We use it for block storage.
The stability and performance of the drive are the most valuable.
IBM is not always as agile as other competitors when it is about cloud integration and user interfaces. They're not renewing themselves very often. They have been slow to evolve from the old GUI. The user interface should be improved, especially regarding performance analysis, which has always been a little bit weak as compared to other solutions.
As a global solution, it lacks the feature for containing integration object storage. Even though they have now started to offer this feature, it is quite young and not as developed as some other vendors. There are also no mass possibilities at all.
They have a lot of competition in the mid-range segment. They need to have a NAS gateway or something like that. It doesn't specifically need to be integrated into the controllers that are keys to the gateway.
We have it in the company for a long time, but I have been working on it for like one year.
It is a very stable solution.
We are using it for our Oracle database as well as for MySQL database, so it is being used for a really high-end environment. We have maybe 2,000 people who are using this system through the database.
I am always happy with their technical support.
We're a team of five, but we're not only handling this product. We are also working on Hitachi, IBM, and NetApp products.
Its price is fair. IBM is quite fair in price when you compare it with others.
We also use Hitachi internally, and Hitachi is always a little bit more expensive. NetApp is also a bit more expensive. So, IBM has good positioning in terms of price.
It is very strong in block storage for the database environment. It has very good quality because the compression, deduplication, and encryption are directly done by the disks, so there is no penalty on the processes of all controllers.
If you need a platform that is oriented towards block storage and has features like multi-protocol, cloud integration, and so on, I don't think this is the best solution. It doesn't have direct NAS protocols or things like this.
I would rate this solution a nine out of ten, specifically for the needs of block storage. Its performance is very good, which is the biggest asset of this solution. However, it doesn't provide enough services, which probably solutions like NetApp or Dell are providing.