IBM Refreshes FlashSystem Lineup With Faster 5600, 7600, And 9600 Arrays
IBM, Tuesday, February 10th, 2026
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.