NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

• Clustered Data ONTAP
• Data recovery
• Protection

Our company has a web application for post-lab test results, and with flash, the application is much faster than it used to be. The customers can see results much faster and can then send new requests for labs faster.

At the moment it's perfect to me because I haven’t used it that long.

We've used it for about a month with different applications for laboratory software.

We had no issues with deployment.

So far the stability is excellent

It scales to our needs.

The customer service is pretty good.

The technical support is pretty good.

We used NetApp FAS previously and switched to the flash version.

The initial setup was generally straightforward, though there were a couple areas that could be streamlined or made a little more clear in terms of which direction we should go.

We used a vendor team.

It's too early for us to tell.

No other options were evaluated.

It’s a pretty good solution; go for it.

It’s really reliable and fast. My customers have several other NetApp systems, but here they really needed the low latency.

Also, clustered Data ONTAP is valuable.

It sped up our data queries and we can work more efficiently. These queries are now done in seconds rather than minutes, affecting everything we do on a day-to-day basis.

I haven’t encountered anything the customer needs that this solution can’t do.

We've used the 8080 for eight months and the 8060 for two months. They're used mainly for VMware products and SQL databases.

I haven’t had any stability problems yet with our current customers.

It scales to our needs.

8/10

We haven’t needed to escalate to NetApp’s tech support.

I went from working with NetApp FAS to AFF, so I stayed in the family. The customer was satisfied with their FAS system but needed lower latency, so it was a clear choice.

The initial setup was very straightforward. When you've worked with NetApp for a while, it is very easy to setup their new systems. If you are new to the system, then there is a learning curve, but NetApp provides great documentation.

I implement it for our customers.

It’s a great choice, and you are on the right path using this product.

• Clustered Data ONTAP
• Snapshot implementation for SAP

It allows us to shrink the maintenance windows and downtime. It provides faster replications between systems because of the installed flash.

ONTAP has a lot of features that are really great, so I don’t think there is something missing that I'd like to have.

However, the best way to improve would be to have better management over the solutions globally (not a part of the software OnCommand, VFA, etc. installed). It would be great to combine all the software solutions together under a single GUI and people can just activate different features as they buy a license as apposed new installs each time.

We've been using it for four months in a multiple system environment with a lot of small writes. This was installed for an SAP HANA system as the persistency layer.

There has been no downtime yet -- perfect stability.

It scales to our needs.

10/10

We didn't have anything similar in use previously.

It's a straightforward and easy setup. It was guided and we had the documents to install it. It took around two days of racking, stacking, and installation.

I did the implementation myself.

We looked also looked at EF from NetApp and chose AFF because of the snapshot technology.

It's definitely worth it if you need the speed.

The speed is really the most important feature for us. The SnapManager feature is also very important.

It will reduced query time because we have a lot of them that take a long time to execute. We created the database because we need to know which product I have available in the warehouse, and this is most important thing for me. Because we have the flash array, the queries to find this out will be much faster.

The product is great for us now.

We bought it recently and use it for BI and partially for SAP. We are planning on implementing ONTAP.

It will scale to our needs.

It's very high.

It's been perfect so far.

I looked at Pure Storage and we decided to get NetApp because they have SnapManager, which Pure Storage doesn't. I need to create a copy of the production DB and without SnapManager, I cannot do this.

Buy it if you need the speed and SnapManager.

Right now, it’s the ability to have full flash based solution with NFS that's most valuable for us. Because Pure Storage does not offer that, only block storage, we need NFS for our services to work.

It's improved the speed, obviously, compared to what we are used to, and the latency. It’s the same OS as the regular NetApp FAS, so you don’t need to learn anything again.

All the storage for the VMs are hosted on the platform of individual companies. When you host everything on NetApp, everything needs to grow and shrink for each customer. They don’t know what their customers are using it for, but NetApp allows us to be prepared for anything without knowing anything.

I'd like to see a one-click-and-start feature for the initial setup. That means software that just asks you a few questions and takes care of the rest.

We're in the process of starting a partnership, and we've been a client for five years.

So far quite good.

The 8080 is the biggest product at NetApp so you can scale very wide. With this kind of product we have no problems at all.

8/10, the two points missing is the same with every tech support, even if the customer knows very well what the issue is. Tech support still needs to go through the script to arrive at the same conclusion.

We started with NetApp five years ago and are still with them now. At the point we started, there were no competitors. At that time, it was a really great choice and it still is today.

Cluster mode setup was complex to do the first time, but everything else was straightforward.

We looked for support, stability, and that we don’t have a vendor who would disappear two years later. That is one reason we didn’t chose Pure Storage, because we don’t know where they will be in a few years. We needed a trusted partner.

It is still cluster mode, and is complex to set up the first time. You have to plan a long time ahead during the initial setup because you don’t know how you will want to scale.

We only looked at NFS because that’s what we need. If you need flash speed and NFS today you only have AFF. If you are looking at SAN, check out all the companies and features to compare them.

The features most valuable to us are--

• A-SIS deduplication
• vServer DR, which is a new feature in v8.3.1

The peak loads on a software install for VDI desktops now have lower latency. Previously, we had a 3240 with HDDs. For normal operation the HDDs with flash cache were fine, but for virus scans and software installations/patching, we would start at midnight and end at three or four am. However, sometimes at four deduplication operations would start and that runs concurrently with the installation that isn’t complete. So as a consequence, we had terrible latency until 11 or 12 so our users were unhappy with that situation. With the AFF, we have absolutely no problem at all.

It’s still new so the only thing I can think of is if the price for SSDs comes down and we can switch everything to flash, that would be an improvement.

I've used it for three years. We're currently running VDI on it with ONTAP.

We had an easy deployment because we have a VMware environment where we use vMotion from the old FAS to the new AFF.

Very stable, 100% uptime.

It scales to our needs.

8/10.

8/10.

We used FAS and we switched because of the above reasons.

It was straightforward.

We used a vendor team who were 10/10.

Straightforward.

The situation before was terrible; we had things to do and couldn’t. It was a high pressure situation. 3,000 people couldn’t work for four hours. Now they can start working on time.

No other options were evaluated.

It’s a good product, performs well and is easy to get up and running. If you need the speed, go for it.

Hands down, the most valuable feature is the speed of flash.

With anything that’s flash, it comes down to speed. If I need sub-millisecond 300,000 IOPS, for example, Flash FAS will provide that for us.

I've not been using it long enough to know.

None.

We’re just starting out, so hard to say. So far, so good.

So far, it looks like it's going to be incredibly scalable as I just install additional nodes as needed.

It's fantastic. NetApp is awesome.

Once you’ve done one, it seems very intuitive. However, the first time seems very complicated.

Buy as much as you can afford.

The speed, we have multiple apps with high IO requirements (Hadoop, Mongo, and some monitoring tools), we’re using our monitoring tools to spin up and spin down our environment.

Flexibility, being able to network multiple 880 series together to increase speed. We’re building a four head environment with goal of 500,000 IOPS/second. With the amount of data from monitoring tools and data storage, we need incredible speeds.

We've been using NetApp products for 15 years.

No issues encountered, and none are anticipated.

As we continue forward, we can add additional heads with same IOPS.

From what we’ve seen so far, we’re very happy with potential.

ONTAP A3 was huge for me because it introduced non-disruptive upgrades, which is imperative in the retail business.

We have a lot of applications that utilize it, and it has ties for e-commerce. Anytime there's the slightest blip in availability, it’s noticeable across the entire enterprise. Upgrade and upware swaps are seamless.

The process for initial setup could be streamlined. I had a couple of instances that weren’t clear in terms of which direction I should go.

We’ve used it for one year now.

It's rock solid, we've only run into one small bug in the code. NetApp were very responsive in getting us to identify it, and providing us with a workaround. I have very little to do in management of FAS because it’s so stable.

We haven’t yet needed to scale. We only have two nodes, but I have plans to present to management for growth. I know it will be seamless in adding nodes in clusters. I’m not afraid to take it on because I know it’ll be easy.

They’re incredibly responsive. We found a bug in the virus scanner that was causing issue in our environment. They identified it and gave us workaround shortly which allowed us to stay online and productive until they provided fix with 8.3. We haven’t had a problem since.

It was mildly complex. At the time, I had very little experience with seven-mode, and we had some falste starts with getting cdot configured. But we used the seven-mode migration tool for 20 terrabytes of data in two days.

I’m in love with FAS series and am chomping at the bit to get my hands on all-flash

What are you waiting for? They’re easy and rock solid. cDot is a gamechanger. The ability to abstract everything into the virtual layer makes management easier and gives you tremendous flexibility. Makes my life much simpler.