TrustRadius Insights for IBM System Storage DS8900F are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Reliability and High Availability: Users have consistently praised the IBM DS8000 family for its reliability and high availability, with no reported outages during usage. This reliability instills confidence in users, ensuring uninterrupted operations and data accessibility.
Ease of Management: Reviewers appreciate the ease of management offered by the Hardware Management Console, making tasks more manageable and efficient. The intuitive interface of the HMC simplifies complex processes, allowing users to navigate system configurations effortlessly.
Excellent Performance: The platform's performance has been highlighted as excellent by users, providing high levels of service and steady performance even as operations scale up. This consistent performance ensures smooth workflow efficiency without compromising on speed or quality.
Our customers use the product for various purposes from mainframe to open systems uses.
Pros
The IBM DS8000 family is the leading, most-trusted platform for IBM mainframe
The IBM DS8000 family is the leading, most-trusted platform for IBM i.
The IBM DS8000 family has time-proven hardware and software contributing to unparalleled availability.
Cons
The DS8000 family still lacks deduplication and compression algorithms.
For best results on replication enablement, optional Copy Services Manager is suggested.
Likelihood to Recommend
<div>If you're looking at the IBM DS8000 you have a special use-case. It's either IBM Mainframe, IBM i or another enterprise environment that requires the most resilient storage technology available. The DS8000 family is a great choice for these highly-critical environments.</div><div>
</div><div>It offers some of the most mature and well-thought copy services available in the industry. This includes synchronous and async options. </div><div>
</div><div>It's also available either pre-racked or rack mountable to suit your use-case.
It is being used by my customers with iSeries, mainframe and open systems with a need for always on high availability for business critical applications.
Pros
Mainframe integration
iSeries native attachment
Multi-site replication
Cons
Smaller high capacity drives
USB encryption
Likelihood to Recommend
It’s hard to justify the cost of the system for small capacity requirements of open/distributed workloads.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (201-500 employees)
We use our DS8882F for our mainframe infrastructure across the whole organization. It addresses the business problem of providing CKD storage in a rack mounted system that can fit in our data center. Its all-flash configuration enables us to run mainframe workloads with the lowest possible latency, helping us establish a testing environment for the setups we implement at other clients.
Pros
Copy Services
Disaster Recovery
High throughput
Cons
I have seen the GUI say that the storage facility is inaccessible, even when getting a clean health check from IBM. Typically rebooting the HMC fixes this.
When decommissioning a box, you cannot delete arrays until ranks are done formatting. This adds a lot of time to the decomm process
IO ports do not have a topology by default
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited for CKD mainframe workloads and legacy support. Less appropriate for situations where FS9100 is more appropriate, such as needing external virtualiztion.
We are replacing EMC storage with IBM storage. It's used company wide. Will be looking to implement FlashCopy for database backups.
Pros
Hopefully it won't have the internal problems like EMC that caused a major data issue last year.
I'm too new to have a good comparison of how this storage works.
Cons
Unknown.
Likelihood to Recommend
Hopefully it will be well suited for all our storage needs. From a database perspective, we will need storage for all our DB2 and IMS data. We currently use DASD storage for our virtual tape (image copies) also.
We use IBM DS8000 to support all of our mortgage servicing customers on the mainframe. The DS8K was chosen for its performance, reliability and synergy with IBM zSeries. The DS8k is also important in reducing risk. The capabilities in replication and disaster recovery are unmatched in the industry and allow us to utilize complimentary technologies such as GDPS for resiliency.
Pros
Performance, the DS8k has provided excellent levels of service levels. I/O response time is no longer a concern.
Scalability - as we grow the platform, performance has been steady.
Replication - copy services capabilites are vast and ensure data integrity and consistency.
Ease of use, the latest GUIs have vastly improved over the last 5+ years. The GUI is a great learning tool for support teams not familiar with the DS8k.
Cons
Ability to use advanced features on HMC (for customers).
Provide better integration with GDPS - for example GDPS GUI hosted on DS8k HMC
Allow customers to install firmware
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.
VU
Verified User
Professional in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees)
We use the DS8000 at many of our customers. I have several of them installed at customers who work in financial markets. Typically, I see it used in Mainframe only environments, due to the relative cost of the DS8k compared to the variety of platforms available for open systems environments. However, even now I have some customers who have open systems environments connected to DS8000 when it is an extremely high priority environment that cannot afford downtime.
Primarily I see it used for FICON attachment. The reason for that is pretty simple -- IBM works very closely between their storage and z groups to maintain "synergy". But it's also just a rock solid highly available platform that's become more reliable with time.
Additionally, when it comes to business continuity functions it can be pretty incredible. Its Global Mirror function particularly impresses me. It's able to deal with exceptionally high latency and still deliver single-digit seconds of RPO (in extreme cases this might require development to use "pokeables"). When combined with Copy Services Manager or GDPS, it really brings disaster recovery functions to a very usable level for the enterprise.
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
Cons
Data Reduction -- DS8k doesn't do any. If you're running a mainframe with pervasive encryption turned on, that's not an issue but it could be for many distributed environments
FlashCopy -- based on Copy on Write. It works well, but it would be nice to see it move to something like Redirect on Write
Expense -- What can I say? It is more expensive than most people in an open systems environment are willing to pay when compared with offerings that don't have FICON
Likelihood to Recommend
It's a qualified 10. If it's a mainframe environment I wouldn't think twice. An open systems environment I would ask many questions to make sure that it's not going to be a bad decision. The open systems environments would need to have requirements to drive the DS8000. It would work for any environment in the interop matrix, but I'd just want to make sure that it's the right fit.
DS8000 provides the reliability for mission critical applications and un-surpassed speed. It allows our DB2 and IMS systems to run without interruption with the speed needed to meet customer expectations. By providing a highly available system combined with disaster recovery, we never worry about missing a sale.
Pros
Disaster Recovery
Response Time
HIgh Availability
Cons
Configuration menus
Likelihood to Recommend
With any mission critical application, the uptime and DR capabilities of the DS8000 are with equal in the industry. Choosing less is risking your data.
VU
Verified User
Technician in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
We uss DS8000 for our storage solution in our IT department. It's very flexible for adding new LUNs to our system and works very well as well with our SVC solution that we have.
Pros
Very flexible with SVC or standalone
Very reliable - never goes down
Cons
Not as fast as our flash system
Likelihood to Recommend
Big data LUNs with minimal writes and read
VU
Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
We use the DB8886 to house our system z data. This meets our business needs by providing fast and secure data storage.
Pros
Allows us to use GDPS for our disaster recovery solution. This is a strength because it enables us to meet our DR requirements.
Allows us to have encryption of our data at rest. This is a strength because it enables us to meet our security requirements.
Allows us to have a stable and reliable disk storage. This is a strength because it enables us to meet our data availability requirements.
Cons
The hardest thing for us is the storage server software for configuring the storage. We find that the previous GUI interface is easier to use.
Being able to utilize some of the GDPS functions that need all flash to use.
The order process could be improved by telling the customer which additional cables/network requirements are needed.
Likelihood to Recommend
The DS8000 series meets all of our processing needs. Our DB2 colleagues are very impressed with the speed of this new DASD. We have just fully installed our new DS8886, so I am sure that other units will be greatly impressed with the speed and availability of this new DASD.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)
