Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs NetApp AFF comparison

Sponsored
 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
1.0
Organizations reduced costs and improved performance with Pure FlashArray X NVMe, achieving quick ROI and efficient resource management.
Sentiment score
2.8
Customers achieved cost savings and improved efficiency with Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, benefiting from better data management and scalable solutions.
Sentiment score
6.7
NetApp AFF boosts ROI with improved performance, efficiency, reduced costs, and enhanced productivity through flash technology and reliability.
If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe's technical support is praised for responsiveness, despite occasional follow-up issues, earning high customer satisfaction.
Sentiment score
4.9
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series customer service experiences are mixed, with some praising it and others citing poor support.
Sentiment score
7.7
NetApp AFF's customer service is praised for responsiveness, though some users highlight delay issues in technical support escalation.
Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
Technical support is good at least through vendors, not directly with the principal.
Infrastructure Specialis at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The support for NetApp AFF is comprehensive—not just the documentation for self-guided reading, but for simple questions, spare parts, or urgent needs, you can have a contract that enables delivery the next business day or within four hours, depending on your process requirements.
Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have communicated with them, and they are effective and responsive.
Presales Manager at Spartec
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers scalable storage with low latency, easy upgrades, though capacity customization and high costs are noted.
Sentiment score
6.4
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is highly scalable for medium to large enterprises, though costs and connections can limit expansion.
Sentiment score
7.6
NetApp AFF offers scalable, non-disruptive expansion, ideal for various enterprise sizes, despite some cost concerns with controllers.
It hasn't broken down anytime in the last six to seven years, despite hurricanes, earthquakes, and power outages.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is scalable, and I would rate its scalability as a seven out of ten.
Service manager at Crescent Technologies
You can add more disks, more disk shelves, or migrate the data seamlessly.
Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would assess the scalability of NetApp AFF as excellent in handling massive data volumes.
Presales Manager at Spartec
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Pure Storage offers exceptional stability and reliability with outstanding support, consistently achieving high user ratings for performance and service.
Sentiment score
5.5
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is generally stable and reliable, though some users report occasional failures and resilience issues.
Sentiment score
8.4
NetApp AFF offers exceptional stability and reliability, with minimal downtime and responsive support, ensuring seamless operation and high availability.
I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.
Project Manager at a government with 11-50 employees
If I have sold fifty boxes, about fifty percent of them experienced failure.
Service manager at Crescent Technologies
They have always been upgrading very fast and implementing patches to resolve these issues.
Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Pure FlashArray X requires cost-effective improvements in UI, integration, cloud features, multitenancy, analytics, backup, AI, and scalability.
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series needs licensing flexibility, enhanced features, better service, and improved pricing and management.
NetApp AFF needs improvements in setup, support, integration, performance, flexibility, latency, monitoring, and management for competitive advantage.
One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert.
Cloud Architect at DXC Technology
Storage replication should be essential.
Infrastructure Specialis at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Many customers have lost data while configuring it, indicating a need for improvement.
Service manager at Crescent Technologies
The GUI of ONTAP Command Manager could be better, but the CLI is perfect.
Senior System Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Our backup system, Commvault, has an amazing capacity to do compression and deduplication better than NetApp AFF by itself.
Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
All of this is the same for all product ranges, whether E-series, NetApp AFF, or FAS series, because they are very efficient to respond.
IT Manager at Synergy Computers
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers see Pure FlashArray X NVMe as a justified premium investment due to performance and comprehensive licensing.
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series offers competitive pricing comparable to Dell and HPE but with complex cost calculations and optional features.
NetApp AFF offers competitive value with features included, often more cost-effective than Oracle and EMC for comparable performance.
While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.
Manager, System Infrastructure & Security at Organik Kimya San. ve Tic. A.S.
The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
There are extra expenses beyond the standard licensing fee for features such as replication and deduplication, which are available on demand.
Service manager at Crescent Technologies
NetApp support is cheaper than Dell support.
Senior System Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
While it is not cheap, they have introduced a new series of AFF that are more affordable.
Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The licensing cost of the product is expensive, and when combined with support, it becomes quite costly.
Presales Manager at Spartec
 

Valuable Features

Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers exceptional performance, reliability, scalability, and seamless VMware integration, enhancing workload efficiency and user experience.
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is praised for FlexClone, cloud tiering, data efficiency, and ONTAP features, offering superior service.
NetApp AFF excels in speed, low latency, and integration, offering efficient storage, high reliability, and scalability for varied needs.
Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed.
Manager, System Infrastructure & Security at Organik Kimya San. ve Tic. A.S.
We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options.
Project Manager at a government with 11-50 employees
One of the most valuable features of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is the snapshot feature.
Service manager at Crescent Technologies
You can even download the ONTAP simulator and deploy it on your virtualization platform and test almost all features.
Senior System Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Data reduction capabilities such as deduplication, compression, and compaction are standard features included with the license in NetApp AFF.
Presales Manager at Spartec
They have 4:1 data reduction techniques, which is really very high. If you have a size of 100 terabytes, you will get 400 terabytes of usable capacity when applying compression, deduplication, or other data reduction technologies.
IT Manager at Synergy Computers
 

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 DM Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
22nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
14
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 January 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is 2.0%, down from 2.3% 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 NVMe1.4%
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series2.0%
Other87.8%
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.
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.
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.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
879,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
21%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Retailer
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
5%
 

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 Business13
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
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 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...
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 DM 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 DM Series vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.