IBM SAN Volume Control Reviews

The product has an ultra-low latency. It enables me to improve my performance and productivity. The product helps with cost and performance optimization. Power consumption is minimal. We chose it for its sustainability. It also has excellent security features.

Patch management and upgrades must be made easier. The storage expansion has some limitations. It must be improved.

I have been using the solution for three years.

The tool’s stability is very good.

The scalability is awesome. Storage management is convenient. Almost 150 people in our organization are using the product. We have only one administrator.

The support is very good.

Positive

The initial setup is easy. It takes two to three days.

I receive good returns on investment. I’m able to meet my business objectives. I save a lot of power and store bulk data. The tool also provides me with reliable security features.

Initially, we had some challenges with massive amounts of customer data. We have an airport segment where the passenger data are required, and it’s huge data. We needed a system that could store bulk data with low latency and provide a good customer experience.

The solution is very famous. Ultra latency provides miraculous performance and productivity. It also enables advanced virtualization for good scalability. Anyone can opt to use the product. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We use this solution mainly for Hyper-V infrastructure and for Oracle Real Application Clusters. We use it in our infrastructure environment because we are a bank. We are the final customer.

We upgraded our IVC controls in December 2021. The solution is deployed on-premises. We also have our own data centers on-premises. Our machine can see there are disks in both data centers, because it's a high availability environment. We have 5 to 10 people using this solution but many more clients. Customers are using applications which are running on them.

The solution is easy to use, easily configurable, and easy to upgrade, manipulate, and add new storage.

Currently, we are trying to improve our SAN infrastructure to go from SAN-based directors. We are trying to upgrade and go on generation seven, which supports the VME protocol for some communication. Currently, we are on generation five, and we want to go to the next generation.

Generation seven is a great benefit with monitoring and following workflows easily to resolve problems on our fibre channel.

I would like to see the usage of virtualized storage boxes improved. I'd like to see this feature fixed, especially for SVC controller, and to be able to hold more storage.

Whenever the virtual environment grows, it has to implement some of those controllers. Also, activity between data centers should be provided with a kind of capacity input. So, for appliances like that, the number should be extended in order to serve all traffic.

It's very complex. Storage works directly with our fibre channel and infrastructure should also improve continuously following the modern products and technology solutions.

We have plans to increase usage. We also are going to buy more storage because the company should be provisioned every three years with correct budgeting and correct planning.

Technical support is great.They are in some kind of transition, and they outsource some activities, but they are still good specialists.

Setup was straightforward.

We used IBM support for implementation.

I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.

Heterogenous Storage management.

Consolidation for isolated Storage Subsystems was made extremely easier.

The most valuable features of IBM SAN Volume Control are the copy services, performance metrics, and analysis. Additionally, they have upgraded and introduced visual volumes.

IBM SAN Volume Control could improve by better integrations with other vendor systems. IBM SAN Volume Control can store the environment and are able to integrate with Veeam, but I don't know if they can integrate as well with SVC or other vendors' systems. 

I have been using IBM SAN Volume Control for approximately six years.

IBM SAN Volume Control is highly stable.

The scalability of IBM SAN Volume Control is good. I have approximately four IO groups in operation.

The technical support from IBM SAN Volume Control is very good. We have been dealing with IBM for quite some time and their response times according to the priority of the case, it's within scope.

Positive

I have not used other solutions prior to IBM SAN Volume Control.

The initial setup of IBM SAN Volume Control is straightforward. To have everything set up, such as the hardware and connectivity correctly, takes approximately half a day to complete.

We have seen a return on investment over the years. IBM SAN Volume Control is worth the money.

The initial price of IBM SAN Volume Control is steep. 

IBM SAN Volume Control is useful and it eliminates a lot of that mid-work that needs to be done. If we have a separate storage subsystem all over the place, this solution is good. You do not need extensive knowledge to use the solution.

I rate IBM SAN Volume Control a nine out of ten.

We use it to work with a record database and with some specific tools for our customer.

With SVC it is very easy to manage and to use for migration, meaning that when we want to move or to keep control of the volume or update a server database, it is very easy. That's why we use it.

If IBM wants want to put SAN Volume Control ahead of their competitors, like NetApp, they just need to put in the snap volume because now they use what is called a flash copy. This means that you have to take all the volume instead of NetApp which uses their snapshot.

They will have to improve that. Today, it is not so difficult to snap a volume when you have an SSD or NVMe disk, it just takes a few seconds to do it. They should improve the snapshot in the IBM SAN Volume Control.

I have been using IBM SAN Volume Control for two years.

IBM SAN Volume Control is stable.

IBM SAN Volume Control is scalable.

We have 500 users using it in different positions.

Today, we have three guys to maintain and manage it, but it is not at full design.

We are satisfied with tech support. We have no pending tickets with support or anything like that now. It is really proactive sometimes.

We previously worked with NetApp and sometimes with Oracle Exadata. We switched because it was a little bit complex with commercial rules. Every time they changed we decided to go for something where we know the price. We know how much we can spend tomorrow to increase volume and capacity. It is easy for us to go on the market and to see how much we will spend in the future. With some of those solutions it is so difficult to know that. So it was not only because of the technical aspect that we switched.

It was very easy to install and manage.

Installation and starting the migration for each project depends, because during the project you have to do the training. This means that between the end of installation and the training, you sometimes have two months. During those two months, you have a lot of things to do. Sometimes it takes weeks or months.

You have, for example the Windows Servers with Office or something like that. It is a different preparation for DevOps.

The return on investment means that you want to speak about CAPEX or OPEX. In our activity, we are more on an OPEX budget. Today, we can rapidly find the amount that we have to engage if we want more capacity or more units. It is very easy. So there is return on investment when you can stay with one person to just calculate and say, "Okay. We know that for this kind of project we have to spend..."

When it is easy, you manage better. You know the budget. I do not have to call everybody in the world to negotiate with integrators or other guys. We don't spend our time discussing about the price.

In the data center, return on investment applies to when your solution is not so high for the crew and all those things are characteristic. It means the number of users in the rack and the coolant to keep the temperature at a very good level. Again, we are seeing that we can do what we want when we want. It's more important.

With IBM, we can separate the license from storage. That means that you are, for example, with an SSD drive, and you buy an SKU. SSD is one SKU. But if you want another path driver with more capacity, your SKU is 1.4 SKU.

You have to compare. With the IBM service you do what you want. Meaning that if you want to make a red six or a red five, you do what you want. You have more tools with the license, you have all the tools to be able to manage your solution. Now, they changed their pricing for redemption tools for compression. They changed it directly in the hardware compression on the drive. This is why I can say that we have all the things to manage and to use the solution with the storage license.

We have a lot of cards. For example, we have Exadata. We have cards with HP. We have cards with NetApp and Dell EMC, but we don't have the card with HGS. We have the card for IBM, but they are not our primary partners or supplier. Today, we have the technical experience and that is why we engage with some of them. IBM is for the primary storage but we use Veeam for the backup. We use other things and other software. We have a partnership with Cohesity.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give IBM SAN Volume Control a 10.

We use SAN Volume Controller with our systems in the SAP HANA environment and for another cloud suite — VMware. We have replication between two data centers for synchronous replication.

The virtualization layer has been great. We have SAN Volume Controller, and below that, we can use any kind of storage. That's perfect for us because if we run out of storage, we can add more storage from any of our vendors.

IBM support can be very slow. Sometimes they take a lot of time to solve a problem; this is an issue with IBM. There are a lot of small companies here in Mexico that don't have many engineers, they can't afford to be waiting around for a response. 

I think the licensing could be improved. With other solutions, you don't need a separate license for storage. With SAN Volume Controller, we need to license by terabyte. With our other products, we license by the box.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.