IBM FlashSystem Reviews

For me, it's the redundancy that the machine provides as that's the most value that I get from this product.

One of the benefits is that when it's doing data extents, it moves them faster than what I was being able to move previously, i.e., by using a flash system.

There is a need for more help with the commands because, from version to version, they change; so what I used to use back in the different version, I can't use now. Thus, it would be helpful if they improve that aspect.

For me, it's stable.

The product is scalable.

I don't use the technical support as much because it's quite stable and scalable.

We weren't using any other solution. Our storage architect is the one who decided for us to have it.

The setup was straightforward, it is pretty easy and I can do it with my eyes closed, if I wanted to.

Reliability is the most important aspect while selecting a vendor.

I would recommend to use it.

The valuable features are snapshots and snap logs. We only use those on our flash system. We value the performance of the system.

Our automatic banking systems have become twice as quick with flash storage.

I don't know about improvements. Maybe having independent snapshots. For now, when we make snapshots one by one, they depend on each other. If we delete the first snapshot, then we can lose the others. We really need functional snapshots which are independent of each other.

The stability is not very good. Over the course of the last two years, we had two incidents with flash storage when we lost our data. We have three flash storages and we lost all the data on two of them. That was not very good.

Scalability is good.

Technical support is good enough. Their advice was mainly to upgrade our firmware and restore our backups.

Test all of the products as you evaluate them.

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.

Most of my customers love it because it's easy to use and easy to manage. They can get their applications up and running very fast. They can buy it at a good price.

I would like to see the connection to cloud service providers, although I think that's already there. There's not much more that I can tell you. There are some issues on a firmware level. It's not very transparent. The option to connect to a Cloud storage provider seems to be available but there is not much detail on how it's implemented.

As a field engineer I’m used to how the systems work. Some customers however have expressed to me , well for lack of better word “anxiety” at not being able to see more of what goes on in the background (as an option). They would like a more detailed progress of the firmware upgrade process. (i.e. NVRAM,controller, etc…).

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.

The challenge here is in order to replace massively Install base of VMware vSphere they need to expand their ecosystem with ISVs (i.e. F5, PaloAlto, Citrix, TrendMicro etc.) to provide a wider range of solutions running as a virtual appliance (vApp) just like VMware did years ago.
Currently there is an ecosystem but I think it is around 30-40 providers.

So far, it's been a very stable platform. There have been some issues lately with some bad codes, but for the most part, it's been very stable. It is something that I can recommend at any time.

Scalability has improved so far. It seems like every year there are more and more expansion added to that.

I have used the technical support and so far it has been very good. The response was a little bit lacking last year, but it looks like it's been improving.

Just buy it. Support for sure is important when considering which vendor to go for, as well as ease of use and the track record of the code base.

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.

It allows our organization to provide a more timely response to our customers.

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

I would like to see bigger modules. That's about the only thing that needs improvement.

So far, it's been very stable. There have been no issues.

It is very scalable.

I have used technical support and they have been very good.

We were having performance issues. We decided to find the lowest latency device and this was it.

I was involved in the initial setup and it was very straightforward.

We only evaluated EMC. This was a better performing product.

This is probably the best unit you're going to find out there.

It was quite easy to migrate from EMC storage because everything is virtualized. Easy Tier is quite nice to use.

We're a public sector organization. One of the benefits was that it was the lowest bid for us. It basically came down to cost.

I had wish lists, but I found out that they have already been completed.

At our current code level, when I extend any volume that is using Metro Mirror, I have to remove the Metro Mirror relationship. Once the Metro Mirror relationship is removed, I can extend the volumes and I have to re-create the Metro Mirror relationship and sync the entire volume.

For example, if I have a 1TB volume and I want to extend to 1.5TB instead of 0.5TB being replicated using Metro Mirror, 1.5TB has to be replicated.

The next version will include an update for this problem.

Stability has been good. We haven't had any issues, besides those that were our own fault when we pushed the work loads too high.

Scalability is quite easy. We've been expanding pretty much every year.

We have always used support. We have a main contact person, and he's a really good technical resource.

We don't really have a choice of vendors because we are public sector. To me, it's history. Our trusted partner is Horizon, and they're great people to work with. When I work with someone else, I'm not sure if they can deliver what I want. But Horizon goes the whole nine yards.

I was not initially involved in the setup. I was tasked with other projects at the time.

If cost is not a factor, I would definitely say IBM is good. Their business partners are good. For instance, they will try to get you vouchers to get training. With EMC, we never really got any training. It was all a cost for us in the public sector. We have to evaluate what training we can take, because I have a jack-of-all-trades type of role.

The most valuable features are the ability to virtualize other storage behind it, thin provisioning, compression, and flash systems.

The benefit of the product is the ease-of-management. It has significantly reduced the IT operation costs to our organization.

I don’t really have a feature that I’d be using. Other storage technologies such as 3D drives or 3D flash would be cool to see, but for the users who I’m selling to, I don’t have this to offer. I don’t think that there is any improvement required.

Stability has been excellent and we never had any problems.

It’s massively scalable, so I’ll never run into that problem.

I have used tech support and they are excellent. They always have an answer for me.

When selecting a vendor, the support mechanism and the reliability are the most important elements.

I was not involved in the initial setup. I have done it for other clients, and it’s very straightforward to set up and use.

Take it for a test drive. You’ll be impressed.

The biggest benefit is the latency. It is so low that it's going to increase your transactions for transactional data. It's going to increase the speed of any block storage on which you're trying to get low latency.

The speed and the ease of installation are the most valuable features. The IBM FlashSystem is the fastest in the industry. You can add it to their other products, such as IBM SAN Volume Controller, and virtualize it. It's a flexible system that you can use purely for speed, where you can add it to a SAN Volume Controller and use Easy Tier to speed up all your disks.

I'm not sure that I want to see any additional features. I like the way they have it. It's simple. It gives you the low latency that you need, so I'm not sure if there are any features that I would be looking for.

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.

To be more specific: The FlashSystem 900 is perfect for providing pure speed and low latency. I am happy that the product doesn’t have Storage efficiencies built into it natively. You can Virtualize the FS900 with the IBM Storwize family and gain storage efficiencies when needed. Today the largest FS900 MicroLatency module is 5.7TB or 57TB per shelf. It will be great when the larger MicroLatency modules are realesed to provide density.

It's been a great product. As they increase the firmware codes and add new enhancements, it just becomes more stable.

It's a good, scalable product with which you can scale out. And you can add it to virtualization. Whether it's a V9000 or you add it to an SVC, it becomes even more scalable.

I have not used technical support.

I actually performed a PoC of multiple flash system products and found IBM FlashSystem to be the fastest one out there.

I was involved in many initial setups. That's part of my job to do post-sales installation. So I've done it for several companies. It's very simple and straightforward.

We looked at Pure Storage and EMC XtremIO. We chose the IBM FlashSystem because it performed the best in the PoC.

If they:

• Have to choose from what's out there in the industry
• Are looking for storage efficiencies where they're going to get deduplication and compression
• Are looking for pure speed

Then the IBM FlashSystem is the way to go.

If they need efficiencies, like compression and deduplication, then they need to look at the IBM A9000.

Support is the most important thing when looking at vendors.