IBM FlashSystem Reviews

In a bank.

- Migration efforts - Site recovery using SRM - Highly scalable while backend storage can be of many vendors - Ideal solution if you have a mixed intel/power infrastructure Ease of use

• Migration effort
• Site recovery plan.

- CLI though intuitive, no other API available - Lacks scheduling or a cron - Has no built in short term performance graphs - IBM TPC overexceeds the montoring needs, had to fall back on Stor2RRd - Support response times are bad -

Node conditions in specific workload conditions might trigger a node reset.

- Multivendor support for backend storage - Clustering and adding in another IO--group - supports many shelves, large disks, several clusters

- Bad response times

IBM SVC -> HP 3PAR -> Storwize v7000f

- Easy and straighforward

- selfserviced

Biggest return is the easy migration/upgrade path as well as the scalability options - IBM added in compression and deduplication in its portfolio, as well as Garbage collection and space reclamation.

- setup cost is cheap as you can do it yourself - IBM SVC licensing on non IBM back-end storage used to cost a lot in terms of licenses per shelf or even per TB. The equipment on itself is relatively cheap. Watch out for license costs !

- HPE 3PAR StoreServe - EMC Unity

We do replication and other things. For us, compression, deduplication, and the space saving features are important to us. The price to value ratio, for us, was good.

We are using replication for our backup solutions and it costs us less compared to other solutions. For space saving features, it definitely saves us in a virtual environment in terms of space and money.

There is a limit on the flash memory for fresh copy, i.e., a memory limit. So there are limits within the software, for buffering and then caching. We want to see those items increased.

There are a lot of bugs and they are still adding features in the product. The system has matured from 6.X to 7.X. It has improved a lot, but it still has room for more improvement.

This is not an enterprise solution, and our team doesn't sell that. That's how it is. So we shouldn't expect an enterprise level solution. Whatever is marketable for the segment serves a purpose.

You can scale out as much as you want. We use up to four in a cluster, four to six nodes, so it's working fine for us.

Other than bug fixes, the technical support is really good. If you actually hit a bug in your environment, it's definitely going to take time. It has to be escalated all the way to the third level and then to the engineers. It's a little bit challenging over there. But overall, it's okay.

We were using SVC and DS83. We are actually using that app, but for us, IBM Storwize V7000 was more cost effective in our environment. That's why we chose that specific product.

The setup is straightforward if you want to do a basic setup. But if you want to do customization specific to your environment, then you need to be more intimately involved with it.

We are not, at this point, considering other vendors. These days, it's specifically cost which is more important when selecting a vendor. We are not part of a financial environment or something like that where we would have a lot of penalties. So for us, as long as it is stable enough, we are okay. So for us, it is stability and then cost.

If they are cost conscious and have a release table solution, this is probably the best solution available.

It has helped us to achieve a good response time for users.

The latency and speed of the array and also its ease of management were beneficial features.

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.

The several major crashes resulted in the entire weekends being lost in rebuilding the array and then for restoring the data. This was caused each time by a memory card failure and the array's inability to use a spare card. The array level RAID does not seem available.

It was great with TMS, however it has been terrible ever since IBM took over.

On one occasion our support renewal had not been processed, which we found out when we tried to get support during an array failure.

Previously, it was a great experience with RamSan-400.

The setup is very easy.

We implemented it in-house. It is very straightforward.

Since the takeover by IBM, the prices are much higher.

For resilience, you need to buy two of these devices per site as RAID only applies within in each memory card, i.e., the whole array is not resilient if a card fails. Failover would only be possible for a standby device.

Virtualization of external storage, while adding cache and speed to the external storage. You don't have to completely take out the datacenter of your old storage. Just add it to the Storwize, continue using it, but with added performance/speed.

It has saved money for our clients by not replacing all of their current storages (with new storages).

• The IP replication
• Events/log analysis tools

I've never used it myself for long periods of time, since as a system integrator and partner, I have only configured these systems for the end user. However, our clients have been using them since 2011, both Gen 1 and 2.

No.

No.

Since our company staff and I are an authorised IBM service partner with certifications in servicing Storwize V7000, all the technical support towards our clients have been done by ourselves. Only when some part fails have claimed it from IBM, and that went fast.

Yes, IBM DS5300. We switched because of the external storage virtualization.

It is pretty straightforward with a nice GUI. One has to know the basic concepts and terminology.

No special advice about pricing. Regarding licensing make sure you add at least three years software maintenance from IBM at the beginning, because you will not be able to download firmware updates or any fixes/patches without this. Even if you have hardware maintenance, they will not allow a download without this SW maintenance contract.

Yes, IBM SVC, which has essentially the same software, but it has no place for disk drives. Therefore, you must attach some storage to it.

Get the control box first, without any expansion boxes, and make sure you add at least three SSD drives, because this system has an auto tiering option. Thus, your frequently used data will be automatically placed on SSDs and be accessed faster by hosts. Data for shared folders, which is not so important, you can keep on older storages virtualized by the V7000, or put on bigger, cheaper, and slower disks.

We used to provision storage from different devices. This requires a lot of manual effort to synchronize all hosts with each storage unit in an environment. IBM SAN Volume Controller helps manage all storage units from a single interface; while IBM FlashSystem provides high performance for our Tier 1 applications.

IBM FlashSystem has an easy to use GUI, similar to the IBM Storewize family, which make it one of the best flash storage systems in the market.

We use the IBM SAN Volume Controller to provide a single management interface for virtualized storage. It is easy to manage many storage devices from a single controller.

The two products should be unified and have a service processor to restart devices remotely. For example, NetApp has devices which include a service processor in nodes, which could be used to restart the nodes remotely. IBM should implement something like this.

Both products are basically for block-level access. There should be a series that also has a file level and block-level access together, which would make it unified.

The stability of the system is fine.

We did not have any problems with scalability.

We receive excellent technical support.

I currently use both NetApp and IBM. NetApp storage is cost efficient, but IBM is way ahead of NetApp in terms of block-level access.

The initial setup was easy.

Pricing can be considered as per market competition. As I am seeing less projects using IBM storage these days, the only reason seems to be the cost of support.

We had a contract with IBM, and now we are also using NetApp storage.

Go ahead and implement it. IBM storage provides you everything that you’ll need for a block-level architecture, as they have many different products which provides you with a variety of options to meet your needs.

This solution is our main production storage system. It is deployed in a few banks in Ukraine, where it is used to store the core system data.

The most valuable feature is that these models have integrated compression chips, so all data is compressed on the chip without losing any performance.

A big area for improvement is that the data reduction pool feature is not recommended for use in a production environment because it has stability and performance issues. There are also some issues with updates when you have different versions installed, which makes it quite difficult for the administrator to choose which version to install.

There are some stability issues.

There is room to scale.

IBM's technical support do excellent work.

I've previously used NetApp FAS, which is a bit difficult to use compared to FlashSystem.

The initial setup is very easy and can be done by one person.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

On-premises

• Thin Provisioning
• Flash Copy
• User friendly management interface

We run our business applications on it. Also OS was booted from SAN.

Product support is restricted to IBM only. It must be decentralized to IBM partners as well.

Six years.

Yes, we faced power supply failure, Multiple SAS drives failure, and at the end both controllers were dead.

We are able to add additional drives easily.

One out of 10.

No, it was our first experience with any kind of SAN.

Initial SAN configuration was smooth.

If you are planning to purchase a new SAN then go for all flash. Do not invest in a hybrid SAN.

Yes, HPE and Fujitsu.

Please make sure that you will be getting proper after-sales support from IBM.

This was a great step forward from the XIV in next generation hardware for the customer. We're seeing tremendous data reduction for many workloads. It's not a 100% move from XIV for all workloads, however, but the customer is very pleased, for the most part, in their environment.

Benefits for us include lower overall cost, higher density, lower data center costs, and reduced total TCO, as well as moving to an all-flash solution versus a flash/spinning disk solution.

The HSM management console GUI still need some enhancements. It is still a bit awkward in navigation, and some functions/features are not yet fully integrated into the GUI support, but only via CLI. We also need to get reporting down to individual pool and volume levels, rather than just overall system levels. Customers need a more granular view of their individual business usage as well.

We've had some issues with stability, such as a couple of hardware failures and a couple of code bugs. They were addressed, but they caused initial customer concern.

Scalability is quite nice, with being able to support over 1.5TB effective in one rack is a nice selling feature. One of the early issues was that they weren't at a code release where we were able to add new elements right away in a non-disruptive fashion. We had to wait for a couple of code releases for that. We've gone beyond that now. At this point, scalability is no longer an issue.

Technical support has been great. They have been engaged from start to finish.

Regarding previous solutions, this was more of a technology refresh decision. A customer was heavily invested in an older technology that they were very satisfied with, but they wanted to continue to make the move to flash technology. This was the next logical era of evolution.

The initial setup was a little more difficult than the predecessor XIV, but it's a new product, so a learning curve is to be expected. As it is becoming more common in the field, it should be getting better documented and more straightforward to deploy. We are seeing new and continual updates to Red books and best practices documents now.

We didn't really consider alternative solutions, mainly because there aren’t any out there that can touch the A9000 family. From our standpoint, we're an IBM business partner. We value reliability and performance above everything else. Price is a close second, but reliability is key.

Read anything and everything you can, such as documentation manuals and best practices that are coming out. Stay plugged into the IBM communities and leverage services if this is your first engagement for capacity and sizing.