IBM Spectrum Virtualize Reviews

It is used for continuity, protecting stuff in the cloud, and migrating data from a legacy device to a new device. 

The big solution that I last implemented was called IBM HyperSwap on SVCs. It is now called IBM Spectrum Virtualize. The solution we build was basically a high availability data center. I replicated all my data with IBM HyperSwap so that if a data center gets destroyed, you can fire up everything on the other side in minutes. It was very fast.

There are many benefits to this solution. Storage virtualization and the ability to migrate massive amounts of data to other systems without impacting your client are the most valuable. It is non-disruptive for my users. We migrated 350 terabytes of data in one night to a new machine without a small system going down and a single user complaining about the performance.

You have to fine-tune a lot of storage machines constantly for performance and for making sure that they are optimal, but IBM Spectrum Virtualize does this by itself. It does the adjustment on its own, and it does it right. That's what makes it different. I had a huge VSP from Hitachi, which is also a type of virtualization-based engine but with a decent size. It was a continuous performance-tuning exercise. I never had that issue with IBM Spectrum Virtualize.

I hate I/O groups. If you start swapping I/O groups, they can be potentially risky. If they could get rid of the whole I/O group principle, the risk is not there anymore. I understand the fundamental thing about I/O groups, but they are risky.

I have been using IBM Spectrum Virtualize for probably ten years. I used to be a service provider. Now I am working for the clients, and I am deploying the solutions myself.

I have had some issues where I was losing new features, but most of the problems were coming from the firmware. The problem is that most people won't have a test environment for this solution because you need to virtualize other storage. This means building another solution, which won't make sense at the end of the day. The firmware goes right into your production, and there you go. There were also a few other bugs on a site that troubled me for probably eight months.

I had contacted them for a firmware issue. In South Africa, IBM's support is not very much up to scratch, which is a bit of a problem. When the pressure was put, they were able to get resources from other countries and assist us. 

The local support is very weak in South Africa. I have raised this issue with my account managers many times. When you start talking about issues, they are completely confused. As soon as I stumble upon a problem and start hammering them, they bring in an international support person who then solves the problem. So, they can get your problem resolved but using local resources from South Africa is a problem.

The initial setup is a bit complex because there are a lot of pieces that you need to check and know beforehand, but once you have implemented it, you can forget about it. It runs on its own.

I am very happy with the pricing. There is no comparison when it comes to pricing. I have looked at all solutions from EMC, Veritas, Hitachi, Dell, etc. None of them compares to IBM when it comes to pricing. I get great pricing from them.

I would absolutely recommend this solution for any big company that has storage devices and is moving towards things like software-defined storage. It is definitely a key tool to have, but you need to make sure that you can afford it, and you do it right. Otherwise, you will not get any sleep.

You have to get it right from the word go, and that is important. Once you get it there, it just runs, and you can forget about it. According to me, this is the leading exporting storage utilization engine in the world. There are only a few solutions that can do what this solution does. Most of the other solutions are years behind this solution. 

I would rate IBM Spectrum Virtualize a nine out of ten. The only issue in this solution is related to the firmware that is released. 

I manage the storage environment. In most of the storage environment, we use IBM products: Spectrum Virtualize, Spectrum Control, Spectrum Scale, and StorWize and SVC products with FlashSystem behind it.

It has the ability to seamlessly move hardware in and out as we refresh technology. It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features. 

Our disaster recovery has also improved drastically because I am able to use a lot of the Spectrum Virtualize features to create multiple copies that we use to test and do development. Our disaster recovery plan tests are always successful, which is good. I have had zero downtime in the last three years.

The SVC gives excellent performance with tiered storage behind it, and the Spectrum Control suite. The newest versions that I have now are very useful in terms of managing, monitoring, and alerting. The full suite handles everything I need. We have had a lot of success through the years with Virtualize, which was originally just SVC, and we use it heavily. My environments are extremely large and busy, and it does the job without any problems. So, we are very happy with it.

It has been very stable. I am pushing a very heavy workload, a couple million I/Os at peak times. I have very heavy throughput with a lot databases: a lot Oracle, a lot of VMware and virtualization, and a lot of midrange virtualization. So, it is handling every platform.

I could scale out really easy with the virtualized product in terms of how I do the tiering behind it. 

We will never probably have everything in the cloud at this point, not until technology can catch up on the from a telecommunications perspective. We have a hybrid type of environment. Right now, we have an on-prem cloud that manages our VMware environment, so the orchestration is centered around that. It's a VMware product, but we anticipate seeing cloud handle a lot of our needs from a file share perspective and collaboration. There are some Microsoft initiatives going on at the moment, and we use cloud for that. 

We are waiting to see where we might be able to fit in with some cloud alternatives, e.g., backup archiving. We are looking at a IBM's cloud products which handle the archiving side of things. 

We are not looking at platform as a service and infrastructure right now. We just have too much load and heavy workload that we just could not get the performance that we would want there yet. 

Technical support has been excellent for all products: SVC, Storwize, DS8000, and FlashSystem. Every one of the different hardware products that I have, I have always had good support. They are very reliable. Therefore, I have been happy with the support.

I set up, bought, designed, purchased, and implemented all of the storage myself.

There were some complex technologies. I learned to go take classes and educate myself, as it is always straightforward when you read the red books. If you follow the best practices and do all the things IBM told you to do, it is always easy. If you do not, you can get in trouble. So, I found it to be very straightforward.

EMC originally was on my list when we were refreshing again six years ago. I decided to introduce EMC back into the fold to create competition. The reason IBM Storage won out over EMC and Hitachi was just performance. It scaled and performed better in our tests and PoCs. There was not enough of a business reason for me to completely change vendors. 

We use Commvault and also have some NetBackup in our environment for our backup software. We are moving primarily to Commvault right now from NetBackup.

It provides a control plane for the data plane. With Spectrum Virtualize, you can extract the physical storage, then hide it and give it flexibility.

Most of my implementations have been on-premise. We could stand up a software instance someplace else and connect to it. However, most people that I work with get it in an appliance format. They use it to migrate off of existing storage. When lease expiration of something is occurring, they will use it to save value and migrate everything. Then, I will see them in a traditional Fibre Channel, a SAN connected to server architecture, or both in virtualized servers as well as standalone.

I do not personally manage any instances, but I have several dozen customers that I have deployed this solution for, so it is up and running in their production.

It lowers cost. It does so by getting more efficient use out of the technology behind it. 

It also simplifies access. You set it and forget it for a lot of things.

• Ease of use
• Scalability 
• The product comes in hardware, software, and appliance models, so I have a lot of choice on how we deploy it and its interoperability.

Tighter integration with cloud storage might be useful as a target for a variety of use cases. 

Stability is very good. I have been working with the product for probably 15 years. I have put it in production during critical workloads without a problem.

The scalability is very good. It can handle anywhere from very small to large enterprise class.

It can handle our customers' future growth. The hardware behind it may get more commoditized, but the capabilities of Spectrum Virtualize remains the same. It still provides value.

Technical support is very good. Most of the support personnel that I have talked to were very knowledgeable, which has always been good.

Originally, it was probably complex. Now, it is straightforward. It is pretty easy to deploy, and with a basic understanding, it comes together easily.

Our customers usually evaluate Dell EMC and Hitachi, but also some of the other newer flash environments, like Compellent. 

I would recommend Spectrum Virtualize. Across the industry, nobody matches it.

Do your homework and architect the solution upfront. The technology will stand by itself if you have done it right.

Customers' main criteria when selecting a solution: Most of my customers buy it in the appliance format, whether it is a Storwize product or something else. They are competitively shopping products, so cost is important along with scalability and usability. They typically start to believe once they see the interfaces, and they like the usability side of it. A lot of my customers have been dissatisfied with other vendors, so this is a rallying point for them. I do not have anybody who has been sorry.

It has been integrated into our production systems, thereby not having as much online storage. We're using the archiving functionality. When I say reliability, I mean that we are operating 24/7. The product enables us to retrieve our client data at any given point in time.

The most valuable feature is its reliability.

They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments. Supposedly, it was going to be corrected in 8.1, restoring it back to the original UID, but it wasn't done.

The stability is excellent.

At this point in time, scalability is excellent. It's very scalable.

I work in Miami, Florida. Our data center is elsewhere. We may have some connectivity issues every now and then, but overall, it's been excellent. I always make certain to have the right phone numbers for support.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup, but I'm involved with the new progression from old TSN to Spectrum 8.1.

We look for reliability of the product itself. It's an excellent product. I would not be penny wise and pound foolish, though.

I would honestly utilize as much IBM as I could. I'm an old system manager in multiple, prior jobs. I would always stick with IBM across the board, especially if you look at the high-end tape units. They will get around to the correct drivers and everything. It's much easier to use all IBM.

If you use someone else's server, whether it is an X86 or whatever, you get finger pointed if something doesn't exactly work right. This is especially the case with tape drives, and especially if you were using Jaguar, which was the old type. They came off mainframe. It was very high end, very costly. I would stick with using IBM servers, even IBM storage like XIV if you want to go with something less costly than a DS88.

Make it correct. Make it easy on yourself. Use HPE storage, disc storage, or Dell storage and you will get finger pointing. It always happens. No one's wrong. Even if you get IBM, sometimes they are also wrong.

We had all IBM and we did have an issue when we upgraded our tape libraries, i.e., we had the wrong firmware. That was with IBM. Imagine if we had someone else. It would be a long, drawn-out process.

You may have one or two issues at the same time, and one can mask another issue. Don't go cheap. Have a test system. Never, ever, put something straight into production. I don't care how many things they swear on, or whatever.

You never know because everyone's environment is different. That's the other thing. I don't care if it was AIX, and it's just moving into Linux, you still need to test it. Put it up for a few weeks, if not for a few months. Don't ever go cheap on a test system. If you can have it separate, have it separate from your other actual production servers. In some places, we actually had it in a different machine.

Have a different machine. Never combine. Keep it simple.

We use this solution to run our virtual machines.

The ability to add the virtual machine on the Spectrum environment to sort out the data movers(DMs) and their schedules is a valuable feature. You are able to have, for example, four data movers to balance them so you do not have too much work on one data mover.

Once you know how to run the commands it tells you what has been backed up and which DM did not get backed up. You have what you call DSM errors. The system talks to the schedule and then it knows why and what happened with a certain backup that was not completed. When you are trying to troubleshoot you are able to go back to the DSM or OPT error files and scroll down and see why the backup did not run. It gives you the error number allowing you to go back to see what the issue was.

When comparing this solution to others it is running 1.5 but should be on a 2.0 and the difficulty is a little higher to operate at first which could be improved.

The only errors I find sometimes is the solution tells me I cannot operate it because a service has turned off, you can just go back to the VM, go to services, and turn back the services. However, this should improve.

We use the solution to backup data.

I have found the solution to be very stable.

There is no maintenance required because it runs very smoothly.

This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose.

I have evaluated Cohesity, Veeam, and Commvault.

My advice to those wanted to implement this solution would be it is very useful and will give you all the details you need; how to set up the data movers, make sure they are balanced so that the load is distributed evenly, how to set it up and get all the documents in place once you log in.

I rate IBM Spectrum Virtualize an eight out of ten.

My view of how the product has aided my customers varies. The replication functions have assisted in the relocation of whole data centres from one site to another, the snapshotting is of value in providing several versioned recovery points for some other customers. The virtualisation of the back end storage gives performance improvements over the direct attachment of the back end storage, as storage pools spanning a large number of drives can be configured, along with the caching algorithms. The migration capability across back end storage appliances has been of particular importance to some of my customers.

There are several good features, many of which have similarities to that of competitive offerings from other vendors (replication, snapshot). Compression is quite useful, but for me the most useful has been the virtualisation of back-end SAN disk systems, from almost any vendor. This enables easy upgrading and updating of storage, across vendors, by moving the storage pools between the back end disk systems. Migration from configurations where servers have storage provisioned from older SAN disk systems to newer storage systems is almost seamless using image mode migration techniques, with only a short outage of the servers. The hybrid storage pools, with SSD and the hard-disk drives, together with the Easy Tier feature, give high IOPs performance for most loads, without the customer needing to purchase all flash storage solutions.

Adding features for data deduplication is one area of improvement.

I have encountered stability issues in situations when the customer-provided AC power has defects. A newer version of the firmware resulted in storage nodes not updating or starting.

No issues with scalability encountered.

Currently, support is generally good, as there is an IBM support web interface to lodge calls. Once the call has been initiated, responsiveness depends on the support contract conditions. The technical expertise, once reaching level 2 or higher, is good.

Going back to the SVC edition of Spectrum Virtualize, I do not recall any comparable alternative storage virtualisation solution.

Like any storage implementation, the details of the complete setup of this solution requires a good understanding of the customer requirements. The base setup of the product itself has varied over time, but has always been fairly straightforward.

Generally the bundled licensing is more cost effective and gives flexibility to the solution. Linking into the Spectrum Suite can also be advantageous, but depends on the scale of the enterprise.

Recently with the many storage virtualisation solutions now available, consideration of other products depends on the size of the customer and their requirements, and what vendor/technology provider may already exist in their organisation.

Spectrum Virtualize has a long history, with the original SAN Volume Controllers (SVC) using early versions of the software. The software on these appliances has had several name changes over the years. I have worked on and been involved with pre-sales, design and implementation on the early SVCs from 2005, and more recently the Storwize implementation, V7000s, 5000s and 3700s. So, product 2145-xxx, 2076, 2077, 2072 and so on. These are all IBM appliances, with their Spectrum Virtualize software running on them.

Obtain a well-qualified technical specialist/architect to review the design and setup if many features such as replication, snapshotting and compression are part of the solution.

The product helps us to manage our storage in a way that allows us to put different frames inside or out of our storage infrastructure and migrate.

The benefits are that it speeds up provisioning of the storage across different tiers and allows a small team to manage that function, for many petabytes of data.

I think they are doing a good job with the features that are there. I don't really have that much to add for the next release. I like what we see.

Stability has been outstanding. There are failures, but they are designed to have failures, and we have not had a single data loss incident, even throughout some pretty funky upgrades.

We are SVC customers and we would like to see the ability to add more nodes. After some sessions that we've had this morning, now we're understanding why this hasn't happened, but we still have hope that it will happen. We will be able to go from an 8-node cluster up to maybe a twelve or fourteen. It would make us really happy.

For this platform, the technical support has been great. We have had very few issues that haven't been resolved, in a timely fashion.

The expense for support and maintenance is a little bit on the heavy side.

I have been involved in the initial setup process. We have production in the DR clusters, some of the production clusters have been in place prior to my arrival, but we have done the same thing in DRs.

The setup was very straightforward. We also have a guy who we call as “our good luck charm”. He is our reseller who comes to help us out; when he is not there things don't go as good, but when he is there he doesn't do much besides bring us the food and gives us great advice. They provide good, reliable support and he is a great guy.

In regards to the vendor selection, it's a price versus reward scenario. We have to be very conscious of what we spend and we have to make sure that the company is spending their money well. So, we're able to buy the products that allow us to have uptime.

If you can afford it, get it. It's great.

It enables us to virtualize the entire data center for the Internal Revenue Service. We have about seven or eight terabytes of data behind SVC right now. Before we took this over as a managed service, they had about 120 silo storage areas. Right now, everything is virtualized behind SVC.

It is easier for management with end of life erase. It now takes us less than two-three days to decommission the erase. It has given us an increase in the usage rate on the SVC. It has gone up from probably 30-40% on the silo erase to about 85%.

We have reduced a lot of power and cooling requirements in the data center. We have optimized as much as possible. Right now, it's running very smoothly.

I would like to see data obligation and some features like cluster grouping. I have seen that on the roadmap for the last two years, but it hasn't come out yet. They are still showing it on the roadmap, so I think that it's going to come out soon.

We've had some issues with the production rate behind SVC. We had problems with back-end storage areas having double disk failures. It took a while to recognize errors, due to some of the environmental settings within the data center. When the temperature increased, we started seeing more drive failures on the back-end. But over the last 18 months, we've had zero downtime across the board.

Scalability is very good.

Technical support is very good. We touch base with the IBM house development team in the UK once every quarter to review the roadmap. So it's very good.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We evaluated the Hitachi RV series. I think it was Z100 at that time, and IBM SVC. We tested three solutions and chose IBM SVC to virtualize the environment.

We were looking for stability, such as in the features search and the ease of manageability compared to other products. These products included EMC, Hitachi, and Red Hat.

It's easy to implement. Just become a partner with IBM and you will be successful.