IBM FlashSystem Reviews

The solution is primarily a file infrastructure. It contains all the virtual machines for our company.

The solution is still new to us and needs to be explored more.

The documentation is excellent so far. 

The solution uses all flash. The connection to the server is a fiber connection. It's very fast. 

The possibility of expanding is very good. It offers very good flexibility.

The price point is pretty decent. 

The product is user-friendly. The setup process is easy.

We've found the solution to be very stable so far.

We need to spend more time with the solution in order to detect any shortcomings. So far, we haven't really seen any.

The design is a little old-fashioned and could be updated. The rack is very primitive and designed in an older style. 

I've only been using the solution for two months. It hasn't been that long just yet. It could be maybe less than that, as we just recently installed it and we decided to go for it about three months back. About one and a half months ago the implementation was completed and we started using it.

The stability of the solution is very good. We haven't detected any bugs or glitches. it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The solution has the potential to scale quite well. If a company needs to expand it, it can.

However, it is a hardware, and you do need to take scaling into account early on. We can grow with the hardware we have and put on new drives, et cetera.

We have approximately 200 employees, and anyone that's connected to the network, those files are stored on this particular solution. Therefore, even if they aren't aware they are using the product, they, in fact, are.

Personally, I haven't directly dealt with technical support. That said, apparently, it looks like it is quite good. The support is proactive. My system is already connected to IBM tech centers. They can highlight predictive failures, for example. My assumption is that they are quite good, although I can't yet peak from personal experience.

We previously used Dell EqualLogic. We switched, as we had used it for close to six years and it needed to be replaced. Initially, we thought to replace it with another Dell EqualLogic product, however, after comparing different brands, we landed on this.  

The initial setup is definitely not complex. It's not difficult. They make it straightforward and user-friendly. A company should have no problems implementing it.

The price is quite good. We find it to be rather reasonable overall. When you compare it to other brands especially, the price is quite good.

We did look at other solutions, including and updated Dell EqualLogic and HPE.

We are just a customer and an end-user.

We are using the latest version of the solution at this point.

I'd recommend the solution. Everything is fiber from start to finish. I don't need to use a fiber switch. It's an expensive component. However, IBM says I don't need it and I can do I direct line from my own source. It's a supported solution. It's very good.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten so far.

We were using the solution for storing data. Recently we were having problems not being able to do a flash when we attempted. We will need to relay to IBM the challenges with taking the flash. Once this problem is resolved, we can do a better comparison with other solutions.

When it comes to the interface of the solution we did not encounter any challenges. Additionally, the solution has good documentation. 

We had issues when attempting to do a flash, we hope to resolve it soon.

I have used the solution for approximately three years. 

The initial setup of the solution was easy. 

I find the pricing of the solution to be very reasonable. 

We are presently evaluating NetApp and this solution. By the time we finished with our evaluations, I will be able to come back to IBM on what challenges we have encountered. We use IBM in all other aspects, including service. That is why we think that combining the IBM storage will be much easier for us than other entirely new solutions.

I rate IBM FlashSystem a seven out of ten.

We are living in IBM FlashSystem. We have more than eight flash storage devices deployed in our environment for different kinds of workloads such as applications, core systems, core banking applications, et cetera. 

Overall, the product is good. 

We've been using it for the last five years, and we haven't had any issues at all. 

The power systems are very reliable if you are running 24/7 operations. For ongoing mission-critical applications, it's the best solution. 

We have been using the V9000 storage for the last five years. It's been very reliable. It's robust from a redundancy and reliability point of view. 

Recently, we deployed SS9100. At the core level that is deployed on that storage, it is not stable. We had an incident not too long ago. Both controllers rebooted simultaneously, within 15 seconds. There was some threshold value defined in the core level, and the system exceeded that threshold value. 

We logged the case to IBM. IBM did internal checks, which we deployed. The permanent fix will be available in the first quarter of 2021. It seems to be an issue on IBM's side. Obviously, we were surprised by how both controllers rebooted. We faced downtime on our applications and on our services. 

The issue which we had recently faced relates to the core level. It should be first tested at IBM labs and then introduced for general release.

IBM should improve its data reduction development.

Overall, I have 14 years of experience in implementing enterprise solutions, and also managing them. We've been using IBM Flash Storage for the last five years.

While the 9000 series has been robust and reliable, the SS9100 hasn't been so stable. IBM is currently working on a patch that should be out soon to handle the issues we've had.

The solution is quite scalable. A company can expand it if they need to.

We are a financial institution with two million customers. This is the storage we use behind all of our solutions.

While we don't plan to expand usage in the near future, we have recently acquired new storage solutions for an upcoming upgrade.

I have experience with a variety of other solutions. On storage, I have experience with IBM FlashSystem, IBM block storage, Dell EMC, block storage VMAX, VNX5600, and unified storage. Also, I have experience with Huawei storage, like Dorado and OceanStor. I've also worked on HPE Enterprise Virtual Array.

If you're talking about flash storage, we have FlashSystem IBM V9000, SS910091, 9200. On cloud storage, we have VMAX 10K, 20K. On unified storage, we have VNX5600 EMC.

We required a homogenous environment that's end to end. We chose to use IBM. 

The initial setup is not overly complex. IBM makes the process very smooth. It's very straightforward and quite easy to accomplish. A company shouldn't have any issues with the setup process.

A company could benefit from bringing on a reseller or consultant. They could help with the process.

When we procure enterprise storage solutions, the license is always be bundled with the deal. There are different licenses for encryption, replication, deduplication, data reduction pools, et cetera, and all should be included in one bundle when we buy a new solution. It's part of that deal.

We are a customer and end-user.

We are using the V9000, and currently, we have deployed SS9100.

This is a financial Institute. As per regulatory compliance, we cannot share our customer data. We keep our confidential customer data on the cloud that is deployed on-premises.

Overall, we have been happy with the solution. I would rate it at a nine out of ten.

It is block storage. We basically use it for the storage units.

The compression and deduplication features are the most valuable. 

They can improve its initial configuration. The initial configuration is currently very difficult. There are multiple choices or alternative ways to configure based on the use case and what you are targeting out of the device, that is, more capacity or more performance. These multiple alternatives cause a lot of confusion.

They should increase the processing part of the nodes. Currently, you can cluster up to eight nodes. From my experience and the workload that I am facing in my environment currently, I would like to see either a bigger or stronger node or a larger number of nodes that can be clustered together. We formally communicated to them that we need to see either this or that, and they are working on something.

I have been using this solution for 14 to 15 months.

If you set it up correctly, it is very stable. After we configured it correctly, we didn't have any issues. I didn't have any issues after the first week of the configuration.

We haven't scaled it yet, but based on the documentation and specification, it is actually scalable.

I have been in touch with IBM support, and I did it a lot. Normally, they respond within an acceptable time with a sufficiently detailed answer. Around 90% of the time, you will get the answer straight back. In some rare cases, you need to ask them more. You send them a mail asking to clarify something or get more details about how to do a specific task, but normally, they provide a satisfactory answer.

We are a very large bank, and we have a lot of storage devices from multiple vendors. We have devices from Dell EMC, NetApp, and Pure Storage. Every product has its advantages and disadvantages. 

If you are targeting functionality, we get the most functionality from IBM FlashSystem, and then from Pure Storage, and then from Dell EMC boxes. If you are targeting performance, then Dell EMC will come first, then IBM FlashSystem, and then Pure Storage. If you are targeting compression deduplication that will generate more capacity, then Pure Storage will come at number one, IBM FlashSystem will come at number two, and Dell EMC will come at number three.

Its initial configuration is difficult. We went through the books and manuals, but we didn't do it correctly. Therefore, we had to start again from scratch. It took two or three attempts to do it correctly. 

We implemented it on our own. My team is managing all of the storage devices that we have, and there are six of us. IBM is responsible for its maintenance.

Among IBM, Dell EMC, and Pure Storage, IBM is the cheapest. The price is also based on our location, the size of our entity, and our regular annual purchases from them. We are a very big IBM customer, so we normally get very high discounts. We are not a big customer of Pure Storage. We don't buy that much from Pure Storage per year.

Everything is included in the price. There is no extra license for different functions.

I would advise others to get somebody to do it for you. Don't do it yourself, or read the book carefully. Our implementation was complicated, so we ended up doing it multiple times. Other colleagues I know in other institutes have much smaller systems than the one we bought. They implemented it in four hours. So, for complex and big implementations, either get an expert to do it for you or read the documentation multiple times before you start, which we didn't.

I would rate IBM FlashSystem an eight out of ten.

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.

Our primary use case for the solution is virtualization.

The most valuable feature of the solution is compression.

The marketing could be improved. Additionally, awareness in the marketplace could be improved.

We have been using the solution since it was introduced and currently use the latest version.

The solution is stable. I rate it an eight out of ten.

The solution is scalable, and approximately 100 clients are utilizing it. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support, but it sometimes takes a while to resolve an issue. I rate them an eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward and took three days. I rate it an eight out of ten.

We implemented it with a vendor team and in-house staff.

I rate the pricing an eight out of ten.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. The solution is good, but its marketing awareness can be improved.

We use IBM FlashSystem with our VMware environment, however, there are times when we need to connect centers or just servers.

Data deduplication is one of the most valuable features of this solution. 

The Fibre Channel connection is excellent, as well as the extremely fast performance.

There should be more licenses included in the standard price.

Additional licenses might be added for the fundamental licenses, such as those for copying and flash copies.

I have been dealing with IBM FlashSystem since it has become available.

I am a reseller. We sell 5,025,5,100, and 5,200, versions.

IBM FlashSystem is quite stable. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.

IBM FlashSystem is scalable.

There isn't a lot of software linked to that IBM software.

It is very easy to scale.

It depends on the client's needs because there are small-sized companies with 50 customers to begin with and such. And it is occasionally used. I would say 220 or more are there for the users.

External support is sufficient to keep this solution functional.

The technical assistance is excellent, which is why I recommend this solution to my clients.

 I would rate the technical support a five out of five.

Positive

We have just purchased Lenovo FlashSystem this week for our clients.

I worked with Storage-Tech, IBM Sharks, EMC Clariion, and other similar products.

The initial setup is simple.

Network with your coding laptop or something similar then set up the network. It's not complicated, it's quite easy.

If five is a good price and one is a high price, I would rate the price a two or three out of five.

I was looking into the differences between Lenovo and I went to some other sites to check. I looked at YouTube, but there isn't much but there is something.

After the research, in my opinion, IBM FlashSystem is better than Lenovo.

I would rate IBM FlashSystem an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for application and database coding.

This solution is really user friendly. It also offers good performance and is highly reliable. 

This solution could be improved by offering greater amounts of storage. 

I have been using this solution for three years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution.

We switched to using IBM because we wanted an AI based solution. 

The entire hardware implementation was done by IBM.

I would recommend this solution to others because it is reliable, high performing and user friendly.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

I find almost all the IBM FlashSystem features beneficial. The performance and the minimum latency IBM FlashSystem provide to the applications are good.  Parsing is the most valuable feature inside IBM Spectrum Virtualize software, which allows us to virtualize any third-party storage for IBM or non-IBM systems. A lot of features like replication/copy snapshots. All of them are very important and amazing, and we have benefited from them with most of the applications.

The generic functionality of IBM FlashSystem, IBM always dismisses using file share or sharing protocols inside their storage hardware, and they only focus on the block-level storage.

I have been using IBM FlashSystem for 10 years.

IBM FlashSystem is a stable solution.

I have found IBM FlashSystem to be scalable. However, with a specific type of FlashSystems scalability is limited. 

The local support for IBM FlashSystem is very weak. Most of the customers are suffering from the IBM support here inside Egypt.

The initial setup is easy. It is not complex at all.

I price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable and competitive.

We provide this solution to many customers.

I rate IBM FlashSystem an eight out of ten.

We are using FlashSystem 5000. There are about 15 people using this solution in my company.

The deduplication and compression ratio is not very good. It's not reaching a very high ratio.

I would like to see the replication or synchronization between the storage to be IP replication. Right now, the IP replication is only supported in this model. So, the pure IP will be okay.

We have been using this solution for a few months.

Before using this solution, we used Storwize 5000. It was okay, but it's very old, and it's out of the support. So, we are looking for some support.

The solution is only hardware.

The pricing is reasonable.

I would rate this solution 6 out of 10.