Item: IBM Storage FlashSystem
Rating: 9
Author: Anirudh Srinivas

Usability

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.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use the Storage systems on our managed customer environment for high performance systems , that have demanding IOPS and on the virtual systems where we host backup infrastructure.

Pros and Cons

The read and write times on these devices are extremely fast and responsive
The IOPS are achieved easily for the applications that have high requirement
The expansion and scaling down of pools are quite easy as well

The flexiblity of upgrading the flash modules for a higher capcity needs to be allowed
The user interface for the management console is sometimes a bit confusing
the configuration of call home can only be done to a specific IP address but not a dns name

Return on Investment

The flash modules are quite expensive and often requires a lot time for delivery
The flash modules have a longer life compared to competition
The performance is outstanding compared to competition
The software part is sometimes not very user friendly specially in the administration.

Performance

We are currently using this in a high IO database environment emulating a mainframe system . the performance is nearly close to original storage that was on the Mainframe. The High IO demands are easily met.

Alternatives Considered

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series

The performance is higher compared to the competition and the integration with other IBM tools are much easier. We chose IBM over the performance achieved compared to the competition, the POC showed the features and benefits over the other.

Likelihood to Recommend

For environments where high IO and read writes are performed the flash storage is very well suited . We also use this for another customer as a back end storage for high performance backups where we run multi stream data writes to it via 100G interface.

Easy , Fast , high performance storage for high demand IO applications

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Storage FlashSystem