Item: IBM Cloud File Storage
Rating: 9
Author: Mauro Giannandrea

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IBM Cloud File Storage is a very useful service when you need to have shared storage between multiple instances and/or services. In our specific case, the services behind the load balancer could all read write and edit files on the storage. Moreover, the services could be added and deleted and still access the storage. IBM Cloud File Storage is the perfect product to resolve this problem, because it works well and considering that is NFS compatible is also easy to integrate also using common libraries.

Pros and Cons

Is NFS compatible so easy to integrate
Snapshot support, replication and encryption for the highest data security standard
Up to 12 TB of shared storage
The possibility to create a snapshot and move on another data center on another app

The limits in operations linked to the capacity is a bit complicated
Would be nice to have a mechanism that automatically increase IOPS when required

Return on Investment

Compared with company datacenter require less maintenance time with an incomparable high availability and business continuity features
The possibility to move snapshots on other data centers let this solution super scalable worldwide
The price for gb let us pay what we need without a pre commissioned storage buy

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) and Azure Files

IBM Cloud File Storage is easier to manage and easier to move on other datacenters to create new workflow. The ecosystem on IBM is more enterprise oriented and math company's customers requirements more than the other 2 providers. In addition we also wanted a different provider respect AWS and AZURE for this storage for high availability and disaster recovery.

Key Insights

Do you think IBM Cloud File Storage delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with IBM Cloud File Storage's feature set?

Yes

Did IBM Cloud File Storage live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of IBM Cloud File Storage go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy IBM Cloud File Storage again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

IBM Cloud File Storage is always a good choice for enterprise companies, and this service is also perfect for companies with needs of high security standards and High avaliability. Is possible to use IBM Cloud File Storage with many standard softwares, because compatible with NFS and the possibility to create snapshots and move to another data center so is possible to create workflow respecting also GDPR. The Maximum storage size with the maximum IPS is 12 TB, is possible to expand to 24 TB that is still not enough for big data or data lake usages and, however would not be with the highest performance. For some usages and business the price of this service may be relatively high.

Shared storage for enterprise needs

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cloud File Storage