IBM FlashSystem Reviews

We used the solution exclusively for block storage. Over time, it added compression features and now even NVMe. 

It's perfectly suited for an on-premise solution or for providing a base for cloud solutions, VMware workloads, IBM i-series, IBM AIX, IBM Power, Linux, and Windows compute. In other words, the complete server stack. It is something others actually can't offer. All of this can be operated from within the same solution. 

It definitely has a strong plus in environments where you actually have such different server solutions in place.

It's a really reliable, powerful platform. It's a mature product. It's like a BMW that evolves consistently. 

There is no need to change or buy another company's solution. It came with storage virtualization and options to move/migrate volumes around and migrates easily even before you actually have svMotion on VMware. 

It can be stretched. There is a Site Recovery Adapter. It has backup integration using flash copies. You can build a disaster recovery solution around it. IBM has its famous Redbooks where you can enter in the best practices. You name it, they've got it!

It offers separate IO Modules for connectivity additions, for compression to offload the CPU. 

It offers storage virtualization to ease migrations. You can build storage clusters and migrate data and easily configure partner relationships. 

The solution offers excellent performance! Flashcopies come in handy with backup solution integrations. The site recovery adapter for VMware Site recovery manager integration is great. Everything is working like a charm. 

I've used it in a banking environment in combination with VMware Site Recovery Manager and Site Recovery Adapter (SRA) - a wonderful combination. It saves you headaches building a recovery plan. Most of all, it works.

IBM's solution has come a long way and has had different milestones/features have been introduced. I would position the 7200 in the upper midrange class as it has lots of features - more than, for example, EMC Unity/VNXe. It doesn't lack anything, really. One could argue that NAS or S3 is not available to it, but I prefer other types of storage optimised for that job.

It is slightly more expensive, however, it all depends on your supplier. Licenses are volume-based. Larger companies with more TB usually are better off as the price per TB decreases the bigger you go. I would definitely recommend this platform!

I've known the predecessors of the IBM Flashsystem, being the Storwize 7200 (Gen 1 to 3) and SVC Front End Servers, from the time they were running on code 6.2 way back in 2011.

We have never ever had an incident with it making the infra go on its knees, nor did we have any datacorruption ever.

All storage solutions have bugs and all have their correctives that might not address an issue on the first occurance or under all circumstances. When the system is stressed and under some specific (nonetheless rare) conditions , the developped code might trigger a reboot of a controller node  to avoid data corruption. A system with 2 controllers is resilient enough on its own and a reboot of a node to prevent e.g. cache merge problems or alike is not harmfull.

To me, the need to evict a controller node and warm boot it is actually intentionally a safety precaution that avoids data corruption, something we all want to stay out as much as possible. It's as reliable as any other product in that respect. All solutions that I know off like DELL EMC Unity, Fujitsue DX-series or 3PAR Storeserv respond in the same manner to avoid datacorruption. I've seen it the most on the SVC (code 7.1/7.2 around 2012/2013  , but not on the  Storewize v7000 Gen1 to Gen2+ solutions, though I have to admit they all had about 40 to 50% of the load of the SVC.

You can build clusters with it and IO Groups.

IBM is able to deliver a support organization with well-trained people. IBM's redpieces/papers and solutions designs are published and offer real references. You can develop your own skills and become an expert or fallback on IBM Supreme Support if you feel less comfortable. 

Positive

We used IBM FastT/DS Storage (LSI Logic) with/without IBM SVC and IBM v7000 Gen1/Gen2/Gen3, shifting from legacy/traditional storage to storage virtualization.

It's quite intuitive. I always enjoyed that, whatever operation you initiated on its Webvinterface, it generated the command, and you actually see which command is being executed. I love it! It surely helps you get acquainted with the product. The setup with many modules and ports requires some design, as on any midrange solution. You get a nice template to initiate it and off you go.

I've done it myself after all the experience I've had. 

At the end of the lifecycle, the migrations and options you have mean that it doesn't require several storage solutions if you have mixed server solutions like Mainframe, i-Series, AIX, IBM PowerPC, VMware, Desktop Virtualisation, et cetera.

Also, the superb integration with VMware SRM and its Site Recovery Adapter makes it a seamless solution to make your infra resilient.

It's not as expensive as HPE Storeserv, however, it is more expensive than Netapp FAS or Dell Compellent. 

We looked at the Netapp FAS all-flash series, Dell Compellent, HPE StoreServ (7200/7400, 8200/8400, and 10500), and Dell EMC VNXe/Unity

It's a more complete solution and really up to mixed infrastructure and resiliency and has a lot to offer on scalability too

The product is used as a central storage system. All live and test environment data, except for periodic data backups and centralized log management system data, is stored on the IBM Flash system.

As a result of the accelerated read and write operations from disks, productivity across the enterprise has increased in daily work.

Ability to compress the data at the NVMe disks is valuable as it is off-loading the process from the storage controller units. Hyperswap feature is valuable as it is increasing the availability without an intervention in the server operating system.

Deduplication feature is not mature and it is significantly increasing the latency. Additionally, the product has limitations in the software features and granularity. For example, data reduction feature cannot be aligned at the logical unit (LUN) level. It is aligned at the pool level. However, I expect to create some LUNs with deduplication and HW compression while some other LUNs with HW compression only. The other limitation is available at the remote copy feature. You can not create one-to-many scenarious for the LUNs which is created as the Hyperswap LUN.

The product has been stable for the last three months.

It is scalable enough.

We recently contacted the technical support and received prompt response. IBM Company has a strong customer service and support organization in my country.

This is the first time we are using a Flash System. In the past, we were using traditional hard disk drive (SAS and SATA) storage systems. We needed to increase the capacity and didn't want to invest in an old technology and slower systems.

The initial setup was really straightforward. It was not complex. Initial setup, data migration from the old products and the remote copy synchronization between Primary DC and DRC was completed in one month period.

We worked together with a local partner of IBM for the setup of the product. They showed satisfactory performance. Data migration was achieved by our own team.

We didn't buy the product for any specific purpose like increasing the number of such transactions for completing more deal in a day. Therefore, I am not sure how can I say the ROI is but it was pretty big investment for us.

Licensing is very straight forward for IBM Flash System and the warranty includes highest level of support conditions. The initial setup was very easy and smooth. The cost was higher than some other competitors.

We chose this solution among 6 solutions from different vendors. Local support organization, performance test results, cost and the technology of the product were the key parameters in the comparison.

Almost all vendors are offering data reduction functionalities (deduplication, compression, thin provisioning etc.) in their newest products. Reduction techniques are offering up to 10 times reduction in data but this ratio is not more than 2 or 3 in real life for mixed type of data. Therefore, customers should test the products with their real and different type of data to measure the reduction rates properly.

Otherwise, vendors may offer smaller sizes in their proposal and there might be conflict in between two parties after setup of the product in the live environment.

The most valuable features are the virtual capabilities that you get from the system and being able to move your data between tiers. We use that feature and we also optimize that with the SAN.

It has helped improve our organizational functionality with the ease of replacement of hardware. We use it a lot for that, for swapping in and out of old hardware to new hardware.

I can't really think of any specific improvements which I would like to see.

Stability has been great. Every time that we had a failed drive or a failed piece of hardware, it's been no problem. The systems have stayed up, with no problems at all.

We haven't scaled it to the maximum. It does scale quite a bit more than we've actually ever used it.

Technical support has been great. As far as responding, we usually get a resolution, or we have somebody calling us from higher up in the chain.

We're an IBM shop, so we've always been on some kind of IBM platform.

The initial setup was straightforward. It's pretty simple.

I would tell them, "The ease of use of the system. If you have a small storage team, then this is the platform for you. It's really easy to manage, really easy to use, and it doesn't take a lot of training." The biggest key to deciding on the product is the support and replacement capabilities.

We have some processes in our company that were cut in half by using the FlashSystem.

The most valuable feature is that is supports a high IOPS rate. We have a heavy workload. Some storage systems are not as good in terms of IOPS. We are using just the FlashSystems. It is virtualized using SVCs. We are using normal physical disks like Storwize for not-so-hot data. For hot data, we are using FlashSystems.

I think the performance of most of the application is improving. Our users now say that it's much better than it was before. The storage speed is perfect.

It has room for improvement in the area of stability. The firmware is upgraded frequently. We need to update it maybe three or four time a year because of the new features and bug fixes. On one side, it is good; but, on the other side, it is not good because we need to upgrade within one year or they will not support the firmware. It would be better if they supported what we already have for longer.

We sometimes had a problem with some bugs in FlashSystems. One time, one FlashSystem was burnt up. There was some smoke and the data was damaged. We saved it because we have redundancy in the cluster. At the cluster level, we make copies and replicate to the other site for disaster recovery situations.

We upgraded one FlashSystem two months ago because it was not full. We had to buy two modules, if I remember correctly. This was quite a complicated upgrade. IBM brought us new FlashSystems. Because it is virtualized, we moved the data from this one, upgraded it, and moved the data back; but it was done dynamically without any outage.

With the virtualized FlashSystem, we hope for improved response time, but the availability is improved. It is also flexible in that we could upgrade it dynamically, move the data, and so on.

I think the guys in our country are very clever in this. We can count on them. When we call them, they respond very fast and bring the new parts on time. The repair time is written into the SLA. Support is available 24/7 and I think the repair time is within 24 hours.

Before we were using IBM DS8000s. The application was consuming a lot of IOPS with a lot of hot data.

We needed a higher IOPS rate. We chose the FlashSystem because the response time needs to be very fast. When the people working on the application feel that the response time is not good, or there is not enough storage space for the amount of data they have, then we have a flexible enough infrastructure to dynamically upgrade them to the FlashSystem. We do this planning on a yearly basis. We design the infrastructure solution according to the project requirements. Sometimes, this requires an upgrade to the FlashSystem.

The initial setup we did ourselves because it is very simple. We did the direct mounting of racks and the hardware. The software design is virtualized using SVCs.

We considered other options, but I don’t think there were any other options with such intensive processing as the FlashSystem. We have a lot of tiers; and for other tiers, we have other vendors. I think that the IBM FlashSystem is the highest quality available in the market. For us, considering the whole solution, it was best for us.

We are very satisfied with IBM's prices, I think.

I would advise colleagues to use FlashSystems. It's a very good solution for us to achieve our goals.

When I evaluate vendors, for me, the historical relationship is very important, and definitely the communication. With IBM, we know the vendor well.

The benefit to our organization is primarily the capacity savings. It compresses the data so we can see something like a four to one compression.

The most valuable features are, of course, the virtualization of the storage, the performance, and the compression.

With regards to the IBM V7000 storage system, where we have multiple tiers of storage, a heat map would show I/O distribution across the tiers of storage. I'd like to see some type of heat map reporting on the management console. It would be nice to see something like that. It may already be in the new release, but I'm not sure. The current release may have that already.

We had no major issues with stability. It's pretty stable.

We actually upgraded it, adding expansion shelves. It was fairly simple.

I can't remember what I called the technical support for. Generally, I think their support gets the job done. It's sufficient. We have a premium support account with IBM, so we have a dedicated support person to help us get it through.

I was involved in the initial setup, but we had a business partner that did the actual physical connections. I helped with some of the configurations. It was pretty straightforward.

Our shop historically had been an EMC shop. We had the IBM storage put in just a couple of years ago. I believe management brought it in based on price, in order to get price competition between the vendors. We were primarily looking at considerations of cost, reliability, and customer service.

I would just tell them to give it a try. Benchmark it and compare it with the other vendors. Talk to some customers about their experiences.

We are providing services to the other department, so FlashSystem is running several applications across multiple servers. In the future, we plan to increase our usage capacity to around 60 terabytes. 

IBM's response is very good.

The GUI for monitoring performance metrics could provide better visibility. For example, it doesn't let me segregate the IOPS per volume.

We've been using FlashSystem for about six months to a year.

FlashSystem is very stable.

You can go for the full controller, so you can say FlashSystem is scalable.

We haven't had any problems with IBM support. However, they don't cover everything in a single contract. They have different types of contracts. For example, you need separate contracts for software services and hardware services. Dell EMC's pricing model for support is much better. There's only one all-inclusive contract.

Installing FlashSystem is very easy. It takes less than half an hour, and I can handle it all myself. Three people on our team manage it. 

FlashSystem comes with all the licenses when you purchase it.

I rate FlashSystem nine out of 10. I would recommend it to others.

The solution is like a storage device that is for our old organized cloud infrastructure. We are using it as storage for all our databases, for the data we are preparing for in developing our own applications, or for running some infrastructure services. 

The solution is very flexible.

It's a very fast product. It's not slow in any way.

The product is very, very easy to configure.

The installation is nice and easy.

The stability of the solution isn't great. We have had a lot of issues with discs over the years.

There should be better integration with utilization platforms.

The pricing needs to be more competitive.

I've basically been using the solution for ten years or so.

It isn't really stable per se. We've had some problems over the years. We experienced some problems with the backplane, from what I recall. There were issues switching the discs. We had a lot of issues with discs. Of course, the problems didn't really happen in production.

We have about 100 users on the solution currently.

We've dealt with technical support in the past and we were satisfied with their level of service. However, we no longer pay for support. We have enough knowledgeable people in house to handle everything.

We are actually in the process of changing solutions. We're going to switch to Lenovo's DE4000.

The initial setup was not complex at all. It's pretty straightforward and easy to handle.

The deployment was very fast as well and may have only taken about a day or two.

We had a team of three that handled everything. They don't just handle the storage, however. They're handling the servers and network as well.

We didn't need to use a consultant when we were implementing the solution. We did everything in-house and with our own internal teams.

We initially paid for licenses and support for I don't remember how many years. Later on, if you want to extend the support you needed to pay for the license. However, due to the fact that we are rather experienced, we decided we didn't need to renew the support.

Currently, on the market, I see a lot of different vendors who are offering the same functionalities or even better options for the same or less money. They should try to be more competitive.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a six out of ten. If it was less expensive and a bit more stable, I would likely rate it higher.

We use the FlashSystem to store our company data that is used in production systems.

The maintenance service and support from IBM is very good.

It could be easier to implement.

This is an expensive product and if the price were reduced it would be better.

We have been using the IBM FlashSystem for a few years.

This is absolutely a stable product. However, we will probably not continue to use it in the future. One of the reasons for wanting to switch is the price. Also, technology is evolving and we will probably adopt a hyper-converged solution.

This storage solution is scalable. It is used in production and not directly linked to users. It runs various routines and batches, although the developers and IT interact with this. Together, this is about 50 people.

Technical support from IBM is very good.

We did not use another similar product prior to this one.

The initial setup is quite complex. To get it in place and configured took about one week.

We deployed with the help of an integrator.

There are three administrators who handle the routine maintenance and the hardware is well maintained by IBM.

In summary, this is a good product and I absolutely recommend it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.