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

Lenovo and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Lenovo is ranked #22 with an average rating of 9.0, while NetApp is ranked #26 with an average rating of 9.0. Lenovo holds a 2.1% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 60% of Lenovo users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series compete in high-performance data storage solutions. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series has an upper hand in features while NetApp EF-Series excels in pricing and support.

Features: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays offer high-speed performance, reliability for quick data access, and minimal latency. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series provides comprehensive data management capabilities, integration options, and scalability.

Room for Improvement: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays need better reporting capabilities and interface enhancements. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series can improve the initial setup process and documentation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays have a straightforward deployment process and responsive customer support. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series features a more complex setup procedure but offers extensive support and resources.

Pricing and ROI: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays provide a cost-effective solution with substantial ROI. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, with a higher initial setup cost, offers a strong ROI through advanced features and performance benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

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

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 866,218 peers since 2012

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 August 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is 2.1%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	0.9%
Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series	2.1%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays	0.7%
Other	96.3%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

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.

Read full review

Mark Richmond

Chief Technology Officer at Next Level Communications

Reliable and fast servers with good support

We use on-premise servers with Lenovo ThinkSystem. We set up Hyper-V and load multiple types of servers including a domain controller, a SQL Server, and application servers The solution provides fast servers that are reasonably priced. We set up RAID ten to ensure drive redundancy, leading to…

Read full review

Tayo Olubanke

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."

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

"I appreciate the performance."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

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

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The price of this solution is good."

"The value we derive from using it is greater than other alternatives like HPE and Dell."

"We are satisfied with the stability."

"One of the most valuable features of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is the snapshot feature."

"The product’s quality of service guarantees the performance of each workload."

"The servers are fast and affordable."

"The most valuable feature of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is its capability to tier to the cloud, such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS. Additionally, the integration is good and they are user-friendly."

"The solution offers very good reliable systems and storage for our clients."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series pros

"The main advantage of this solution is performance."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the performance of the database access."

"I like the performance aspect of EF Series. It basically provides everything that we are looking for as a solution, very low latency and very high performance."

"The management of it is very simple. that is the most valuable feature."

"The management software is very good."

"The benefits are better up-time, better response time."

"One of the most valuable features is the overall performance it provides. You're able to throw a pile of IOPS at it and it will handle that without much issue."

"The solution allows us to segregate one storage unit from another."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pros

Cons

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"Many people do not realize that Lenovo has a storage solution, so better marketing from the vendor is needed."

"There might be improvements needed in drive throughput as disk speed has been a limitation on Windows servers."

"I would rate the support of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series a four out of five."

"This is an expensive solution."

"Lenovo could have a wider variety of storage solutions in the NAS space."

"The licensing model needs to be revisited. It needs to be simplified."

"The Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series was very hard to configure. Installation of the product was very hard. These are its areas for improvement."

"The solution needs a simpler licensing theme around the DM series. The problem is if you only need one of the features, you still have to buy the whole thing. The licensing needs to be more granular or flexible so you have the option to only license FlexCone or Inline Compression features."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series cons

"A little more manageability, a simpler management interface. It's not necessarily that it's way overly complex. It's just that it's not as easy as the FAS series."

"I've observed an issue when creating a new storage solution with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays."

"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."

"Their problems are on the software and the controlling of the storage where they lack segmentation and federation."

"The management interface, while very reliable, it seems a little old now and could maybe use a little modernization."

"This solution does not have any compression or deduplication."

"As far as the manageability, being able to port between the two and have to do less training in-house from a customer point of view, that would be the part to improve."

"The only major drawback is the replication between EF-Series units."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"The product is expensive."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"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's pricing is similar to Dell and HPE."

"The price of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is good."

"The solution is highly-priced."

"Cheaper pricing is always good. NetApp has been doing everything the right way. They've been figuring out things really well, going in the right direction."

"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."

"The pricing is comparable with other competitors and similar in mid-range solutions, and for high range solutions, it would depend on our requirements or needs."

"NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is an expensive product."

"he price point that we're getting is very competitive in the market. Since we are buying in such a large quantity, they gave us a huge discount."

"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."

"The cost of our license is approximately $200,000 over three years for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. There can be additional costs for storage. For example, if you want to have eight terabytes."

"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

866,218 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

23%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Performing Arts

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	2

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	18

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 25% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

NetApp AFF vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 37% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 14% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 11% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 6% of the time

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 25% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 14% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 14% of the time

Dell XtremIO vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 12% of the time

NetApp ASA vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 9% of the time

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

August 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

August 2025

Download Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

August 2025

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report

Download NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays product report

Also Known As

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

ThinkSystem DM Series

NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series

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

To meet enterprise storage requirements, ThinkSystem All-Flash DM Series systems provide high performance, superior flexibility, and best-in-class data management. DM Series runs on ONTAP data management software, which gives customers unified storage across block-and-file workloads. It accelerates your business while improving the efficiency, flexibility, and reliability of your IT operations.

Lenovo

The NetApp EF560 all-flash array is an all-SSD storage system for applications that demand extremely high levels of performance and reliability. Requiring just 2U of rack space, the EF560 all-flash array combines extreme IOPS, microsecond response times, and up to 12GBps of bandwidth with leading, enterprise-proven availability features.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation

Buyer's Guide

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

July 2025

Free Report: Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Find out what your peers are saying about Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

866,218 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays 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.