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Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs NetApp AFF comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
21st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
314
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.5%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is 2.0%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 8.8%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetApp AFF8.8%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe1.5%
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series2.0%
Other87.7%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
GP
System Administrator at PORTGUARDIAN.COM SRL
Performance and cost-effectiveness are maximized with seamless setup and significant ROI
I use Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series to replace the old storage in our infrastructure. Additionally, I use it in customer infrastructures to migrate from the old storage to the new one On the M storage, I find the best features to be deduplication and compression. On the DE storage, the most…
KennethEtsula - PeerSpot reviewer
Presales Manager at Spartec
Offers seamless installation and efficient data handling with robust support
NetApp AFF provides an all-flash storage solution for unified SAN solutions, supporting both SAN and NAS functionalities. Data reduction capabilities such as deduplication, compression, and compaction are standard features included with the license in NetApp AFF. With the storage efficiency from a NetApp AFF installation, users can manage substantial data running on all-flash. The features such as compaction and compression provide storage efficiency guarantees in an all-flash environment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."
"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is simple to use"
"The solution is very easy to set up."
"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."
"We have been working with the solution for around a year and so far it has shown itself to be stable."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"I would rate the stability of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series as a ten."
"Fewer features is not necessarily a negative as it leads to simpler operation and lower price."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is highly reliable, especially for block-level storage. It is stable, with minimal downtime and no issues beyond user errors."
"It's very stable. It's always there when we need it. With the Dual Controller, if one drops out, the other one comes right online. We don't use any iSCSI so there is a little bit of a latency break but, over the NFS, we don't notice that switch-on. We can do maintenance in the middle of the day, literally rip a whole controller out of the chassis, and do what we need to do with it."
"Our AFF 8040 is currently helping us in terms of response time and speed because it is a flash system. Most importantly, it enables our SQL Cluster to respond to database queries and things a lot faster. It minimizes latency."
"We have a unified storage to access the file and NAS. We can do all the things in the same solution. We do not need any other product or storage mix."
"The storage solutions that we use allow us a lot more peace of mind."
"The most valuable features are the ease of administration and configuration, as well as the speed of deployment."
"It is user-friendly. Everybody can use it, not just the technical people."
"It is a stable solution."
"The cloning and snapshot features are the most valuable. With snapshot backup, we can clone a big database in minutes. We take a lot of snapshots for clients in different environments."
 

Cons

"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."
"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"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."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"In the next release, I would like to see support for Hyper-converged infrastructure."
"Its performance could be faster."
"The features are limited."
"ThinkSystem could be better integrated with backup software like Commvault, Veritas, or Symantec."
"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."
"Improvements can be made to the product's performance."
"It would be useful to have structured solutions replicated to other sites."
"The solution could be more scalable, although it suits our present needs."
"I would like to see better tutorials available, beyond the basics, that cover subjects like MetroCluster and automation."
"NetApp could focus even more on the configuration."
"We installed NetSender to test it. I think it could be a good solution. It is very small now, but will probably become bigger in the next few months to years."
"We don't have it in production yet."
"When it comes to the connectivity on the back end, where the hardware is concerned—the cabling and the like—it could also be simplified to ease the communication between the nodes and between the other components of the infrastructure. I still find that a little bit complicated."
"Our backup system, Commvault, has an amazing capacity to do compression and deduplication better than NetApp AFF by itself. If they can spend some time improving deduplication and compression, it would be great because it has been proven that some commercial features can do it."
"I do not like the NetApp GUI. For example, the GUI of ONTAP Command Manager could be better, but the CLI is perfect."
"The initial setup has a lot more steps in it than are probably necessary for a base deployment, unlike other vendors where it's more straightforward. It could be a little bit more streamlined."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."
"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."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The product is expensive."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"The pricing for this solution is good compared to HP or Dell EMC."
"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."
"For an all-flash setup, the cost is around $20,000 for a decent configuration."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The best thing about this solution is its price, which reduces our costs."
"The pricing is fair and low compared to other products in this category."
"The solution's price could be better."
"All of the features are bundled together, and you can renew the bundle with all of the features included."
"It can get a little expensive if you need to add more disks. The cost is a pain point for us, especially in terms of expansion."
"I am able to store two times more data than what I'm purchasing, which affects the way funds are being utilized."
"Once we did get into the NetApp ecosystem, we realized that the cost effectiveness was greater than we originally thought."
"In addition to simplifying the management across a mix of solutions, AFF simplifies the cost. That was one of the main reasons we purchased AFF."
"Always consider whether you can afford the solution."
"Other vendors may come in at a cheaper price point, but you will pay in the end with management costs and downtime."
"The price to performance ratio with NetApp is unmatched by any other vendor right now."
"We have been able to utilize and leverage equipment which was purchased a decade ago up until this past year. So, we were running disk shells for 13 years and all we were doing was upgrading the filings and controllers, and using the same disk shells. Therefore, we were able to do something where we didn't have to invest that much. Recently, we had to upgrade all our disk shells, but it was a lot less because the technology had changed a lot since those times. It is faster now, and we have SSDs. We have larger drives that are 4TBs and 6TBs. Everything can condense so we are saving disk shell space and rack space. We are paying less now than we did at that time"
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Comparison Review

it_user186357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect with 51-200 employees
Jan 28, 2015
NetApp vs. XtremIO
Is there another storage platform as feature rich as NetApp FAS? I think it is fair to say that NetApp FAS running Clustered Data ONTAP is a very feature rich platform – the move to the clustered version of ONTAP has brought many next-generation features including Scale-out and Non-disruptive…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
6%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise242
 

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.
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...
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 ...
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...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
Well, Is one thing NetApp Storage has vs other brand is the mix of protocol CIFS with NFS booth working together in t...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended c...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matt...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
ThinkSystem DE Series
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Information Not Available
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,606 professionals have used our research since 2012.