IBM FlashSystem Reviews

The IBM FlashSystem is the primary storage for files and data in our organization.

The most valuable features are deduplication and compression, which together, enable you to have more space.

Performance is a major advantage of this storage.

When you add more flash drives or more NVMe, that is the bottleneck or shortcoming with this type of storage. When you fill the first enclosure, you won't be able to add more NVMe until you add more SAS drives.

The security features can be improved such that the encryption does not affect performance in any way.

I have been using IBM FlashSystem for about four years.

The stability is very good.

We have approximately 1,500 people who are directly or indirectly accessing the data that is residing on this storage.

The technical support is pretty good, especially the local team in Pakistan. Normally, the response time is very good.

This is the first flash storage system that we have used. Prior to that, we were using a hybrid Dell EMC storage.

The initial setup is not very difficult. I would say that it is similar to the way other storage systems are set up. I believe that it took one week for our deployment, which included testing.

We have three administrators who take care of the different applications and data that are hosted on this storage. We don't perform maintenance on a daily basis. We may extract some stats for the performance and for evaluating capability. However, when it comes to maintenance, we probably work on it once or twice a month.

Before purchasing this product, I recommend that everyone should do a PoC because there are multiple flash drive systems now available. All storage vendors are now making flash drives because it is a new technology that replaces existing hybrid systems. I would suggest doing some analysis and some R&D because Huawei, for example, is doing well. EMC is also top of the line, with IBM. There are slight differences in features, however, so it is important to do a comparison before making any decision.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The general use cases depend on the size of a company. I work with the commercial sector, the FlashSystem 5000 and its different models. It suits the small to medium, or SME, companies. The FlashSystem 9200 goes mainly to big enterprises, like banking or governmental sectors. The 7200 plays sometimes in SME and sometimes in bigger enterprises. 

One of the most valuable features is that it's very easy to use and configure. It used to be more difficult, but now it's almost flawless. 

The pricing could be improved, but I think it's getting better and better with each version. 

IBM needs to implement NAS storage again, as this is a big flaw. Dell EMC is very good at this and if you compared them based on NAS storage, Dell EMC would win right away. IBM's solution for NAS storage is very complicated. We don't have a storage box that provides file sharing from itself, we have to put software on it and go through a whole complicated process. It should be simplified. 

I have been working with IBM FlashSystem for around seven years. 

It's really stable, and many customers have experienced this as well. 

It's easy to scale, but it depends on the model. The 5100 is obsolete, but the 5200 has line expansions, up to two controllers, and can scale out both ways. The 7000 and 9000 can scale to 20 expansions and four controllers. It's very scalable, both horizontal and vertical. 

I believe the second line and third line are very responsive here. It depends on the customer's warranty level, if it's 9x5—it can't be like 24x7, which is immediately. 

IBM has some features that don't exist in other brands. External virtualization, for example—Dell EMC has the same feature, but it's applied differently. IBM's approach is to make it usable in many different scenarios so that the customer can work with multiple vendors under the IBM controller. Dell EMC can't do that. The external virtualization stacks with Dell EMC, and the features stack to every box. If I have a main box with high specs and I virtualize another box with minimum specs, that means I'm stuck with the minimum specs. With IBM, if I'm working with the virtualization engine with higher specs, I get the benefits from these higher specs, even if the virtualized box has minimum specs.

The initial setup is very straightforward and user-friendly. The FlashSystem 5000 can be deployed in around 20 to 30 minutes, but it depends on the number of volumes and the tools we set up afterward. On average, it can be installed and initiated within an hour, including microcode updating. If you calculate from the time I begin unpacking to the time I start to configure volumes, it will not exceed around 45 minutes. 

I implemented myself. 

The pricing may be a bit higher than other brands. If you compare the IBM FlashSystems in midrange with Dell EMC in midrange, IBM costs a bit more, but I prefer IBM because it has more specs that I can benefit from. 

Two years ago, we had all features installed in the midrange box without any need for extra licensing. However, lately we have features like Easy Tier and FlashCopy, which need extra licensing. We can purchase it with the box or afterward, and it's a smooth process. 

In my experience, IBM doesn't need maintenance at all. Every year, there is a microcode update to get a new feature or fix a bug, but I know some customers who have had the box for more than five or six years without updating it and it still runs well. 

To anyone who's looking into implementing IBM FlashSystem, I would advise you to read the instructions on the box. If you follow the instructions, implementation will be very smooth and easy, even if you're not a professional. 

I would rate this product a ten out of ten. 

Our entire company uses the solution for block storage. The solution is easily administered and maintained by four technicians. 

The solution has a very compact physical footprint that is high performance and easy to administer.

The solution allows for easy migrations from previous products or vendors via its embedded storage virtualization function.

The solution has a low number of NVME host attachments at 16 per IO group over the fiber channel. This is magnitudes lower than competing products. 

The 8.5 release for the 7300 and 9500 Flash Systems no longer allows IO group migrations. The replacement volume mobility is not as seamless as IO group migrations.

The Kubernetes CSI driver and the open-stack cinder driver still rely on SSH instead of native APIs for configuration changes. This reduces the limit of outstanding configuration changes that can be submitted to storage in bulk. 

The solution has not yet adopted Swordfish APIs and its SMI-S APIs are legacy and depreciated. Swordfish's are vendor-independent APIs made by the Storage Industry Association that allow you to manage storage no matter your vendor. These new generation APIs were released after ten years but IBM has not yet jumped on board. With a multi-vendor environment like ours, implementations are easier with universal APIs. 

Redhat Enterprise Linux clones such as CentOS, AlmaLinux, or Rocky Linux are not supported. All are binary compatible and should be supported because they are fundamentally the same product with different branding. 

It would be helpful to have a public page listing the minimum supported firmware levels for HBAs from different vendors. We have run into bugs with fiber channel cards that were solved with firmware updates. It was a laborious process to cross-reference vendor information so it would be helpful for IBM to provide recommended baselines for firmware. 

I have been using the solution for four years. 

The solution is scalable within reason. We lease it based on a four-year forecast and then return it when the lease term ends. The solution can scale up a bit but we haven't really changed configurations during our lease terms. 

Technical support is very proactive and we receive alerts when they are visiting the data center or asking for permission to change a part. We are alerted to part failures before we even have a chance to find them in logs. 

I rate technical support a ten out of ten. 

Positive

The setup is quite straightforward and easy. 

The rack mount took thirty minutes because we had to cable the device. Deployment took about ten minutes. 

I implemented the solution because it is an easy product to set up. It is a pleasure to occasionally get out of the office and assist the data center. 

Previously, integrators helped with installations but weren't utilized much. 

The pricing is competitive in our country. In some countries, IBM is the most expensive vendor but that is not the case for us. 

We also negotiated a 60% discount directly with IBM because we are the largest consumer of enterprise hardware in the country. 

Each solution has its pluses and minuses. Pure, Dell EMC, and all other products have room for improvement. 

IBM is a good vendor with an excellent product, but the software side of the company still needs improvement. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. All top-tier solutions have room for improvement so I never rate them higher than a seven. 

The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem are performance and security.

The interface could improve in IBM FlashSystem.

I have been using IBM FlashSystem for approximately four years.

IBM FlashSystem has high availability.

The scalability of IBM FlashSystem has been good.

The technical support from IBM FlashSystem is very good.

We have not used other solutions other than IBM FlashSystem.

The initial setup of IBM FlashSystem was easy.

The price of IBM FlashSystem is a little high because you pay a premium because the solution is from IBM. We had paid for the SLA prior to using the solution.

If someone wants a robust, scalable, and consistent behavior for their site, then they should use IBM FlashSystem.

I rate IBM FlashSystem a nine out of ten.

We are using IBM FlashSystem for Oracle E-Business Suite backups.

IBM FlashSystem is a powerful effective storage solution. Additionally, it is user-friendly, anyone can use it.

We use some open-source tools for monitoring, such as Grafana and it should be bundled along with IBM FlashSystem.

I have been using IBM FlashSystem for approximately two years.

IBM FlashSystem is stable, we have not found any issues.

The solution is scalable.

The solution can be used for any size of business.

I have not needed to contact the support.

The implementation is very simple.

The price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable.

IBM FlashSystem is very simple and plug-and-play. I would recommend it.

I rate IBM FlashSystem a nine out of ten.

For me and for the operations team, the ease-of-use of the GUI is the most valuable feature. It's really easy to understand. It's really easy to do tasks. That's what I like most. The performance is really good. From an operations perspective, definitely the ease-of-use stands out. Compared to other products and other vendors, it's much, much easier.

Time to value. You finish things a lot quicker. I can provision the storage a lot faster and find problems a lot quicker. The fact that I can SSH in and do CLI commands where some of these other vendors don't let you do it is a big deal. I can write custom scripts and do things a lot quicker. The ease-of-use is a lot better with this product.

There's always room for improvement. Adding deduplication would allow us to get more bang for our buck, basically.

Overall, stability is really, really good. We ran into some issues with compression, but it was because we were trying to overload it. So if we don't do that, it runs really, really well.

We have it architected to keep it at a certain level. But if we needed to, we could scale it pretty easily because it's virtualized storage. There's a lot of flexibility with it.

Technical support is really good. Because we're a bigger company, they get to us a little bit quicker. There's more on the line for IBM, so they really treat us well. It's been pretty good. We get good feedback quickly.

We needed the performance of the applications. Payroll applications are very I/O intensive and flash systems are a perfect fit. It makes sense.

I was involved in the setup and it was easy. I've done those for years.

We looked at pretty many vendors. Anybody you could name, we looked at them. We have multiple vendors in the environment, not just IBM. But for our really critical, high performance apps, we put it on the V9000.

Just be careful if you're going to try to use compression, because of the specific issues we've had. If it's a high performance computing environment, just keep it thick provisioned. Get the best performance from it. Don't try to save and then screw up the user experience.

If something fails, it's not going to bring down the application. V9000 is redundant through and through, so it's a great product.

When selecting a vendor, stability, ease of use, and resiliency are the most important things.

We use the solution to link the VMware environment. It is used to share documents between the departments.

The valuable feature is autoscalling. It's able to do hardware compression and encryption.

The product could be cheaper.

I have been using IBM FlashSystem for over five years.

There's no performance issue. It provides low latency and good performance.

I rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the solution's scalability as eight out of ten.

The deployment takes six hours to complete. It involves setting up and configuring the IP and updating the firmware. It connects to sensors, does doting, and assigns the volume to the servers.
I rate the setup process as eight out of ten, with one being difficult and ten being easy.

The product is expensive. It costs around 150k for five years.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Using IBM storwize V7000 as storage to be used in daily operation as well using the virtualization capability along with doing data migrations of old storage data.

IBM Storwize It makes management of the IT environment much easier, 

High availability and enhanced security; Proven dependability; Data compression with hardware acceleration; Advanced copy services features are all in this product.

Virtualization and Data Migration.

V7000 is built with IBM Spectrum Virtualized software, which is part of the IBM Spectrum Storage family.

V7000 software:

• Provides a single or multiple pool(s) of storage
• Provides logical unit virtualization
• Manages logical volumes
• Mirrors logical volumes

V7000 hardware provide the below features:

• Large scalable cache: thru IO groups methodology
• Copy services: metro mirror, global mirror, Data Migration, point in time copy, active-active copy (Hyperwap)
• Space management: thin provisioning, Easy Tier, and compression

The Storwize V7000 nodes in a clustered system operate as a single system and present a single point of control for system management and service.

GUI interface should be enhanced more as there is some issues in copy services GUI interfaces should be enhanced as this will not let the customer doing wrong configurations

Yes, some bugs in the system, like nodes warm-started.

No.

Nine out of 10.

No, I have only used used IBM solutions.

Two methods of initial setup are straightforward, either by using USB port through Init tool or by using the technical port. sgafd

In-House implementation

15 - 20 %

Storwize software for Storwize V7000 license has the following feature codes:

• Base software
• Full feature set
• Easy Tier
• FlashCopy
• Remote Mirroring
• Compression

IBM V7000 has a new license and price structure which provides intuitive licensing based on the functions customers wish to enable and use the most.

No.

I advise everyone to have a look at their current use of storage and think of single management and live migrations of their data, and how they will save money instead of having multiple vendors to reinstall and migrate data.