IBM Storage Scale

What do you like best about the product?

As SDS Solution it is a flexible platform to fit our storage challenges in all aspects to provisioning a performant, scalable storage solution.

What do you dislike about the product?

In some areas of function there are some gaps to interoperate with the current implementation of IAM Provider like sssd on Red Hat. Another aspect of scale is that there are very complex filesystems with many parameters that are great, but the different use cases generate different IO patterns. This generates different performance tuning options that are not very well documented and there are small hints available to automate and write the correct values to optimize this. This is currently science work.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Spectrum Scale is established in many areas of our company. It hosts our complete backup, archive, most filesystem protocols, and complete container storage platform. Another use case is our SAS Institute platform as our analytics cluster.

What do you like best about the product?

1. It is easily scalable with its clustering options to support high storage requirements. 2. It can support both Hot-Hot datacenter approaches, meaning both replicas can be active at the same time. 3. A very good and innovative option to store large amounts of data. 4. Although it is a product of IBM, it can support both IBM and non-IBM storage.

What do you dislike about the product?

Nothing really. It works pretty well. So no complaints.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

1. It is easily scalable with its clustering options to support high storage requirements. 2. It can support both Hot-Hot datacenter approaches, meaning both replicas can be active at the same time. 3. A very good and innovative option to store large amounts of data. 4. Although it is a product of IBM, it can support both IBM and non-IBM storage.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Absolutely

What do you like best about the product?

Container native and Data-aware intelligence is Impressive.

What do you dislike about the product?

not experienced bad as of now and the futures are good when compared to the legacy

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Data aware intelligence and Scaling are the benefits

What do you like best about the product?

High availability, I think it's not big different than old system GPFS

What do you dislike about the product?

Nothing in specific but may I say the configuration some time complex.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Where I worked we just do the config and test it just as demo for costumer. The main issues was I faced in configuration steps.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

The IBM product in general is the best

What do you like best about the product?

It can write the same file at two or more application nodes at a time. And users can access those files concurrently.

What do you dislike about the product?

Need or consume more storage to write the same file at two or more application nodes at a time.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Now I am solving slowness of concurrent file usages for our Production Image data with IBM Spectrum Scale or GPFS. As a result, our users are accessing concurrent Production Image data quickly without any delay.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Strongly recommended to other users who will use concurrent user access data from many branches. The setup of the IBM Spectrum Scale in the server is not complex too.

What do you like best about the product?

Fast and accurate support from IBM when having problems

What do you dislike about the product?

The systems resulted unstable when several users were accessing the same file from different nodes. Snapshots provoke the system to respond really slow for few minutes when they are running or deleting (several times per day)

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Problems with CTDB service. Nodes being unstable. The support really help you with the troubleshooting.

What do you like best about the product?

Reliability is the best word to describe Spectrum Scale from IBM. Been using it for a couple of years and never experienced a downtime due to the platform itself. IBM support is also very helpful in case of questions or upgrades.

What do you dislike about the product?

Can't think of any downsides, everything works as expected.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Clustered filesystem between 2 DC's

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Dare to compare. Reliability is one of the strengths of IBM Spectrum Scale

What do you like best about the product?

Best thing is about the high-performance SAN capability with LUNs providing extensive scaling.

What do you dislike about the product?

After working with IBM and NetApp storage systems, IBM seems a bit complex in terms of cloud tiering.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Client's SAN Infrastructure management with IBM LUNs. Active-Active clustering in Disaster recovery (Metro-cluster) environments are critical and IBM Spectrum scale replication & mirroring capabilities are phenomenal.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

For those who are using IBM Spectrum Scale, recommend you to explore more and unleash its potential, because it is more than a File system / Storage architecture.

What do you like best about the product?

It is an excellent tool to monitor the system's health and performance. In addition, I enjoy using it to monitor the capacity details of file systems, pools, filesets, users, and user groups.

What do you dislike about the product?

The snapshot feature could be improved. I used this to create rules and automate snapshots and I feel the user interface could be improved.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

All in all, we use it to monitor the system's health and performance as well as monitoring dashboards and events. The main benefit for us is having a better understanding of how we are operating on a daily basis.

What do you like best about the product?

Great transparent Cloud tiering service. Manages NFS exports, AFM and gateway nodes easily, when Protocols are enabled on the cluster.

What do you dislike about the product?

I used this page to grant access to the remote clusters and it worked great. Also helped me to notify administrators when system events occurred.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Helped to monitor and troubleshoot issues. Great IBM spectrum scale system. Is very easy to integrate, creating object users, configuring authentication methods and defining default fileset quotas. I recommend it!