IBM FlashSystem Reviews

Storage virtualization. Two Storwize V7000 systems in a cluster configuration serve about 500 servers (physical and virtual).

• Storage virtualization simplifies space management. 
• Thin provisioning saves space.
• Copy services simplify environment replication.
  

Virtualization, because it abstracts hardware and allows to use other storages (old DS series) as unique storage spaces.

The cluster should be improved because non-disruptive failover was supported only on a few operating systems.

We usually use Storwize for SMB customers, when they need small but reliable storage and fast response times. The performance is great.

The virtualization feature shortens the time to convince customers, to sell the solution, and to implement it.

From the moment we first see a customer and tell him that we are capable of doing this, until we do it, is a relatively short time. It's not going to be a long-term project, one that is going to take time for migration.

The user interface is very mature and it's becoming more mature all the time. They made it very easy for the user, very friendly to work with.

They have a virtualization feature and, even if you do not want to buy that feature, you can have it as a trial for two to three months. If you have another brand of storage from another company, you can use this tool to transfer all your data from the old system to the new Storwize system, which really shortens the migration time. This feature makes it much easier for us, as a business partner, to convince the customer that it can be done in a very short time, without any concerns about losing data or something breaking. That's one of the main features, and it works.

It helps me a lot when talking with potential customers who are stuck with all this data and, when they think of moving on to new systems, the first thing that bothers them is how to migrate all this information to a new system.

The other stuff that everybody sells today like tiering, which IBM calls Easy Tier, and FlashCopy, they have been around for years with the other vendors as well.

IBM gets a lot of input from the field, from system engineers, regarding what needs to be done and I believe they have a roadmap to try to constantly make the user interface more mature, as well as the options and tools. I trust they are doing good job on this.

I have looked at a few pages of a report I download and I saw a graph there regarding software-defined vendors. IBM is not in a good position on this graph. I know that they are working very hard on this, to make it much better and to get to a level where it's not only hardware but also software to provide a complete solution.

It's very stable as a single system or you can have it as a cluster for redundancy. We haven't had any issues, as far as I know, of it crashing or something that might make you suspicious about the reliability of the system. It is really reliable. The system engineers we work with have no doubt regarding any stability issues.

The scalability is fine, but it also depends on the type of customer. If they are a lower-level SMB and we can find out what their growth would be over the next year to two years, the availability of different models from Storwize makes us comfortable in telling customers that they can expand, without any doubt, for another three to four years. They don't need to worry about having to buy a new system in two years. Just upgrade and expand, that's all.

We have our own engineers trained by IBM and they are certified. I don't really recall many real issues. As I think back, there has been nothing critical where we had to ask IBM to contact their own labs to find a solution. Day-to-day, we have almost no need for IBM to show up for any problem or technical issues.

We are not in a good position to answer this question because we have worked with IBM for all these years. But I believe the way it came about was that we had a situation where we moved a customer from the competition to IBM Storwize. When we looked at the space it took, the performance, the pricing, the ease of working with it, and the migration - especially the migration, because when you want to move somebody from a different vendor to Storwize, people know it's hard work - it was easily done by Storwize and the software that comes with it.

As a business partner, when selecting a vendor the important criteria are the terms and conditions under which you can work with your supplier. In addition, it's the level of availability of the vendor when you need them, that they will respond immediately and are with you in the problem, hand-in-hand, to go solve the issues. One of the main issues is that you don't feel alone in the field, you have somebody with you. That is very important. If there is a problem, the customer also needs to be confident in who we are. We have a name and we are a business partner, but who is backing us up? When you go with a company like IBM, with all its experience, and with your own experience over all these years, that's a huge advantage.

I'm not involved in installation but, as far as I know, it's very straightforward, it's very easy. The main issue is that if you spend enough time on design, to find out what the customer really wants, that makes the implementation easier. That's where the emphasis should be. But as far as the system itself, the installation and putting it up, it takes no time. As far as I know, it's so easy.

The pricing has been very competitive for the last few years. IBM got to the point where they changed the pricing model and we feel very comfortable with the pricing. It's very competitive.

Over the last two years, IBM has been coming up with all kinds of interesting promos, especially for the SMB systems. That makes it very competitive price-wise and in terms of performance to help convince customers. It benefits both the customer and us.

We also do sell HPE if we have to, but IBM is usuall the first choice because of the pricing and performance.HPE has tried to work with us a lot and we tried to work something out with them, but each time we went back to Storwize, as it fits our needs and it's much easier to work with.

There really aren't any others really on our list. The Infinidat we have in our data center is for our own usage and our own services that we have in the cloud system. It's not something that we go out and install.

IBM is really open and available to those who want to find out what kinds of solutions will fit their needs. More than that, if it becomes more serious, with potential, IBM can provide you almost everything you need to see in its labs, to show you that the numbers they talk about are not only on paper but in real life. They are real and they can get to these performance levels.

IBM does a lot of customer setups in their labs and they invite the potential customers in and show them. But it's not for everyone. When we have a real potential customer and they demand it, that's what we do for them.

There are no 10s in the market right now. Everybody is evolving. As far as where we see storage going, it's not only hardware, it's also software-defined, and everybody is trying to reach a higher and very comprehensive level. And that takes time. It's not IBM, they need others to get to that higher level so we can have a comprehensive solution. It's not because IBM is an eight out of 10 and somebody is a nine or 10. It depends on the solution and application. In some cases, they would rate a 10, in others you might only give them seven.

I use it for virtualization and databases.

It is simple but stable storage. I use the Snapshot feature.

It is very stable.

Excellent.

I have never used technical support for this solution. I haven't needed support.

I did the initial setup based on the documentation it came with. It was very simple.

I looked at Dell and HPE solutions. I probably wouldn't buy a 3PAR but it does have more features than Storewize.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are price, stability, support, and scalability.

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. It is a good storage solution, but there many other options out there with more resources.

We are using the IBM FlashSystem 900 in a tiered storage environment virtualized behind the IBM SAN Volume Controller in a stretched-cluster topology.

The FlashSystem 900 consistently delivers performance below 1ms for read/write. This performance is essential for an effective SVC stretch-cluster configuration across two datacenters, and presenting active-active storage to the customer.

The performance monitoring feature is useful as it can report in 15 minute intervals by hour, day, week, month, or by a custom date range. Version 1.5.0.0 also has a useful feature which allows for IBM to provide remote support directly into the FlashSystem 900.

Include an option to upload the support package to the IBM ECuRep when opening an IBM PMR.

The initial customer technical support was efficient and effective.

No previous solution was used.

The initial setup is very similar to setting up the IBM family of enterprise storage products (V7000, V9000, SVC, etc.).

We implemented with a business partner and IBM.

Using IBM storwize V7000 as storage to be used in daily operation as well using the virtualization capability along with doing data migrations of old storage data.

IBM Storwize It makes management of the IT environment much easier, 

High availability and enhanced security; Proven dependability; Data compression with hardware acceleration; Advanced copy services features are all in this product.

Virtualization and Data Migration.

V7000 is built with IBM Spectrum Virtualized software, which is part of the IBM Spectrum Storage family.

V7000 software:

• Provides a single or multiple pool(s) of storage
• Provides logical unit virtualization
• Manages logical volumes
• Mirrors logical volumes

V7000 hardware provide the below features:

• Large scalable cache: thru IO groups methodology
• Copy services: metro mirror, global mirror, Data Migration, point in time copy, active-active copy (Hyperwap)
• Space management: thin provisioning, Easy Tier, and compression

The Storwize V7000 nodes in a clustered system operate as a single system and present a single point of control for system management and service.

GUI interface should be enhanced more as there is some issues in copy services GUI interfaces should be enhanced as this will not let the customer doing wrong configurations

Yes, some bugs in the system, like nodes warm-started.

No.

Nine out of 10.

No, I have only used used IBM solutions.

Two methods of initial setup are straightforward, either by using USB port through Init tool or by using the technical port. sgafd

In-House implementation

15 - 20 %

Storwize software for Storwize V7000 license has the following feature codes:

• Base software
• Full feature set
• Easy Tier
• FlashCopy
• Remote Mirroring
• Compression

IBM V7000 has a new license and price structure which provides intuitive licensing based on the functions customers wish to enable and use the most.

No.

I advise everyone to have a look at their current use of storage and think of single management and live migrations of their data, and how they will save money instead of having multiple vendors to reinstall and migrate data.

The good thing is that it is very easy to use and anybody can allocate Launch to the systems. The GUI is very easy and performance is also good.

It is easy to deploy. We use this product for a variety of the applications and databases. This is one of the best features I think.

Replication features need improvement. Currently, they are there in the product, but I'm not sure as to how it works exactly.

They are other IBM products that are better than this such as IBM XIV and IBM disk storage (the old one); they have better performance.

It is stable.

We can add more disks or JBODs into it. So, it is scalable and easy to scale.

Technical support is good.

The setup was easy.

You can use this product for your applications, databases or for whatever other solutions that you have.

Cost and performance are the two things that we consider while selecting a vendor.

Virtualization of external storage, while adding cache and speed to the external storage. You don't have to completely take out the datacenter of your old storage. Just add it to the Storwize, continue using it, but with added performance/speed.

It has saved money for our clients by not replacing all of their current storages (with new storages).

• The IP replication
• Events/log analysis tools

I've never used it myself for long periods of time, since as a system integrator and partner, I have only configured these systems for the end user. However, our clients have been using them since 2011, both Gen 1 and 2.

No.

No.

Since our company staff and I are an authorised IBM service partner with certifications in servicing Storwize V7000, all the technical support towards our clients have been done by ourselves. Only when some part fails have claimed it from IBM, and that went fast.

Yes, IBM DS5300. We switched because of the external storage virtualization.

It is pretty straightforward with a nice GUI. One has to know the basic concepts and terminology.

No special advice about pricing. Regarding licensing make sure you add at least three years software maintenance from IBM at the beginning, because you will not be able to download firmware updates or any fixes/patches without this. Even if you have hardware maintenance, they will not allow a download without this SW maintenance contract.

Yes, IBM SVC, which has essentially the same software, but it has no place for disk drives. Therefore, you must attach some storage to it.

Get the control box first, without any expansion boxes, and make sure you add at least three SSD drives, because this system has an auto tiering option. Thus, your frequently used data will be automatically placed on SSDs and be accessed faster by hosts. Data for shared folders, which is not so important, you can keep on older storages virtualized by the V7000, or put on bigger, cheaper, and slower disks.

I think the v7000 is versatile, reliable, and gives really good performance in the configuration you choose. The V7000 can be configured in different ways. It has proved to me that it is reliable, that the disks do not constantly break down, and that any administration work is simple. It also has a very complete assistant that helps you to solve the problems that arise.

This product has improved the speed of disk access where I have mounted, but I do not think that is its best feature since others give you the same performance. As I said for me what recommends this product is its reliability and the peace of mind it brings.

Of course the cost, it's expensive compared to other solutions.

I've been using for more than five years.

No problem, in fact it is a characteristic that I like.

No problem, there are very scalable models, everything depends on planning and the requirements.

The technical support in general of IBM, in my personal opinion, could be much better. The truth is that I have never had any problem with them at a hardware level, the service is agile. Things get a bit complicated if the issue is not solved with a replacement part. I would give technical support a seven out of 10.

I have used many solutions, having mounted many projects with storage (NetApp, HPE, Clarion, etc.) but if I had to choose one based on value for money, I think I would stick with V7000.

The initial configuration is simple, but critical because at this point you can make it not work or even damage it completely. I think configuration should be done by a specialist. A storage specialist who had never set up a V7000 would not have problems.

As I have already noted, everything depends on how you want it set up. I think there are others in the market that are equal in cost but much worse.

If you are going to go with a V7000, you will not regret it. Be sure to clarify what you need, and it will give you the expected results.