IBM FlashSystem Scalability
Mike Bellemans
Project manager at Sopraco NV
FlashSystem is scalable, but you need to pay to expand it. We are at around 50 percent capacity, and we can increase that by purchasing more disks. It's still possible to scale beyond that, but it will be more expensive because I need to buy storage boxes.
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Storemgr67
Storage Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I never try to scale up the solution. I mostly buy a lot of small boxes of the solution to operate in my company.
In my company, two administrators at the most use IBM FlashSystem.
Atif Najam
Chief Information Officer and Program Lead at Gatron Industries Ltd
The solution is scalable and has varying degrees of scalability. For example, if you have to buy a port and initial or entry-level storage, it can scale up to a certain level. After that, you'll have to change the box. If you need a forklift to pick up and bring in a new device regarding scalability, we usually plan for three to four years because technology changes fast. Hence, with five years of scalability, you will have no issues scaling that product to a certain level.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
IBM FlashSystem
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about IBM FlashSystem. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
767,995 professionals have used our research since 2012.
CM
WebOpsManager15
Web Operations Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The V9000 can only hold two shelves of flash, at which point you need new controllers.
View full review »
Raanan Sitton
Vice President Sales at BELOCAL LTD
IBM FlashSystem is scalable, but it depends on what you're selling. You'll have scalability issues if you sell it as a complete system with maximum capacity. I didn't sell the entire system, so it can be upgraded if the customer needs more capacity.
View full review »AM
Abdullah Mahmood
Network and System Administrator at TWD Technologies Ltd.
The solution has the potential to scale quite well. If a company needs to expand it, it can.
However, it is a hardware, and you do need to take scaling into account early on. We can grow with the hardware we have and put on new drives, et cetera.
We have approximately 200 employees, and anyone that's connected to the network, those files are stored on this particular solution. Therefore, even if they aren't aware they are using the product, they, in fact, are.
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EMIL DOMINGUEZ
HW Sales Representative at GBM (an IBM alliance Company)
I give the scalability a nine out of ten. This solution is highly scalable, allowing for both side-by-side placement and clustering. This makes it an ideal option for me due to its scalability.
View full review »PH
reviewer2014950
Service Delivery Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
This is a scalable solution.
View full review »
Gungor Bingul
Head of IT at Korozo
It is a scalable product.
In our organization, we have more than 1,000 people using this solution.
In general, we plan our investments for three to five years in advance. Because technology evolves every five years, the solution is usually changed after five years. As a result, we had to replace everything.
We don't have any plans to purchase additional licenses in the near future.
View full review »PS
Peter Sachs
Storage Infrastructure Engineer at Cambridge Health Alliance
IBM FlashSystem is highly scalable.
We have approximately 5,000 people using the solution. We plan to continue using this solution in the future.
View full review »Storemgr67
Storage Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
We haven't scaled it yet, but based on the documentation and specification, it is actually scalable.
View full review »AZ
Ahmed Zaki
Infrastructure Architect Supervisor; Solution Delivery Supervisor at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
It is scalable. All projects in my company use the IBM FlashSystem. I am working on high-end storage, not mid-range. I can scale out or scale up. IBM has introduced FlashSystem 9200 to the market in which I can scale SAS disk, NVMe disk, and SSCM disk. I have three options on one box, which are not available with EMC or Pure Storage.
You can also scale out storage in EMC. In Pure Storage, there are issues in scaling. Pure Storage has different boxes like X70, X90, X50, and if I need to scale or upgrade the box, I need to change our controllers. Every Pure Storage box has limited capacity, whereas, for IBM storage, the capacity of the box is not limited.
MM
Marko M
Product Manager at ZELINKA d.o.o.
The solution is scalable so scalability is rated an eight out of ten.
View full review »
AANKITGUPTAA
Consultant at Pi DATACENTERS
The scalability is excellent. We can add a storage box as required and the capability is increased on that particular box. In one year we export our data to the boxes and we have doubled.
Janith Ranasinghe
Senior Manager - IT at LankaClear
This is a scalable solution.
View full review »Storemgr67
Storage Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I have only four boxes now, so it's not the best scalability you can get, but it is still acceptable. Since we are hosting our core banking on it, we have about 20,000 employees working on it.
View full review »
Pratyush Bhosale
Chief Manager - information technology at UTKARSH SMALL FINANCE BANK LIMITED
I would rate the scalability at seven out of ten.
View full review »HB
C832
COO at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
The scalability is fine, but it also depends on the type of customer. If they are a lower-level SMB and we can find out what their growth would be over the next year to two years, the availability of different models from Storwize makes us comfortable in telling customers that they can expand, without any doubt, for another three to four years. They don't need to worry about having to buy a new system in two years. Just upgrade and expand, that's all.
View full review »IA
IbrahimAysu
IT Manager at Def Industry
The transactions of more than 1,00,000 customers are running on this solution.
I rate the solution an eight out of ten for scalability.
RV
reviewer1125696
UNIX Security Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
The solution is scalable within reason. We lease it based on a four-year forecast and then return it when the lease term ends. The solution can scale up a bit but we haven't really changed configurations during our lease terms.
View full review »
Aamir Jameel
Senior Systems Manager at Tapal tea
The scalability of IBM FlashSystem has been good.
View full review »SM
Savera-Menezes
Head of IT Infrastructure at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
In our experience, scalability is not very easy. This may depend on our systems so it might not be universally true but definitely, for us, scalability was a problem. IBM came out with a newer version and told us that "To scale, you'll have to either switch over to a new version or buy an additional controller."
So, scalability on that particular model was not feasible. There may be better models but the model that we purchased was not easily scaled.
We have 800 users and there are four engineers who manage our IT products.
We do not plan on expanding our use of this product in the future because our plan includes moving to the cloud.
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Isanka Attanayake
Manager - Information Technology Infrastructure and Development Support at Royal Ceramics
This solution is scalable. We have 400 users using it.
View full review »GM
Ghulam Mustafa
BT Area Champion/Trainer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
The solution is quite scalable. A company can expand it if they need to.
We are a financial institution with two million customers. This is the storage we use behind all of our solutions.
While we don't plan to expand usage in the near future, we have recently acquired new storage solutions for an upcoming upgrade.
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Usman Rasool
VP - Head Enterprise Technology Infrastructure at MCB Islamic Bank Ltd.
We have approximately 1,500 people who are directly or indirectly accessing the data that is residing on this storage.
View full review »MN
Moahmed Nabil
Infrastructure Solutions Architect at areebah
It's easy to scale, but it depends on the model. The 5100 is obsolete, but the 5200 has line expansions, up to two controllers, and can scale out both ways. The 7000 and 9000 can scale to 20 expansions and four controllers. It's very scalable, both horizontal and vertical.
View full review »
it_user674244
Design Engineer at a recruiting/HR firm with 10,001+ employees
We have it architected to keep it at a certain level. But if we needed to, we could scale it pretty easily because it's virtualized storage. There's a lot of flexibility with it.
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Branko Cirovic
Storage Engineer at Comtrade Group
IBM FlashSystem is scalable.
View full review »it_user736929
Senior Systems Engineer & Support Contracts Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
MB
Matthys Booyens
Chief Technology Officer at Inovo
The system can be expanded with additional trays. Current we have about 2,000 users on the system. They are mostly end users, database administrator, and developers.
View full review »RC
reviewer1550817
Hybrid IT Enterprise Executive at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
The solution is scalable, and approximately 100 clients are utilizing it. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten.
View full review »it_user672366
Senior Technical Specialist at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Storewize is scalable, especially the V-7000. The GEN-28 can scale up to 20 expansions. It's highly scalable and you can have a maximum of 8 nodes.
View full review »it_user672375
CTO at CAS Severn
The scalability of the V9000 product is really where it shines. Being able to add additional capacity to the unit, without having to come up with a different management of lots of separate units, has been very beneficial to clients.
That idea of starting small with their current flash rollout and then being able to grow as the budget allows, has been very beneficial to clients.
View full review »it_user211857
IT Program Manager at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
There have been no issues with the scalability.
View full review »
Nuno Chiziane
Core Systems Services Consultant Infrastructure & Security at Asseco Central Europe, a.s.
This is a scalable solution.
View full review »it_user672384
Senior Technical Specialist with 51-200 employees
As a building block, the FlashSystem 900 isn't really intended to scale out to a large degree. Instead, it's intended to be used as a block with which to build out a scalable solution (such as with an A9000/A9000R or a V9000).
View full review »it_user672363
Systems Engineer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Scalability has improved so far. It seems like every year there are more and more expansion added to that.
View full review »
Ondrej Klivan
SENIOR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR at TOTAL SERVICE a.s.
Our customers are medium and enterprise businesses. We provide IT services to our clients. We have 10 to 12 employees who can deploy the solution. Everyone in our organization uses the tool. We have 150 employees. I rate the tool’s scalability an eight or nine out of ten. It serves big capacities.
View full review »
SemyonOsadchiy
Commercial Director at MUK
It is scalable. We have more than 12 customers using IBM FlashSystem in my country.
View full review »DP
reviewer1983588
General Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
IBM FlashSystem is scalable.
There isn't a lot of software linked to that IBM software.
It is very easy to scale.
It depends on the client's needs because there are small-sized companies with 50 customers to begin with and such. And it is occasionally used. I would say 220 or more are there for the users.
External support is sufficient to keep this solution functional.
View full review »ST
C.
Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
You can build clusters with it and IO Groups.
View full review »
KashifAdeel
Pre-Sales Consultant - Infrastructure at InfoTech Group
IBM FlashSystem is scalable as per our organization's requirements. We have also upgraded the capacity after two years and it is working fine and it was quite easy to add more capacity to the existing pool. We can use the same capacity to increase the existing two drives or for the new workload.
I work for medium to large enterprises which use this solution.
View full review »GA
Gokhan Aricioglu
IT Manager at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
It is scalable enough.
View full review »it_user672393
Systems Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
We haven't scaled it to the maximum. It does scale quite a bit more than we've actually ever used it.
View full review »it_user523167
IT Specialist at Slovenská sporiteľňa
We upgraded one FlashSystem two months ago because it was not full. We had to buy two modules, if I remember correctly. This was quite a complicated upgrade. IBM brought us new FlashSystems. Because it is virtualized, we moved the data from this one, upgraded it, and moved the data back; but it was done dynamically without any outage.
With the virtualized FlashSystem, we hope for improved response time, but the availability is improved. It is also flexible in that we could upgrade it dynamically, move the data, and so on.
View full review »it_user672354
Storage Administrator at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
We actually upgraded it, adding expansion shelves. It was fairly simple.
View full review »JS
reviewer1344021
Deputy director at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
You can go for the full controller, so you can say FlashSystem is scalable.
View full review »MJ
reviewer1648785
Technical Support Manager at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
This product has good scalability, allowing us to scale up as much as we need.
View full review »RC
reviewer1550817
Hybrid IT Enterprise Executive at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
This solution is very scalable. We have no issues with the scalability of the IBM FlashSystem.
View full review »BB
reviewer1480077
Deputy Chief Technology Officer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
We have about 100 users on the solution currently.
View full review »PV
reviewer1445691
Senior System Administrator at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
This storage solution is scalable. It is used in production and not directly linked to users. It runs various routines and batches, although the developers and IT interact with this. Together, this is about 50 people.
View full review »AR
Andrey Rogov
CEO at a government with 1-10 employees
It has good scalability abilities.
View full review »RR
Chieftechofficer67
CTO at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
This solution is scalable to an extent.
View full review »it_user730569
Senior Systems Consultant at a tech services company
The V7000 can scale up to 10 enclosures (disk shelves), each up to 24 disks per enclosure. A cluster of 2 x V7000 has twice the capacity.
Using the V7000 you must be careful not to overload the CPU and disk backplane. When planning to implement any storage array, you must plan your workload carefully. IBM have a superb tool, Disk Magic, that predicts the I-O performance of the array configuration you have selected. This is an invaluable tool in planning any IBM storage array.
View full review »it_user732744
System Administrator at Dhaka Bank Limited
it_user672345
Senior Technical Specialist at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Scalability is neat as well. It can grow massively. We usually deal with SMB environments and it's pretty good for that environment.
View full review »it_user264465
Arquiteto de Soluções at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
It has great scalability.
View full review »RP
SeniorTeb154
Senior Technology Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We can add more disks or JBODs into it. So, it is scalable and easy to scale.
View full review »it_user674226
Senior Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Scalability is also good because you can add an additional FS900 behind it or you can stack in other V9000s and cluster them together. You can either go deeper or wider with your solution set. It really just depends on how much performance or workload insulation you need, whether you go wide or you go deep.
View full review »LS
SystemsIe783
Systems integrator at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees
It is very scalable.
View full review »it_user671418
Enterprise Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It's a good, scalable product with which you can scale out. And you can add it to virtualization. Whether it's a V9000 or you add it to an SVC, it becomes even more scalable.
View full review »ME
reviewer1025793
Technology Supervisor at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The scalability of the product is quite good. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. It's not a problem at all.
View full review »it_user672396
Storage Administrator at Sprint
The product is scalable.
View full review »it_user671433
Programmer Analysts at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Scalability is quite easy. We've been expanding pretty much every year.
View full review »it_user671412
Network Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It is definitely very easy to scale. It's like everybody says, "plug and play". It just works.
View full review »it_user671409
Storage Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
It's not extremely scalable as of today. There are certain limits of the hardware that it runs on. Essentially, it does provide for medium to large enterprises in a single appliance solution.
View full review »KE
Khaled Elashmawy
Chief Technology Officer at areebah
I have found IBM FlashSystem to be scalable. However, with a specific type of FlashSystems scalability is limited.
View full review »BS
reviewer1155420
NDT - TECHNICIAN at a paper AND forest products with 1,001-5,000 employees
it_user738690
Gestor de Capacidad at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
No problem, there are very scalable models, everything depends on planning and the requirements.
ST
reviewer1059243
Senior System & Storage Engineer at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
- Multivendor support for backend storage - Clustering and adding in another IO--group - supports many shelves, large disks, several clusters
View full review »
it_user674229
Storage Admin at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
You can scale out as much as you want. We use up to four in a cluster, four to six nodes, so it's working fine for us.
View full review »it_user739677
Systems Integration Expert & IT Consultant at a tech services company
it_user531666
Senior Analyst at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
We did not have any problems with scalability.
View full review »MD
reviewer1759665
Storage Administrator at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
There is room to scale.
View full review »it_user541197
General Manager Information Technology Department at a university with 501-1,000 employees
We are able to add additional drives easily.
View full review »it_user672369
Solution Architect tct at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Scalability is quite nice, with being able to support over 1.5TB effective in one rack is a nice selling feature. One of the early issues was that they weren't at a code release where we were able to add new elements right away in a non-disruptive fashion. We had to wait for a couple of code releases for that. We've gone beyond that now. At this point, scalability is no longer an issue.
View full review »it_user672381
Head of IT infrastructure at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Scalability is good.
View full review »it_user671430
Enterprise Architect at Horizon
It’s massively scalable, so I’ll never run into that problem.
View full review »KV
reviewer1081236
Director Technical at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It's extremely scalable. There are no limitations, because of the profile of the customers they work with.
Most of their boxes are highly scalable to meet that requirement and the scaling is pretty straightforward.
There's no rip and replace. It's a very scalable tool.
View full review »AJ
Ajai Jayakumar
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
It is scalable, although it's very expensive. In maybe another three or four years we'll be adding more storage space and hard disk flashes to the existing system. Right now, we have between 500-600 end users on the application.
View full review »it_user672390
San Admin at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It doesn't scale out that well. It actually goes up to 15 module and after that, you have to add another frame. But, they have come out with a new technology where you can do hyperscale. I wish they had put a SVC in front of it but, it's a hyperscale, i.e., you can be on either the A-side or B-side.
View full review »it_user674238
Storage Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
We find the product very scalable. We've been able to implement many storage arrays in our environment with very little effort.
View full review »it_user672357
Tactical Expert at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Scalability is also very good because in the first product you could add four expansions to it, but then today, with the later code you can add nine to the controller units. So, it's very good and also, if you put an SVC product on top of it, then it works very well together as we see in all of the products as well.
View full review »SY
reviewer1314750
Technical Manager at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
The scalability is similar to the Nimble Storage solution.
We have approximately 200 users using this solution, and we have plans to increase usage.
View full review »AH
reviewer1547445
System engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
I have found the solution to be scalable.
We have approximately 1,000 users using the solution in my organization.
View full review »it_user732741
Sistem Yönetimi Uzman? at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
AA
reviewer1386717
Technical Presales Consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
I would recommend this solution.
IBM FlashSystem can expand very well, it is scalable.
View full review »DP
reviewer1423749
System Administrator at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
This solution is scalable.
View full review »IE
reviewer1477065
Senior Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We are only using one box or enclosure for now. We don't have experience with scaling the systems. Our companies here don't need big systems for now.
View full review »CC
technica379896
Technical Head at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
None so far.
View full review »it_user418875
Diretor de TI at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Excellent.
View full review »CC
technica379896
Technical Head at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Scale in scale out design was implemented
View full review »Buyer's Guide
IBM FlashSystem
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about IBM FlashSystem. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
767,995 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Buyer's Guide
Download our free IBM FlashSystem Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2024
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