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IBM FlashSystem pros and cons

Vendor: IBM

4.1 out of 5

113 reviews
91% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

IBM FlashSystem supports high IOPS rates crucial for low latency and data transfer and offers features like deduplication and compression. It is reliable but high cost and complex installation are concerns for tech buyers. Technical support is fast, but data reduction and replication need improvement. Limited storage capacity may be restrictive, and the product requires extensive knowledge to operate effectively. Pricing could be more competitive given performance features.

Buyer's Guide

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

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

IBM FlashSystem delivers high performance with low latency and high IOPS, crucial for data-intensive applications.

The product offers excellent data deduplication and compression capabilities, allowing for efficient storage management.

The system excels in storage virtualization, providing seamless data migration and flexibility.

Speed and ease of installation make IBM FlashSystem convenient and time-saving for users.

IBM FlashSystem is renowned for its stability and reliability, making it a preferred choice for mission-critical operations.

CONS

IBM FlashSystem faces stability issues and improvements are needed in its replication features, as it's unclear how they function.

FlashSystem's RAID options and disk capacities could be expanded, with current offerings capped at 57 terabytes per shelf.

The pricing of FlashSystem is considered high, and more competitive pricing would be advantageous for users.

There is difficulty in implementing IBM FlashSystem, requiring extensive knowledge and causing confusion during the setup process.

IBM needs to address data reduction improvements, as current deduplication and compression features are inadequate.

IBM FlashSystem Pros review quotes

Technical Head at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jul 4, 2016

Flash disk with Easy Tier option

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IT Specialist at Slovenská sporiteľňa

Sep 29, 2016

The most valuable feature is that is supports a high IOPS rate.

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Senior UNIX Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 1, 2016

The most valuable features were the performance of the array, i.e., very low latency and high IOPS. Plus, the management interface is very easy to use.

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IBM FlashSystem

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Enterprise Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

May 24, 2017

The speed and the ease of installation are the most valuable features.

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Systems integrator at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 24, 2017

The speed of the unit is its best feature. It performs very well.

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Senior Technology Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Oct 24, 2017

The GUI is very easy and performance is also good.

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Storage Administrator at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 25, 2017

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

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Systems Engineer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees

May 25, 2017

The valuable features for us are the extra add-ons, such as the FIM provisioning, the compression, the disaster recovery capabilities, and the storage pooling functions.

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Senior Technical Specialist at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

May 25, 2017

The valuable features are high availability, compression, and a failover mechanism. It's a very highly available storage solution.

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Senior Systems Consultant at a tech services company

Sep 10, 2017

Ability to manage third-party arrays and virtualise them: One screen to control multiple arrays. Simplified administration.

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IBM FlashSystem Cons review quotes

Technical Head at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jul 4, 2016

When you provision a datastore auto-format takes a long time

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IT Specialist at Slovenská sporiteľňa

Sep 29, 2016

It has room for improvement in the area of stability.

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Senior UNIX Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 1, 2016

The array level RAID does not seem available.

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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: December 2025.

879,711 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Enterprise Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

May 24, 2017

I would like to have a larger disk. Right now, you can get 57 terabytes in a shelf. Once they get the larger disk and you get larger capacities, it'll be even better.

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Systems integrator at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 24, 2017

I would like to see bigger modules.

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Senior Technology Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Oct 24, 2017

Replication features need improvement. Currently, they are there in the product, but I'm not sure as to how it works exactly.

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Storage Administrator at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 25, 2017

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.

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Systems Engineer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees

May 25, 2017

AHV is Acropolis Hypervisor – A relatively new Hypervisor, robust and stable as VMware vSphere, has built-in advanced analytics and powerful operations, Self Service Portal and components for DevOps included, managed by a single pane of glass (Prism) via HTML5 and it is free of charge – That is why Nutanix is so advanced and revolutionary.

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Senior Technical Specialist at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

May 25, 2017

I know they have a flashcopy manager, but it is extra software, an additional license, and some customers don't like to add addition costs to their infrastructure. If IBM could create, or include snapshot management within the GUI, that would really be helpful.

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Senior Systems Consultant at a tech services company

Sep 10, 2017

One area for improvement is in the GUI, where host clusters are not properly dealt with. With Hypervisor host clusters, all hosts must see the same volumes in the same order. Using the concept of a “host-group” has been around (even with IBM) for many years, so why not with the V7000?

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

All-Flash Storage

Popular Comparisons

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Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem

Pure FlashArray X NVMe vs IBM FlashSystem

NetApp AFF vs IBM FlashSystem

Pure Storage FlashArray vs IBM FlashSystem

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