Likelihood to Recommend Well suited for mainframe CKD based applications. There is unmatched synergy with IBM zSeries when compared to the competition, for example zHPF, SUPERPAV, zHyperLink, cache management and replication technologies. For distributed, the fact that Copy Services Manager comes with the box is a great move on IBMs part to provide replication capability no matter what the applicaiton. I think the DS8k is less suited for smaller distributed environments. I think product overlap with V9000 in this case
Read full review The product is a must for enterprise & SMB segments as this gives a good value for money and the licensing policy is very well defined and cost effective for the feature set it provides. This is very well suited for organization which have multiple brand storage systems and would like to consolidate them all together, thus providing a huge storage capacity for the organizations data growth. The product becomes less appropriate in organization where they have single storage platform as the service provider would have the ability to consilidate all the storage systems. Hence this products may be under utilized.
Read full review Pros Remote Copy -- The DS8k has decades of excellent code built to handle the most demanding environments for mainframe or open systems and can be combined with automation solutions like GDPS or Copy Services Manager Reliability and Availability -- This is the platform that gets used for the most demanding environments, even when FICON attachment isn't required Continued enhancement -- IBM continues to put resources into the DS8k and the platform has advanced with the technology from z and power Mainframe synergy -- Poughkeepsie communicates and works very closely with the DS8k developers Read full review VMware runs VSAN certification programs to make sure the OEM sells validated nodes. It helps customers to select appropriate certified ready nodes like Lenovo ThinkAgile VX which comes factory configured and easy to set up. Hyperconverged solutions reduce real estate space and networking costs when compare with shared storage. The host overhead also less. Supports All-Flash (SATA and NVMe SSDs) and Hybrid vSAN with HDD and SSD. So customers can choose cost-effective solutions appropriate to their workloads. Supports different storage policies, RAID and duplication, and compression features and it makes a complete storage solution. Read full review Cons The DS8000 family still lacks deduplication and compression algorithms. For best results on replication enablement, optional Copy Services Manager is suggested. Read full review We were a fairly early adopter of VMware vSAN and as such experienced several growing pains. We experienced a few bugs that took a few software versions upgrades to go mostly away. The biggest issue we had overall was with host drivers. Even with vSAN ready node compatible hosts, you have to be very careful that the drivers for NIC and RAID controllers are right. Read full review Usability Deploying and configuring VSAN is a relatively simple process for people that are already used to working in virtual environments, primarily for those that are familiar with
vSphere . The compatibility of those two products is amazing. You shouldn't really encounter any issues and if you do, you surely did something wrong.
Read full review Support Rating Support is (as always forVMware) top notch and easy to work with. The majority of computer companies are outsourcing their tech staff, and it seems they do as well. But their guys know the product well and are quick to respond to your ticket (if the severity is right!).
Read full review Alternatives Considered DS8882F provides CKD storage in a manageable footprint. Its advantage over FlashSystem is its interoperability with IBM Z Systems
Read full review Our VMware solution is built in-house for the organization's private application, we don't want to put our data on cloud premises. Also, vSAN is a cost-effective solution for our environment. We have done the POC with both products to understand the Flexibility, Management, and cost. After the successful POC, we have chosen the VMware vSAN.
Read full review Return on Investment I do not know the cost. If it prevents future system wide outages, it will be a great ROI for our company. Read full review we have realized savings in the licensing compared to traditional storage (over $500,000 over the last 5 years) we have realized ROI through efficiencies in our staff of approx $1MM (over the last 5 years) also, positive impact on the time to value/speed of implementation allowed us to realize business objectives (Over $1MM of ROI) Read full review ScreenShots