IBM FlashSystem Reviews

This solution is our main production storage system. It is deployed in a few banks in Ukraine, where it is used to store the core system data.

The most valuable feature is that these models have integrated compression chips, so all data is compressed on the chip without losing any performance.

A big area for improvement is that the data reduction pool feature is not recommended for use in a production environment because it has stability and performance issues. There are also some issues with updates when you have different versions installed, which makes it quite difficult for the administrator to choose which version to install.

There are some stability issues.

There is room to scale.

IBM's technical support do excellent work.

I've previously used NetApp FAS, which is a bit difficult to use compared to FlashSystem.

The initial setup is very easy and can be done by one person.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

• Thin Provisioning
• Flash Copy
• User friendly management interface

We run our business applications on it. Also OS was booted from SAN.

Product support is restricted to IBM only. It must be decentralized to IBM partners as well.

Six years.

Yes, we faced power supply failure, Multiple SAS drives failure, and at the end both controllers were dead.

We are able to add additional drives easily.

One out of 10.

No, it was our first experience with any kind of SAN.

Initial SAN configuration was smooth.

If you are planning to purchase a new SAN then go for all flash. Do not invest in a hybrid SAN.

Yes, HPE and Fujitsu.

Please make sure that you will be getting proper after-sales support from IBM.

This was a great step forward from the XIV in next generation hardware for the customer. We're seeing tremendous data reduction for many workloads. It's not a 100% move from XIV for all workloads, however, but the customer is very pleased, for the most part, in their environment.

Benefits for us include lower overall cost, higher density, lower data center costs, and reduced total TCO, as well as moving to an all-flash solution versus a flash/spinning disk solution.

The HSM management console GUI still need some enhancements. It is still a bit awkward in navigation, and some functions/features are not yet fully integrated into the GUI support, but only via CLI. We also need to get reporting down to individual pool and volume levels, rather than just overall system levels. Customers need a more granular view of their individual business usage as well.

We've had some issues with stability, such as a couple of hardware failures and a couple of code bugs. They were addressed, but they caused initial customer concern.

Scalability is quite nice, with being able to support over 1.5TB effective in one rack is a nice selling feature. One of the early issues was that they weren't at a code release where we were able to add new elements right away in a non-disruptive fashion. We had to wait for a couple of code releases for that. We've gone beyond that now. At this point, scalability is no longer an issue.

Technical support has been great. They have been engaged from start to finish.

Regarding previous solutions, this was more of a technology refresh decision. A customer was heavily invested in an older technology that they were very satisfied with, but they wanted to continue to make the move to flash technology. This was the next logical era of evolution.

The initial setup was a little more difficult than the predecessor XIV, but it's a new product, so a learning curve is to be expected. As it is becoming more common in the field, it should be getting better documented and more straightforward to deploy. We are seeing new and continual updates to Red books and best practices documents now.

We didn't really consider alternative solutions, mainly because there aren’t any out there that can touch the A9000 family. From our standpoint, we're an IBM business partner. We value reliability and performance above everything else. Price is a close second, but reliability is key.

Read anything and everything you can, such as documentation manuals and best practices that are coming out. Stay plugged into the IBM communities and leverage services if this is your first engagement for capacity and sizing.

The valuable features are snapshots and snap logs. We only use those on our flash system. We value the performance of the system.

Our automatic banking systems have become twice as quick with flash storage.

I don't know about improvements. Maybe having independent snapshots. For now, when we make snapshots one by one, they depend on each other. If we delete the first snapshot, then we can lose the others. We really need functional snapshots which are independent of each other.

The stability is not very good. Over the course of the last two years, we had two incidents with flash storage when we lost our data. We have three flash storages and we lost all the data on two of them. That was not very good.

Scalability is good.

Technical support is good enough. Their advice was mainly to upgrade our firmware and restore our backups.

Test all of the products as you evaluate them.

The most valuable features are the ability to virtualize other storage behind it, thin provisioning, compression, and flash systems.

The benefit of the product is the ease-of-management. It has significantly reduced the IT operation costs to our organization.

I don’t really have a feature that I’d be using. Other storage technologies such as 3D drives or 3D flash would be cool to see, but for the users who I’m selling to, I don’t have this to offer. I don’t think that there is any improvement required.

Stability has been excellent and we never had any problems.

It’s massively scalable, so I’ll never run into that problem.

I have used tech support and they are excellent. They always have an answer for me.

When selecting a vendor, the support mechanism and the reliability are the most important elements.

I was not involved in the initial setup. I have done it for other clients, and it’s very straightforward to set up and use.

Take it for a test drive. You’ll be impressed.

We are solution providers. We deploy solutions around VMware. Typically we deploy data protection, and disaster recovery of workloads in the cloud, and on-premises.

If I need to know about a platform or the base platform on which I'm working, I try to read up on their model. We are also storage integrators and solution providers.

The primary use case is for storage, enterprise workloads, and databases.

The V5000, and the V7000, both are equally good.

Over the years, it has become increasingly user-friendly.

There is always room for improvement, but IBM is less interested in on-premise storage or on-premises solutions going forward. 

They're highly focused on the cloud. I don't see IBM being a very major player, the way that they used to be because they are moving away from this and are trying to move all their customers to the cloud.

Nothing really comes to mind for needing improvement. Some years ago, there would have been an answer to what could be better about this product, but nowadays, virtually all of the companies are meeting all of the features.

More and more, we would like to see how it's easier for the solutions to be bought by the customer more on a pay-per-use basis. That is certainly an improvement.

The customer's expectations are what they get on the cloud, they're expecting even in the on-premises deployments, going forward. 

They want to pay-per-use and not own and get stuck with what they're buying. 

They want flexibility.

IBM does that in a few products, but then more and more you see the business model changing towards that. We'd like to see that in all IBM products.

We have been a services and deployment company for more than 30 years.

We've worked across the board with the various solutions across various vendors.

It's very, very stable, and we have never had issues.

It's extremely scalable. There are no limitations, because of the profile of the customers they work with. 

Most of their boxes are highly scalable to meet that requirement and the scaling is pretty straightforward. 

There's no rip and replace. It's a very scalable tool.

Previously, I had experience with Hitachi SAN.

The suitability of either solution depends on the use case. If you talk about modular storage virtually from any company, they will have solutions which more or less do the same thing. 

There will be a competing model at each bracket of requirements. When you talk about storage hardware, you can't really say which is better, or which is worse. 

You can talk about reliability and support, or you can talk about how good it is in a particular geography. But, this is not like Mercedes Benz is a good car and the Fiat is not, it doesn't work like that.

We find the initial setup to be fairly straightforward because we understand the technology.

We do this as service delivery, so we understand that we have trained ourselves in it.

It can take half a day to get the initial things up and running.

In today's world, nothing is reasonable because the customer's budgets are thinking on a daily basis. 

They've been much more aggressive in the last five or six years than they were before that.

They are more realistic.

My basic advice is to work with partners who really understand what they're talking about. Anybody who sells one of these boxes doesn't necessarily have the capability to supply or support them. Be very clear that you're dealing with organizations that have the experience to actually deploy and support you. 

That would be what is critical. Because it's not something that we just rack it up and switch it on and it works. There are many things involved. 

Also, initially, before purchasing, the sizing is very critical. There has to be enough time spent on performance metrics, analyzing the workload requirements, and things like that.

Before the purchase and after the purchase and the deployment, there needs to be quite a bit of involvement. This is why I would advise the customer to work with partners of IBM or Hitachi. 

Whoever you're talking about, and who has experience. Not somebody who just comes and says, "I'll do anything, and for the price, I'll give you the best deal." 

The best deal is not always the best deal. 

Once you buy it and it doesn't work for you, ultimately you are paying more.

I would rate IBM XIV and eight out of ten.

IBM XIV is the most valuable part of this solution. It is easy to use and manage. It is a cheap and also has reliable technology.

We actually are a hospital and we have zero downtime or any outage whatsoever.

There is need to put a SVC in there.

It is very stable. We've been using this solution for more than ten years. We're using it on our three big sites, there were no issues.

It doesn't scale out that well. It actually goes up to 15 module and after that, you have to add another frame. But, they have come out with a new technology where you can do hyperscale. I wish they had put a SVC in front of it but, it's a hyperscale, i.e., you can be on either the A-side or B-side.

The most important criteria while selecting a vendor are reliability and their level of maturity.

It's not the best solution, but it's very reliable.

It depends as every company is different. Some companies choose reliability, while others prefer the market. You have to assess your own stuff and see accordingly, what fits your bill.

The ease-of-use and scalability are the most valuable features.

The common interface has improved the way we work. We don't have to learn more than one interface to manage the storage arrays.

So far, it seems pretty stable. We haven't had any major issues.

We find the product very scalable. We've been able to implement many storage arrays in our environment with very little effort.

We have used technical support. So far, we haven't had any bad experiences with them. We have been able to get the proper support we needed.

When selecting a vendor, I want stability, years in the industry, and overall stability.

The setup was straightforward.

Make sure you look at a wide variety of products. That way you can come to an intelligent decision on what platform you are going to go with.