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IBM FlashSystem C200 (IBM 5202-C25): Affordable All-Flash repository for the Modern Data Centre
Why settle for spinning disks when you can have Flash?
The way businesses handle data is evolving—faster applications, bigger workloads, and ever-growing storage demands. Yet, many IT leaders still rely on traditional HDD arrays for archival, backup, and bulk data storage. Why? Because flash storage is “too expensive,” right?
Not anymore. Meet IBM’s recently announced FlashSystem offering, the FlashSystem C200, which is available to order towards the end of this month.
The IBM C200 is a high-capacity and energy-efficient Flash storage solution designed for applications that don’t necessarily require ultra-low latency but would benefit from significant performance improvements and considerable operating cost savings over a spinning disk alternative. HDD-based storage can be a bottleneck, especially when handling large-scale data retrieval, media streaming, or backup processes. The FlashSystem C200 eliminates those delays by offering a significant performance increase when compared to traditional hard disk arrays.
It’s designed for high-capacity workloads where extreme speed isn’t the primary concern but consistency, efficiency, and reliability are. Think archives, backups, and media repositories—but on flash instead of spinning disks. Aiming to provide workloads up to 200,000 IOPs at 1-2 ms latency and 23 GB/s throughput, this is clearly a far superior option than a traditional NL-SAS configuration and is optimized for sequential workloads and clients looking for fast restores.
A comparative IBM FlashSystem, using NL-SAS, would require around 7 times the rack space, so in addition to the competitive initial cost of the C200 (Circa £250,000 for our UK readers), there’s clearly savings to be made in power and cooling thereafter also.
Offered, for now, in a single predetermined configuration of twenty-four 46TB (C200-specific) versions of IBM’s latest FlashCore Module 4 NVMe drives, it offers 1.1 PB of raw and up to 2.3 PB of compressed (and encrypted) effective storage capacity. Being FCM4’s users will of course benefit from the Ransomware Threat Detection and Immutable Copies (via IBM Safeguarded Copy) that IBM’s FlashCore Module offer.
Naturally, the C200 runs IBM Storage Virtualize, which provides host-attached systems with a single pool of storage, logical unit virtualization, and management of logical volumes.
The IBM FlashSystem C200 features two node canisters with a 256GB cache in a 2U enclosure with 10GB iSCSI connectivity as standard, with optional 10/25GB iSCSI and 32GB FC connectivity also.
Legacy storage was built for a different era—one where data volumes were smaller and workloads were simpler. But today’s IT environments demand better efficiency, lower costs, and smarter infrastructure.
The IBM FlashSystem C200 gives you all the advantages of flash at a price comparable to HDDs. No trade-offs. No compromises. Just smart storage for a data-driven future.
