Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs NetApp AFF comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series and NetApp AFF 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.
To learn more, read our detailed Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs. NetApp AFF Report (Updated: May 2023).
709,643 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
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 the Pure Storage Flash Array is the blazing fast monitoring.""It is always out of the box, and ready to use.""The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is its high stability level.""We've been using FlashArray's snapshot for backups. Their replication across sites and response time are also excellent.""The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are the management view of the solutions, ease of provision, and deprovision, it is fantastic.""The code upgrades are very smooth.""The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the all-flash storage performance, low latency, and efficiency of their de-duplication technology. Additionally, the ease of use is good compared to other storage systems. The features in data protection, snapshotting, and replication between data centers and sites are superior to other solutions.""The compression and deduplication features help to make the best use of the capacity."

More Pure Storage FlashArray Pros →

"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is simple to use""ThinkSystem's storage performs well, and the price per gigabyte is good, especially on SSD solutions. It's also easy to use.""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.""We have been working with the solution for around a year and so far it has shown itself to be stable.""Its initial setup process is easy.""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 is very easy to set up."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series Pros →

"The speed of data retrieval is the most valuable feature. We mostly use it for our SAP database and we are getting good IO from the hard drive.""The benefits of being on AFF are the phenomenal speed at which we're able to ingest data and index it, and the IOPS.""We recently started using the volume encryption feature, which is helpful because there are some federal projects that require data at rest to be encrypted.""The Snapshots and just the overall flexibility of the product have been great.""Regarding features, SnapMirror is one we depend on right now. It helps us provide snapshots to the customers on request. There are many scenarios in which we might take snapshots in various daily use cases. We trigger the snapshots, which gives us a sense of security because we know we have this technology in place if something happens.""The most valuable features are the performance and the storage efficiency, due to the compression and deduplication... The efficiency is very important because we can buy fewer disks for more data.""Technical support has been okay.""Other manufacturers claim simplicity. In fact, frankly, they do have an advantage in that regard, however, they don't have the functionality. If you were to compare one of those products to NetApp, head to head from a feature perspective, NetApp would wind up in the top 10."

More NetApp AFF Pros →

Cons
"The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release.""Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases.""The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in.""The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better.""Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations.""The price should be lower.""We would like to be able to connect to data tape for backup, specifically to the LTO backups.""It would be good to have metrics of the box's performance so we can see what it delivers, but currently, I can't see what it's actually doing."

More Pure Storage FlashArray Cons →

"In the next release, I would like to see more functionality. But, again, it is an entry-level product.""Its performance could be faster.""ThinkSystem could be better integrated with backup software like Commvault, Veritas, or Symantec.""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.""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."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series Cons →

"When it comes to the cloud, they might need to improve in terms of making it clear why someone would use a NetApp solution over cloud-made storage.""It would be better if they just improved the performance of the system.""From my perspective, everything works well. They've already announced that they have some features in their next release that make the existing investment more usable, by adding software features to your existing legacy hardware investment.""There is room for improvement in terms of support. I have noticed that if I sometimes call their customer care for a particular issue, they will give me another number and ask me to call that other team. It would be better if they could do a warm transfer. That would save customers time from calling all the numbers again and speaking to another team.""They should provide easier integration with multiple systems.""After the three-year prepay, the extended warranty is a little expensive.""This is an expensive solution that could be cheaper.""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."

More NetApp AFF Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "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."
  • "There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
  • "Pure is typically more expensive than everyone else. You get what you pay for, but I have lost deals to similar solutions because of pricing. They include everything, and that's another positive about Pure Storage. They aren't trying to nickel and dime their customers for different features. It is all included in one price. The license is by capacity, and the price depends on the capacity and the discount we're getting from the vendor. You get the SKU of the physical appliance, support, and maintenance, and that's it. You're licensed for whatever feature they offer. It is all rolled up into the price of the appliance."
  • "The pricing is reasonable."
  • "When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
  • "We consume it as a service, and that's actually something we really like, or at least I really like from the technical perspective. That's because it means there is no hassle when we need to upgrade arrays to add capacity. We just interact directly with technical counterparts, and we say, "Hey, we're filling up," and they say, "All right, here's another data pack." They ship it in, and we install it. So, the as-a-service model has worked very well. Given the outstanding data reduction rates, it has improved our profitability because we're selling allocated volumes as part of the cloud service or recovering those costs from our tenants. It is very efficient, but that has offset the premium price. It started out that way, but over time, as we've added capacity, the price per gig has gone down a lot because we have a lot of it."
  • "There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
  • "I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."
  • More Pure Storage FlashArray Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We have a five-year contract for providing support."
  • "All of the features are bundled together, and you can renew the bundle with all of the features included."
  • "The best thing about this solution is its price, which reduces our costs."
  • "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."
  • "It is an expensive solution."
  • More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The licensing and pricing are fine. As a reseller for the product, we need to make the differentiation in the minds of the customer. They are not just buying some tool that does only one thing, e.g., showing a LAN for a customer. The pricing is fair for what it is."
  • "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."
  • "NetApp AFF is an expensive product, although not compared to other vendors."
  • "The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. But if you have to buy any more disk space, it can be quite expensive."
  • "The list price of AFF is too expensive... they need to be careful with the pricing of the new NVMe disks. They are way too expensive."
  • "I looked at other vendors for other potential projects and thought NetApp's pricing was very competitive."
  • "There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost. The cost is very high compared to other devices."
  • "The only area where the product has room for improvement is the cost."
  • More NetApp AFF Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
    709,643 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure… more »
    Top Answer:Data deduplication is one feature I found to be the most valuable in the tool...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a… more »
    Top Answer:The solution is expensive. Our customers purchase a yearly license for it.
    Top Answer:Well, Is one thing NetApp Storage has vs other brand is the mix of protocol CIFS with NFS booth working together in the… more »
    Top Answer:This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended cost… more »
    Top Answer:The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matters… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    ThinkSystem DE Series
    NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray is the world’s first enterprise-class storage array that runs exclusively on the nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) protocol for memory access and storage. It represents a totally state-of-the-art type of storage technology. It offers users shared accelerated storage that delivers cutting-edge features in the realms of performance, simplicity, and consolidation. Pure Storage is fresh and modern today and will be for the next decade. Without forklift upgrades or planned downtime, Pure Storage takes the work out of storage ownership and delivers unprecedented customer satisfaction.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is built with simplicity and reliability in mind. The solution can be implemented and optimized in hours, as opposed to other similar solutions that can take days. It has no moving parts, which removes areas where it could potentially be vulnerable to suffering errors. It is highly stable and gives users the ability to manage system shutdowns in a way that  prevents data loss.

    Benefits of Pure Storage FlashArray

    Some of the benefits of using Pure Storage FlashArray include:

    • A much higher level of speed than similar pieces of technology. Pure Storage FlashArray maximizes the speed at which data can be transferred while at the same time minimizing system latencies that might slow the transfer down. Additionally, it offers users quick memory read and data access speeds.

    • A higher bang for your buck in terms of the storage capabilities you get for the money you pay. They are smaller in size than more standard storage technologies, but they offer flash memory, which enables users to store larger amounts of data than the current standard.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Pure Storage FlashArray is a highly effective piece of storage technology which stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its overall robustness and the value that it offers by way of its reliability and ease of use. It provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with this solution. Pure Storage FlashArray’s reliability and ease of use make it a highly valuable solution. 

    PeerSpot user Prabakaran K., a technical consultant at Injazat Data Systems, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."

    PeerSpot user Jason D., a cloud solutions architect at a tech services company, notes three features that make this solution valuable when he writes, "We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."

    The DE All-Flash Series delivers the performance of more than 2,000 15k rpm HDDs, yet requires only 2% of the rack space, power, and cooling. Because it consumes 98% less space and power, DE Series can significantly improve the overall efficiency of your IT operations while continuing to meet your performance requirements.

    NetApp AFF A-series systems are cloud-connected, flash storage designed to meet and exceed the performance requirements of business-critical applications and enterprise workloads. Powered by NetApp ONTAP data management software, AFF systems deliver industry-leading performance, superior flexibility, and best-in-class data services and cloud integration to accelerate, manage, and protect your business-critical data in the hybrid cloud.

    These systems support end-to-end NVMe technologies to deliver the industry’s lowest latency for an enterprise all-flash array, making them the superior choice for running the most demanding business-critical workloads and AI/ML applications.

    NetApp AFF is a robust, scale-out platform ideal for virtualized environments and can be deployed as an independent system or a high-performance tier in a NetApp ONTAP cluster configuration.

    NetApp AFF Benefits

    The AFF systems yield many benefits:

    • Reduce Cost:  Change the economics of your data center with flash - you'll consume 11 times less electricity, require 11 times less rack space, and spend 67 percent less on support compared to a data center using HDDs.
    • Increase Performance: AFF A-Series systems deliver industry-leading performance proven by SPC-1 and SPEC SFS industry benchmarks, making them ideal for demanding, highly transactional applications such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB databases, VDI, and server virtualization.
    • Simplify Operations on premises or in the cloud: Eliminate fragmented and redundant toolsets and combine visibility and manageability of storage instances with data services in a unified control plane across the hybrid cloud.
    • Secure your data: automatically protect your data from ransomware attacks and avoid paying ransoms, meet compliance requirements with ease, and create a Zero-Trust perimeter around your organizations data on premises or in the cloud.

    NetApp AFF Features

    Many critical features play a role in making AFF systems the optimal flash storage choice:

    • Take advantage of faster host connectivity with NVMe/FC and NVMe/TCP support.
    • NetApp SnapMirror replication software reduces overall system costs by replicating to any type of FAS or AFF system, whether it is all-flash, hybrid, or HDD, on premises or in the cloud.
    • Automatically balance and optimize your production all-flash capacity with efficient cloud storage.
    • Built-in, app-integrated backup.
    • Automatic ransomware protection, multifactor admin access, secure multitenant shared storage, and in-flight and at-rest encryption.
    • Unified architecture which supports file, block, and object storage
    • Scale out to 24 nodes, 367PB of effective capacity, and 4 million IOPS non-disruptively.

    Reviews from Real Users

    NetApp AFF stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its high performance and simplicity. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    PeerSpot user and Storage Administrator, Daniel Rúnar Friðþjófsson, comments “AFF has helped to simplify our infrastructure, while still getting very high performance for our business-critical applications. Having all these things working well on one solution is really good. We run this as the backbone for both Hyper-V and VMware as well as an archive location for Rubrik. So, it is great having one solution that can do it all.

    Because of the ease of it all, you have a highly tunable, high-performance storage system that alleviates a lot of problems. With its ease of management, you can quickly get your work done and go onto the next thing on your list.”

    Additionally, Mohan Reddy, Sr. Technology Architect at a Pharma/Biotech company comments on how “NetApp's ONTAP data management software has also made tasks simpler for us. There's no question about that. It has helped us run operations very quickly, saving us a lot of time. Before ONTAP, we used to spend a long time doing regular operations, but with the latest version of the tool, our day-to-day operations are much quicker and easier.”

    Offer
    Learn more about Pure Storage FlashArray
    Learn more about Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series
    Learn more about NetApp AFF
    Sample Customers
    Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
    Information Not Available
    DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization22%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company26%
    Government10%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company16%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization42%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Financial Services Firm5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise31%
    Large Enterprise50%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business70%
    Midsize Enterprise30%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business34%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise51%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business11%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise76%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise50%
    Large Enterprise36%
    Buyer's Guide
    Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs. NetApp AFF
    May 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
    709,643 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is ranked 19th in All-Flash Storage with 7 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 30 reviews. Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is rated 8.6, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series writes "High availability, helpful documentation, and responsive support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Provides us with quick options when restoring things for customers". Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is most compared with Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, IBM FlashSystem, Dell PowerStore, HPE Nimble Storage and Dell Unity XT, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, HPE Nimble Storage and SolidFire. See our Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs. NetApp AFF report.

    See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.

    We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.