support, and high availability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series writes "Provides good stability and is reliable in terms of performance". IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, IBM FlashSystem and HPE Primera, whereas Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, NetApp AFF, IBM FlashSystem and Dell Unity XT. See our IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series report.
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