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Kaminario K2 [EOL] vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
Kaminario K2 [EOL]
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (24th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Engineerdb78 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
A solution with a simple configuration and good stability but it's quite expensive
Access to technical support should be improved for our region. Technical support is good, but they're very hard to access. When we have a problem with this storage, it's usually related to a very bad configuration. All-Flash Storage is very, very expensive. They are important solutions so I don't really have any ideas about how to rectify this. The device could use better monitoring tools.
CA
Service manager at Crescent Technologies
Complicated deployment and poor support persist, affecting overall satisfaction
The deployment process of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is very complicated compared to previous GUI systems. Many customers have lost data while configuring it, indicating a need for improvement. The after-sales service is also very poor. Furthermore, it does not offer basic features like deduplication, and the service is generally considered to be very bad.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Pure Storage customer service is by far the best part of the product and organization."
"The initial setup is very straightforward. You simply plug it in and turn it on."
"It's very fast, easy to use, and the cloud-based management is good."
"The GUI is very easy to use and intuitive."
"Performance, dedupe, and that it works well with database workloads are its most valuable features."
"Pure Storage is extremely reliable — it's never failed."
"While all these products have their own uses, Pure Storage FlashArray is in a market of its own."
"The best feature is consistently lower latency, even when IOPS crank up to over 75K, and the product maintains submillisecond response time, which is incredible."
"Looking at what changed at Kaminario the last couple of months (and the last couple of years, for that matter) I’m certain we’ll see a lot of great innovation from Kaminario in their upcoming releases."
"The capacity that we're saving by using Kaminario's K2 is giving us a four-to-one ratio for our deduplication."
"Logic/software management"
"I think this product hits all the big features of all the SANs that are out there, all the storage vendors that are out there and more."
"Kaminario allowed us a solid state solution with marginal incremental cost."
"The speed and, for us in particular in what we're doing, the data de-duplication."
"Go with it. I tell people all the time they need to take a serious look at it."
"It is consistently stable; haven't had a single issue with it."
"My advice is to try it, because I think DM Series is a scalable all-in-one system with unified block and file storage and cloud tiering."
"The solution offers very good reliable systems and storage for our clients."
"The price of this solution is good."
"It has been a perfect fit for the workload that our customer is doing."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is its ability to store data well."
"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."
"The value we derive from using it is greater than other alternatives like HPE and Dell."
 

Cons

"If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it."
"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."
"Pricing could be better in comparison to other solutions."
"The product should improve its response time. I have also encountered issues with its configuration."
"Larger capacity and more storage ports would be the two things I'd like to see."
"I feel like there is too much automation; the user doesn't have any manual input."
"I would like to see them lower the costs."
"One thing I'd like to see in a future release is integration between their main storage array and what they call their FlashBlade product; to be able to snapshot directly from the primary array into multiple different backup copies on FlashBlade."
"Replication and de-duplication could be better."
"There are a few areas where the system could be improved. Examples would be that the system currently has a 15TB LUN size limit and that snapshots need to be scheduled through script API instead of the GUI."
"I'd give it a perfect rating if I could push it to 300,000 IOPS like they promote; we just haven't been able to push that many IOPS out of our system."
"I would like them to come down in price."
"Some of the nice to haves for us, in terms of today, would be VVols but again, it’s not a critical feature."
"I would love to see capacity on its DRAM. I know it's not cost effective for them to do it, but I think that it could be a big differentiator and was a big differentiator from the beginning."
"A single pane of glass to monitor/manage multiple arrays would be helpful."
"I would like to see LDAP for the management panel; I've been notified they might be currently working on it."
"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."
"Many people do not realize that Lenovo has a storage solution, so better marketing from the vendor is needed."
"The solution needs a simpler licensing theme around the DM series."
"There might be improvements needed in drive throughput as disk speed has been a limitation on Windows servers."
"Lenovo could have a wider variety of storage solutions in the NAS space."
"In comparison with other similar solutions, I think this one is the most expensive."
"The solution should change the licensing model and allow customers to choose features based on their requirements."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost-wise, I imagine that the product's price would probably give you a nosebleed if you were a younger company."
"Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"Cost-wise, it's been very effective."
"Pricing is moderate. It is neither cheap nor expensive."
"I would prefer that they lower their pricing."
"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."
"It is not the cheapest one out there. We're paying yearly, but I'm not 100% sure."
"The licensing is all-inclusive."
"All features are provided in the licensing. The cost of Kaminario was less than the cost of a hybrid array."
"Licensing is very straightforward. The cost was considerably lower than other products we looked at."
"The "extra" costs associated with features and options that are available off the shelf with Kaminario, make their value proposition extremely competitive."
"Kaminario is very competitive on price. They also have a pay per TB model."
"The Kaminario setup is simple and there are no hidden licensing fees so this area is a relief."
"I would like them to come down in price. It is as expensive as EMC, Hitachi, and other major vendors."
"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 solution is highly-priced."
"The price of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Construction Company
15%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
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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 ...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
ThinkSystem DM Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Wargaming.net, El Rio Community Health Center, ECN, SpotOption, Ashkelon College, Clearwater Analytics, Intigua, Cobb EMC Customer Case Study
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