Software Defined Storage (SDS)
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
IBM Spectrum Virtualize Reviews
3 reviews12 discussions
IBM Spectrum Virtualize OverviewUNIXBusinessApplication
IBM Spectrum Virtualize is #9 ranked solution in top Software Defined Storage (SDS) tools. PeerSpot users give IBM Spectrum Virtualize an average rating of 8 out of 10. IBM Spectrum Virtualize is most commonly compared to Dell EMC VPLEX: IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs Dell EMC VPLEX. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 29% of all views.
What is IBM Spectrum Virtualize?
IBM Spectrum Virtualize is a dependable solution that improves data value, security, and simplicity for new and existing storage infrastructure. Proven over 12 years in thousands of deployments, its innovative virtualization capabilities help organizations achieve better data economics by supporting new workloads that are critical to their success. IBM Spectrum Virtualize software helps make new and existing storage more effective and standardizes functions traditionally deployed separately in disk systems for greater flexibility and potentially lower costs.
Download the Software Defined Storage (SDS) Buyer's Guide including reviews and more. Updated: January 2022
IBM Spectrum Virtualize Customers
Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services
IBM Spectrum Virtualize Video
Archived IBM Spectrum Virtualize Reviews (more than two years old)
EMC ViPR [EOL]
Veritas Access
HPE StoreVirtual
Hedvig
it_user12768
Sr. Technical Specialist at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Seamlessly moves hardware in and out as we refresh technology
"It has the ability to seamlessly move hardware in and out as we refresh technology."
"It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features."
"The SVC gives excellent performance with tiered storage behind it."
I manage the storage environment. In most of the storage environment, we use IBM products: Spectrum Virtualize, Spectrum Control, Spectrum Scale, and StorWize and SVC products with FlashSystem behind it.
It has the ability to seamlessly move hardware in and out as we refresh technology. It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features.
Our disaster recovery has also improved drastically because I am able to use a lot of the Spectrum Virtualize features to create multiple copies that we use to test and do development. Our disaster recovery plan tests are always successful, which is good. I have had zero downtime in the last three years.
The SVC gives excellent performance with tiered storage behind it, and the Spectrum Control suite. The newest versions that I have now are very useful in terms of managing, monitoring, and alerting. The full suite handles everything I need. We have had a lot of success through the years with Virtualize, which was originally just SVC, and we use it heavily. My environments are extremely large and busy, and it does the job without any problems. So, we are very happy with it.
More than five years.
It has been very stable. I am pushing a very heavy workload, a couple million I/Os at peak times. I have very heavy throughput with a lot databases: a lot Oracle, a lot of VMware and virtualization, and a lot of midrange virtualization. So, it is handling every platform.
I could scale out really easy with the virtualized product in terms of how I do the tiering behind it.
We will never probably have everything in the cloud at this point, not until technology can catch up on the from a telecommunications perspective. We have a hybrid type of environment. Right now, we have an on-prem cloud that manages our VMware environment, so the orchestration is centered around that. It's a VMware product, but we anticipate seeing cloud handle a lot of our needs from a file share perspective and collaboration. There are some Microsoft initiatives going on at the moment, and we use cloud for that.
We are waiting to see where we might be able to fit in with some cloud alternatives, e.g., backup archiving. We are looking at a IBM's cloud products which handle the archiving side of things.
We are not looking at platform as a service and infrastructure right now. We just have too much load and heavy workload that we just could not get the performance that we would want there yet.
How is customer service and technical support?
Technical support has been excellent for all products: SVC, Storwize, DS8000, and FlashSystem. Every one of the different hardware products that I have, I have always had good support. They are very reliable. Therefore, I have been happy with the support.
I set up, bought, designed, purchased, and implemented all of the storage myself.
There were some complex technologies. I learned to go take classes and educate myself, as it is always straightforward when you read the red books. If you follow the best practices and do all the things IBM told you to do, it is always easy. If you do not, you can get in trouble. So, I found it to be very straightforward.
EMC originally was on my list when we were refreshing again six years ago. I decided to introduce EMC back into the fold to create competition. The reason IBM Storage won out over EMC and Hitachi was just performance. It scaled and performed better in our tests and PoCs. There was not enough of a business reason for me to completely change vendors.
We use Commvault and also have some NetBackup in our environment for our backup software. We are moving primarily to Commvault right now from NetBackup.
Michael Drapkin
Enterprise Architect at QCM Technologies
It simplifies access and lowers cost
"It lowers cost. It does so by getting more efficient use out of the technology behind it."
"The scalability is very good. It can handle anywhere from very small to large enterprise class."
"Tighter integration with cloud storage might be useful as a target for a variety of use cases."
It provides a control plane for the data plane. With Spectrum Virtualize, you can extract the physical storage, then hide it and give it flexibility.
Most of my implementations have been on-premise. We could stand up a software instance someplace else and connect to it. However, most people that I work with get it in an appliance format. They use it to migrate off of existing storage. When lease expiration of something is occurring, they will use it to save value and migrate everything. Then, I will see them in a traditional Fibre Channel, a SAN connected to server architecture, or both in virtualized servers as well as standalone.
I do not personally manage any instances, but I have several dozen customers that I have deployed this solution for, so it is up and running in their production.
It lowers cost. It does so by getting more efficient use out of the technology behind it.
It also simplifies access. You set it and forget it for a lot of things.
The product comes in hardware, software, and appliance models, so I have a lot of choice on how we deploy it and its interoperability.
Tighter integration with cloud storage might be useful as a target for a variety of use cases.
Stability is very good. I have been working with the product for probably 15 years. I have put it in production during critical workloads without a problem.
The scalability is very good. It can handle anywhere from very small to large enterprise class.
It can handle our customers' future growth. The hardware behind it may get more commoditized, but the capabilities of Spectrum Virtualize remains the same. It still provides value.
Technical support is very good. Most of the support personnel that I have talked to were very knowledgeable, which has always been good.
Originally, it was probably complex. Now, it is straightforward. It is pretty easy to deploy, and with a basic understanding, it comes together easily.
Our customers usually evaluate Dell EMC and Hitachi, but also some of the other newer flash environments, like Compellent.
I would recommend Spectrum Virtualize. Across the industry, nobody matches it.
Do your homework and architect the solution upfront. The technology will stand by itself if you have done it right.
Customers' main criteria when selecting a solution: Most of my customers buy it in the appliance format, whether it is a Storwize product or something else. They are competitively shopping products, so cost is important along with scalability and usability. They typically start to believe once they see the interfaces, and they like the usability side of it. A lot of my customers have been dissatisfied with other vendors, so this is a rallying point for them. I do not have anybody who has been sorry.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Business partner.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Dell EMC, DataCore and others in Software Defined Storage (SDS). Updated: January 2022.
it_user868257
IT Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price
"When we add storage behind it, the product is good for the customers because their customers do not notice that anything is happening due to the virtualization."
"The Storwize port is not so stable."
"The disk reliability is not that good."
"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."
We have a lot of different customers, such as banks and retail customers. In banks, it is mainly used for open environment testing. We have some retail customers, and they use it mostly for their test environments. Retail customers also use the DS8000 for production, because it is a more robust platform.
It is performing well in most cases. The disk reliability is not that good, not as good as with some of these products.
Most of our customers run their solutions via on-premise instances.
The versatility is the main benefit. Since it virtualizes everything, they use it for so many different things.
It is also good for them when we do upgrades, etc. When we add storage behind it, the product is also good for the customers because their customers do not notice that anything is happening due to the virtualization.
Its versatility, as it has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price.
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.
The SVC port (virtualized port) is very stable, but the Storwize port is not so stable.
It is very scalable.
In the past, the technical support has been very good. However, lately, it has not been so good as they are moving the support to Bulgaria. We are really unhappy about this.
The initial setup is straightforward.
I would recommend IBM Spectrum Virtualize.
Mainly, our customers are IBM friendly and have mostly IBM equipment.
Customers' most important criteria when selecting a vendor: cost.
Senior Storage Engineer at ADT Corporation
Provides a single view that all hosts see simultaneously
"The abstraction flair and the abstraction layer. We had a mixture of different storage arrays, and the wonderful thing about SVC is is that it normalizes all it into a single driver. A single view that all hosts see simultaneously."
"We acquire companies (and things), so we end up with odd hardware. We bring it behind the SVC and it allows us to migrate stuff off of it seamlessly. SVC can also cover up a host of defects of the underlying storage."
"NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap."
The main reason for our utilizing the product:
The abstraction flair and the abstraction layer. We had a mixture of different storage arrays, and the wonderful thing about SVC is is that it normalizes all it into a single driver. A single view that all hosts see simultaneously.
The mobility that it gives us to move around to different performing storage arrays, depending on their load.
The ease of the mobility, the flash copy product, and the copy services.
ADT acquires companies (and things), so we end up with odd hardware. We bring it behind the SVC and it allows us to migrate stuff off of it seamlessly. SVC can also cover up a host of defects of the underlying storage.
Dell Compellent, which maybe was good at one time, but is no longer ready for prime time, SVC made the Compellent look good. The other thing, because services are licensed at the SVC level, it does not matter what the underlying capabilities of the other storage is.
The abstraction. Hands down, it is the top reason for having it.
NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap.
Stability is rock solid. We have never had an outage.
We have gone through code updates, UPS battery replacements, and node failures. Nobody ever notices anything.
We have not hit any limits. At one time, we had 8 POWER Frames, almost 400 alt parls, LTO tape in zones, a bunch of Windows, and ESX host servers. So, it is more than adequate for our purposes.
Technical support is effective and helpful.
We were having some bottleneck issues with our DS8800, and it turned out that they had changed best practices on us. So, we involved technical support on the best way to migrate from intermingling hosts and storage to display them out into two separate aisle port groups.
We will do the initial setup on any storage array, but all the management is on the SVC. Therefore we get by with a much smaller staff, but not by design. It allows us to continue to do our jobs effectively.
I personally am a scripter, I build my own tools. So, I have automated huge amounts of my job, which allows me to leverage the SVC and do the job of three people.
When we brought SVC into the environment, I could see what would be daunting for some people. However, it was not for me. I can script, so I was able to automate much of the process and copying everything back over.
Anyone who is not very comfortable with command line and the ability to automate their own stuff should probably engage professional services to help them do the transition, at least the initial transition.
Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it. Look at it.
I love the SVC. I would recommend it.
Main criteria when selecting a vendor: extraction. It was to reduce the complexity of the drivers that we had to deal with. Because at the time we brought it in, we had SSA, DS8100s, Compellent, and a couple of weird little EMC boxes that someone had brought in on us. Therefore, they wanted the ability to move stuff around at will, and SVC was the perfect solution for this.
SysEng551561
Systems Engineer at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We are happy with the support that IBM provides us
"We can failover easily, because a lot of our data is replicated from family to the second replication."
"We are happy with the support that IBM provides us."
"Anything which improves performance and the ability of our systems would be a nice."
"In general, the migration is complicated. Though, it is case-by-case."
We use it to virtualize some different storage units. It can virtualize and provide some good migration and disaster recovery options.
Our infrastructure is on-premise. We have two POWER8 systems. For the storage, we have FlashSystem 900s, FlashSystem 820s, and Flash V7000s behind the SVCs.
We can failover easily, because a lot of our data is replicated from family to the second replication.
The replication
The flash copies
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.
It is pretty stable. We have not had that much downtime.
It is pretty scalable, as far as the storage which can be added using any additional storage units. We can get two individual storage units or we can add trays to the V7000s, since migrating from one storage unit to another is pretty easy.
We do use them when there are issues, when we do upgrade, migrate, and work with business partners. We are happy with the support that IBM provides us.
On some of the POWER8 systems, I was involved with the migration.
We worked with business partners, and more recently, with IBM Labs for migration. We have been happy with them.
In general, the migration is complicated. Though, it is case-by-case.
We did not evaluate any other competitors.
I would recommend this solution.
Main criteria when selecting a vendor: Upgrading our systems and migrating to newer storage products, as we are always on a time crunch.
Lance Hawkes
Solutions Architect at Direct Systems Support
A single pane of glass management interface; one place to go to manage everything
"The ability to have a feature-rich software set which extends the capabilities of the back-end storage arrays."
"It is a single pane of glass management interface, so once the storage is allocated to SVC, they only have one place to go to manage it for everything."
"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."
Primarily, our customers use it to manage a bunch of different storage devices. It works really well, and it is a great platform to migrate data. I am currently helping a customer to migrate off of an HPE storage array to Pure Storage, and we are using SVC as the platform to move that data.
Our customers are mostly enterprise in size.
It is a single pane of glass management interface, so once the storage is allocated to SVC, they only have one place to go to manage it for everything. Then, my Power customers using Power VC can allocate storage themselves from Power VC, because it has integrated with SVC, so AIX admins do not have to know anything about storage. It is very powerful.
The virtualization layer
Easy tier
The ability to have a feature-rich software set which extends the capabilities of the back-end storage arrays.
Occasionally, there are issues with a node or something, but because it is a clustered system, it is stable. Overall, it does not go down. I do not know if IBM has ever had a system which has ever caused any loss of data. Therefore, I am very confident in recommending it to my customers.
It is fantastic. It scales great.
Technical support is mostly good. Most of the time, especially at the Level 2 support and above, it is really good. The guys in Austin are fantastic, plus ATS, Lab Services, and the people from Hursley put out stuff which allows us to better understand the product and support it. That has been great.
For Level 1 support, I have been trying to decide if it is AIX Level 1 support that I have the problem with or SVC. I probably deal more with Level 1 support for AIX than I do with SVC. Though, nothing really stands out for the support problems from SVC.
Nine times out of 10, customers are looking to invest in a new solution because their previous/existing solution is at the end of life of its existing storage.
The initial setup is totally straightforward. With Storwize products and SVC, it is super simple.
We have struggled with Pure Storage, but people are understanding that much of Pure has been consumer grade SSDs. Therefore, when the customer is really understands what they are getting, they realize that IBM presents the same sort of value as existing vendors.
The typical three competitors that I hear about nowadays:
EMC has always been a strong one, but they have faded a little bit.
Pure has come on strong.
Hitachi seems to have gained some traction recently.
Customers chose Spectrum Virtualize because of the features that SVC has and its maturity. The product has been around for so long, plus I get involved with customers that select SVC. They can buy a cheap storage system and not invest as heavily in the software layer. However, from the SVC level, they get the whole storage virtualization and whatever they feel is the top tier storage behind the SVC realizing the best of both worlds.
I love Spectrum Virtualize. It is my favorite. I would rate it a 10 out of 10.
Customers' most important criteria when selecting a vendor:
Supportability.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
Manager of Infrastructure at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The simplicity of the product makes IBM Spectrum Visualize a pleasure to use
"Although the GUI from the XIV was used (in my view), IBM has polished and refined the GUI providing a pleasant and easy to navigate GUI experience."
"GUI should be developed in HTML5 as opposed to Java."
The simplicity of the product makes IBM Spectrum Virtualize a pleasure to use. With numerous islands of storage arrays, this allowed the company to effectively "pool" all the numerous storage arrays and encouraged a tiered storage approach. The speed at which snapshots can be created are impressive with clones copies taking longer due to the nature of a clone (VM) vs snapshot (copy of VM disk file). Google it. With all flash becoming the new standard, the IBM Spectrum Virtualize nodes boast an array (pardon the pun) of flash technology providing the performance where and when it is needed.
Where does one begin? Although the GUI from the XIV was used (in my view), IBM has polished and refined the GUI providing a pleasant and easy to navigate GUI experience. The IBM Spectrum Virtualize has gone from strength to strength but at the same time setting the bar for what's possible in the storage virtualization market. IBM have just recently released the new SV1 nodes which boasts integrated flash and processor power, thus providing far better response times overall.
Cheaper pricing and GUI should be developed in HTML5 as opposed to Java.
No issues at all.
IBM Spectrum Virtualize loves scalability.
IBM service is good with no language challenges when speaking to call center agents from different countries and cultures.
On a scale of one to five (one: terrible to five: excellent): four.
No previous competing products. The challenge was to consolidate islands of storage arrays.
The most challenging parts of the implementation were the initial cabling configuration. With many storage arrays needing cabling and multiple paths needing to be cabled using fibre optic LC cables, zoning also proved to add significant effort but this is to be expected and is a once-off exercise. Although regular commissioning/decommissioning of server/backup infrastructure is part of storage administration duties, the initial setup was far more intensive as an entire storage infrastructure needed to be redesigned. Once the hardware infrastructure was in place and the software configured to best practice (IBM implemented in order to ensure best practice was adhered to).
Combination of onsite and vendor team.
Vendor team was professional and well-skilled.
Liaise with both the vendor and their partners. You'd be amazed at how much you can score.
No. Competitor products just did not offer the features we required.
HTML5, please.
Principal Specialist and Solution Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
For me the most useful has been the virtualisation of back-end SAN disk systems
"Migration from configurations where servers have storage provisioned from older SAN disk systems to newer storage systems is almost seamless using image mode migration techniques, with only a short outage of the servers."
"Adding features for data deduplication is one area of improvement."
My view of how the product has aided my customers varies. The replication functions have assisted in the relocation of whole data centres from one site to another, the snapshotting is of value in providing several versioned recovery points for some other customers. The virtualisation of the back end storage gives performance improvements over the direct attachment of the back end storage, as storage pools spanning a large number of drives can be configured, along with the caching algorithms. The migration capability across back end storage appliances has been of particular importance to some of my customers.
There are several good features, many of which have similarities to that of competitive offerings from other vendors (replication, snapshot). Compression is quite useful, but for me the most useful has been the virtualisation of back-end SAN disk systems, from almost any vendor. This enables easy upgrading and updating of storage, across vendors, by moving the storage pools between the back end disk systems. Migration from configurations where servers have storage provisioned from older SAN disk systems to newer storage systems is almost seamless using image mode migration techniques, with only a short outage of the servers. The hybrid storage pools, with SSD and the hard-disk drives, together with the Easy Tier feature, give high IOPs performance for most loads, without the customer needing to purchase all flash storage solutions.
Adding features for data deduplication is one area of improvement.
I have encountered stability issues in situations when the customer-provided AC power has defects. A newer version of the firmware resulted in storage nodes not updating or starting.
No issues with scalability encountered.
Currently, support is generally good, as there is an IBM support web interface to lodge calls. Once the call has been initiated, responsiveness depends on the support contract conditions. The technical expertise, once reaching level 2 or higher, is good.
Going back to the SVC edition of Spectrum Virtualize, I do not recall any comparable alternative storage virtualisation solution.
Like any storage implementation, the details of the complete setup of this solution requires a good understanding of the customer requirements. The base setup of the product itself has varied over time, but has always been fairly straightforward.
Generally the bundled licensing is more cost effective and gives flexibility to the solution. Linking into the Spectrum Suite can also be advantageous, but depends on the scale of the enterprise.
Recently with the many storage virtualisation solutions now available, consideration of other products depends on the size of the customer and their requirements, and what vendor/technology provider may already exist in their organisation.
Spectrum Virtualize has a long history, with the original SAN Volume Controllers (SVC) using early versions of the software. The software on these appliances has had several name changes over the years. I have worked on and been involved with pre-sales, design and implementation on the early SVCs from 2005, and more recently the Storwize implementation, V7000s, 5000s and 3700s. So, product 2145-xxx, 2076, 2077, 2072 and so on. These are all IBM appliances, with their Spectrum Virtualize software running on them.
Obtain a well-qualified technical specialist/architect to review the design and setup if many features such as replication, snapshotting and compression are part of the solution.
Storage Chief Architect at Unisys
It virtualizes the servers from the storage.
"One of the main features of Spectrum Virtualize is it virtualizes the servers from the storage. We have a very large infrastructure. A major advantage is when you get the aged storage arrays and you have to replace all of those."
"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."
One of the main features of Spectrum Virtualize is it virtualizes the servers from the storage. We have a very large infrastructure. A major advantage is when you get the aged storage arrays and you have to replace all of those. Last summer, we replaced four petabytes of aged storage arrays. They were old and past end-of-life. But we did that seamlessly, without affecting any of the server applications. There were no system admin times; nothing required at all. It was really quite good for our client. That was perfect for them.
Our team operates four 8-Node IBM Spectrum Virtualize (SVC) clusters (32nodes total), two clusters at one site and two at a sister site with replication between the two sites.
These four clusters have a number of storage arrays behind them to yield a total storage capacity across the four cluster of approximately ~6 petabytes of Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze Data Classes. The Storage Cloud uses IBM's EasyTier feature to create different performing storage classes and uses Thin Provisioning to lower our clients requested 8 petabytes of capacity to a much less costly 5 petabytes of consumed capacity. The remaining ~1 petabyte is elasticity which is built into the Cloud.
Our client does not have any classical maintenance windows where systems or storage can be taken down for upgrades, repairs, expansion, or replacement. Servers require 24x7x365 data access (actually 4 days are planned power outages for power testing - but no IT changes are permitted).
So when I say our storage services to our client were provided continuously - non-stop - for 12 months, it means that all customer servers had 100% uninterrupted, online SAN access to their data 24x7x365 (minus the power down). During that time, our team provided on-demand capacity provisioning of about 700TB of new client growth and expansion, updated all cluster softwares, decommissioned ~4 petabytes of aging storage arrays, installed ~5 petabytes of new replacement / expansion arrays, and repaired a couple failed components. It really shows the power, utility, versatility and availability of our Cloud Storage design.
The second feature that it is software-defined. Every year, we select a new release and we get new features. This gives us time to test them out. It's just very amenable to our type of delivery of services to the clients that use storage.
In addition to that, they've been able to add some really cool functions. It started out with the usual stuff, such as thin provisioning. Then they added features like compression. Now they're actually adding transparent cloud tiering, so they can put data up in the cloud, just by taking it off of the SVC and sending to the cloud. This is very, very good for us in being able to put together a roadmap for functions for our clients of what they can do with their data.
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.
The stability is very good. We just finished running non-stop for one year. It was perfect, with no down-time at all. Zero. 100% availability.
Scalability is perfect. We're at the top of their scale though. Right now, the largest cluster they use is eight. We have eight very high performance servers running the software. That is good, but we added a second cluster to do more, which has worked quite well. You sort of wonder, "Would it be better to have a 10 node, a 12 node, or a 16 node?"
We do use technical support. They do very good work. Because we're so big, they have a little bit of trouble tracking all the products and making sure we get connected with the reports, but, in general, they are very good.
We did a fairly extensive industry search about five years ago, when we were deploying this call initially. We were not using a different product. It was a new offering; Greenfield. We looked at all the major players in the industry and selected IBM.
When selecting a vendor, first the product has to meet future functionality. It needs to have some stability in the industry. It needs to have some past performance proof-points. Our client is somewhat risk averse, so they don't want to be first. That's very important.
I was involved with the initial setup. It was very straightforward. Delivery of all the services has been very methodical and well defined.
We looked at Hitachi, EMC, and NetApp. The major boys.
If you're going to implement this, we have a highly technically skilled team. We hired them and put them together for this purpose. So, if you're in a traditional environment without this, either hire a service like us to come in and help you get started and get "flying lessons".
Once you're good and once your team is good, once your staff is up to speed, then they can take over if they want. This usually takes about a year. We offer a one year set of services. Afterwards, they can take over if they want to, or they can keep the service there. Once they're there, they'll never look back. It's one of those kinds of things and it's very good the way it works.
Technical Specialist at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It gives us the ability to move the data across multiple storage devices.
It's flexibility. It gives us the ability to move the data across multiple storage devices. That makes our lives as the implementers easy during data migration.
It makes data migration straightforward. And on the customer side, there is downtime, but it is very minimal.
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.
The stability is fine. I've been working with Spectrum Virtualize for two years. I saw them encounter problems and those problems are minimal. It's pretty much stable.
It is scalable, especially the VH8 and the SV1. You can locally attach storage to the SVC nodes. It's now more like Storwize. The scalability is head-on.
I have been working with technical support. Before moving to a business partner, I worked with IBM. There were good times and there were bad times. But pretty much, they delivered.
I have had this storage platform for 10 years. I saw the progress of IBM stepping away from conventional hardware storage and going to software. IBM did pretty good research and development on it.
When selecting hardware, I look for technical experience.
I was involved in the initial setup. Most of the time, I dealt with the planning. I start with the planning rack and stack configuration, teaching the customers and then do documentation. The implementation was easy.
I did not look at any alternatives.
I would recommend it. IBM is not the best in the disk storage industry, but they pull out some good tricks.
Storage Administrator at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
It is flexible. We can easily add any additional product from the background.
The product is very flexible, and it is very easy to add any additional product from the background; so we can use any multi-vendor backend storages and virtualize the product. It becomes a powerful virtualization engine for migrating data, for provisioning data and any type of data migration is easy.
As I have mentioned, the benefits of this solution are that it reduces time.
Basically, we can clear the storage for faster/medium/slower access. We can make three-tiers and migrate the data easily.
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.
Stability is awesome; it's very stable.
The scalability is absolutely outstanding and we can scale as much as we want.
IBM technical support is awesome.
Basically, we had different islands of storage from different vendors. We wanted a product to integrate all of them together. So that is why we found, IBM Spectrum Virtualize, as the product.
They come to us every time when there is an initial setup, they help us with the process. The setup is very straightforward.
We have another EMC brand storage product also, but we are using both of them.
Of course, the product is the most important criteria for vendor selection.
This is an absolutely outstanding product and anyone can use it with ease. It can do everything.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
Storage administrator at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
It helps us to manage our storage in a way that allows us to put different frames inside or out of our storage infrastructure.
The product helps us to manage our storage in a way that allows us to put different frames inside or out of our storage infrastructure and migrate.
The benefits are that it speeds up provisioning of the storage across different tiers and allows a small team to manage that function, for many petabytes of data.
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.
Stability has been outstanding. There are failures, but they are designed to have failures, and we have not had a single data loss incident, even throughout some pretty funky upgrades.
We are SVC customers and we would like to see the ability to add more nodes. After some sessions that we've had this morning, now we're understanding why this hasn't happened, but we still have hope that it will happen. We will be able to go from an 8-node cluster up to maybe a twelve or fourteen. It would make us really happy.
For this platform, the technical support has been great. We have had very few issues that haven't been resolved, in a timely fashion.
The expense for support and maintenance is a little bit on the heavy side.
I have been involved in the initial setup process. We have production in the DR clusters, some of the production clusters have been in place prior to my arrival, but we have done the same thing in DRs.
The setup was very straightforward. We also have a guy who we call as "our good luck charm". He is our reseller who comes to help us out; when he is not there things don't go as good, but when he is there he doesn't do much besides bring us the food and gives us great advice. They provide good, reliable support and he is a great guy.
In regards to the vendor selection, it's a price versus reward scenario. We have to be very conscious of what we spend and we have to make sure that the company is spending their money well. So, we're able to buy the products that allow us to have uptime.
If you can afford it, get it. It's great.
Archiect at Gulf Business Machines
It gives flexibility to the customers to view the entire storage infrastructure as a single entity.
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.
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.
The product should have better management capabilities.
This product is very good in terms of the stability and scalability. The security features are also very good.
Basically, we evaluate the support looking into the performance. Technical support is good.
The setup was straightforward, not complex.
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.
I shall definitely recommend it.
Client technical architect at Gbm
It can virtualize your data center. You can move one storage tier to another storage tier.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is immensely scalable. It allows me to start small. It can start at a very small footprint and then it can scale up.
We have used tech support and it is fine. Although it could have been better
The initial setup was very straightforward. It was a wizard driven, intuitive setup.
One other vendor we considered was EMC, but this particular product really has some cool features as compared to the competitor's products.
Close your eyes and go for it.
Storage Administrator at a university with 10,001+ employees
Being able to move things around from one array to the other is the biggest feature. We need resiliency and stability in the features.
Being able to move things around from one array to the other has been the biggest feature for us.
There's a little bit of performance benefit. The flexibility that we get from being able to have different vendors' storage arrays presented as one homogenous unit to our hosts has been the main benefit.
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.
We have been using the system for twelve years.
It's been pretty stable, but we've had some issues. I wouldn't say it's poor, but the resiliency has been less than what we expect from an enterprise class product.
It appears to us, over several decades, that quality control waxes and wanes. That's scary for us, because as a new system comes out and we install it, we really expect it to be an enterprise class product and not to have problems. We expect it all to be bullet-proof, and it hasn't been in our experience.
Scalability is limited, but it meets our needs.
Generally, technical support is good.
It's been a long time now, about twelve years. I forgot about previous solutions.
The initial setup was straightforward.
I'd tell them that it's a good product and they should implement it. They probably should not run the latest code and they should look very carefully at advanced features.
When selecting a vendor, honesty is one of the first things to consider, and then stability and resiliency of the products. Performance is nice, but the applications that I support need bullet-proof stuff behind it with no down time.
Kannan Chandrasekaran
Storage Architect at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
It enabled us to virtualize the data center for the Internal Revenue Service.
It enables us to virtualize the entire data center for the Internal Revenue Service. We have about seven or eight terabytes of data behind SVC right now. Before we took this over as a managed service, they had about 120 silo storage areas. Right now, everything is virtualized behind SVC.
It is easier for management with end of life erase. It now takes us less than two-three days to decommission the erase. It has given us an increase in the usage rate on the SVC. It has gone up from probably 30-40% on the silo erase to about 85%.
We have reduced a lot of power and cooling requirements in the data center. We have optimized as much as possible. Right now, it's running very smoothly.
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.
We've had some issues with the production rate behind SVC. We had problems with back-end storage areas having double disk failures. It took a while to recognize errors, due to some of the environmental settings within the data center. When the temperature increased, we started seeing more drive failures on the back-end. But over the last 18 months, we've had zero downtime across the board.
Scalability is very good.
Technical support is very good. We touch base with the IBM house development team in the UK once every quarter to review the roadmap. So it's very good.
We evaluated the Hitachi RV series. I think it was Z100 at that time, and IBM SVC. We tested three solutions and chose IBM SVC to virtualize the environment.
We were looking for stability, such as in the features search and the ease of manageability compared to other products. These products included EMC, Hitachi, and Red Hat.
It's easy to implement. Just become a partner with IBM and you will be successful.
Team Lead for Storage and Backup at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
We can use different storage products in the back-end and one code base for mirroring.
The ability to use different storage products in the back-end
Having only one code base for mirroring and all other enterprise features
When you use different storage vendors, you may not get what you want. With this solution, you can put these solutions under Spectrum Visualize and use them, because they will look the same in IBM storage.
I would like to see data obligation which I think is already on the road map.
We have been using this product for eight years.
Stability on our side is very good.
Scalability is also good. It could be improved, but we will see if they will improve it.
Technical support is sometimes good and sometimes it is low.
Eight years ago, we had a different product that was not very well designed. It is no longer on the market. It was LSI Storage, but we switched.
We had a business partner doing the setup for us, but it is complex. This is a special product. It's not a standard storage product, so you have to know a lot about your environment.
We evaluated FalconStor and DataCore. This was based on installing software somewhere on the server. This was software for storage from a very early version in 2008/2009. We don't trust them, so that's why we chose an appliance level from IBM.
When looking at vendors, we look at their ability to perform and give good support.
Difficult question. You have to look at your environment and what you need to do there. I think Spectrum Visualize is a very good product to address a lot of problems.
IT Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
It works across different technologies such as flash and regular drives.
It is easy to deploy and use. It's very calm. The GUI goes right across the entire platform.
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.
Stability has been good. Stability has been high, actually. We've had some minor issues, and IBM has been quick to fix those. I don't have any issues with the stability.
Scalability is good. And of course, it works across multiple, different technologies including flash and regular drives. Scalability is definitely good.
Technical support at IBM is actually not as great as it used to be. It seems like IBM has decreased the number of people who can support this environment. We find that locating someone who knows the product line, or more of that product line, is becoming limited.
I'm not the one who invested in this solution, but multiple clients have invested in it. There were business requirements from a technology standpoint, there was performance that they needed, and there were different degrees of availability that they needed.
The initial setup was straightforward. It was easy.
We deal with multiple vendors. We go from Cisco, to IBM, to EMC when we talk about clients. But I don't know how to answer this question from the perspective you are asking about. It is from a different point of view.
I'd recommend it, for sure. It offers supportability, reliability, and some scalability. The vendor is there as a partner.
Storage Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
We use the tool to manage our storage.
It gives us a lot of flexibility and ease of management. We have all the tools in one place. We pretty much do all our storage using the Spectrum Virtualize. It makes it really easy for us to manage all our storage.
We have a lot of different tiers of storage. We have enterprise all the way down to applications that don't need that much performance. It gives us the flexibility to move things in between these. I think a lot of the benefit is just the ease of use of the tool itself.
We are pretty happy with the roadmap that we've seen with the stuff that is coming.
In more recent years, we've been very happy with stability. We went through a lot of bumps with the earlier releases of code.
We've also been very happy with the scalability.
We are not happy with the technical support.
In the last seven or eight years, I honestly think that IBM's technical support has gotten way worse. It's so hard to get hold of someone. There's no more live troubleshooting. In the old days, we used to have live troubleshooting. Now it is a matter of sending them logs and "we'll get back to you. Send us logs and we'll get back to you". It gets pretty frustrating, especially when you're supporting applications that are 24/7.
All they can do is say "send us logs and we'll get back to you". So we are not happy with the support at all.
This solution was actually chosen before I got there. I wasn't a part of the decision making. I was a part of the implementation, but not the decision making.
I was involved with the initial setup. It was pretty straightforward.
We've compared it to other platforms like EMC. This product is really intuitive. It is really easy to use. So from that point of view, it's really good.
I would say, definitely give this a look.
In the past, we've also looked at other solutions. So far, especially from the management point of view, being the administrator for the systems, it can't be beat. I think the tool itself is really intuitive. It's really easy and has a lot of features. Ease of management is the biggest thing. We've been pretty happy with the performance.
Probably the biggest hit, though, is the support.
Storage Admin at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
It gives us a single pane of glass between our host and our back-end storage.
The most valuable feature is the abstraction layer. Basically, it gives us a single pane of glass between our host and our back-end storage, regardless of what the back-end storage actually is.
Beyond that, I would also add the flexibility of the management itself.
It has significantly lowered management cost, overhead, and everything else. We now have better performance as well.
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.
Overall, I would say that stability is very good.
There are some caveats with scalability, such as volume count. We are highly limited by volume count at this point in time. We have to grow wide rather than grow tall.
There are some caveats here, too. Sometimes it's been very, very good. Sometimes we have had sessions where we're beating our heads against the wall. It depends on the call. Part of it is has do with us getting better with the technology.
It would be really nice to be able to escalate faster. By the time I'm calling IBM, it's already become such an issue that their Level-1 and usually their Level-2 people can't help me.
We did not use any previous solutions that I am aware of, but this one has been lacking since we first brought it in. It's a wide matrix of considerations. Performance, price, support, availability, and scalability. It's a wide matrix.
The initial setup was a bit of a paradigm shift. Once we got past that, it was very straightforward.
We looked all over the place. But we found what we wanted with this solution.
Absolutely. Period. Do it.
Media Storage Services Manager at a media company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Provides the virtualization of the disk between disparate places.
"Using SBC, a valuable feature is the mirroring, which is the virtualization of the disk between disparate places."
"For improvement considerations, I would probably say multiple sites."
I think probably one of the biggest benefits of this solution is that it is relatively easy to use and easy to understand. It's intuitive. The front interface is very intuitive. I can have any of my administrators know what to do with it with a very small learning curve. I know that it's going to be static across the board, whether I'm using the store wide systems, or if I'm using Spectrum.
Using SBC, a valuable feature is the mirroring, which is the virtualization of the disk between disparate places.
One of the things that we use it for, is that we can bring any storage underneath it. Not only will it recognize it and put it in the pool and add it to the storage, but it also allows me to mirror that storage across the campus, a mile and a half away.
Neither my applications, my servers, nor my hosts even know that the disk is actually split between the two places. It just sees it as the normal disk that it uses. If one side goes away, whether it is disaster recovery or if is normal every day operations, if we're restarting something or there's an issue, we have to do updates, or upgrades, and it doesn't even know it.
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.
It has been very stable. I haven't had any concern as far as stability is concerned.
Regarding scalability, that's a good question. I haven't had to really scale it to any more than what we've done with it currently. Actually, I'm in that process right now and I probably will have that answer in maybe a day or so. I don't think there's really too much of an issue. We add the pools underneath the storage, and it seems to just accept what we give it and we move on.
The technical support has been good. We do use Avar as the value added reseller for the professional services. So if I have to go into that space, it's usually not through IBM. I would give them a rating of 4/5.
We were using something very similar previously. It was competitor unit that was a little bit more complex. It did some of the same things, but it was just a lot more complex in its usability and where we were going with our future storage requirements.
The initial setup was very straightforward.
We evaluated all the big names: Hitachi, EMC, NetApp, and HPE.
I think we were looking at cost. We were also looking at the technical aspects of where we had requirements up front that we were looking for from every one of the vendors. We had a list of requirements. They were listed in their priority from highest priority, even to the very lowest. Some of them maybe weren't even requirements, but we added them in there. They had to meet at least the first top seven or eight. IBM seemed to meet those, and exceed them, so that was one of the reasons why we chose them.
It fills the use case quite well. I would recommend it.
Storage Admin at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The most valuable feature is its ease of use.
The most valuable feature for is its ease of use.
I have nothing to suggest regarding improvements. It's fine.
Stability is pretty good.
Scalability is good.
Technical support is sometimes good and sometimes okay.
Give it a try.
Storage Admin Analyst at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The product enables us to retrieve our client data at any given point in time.
"The most valuable feature is its reliability."
"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments."
It has been integrated into our production systems, thereby not having as much online storage. We're using the archiving functionality. When I say reliability, I mean that we are operating 24/7. The product enables us to retrieve our client data at any given point in time.
The most valuable feature is its reliability.
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.
The stability is excellent.
At this point in time, scalability is excellent. It's very scalable.
I work in Miami, Florida. Our data center is elsewhere. We may have some connectivity issues every now and then, but overall, it's been excellent. I always make certain to have the right phone numbers for support.
I wasn't involved in the initial setup, but I'm involved with the new progression from old TSN to Spectrum 8.1.
We look for reliability of the product itself. It's an excellent product. I would not be penny wise and pound foolish, though.
I would honestly utilize as much IBM as I could. I'm an old system manager in multiple, prior jobs. I would always stick with IBM across the board, especially if you look at the high-end tape units. They will get around to the correct drivers and everything. It's much easier to use all IBM.
If you use someone else's server, whether it is an X86 or whatever, you get finger pointed if something doesn't exactly work right. This is especially the case with tape drives, and especially if you were using Jaguar, which was the old type. They came off mainframe. It was very high end, very costly. I would stick with using IBM servers, even IBM storage like XIV if you want to go with something less costly than a DS88.
Make it correct. Make it easy on yourself. Use HPE storage, disc storage, or Dell storage and you will get finger pointing. It always happens. No one's wrong. Even if you get IBM, sometimes they are also wrong.
We had all IBM and we did have an issue when we upgraded our tape libraries, i.e., we had the wrong firmware. That was with IBM. Imagine if we had someone else. It would be a long, drawn-out process.
You may have one or two issues at the same time, and one can mask another issue. Don't go cheap. Have a test system. Never, ever, put something straight into production. I don't care how many things they swear on, or whatever.
You never know because everyone's environment is different. That's the other thing. I don't care if it was AIX, and it's just moving into Linux, you still need to test it. Put it up for a few weeks, if not for a few months. Don't ever go cheap on a test system. If you can have it separate, have it separate from your other actual production servers. In some places, we actually had it in a different machine.
Have a different machine. Never combine. Keep it simple.
Technical analyst 3 at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Data migration allows us to bring in back-end systems and swap data out.
"It's got full features, so we can compress volumes. We can do thin volumes and we can change them on the fly."
"The integration would be an option that we would like, but I understand that's not how it's going to be implemented."
Reducing our costs: We used to have all tier DS8 storage. Even though we had Spectrum Virtualize in front of almost all of that, we still had almost all DS8.
We've been able to bring in multiple tiers, flash systems, and V7000s
We can migrate that data, watch it with the tool, and know that the data is not on the right tier.
We can migrate that data again, place it in the right tier, and reduce our overall cost.
The most valuable feature is probably data migration so we can bring in back-end systems and swap data out. Our end-users, and even our other system administrators, don't have any idea that we've moved storage around.
It's got full features, so we can compress volumes. We can do thin volumes and we can change them on the fly.
Nobody knows that we've migrated that data around. We can ship it off to our DR site. This is all under the hood of Spectrum Virtualize.
We don't have to worry about what type of block is underneath it at the time. It's all being done at that layer.
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.
For the most part, stability has been really good. Like anything else, the more you use it, the more times you're going to run into a bug. We've certainly done that.
It seems like scalability is OK. I mean, it's kind of hard for us. We're on a four year refresh cycle. So we stay pretty current with the hardware itself. We are adding in things like compression accelerators, and now with the new SV1 nodes, more cache, and we are going to more adapters. Of course, we're always willing to split out workloads onto separate stacks. So it scales pretty well.
Support has been pretty responsive. Software is coming out all the time with PTFs to fix, so staying on top of that is important.
We've run into the seven three code. Specifically, we hit the cache performance bug. We were right on top of that and had to do another upgrade to clear that.
We've also had a bug with the fiber channel cards. Again, by the time we were implementing, it was a known issue. It was not anything that we've really had to wait on, but not something that we were aware of at the time of implementation.
Get a demo of it. If you haven't seen the product and you have not had somebody step you through all of the features and all the things that you can do with it, then I think it would be really tough to see where adding another set of controllers in front of your storage is benefiting you.
You might be thinking, that's just another hop and it's another delay in getting to my data. I think you will see the value of this solution once you:
See it plugged in
Understand what's going to come with being able to move, compress, and virtualize your data in one interface
Are able to manage all the data there, and not worry about the back end-stuff
Are able to carve up volumes very quickly to the end users
Integration with Spectrum control and a kind of self-service provisioning is good. It is something we're looking at turning over and then deciding about all the data migration that can happen in the back-end. We can look at that request, and then decide. Perhaps we didn't have enough information when we started, and then we can move it on the back-end. We don't have to worry about getting into the weeds, necessarily, from day one.
Senior Storage Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Gives us the ability to migrate storage without impacting the client.
To be able to seamlessly migrate storage sub-systems underneath Spectrum Virtualize.
Being able to migrate storage without impacting the client.
The ability to migrate between clusters, like between Spectrum Virtualize clusters, seamlessly.
Very good. Very stable.
Scalability needs some work in some areas. The number of volumes needs to be increased drastically.
Technical support is very good.
We were using Direct Attached DS8000 before and we switched for scalability. …
We were using Direct Attached DS8000 before and we switched for scalability.
It was pretty straightforward.
Don't go with EMC. Go with IBM. Go with this product. Absolutely. It's a very good product compared to the competitors.
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Gives you the capability of putting heterogeneous storage systems in one management pane.
Capability of putting lots of heterogeneous storage systems all in one management pane
Being able to substitute them out and move between them
The ability to put it all in one management and fix them into something that's much more usable.
It's just been handy with a lot of customers that have, over the years, developed a mess of storage.
It's all about manageability. The product lets you manage:
Different sorts of systems
The same host multi-pathing driver
The same feature set: snapshots and replication, regardless of what system it is
Spectrum Virtualize gives you the same functionality and all the same management through the same GUI, regardless of whether you are using EMC storage, Hitachi storage, or IBM storage.
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.
For the vast majority of the time, it's absolutely awesome. I had a couple isolated problems with reliability, mostly related to replication, but I have been able to work through them.
The scalability is actually one of the great things about the product. It is designed to be able to give you scalability with the virtualization of multiple storage systems. It's very easy to scale.
I've had to use tech support quite a lot of times, because I support a lot of customers. Consultants support a lot of customers. Once you get past Level-1 support, it's generally top notch.
Good luck finding anything that does half of what it does. When looking for a vendor, I look for reliability. I've had lots of good experiences with it. It's been a very reliable product and the feature set is something you can't get anywhere else.
Enterprise Storage Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We do not have to take any kind of outage to do a storage data migration.
Not having to take any kind of outage to do a storage data migration.
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.
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 stability is good.
The scalability is great too. It scales from a single I/O group to up to four.
Technical support has been great. I've been using it for 15 years.
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.
Christopher Okerberg
Storage/SAN Administrator at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Allows for disaster recovery with global mirror.
"The most valuable features are the simplicity of use, the flexibility, and the options included. I mean, it's just a big time saver."
"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."
Benefits for us are pretty much the simplicity, ease of implementation, and the ease of maintenance. Flexibility and responsiveness to customer needs are key. They are the things that allow for ease of disaster recovery with global mirror, which we use. So it's just flexibility and ease of use which are the key things that I like about it.
It helps us to reduce time, reduce complexity, and be more responsive to requests instead of taking an hour to do one volume. Now I can do one volume in less than two minutes. So that keeps the business moving forward and keeps up with the pace.
The most valuable features are the simplicity of use, the flexibility, and the options included. I mean, it's just a big time saver.
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.
Stability has greatly improved since day one. It's much easier to implement. It's not so white knuckle when you're doing upgrades and things like that. So they have come a long way.
There's a lot of flexibility to it, especially with the new hardware coming out. Software always comes out with new and improved options, features, or fixes. So they're doing a real bang up job.
Overall, technical support is good. It is sometimes frustrating when you supply all the information you think they need upfront and they come back and say, "Hey, we need this." So, there's some frustration to it.
We used to have the Shark ESS, where you had to actually go in through their GUI manually to apply and create volumes at that level. You then had to have them mapped. It was more cumbersome and time consuming.
The initial setup was overall pretty easy. And that was years ago, pretty much when it first came out. Overall, it was pretty easy to set up.
We didn't really consider any alternatives. We're pretty much an IBM shop, so it was like the leader when it came out. We value compatibility and price, obviously.
I'm a technician. I don't care about price per se. I am more involved in the technical advantages, ease of implementation, and stability. They are probably the key factors for me.
I would absolutely recommend it. I would ask them, "Why are you waiting?"
Database Administrator at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We can move data where we need it to be and stick storage solutions on the back-end.
The most valuable feature for sure is the abstraction of the storage. In this way, we can basically stick any storage solution that we want on the back-end. Then we've got a rich feature set above that. We can basically move the data where we need it to be. We have a lot of control. It's a good product.
We're a fairly small shop, as far as the number of IT people that we have. The tool allows us to basically multiply our staff to be able to get our work done. We don't have to rely on consultants. The feature sets are usually ahead of where we need to be.
There's always room for improvement. A little lower price would always be nice. Otherwise, nothing major.
Stability has been very good. We're more on the conservative side, in that we are not going out and downloading the latest and greatest code. We are a couple of releases behind, but it's been very stable.
Scalability has been really great. We've done refresh cycles every three years and the technology is usually ahead of where we need it to be, as far as scaling up is concerned.
Technical support has been pretty good. Maybe sometimes we don't get responses back as fast as we would like, but they have always been very professional and they follow through. No major issues. It's been good.
The initial setup was very easy.
For one, there are very few vendors that actually offer this product on the market. And nobody has the quality feature set that IBM has.
We were looking for quality, support, and service. These are all the normal things most companies look for.
I'm not sure. I'd ask them why they haven't done it already.
Lead Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Provides disaster recovery, replication, and multi-site setup.
The most valuable features are disaster recovery, replication, and multi-site setup. Being able to quickly recover in a disaster and knowing that your data is protected across multiple sites is important.
The benefits are protection of data, usability, and performance speed in a high capacity setup.
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.
The product is very, very stable. It is much more stable than the open system configurations that we've worked with. It has the highest stability that we have seen.
The scalability is very good. It is about even with the open system offerings.
I have used technical support. The process to open problem management requests should be faster. Especially in a high pressure situation when things are going wrong. It would be good to just have a quicker way to get the problem out there and get a response.
The initial setup was complex, but that's what keeps me employed. So, it's quite all right.
It's the best mainframe storage available. It is much better than EMC and other competitors.
My advice would be to familiarize yourself with the levels of virtualization and understand how the product works at a lower level in order to implement it.
IT System Architect at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
It helps us with automation and migration between other vendors for storage.
It is very good for compatibility and stability.
It helps us with the management of automation and migration between other vendors for storage.
I had some ideas for improvement, but I can't recall them at the moment.
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.
Regarding scalability, it depends. We had some problems with…
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.
I have used technical support. It was hard work, but we had some colleagues in IBM and they helped us to move forward.
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.
Dell EMC VPLEX
Dell EMC VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
IBM Spectrum Scale
IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
DataCore SANsymphony SDS
DataCore SANsymphony SDS vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
HPE StoreVirtual vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Nutanix Acropolis AOS
Nutanix Acropolis AOS vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
IBM Spectrum Accelerate
IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
See all IBM Spectrum Virtualize alternatives
Download our free Software Defined Storage (SDS) Report and find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Dell EMC, DataCore, and more!
When evaluating Software Defined Storage, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?
What are the main storage requirements to support Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning applications?