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."The most valuable feature is that maintenance is free."
"The stability of Pure Storage is very very good."
"We also use VMware integrations developed by Pure, their plugins in our vCenter environment. They help by allowing our non-technical operations teams to deploy new data stores and resize data stores without me having to involve myself all the time to do those simple tasks."
"We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression."
"The most valuable feature is its upgradeability."
"All our junior partners can administer the storage arrays. It is simple and easy to use. We don't have to dedicate a whole team of full time people to work on it."
"The first set up we had was really straight forward and simple."
"This is the best all-flash storage array on the market."
"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is simple to use"
"We have been working with the solution for around a year and so far it has shown itself to be stable."
"Fewer features is not necessarily a negative as it leads to simpler operation and lower price."
"This solution is good for virtualization and meets the need for CPU and RAM requirements."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"Its initial setup process is easy."
"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."
"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 business copy solution has become faster using SnapMirror."
"NetApp AFF is based on Unix, which makes it secure."
"When we move to all-flash, our response times were reduced to microseconds."
"Deduplication"
"The tool's most valuable feature is efficiency."
"We have never had a failure. We can upgrade as we move along with zero downtime."
"I would say the consistency with the ONTAP versions and the speed and performance from the flash."
"The most valuable feature is speed."
"The only time that we had problems with it was that there was a bug in the VVol implementation but, outside of that, it has been flawless."
"We would like more extended historical data to help with some of the capacity planning. This is something that we are asking for all the time. E.g., what was the historical performance of this particular volume? So, we would like more historicals."
"It is a bit expensive."
"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current. I think it's bundled with the deduplication and other compression factors. We need more user interfaces for forecasting in this software and more interfaces need to be integrated with this array management tool."
"We have not seen a reduction in our TCO nor have we seen ROI."
"The support for NFS protocols right out-of-the-box need improvement. I'm used to other storage vendors who have NFS support right out-of-the-box, and Pure Storage doesn't seem to have anything."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve in the area of cryptographic information in the consoles. The user-friendliness could improve. The Pure Storage FlashArray team should come and log into the system with their maintenance credentials and then pull out the information as evidence of cryptography."
"The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features."
"There could be a snapshot feature in the solution."
"In the next release, I would like to see more functionality. But, again, it is an entry-level product."
"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 features are limited."
"Its performance could be faster."
"In the next release, I would like to see support for Hyper-converged infrastructure."
"It would be useful to have structured solutions replicated to other sites."
"The solution could be more scalable, although it suits our present needs."
"When comparing with Pure for example, with Pure you have no maintenance anymore and with NetApp, you still need maintenance."
"I want an interface through ONTAP that look more like what it does for the E-Series with Santricity."
"Stability could be improved."
"I would like it to be an IP as our network is mainly IP-based."
"There are no pNFS with VMware VVOLs."
"One of the areas that the product can improve is definitely in the user interface. We don't use it for SAN, but we've looked at using it for SAN and the SAN workflows are really problematic for my admins, and they just don't like doing SAN provisioning on that app. That really needs to change if we're going to adopt it and actually consider it to be a strong competitor versus some of the other options out there."
"I really don't have anything to ask for in this regard, because we're not really pushing the envelope on any of our use cases. NetApp is really staying out ahead of all of our needs. I believe that there were firmware issues. I think it was just a mismatch of things that were going on. It could have possibly been something in the deployment process that wasn't done exactly right."
"Sometimes, NetApp support could be better. When the customers escalate, it can feel like everything's starting from scratch. These are rare cases. I'm not directly involved in support, but that's what I hear when something doesn't work."
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is ranked 20th in All-Flash Storage with 11 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 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 "Provides good stability and is reliable in terms of performance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, IBM FlashSystem, Dell Unity XT and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN and HPE Nimble Storage. See our Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs. NetApp AFF report.
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