it_user672372 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Storage Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Consultant
We do not have to take any kind of outage to do a storage data migration.

What is most valuable?

Not having to take any kind of outage to do a storage data migration.

How has it helped my organization?

It improves a lot of functions for our clients. The high availability is the best thing. I have been working with it for 15 years, and it's one of the most stable products that IBM has.

What needs improvement?

There are a few little GUI issues and stuff like that, but nothing major. I would like to see better layout of some stuff. They kept on moving things around from version 7.4 to through version 8. They've made it a little difficult for some customers to find things.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good.

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is great too. It scales from a single I/O group to up to four.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support has been great. I've been using it for 15 years.

What other advice do I have?

Next to the DSA1000, it's the most enterprise thing that IBM has for storage.

Make sure that it really has all the things that Spectrum Virtualize has, where you can upgrade the hardware and the software and everything without taking any kind of outage. And that's for infinity, not just for the life cycle with that version of the product, but for each subsequent version. It's all done on the fly.

When choosing a vendor, I look for support.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user672429 - PeerSpot reviewer
Archiect at Gulf Business Machines
MSP
It gives flexibility to the customers to view the entire storage infrastructure as a single entity.

What is most valuable?

The ability to virtualize multiple storage components is a valuable feature.

It gives flexibility to the customers to view the entire storage infrastructure, as a single entity.

How has it helped my organization?

Some of the benefits of this solution are that the customer need not go and manage multiple systems. They can only go and manage a single management view, for all these sorts of systems.

What needs improvement?

The product should have better management capabilities.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This product is very good in terms of the stability and scalability. The security features are also very good.

How is customer service and technical support?

Basically, we evaluate the support looking into the performance. Technical support is good.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was straightforward, not complex.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at other solutions namely EMC and IBM.

When I am selecting a vendor I look at the support as well and not just the product. It's the complete ecosystem of the product and support that we evaluate, before selecting a vendor.

What other advice do I have?

I shall definitely recommend it.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Buyer's Guide
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
April 2024
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770,292 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user672426 - PeerSpot reviewer
Client technical architect at Gbm
MSP
It can virtualize your data center. You can move one storage tier to another storage tier.

What is most valuable?

It is really a good product which can virtualize your whole data center. It is a road to a whole different software data center. It's a wonderful product for total cost of ownership, production, and providing ease of management.

How has it helped my organization?

It is all about the ease of management and better utilization of the storage capacity. It is about the dynamics of the storage. You can move one storage tier to another storage tier.

What needs improvement?

One very important feature is the analysis of the logs which should be there in the system. Other than that, I'm pretty satisfied with all the features in the system.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This product has been on the market for the last fifteen years. It's a wonderful product and the new releases from IBM are just great. New functionality is being added and it's a wonderful product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is immensely scalable. It allows me to start small. It can start at a very small footprint and then it can scale up.

How is customer service and technical support?

We have used tech support and it is fine. Although it could have been better

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very straightforward. It was a wizard driven, intuitive setup.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

One other vendor we considered was EMC, but this particular product really has some cool features as compared to the competitor's products.

What other advice do I have?

Close your eyes and go for it.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user674235 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT System Architect at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
It helps us with automation and migration between other vendors for storage.

What is most valuable?

It is very good for compatibility and stability.

How has it helped my organization?

It helps us with the management of automation and migration between other vendors for storage.

What needs improvement?

I had some ideas for improvement, but I can't recall them at the moment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

For us, the stability is great. We don't have a problem with this solution. We have our own systems and we integrate with other systems. When we have stability problems because of compatibility between other vendors, the same vendor, and many solutions, we lose money because of longer implementation times.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Regarding scalability, it depends. We had some problems with performance on all-flash storage. We don't use Spectrum Virtualize to offer storage, because they are too intensive for this environment.

How is customer service and technical support?

I have used technical support. It was hard work, but we had some colleagues in IBM and they helped us to move forward.

What other advice do I have?

They should test the solution before starting the implementation. Sometimes IBM documents something, but in the real world, it doesn't work. It depends on the brand or the version of the software. So they should test it and then go to the client to make sure that it works there.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Software Defined Storage (SDS) Report and find out what your peers are saying about IBM, DataCore, Dell Technologies, and more!
Updated: April 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Software Defined Storage (SDS) Report and find out what your peers are saying about IBM, DataCore, Dell Technologies, and more!