NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

We're a hospital and we store all of our patient records on it. Everything that we do in the hospital is done on there. It does it for VMware as well as databases and Oracle, we do everything on it. It allows us to do our job.

Learn about the benefits of NVMe, NVME-oF and SCM. Read New Frontiers in Solid-State Storage.

The capabilities of ONTAP is what drives me towards NetApp.

Their ability to put more storage on smaller spaces through their deduplication compaction. Routines and thin storage are very valuable to us. 

An additional feature that I would like to see better support for is block level storage, where they understand what's inside the LUNs as well as the LUNs themselves.

Though with 9.2 coming out, there is very little else that I want. I think anything they add at this point is going to be just icing, because it's already meeting my needs.

It's very stable.

I like the scalability, the clusters, being able to add new nodes and such. It also makes for easy upgrades; you just add new nodes, move stuff off, and take the old nodes off.

They are very good, knowledgeable, and responsive. Though every once in awhile, you get a knucklehead.

Learn about the benefits of NVMe, NVME-oF and SCM. Read New Frontiers in Solid-State Storage.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

We were using an EMC solution before this one. We switched when we ran out of performance on what we had.

I was involved in the setup.

They preconfigured it at the factory and that is a pain in the neck. This should stop.

We evaluated EMC, Hitachi and NetApp.

When choosing a storage, it's a matter of management. Once you've bought the storage, all your time is spent in management. So, look at the software as well as the hardware.

We use it for block storage almost exclusively.

We are more likely to consider NetApp for mission critical storage systems because they have been excellent to work with and their product has been stable.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: support and performance.

While our VDI people are storing user profiles, we make good use of single name space. With application driven ride, VDI has driven us to use NetApp because they needed a single name space and there's just no vendor on the market that can do single name space with All Flash.

In the single name space, the profile pad need not be changed for various users. All the users of VDI can be pointed towards one profile source.

Our primary use case for All Flash is we put VDI on it and we put our Providence Health Systems work on Epic. Epic is our tier one app. We put all the NAS needs for the Epic app on All Flash, and we also put our user home directories on All Flash.

We would like to see permission repair technology built into ONTAP. We have it in EMC Isilon and we have been asking our accounting to take it to the engineering team. We want a job repair technology in EMC Isilon, in that app as well, so that app can refer to it and build on it.

Also, the product could be made cheaper.

We have been using it for eight months.

The stability is good.

It is certainly scalable.

We used tech support. They are good, smart, and responsive.

No, we didn't use a previous solution. We came to AAF 300 All Flash because we were refreshing all of our NetApp applications.

I am the lead for all NetApp installs. Every time we had a good installer coming onsite, so we make it easy for them and they make it easy for us.

We use All Flash for block and file storage.

We have been a NetApp shop for a while, even before AAF 300. Thus, our impression of NetApp has a long history. It's been good to us in providing the support and giving us the right solutions when we need them. Therefore, we have a good impression of NetApp.

I recommend NetApp. If someone is looking at a similar solution, I would give them the advice, "Go for NetApp."

When it comes to NAS services, they have better operating systems compared to anyone, even other vendors would have it, but NetApp has a long history of being in the market and large customer base. Therefore, they might have gone through various problems and solutions compared to any new vendors who are out there. Experience matters.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• How robust the technology is
• How reliable the vendor is
• How experienced they are.

• Performance
• Contingency, failover, and data recovery
• It's a good vendor.

They have always been really supportive, easy to get ahold of, and easy to work with.

The primary use case for All Flash is improved performance.

• Better performance
• More reliable systems
• Less space needed versus competitors of similar storage

Simplifying the solution for performance, though they are already working on it. Also, making the UI more user-friendly couldn't hurt.

Over five years.

It's very stable. We haven't had any problems in our environment.

It is very easy to scale.

We have a good relationship with our representatives through them. Our sales representative gave us a lot of information as far as moving forward with upgrading stuff.

It has been used quite a few times and we always have always had a good response from them. They are very knowledgeable.

It was very straightforward.

We use both block and file storage.

NetApp is the leader in the field for high performance and storage systems. They have always been our primary go to. We are more likely to consider NetApp for mission critical storage systems based on our experience.

Advice for someone looking at similar products: Just do the research beforehand and you'll be able to tell what vendors separate themselves from the rest as far as other companies' reviews out there. I would definitely recommend NetApp All Flash FAS.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: compatibility and communication. Being able to rely on them whenever we need them.

We have been able to construct a business intelligence environment with nearly instant reporting for our parks, so they can determine where resources need to be put during the middle of a day. So, if there's a rainstorm, they can determine that we need to move people to front gates, we need to move pizzas here, etc. It enables realtime actions to events.

Learn about the benefits of NVMe, NVME-oF and SCM. Read New Frontiers in Solid-State Storage.

The performance is the most valuable feature.

The primary use cases for our All Flash storage system are primarily server virtualization and data storage for unstructured storage. We use it for both block storage and file storage.

The only complaints I ever had was with OnCommand Unified Manager and Performance Manager, and they fixed them in the last version.

It's pretty reliable. We do our upgrades in the middle of the day, with parks open. If I'm not up at 3:00 in the morning doing an upgrade because of a risk, that's a great thing.

We haven't had to scale yet. However, we built it so if we do, it's very simple to do. We could probably do it with an onsite staff and not need professional services.

We have frequently used tech support. They are one of the best departments at NetApp. Without them, we wouldn't be able to operate the way we do.

Learn about the benefits of NVMe, NVME-oF and SCM. Read New Frontiers in Solid-State Storage.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

We had a different NetApp solution before. We actually started running the numbers, and due to the age of the systems, we were starting to lose multiple disks at a time. We were going to have a point where we lost data, so it was time to replace them. NetApp was the only vendor that really worked out during the quote process.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was very straightforward. By the end of the process, we had it down to where we were converting an entire park within 48 hours.

Definitely go with NetApp. You're going to look at other vendors. They may come in at a cheaper price point, but you will pay in the end with management costs and downtime.

Before purchase All Flash, we had a very high impression of NetApp as a vendor of high performance sound storage. It is still very high as it is the only vendor we would consider for mission critical systems based on our experience at this point.

We looked at some other vendors. They can't provide the single pane of glass management. We're a very thinly-staffed environment, and we need to be able to have a minimum number of people managing the maximum amount of resources. Other vendors don't do that.

For example, we looked at EMC. Their primary problem was the pane of glass problem. They offered three solutions to do what we're already doing with one. Nimble was the other solution which we looked at, and they were protocol limited. They could only do iSCSI, which would have required a significant architecture rebuilt for us.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• High availability
• Reliability
• Performance.

We have to be able to do the three P's. Get people in the front gate, sell them plush "Bugs Bunnies", and sell them pizzas. If we can't do that, we have a problem.

The most valuable feature is the support. If we have any issues, we can call into NetApp and their support is really good.

Speed and reliability of the data's access is the main reason why we went with All Flash. We mainly use All Flash for file storage.

With the new all solid state, it has really good performance.

We have had NetApp for many years. It's been reliable. If we have a disk go bad, they send it out with all the auto support features. We're hands off and all that stuff is being done behind the scenes. That's really valuable.

The primary use case is to put all of our data on NetApp, all of our primary data anyhow. Our SQL databases are Oracle databases. We even have all of our SIF shares on there right now just because we don't have that much. We're probably looking at 120 terabytes of data. We don't have that much, so we are able to put everything on All-Flash.

It would be nice to have better integration between SRM and VMware, as I've had some issues with that. Though this may just be our particular system and may not be a global issue.

Also, maybe include additional instructions on how to set it up properly.

We have been a NetApp customer for many years, so we had all SATA/SAS drives before. Just last year, we got the All Flash FAS system. Every year, it gets better.

We have been with NetApp for many years and haven't had any issues. If we do, NetApp is there to support us.

It's really good.

We had a vendor come in and they set us up.

Obviously depending on the price point, NetApp is obviously a little more expensive than your generic Dell SAN solution or whatever.

It's reliable. The speed is good. We've tried to push the thing to the max and it's almost impossible. The CPU of our host gets limited before the storage gets limited, therefore backup solutions for it is easy.

Depending on what your needs are, obviously NetApp would be the way to go.

We have our ESB system which was actually running on an older NetApp that was having severe latency. Therefore, we just implemented an All-Flash system this year, which dropped the latency by at least four times, so now it runs without any hiccups or problems.

The company as a whole definitely is far more lenient towards NetApp now that we have the All-Flash array because the major ESB system is now running without any problems. Thus, it's made a big difference in the outlook of NetApp for our company.

• Lower latency
• Easier to manage with the clustered system and everything with the newest ONTAP 9.
• Also it has the WAN acceleration between locations, which sped up our replication as well.

Higher communication: I love the professional services and I love everything that everyone's able to offer us, but I find sometimes we're not aware of all the things that NetApp can do.

With the new clustered system, because it has the switches in-between the cluster, it's far more redundant and far less likely to have any kind of outage, even if our network isn't as stable as we'd like it to be.

We haven't had to scale it yet.

I was the main engineer on the implementation. We had professional services that came out and helped us, install it and set it up, to make sure that everything was running properly, which was amazing. The set-up of the clustered system, while complex, was very necessary to ensure redundancy.

After it was set up, it was very straightforward getting moved over; pretty seamless for the most part.

Give NetApp a shot. There's a lot of other really good solutions out there as well. I'm pretty entrenched in NetApp personally because I think they do a great job.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Dependency and redundancy; just ensuring that we're able to stay up constantly. That's the biggest thing. It's because any downtime causes our stores not to be able to take transactions, that's not okay.

The benefits are automatic; the power consumption is very low with the All Flash and the performance is very high. So, it helped us to better serve our customers to do the VMware data source.

The scale up version of it is the most valuable feature. You can go to 24 nodes, which is very cool. We are primarily using VMware environment. We use it for VMware data source for our hosting customers. We have 32 petabytes of data on NetApp's storage, so we definitely use it for primary storage.

Going forward, I would like more performance analytics on it, on the area itself, instead of using some other tool.

It's very stable.

We have a 9.1 operating system on it, and it's very stable. We did an upgrade online, and we had no issues. We did a failover testing, and nothing. It's solid.

The scalability is good.

I use it for small issues, like how to configure using multiple VLANs. It was pretty easy to set up, and the technical support were very good.

We decided, as a company, to not buy any more disk storage for our primary customers, and that's the reason we needed All Flash. NetApp was a perfect fit because we could grow as we needed and it scales out the architecture works for us. We were looking for a high-performance, small, low footprint block rate, and NetApp fits in right there.

Very straightforward. NetApp already does all the installation for us. They just come in and set the IPs, etc.

It's a pretty solid solution. If you're looking for a block solution, or file solution, on flash, you definitely have to look at it.

It supports our virtualization, our VMware environment.

We're more nimble. We can move from block to file. The ability to have all of the efficiencies that come with it. The dedpulication, the compaction, the compression, give us those capabilities to get more bang for the buck.

The fact that we can move forward, increase capacity, update hardware, without having to take an outage.

There are a bunch of features that are available but aren't vetted for enterprise use yet, at least not in my environment.

Better stability, not releasing features until they are fully functional, or at least giving us a software train that doesn't add them until they are fully functional and proven. Right now, the long-term support model is nice but it still has features in it that are not ready. At least not for our environment.

NetApp's base solution is very solid. The latest, greatest features of course are not always that stable. We avoid those. If we stick with the tried and true, we have no problems. It's very stable.

It's extremely scalable. With the cDOT, you have the ability to add many, many nodes, and that gives you that capability of also being able to upgrade portions of it without taking the entire thing out.

Technical support, the first wave is a little bit rough sometimes to deal with. However, once you get to the right resources, it's quick in action.

It's actually kind of hard to deal with the first level because of the questions and we already have visibility into the triage sheets that they are asking us the questions from, and we've already gone through those. So we've moved beyond that dependence on the first level because of those triage sheets that are publicly available on the website.

It's been there as long as I've worked there. So, before that, CIFS, user shares, that kind of thing. It was never really an option for high performance storage.

We've been using Netapp for many years, long before I even came to the company.

It was very straightforward.

We're multi-vendor. We do EMC and NetApp. We will look at others but most don't have the track history that we are looking for.

We use AFF for both block storage and file storage. We are more likely to consider to NetApp for mission critical storage systems based on our experience with AFF. With clustered data ONTAP, it's actually a true enterprise solution that has upgrade paths that don't require actual downtime.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor solution is the ability to deliver in the long-term.

The TCO makes it a very desirable solution. The efficiencies are more than worth the money. It means you can have a small footprint but support a lot of different solutions within the datacenter.