NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

It's a three-tier architecture and it's separated. It runs over the network instead of hyperconverged infrastructure. It sells itself since it's centralized management. Three-tier is completely separated away from it. With centralized management, you actually have pitfalls where speeds and read/write operations are all slower. Having it separate and having a dedicated storage area network or a dedicated network attached storage, for us, just worked better. It's been faster.  

In terms of improvements, they could have a couple more things that are usually done through the command line. 

I see that they're making more improvements by adding things like SnapMirror to ONTAP Systems Manager, so maybe some more features in that area would be helpful.

We do plan to expand. We're going to purchase a few 250s for some off-site backups in our secondary location, and that's kind of where we're at right now. With the next technology, we're actually getting Veeam. It integrates perfectly as a backup and replication system with NetApp. Being able to use an old NetApp as essentially a target for our backups is going to work perfectly. That's the next step for us.

We had Nutanix and VMware vSAN. We had sit downs and meet and greets with Pure Storage as well. A lot of them were very expensive, and we knew how Nutanix was operating. They give you everything upfront, and then you have to pay extra for the nodes. So the pricing models weren't as transparent. 

The scalability of this solution fit our needs and was better. Performance was the biggest factor in our decision-making.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Data storage and optimization are going to be our biggest focus next. We've had problems with it in the past, and we're able to fix those issues with the solutions that we're purchasing.

Our company is really into growth and innovation in general, and they're always looking for new ways to do something better. Previously, we have been doing things not to the best of our ability. Being able to purchase new hardware, new software, and have solutions architects come in and look at what we've got going on, it just makes sense to to go in that direction as well. 

The replication of data from on-premises to the cloud is very easy when we are using the SnapMirror technology. 

Being able to use FlexCache is the best part of this solution. It is something that on-premises users are using for their production. There are some users who want to use the same volume from the cloud. FlexCache helps us in providing that.

We have a unified storage to access the file and NAS. We can do all the things in the same solution. We do not need any other product or storage mix.

CVO and AFF technologies have delivered the most value to our company. I would rate AFF a ten out of ten, and I would rate CVO a nine out of ten. We are still exploring the cloud. AFF is completely packed, and with CVO, we have a few challenges that we are trying to solve. Taking a snapshot and cloning are some of the best things that we are doing with these technologies. CVO also offers cost-effectiveness.

Their customer support can be better. When we have an outage, we need to wait until the issue is escalated to L3 which takes a lot of time. If that can be improved, it will help a lot. If there is any issue, we should be able to resolve it immediately instead of waiting for so long to get a qualified resource from NetApp.

We have a NetApp partner and we also have a point of contact from NetApp with whom we have regular calls every week. We can see what the new products are and we try to adopt the new ones. 

If there are any issues, we can get NetApp support to get them resolved. Their customer support can be better.

We considered another solution that is used only for SAN and is server block storage. With this solution, we get both SAN and NAS within the same storage device. We chose this solution due to its flexibility.

We have had a few outages on the CVO where the host needed more performance but the CVO that we selected in terms of disk type and other things was not able to support that workload. To support that workload, we moved the host to ANF instead of CVO. 

We are moving towards AI, but we are not fully involved as of now.

We have plans to increase its usage both on-prem and on the cloud. Data is constantly growing. We need more capacity. New business needs require new storage. New projects require more storage.

Cost saving on the cloud is the goal we have. We do not know how much exactly it will come out to be because it is on a usage basis. It can grow constantly, and then for one month, it can come down. We need to make sure that the cost is constant.

Our upcoming investments would be prioritized around data storage and cybersecurity. Data storage is the main thing that we cannot avoid. Cybersecurity is something that we need to make our environment secure.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The most common use case of NetApp AFF is as block storage and file-level storage. 

From my standpoint, NetApp AFF is the most powerful enterprise solution. I find it to be highly flexible, allowing me to do whatever I want.

It is pretty flexible. Additionally, ONTAP is a very powerful operating system, and there are many use cases related to data protection, integration with the cloud, and monitoring solutions. NetApp has great documentation, and as a NetApp partner, I also have access to the NetApp Partner Portal and their learning center, where I can learn a lot. Partner Portal is a big plus.

They have great support. They have great documentation. They have learning sources. They have everything. You can even download the ONTAP simulator and deploy it on your virtualization platform and test almost all features.

SnapMirror is one of the best replication mechanisms in the world, and it is very well described. NetApp has good integration with other vendors such as Veeam, Commvault, and other backup solutions.

I do not like the NetApp GUI. For example, the GUI of ONTAP Command Manager could be better, but the CLI is perfect. With every new version and upgrade, they change things, which makes it messy, and I am not good at working with that. Even for monitoring, I use other tools. I am totally command-line oriented.

I have used NetApp AFF for five years.

I have not encountered any stability or performance issues.

I am satisfied with their customer service. I have had no problem.

Positive

I have worked with Dell solutions. It is pretty simplified for end users, but it does not offer as much flexibility as NetApp. You do not know what is happening in the background. They have simplified their GUI, and it is easy to use. However, when you want to try something from the command line, it is not so comfortable. You have to read the documentation. The ONTAP command line interface is quite extensive.

Dell's support is so expensive. We have a NetApp partner portal tool, which is called the TCO estimator. When we compare these two, Dell's support is expensive. It is good, but it is expensive. The support of both NetApp and Dell is good.

I do not deal with pricing, but the pricing of NetApp and Dell seems pretty close.

NetApp support is cheaper than Dell support.

I would rate NetApp AFF a ten out of ten.

NetApp has made data storage much easier.

I can get a NetApp and have it deployed within days instead of something else like we used to use Hitachi arrays. It required an actual team to come in and install. The ease and scalability are monumental.

The usability of actually being able to scale it out has been great.

ONTAP has delivered the most value to our organization. Also, the ease of ability to train other people to use ONTAP is great. It is very straightforward. I can take a brand new tech who is straight out of an internship, bring them in, show them how to do A, B, C, and D, and it doesn't deviate. It's the same no matter which cluster they touch.

I honestly don't have anything of note on how they can improve. They already exceed my expectations. 

We do constantly expand. We get new programs all the time. The fact that we can throw a C250 in and have it up and running in days makes life so much easier.

We actually recently got off of -two Gseries from Hitachi that were spinning disks, and we went to all flash arrays. All of the engineering issues that they had for all of their software programming, time delays, et cetera, are nonexistent anymore.

Money has been a serious constraint. The fact that they're making things more affordable is making our lives that much easier to keep up with our accreditations. We can show that we can save money by doing more with less, and we can do that with this solution.

We did evaluate other options. The speed on this solution is more. Cost was a big one in the decision making factor.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

Security is always the top concern. We'll always prioritize cybersecurity. I like the fact that the solution encrypts everything, that it is a trusted brand, that we know that we have the support in the event that anything happens. They back their product 100%.

As a pharmaceutical company, our data is very sensitive. It's critical to recover in the event of any incident. NetApp played a major role in our backup and recovery services.

The RPOs and RTOs are excellent. When we had a ransomware attack, NetApp helped us recover. NetApp has streamlined operations by providing faster operating responses and making data more accessible to users. The equipment they offer helped increase our performance.

I administer the solution, so I'm not involved with the design and decision-making, so I can't speak about our future planning. However, most of our files are on NetApp, which we have 50 sites using. I don't know about AI or other emerging technologies we may adopt. We haven't used AI, but the company is looking at that and security-related features, like AI-based ransomware technologies. ONTAP is on the roadmap. 

We plan to expand. All our storage is on-prem, but we plan to shift to the cloud, depending on the application requirements. Our roadmap includes migrating to the cloud and implementing AI. 

NetApp's backup and recovery are the primary features we use. We also appreciate data protection. NetApp's technology and hardware support all our requirements. Snapshot technology is hugely beneficial for backing up our data. 

Our environment is NAS-based. I don't have much exposure to NetApp on the block storage side. At the file level, the protocols they support are easy to use. This improves resiliency and helps us run the environment.

Our block storage is primarily Dell EMC, and we use NetApp for our AFF at the file level. We've heard many things about NetApp's block solutions, so it may be an excellent opportunity to look at NetApp from the block side of things and migrate. Dell EMC is relatively expensive, whereas NetApp is more cost-effective. I would like to explore all the new technologies and move our block storage to NetApp.

We did many POCs with companies like IBM, EMC, and NetApp and how they handled the file-sharing structures. NetApp came out on top for how it handled the files. It also beats the competitors in cost-effectiveness, which is the first thing a company looks at. 

I rate NetApp nine out of 10. 

NetApp is highly flexible. We can do things on the fly. Because the nodes are rock-solid, there is less downtime and maintenance. We don't have any downtime due to NetApp storage.

Our internal operations are rather static. We're a healthcare company, so we have the same product line. We don't have to fluctuate too much due to market pressure. The integration with VMware has streamlined the IT operations, where we can use vCenter to do half our BlueXP work.

One of the biggest challenges we had recently was SnapMirror. SnapMirror is rather old, but that shows how good it is. It hasn't been reinvented in so long. We're on-prem right now. I think hybrid integration with BlueXp to manage both storage types will greatly benefit us. We're not heavily involved in AI, but I am so happy that NetApp is with ARP and Cloud Insights. 

We plan to expand our NetApp usage to include more AI and ransomware protections. I want to strengthen our security posture with MFA and multi-admin approvals. We want to get off VMware and go right to Kubernetes. 

Our future investment will focus on cybersecurity. We've had partners who were attacked, infected, and went down. I won't give names. We weren't affected, but we were indirectly affected. We had to change how we communicated with them. It's coming from the top down that we all need to focus more on cybersecurity.

Unfortunately, cybersecurity throws a wrench into innovation. We only have so much money, tools, and people, but it's what you have to do. You can't just say that we're not going to do it, and we're going to develop a new product line.

We're not fully utilizing NetApp's Converge BlueXP, but it's a great help. It integrates on-prem and cold storage and provides disaster recovery. We'll see more benefits as it improves.

We implemented SnapCenter for SQL, which we provide to our customers for free. It provides hourly point-in-time recovery, which they weren't expecting, and we already had the license. They got it for free.

NetApp's price could be improved. All storage is expensive. NetApp is not cheap, but we can't return to anybody else now. We'd lose too much value. We'd be, reinventing ourselves.

We have used NetApp for 10 years.

We came from HPE and considered Dell EMC, but we're not in block storage anymore. We want the flexibility of NAS, and it wasn't hard to decide on NetApp.
It's come a long way, and we can train new employees that have never touched NetApp. They can get going in a week and start being administrators quickly using all the GUI tools. 

We've had instances before where we were on block storage with VMware. And if it fills up or anything happens, you have downtime. NetApp now gives us more alerts, so we expand it on the fly. It will auto-expand on the fly. So I think that's definitely a big outcome.

I only made the decision at the technology level about whether it would fit into our stack and provide for our needs. I never got involved in the cost, so I don't know if cost was a deciding factor. When we adopted it 10 years ago, NetApp was a different storage creature than everybody else. It was an easier decision. If we wanted to stay with block storage, we could go with anybody else, and they were almost identical at the time.

I rate NetApp 10 out of 10. 

We're still in the process of the migration, so we're hoping that it will help with business and serving customers. We're hoping that it will be faster. We had previous file limitations with our old technology. We're hoping to better utilize the NetApp arrays to serve our expanding and growing business.

If the data is deduplicated, we'll hopefully begin to save space. We're also hoping it will allow our business clients to access their data faster, and we'll be able to read and write it faster as well using all-flash technology.

The C400 flash arrays have been very valuable so far.

We'll use it to secure data, back up that data, and replicate it to other data centers. We'll leverage it to take a holistic approach to data replication, backup, and accessibility.

We're assuming accessing and writing files will be a lot snappier with opening files will be faster. That's what we're looking at. We're hoping for a lot of speed.

We don't have it in production yet. We don't have areas for improvement right now. Once we put it into production and get client feedback, we'll have more visibility.

We did use a different solution. We made the change based on the price point and being able to open more files.

We looked into Dell and another big player in the space. We chose this solution based on the price point and the all-flash technology.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. We just got it. We're expecting it will be faster and that we'll see some good compression and deep replication on our data.

The evolving cybersecurity landscape and proliferation of AI influenced our technology decisions. It's a factor in every decision that we make. The security is very important. I know other vendors provide similar types of types of security, and data tech and data security as well.

We're using it all just for NAS right now. We possibly might use it
for SAN in the future and then maybe archiving.

We're very new to AI and it will be a consideration in the future. Cybersecurity for sure will also be a priority and data optimization is the most important. 

NetApp has sped up delivery for our virtual environment. It's been a great solution. Our customers have been amazed and overjoyed with the performance of our virtual environment, which uses VDI for virtual desktops and VMware for our virtual host servers. Everything is working seamlessly. 

We plan to expand our use of NetApp solutions, and we're already in talks about this. We will be looking at the new ASA products they just released to see if they're more suitable for us than the C-series and what the cost is. We would love to have flash storage, but we'll see how much that costs.

A Flash environment would be great. We still have some spinning disk storage, and we hope to get rid of those completely and go all SSD. So we're looking for that to be within our budget

The NetApp C-Series storage soutions are the most valuable to us. I would rate them 8.5 out of 10. 

Customer support is a hot-button issue, so we definitely need better customer support. We get some support from our vendor that helps. If the C-Series had a more user-friendly GUI, that would help us get our LUNs built and data storage connected faster. 

We've been with NetApp for years. We considered switching to HPE Nimble Storage, but we decided to stay with NetApp and upgrade our environment to the C-Series. With NetApp, support has been a pain point, but the price and warranty costs are perfect for our budget. 

NetApp is offered at a reasonable price point, so it has saved us money. Our primary goal is to keep our costs low. We're hoping that the next line of products will include a more budget-friendly option. 

I rate NetApp solutions 8.5 out of 10. Improving support would increase the rating. They could also enhance and streamline the GUI to make management more efficient.