Lenovo ThinkSystem SR Series vs. Red Hat Virtualization

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR Series
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Lenovo offers the ThinkSystem SR series of rack servers, offering a wide range of options boasting price, power, or low foot print as desired. Presently Lenovo's ThinkSystem series of rack servers includes the SR250, SR530, SR550, SR570, SR590, SR630, SR650, and the SR670.N/A
Red Hat Virtualization (RHV)
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Red Hat Virtualization (formerly Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, broadly known as RHEV) is an enterprise level server and desktop virtualization solution. Red Hat Virtualization also contains the functionality of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktop in later editions of the platform.
$999
Per Year Per Hypervisor
Pricing
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR SeriesRed Hat Virtualization
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard
$999.00
Per Year Per Hypervisor
Premium
$1,499.00
Per Year Per Hypervisor
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR SeriesRed Hat Virtualization (RHV)
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR SeriesRed Hat Virtualization
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Top Pros

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Top Cons

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Features
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR SeriesRed Hat Virtualization
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR Series
-
Ratings
Red Hat Virtualization
7.7
10 Ratings
8% below category average
Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings7.910 Ratings
Management console00 Ratings7.310 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings7.29 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings6.910 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings8.99 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR SeriesRed Hat Virtualization
Small Businesses
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Score 8.6 out of 10
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Score 9.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
HPE ProLiant DL
HPE ProLiant DL
Score 7.3 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Z
IBM Z
Score 9.3 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR SeriesRed Hat Virtualization
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(1 ratings)
6.6
(12 ratings)
User Testimonials
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR SeriesRed Hat Virtualization
Likelihood to Recommend
Lenovo
I believe all businesses would benefit from Lenovo's series of products - as they can be custom-built to meet your needs. We have been utilizing Lenovo servers for the past seven or eight years now, and have had get success with their hardware builds. We had one issue with a bad SD card that was in a RAID0 - they replaced both SD cards free of charge, and I had them the next business day (this, obviously, is contingent on the level of warranty protection that you purchase with your hardware - but support was fantastic to work with!)
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Red Hat
RHEV is well suited for organizations that need a cost-effective and flexible solution for their environment. As its vendor-independent software, easily install on any type of hardware. RHEV provides a GUI interface to manage the software, which makes the management of the software easier for the end-user. RHEV is best for non-production or less critical applications. RHEV can be easily integrated with other REDHAT software.
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Pros
Lenovo
  • Affordability
  • Flexibility with custom builds
  • SATA/SSD/M2/SD support for front-end caching or for an entire storage solution
  • Allow x2 SD cards to be installed in a RAID0 setup, so that the host can run ESXi without any internal hard drives whatsoever. Also came with an internal battery for the RAID controller.
  • Lenovo Support is very quick to respond to issues - either by phone or by email.
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Red Hat
  • RHV issues/bugs can be reported via Bugzilla to RH support. The service is great and typically responds soon.
  • Red Hat distribution integration is seamless as it is integrated into the kernel.
  • OpenStack support enables more customized VM templates and network configuration control.
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Cons
Lenovo
  • A video tutorial on upgrading built-in firmware on their systems would be fantastic. As it was a bit difficult to navigate to find the download, and also the install process the last time I did so.
  • The remote BIOS utility through the XClarity controller is difficult to reset a password on - if it's forgotten. I have yet to find a way to reset it on a host that has a password not working.
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Red Hat
  • 1- RHVM API is pretty slow, especially after creating a VM it is not possible to retrieve the VM details (i.e VM's MAC Address) fast enough, where we need to place a pause in our Ansible Playbook, make the automation process slow.
  • 2- RHV is still using collected to monitor the hypervisors which is deviating from Red Hat policy for other RHEL based applications to use PCP to monitor, which is richer in features.
  • 3- It will be great if it is possible to patch the hypervisors using other tools such as satellite and not only via RHVM.
  • 4- In the past Red Hat used to present patches in the z release (i.e. 4.3.z), and features in the y release (i.e 4. y), but starting from 4.4 that is mixed together wherein the Z release you get both patches and features, that is not good because that requires a lot of time to test when we patch as it includes features as well.
  • 5- Engineering team has to be more reactive when new feature is requested.
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Alternatives Considered
Lenovo
The initial selection of Lenovo for servers was provided to us as a recommendation from a reseller. I was skeptical, initially, as I am not a fan of Lenovo's consumer-grade laptops. I was very intrigued by the price of these devices though, so we purchased two for a location to see how they worked. The recommendation panned-out, and all of our needs were met (and exceeded) by this new line of products brought to our attention. I'm sure there are countless other stories like mine with dozens of other manufacturers - but we are more than pleased with our fleet of Thinksystem servers at our district
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Red Hat
RHEV is an excellent product, includes more features, is less expensive, and has rock solid reliability and is backed with the best Red Hat Support in the industry. RHEV uses KVM under the hood which is used by all the big players in the industry (AWS, Rackspace, etc) to lower their overall costs and improve efficiency and profits and that's why RHEV is an excellent solution!
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Return on Investment
Lenovo
  • Our uptime has increased from our old HP ProLiant servers from 8+ years ago.
  • These servers are also cheaper than previous models we have deployed in the past
  • XClarity controller allows for remote BIOS functionality - which we hadn't been able to utilize, previously.
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Red Hat
  • RHEV has provided a positive ROI as our customers are not experiencing as many outages during maintenances.
  • We have not experienced any catastrophic failures as a result of vsphere losing connection to the ntp.
  • There has been a level of stability in our environment that was not previously experienced with our previous vendor.
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