NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

NetApp has always been one of the best storage solutions on the market.

We are an 85% NetApp shop, and it has been extremely helpful. We've been able to save a lot of money with the introduction of the use of the tiering aspect and the flex groups. We're able to move data around on the fly.

From a VMware perspective and from a high-performance computing perspective, it is able to churn data as fast as we will do it. It's been great. We're able to identify a lot of data thanks to Cloud Insights. Generally, about 80% of data is not in use. To be able to tier that data automatically has been key. Then, being able to move the data to a specific place or on the fly to a different aggregate with a different disk has been a big benefit.

The solution has helped streamline our internal operations. It helps a lot with the use of WFA - workflow analytics. It allows us to provision storage quickly. And with the use of BlueXP, we're able to monitor, manage, and do some other general things with ease and quickness in terms of provisioning. We're a cloud shop now, and we use Azure. So we use a lot of AFF and a lot of CDOs. And so we now have the ability to provision things a lot faster. The upgrades are a lot faster. The bills are a lot faster. It's definitely progressed yearly.

We're working with Cloud Volumes ONTAP and BlueXP. We have some on-premise stuff. That said, we're actually moving to the Keystone site next week. We're going to be replicating or migrating data from the on-premise site to Keystone. We're also collecting data from Delphi and SLB. They're moving 15 to 20 petabytes in. Everything we're doing, we're using NetApp's XCP solution. We're using Cloud Sync to do all these moves. We're using a lot of stuff.

The cloud service is a lot better. I've dealt with initial cloud providers from a hybrid solution that was not necessarily up to par. The level of administration or support with some of the other solutions just doesn't compare. Once we got this solution, everything just went smoothly.

To get the performance in Azure has been a challenge. We're moving everything to Azure.

I've personally been using the solution myself since maybe the year 2000.

We're currently introducing Cloud Insight to help us manage users better. We're implementing that now. In terms of expansion, we're opening pretty much everything.

We're in the middle of a large migration project involving 12 to 13 petabytes of data, which has been a big project lately.

One of the best things is the support Itself. I've never had an issue with anything. The support was a lot better than any others I had to deal with.

With other solutions, the level of management that's needed was a challenge. The management aspect of this solution is better. BlueXP, the storage manager, the CLI, all of that stuff, it just makes life a lot easier. I've worked with a lot of other solutions. I don't want to mention them.

We did look into EMC, Dell, Hitachi, and Microsoft. From a storage management perspective and a NAS perspective, this solution is better. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. It's the best in the industry.

The proliferation of AI and the evolving cybersecurity landscape hasn't influenced our technology decisions yet. We are in the process of moving towards AI. It's coming, and we're definitely looking at it.

We've been a NetApp shop for 12 years. We do periodically try other solutions, however, that's gone by the wayside. We're basically a NetApp and Microsoft shop.

Our upcoming investments will be prioritized around storage and security - and AI in the future. The key is to save money. We're moving things and disabling machines that are no longer needed. From a performance perspective, we're always trying to find different solutions that will help customers. We're working to get to data a lot faster.

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.

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 allowed us to refresh our old systems with the new NetApp platforms. It allowed us to increase our capacity, our performance all over, and we are looking forward to utilizing more products in the future.

The ATL process, or the authorized-to-operate process, has been beneficial to the organization.

The ONTAP management software gave us the most beneficial bang for our buck. It allows our operation teams to manage the systems more easily than our previous tech solution.

The mirroring of two different sites is great. We're huge on that. We were not able to easily get that done with our previous solution. Using ONTAP and their SnapMirror technology allowed us to easily utilize their advantages in that space.

We want to consolidate under one solution. It'll be easier if we just had all of one product. That's what we're looking forward to.

They should just keep building on what they currently have. If they can continue to make it easier and more efficient and listen to customer feedback or do anything to automate the process will help a lot.

We're just getting into the solution and building on it. I can't say what needs to be improved.

Once we fully flesh out all of its capabilities, we will probably be able to provide some proper feedback.

Maybe more integration with other tech vendors and products, such as hypervisors. I know they're working well with Microsoft and VMware. However, they could integrate with more. If they can integrate more, it would be better.

We do have plans to expand in the future. We plan to continue to spread the solution across our sites where we need it the most. Hopefully, we'll have an all-in-one solution rather than having multiple storage solutions across our enterprise.

There's no competing option for us. We are a little bit on the budget side. This solution was able to deliver what we needed as far as requirements within our budget. Previously, we had Dell, and we're moving on to NetApp across the whole enterprise. 

In the future, we might look at something else depending on our use cases and requirements. As of right now, this solution is the one.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

The evolving cybersecurity landscape and proliferation of AI have been influencing our technology decisions a lot recently. We just recently made a commitment to AI in the space.

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 enabled us to transition from legacy configurations and continue to do some of the same things we did before implementing NetApp storage. It helps us with simple things, like allowing us to grow a file system immediately. Customers can do their own self-restores. 

I've combined other NetApp systems into one of our newer platforms, taking other file-sharing solutions native to Windows or Mac and creating file shares, yielding a better return on our investment. At the same time, we are providing better resources and more efficient channels for files.

When we had another vendor, backups were not done efficiently, so we lost critical data. That's why we went with this solution. It has required us to think differently about how we will implement it. Anything we do needs some aspect of AI involved to help us because we don't have enough resources in terms of money or labor power. 

We have considered using WEKA.io or S3, but we have a solid history with NetApp. We have it in multiple layers, so we can't make those shifts without interrupting many business systems. Ease of use is one of those critical things. We're familiar with it. Making those changes is too much of a lift and would be costly. 

When you evaluate what it costs to bring in a new vendor or platform versus what you've already invested in that app, it makes that decision easy. Right now, I plan to start doing some more data tiering. We bought a storage grid we use for backup but want to use for data tiering. S3 will be a protocol we can use for clients needing to access things from various platforms. 

We want to add more. We want to build out our source grid infrastructure because that can allow us to do data tiering, backups, and another protocol to enable users to use data more efficiently. It's also secure, and all those things are part of our effort to be more efficient. You can't have one without the other. 

Our organization recently underwent a major upgrade, and we're expecting exponential data growth over the next few years. We must embrace what we currently have and the building blocks to grow and understand the demand. We have to do that seamlessly, but we can't do it with the same resources we have now. 

We could not consolidate resources between NFS and Sys services without the NetApp appliance or something like it. 

I rate NetApp 10 out of 10.