Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs. SolidFire (discontinued)

My experience with Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series has been commendable and everything has been running smoothly. Data storage and analysis takes place effectively under this platform system giving our teams best insights on planning and decision making on time. All our financial records have great database that is secure and cannot be easily compromised by unauthorized access. The customer support team is reliable and always ready to offer help where needed 24/7.

Incentivized

Solidfire is a good, multi-purpose array for iSCSI environments. Grid architecture allows incremental, linear expansion of the array both in capacity and performance. The all-flash is a very high performance, low latency platform for a lot of applications. The way the company has architected the platform allows for continual upgrades and removes the lift-and-load replacements if you stay with Solidfire in the future. The Solidfire fiber channel implementation is workable, but largely there is a checkbox. I cannot imagine any fiber channel shop is going to look at a Solidfire seriously, unless they are looking to move towards Ethernet based transport. Write intensive workloads struggle on the array. The double-helix data protection combined with the architecture can make writes more latent than expected - well into the teens and 20's of ms within the array.

Incentivized

• It easily updates our systems to comply with international standards.
• Networking our systems with cloud servers

Incentivized

• Speed is incredible.
• Ongoing maintenance is great.
• Price point was quite good.

Incentivized

• I have not experienced any downside that requires improvement.
• No missing functionality across all the features

Incentivized

• API documentation could use some help
• GUI can be slow

Incentivized

When we have had problems, the response on the Solidfire side has been strong, but not perfect. As they scale and integrate into NetApp, support from regions outside of the USA are having a more difficult time diagnosing and addressing issues for complex problems. The Boulder, CO, and Raleigh, NC, support teams are both extremely strong and provide top-notch support. ActiveIQ is a great support tool both for NetApp/Solidfire and for the customer. The proactive support tickets opened have been helpful. The node-based support has been excellent - meaning when we had a DIMM fail, they sent a replacement node - no time consuming troubleshooting of internal components to fix the issue. Upgrades are handled by SF technicians, so it feels white-glove

Incentivized

I have not worked with a similar product in our company but this has been a reliable product throughout. It is easy and flexible to work with and the cost is manageable. It has suitable data storage plans that have been favorable to our workload demands. The results have always been positive and Return on Investment was achieved within the planned time. It has been profitable to all our departments meeting all data security requirements and working at reliable speed in file transfer.

Incentivized

SolidFire was chosen over these other service providers because of relationships we have with the company, with our reps, and with the local Denver presence. We also are a partner, and we felt that the solution stacked up technologically very well against the competition and was more cost effective.

Incentivized

• The ROI was quick - under 1 year

Incentivized