Skip to main content
TrustRadius
IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)

IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)

Overview

What is IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)?

IBM Storwize is a family of recognized all-flash and hybrid storage solutions designed to support the virtualization needs and application workloads of mid-sized enterprises.

Read more
Recent Reviews
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
N/A
Unavailable

What is IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)?

IBM Storwize is a family of recognized all-flash and hybrid storage solutions designed to support the virtualization needs and application workloads of mid-sized enterprises.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

2 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is Wasabi Object Storage?

Wasabi Technologies headquartered in Boston offers "hot cloud storage," object storage available pay-as-you-go as well as reserved capacity storage which they describe as tier free, and easily manageable. Additionally, Wasabi offers a Cloud NAS option, designed to be "hands free" and require…

Return to navigation

Product Details

What is IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)?

The IBM Storwize family, now part of the FlashSystems family, is designed to meet the storage requirements of businesses with entry to mid-sized application workloads who need all the features and capabilities demanded in business-critical environments but within constrained budgets. Members of the Storwize family deliver hybrid flash capability at a low entry price whereas others offer high performance end-to-end NVMe including NVMe flash drives and support for NVMe over Fibre Channel fabrics. Many Storwize systems include unique IBM FlashCore Modules with ultra-low latency, and compression and FIPS 140-2 encryption, delivered without impact to performance.

Offered in a wide range of storage systems, the IBM Storwize family delivers sophisticated capabilities that are easy to deploy and easy to manage thanks to its IBM Spectrum Virtualize software. These capabilities include non-disruptive data migration from existing storage, comprehensive data reduction to help reduce costs, six-nines availability to meet the most demanding business needs, easy scalability, and hybrid cloud capability when used with IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud. All Storwize systems are enhanced with cloud-based IBM Storage Insights that helps monitor health, status, and performance, and offers proactive recommendations. When problems occur, Storage Insights helps streamline obtaining support.

IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) Features

  • Supported: Get faster insights with NVMe acceleration
  • Supported: Improve your business agility with enterprise-class storage capability
  • Supported: Transform the economics of data storage using data reduction technologies
  • Supported: Leverage AI to optimize configurations and streamline issue resolution
  • Supported: Complement on-premises storage of all types with hybrid multicloud capability

IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) Screenshots

Screenshot of

IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) Competitors

IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

IBM Storwize is a family of recognized all-flash and hybrid storage solutions designed to support the virtualization needs and application workloads of mid-sized enterprises.

Dell Unity XT Unified Storage, HPE Nimble Storage, and HPE 3PAR StoreServ are common alternatives for IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems).

The most common users of IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(31)

Reviews

(1-19 of 19)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
April 18, 2022

Affordable Storage

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Storwize was used to maintain the application data backup and disk allocation in AIX servers environments. We have resolved our data backup problems in our testing and development environments.
  • IBM Storwize is easy to set up and configure. This storage provides lots of easy features to use in daily operations like interface, disk provision, data backup and restore, etc.
  • Stability with dual controller
  • We faced few issues with vendor support when we faced one major issue with this storage
IBM Storwize is well suited to every operating system like AIX, Linux, other OS, etc. This storage is capable enough to manage the workload, it's a fast and reliable system. We can also use this storage in cloud environments.
April 15, 2022

IBM Storwize Review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Storwize we used in our DR site for AIX and Linux environments servers to maintain the data. IBM Storwize provides an easy user interface and many other key features like disk provision, updates, data security, etc which help to manage this storage in a smooth way.
  • IBM Storwize provides a simple way to do the Disk provision and map to Unix servers.
  • IBM Storwize provides the security and enough storage space for user data.
  • IBM Storwize provides the fast data IO processing speed.
  • Some time we don't get the error Monitoring alerts.
  • This storage is not really capable to manage our critical server data.
IBM Storwize is good storage to manage the different environment work and different applications/databases. This storage provides an excellent data backup solution and DR site. This storage is not capable to manage the huge data transaction.
April 11, 2022

IBM Storewize- Review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Storewize is used in our business to store and manage heavy data and applications. This system is very fast and has a good efficiency in this system used in our organization for AI and hybrid cloud storage. This product has many features such as it is scalable and can easily access the data at a lower cost. So this is best for our organization.
  • Data accessibility is good
  • Provide Security to our data
  • Storage is enough
  • Need some Improvisation in data backup facility
  • Not always but sometime might be problem in disk scanning
IBM Storewize is widely used in organizations for on-premises with a lot of facilities that are given by this IBM Storewize. Data accessibility is very good and fast in this system. This system is available with different data services such as scalability and flexibility in data even providing security to our data.
February 22, 2022

IBM Storwize - Review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using IBM Storwize for on-premise solution, Cloud, VMware and IBM i-series. We are also using this product for backup as well as.
This system provides high available data storage.
  • High Availability
  • Backup solution
  • Easy to setup and configuration
  • Redundant controllers
  • some time face the issue with disk scaning
  • We also face some issue with backend support during the major issue
IBM Storwize is well suite for backup, VMware and cloud solution. This product can be used by small companies also. This system provide high availability data storage with redundant controller system.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the IBM Storwize in our projects and company for backups and other small medium database and other normal transactions.
It has great capacity.
  • Easy to expand
  • Redundant controllers
  • High Capacity
  • Good for Backup
  • Dashboard should be more improve
  • alerts and monitoring
  • Real time compression should be more improve
IBM Storwize is well suitable for hybrid environments and file servers ,backup etc. Its not recommended for that kind of projects in which heavy transection are happen. Its has great capacity, low speed use case.
February 03, 2022

My Storwize Experience

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Utilizing Storwize allows us to provision our hardware quickly and efficiently. The interface feels familiar while giving you a more detailed view of the different components. From the initial setup to applying new storage to a host or hosts, to optimizing your IOPS by looking over the utilization. Big data, database, or archiving with the larger units, we utilize Storwize throughout many application functions or historical profiles. Small office file shares or medium-sized to large-sized deployments. Mirror your data as this is more and more of a requirement for businesses to run.
  • Better at fault tolerance.
  • Automated alerting so I know there’s an issue.
  • Built to last.
  • Easy to expand.
  • Update the dashboard.
  • Centralization is missing if you have many devices.
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.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We use a Storwize V7000 for backups and testing of copy services. It addresses the problem of recovering from a failure of our primary storage systems.
  • Low cost
  • High capacity
  • Good for backups
  • Would benefit from internal flash
  • Could use more streamlined port assignments
Storwize is an excellent backup solution that works very well for us. It is great for high capacity, low speed use cases. It would be less appropriate for production systems or applications requiring the lowest response time.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use IBM Storwize virtualized products to leverage storage efficiency practices to scale our storage to business demands. Data is endlessly growing, and being able to use virtualized products we can somewhat manage growth. We use multiple Storwize V7000 and V5000 devices behind SVC. The SVC allows us to seamlessly move data between storage devices without issues. Specifically, the V7k V5k, and as well as the V9Ks allow us to provision storage and over-allocate storage when workloads are not meeting the requests from the users.
  • 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.
  • Support could use some improvement when there are major issues. Call home reaches level 1 support, but each error should probably reach a different team when a more major event occurs.
  • There is a bit of confusion surrounding data reduction pools and leveraging DRP or using FCM. This may be confusion on my part, not necessarily the Storwize product.
Storwize has been well suited in environments where users have requested more storage than they need. Using thin provisioning techniques we have eliminated the need for multiple storage purchases. In our industry, we have users request storage more than they need. A user may request a 2 TB volume, but only use 900GB of the 2TB. Storwize is well suited for these type of scenarios because it can manage to provide the user with the 2TB allocation, but only physically be using the 990GB that is in use, allowing for us to allocate additional storage for other users.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
IBM Storwize is used by the entire organization. It is normally used for some databases with medium transactions and file saving as document management.
  • IBM Storwize, thanks to its IBM Spectrum Virtualize base software, is able to perform well-executed functions such as storage to storage replication, easy tier, flash copy and the most interesting one that I have seen operating in our clients is the capacity for real-time compression.
  • We have had several clients with real-time compression component, thanks to the great benefits it offers us in saving space in volumes, rack space, energy saving, among others.
  • Real-time compression on a V7000 with its compression accelerators not only has the ability to compress data volumes but also gives us better performance.
  • I would like them to improve the real-time compression in the V5030 family, since when compressing the data it takes processor resources from the controllers, degrading the performance at the time of compression.
A scenario where IBM Storwize is suitable is when we have hybrid environments such as databases, virtual machines, and file servers. With IBM Spectrum Virtualize software integration, we can take full advantage of the advantages offered by compression, deduplication, storage pool balancing, and data reduction pools among other interesting features that allow us to save considerable space and performance.

A scenario where IBM Storwize is not very suitable is when we have many transactions or a very high level of IOPS. In this case, it is better to consider an IBM Flash type storage with micro-latency.
May 02, 2019

my storwize review

Richy Peebles | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently have V9000 installed connected to P824 running IBMi 7.2. We use JD Edwards E1 9.2. We went with Flash for performance reasons and for the most part have not been disappointed.
  • Self monitoring and reporting
  • Friendly GUI interface
  • Make finding information about storage insights easier
  • As new technology is introduce, could have better migration paths
Sizing and price points are good for clients moving from internal storage to external storage for the first time.
Kenneth Ditmar Hansen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Storwize storage products for fast flash storage access for hosting of customers' data, but also for internal use. Storwize products are in my opinion very easy to use, fast and a reliable storage solution. They are up to date with the newest flash technology, and that gives us an advantage in the industry.
  • Easy to use GUI
  • Fast performance
  • Good value for monney
  • Remote service built in, like EMC's ESRS
  • Better and easier support page
  • New data reduction features
  • Mid-range storage for all around storage, and can fit in all storage departments, easy to work with, and provides newest flash technology in an easy way.
  • Good for mid size environments, and for all workloads it's easy to design the right solution.
  • IBM is a well known brand and provides a good bang for the buck.
Peter Sachs | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The Storwize V7000 Gen 3 provides all tiers of SAN storage for our hospital. The cost is reasonable any you can pretty much configure the systems with whatever types of drives, SSD and NVMe media you need.
  • The price of the Storwize has been quite reasonable
  • Support is great!
  • With Storwize any GUI commands that run have their CLI counterpart recorded on the same screen which is great for scripting.
  • We can take our legacy storage and represent it behind the storwize.
  • Better advertising of their product.
  • Rackmount diagrams could be clearer.
  • Add a second Welcome mat in the box that shows clear rail deployment steps.
The support for larger 12TB and 14TB spinning drives will be great for PACS and imaging.
Rusty Beard | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Customers of mine deploy IBM Storwize systems for many different purposes of general information technology storage. Storwize is one of the most flexible and capable block storage devices in IT today, and one of IBM's most successful. It addresses issues of high-speed data storage and combines with software-defined virtualization.
  • Software-defined virtualization based on a two-decade track record of SVC.
  • Flexibility in device choices.
  • Industry-leading replication over FC or IP.
  • It would be nice, at some point, if new disks could be added to a pre-existing RAID array.
It excels at nearly all things block-storage related. It's not a NAS device, and doesn't support NAS protocols.
Bill Raines | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
I'm with an IBM business partner. The Storwize portfolio targets the majority of clients with a very flexible and simple block storage for most every use case in their business. I think that IBM's product and support wrapped with their Storage Insights in the cloud make this an excellent choice for the first time client as well as loyalty clients. Based on IBM Spectrum Virtualize provides the client peace of mind that IBM has done most of the work for them in proven solutions that clients need to support their older, current and future infrastructure.
  • Flexible Configurations and Features that are relevant to clients who need an array for a specific use case or a mixed workload at the right price
  • Simple GUI and Integration of the functions into the most widely used hypervisors for administrators of all types
  • Space Efficiency Technologies
  • Storage Insights to assist the administrator do their job
  • 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.
Well Suited:
Clients with Power Systems (Linux, AIX, and iSeries)
General Environments with mixed workloads
Traditional applications
Environments where the client has to co-exist legacy and modern systems (Spectrum Virtualize)
Keith Thuerk | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The IBM Storwize was originally purchased to consolidate DS5000 workloads. Hence we have refreshed the array and even grown it [to] add in a DR location. The GUI is super easy - even our manager can figure it out in times of need.
  • Block Storage
  • Storage Consolidation
  • Easy to Use GUI
  • Always room for Data Reduction Improvements (efficiency) without the overhead on the array
  • Would love to see NVMe roadmap
Midrange to Large Enterprise Storage offerings. No NAS or Unified storage offering (enterprise) as IBM has dropped all the NAS/Unified offerings
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use this with all of our IBM storage systems, it allows us a single use platform to connect to our systems.
  • Simple Use.
  • Great GUI
  • Easy Management
  • Updates hard to manage.
  • Storwize works well for underlying issue resolution for business/enterprise level storage.
  • May not always be best to use for small environments.
April 30, 2019

So far so good

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Storwize is our company's main storage application. We're able to utilize its VTS optimization, and it's as easy and as streamlined as we hoped. Although I haven't been exposed to as many storage resolutions as some, I do appreciate the thought that went behind this product, from a user perspective.
  • Ease of use
  • Visually appealing
  • Fast
  • Well thought out
  • Could be faster
  • Updates [could be] easier to install
  • Updated GUI
IBM Storwize is well suited for our VTS resolution, with its ease of use, and its fast and reliable software. IBM Storwize is not the best suited for our physical tape resolution.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We use a v3700 storage as the main storage for the entire company. Thanks to Thin Provisioning and Easy Tier I can look over provision volumes and be sure that my most used data will be on the fastest tier of storage. The performance, even being the smallest of the family, is a great bang for the buck and meets all our needs.
  • Management Interface
  • Easy Tier
  • Migration support
  • SCSI Unmap support (fixed in the new generation)
  • Data Deduplication (Again, fixed in the new generation)
  • Flashcopy interface, it's hard to understand at first.
Storwize products are well suited to most scenarios, it's features adapt to most workloads seamlessly. Only if one needs the least latency between data and the server and is willing to forego all the features the Storwize stack brings, just in that case something like the FS900 might be better suited.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Storwize is used as a SAN with multi tier storage for production and prototype systems. It is used by many areas of the enterprise.
  • Multi tier storage
  • Internal fault checking
  • Speed of fast tier storage
  • Cost is high for storage
  • Cost of maintenance is higher than it should be
Storwize is well suited for areas requiring/benefiting from complex tiered storage. It is expensive to service, so having local expertise is helpful.
Return to navigation