IBM FlashSystem Reviews

The Flash core models offer amazing performance.

The basic setup can be challenging when it comes to certain IP addresses and the configuration of the IP. You have to go in to different menus to makes changes and ensure it is stable.

Ina future release, we would like to have a better way to install and to configure FlashSystem.

I have been using this solution for two years. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for stability. I have experienced one problem and that was solved by EBM. It was for a FS 5,200. I had to connect to an IBM i system without some switches. I was the second or third customer who did it, worldwide. They had to make a special patch for it.

This is a scalable solution. 

I would rate the technical support for this solution a three out of five. 

Neutral

I would rate the pricing of this solution a four out of five. 

We considered Dell PowerStore. From a capability and technology point of view, both solutions are comparable. However, from a price perspective, IBM is 30% cheaper.

I would definitely recommend this solution to other users. It is suitable for many sizes of business due to the options they offer. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten as it offers great performance and stability. 

We usually use Storwize for SMB customers, when they need small but reliable storage and fast response times. The performance is great.

The virtualization feature shortens the time to convince customers, to sell the solution, and to implement it.

From the moment we first see a customer and tell him that we are capable of doing this, until we do it, is a relatively short time. It's not going to be a long-term project, one that is going to take time for migration.

The user interface is very mature and it's becoming more mature all the time. They made it very easy for the user, very friendly to work with.

They have a virtualization feature and, even if you do not want to buy that feature, you can have it as a trial for two to three months. If you have another brand of storage from another company, you can use this tool to transfer all your data from the old system to the new Storwize system, which really shortens the migration time. This feature makes it much easier for us, as a business partner, to convince the customer that it can be done in a very short time, without any concerns about losing data or something breaking. That's one of the main features, and it works.

It helps me a lot when talking with potential customers who are stuck with all this data and, when they think of moving on to new systems, the first thing that bothers them is how to migrate all this information to a new system.

The other stuff that everybody sells today like tiering, which IBM calls Easy Tier, and FlashCopy, they have been around for years with the other vendors as well.

IBM gets a lot of input from the field, from system engineers, regarding what needs to be done and I believe they have a roadmap to try to constantly make the user interface more mature, as well as the options and tools. I trust they are doing good job on this.

I have looked at a few pages of a report I download and I saw a graph there regarding software-defined vendors. IBM is not in a good position on this graph. I know that they are working very hard on this, to make it much better and to get to a level where it's not only hardware but also software to provide a complete solution.

It's very stable as a single system or you can have it as a cluster for redundancy. We haven't had any issues, as far as I know, of it crashing or something that might make you suspicious about the reliability of the system. It is really reliable. The system engineers we work with have no doubt regarding any stability issues.

The scalability is fine, but it also depends on the type of customer. If they are a lower-level SMB and we can find out what their growth would be over the next year to two years, the availability of different models from Storwize makes us comfortable in telling customers that they can expand, without any doubt, for another three to four years. They don't need to worry about having to buy a new system in two years. Just upgrade and expand, that's all.

We have our own engineers trained by IBM and they are certified. I don't really recall many real issues. As I think back, there has been nothing critical where we had to ask IBM to contact their own labs to find a solution. Day-to-day, we have almost no need for IBM to show up for any problem or technical issues.

We are not in a good position to answer this question because we have worked with IBM for all these years. But I believe the way it came about was that we had a situation where we moved a customer from the competition to IBM Storwize. When we looked at the space it took, the performance, the pricing, the ease of working with it, and the migration - especially the migration, because when you want to move somebody from a different vendor to Storwize, people know it's hard work - it was easily done by Storwize and the software that comes with it.

As a business partner, when selecting a vendor the important criteria are the terms and conditions under which you can work with your supplier. In addition, it's the level of availability of the vendor when you need them, that they will respond immediately and are with you in the problem, hand-in-hand, to go solve the issues. One of the main issues is that you don't feel alone in the field, you have somebody with you. That is very important. If there is a problem, the customer also needs to be confident in who we are. We have a name and we are a business partner, but who is backing us up? When you go with a company like IBM, with all its experience, and with your own experience over all these years, that's a huge advantage.

I'm not involved in installation but, as far as I know, it's very straightforward, it's very easy. The main issue is that if you spend enough time on design, to find out what the customer really wants, that makes the implementation easier. That's where the emphasis should be. But as far as the system itself, the installation and putting it up, it takes no time. As far as I know, it's so easy.

The pricing has been very competitive for the last few years. IBM got to the point where they changed the pricing model and we feel very comfortable with the pricing. It's very competitive.

Over the last two years, IBM has been coming up with all kinds of interesting promos, especially for the SMB systems. That makes it very competitive price-wise and in terms of performance to help convince customers. It benefits both the customer and us.

We also do sell HPE if we have to, but IBM is usuall the first choice because of the pricing and performance.HPE has tried to work with us a lot and we tried to work something out with them, but each time we went back to Storwize, as it fits our needs and it's much easier to work with.

There really aren't any others really on our list. The Infinidat we have in our data center is for our own usage and our own services that we have in the cloud system. It's not something that we go out and install.

IBM is really open and available to those who want to find out what kinds of solutions will fit their needs. More than that, if it becomes more serious, with potential, IBM can provide you almost everything you need to see in its labs, to show you that the numbers they talk about are not only on paper but in real life. They are real and they can get to these performance levels.

IBM does a lot of customer setups in their labs and they invite the potential customers in and show them. But it's not for everyone. When we have a real potential customer and they demand it, that's what we do for them.

There are no 10s in the market right now. Everybody is evolving. As far as where we see storage going, it's not only hardware, it's also software-defined, and everybody is trying to reach a higher and very comprehensive level. And that takes time. It's not IBM, they need others to get to that higher level so we can have a comprehensive solution. It's not because IBM is an eight out of 10 and somebody is a nine or 10. It depends on the solution and application. In some cases, they would rate a 10, in others you might only give them seven.

The primary use case involves the use of IBM FlashSystem in the banking industry.

The valuable features of IBM FlashSystem include flash copy mapping, which is a procedure to collect instant point-in-time data for testing real data. 

There is built-in compression, a data reduction feature, and artificial intelligence-driven insights that calculate warnings and errors to redirect to customers automatically. Customers mostly use the built-in compression feature.

There is room for improvement in the troubleshooting part, specifically related to IBM Spectrum for Insight. Customers are uncomfortable with remote access, which affects automated remote support. Licensing fees make the features expensive.

IBM products at the enterprise level are stable solutions, with a score of nine out of ten for stability. Customers have infrastructure that is 100% stable.

Scalability was rated seven out of ten. The problem arises when migrating data to a later IBM FlashSystem version due to issues with firmware compatibility.

IBM customer support is responsible, efficient, and responsive, though it is expensive. Those customers without active warranty support on older devices face challenges.

Positive

IBM is comparable to Dell, Huawei, and HP for enterprise-level devices, and customers often choose IBM, particularly in the banking sector.

The setup and configuration of IBM FlashSystem is not very complicated, and it rates an eight out of ten for ease.

FlashSystem provides stability, scalability, and after-sales support that are valuable over cost concerns.

Many factors affect purchasing directly from IBM, often involving a multi-step process. Customers, especially in banking, often use the latest devices as they are upgrading, indicating they do not face significant financial problems.

I recommend that customers should be educated regarding the specific product's technical requirements and the environment where the product will be deployed. 

Overall, I would rate IBM FlashSystem eight out of ten.

The solution has good performance and the highest throughput ratio in a single enclosure. The most valuable feature of the solution is SCM (Storage Class Memory), which has the lowest latency value in the storage industry.

The solution's infrastructure technology level could be PCI Express 5 instead of PCI Express 4 for the next version.

In addition to SaaS-based enclosures, the solution's expansion options must include NVMe options.

I have been using the solution for a few months.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten for stability.

The transactions of more than 1,00,000 customers are running on this solution.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten for scalability.

We have previously worked with several store systems like Pure Storage, HPE, and NetApp storage. We switched to IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe because of its performance.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for the ease of its initial setup.

The solution’s deployment took around two days.

The solution has good pricing, but it is not cheaper.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We are using IBM FlashSystem for data storage at the hospital I work at.

IBM FlashSystem has benefited our organization because we can mix solid-state drives with spinning drives.

IBM FlashSystem is a flexible solution with plenty of features.

I have been using IBM FlashSystem for approximately one year.

The solution is stable and has good performance.

IBM FlashSystem is highly scalable.

We have approximately 5,000 people using the solution. We plan to continue using this solution in the future.

The support could improve by allowing you to speak to someone when you call rather than them calling you back. However, once we do have contact with one of their technicians they are excellent.

We previously used HPE and we are slowly moving towards having them switched with IBMFlashSystem. We have found the IBM FlashSystem to be more flexible.

The installation was a moderate level of difficulty and it took approximately one week.

We do the implementation and maintenance of the solution using our in-house team.

The cost of the IBM FlashSystem is lower than the HPE solution.

IBM FlashSystem provides a very good value.

I rate IBM FlashSystem a nine out of ten.

We were using the solution for storing data. Recently we were having problems not being able to do a flash when we attempted. We will need to relay to IBM the challenges with taking the flash. Once this problem is resolved, we can do a better comparison with other solutions.

When it comes to the interface of the solution we did not encounter any challenges. Additionally, the solution has good documentation. 

We had issues when attempting to do a flash, we hope to resolve it soon.

I have used the solution for approximately three years. 

The initial setup of the solution was easy. 

I find the pricing of the solution to be very reasonable. 

We are presently evaluating NetApp and this solution. By the time we finished with our evaluations, I will be able to come back to IBM on what challenges we have encountered. We use IBM in all other aspects, including service. That is why we think that combining the IBM storage will be much easier for us than other entirely new solutions.

I rate IBM FlashSystem a seven out of ten.

We implement this solution for our customers, including African banks who use it for storage. 

The storage capacity of this solution could be improved. 

I have been using this solution for six years. 

This is a scalable solution. 

The technical support for this solution is good. They used to help us when the motherboard of Power Systems broke. Their response times are really fast. 

The initial setup is straightforward but does have some complexity in the middle. 

The price depends of the technology that our customers need.The price can come at a lower cost but this may increase as storage is added.

I would recommend this solution because it offers good performance and the systems are fast. In terms of dealing with Oracle, it's really a good choice for customers that have their infrastructure that needs balance. 

I would rate this solution ten out of ten. 

Our primary use case is we are required to share storage. We share and cluster the application and databases. We use the IBM Flash System as a tier of storage. We have SND, cache, SST storage system, and staff storage. When performance or database is required we provide the storage tier from the SAS-based storage. It is a hybrid storage system that combines both SAS and SN storage.

The data is the main factor. The security encryption of the data with storage has been the biggest improvement to our organization.

The most valuable feature in demand is virtualization and its support storage of virtualization features.

In the next release having the next level of high-speed performance would be great. We should see an increase in the FC board to thirty-two G, sixty-four G UBS port for the performance to be readily available. 

I have been using IBM FlashSystem for the past two and a half years.

IBM FlashSystem is a very stable solution and its default rate is low. In the past four to five months we only received one default.

The scalability is excellent. We can add a storage box as required and the capability is increased on that particular box. In one year we export our data to the boxes and we have doubled.

We previously used HP three Power and DX four hundred and ten storage. We needed the virtualization feature and IBM FlashSystem was the only one that offered that.

The initial setup is complex because it requires a more extensive knowledge base. There are multiple parts from storage, and data parts, and the configuration zoning of each of them.

We used a third party and had it deployed by IBM.

We can see a return on investment on the technical side. IBM FlashSystems is stored in a centralized way and with the original fee. We can protect the time and we can restore the application in case of any disaster.

I would rate IBM FlashSystem a nine out of ten.