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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 (23rd)
 

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

"Before we used Pure Storage it took 93 days of employees who run the database to back up and restore databases, and the scale of deployment basically went from several days to a few minutes."
"The solution is stable with low vulnerabilities."
"I like the speed, and I like the API and how programmable it is."
"The GUI is very easy to use and intuitive."
"The support has been very good from Pure Storage FlashArray."
"What I like most about this solution, is the speed, resiliency and scalability."
"It has simplified our storage."
"The deduplication and compression rates are beyond impressive."
"The ratio between the physical storage and the storage we use is very high."
"Using snapshots allows us to automate production database refreshes to development environments in minutes, rather than in hours."
"It provides a full feature set without separate licensing (deduplication, compression, snapshot, asynchronous replication, stable performance, etc.)."
"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."
"Ease of use: My installers - my administrators over the system - they love how easy and fast it is to install and spin up a LUN and get going."
"The GUI is very straightforward and easy to use."
"Built-in snapshot support gives us SAN-side functionality most other platforms would have had us license separately."
"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."
"We are satisfied with the stability."
"Ability to cluster two storages together with HA availability."
"It has been a perfect fit for the workload that our customer is doing."
"The servers are fast and affordable."
"The FlexClone feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The most valuable feature of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is its ability to store data well."
 

Cons

"The solution is expensive."
"The problem is that we can only make a few groups, around five or six groups. I like groups and we need a lot of them. We had to put all the information in only a few groups and cannot make a more detailed separation of them."
"I would appreciate improvements on daily health checks."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services. There are increasingly more and more services coming out from AWS but there are also certain constraints where we can't move everything over to a cloud as well. We would like for things that are on-premise to be easily integrated with AWS."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"I think replication is one area that still needs improvement. Earlier, Pure Storage FlashArray only had IP-based replication. There was no API-based replication, but they have enhanced the feature now. However, they need to work on API replication for C-type of arrays."
"The price should be lower."
"In the configuration, which we brought in or tested it in, it has a very limited config as far as the array goes. That said, it still did more than our anticipation."
"The management graphical interface needs more improvement."
"The front panel of the drive shelf doesn't always seat firmly."
"The interface look and feel could be improved."
"What I think would be a great idea for Kaminario is more visibility outside the US, when my customers start talking about AFA I notice they almost never talk about Kaminario, mainly because they just don’t know about them, and there are no local sales team to tell them about the Kaminario offering."
"Some of the nice to haves for us, in terms of today, would be VVols but again, it’s not a critical feature."
"On the road map, I'm hoping to see Active Directory integration. Right now, you still have to use a local admin account to log in and manage everything."
"There are some mid-market SMB customers that it may not fit the best for from a pricing perspective, but for the vast majority of our customers, once we aware of it and learned about the technology which it performed with, it fits a very useful metric."
"I would like them to improve the look of the product’s external casing and shelves."
"The Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series was very hard to configure. Installation of the product was very hard. These are its areas for improvement."
"I would rate the support of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series a four out of five."
"In comparison with other similar solutions, I think this one is the most expensive."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is not stable. If I have sold fifty boxes, about fifty percent of them experienced failure."
"Many people do not realize that Lenovo has a storage solution, so better marketing from the vendor is needed."
"Lenovo could have a wider variety of storage solutions in the NAS space."
"The solution needs a simpler licensing theme around the DM series."
"I would like Lenovo to add a feature like IBM Easy Tier to DM Series. This is a crucial feature for the customers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In comparison to the competitors, Pure is very price-competitive for the future functionality that it provides."
"The price is reasonable."
"My organization has a yearly license, but I believe that Pure Storage FlashArray has capacity-based licenses as well. I'm definitely happy with the pricing."
"For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
"There are no licensing fees aside from the support."
"I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing. It could be improved."
"Pricing is moderate. It is neither cheap nor expensive."
"It could always be lower, but it's okay."
"The Kaminario setup is simple and there are no hidden licensing fees so this area is a relief."
"Kaminario is very competitive on price. They also have a pay per TB model."
"All features are provided in the licensing. The cost of Kaminario was less than the cost of a hybrid array."
"The licensing is all-inclusive."
"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."
"I would like them to come down in price. It is as expensive as EMC, Hitachi, and other major vendors."
"The solution is highly-priced."
"The solution's pricing is similar to Dell and HPE."
"The price of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is good."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Construction Company
16%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
9%
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 have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
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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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