IBM FlashSystem Reviews

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.

We use the solution to link the VMware environment. It is used to share documents between the departments.

The valuable feature is autoscalling. It's able to do hardware compression and encryption.

The product could be cheaper.

I have been using IBM FlashSystem for over five years.

There's no performance issue. It provides low latency and good performance.

I rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the solution's scalability as eight out of ten.

The deployment takes six hours to complete. It involves setting up and configuring the IP and updating the firmware. It connects to sensors, does doting, and assigns the volume to the servers.
I rate the setup process as eight out of ten, with one being difficult and ten being easy.

The product is expensive. It costs around 150k for five years.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use IBM FlashSystem for VM farms, physical SQL servers, and replication.

The solution is not easy to use and could improve.

I have used IBM FlashSystem within the last 12 months.

IBM FlashSystem has been stable in our operations.

The scalability is similar to the Nimble Storage solution.

We have approximately 200 users using this solution, and we have plans to increase usage.

We have not used the support from IBM.

We previously used free CSS Storage.

The installation is complex and it could be easier. The concept is quite different from traditional storage. The full process took approximately three days.

We used vendors' support for the implementation.

We had approximately three engineers for the implementation.

There are no licensing fees, it is a one-time purchase of the IBM FlashSystem.

I rate IBM FlashSystem a seven out of ten.

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.

My main use of this solution is for backup.

The data reduction pool feature sucks and is not recommended for use with heavy workloads. I also understand that the APIs don't work well and need improvement. In the next release, I would like to see a better monitoring system for metrics.

I've been using this solution for around five years.

This solution is scalable.

The technical support is good.

The initial setup is straightforward and can be done in an hour and a half by one person. 

IBM FlashSystem is fast and reliable. However, we also use Huawei, which is more reliable and has less frequent upgrades. I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.