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IBM FlashSystem pros and cons

Vendor: IBM

4.1 out of 5

111 reviews
91% willing to recommend

2,333 followers

Pros & Cons summary

IBM FlashSystem delivers high IOPS rates, robust compression, and seamless migration options for critical applications, yet faces drawbacks in data replication and setup complexity. While optimized for 24/7 dependability, the system's cost, data reduction features, and expansion options require improvement. Buyers should consider its high performance and reliability against the challenges of expanding and pricing. Understanding these factors can aid in assessing IBM FlashSystem's fit for enterprise needs.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

IBM FlashSystem supports a high IOPS rate essential for applications requiring low latency and high speed.

It provides valuable features like storage virtualization, compression, and deduplication, which help optimize space and performance.

IBM FlashSystem offers high availability, enhanced security, and a reliable failover mechanism, making it highly dependable.

The performance and stability of IBM FlashSystem are praised, with users expressing 100% satisfaction with its reliability.

IBM FlashSystem enables easy data migration from previous products or vendors with its embedded storage virtualization function.

CONS

IBM FlashSystem has challenges with pricing, which is considered high by users.

Stability issues are present, particularly with the data reduction pool feature.

IBM FlashSystem's scalability options are limited and need refinement.

There are shortcomings in the infrastructure technology, as it could be improved to PCI Express 5 from PCI Express 4.

IBM FlashSystem has insufficient data replication capabilities, particularly for one-to-many scenarios.

IBM FlashSystem Pros review quotes

HB

COO at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees

Aug 19, 2018

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.

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ST

Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Feb 9, 2022

It's a mature product. It's like a BMW that evolves consistently.

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SM

Head of IT Infrastructure at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

Dec 27, 2021

The performance is very good and we use this product to enhance our core system.

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IBM FlashSystem

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AZ

Infrastructure Architect Supervisor; Solution Delivery Supervisor at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 1, 2020

Most of the features for the reduction in data compression are useful. It is also very easy to use and administer. Its performance is also good.

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HW Sales Representative at GBM (an IBM alliance Company)

Jan 28, 2023

At the FlashSystem level, customers are especially fond of multi-tier and distributed rate systems, particularly the dynamic rate six arrays.

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reviewer1081236

Director Technical at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Nov 16, 2020

Over the years, it has become increasingly user-friendly.

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AJ

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Aug 12, 2019

The performance of the All-Flash System is very good. There is more enhanced performance and data production in the solution, which I appreciate.

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MN

Infrastructure Solutions Architect at areebah

Nov 10, 2021

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.

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Storage Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Dec 20, 2020

The compression and deduplication features are the most valuable.

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GM

BT Area Champion/Trainer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Feb 19, 2021

The power systems are very reliable if you are running 24/7 operations. For ongoing mission-critical applications, it's the best solution.

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IBM FlashSystem Cons review quotes

HB

COO at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees

Aug 19, 2018

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.

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ST

Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Feb 9, 2022

It is slightly more expensive, however, it all depends on your supplier.

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SM

Head of IT Infrastructure at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

Dec 27, 2021

This product lacks some of the options we wanted. For example, expansion was difficult and it required a lot of patching to be done.

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IBM FlashSystem

Free Report: IBM FlashSystem Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about IBM FlashSystem. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.

849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

AZ

Infrastructure Architect Supervisor; Solution Delivery Supervisor at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 1, 2020

They can include Amazon file system S3 protocol in the upcoming releases. It is a cloud file system. IBM FlashSystem doesn't have this feature in the box for high-end or mid-range. We have got requests for this from customers because we need to use S3 for EDI application storage. At the beginning of every year, IBM releases firmware. When I find any bugs in the firmware during the year, I am unable to find any information from IBM regarding the bug. I need to open a ticket, and the IBM engineering team makes a patch only for me. This patch is not public. By creating a customized patch for a client, they don't really solve the issue for everyone. If multiple users have the same bug, IBM should upload the patch on the official website so that we can download it. IBM FlashSystem has a monitoring tool in the box, but it is not advanced. I need a more advanced tool for more advanced equations and monitoring. All top three storage vendors, that is, EMC, IBM, and Pure Storage, don't have a powerful monitoring tool. To monitor our box to show the statistics for I/Os and latency, I need to pay for extra software. The built-in monitoring storage is not mature enough to handle all requests and generate all reports that I need. They can include the functionality to stretch a cluster natively without using any additional boxes. In addition, there are some features that EMC has integrated with the box. These features are not available in IBM FlashSystem.

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HW Sales Representative at GBM (an IBM alliance Company)

Jan 28, 2023

Our customers have raised concerns about the limitations of the FlashSystem 5200 and 7300, which only offer a 32-gigabyte connection.

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reviewer1081236

Director Technical at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Nov 16, 2020

The customer's expectations are what they get on the cloud, they're expecting even in the on-premises deployments, going forward.

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AJ

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Aug 12, 2019

The solution is not easy to implement. It takes a lot of time to study the product and it's a little complicated in general.

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MN

Infrastructure Solutions Architect at areebah

Nov 10, 2021

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.

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Storage Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Dec 20, 2020

They can improve its initial configuration. The initial configuration is currently very difficult. There are multiple choices or alternative ways to configure based on the use case and what you are targeting out of the device, that is, more capacity or more performance. These multiple alternatives cause a lot of confusion. They should increase the processing part of the nodes. Currently, you can cluster up to eight nodes. From my experience and the workload that I am facing in my environment currently, I would like to see either a bigger or stronger node or a larger number of nodes that can be clustered together. We formally communicated to them that we need to see either this or that, and they are working on something.

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GM

BT Area Champion/Trainer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Feb 19, 2021

IBM should improve its data reduction development.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 79)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

All-Flash Storage

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

All-Flash Storage

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs IBM FlashSystem

NetApp FAS Series vs IBM FlashSystem

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs IBM FlashSystem

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