IBM FlashSystem Reviews

IBM FlashSystem is used for performance systems.

IBM FlashSystem has improved the way the organizations of my customers function.

The most crucial feature of IBM FlashSystem is compression.

The only issue my team faced was transferring the data from the old system to IBM FlashSystem, which is an area for improvement in the solution.

I've been dealing with IBM FlashSystem for four years.

IBM FlashSystem is one hundred percent stable. My customers didn't encounter any failures, so it's good.

IBM FlashSystem is scalable, but it depends on what you're selling. You'll have scalability issues if you sell it as a complete system with maximum capacity. I didn't sell the entire system, so it can be upgraded if the customer needs more capacity.

I haven't contacted the technical support for IBM FlashSystem.

I sold other solutions apart from IBM FlashSystem, but the price for IBM FlashSystem was better.

Two of my customers preferred IBM FlashSystem, and the third customer liked Hitachi, but Hitachi was more expensive, so that customer went with IBM FlashSystem.

The implementation of IBM FlashSystem was straightforward. It will take less than two hours to implement if it's just a small system.

One engineer from my company and one engineer from the customer side took care of the deployment of IBM FlashSystem.

My customers got the IBM FlashSystem bundle offer. It was a one-time purchase for three years of service. The price would depend on the storage size and could reach between $25,000 to $55,000.

My company sells IBM FlashSystem to customers. I'm a salesperson.

My company sold six IBM FlashSystem to three customers. One was large-scale, while the other two were small-scale. The customers use the solution on production and deal sites. The capacity of my customers is sufficient at the moment, so there's no plan to increase the usage of IBM FlashSystem.

I'd tell people looking into implementing IBM FlashSystem that installing and managing it is straightforward. The solution also has excellent performance.

My rating for IBM FlashSystem is nine out of ten.

My company has a partnership with IBM.

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. 

IBM FlashSystem is used for online transaction processing in TP solutions.

The price-performance ratio is most valuable.

It is simple to use.

Both the performance and interface are good.

We are in our second year of using IBM FlashSystem.

IBM FlashSystem is a stable solution.

It is a scalable product.

In our organization, we have more than 1,000 people using this solution.

In general, we plan our investments for three to five years in advance. Because technology evolves every five years, the solution is usually changed after five years. As a result, we had to replace everything.

We don't have any plans to purchase additional licenses in the near future.

We haven't needed any assistance from technical support so far.

We use a variety of solutions from Hitachi, EMC, and NEC.

We switched to IBM FlashSystem because of the scalability, it was a beneficial option for us, as well as the price-performance ratio and technology.

They compare the IBM features with those of EMC and HP.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is easy to install.

It takes very little time to deploy. The initial implementation will take two days. The data will then be moved by wifi over a three-week period due to the implementation study.

The installation is being managed by a team of two engineers.

A company called Compro assisted us with the installation. They were good.

They don't offer subscription-based payments. You pay for the license.

I would recommend this solution to anyone else who is interested.

Because technology is evolving at a rapid pace, they should compare the benefits. Of course, solution technology is important, but the most important aspect is service and knowledge.

I would 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.

The most important feature that our customers are very interested in is the virtualization. Being able to have the flexibility as they grow, without having to just lift and replace everything that they're doing.

Where it's moving into now is a unified set of advanced features that they're able to lay across their enterprise, without it being different in every single product that they're dealing with.

The virtualization, the flattening, and those advanced characteristics of the product are really what our customers have gravitated towards on the V9000.

When it comes to our benefits from this solution, a lot of it comes down to simplicity. If we take a look at a lot of these complex IT solutions today, they're very hard to maintain and to administer. However, the V9000 and the investment that IBM has made to the user experience, makes it very easy for our customers to be able to self-maintain and self-administer their own environment. They don't have to always go to a storage consultant or have to call into support. That's been very beneficial to our clients.

We think that IBM has to continue to invest in additional data reduction capabilities which are on their roadmap. Being able to use flash most efficiently, where the least amount of data is physically being stored on the V9000 is really where IBM needs to make additional investment. They are doing that.

The stability's been rock solid. If we take a look at the V9000 and the base of what it's built on, it is the heritage of IBM Storwize. This goes back to IBM SAN Volume Controller or SVC. We're on a very mature code base and it is a code base that's been very extendable.

So over the years, they've been able to inject new capabilities in the product line while still keeping the product very stable. We've had customers who have been through multiple upgrade cycles over the life of the product with no issues at all.

The scalability of the V9000 product is really where it shines. Being able to add additional capacity to the unit, without having to come up with a different management of lots of separate units, has been very beneficial to clients.

That idea of starting small with their current flash rollout and then being able to grow as the budget allows, has been very beneficial to clients.

We've been absolutely happy with the technical support.

From an IBM perspective for technical support, they really love the V9000, especially when you're going to do some enhanced service offerings that IBM has.

When it comes to using things like the technical advisor, being able to have more of a concierge service with support has been very beneficial to clients.

A lot of our customers were previously using either all disk or hybrid solutions for their storage. Moving towards an all-flash V9000, allowed them to take performance management and stop having to worry about that in their everyday tasks.

Moving to an all-flash array allowed them to spend more time dealing with application integration and dealing with their end users. This is rather than having to do performance management and moving data around. The all-flash array made their life a lot simpler.

We were involved with all aspects:

• Initial design
• Setup
• Rollout
• Integration with the different operating systems and different hosts through the storage fabric

It was straightforward. What we really like about the V9000 is that we're able to take implementation engineers who had experience with other members of the Storwize family.

They are able to take those skills that they learned within other product sets and directly translate those to the V9000.

They are able to very quickly come up to speed on the product without having to learn a brand new skill set.

From a CAS Severn perspective, IBM continues to be our premier supplier of storage. We do have a lot of experience with other vendors in the industry, including Pure Storage, EMC, and HP.

When it comes to recommending a vendor, the entire lifecycle of supporting a system is important. That's everything from design, to implementation, to ongoing support. IBM provides a strong package on all three aspects of the lifecycle of the equipment.

Folks that are looking to implement the V9000 really should take a look at the simplicity that an all-flash array can bring to their environment. They should look at the efficiency of being able to take skills that they might have learned within other Storwize products and be able to directly translate those into the V9000.

To summarize: Similar interface, similar support interaction, and the way they can take knowledge that they previously had and be able to directly translate that to their all-flash array decision.

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.

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 most valuable feature is the continuity of the user interface. Many of our customers leverage Storwize and XIV storage subsystems. That continuity in look and feel has likely helped the FlashSystem because transitioning to using this new product doesn't require any additional training or familiarization time. Instead, customers leverage their experiences to perform 90-95% of the tasks necessary to get a new FlashSystem 900 running.

It's especially important to be able to walk into a customer site and say, "Hey, you have access to the same user experience that you have with your Storwize system, and/or a very similar user experience to your XIV."

Having a consistent user experience and user interface has helped save our customers' time: we don't have to retrain them for a new user interface, and they don't have the learning curve associated with understanding the nuances of a new interface.

The FlashSystem has really helped improve our customers' I/O intensive workloads. Many of our customers leverage Flash for database workloads and appreciate the extra performance boost it gives.

A lot of the beauty of the FlashSystem 900 is that it's very, very focused on what it does, and it does it well. I don't really think there are additional features required.

The FlashSystem 900 is a relatively stable platform. While any codebase will have some issues and require patching (nothing is perfect), the codebase on which the FlashSystem 900 is built is solid.

As a building block, the FlashSystem 900 isn't really intended to scale out to a large degree. Instead, it's intended to be used as a block with which to build out a scalable solution (such as with an A9000/A9000R or a V9000).

IBM's support for storage hardware is usually excellent.

IBM's storage technical support is usually excellent.

I have been involved in the initial setup with a number of customers. It's very straightforward. It's a lot easier than the old days.

If you are looking for a great flash solution that can be virtualized or utilized as a building block for a scalable flash solution, or if you're looking for flash for a very specific workload, then you may want to consider a FlashSystem 900.

It's probably the most straightforward piece of hardware you can get. The user experience from the interfaces and the price points for the performance a really solid.

I'm an IBM Business Partner, so there's really only one vendor that we go to for our storage. However, even if I weren't an IBM Business Partner, having a pretty stable track record with their products, ease of use, and value delivered for price -- I would probably still recommend a FlashSystem 900 for the use cases I stated earlier.