EMC VNX (Discontinued) vs. IBM Storage FlashSystem

• EMC VNX is suited for VMware environment as it integrates with vCenter.
• Integrates well with SolarWinds storage monitoring software.
• It is well suited for enterprise-level organizations with 100+ servers.
• It is not suited for small businesses as it requires specialized administrators and has relatively high license cost.
• It is not suited for businesses that host most of their servers on the cloud.

Incentivized

IBM Storage FlashSystems are well suited as VDI storage for Citrix XenServer environments. Our Xen VDIs are much more responsive with the fast IBM storage attached. With the low latency, the users are experiencing much less lag while working in their Windows VDIs hosted on the XenServers. There's also less graphic fragmentation that occurs since moving to the IBM Storage FlashSystem.

Incentivized

• VNX has had very solid uptime. Over the course of the last 5 years, we have had very little if any downtime.
• We have also used it for our home directories, and with the data dedupe on the file side it has saved us a lot of space.
• Adding additional drive space has also been really easy.

Incentivized

• Data Replication over long distances using Policy-Based Replication and maintaining the RPO.
• We use snapshot technology heavily and these snaps are easy to create/automate and instantly available.
• Upgrades/Updates are deployed to the system without loss of data or services.
• Sub-millisecond latency is maintained and spikes are handled and absorbed by the system during peaks.
• When connected to the internet via Storage Insights and Cloud Call Home it makes for proactive problem alerting, monitoring and resolution.
• The fact that Replication and snapshot stuff are hidden under the covers and we no longer have to create mirror pairs or flashcopy pairs ourselves. It does it within the cluster or partnership.

Incentivized

• It occupies a large floor space in the data center.
• Unisphere management interface uses Java, which is problematic to run.

Incentivized

• The flexiblity of upgrading the flash modules for a higher capcity needs to be allowed
• The user interface for the management console is sometimes a bit confusing
• the configuration of call home can only be done to a specific IP address but not a dns name

Incentivized

As flash technology evolves rapidly, vendors should [adapt] to the changes and onboard them in their products. IBM is a bit slow in adopting advanced technology in [its] portfolio. Even though the current product is good, my decision is purely based on how the transformation of the product [is] being produced and supplied to [the] end-user.

Incentivized

I have found the system to very user friendly. We are currently using it for on premises storage only and have not had the need to leverage any of the cloud extensions. Being able to directly connect up to 8 hosts with dual controller fiber channel is a very nice feature for such a low cost SAN, which saved up quite a bit of money by not having to purchase fabric switches. This also keeps maintenance and power costs down and saves room in the rack.

Incentivized

we usually have never had problems with the storage going down, ofcourse there have been disk failures as part of redundancy it works well and didnt have problems with unavailablity.

Incentivized

Under normal conditions the performance of the storages is very good, the only thing that can vary the performance is when we use pools with data reduction and the stored space of the pool exceeds 90%, in these cases the performance is very bad

Incentivized

Sometimes the knowledge of the support agent is quite limited and the support always has to route through the level 1 agent to screen all the informtion provided. Then its esclated to the next level support with the all collected data . The logs are always uploaded along wiht the case but still its reviewed at the lower level and then escalated / handed over to the next level if its complex issue to solve.

Incentivized

THe training is often selfpaced and easy to follow if you have worked previously with other storage products. The content is clear and contains all the information needed for an admin to learn. However the troubleshooting part is not always included and this is dependent on forums or other sources where the information is not accessible very easily.

Incentivized

I was amazed by the way IBM Flash storage provides a huge amount of storage within the limited footprint, it helped us to replace big fat storage arrays, which aided in the process of moving towards lower hardware, carbon, and energy consumption footprint. We can comfortably say that Flash helped us to host applications fast with a blazing speed and user transactions are quite quick.

Incentivized

• Dell EMC Unity is the improved version of EMC VNX. It has all the features in VNX with better performance.
• NetApp all flash is faster and more expensive. It performs better with Citrix systems and VDI solutions.
• HP MSA storage system is less performant and less expensive. It works better for file and CCTV data storage.

Incentivized

For the past six months, we have been utilizing this technology in our projects to manage a massive workload and produce swift business outcomes on a crucial production database. The IBM FlashSystem 7200, which offers high performance and compression, has so far been a great experience for us. The results and functionality of this product have delighted our consumers.

Incentivized

We have been able to scale this storage system whenever there has been requirement for additional capacity and performance. with the help of deduplication we have been able to build quite a robust environment.

Incentivized

• I think it has provided improved reliability and performance [compared to] our previous solutions.
• The lack of performance metrics has led us to need a 3rd party tool that integrates into our Vsphere environment to give us feed back on performance.

Incentivized

• Flash System 5000 Built on a software foundation that delivers a 359% ROI.
• IBM Flash System 5000 Gain the highest levels of availability to support mission-critical applications.
• IBM Flash System 5000 benefits from [the] integration of modern data protection and rich cyber resiliency features.
• IBM Flash System 5000 Enhance storage efficiency.

Incentivized