The solution could have a better built-in performance monitor. I use a different product for performance monitoring.

I would like to see three-side support. When we do the replication, there is currently two-side support. That is okay. But the three-side version is very new. I would improve the configuration and interface. Enhance baseline replication and add more integration with the operating system between Vmware and IBMI.

It is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups. However, this is still 32 petabytes worth of capacity, so it is substantial. In theory, you could have tens of thousands of volumes, so it can be considered a limitation.

We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us. Also, anything which improves performance and the ability of our systems would be a nice.

For improvement considerations, I would probably say multiple sites. Right now, I'm doing two, and I believe we can go to a larger scale than that. But I think that having to go into three or four sites, where I would have more of a grid-type of technology with them, would probably be a bigger benefit for me.

NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap.

When comparing this solution to others it is running 1.5 but should be on a 2.0 and the difficulty is a little higher to operate at first which could be improved.

The only errors I find sometimes is the solution tells me I cannot operate it because a service has turned off, you can just go back to the VM, go to services, and turn back the services. However, this should improve.

I hate I/O groups. If you start swapping I/O groups, they can be potentially risky. If they could get rid of the whole I/O group principle, the risk is not there anymore. I understand the fundamental thing about I/O groups, but they are risky.

I think they are doing a good job with the features that are there. I don't really have that much to add for the next release. I like what we see.

Tighter integration with cloud storage might be useful as a target for a variety of use cases. 

I already discussed possible improvements with some of the guys from Hearnsley. One of our frustrations is when you go to expand volumes in a global mirror environment, you have to stop everything in order to expand. So that's one of the things.

It's on their roadmap to do, but as I understand, it's very complex. So that's one of the big features that we would like to see. And I'm sure other customers have been asking for it for years and years. That's probably the biggest thing that we can see.

The IBM Easy Tier works on different pools of disks and flash. Going forward when everything is Flash storage and no more spinning disks, the Easy Tier is not required. After attending the IBM Tech U, IBM is focusing on all flash storage devices. This is good and hopefully IBM pricing will have an edge over the competition.

We found a gap for smaller clients. Right now, the only offering is a huge, rack-sized storage device, and no more. There was nothing that came after the DS-1600. I'd like to see a smaller form factor for smaller clients.

There are things that occur when you get to this size and capacity. We're very large, i.e., petabytes. When you get to that sheer volume of the numbers of things, it is too big for people to keep track of. So, it's okay if you have 50 volumes, and I can watch them. I can assign people to watch them. But when you have 5,000, it's not possible anymore. So you need capabilities within the products that would do what that person would've done watching the 50. So, they have this “cognitive IT” sort of thing going for them.

I don't think they've realized they can apply that cognitive concept to that. It is like, "Okay, I'm going to use software to watch all that." Now, they have some of that already with Easy Tier that automatically moves data around. It is perfect. Now I need that same concept extended into other areas.

I would like to see data obligation and some features like cluster grouping. I have seen that on the roadmap for the last two years, but it hasn't come out yet. They are still showing it on the roadmap, so I think that it's going to come out soon.

The ability to migrate between clusters, like between Spectrum Virtualize clusters, seamlessly.

I would like to see some features from the Spectrum Control, such as long term reporting. Right now, the reporting on the Storwize and Spectrum Virtualize is only for a few days. You really need another plug-in, like in Control, to get the historical performance data.

The only thing I really don't like about Spectrum Virtualize is the application area. But it has nothing to do with the product. Most application issues come from the link provided by the telecoms.

If they could make the application much easier, that would be great. But it's okay.

There is third site replication. Right now, we're limited in our ability to migrate data between clusters. Like I said, we had to scale wide rather than tall and continue to protect our data while we migrate. Additionally, if we wanted to set up a third site for additional DR, we don't really have a good option for that.

I’d like to see deduplication. IBM announced during Tech U that Storwize is adding it in the upcoming Q3 2017 code update-- same as what exists on the A9000. Duplicate blocks of data write references to pre-existing block of data, instead of re-writing the same data multiple times, thereby saving storage capacity.

They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments. Supposedly, it was going to be corrected in 8.1, restoring it back to the original UID, but it wasn't done.

Currently, the newer features exceed our needs. What we really need is resiliency and stability in the features that are out there and do run.

A feature that is already there, if I remember correctly, is encryption. I think it is coming out, or it is already there.

That is a key management piece. Right now, we're doing an encryption on the back-end flash systems on the V7000s. It's simple, with just a USB key into the controllers.

The integration would be an option that we would like, but I understand that's not how it's going to be implemented.

NPIV is also coming. I'm not exactly sure what benefit it will bring. Initially, that sounded like that was going to be kind of cool. Even though we can migrate data without our end users really knowing it, they do see a path failure, and NPIV would take care of that for us.

The feature that's kind of missing is getting us up to the point where we can help the application owners see where their data is at, understand it, and potentially help us breakout.

We've used easy tiered functions in the pools, so we're trying to help step that storage down. If they can get visibility somehow into that data, help us further break that down, or better tier and separate out their data, that would be helpful.

I know that VMWare has that function, where they are taking multiple tiers themselves and placing subsets of data, as opposed to whole blocks.

We would like the right support and the ability to add disks concurrently to arrays. There are big arrays now, and if a customer wants add more disks to it, you have to have another array. Adding disks to existing arrays is one of the most demanded things from our customers.

Adding features for data deduplication is one area of improvement.

I would like to see data obligation which I think is already on the road map.

I would like to see more information about the heat map. That would give us an easier view from an architect's standpoint in terms of:

• A better idea of where we have to put data
• What we have to build-in with virtualization
• The ability to grow it
• The ability to make it more scalable.

There's always room for improvement. A little lower price would always be nice. Otherwise, nothing major.

Cheaper pricing and GUI should be developed in HTML5 as opposed to Java.

We are pretty happy with the roadmap that we've seen with the stuff that is coming.

I have nothing to suggest regarding improvements. It's fine.

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.

The product should have better management capabilities.

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.

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