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Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays 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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
218
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
23rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
24th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.5%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is 1.7%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 1.2%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray7.5%
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series1.7%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays1.2%
Other89.6%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
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.
Tayo Olubanke - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at GCET
Offers flexibility and top-notch technology
You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I appreciate the ease of provisioning storage on Pure Storage FlashArray."
"It is easy to deploy and it's all-flash, so it's very fast."
"If you factor in the ease in terms of operations, as well as the cost of the array compared to other solid state arrays, it becomes a clear positive for Pure Storage."
"Lone segmentation is simpler and more agile. It's improved the velocity in overall provisioning from project to operation."
"The most valuable feature is its speed."
"The money I saved by not renewing maintenance on the Dell EMC devices paid for the Pure Storage devices."
"The most valuable features are the ease of use and support."
"I am very satisfied with this solution and I would recommend it to others."
"In this solution, I like the option of clustering two storages together and that there can be HA availability."
"The most valuable feature of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is its capability to tier to the cloud, such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS, and the integration is good and user-friendly."
"Lenovo offers a good variaty of Storage Systems. Starts with DS, then DE and the most sophisticated version - DM-Series."
"The FlexClone feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The Lenovo ThinkSystem is used for everything in our company from ERP to BI, for production, PLM, CAD for designing, and everything else."
"Ability to cluster two storages together with HA availability."
"My advice is to try it, because I think DM Series is a scalable all-in-one system with unified block and file storage and cloud tiering."
"The value we derive from using it is greater than other alternatives like HPE and Dell."
"NetApp maintains the very high performance that we want to have."
"Compared to Dell Unity XT, what I see as an advantage in NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is the fact that it is more scalable...The performance of the product is good."
"The deployment is very quick and very simple to use."
"Some of the valuable features include MetroCluster switchover, in terms of disaster recovery, it is easy to use, and flexible."
"NetApp All Flash is a system that I recommend for a rapid storage solution."
"The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our databases, and what's great about this solution is that it speeds up our data store because it is a cheap solution for flash performances."
"Having the option of such high-speed storage in the data center is what makes it valuable."
"Being able to partition different virtual volumes of storage is really valuable for us."
 

Cons

"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see automated copy data management for SQL Server."
"In terms of improvement, Everpure FlashArray could have more attractive UI/UX design compared to other solutions."
"Pure Storage takes a hit in the minds and opinions of some of the customers because they cannot customize things as much as compared to a legacy storage provider's appliance such as NetApp, Dell EMC, or even HPE."
"I would like to see box-to-box encryption on replication included in the next release."
"It would be nice to have a better view of the allocated capacity on their Platform as a Service solution because we have to do some manual calculations to understand how much we are going to pay every month to use the storage that is allocated."
"If I need to change or troubleshoot the dashboard, I cannot do it without calling support. If I want to move something critical, I cannot do it by myself. The dashboard blocks me from changing those critical things."
"There are many features which need to be added, particularly on the replication side."
"Many people do not realize that Lenovo has a storage solution, so better marketing from the vendor is needed."
"Lenovo could have a wider variety of storage solutions in the NAS space."
"The Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series was very hard to configure. Installation of the product was very hard. These are its areas for improvement."
"The tool's pricing is high."
"In comparison with other similar solutions, I think this one is the most expensive."
"The Lenovo DM Series is an excellent storage product, but I think it isn't competitive with other companies like Dell EMC and IBM because IBM products are very cheap and have more features."
"I would rate the support of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series a four out of five."
"The Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series was very hard to configure. Installation of the product was very hard."
"The solution should really build out a more hyper-converged product."
"It was difficult to implement and lacks some additional features that would be useful, but as a solution fits a particular need for our organization."
"If anything else, I would like to see higher-capacity drives, as they come out; I have heard that 15 TB are out on a different NetApp series."
"It says NetApp on the badge, but it’s not a NetApp product."
"I’d like to see bigger, faster, better hardware, of course. I think that is the way the hardware is trending anyway; bigger, faster CPU, better software, fewer bugs, all that stuff. T"
"Obviously to a small, medium size business, you're probably not going to recommend it because it's probably overkill."
"This solution has limited storage."
"The management interface, while very reliable, it seems a little old now and could maybe use a little modernization."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price-to-performance is good. I looked at Pure about three to four years back, but the price-to-performance wasn't right for us. Now, it's right."
"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. So, every year, we renew. We could do a three-year contract, but right now, we only do a one-year."
"Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"The cost of Pure Storage is subjective and determined by your environment. Pure Storage tends to be more expensive than NetApp, but it is cheaper than EMC. Performance varies with data workload, making cost considerations complex."
"I would rate the pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of ten. It is expensive but not too much."
"The licensing is $100,000."
"The price of the solution can be a bit expensive. There is an additional fee for support."
"The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."
"Lenovo offers two software tiers for the DM Series: basic and premium. If you need more features like the MetroCluster, you must buy the premium version. You can stick to the basic software if you don't need MetroCluster or features like asynchronous replication. That makes DM Series a little cheaper."
"The solution is highly-priced."
"The solution's pricing is similar to Dell and HPE."
"The price of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is good."
"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."
"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."
"Most of my customers pay for the license on a yearly basis. It can be expensive depending on the capacity number."
"They provide licenses upon purchase, so there's no need for additional licenses. Regarding additional expenses apart from the standard licensing fees, such as for support or maintenance, there aren't any. Updates take around twenty to thirty minutes, including rebooting the systems, and we haven't faced any problems with the NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We utilize various other storages like Fujitsu, IBM, and Dalian SIP, but the NetApp EF-Series stands out as we've had no issues throughout the entire year of usage."
"NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is an expensive product."
"The pricing of the solution is expensive, considering the initial investment required...At the end of the product's life cycle, it could get cheaper, but the initial investment in NetApp makes it one of the most expensive solutions."
"The price point for EF is considerably lower than the alternatives."
"The pricing of this solution is competitive with other vendors here in Egypt."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Retailer
6%
Construction Company
6%
Construction Company
14%
Performing Arts
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise152
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
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 your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to rene...
What needs improvement with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's supp...
What is your primary use case for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
There are so many things to talk about around the use cases associated with the tool. There are so many reasons why I...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
ThinkSystem DM Series
NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation
Find out what your peers are saying about Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.