Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs StarWind Storage Appliance comparison

Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs. StarWind Storage Appliance

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is 2.5%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Storage Appliance is 0.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

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. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

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Gastone Canali

IT Consultant at Effegibi

Provides good stability and is reliable in terms of performance

The solution is reliable in terms of performance They should include a snapshot feature for the solution. We have been using the solution for two to three years. The solution is stable. We have 60 solution users in our organization. The solution's initial setup process is easy. It takes three…

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Kishore CA

Senior Engineering Assistant at Bharat Electronics Limited

Offers stable performance even with a single node failure and manages everything with just two nodes.

The only drawback is that it takes a bit of time during initial synchronization, especially after restarting the environment. This is a potential area of improvement. There's a synchronization time, but it takes time. Initially, when we start the first environment deployment, it starts synchronizing between the storage. So, it is taking time. One thing is that even when you restart. Let's assume that the synchronization is completed and the storage is synchronized. Both storages are fully synchronized, and it is in sync mode. Now, if we want to restart both nodes, there is a case for maintenance purposes. You took both nodes for maintenance, and we rebooted it. Then, it should not synchronize again. It should be a checksum. And if there is a checksum match, there should be no synchronization again. So, one thing that should be taken care of. Another thing is that I used freeware- the community version, free license, which we deployed using PowerShare. In that case, it was very difficult to bring back another node when one node was faulty. Let's assume that both the nodes are working fine. And we found one node faulty. And we destroyed all the volumes in that and tried to bring it back. So that was a difficult factor. The final solution is that we were not able to bring back the failed node. So, we reconstructed a new data source for that. That is another drawback. In future releases, I would like to see the integration with VMware or some other things as a plugin model for VMware.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"I would rate the stability of Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series as a ten."

"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."

"Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series is simple to use"

"The solution's initial setup process is easy."

"ThinkSystem's storage performs well, and the price per gigabyte is good, especially on SSD solutions. It's also easy to use."

"Fewer features is not necessarily a negative as it leads to simpler operation and lower price."

"Its initial setup process is easy."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series pros

"The management interface is the most valuable feature for us."

"Another good feature is that you can pause the appliance if you want to move it from one location to another and then once it's moved you can resume it, this way you can physically move the whole cluster or storage without any downtime. Its really easy to use, if you have a good foundation in storage and clustering then you will need less then one hour to figure out how to operate it."

"Having instant failover redundancy helps me sleep easier at night."

"It is very easy to use and very cost effective."

"Its user-friendly interface makes it an attractive option, especially for customers who may not be highly tech-savvy."

"We saw an ROI. We have saved both time and money by using it."

"StarWind Storage Appliance is simpler and more effective than using Microsoft products. We chose it because it can be easily integrated with Microsoft."

"I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product...I rate the technical support a nine out of ten."

More StarWind Storage Appliance pros

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."

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"We need better data deduplication."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"It would be useful to have structured solutions replicated to other sites."

"Its performance could be faster."

"Usually, when a part fails, we have to replace it and it takes a while. It would be better if the part could be available locally here in Kenya so we don't have to wait so long to repair the solution."

"There could be a snapshot feature in the solution."

"The type of connection that is used in Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series should be improved."

"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."

"The features are limited."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series cons

"StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one."

"They offered onsite installation, but we chose to do it ourselves. That took longer and was more work for us but saved us a ton of money in the end."

"They could improve by providing integration with HP."

"StarWind should improve the synchronization time of its product. There should be a standard operating procedure (SOP) for synchronization to reduce the time it takes."

"StarWind no longer sells HDDs for primary storage."

"It needs more integration with backup vendors so there is native integration with it that will allow storage level backup/snapshots. I would love to see integration with Veeam and Commvault so it can be recognized by them directly and added as network storage."

"An improvement would be if they reached out to education customers with other available products."

"With StarWind Storage Appliance, it would be better to have an overall easier setup with a little bit of configuration changes since, currently, even a small mistake may cause the setup process to go wrong."

More StarWind Storage Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"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."

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"All of the features are bundled together, and you can renew the bundle with all of the features included."

"It is an expensive solution."

"The pricing for this solution is good compared to HP or Dell EMC."

"For an all-flash setup, the cost is around $20,000 for a decent configuration."

"The best thing about this solution is its price, which reduces our costs."

"The solution's price could be better."

"We have a five-year contract for providing support."

"The pricing is fair and low compared to other products in this category."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series pricing and cost advice

"We found that the price of StarWind was very good compared to VMware or Nutanix."

"On the homepage, you can not see the pricing."

"StarWind by far provides the best bang for the buck."

"With StarWind Storage Appliance, the payments made towards the licensing part of the product are on a per-node basis, making it cost-effective for us to use the solution in our company."

"I rate StarWind Storage Appliance's pricing an eight out of ten."

"The cost is determined by various factors, including the amount of terabyte storage you require, the number of nodes you want to purchase, and the duration of your maintenance agreement"

"It costs about 50,000 euros."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

University

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

What do you like most about Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series?

The solution's initial setup process is easy.

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 do you like most about StarWind Storage Appliance?

I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product...I rate the technical ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Storage Appliance?

I rate StarWind Storage Appliance's pricing an eight out of ten.

What needs improvement with StarWind Storage Appliance?

StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one.

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Comparisons

Compared 30% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

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Dell PowerStore vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 31% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 13% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 13% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series

Compared 8% of the time

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FreeNAS vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 32% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 19% of the time

Scality RING vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 17% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 17% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 15% of the time

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Product Reports

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

All-Flash Storage

Download Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series product report

StarWind Storage Appliance

Download StarWind Storage Appliance product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

ThinkSystem DE Series

No data available

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

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.

Lenovo

For SMB and Enterprises who are looking for high performance primary storage for server virtualization, VDI, database and Big Data scenarios, or inexpensive secondary backup tier, our solution is StarWind Storage Appliance. It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, and associated software into an easily scalable storage platform.

Additionally, the appliance features an optional gateway to Azure public cloud, which helps to implement an effective Disaster Recovery plan or meet regulatory requirements. StarWind SA scales up by adding individual disks and flash modules, or JBODs, while adding ready controller nodes allows scaling out.

StarWind SA targets those, who need high-performance primary storage or secondary storage for backup. In case there is a whole virtualization infrastructure to build from scratch, StarWind HCA will come in handy. Otherwise, if all the required hardware is present, StarWind Virtual SAN will be enough to build a high-performance virtualization setup.

StarWind

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon

Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs. StarWind Storage Appliance