We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"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."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"The solution is scalable."
"It is great because it can work as a SAN and net storage."
"We're able to access it from just about anywhere, as long as we have access to a browser. That feature is really neat because sometimes we will go to a different data center or a different site, and if we need to access it to see a LUN or to see any type of storage, we can do that. That's one of the big takeaways with Unity."
"In the hybrid version, I would say they are fast. They have fully automated storage tiering. In the all-flash version, higher performance, compression, data replication."
"The initial setup was very straightforward. Migration was smooth and configuration of the storage was quick and simple. The time needed to put it into production was less than expected, and data migration itself went without a glitch."
"We have integrated it with vSphere and SQL. There were no costs involved outside of our normal workload licensing, no costs that were specific to the Unity platform."
"The most valuable thing for our use case is the flexibility to have multiple-protocol support."
"We can sleep at night because the support is great."
"It has compression, which allows you to store more data than you would normally under the arrays."
"Last year, I did a DM Series installation with my colleague, and this installation was effortless because we had Lenovo support on the phone, so it was easy to get help if we had any problems."
"Ability to cluster two storages together with HA availability."
"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."
"The FlexClone feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The product’s quality of service guarantees the performance of each workload."
"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."
"We are satisfied with the stability."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"I think that they could do a better job of testing on the back-end, for the code revisions. I've heard of some issues down the line where people have upgraded to the latest code and there were bugs in it, and they had to release a subsequent code fix."
"We do a lot of VMware. It only integrates with VMware in one way, which is virtual volumes. I don't really have any visibility on anything else. From VMware, I can't look into Unity. From Unity, I can't look into VMware unless I am using virtual volumes, where they integrate together happily, but we are not using that. I would like better integration for non-virtual volume VMware use."
"Support Responsiveness & time to fix bugs should be improved."
"We have only used this solution for less than one year so I don't have any improvements suggestions yet."
"I would like to see better compression, better dedupe. It's not nearly as good as what is built into the XtremIO. I understand why that is the case, but if they can take some of that technology and leverage that a little bit better in the Unity array, that would be great."
"Problems with I/O modules, with bugs that came out that really should have been caught before the product was released."
"We went to the PowerMax because of the needs that we have for the business. We're doing true enterprise-level storage. So we went from Unity to PowerMax to give us that tier that we were looking for."
"I would like to see a more seamless virtual box integration with the physical box which can replicate, because the setup of the replication is very difficult right now."
"Many people do not realize that Lenovo has a storage solution, so better marketing from the vendor is needed."
"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. These are its areas for improvement."
"This is an expensive solution."
"I would like Lenovo to add a feature like IBM Easy Tier to DM Series. This is a crucial feature for the customers."
"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."
"The solution should change the licensing model and allow customers to choose features based on their requirements."
"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."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 189 reviews while Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is ranked 21st in All-Flash Storage with 11 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Dell Unity XT writes "Easy to set up with good data compression technology and useful deduplication". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series writes "Simple deployment, stores data well, but missing features". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, Pure Storage FlashArray and Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series, whereas Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is most compared with NetApp AFF, Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series, Dell PowerStore, IBM FlashSystem and HPE Nimble Storage. See our Dell Unity XT vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series report.
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