NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

The tool's most valuable feature is SVM. I also like the speed and response of the filers. 

We should be able to manage NetApp AFF as per the desired usage and needs. 

I have been using the product for five years. 

NetApp AFF is stable. 

NetApp AFF's support is excellent. 

Positive

We have seen ROI with the product's use. 

NetApp AFF has helped us unify and manage the shares under one domain. 

The product has helped to reduce operational latency. 

The tool has helped us optimize costs with its deduplication, data efficiency, and compression features. 

I rate it a nine out of ten. 

The most valuable feature of the solution is data protection and snapshot technology for backup. 

NetApp AFF needs to focus more on block storage. It has to focus on high-end, performance-driven applications. 

I have been working with the solution for more than five years. 

NetApp AFF is scalable. 

NetApp AFF has good technical support. 

Positive

We chose NetApp AFF because it is flexible and reliable. It offers a unified storage system. 

NetApp AFF's deployment is straightforward. You can deploy it within half a day. 

NetApp AFF's pricing is competitive. It is not expensive or cheap. The tool's pricing is based on configurations and can cost around 150-160 dollars for 70 TB of storage. 

We recommend the solution to small, mid, and enterprise companies. I rate it an eight out of ten. 

Our primary use case for AFF is for file storage.

It simplifies IT operations.

Thin provisioning enables us to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. Thin provisioning is obviously heavily utilized so we don't have to buy a new kit.

AFF has enabled us to move large amounts of data from one data center to another. It has also affected IT operations by greatly improving resilience.

AFF SSDs have improved application response times. We've seen a five-fold decrease in the latency figure.

Datacenter costs have decreased because of the smaller footprint and less power usage. In one system we saw six racks go down to half a rack. It's probably five to one in terms of actual data space.

Speed, reliability, ease of use are the most valuable features. 

The overall latency in your environment is very good. 

We don't use the solution for artificial intelligence or machine learning applications.

The simplicity around data protection and data management is very good. We use SnapVault for data protection which works very well. SnapMirror is also good. We mainly use the command line a lot, so we don't tend to use many provisioning tools.

We have had issues with CIFS presentations and outages, so if that was removed, we could do seamless upgrades without affecting CIFS presentations. That would be an advantage. That's about the only improvement I can think of.

It's stable.

Scalability is very good. 

The technical support is very good. We haven't had any issues. 

Initially, the setup was complex because it was new and very different, it was 7-Mode to cDot. We got a lot of support from NetApp so it wasn't an issue. It was just complex, but they provided the assistance we needed.

We are integrators but NetApp consultants also help.

We always use NetApp for our file services.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. Nothing would make it a ten, nothing is perfect. I would advise someone considering this solution to buy it!

• High performance
• Good improvement in IOPS
• Less latency
• Easy to manage

Functionally it did improve our company. It improved internal customer performance.

It's good.

Scalability wise, it is also good, although we have not had to scale yet.

It is good. I rate it nine out of 10.

We have other storage as well but we have been using NetApp for a long time.

We have a weekly call with the NetApp representative, we have been getting that from them. From them we understood that we needed to get a new solution.

EMC. We chose NetApp over EMC because support is good.

Our primary use case is databases using NAS file storage. Our impression of NetApp as a vendor of high performance SAN storage before the purchase was that it's good. Now that we have it, we still think it's good. We are more likely to consider NetApp for mission critical storage systems because of the improvement in the performance.

In terms of selecting a vendor, in the case of PoC, we look for more support and faster responses.

I would advise a colleague researching similar products that this is the preferred solution.

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.

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.

Two functions are valuable for us:

• Snapshot: We are able to replicate/clone production environments to test the SW version up (e.g. the Oracle Financials upgrades).
• MetroCluster: Our disaster recovery is based on two active-active sites. The MetroCluster feature allowed us to continue our operations (without business interruption) when we stopped one of the sites.

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

This solution is based on the scale-out concept. Some workload balancing activities across the nodes are not transparent (requires server downtime).

When moving volumes between controllers, you should always use the optimized path.

FCP is doing this automatically, but NFS unfortunately not.

So when moving NFS volumes between controllers, you will not move the load to the other controller.

To do this, you need to remount the volume to the correct LIF.

We did encounter stability issues but nothing that interrupted the solution; more background type of problems.

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

We did encounter scalability issues, the solution is not delivering the requested performance (I/O response time for the requested IOPS).

The technical support level is between poor to medium in our geography.

Previously, we were using the older generation of the NetApp MetroCluster (6240 unit). We switched as this unit was not performant enough, i.e., it had a high maintenance cost for the performance delivered.

Negotiate everything, i.e., including the price for the future capacity upgrades as part of the deal.

We looked at EMC, HPE, and Fujitsu.

You need to understand the limitations of the scale-out architecture.

• CIFS (stable solution)
• Ability to support multiple protocols

• SVM application provisioning: makes it easier to provision applications for VMware, VDI, Oracle, and SQL.
• All flash: low latency and higher IOPS since it’s all flash.

Firmware upgrades consistently continue to be the weak spot in all NetApp products.

For 8 months now.

I have not yet had any stability issues.

I have not had any issues with scalability.

On a scale of 1-5, I would rate them 3.5.

On a scale of 1-5, I would rate them 3.5.

Initial setup was complex. In spite of the new CDOT 9, NetApp setup is still complex. It requires configuration of all the network interfaces, SVMs, which can become a little overwhelming.

NetApp is trying to stay in competition and are offering competitive prices to existing/new consumers. The key is being aggressive.

We looked at Pure Storage and Nimble.

Be prepared for a lot of configuration hiccups before being operational.