FlashSystem.ai

About FlashSystem.ai

The assistant supports common tasks such as creating volumes, volume groups, hosts, host clusters, and snapshots. It can also assign snapshot or replication policies to volume groups to support disaster recovery workflows.

FlashSystem.ai requires an active IBM Storage Insights connection, using a Storage Insights API key and tenant ID.

Capabilities

Natural‑language administration

FlashSystem.ai supports natural‑language interaction. You can use plain‑language instructions in the management GUI to retrieve system information and perform selected administrative tasks, including the following operations and queries.

• Creating volumes, volume groups, hosts, and host clusters
• Creating snapshots
• Assigning snapshot or replication policies to volume groups
• Renaming volumes
• Increasing volume size
• Querying system configuration
• Asking follow‑up questions to refine results

Supported administrative actions

You can use natural language instructions to initiate the following supported administrative actions:

• Create volumes
• Create hosts and host clusters
• Create volumes and attach to hosts
• Create volume groups
• Create snapshots
• Rename or expand volumes
• Move volumes between volume groups
• Modify snapshot and replication policies on volume groups
• Perform host‑cluster operations (create clusters, map volumes)

Information retrieval capabilities

You can use natural language queries to retrieve the following information from managed systems:

• System overview
• Volumes and volume groups
• Hosts and host clusters
• Host–volume mappings
• Snapshots
• Snapshot and replication policies
• Storage pools
• Partitions
• Portsets

Filtering and aggregation are supported for all query results.

Context‑aware responses

The assistant identifies the systems that you are managing and uses this context when it runs queries or other supported operations. By default, when you request information such as a list of volumes, the assistant retrieves data from the active system. You can also request information from any other system that is configured in the container by specifying the system name.

Assistant behavior and approval model

For all supported create and modify actions, FlashSystem.ai requires explicit user approval and follows these rules:

• The assistant presents a human‑readable confirmation dialog before each operation it runs.
• The dialogs explain the action in plain language.
• You must explicitly approve each configuration action before it runs.
• All changes are performed through on‑premises API calls; nothing is executed in the cloud.
• The assistant is available only when the AI container is deployed and registered.

You can view results in a table format that supports filtering and aggregation for easier analysis.

Guardrails for safe operation

FlashSystem.ai enforces guardrails that block destructive, security‑related, and other high‑risk actions. The assistant does not support the following operations:

• Deleting system objects
• Reducing the size of objects
• Reversing replication relationships
• Restoring data from snapshots
• Removing snapshot or replication policies
• Performing any security‑related tasks
• Creating objects that require special user handling (for example, partitions, replication policies)

The assistant does not have access to any security-related information on the system.

Human‑in‑the‑loop administrative actions

All configuration actions run on‑premises. The assistant can perform supported actions on the user's behalf and uses human‑in‑the‑loop prompt boxes to confirm approval before each action is run.

Access, support and licensing

User access

FlashSystem.ai uses role‑based access control to define which actions each user is permitted to perform:

• A dedicated Administrator account must be created on each system and provided to the AI container.
• This account must be provisioned manually by the customer.
• Read‑only interactions are possible with lower‑privileged accounts, but configuration actions require Administrator access.
• A Security Administrator is required to register each system with the AI container by using the chaicontainerinfo command.

Licensing

FlashSystem.ai is included with the system at no additional cost. No WatsonX.ai subscription is required.