IBM refreshes FlashSystem lineup with faster 5600, 7600, and 9600 arrays

IBM has updated its all-flash FlashSystem family, replacing the 5300, 7300, and 9500 products with faster and more capacious 5600, 7600, and 9600 models, and added a natural language FlashSystem.ai admin agent that helps provide autonomous operations.

FlashSystems are classic, dual-controller storage arrays running the SAN Volume Controller OS and supporting block-access storage. They are populated with IBM’s proprietary SSDs called FlashCore Modules (FCMs). This is a hotly-contested market, and the systems compete with Dell PowerStore, Hitachi Vantara VSP One Block, HPE Alletra MP B10000 (scale-out storage nodes with a disaggregated shared everything (DASE) architecture), NetApp ASA (All-flash SAN) block-access-only systems, Pure Storage FlashArray with 150 TB drives, and VAST Data’s DASE Architecture block systems.

IBM is focusing on AI Agent-enabled administration for the new FlashSystems. Sam Werner, GM of IBM Storage, said: “The next-generation IBM FlashSystem elevates storage to an intelligent, always-available layer, where autonomous AI agents continuously optimize performance, security, and cost without human intervention.”

“The updated portfolio marks the beginning of an autonomous storage era, where FlashSystem becomes a strategic AI partner that can help IT leaders ensure optimal, secure performance for every workload they run.”

The now five-product family starts with the existing FlashSystem 5000 and archive-focused C200 and goes through mid-range 5600 and 7600 variants to the high-end 9600. Here are the basic specs with the previous 5300, 7300 and 9500 details included for comparison:

IBM positions the 5600, with its 2.6 million IOPS performance, as a good fit for “space-constrained environments such as edge locations, remote offices, and smaller data centers.” The 7600 is a mid-range box, putting out 4.3 million IOPS, while the 9600 is a high-performance system, delivering up to 6.3 million IOPS, the same as the 9500.

We can see that the 4 RU 9500 is replaced by the physically smaller 2 RU 9600, and its max read bandwidth drops from 100 GBps to 86 GBps, as the I/O port count falls from 48 to 32. But capacity rises, from 1.8 PB raw to 3.3 PB raw, due to higher-capacity FlashCore Module (FCM) drives.

The company claims that“FlashSystem reduces the required storage footprint by 30-75 percent, depending on the model, through optimized placement and consolidation, compared to its previous generation.” With the 7600 and 9600, customers “have the option to monitor and visualize system state information physically with new interactive LED bezels.”

The Gen 5 FCMs follow on from the Gen 4 products introduced in February 2024, with 4.8, 9.6, 19.2, and 38.4 TB raw capacities and PCIe Gen 4 bus support. The new FCMs have larger 6.6, 13.2, 26.4, 52.8 and 105.6 TB capacities available, with the 105.6 TB drive only available for the 9600. The largest FCM available for the prior 9500 was 38.4 TB, considerably less.

IBM says that, as with its Gen 4 FCMs, each FCM records statistics for every I/O. The FlashSystem SVC software aggregates these per-drive stats and passes them to an AI model running in the array. The model checks these drive stats every 2 seconds against ransomware patterns and raises an alert with IBM Storage Insights Pro if a match is found. This model can keep false positives to under 1 percent, IBM claims.

It says there is “guaranteed detection of potential risks in under a minute, safeguarding the integrity of an organization’s data and enabling the recovery of secured copies within 60 seconds.”

The FlashSystem.ai feature can reduce manual storage management effort by up to 90 percent, according to IBM, compared to doing routine operations, such as multi-volume provisioning in a drive’s graphical user interface (GUI). It can “execute thousands of automated decisions per day that previously required human oversight.”

The agentic AI “is built to adapt to application behavior in hours [and] designed to be significantly faster than template-based machines, suggesting performance improvements and explaining reasoning, while incorporating administrator feedback to tailor recommendations.” It “runs client workloads with proactive tuning [and] intelligent placement of workloads for non-disruptive data mobility across storage devices, including third-party storage arrays.”

The agents can auto‑assemble evidence of configurations, protection policies, operational history, and risk posture to support audit preparation.

All in all, IBM says, its new FlashSystem transforms storage from a passive repository into an autonomous, intent-aware, data services layer. We expect virtually all storage array suppliers to add agentic AI management features to their operating systems in the next few months. It will become a top-of-the-roadmap tick-box item.

IBM’s new FlashSystem portfolio will be generally available on March 6.

Bootnote

IBM says its FlashSystem Policy-based High Availability (PBHA) is designed to offer zero RTO and zero RPO for two storage systems in different locations, synchronously replicating data across metro-area distances, allowing concurrent data access for servers in each data center and providing seamless failover. It can boost disaster recovery over greater distances with asynchronous replication across regions.