IBM FlashSystem Reviews

The easy GUI is the most valuable feature.

As I said When you Sync V7000 to Another V7000 that are located in my case more than 10km and with DWDM as dark fiber , first you need license for long distance from brocade.
Than you can change the buffer credit on the SAN switch to at least 49 . the point is that you need to test the parameter to get the best value .
This depend on the line you have and also check if there is any limitation from your DWDM Provider.

The problem is that if the buffer is not configured correctly this increase the latency because of this delay and the retransmit .

I have been using it for four years.

Remote copy performance impacts latency on the local storage: Must be configured with the correct buffer credit.

Customer service is very good.

Technical support is very good.

We previously used a different solution. We switched because Storwize v7000 is easy to manage.

A vendor team implemented it.

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.

The interface management is simple and intuitive. It has been replaced with other arrays successfully, that were larger in size but more slow. We were able to reduce the footprint of space used in GDCS and also the power consumption.

Speed (IOPS/second) – It is most vital for applications that need low latency and high speed for transferring the data. 

We have some large databases that are accessed at the same time by more than 10,000 users. In the past, it was on 15K disks. After we migrated them under the IBM Flash Array, the overall IOPS rate has increased by 30% and its latency is lower. The customers are very happy with the new solution.

The storage size vs the storage price needs to improve. The total storage capacity vs price is still quite high for the IBM Flash Array. It will sound better in the following years, as and when the price will be more accessible/economical.

In our environment we also have the XtremIO All-Flash Storage Array, but it has some scalability issues. That was the main reason why we focused on buying more IBM Flash Arrays.

We also use ServiceNow and SNIA Protocol; it’s present and working good with all the IBM products.

Since we have multiple IBM equipment in use, the installation process was straight forward.

Usually IBM doesn't sell the product directly, so each installation is carried out either with the vendor or via the GDC technicians. We as storage admins configure the storage system.

This product has the best quality, performance and cost.

We have some processes in our company that were cut in half by using the FlashSystem.

The most valuable feature is that is supports a high IOPS rate. We have a heavy workload. Some storage systems are not as good in terms of IOPS. We are using just the FlashSystems. It is virtualized using SVCs. We are using normal physical disks like Storwize for not-so-hot data. For hot data, we are using FlashSystems.

I think the performance of most of the application is improving. Our users now say that it's much better than it was before. The storage speed is perfect.

It has room for improvement in the area of stability. The firmware is upgraded frequently. We need to update it maybe three or four time a year because of the new features and bug fixes. On one side, it is good; but, on the other side, it is not good because we need to upgrade within one year or they will not support the firmware. It would be better if they supported what we already have for longer.

We sometimes had a problem with some bugs in FlashSystems. One time, one FlashSystem was burnt up. There was some smoke and the data was damaged. We saved it because we have redundancy in the cluster. At the cluster level, we make copies and replicate to the other site for disaster recovery situations.

We upgraded one FlashSystem two months ago because it was not full. We had to buy two modules, if I remember correctly. This was quite a complicated upgrade. IBM brought us new FlashSystems. Because it is virtualized, we moved the data from this one, upgraded it, and moved the data back; but it was done dynamically without any outage.

With the virtualized FlashSystem, we hope for improved response time, but the availability is improved. It is also flexible in that we could upgrade it dynamically, move the data, and so on.

I think the guys in our country are very clever in this. We can count on them. When we call them, they respond very fast and bring the new parts on time. The repair time is written into the SLA. Support is available 24/7 and I think the repair time is within 24 hours.

Before we were using IBM DS8000s. The application was consuming a lot of IOPS with a lot of hot data.

We needed a higher IOPS rate. We chose the FlashSystem because the response time needs to be very fast. When the people working on the application feel that the response time is not good, or there is not enough storage space for the amount of data they have, then we have a flexible enough infrastructure to dynamically upgrade them to the FlashSystem. We do this planning on a yearly basis. We design the infrastructure solution according to the project requirements. Sometimes, this requires an upgrade to the FlashSystem.

The initial setup we did ourselves because it is very simple. We did the direct mounting of racks and the hardware. The software design is virtualized using SVCs.

We considered other options, but I don’t think there were any other options with such intensive processing as the FlashSystem. We have a lot of tiers; and for other tiers, we have other vendors. I think that the IBM FlashSystem is the highest quality available in the market. For us, considering the whole solution, it was best for us.

We are very satisfied with IBM's prices, I think.

I would advise colleagues to use FlashSystems. It's a very good solution for us to achieve our goals.

When I evaluate vendors, for me, the historical relationship is very important, and definitely the communication. With IBM, we know the vendor well.

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.

IT Improve our TPS (transactions per seconds)

Flash disk with Easy Tier option

Same GUI as v7000

When you provision a datastore auto-format takes a long time .. to disable is you have to redo the whole process. this is a bit difficult if you want to make adjustments on the datastore

none so far.

Scale in scale out design was implemented

Customer Service:

We have a good relationship with IBM

Technical Support:

Highly skilled implementor

Straightforward

HP, EMC,

We have not had a good experience with this platform.

The installation and service was very good. But, the services to help us migrate our NAS data from an existing EMC VNX system has failed once already with ACL permissions issues specifically on how the V7000U NAS works. I have had to involved IBM Global Support by actually contacting high level Vice Presidents. As of January 26, 2016, we have not successfully migrated our NAS data.

It has not improved anything yet within our environment.

They could increase the maximum storage capacity so more disk shelves can be added.

We've had it for eight months, but still have not successfully migrated our NAS data yet. Also, it contains drives for AS/400 system and Exchange Archive data.

Software functionality issues that were not known until our NAS data migration failed. We hit further ACL Permissions issues as well.

We have performance and spiking issues of which IBM applied a work-around patch.

There have been no issues with the scalability.

6/10

It's average.

We switched to Pure Storage because of the way the system performs and does everything in 32K sizing. The IOPS are high and the support and customer server are exceptional.

Fairly simple as it took about two hours to rack and get on-line.

It was installed through one of our partners who did a good job.

We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy.

We evaluated EMC (which we already had), DELL and HP.

The sales team was great as was the technical team. I now feel the EMC VNX and NetApp are both better NAS systems. If I had to do it over again, I would stayed with the EMC VNX for NAS.

The most valuable features of all the products are the high performance and micro latency.

I'm a Solutions Architect, so I don't have any from my company, but I do some projects for some clients where the unique performance and micro latency of the flash provides real- time information that is used to make strategic decisions.

Because the product is already mature, it doesn't need any improvement.

From about two years when IBM first bought FlashSystem. I knew some things about it when it was Texas Memory System,

I didn't have issues with models 900 and v9000, but on previous versions, like the 720, I had some questions.

It is stable, because it's use an ASIC in it's development. Therefore, that does the job and it doesn't have software at its core.

It has great scalability.

It's very good because IBM always make sure they have good customer service.

Not so good in my country because they only have a few people with great knowledge about FlashSystem.

I've never used another solution.

The initial setup was very simple, because IBM have a default interface for all their storage systems.

I did the implementation in-house.

It's a little expensive, so it's you need to have a good architect involved to explain it and make sure the project goes well.

Have good knowledge about the clients business.