Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs SolidFire 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 #28 with an average rating of 9.0. Lenovo holds a 2.1% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 60% of Lenovo users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Both SolidFire and Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series are leading storage solutions catering to enterprise needs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series seems to be a superior product due to its advanced features, making it worth the price.

Features: SolidFire receives high praise for its scalability, performance, and integration with VMware environments. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is noted for its robust data protection, ease of configuration, and efficiency in managing a hybrid cloud setup.

Room for Improvement: SolidFire users suggest improvements in reporting tools, better NAS support, and analytical features. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series users indicate the need for more intuitive management tools, enhancements in technical support response times, and refinements in management tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolidFire is acknowledged for its straightforward deployment and proactive customer service, which is quick to address issues. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series also receives positive feedback for its deployment process, though some users feel the initial setup can be complex.

Pricing and ROI: SolidFire is often cited as offering good value for money and a quick ROI due to lower initial setup costs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, though more expensive upfront, is viewed as a long-term investment with substantial ROI when considering its features and capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. SolidFire Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. SolidFire

July 2025

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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 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 SolidFire is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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.

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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…

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Ramil Cerrada

Solution lead at Globe Mobile

A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance

The most significant benefit lies in its exceptional performance, driven by its Flash-based architecture. This enhances routing speed and, consequently, database performance. The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential.

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

"I appreciate the performance."

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"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 most valuable feature of the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is its ability to store data well."

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

"It has been a perfect fit for the workload that our customer is doing."

"Ability to cluster two storages together with 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. Additionally, the integration is good and they are user-friendly."

"The servers are fast and affordable."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series pros

"The scalability and being able to implement it quickly."

"The simplicity of it."

"Feature-wise, it is a good solution allowing users to monitor and simplify their networks. The solution also provides its users with flexibility by enabling them to utilize its extensions."

"It's got full API functionality and the performance is pretty steady."

"It is very easy to scale up SolidFire."

"The square footage for doing development is at a premium when dealing with government networks. To be able to put a lot of IOPS in a lot of high-speed performing drives in a very small location which requires very little HVAC with very little power, it is very valuable to us."

"Individual settings you can put on each individual volume, if you want to do that."

"We can just buy them, scale them as we need on demand, and we don't have to spend so many front end cycles on designing the architecture."

More SolidFire pros

Cons

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

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."

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

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

"It is on the expensive side."

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

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

"The tool's pricing is high."

"Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series could improve by having a snapshot feature. Additionally, there can be other features added to help restore the data faster."

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

"This is an expensive solution."

"It takes a very long time to enter the management console, as well as to restart the system, and these are things that should be improved."

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

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

More Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series cons

"We are looking for, potentially, on the Active IQ reporting side, to do reporting based on the datastore. Right now, I can report on the whole SolidFire, or I can report on just a certain datastore or a volume. I'd like to take all of my VDI infrastructure, which as an example would be multiple datastores."

"SolidFire should start from two nodes instead of the four nodes. That's the only thing. In a lot of solutions, we have to use four nodes, that's the better thing. But as a starting point, two is better. That's why their starting point is expensive."

"There is room for improvement with a focus on creating a centralized storage system, functioning similar to AWS."

"When you set up the nodes, we have to serial into each one of these nodes to configure the IP ranges. It's still very easy, but it's time consuming."

"The inclusion of more protocols and interfaces would make it easier to integrate with other products."

"The user interface needs to be improved. Much of the client feedback involves comments such as "Oh, it's hard to navigate through.""

"It would be good to provide administrative access at the root level to be able to do things with the system, if need be."

"SolidFire could improve in terms of hardware robustness."

More SolidFire cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

"The product is expensive."

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

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

"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."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The solution is highly-priced."

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

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

"On a scale where one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the solution between three and four. It is an expensive solution."

"We would probably use SolidFire more, except we're getting more bang for our buck with our purchases of ONTAP right now, and the deal we made with NetApp, so it's more of just a cost decision"

"It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for what you get."

"The price of this solution is more expensive than others."

"Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."

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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

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.

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 SolidFire?

The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance w...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolidFire?

It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay fo...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolidFire?

There is room for improvement with a focus on creating a centralized storage system, functioning similar to AWS. This...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

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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

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NetApp AFF vs Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series

Compared 38% 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

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NetApp AFF vs SolidFire

Compared 100% of the time

More SolidFire 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

July 2025

Download Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series product report

Buyer's Guide

SolidFire

July 2025

Download SolidFire product report

Also Known As

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

ThinkSystem DM 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

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

SolidFire delivers all five core elements needed to deliver newfound storage agility to your next generation data center and beyond. With SolidFire you can deploy new applications and capabilities faster, provide more agile and scalable infrastructure, increase application performance and predictability, enable automation and end-user self-service and raise operational efficiency and reduce cost.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

California Public Utilities Commission, RFA, 1&1, Ultimate Software , Endicia, ezVerify, MercadoLibre, Sungard Availability Services, ServInt, Elastx, Hosted Network, Colt, Crucial, iWeb, Datapipe, Databarracks

Buyer's Guide

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. SolidFire

July 2025

Free Report: Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. SolidFire

Find out what your peers are saying about Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs. SolidFire and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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