🚀Just dropped: IBM Storage Virtualize 9.1.1 - 4Q25 update 🚀

This release brings a powerful set of enhancements focused on data resiliency and AI-driven operations — helping storage administrators better protect, manage, and recover their data in increasingly dynamic environments. 

From smarter ransomware threat detection and automated snapshot handling to expanded snapshot capacity limits and improved thin clone workflows, this release is packed with features designed to simplify operations and strengthen data integrity across IBM Storage FlashSystem deployments.

🧠View Proactive AI-powered recommendations in a FlashSystem grid: AI-driven insights

The FlashSystem grid now brings AI-generated recommendations directly from IBM Storage Insights into the FlashSystem grid.

With this enhancement, storage administrators can now:

• View actionable suggestions for member systems managed by Storage Insights directly within the FlashSystem grid.

• Quickly identify and resolve potential issues before they impact application/system availability and performance.

• Access detailed analysis by navigating to the corresponding suggestion page in IBM Storage Insights.

This feature empowers users to make faster, informed decisions without leaving the FlashSystem grid — improving operational efficiency and system resilience.

🌐FlashSystem grid partition migration with iSCSI hosts: Smarter migrations, Wider support

This release introduces support for iSCSI-based host environments in partition migration workflows.

By supporting iSCSI environments, IBM Storage FlashSystem now offers a more inclusive and automated migration experience, reducing manual overhead and improving reliability across diverse deployment scenarios.

🧩Support for NVMe-TCP and NVMe-FC hosts in HA partitions: NVMe performance meets FlashSystem resilience

Policy-based high availability now supports NVMe host environments, including NVMe-FC and NVMe-TCP protocols.

This update brings parity to NVMe-based deployments — enabling storage admins to configure NVMe hosts within partitions and benefit from FlashSystem’s grid, High availability, and replication features. This also ensures FlashSystem remains future-ready, supporting evolving host attach technologies while maintaining robust High-availability and Disaster recovery capabilities.

⚖️Smarter quorum management

In this release, IBM Storage FlashSystem and SAN Volume Controller take a step toward simplifying IP Quorum functionality.

By refining how and where IP quorum apps are used, this update helps ensure that quorum configurations are intentional, supported, and aligned with best practices — especially in environments transitioning away from legacy Fibre Channel quorum disks. 

🔄Providing an option to create a thin-clone of a volume from an HA snapshot within the same storage partition

This new feature provides an option to create a thin-clone of a volume from an HA snapshot within the same storage partition. This enhancement allows users to access snapshot data in a highly available format, making it easier to integrate with host systems, perform testing, and manage backups — all without compromising HA.

Imagine a storage admin needing to scan production data for malware without impacting live workloads. With this feature, they can create a HA thin clone from a snapshot and perform scans — all while maintaining HA and ensuring the clone is available across both systems.

Whether you're managing backups, testing environments, or disaster recovery workflows — HA thin clones from HA snapshots give you the tools to do it with confidence.

📊Increased capacity limit for volume group snapshots: More Snapshots. More Resilience. Greater Confidence

As data volumes surge and snapshot-based protection becomes central to modern storage, FlashSystem is evolving to meet the demand. The latest enhancement introduces significantly increased capacity limits for volume group snapshots, unlocking new possibilities for data protection, replication, and recovery. 

These expanded limits allow customers to maintain more snapshots of production data, support larger clone and thin-clone volumes, and optimize data recovery and replication strategies.

🛡️Intelligent snapshot creation triggered during Ransomware Threats: Act Fast. Restore Smart. Stay Protected.

As ransomware threats become more complex, FlashSystem is evolving to offer smarter, automated protection. This feature ensures that critical data is preserved the moment a threat is detected — without requiring manual intervention.

With advanced threat detection powered by IBM Storage Insights, FlashSystem monitors data patterns for signs of ransomware. As soon as anomalous activity is detected — based on telemetry from IBM Storage Insights — FlashSystem automatically triggers a snapshot for affected volume groups. This snapshot is labelled Detected threat triggered, capturing the system state at the earliest point of compromise. It serves both as a potential recovery point and a forensic reference for post-incident analysis.

Dive deeper!

📢 Release Announcement

💡 Product documentation 

To explore all new features, visit the product documentation available at:

• FlashSystem 9000 family
• FlashSystem 7000 family
• FlashSystem 5000 family
• FlashSystem C family
• SAN Volume Controller