IBM System Storage DS5000 Series Reviews

My company uses the product for virtualization, SAP, and VDI.

The management features provided by the product are very simple and easy, making them the most valuable feature of the solution.

The price of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required. From an improvement perspective, the price of the product needs to change.

I have experience with IBM System Storage DS5000 Series for fifteen years. My company has a partnership and is a major vendor for companies like IBM and VMware.

It is a very stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

I deal with more than a hundred customers of my company who use IBM System Storage DS5000 Series.

In relation to the technical support of the product, I would say that all the vendors of IBM face challenges because of the issues with the supply chain, because of which, at times, the spare parts take too long time to be delivered.

The product's initial setup phase is very straightforward, considering I am a system integrator by profession.

During the product's installation phase, I try to find the IP addresses, and during the initial configuration for the partition, I create volumes and assign those volumes to servers.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

Two people are required to implement a single product.

The basic functionalities of the product are provided within the normal license, but users can opt for some optional features from IBM's licensing model.

I work as a system integrator in an organization where we use SAP. My company takes care of the implementation part of SAP infrastructure for our customers.

I would recommend to those planning to use IBM System Storage DS5000 Series that they also need to consider the other products in the market before making a decision.

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten.

We use it for block storage.

The stability and performance of the drive are the most valuable.

IBM is not always as agile as other competitors when it is about cloud integration and user interfaces. They're not renewing themselves very often. They have been slow to evolve from the old GUI. The user interface should be improved, especially regarding performance analysis, which has always been a little bit weak as compared to other solutions.

As a global solution, it lacks the feature for containing integration object storage. Even though they have now started to offer this feature, it is quite young and not as developed as some other vendors. There are also no mass possibilities at all. 

They have a lot of competition in the mid-range segment. They need to have a NAS gateway or something like that. It doesn't specifically need to be integrated into the controllers that are keys to the gateway.

We have it in the company for a long time, but I have been working on it for like one year.

It is a very stable solution.

We are using it for our Oracle database as well as for MySQL database, so it is being used for a really high-end environment. We have maybe 2,000 people who are using this system through the database.

I am always happy with their technical support.

We're a team of five, but we're not only handling this product. We are also working on Hitachi, IBM, and NetApp products.

Its price is fair. IBM is quite fair in price when you compare it with others. 

We also use Hitachi internally, and Hitachi is always a little bit more expensive. NetApp is also a bit more expensive. So, IBM has good positioning in terms of price.

It is very strong in block storage for the database environment. It has very good quality because the compression, deduplication, and encryption are directly done by the disks, so there is no penalty on the processes of all controllers.

If you need a platform that is oriented towards block storage and has features like multi-protocol, cloud integration, and so on, I don't think this is the best solution. It doesn't have direct NAS protocols or things like this.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten, specifically for the needs of block storage. Its performance is very good, which is the biggest asset of this solution. However, it doesn't provide enough services, which probably solutions like NetApp or Dell are providing.

Our primary use case for this solution is storage for a virtualized environment, whereby we have storage that acts as a pool of resources whereby you can create a server. The solution is deployed on-premises.

We have found storage virtualization valuable, and its disks can be shared with many host machines. Hence, allowing us to virtualize and share. For example, you may have 30 hosts like VMware, and you can easily virtualize and share the storage.

The amount of storage could be increased.

We have been using the solution for four years.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is scalable and there are currently 50 end users utilizing the solution in our organization.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support. I rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward and it took six hours to deploy.

We implemented via a consultant.

The license is affordable.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. The solution is good but the amount of storage can be improved.

We primarily use this solution for virtual desktop (VDI).

The most valuable feature is compression.

It would be nice if duplication was possible at the hardware level. As it is now, duplication is a software feature, whereas compression is a hardware feature.

We have been using the IBM System Storage DS5000 Series for approximately five years.

This is a stable product and we use it extensively. The is little or no maintenance required.

This solution is scalable and we have at least 1,000 users. In the future, we will likely add another system.

We were only in contact with technical support once. We thought that we had a problem but they solved our issue very quickly.

Last year, we purchased the newer 8000 series model from IBM.

We are also using the Dell 4000 series. It was the Dell 4020 that we initially started with.

In total, we are using one system from Dell and three systems from IBM. All of them are operational.

We prefer IBM to Dell because of the ratio of price to performance. Essentially, IBM has more aggressive pricing. 

The initial setup is easy.

The last deployment we did was by our in-house team.

This product is priced well. The ratio between cost and productivity is very high and we're happy with it.

In summary, this is a good product. They have also added some extra security features, and we like them very much. As an example, we didn't ask for it, but they implemented a helpful feature to fight against ransomware. This adding of features is quite nice.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Regarding the use cases, we have a database with not more than sixty servers on it.

Our current system is outdated, almost full, and has limitations with storage. Therefore, replacing the current system with a new one is the only solution. The solution's scalability can also be improved.

I didn't make the comparison between the solution and other brands because I'm just preparing the document considering our requirements.

I have been using the IBM PowerStorage DS5000 Series for a month.

The solution is stable. I rate its stability a nine out of ten.

The solution is not flexible enough. I cannot move the machine as I want. So that is not scalable. Also, there is a limitation of the storage on the device. So I cannot upgrade it.

Approximately 200 users within our organization are using this solution on a daily basis.

I have used Dell SAN storage.

The initial setup is straightforward. The solution was deployed on the cloud.

It's an expensive solution.

I suggest looking for the latest version of this solution.

The solution is reliable. It only has a limitation with the storage. When we reach the maximum storage, we need to replace the system. We cannot take a standard one.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

The solution is quite robust and complex. You can do a lot of things with it.

The stability is excellent.

I find the solution isn't so easy to understand. A user must be quite knowledgeable in the product. It isn't like HPE 3PAR, which you can use quite easily without too much storage experience. In that solution, you can just simply follow instructions. 

They need to add instructions inside the storage the way 3PAR has them. If they can add this usability on the storage web console, it will be very easy to follow.

While I've worked with IBM quite a bit, I'm not really using it so much now. I am helping a client with it. I'm much more comfortable with HPE products.

We've never had stability issues with the solution. There aren't bugs or glitches. It's stable and reliable. It doesn't crash.

On the customer's side, as far as I remember, there were about three disk shells and one controller shelf. I didn't experience any kind of add-on for their storage in that case. As far as I know, however, If he or she would want to go and add some disk shelf on the storage, it's not easy.

I have some experience with HPE 3PAR and Storwize 7000. Both have similar usability and nearly the same storage capacity. They are really easy if you just follow the instructions. This is not the case with the DS 5000 series from IBM.

I've also worked with the SC series of Dell Compellent. It's also really good for any kind of usage. It's so easy to add anything on the shelf due to the fact that you have many of the instructions on the screen to follow. When you follow these instructions, you can easily add or remove a disk shelf.

With the Turkish currency, it's hard to nail down the exact pricing. It fluctuates and the costs are based on the US dollar. Right now, it's fluctuating so much, you can't really do a comparison using the Turkish lira. That said, I would estimate that the cost is a bit lower compared to other models. 

Currently, we don't sell IBM products, although I've worked with IBM via clients.

The customer is still working with the storage. I have experienced full replacements with it. The customer had a problem with it and they had to replace the controller.

I prefer HPE 3PAR for managing. 3PAR has many specifications on the storage web console. You can do anything and analyze everything from there. With IBM you must know the system quite well. You must have some experience in order to use it effectively.

On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate this solution at a seven. If they improved the usability by adding instructions into the console, I'd probably rate them a nine.