IBM Storage FlashSystem vs. IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)

Top choice for IBMi integration. In general, it's a very good solution for quite a lot of customers. If you need a 3 site replication solution (HA + DR) maybe it's not the best solution, unless you use SVC. FlashCore Modules have very powerful compression rate, while mantaining good performance: high IOPS rate and really low latency

Incentivized

This stuff runs! Hot, cold not wet, but you know where your data is. Reliably in the cabinet turning your data for the next customer request. You need dedupe, get the flash drive models. Long archives with spinning disks can help with all the data modeling the analysts do. Keep up with the dba’s constant need for speed with all-flash! You will get what you pay for.

Incentivized

• Extremely fast storage
• Scales up as needed. Add flash core modules easily and increase volumes very quickly.
• Applying firmware updates to IBM Storage FlashSystem is very easy to do and can be done without any downtime.
• Replication policies are very versatile and also easy to setup.

Incentivized

• Data processing and IO. The Storwize devices are very resilient in how they process data and do not have a drop in IO when errors occur (common errors such as disk failures and lost paths).
• Storage efficiency management. We are able to use multiple efficiency techniques such as thin provisioning and data reduction to reduce our budget footprint.
• Easy to use interfaces. Creating a volume and mapping to a host has proven to be a very easy process and makes onboarding less stressful for our team.

Incentivized

• Definitely we need to be able to extend a volume that is part of a mirror pair or Policy-Based Replication(PBO) on the fly.
• Expansion of mirrored volumes/volume groups should resynchronise only the changed data (Almost like making use of change-volumes) and not trigger a full resync.
• Please allow us to select downloading drive microcode also from Fix Central directly onto the flashsystem like with updates.

Incentivized

• As a business partner looking to provide services to keep the uptime of the Storwize, I would like to have the capability to pull reports from IBM Storage Insights to assist my clients in managing their system through it's lifecycle.
• More knowledge out there for partners to best integrate IBM Storwize with IBM Power i. This seems to be lacking in communication from IBM.

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

The integration into our SVC and the midrange systems are very well working. We do use cross site replication and global mirror which in turn is easy setup and the consistency groups are well maintained. The storage does global mirroring but also internal cross room replication as well. The integration of cloud object storage also helps in tiering the overall system.

Incentivized

Yes. The last really issues I've seen in the environments of my customers were back in the "Storwize" era of systems. Issues with code updates or sometimes rarely failing critical components. BUT: since every component is at least dual redundant even back in that day real outages were very rare. And today in the "FlashSystem Era" the systems are so reliable and available even during code updates there are no complaints. I think the 5 or 6 9s are completely achieved.

Incentivized

Latency and throughput have been excellent. The compression is done natively on the NVME modules so we do not see an impact there. the distributed parity does not seem to impact write speeds at all. We have found database performace has increased quite a bit over our old hybrid storage solution.

Having a single tier of performance makes it easy to set up SLAs for workloads.

Incentivized

I would rate the overall support for IBM Storage FlashSystem with a 10. The response times have consistently been fast, and the support engineers always come prepared with relevant questions and practical solutions. They demonstrate a deep understanding of the product and our use case, which means issues are typically resolved quickly and without unnecessary back-and-forth. This level of support has been especially valuable for our SAP environment, where uptime and quick resolution are critical.

Incentivized

Very good traning by experienced personnel. I attend instructor led sessions on IBM TechExchange and STUs before as well as IBM workshops for FlashSystems at IBM Böblingen which I helped to prepare and improve after piloting them. Absolutely nothing to complain about FlashSystem training in Germany or USA. So: all good here!

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

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

IBM Storwize is a part of a family that is complemented by the products listed. In many negotiations, involving storage is our workhorse to ensure several businesses thanks to its balanced cost and all the benefits that we offer.

Incentivized

I'm using cognos - especially cognos reports - as a part of IBMs Storage Intelligence software to manage datacenters and report storage and overall resource consumption to my customers. The software is reliable and - my customers who are using cognos in their businesses - say that they are very satisfied about the scalability of cognos. I can give it only an 8 rating because of the quite heavy resource footprint...

Incentivized

• the compression in line means the IBM flashcore allow us to store much more information with less capacity, we can store much more with fewer disks
• virtualization allows us to extend the useful life of old equipment that we already had separated, as I said, I use them as a repository for backups
• With the implementation of the new functionality of immutable copies with SafeGuarded Copies, the information is much more secure for possible attacks

Incentivized

• I would like to highlight the most positive aspect I have seen in the products of the IBM Storwize family, and it is the ROI that we can choose when we offer real-time compression with the IBM V7000 family. In truth, this feature is excellent, and we have seen how customers save storage resources, rack space, power and management.

Incentivized