NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Reviews

Its performance is most valuable. This solution is much faster than other as well as older storage solutions. The performance of the system is very good. We are getting 50 times better experience than the older storages. We are using AFF 300. It also has native cloud integration and most of the features.

Its pricing should be better. Its price is competitive, but they need to improve the pricing. They have different licensing models, which they need to improve.

My expectation was cloud integration, which they have, but it is a different license. Therefore, people cannot enjoy it. If I want to use it, I need to pay extra. There is a cost involved for everything, but it should reach everyone. It is similar to having a Rolls-Royce, but you need to pay extra for the key. If you want the key, you need to pay.

It is very stable.

We have around 3,000 users. We plan to increase the usage of this product.

Their technical support is good. I am satisfied with their support.

I have been using only NetApp in this company, and it is good. I also have experience with solutions from Hitachi, EMC, Dell, IBM, HP, and others.

It is very easy. It hardly took four hours.

We used an integrator for deployment, and we are satisfied with the experience.  

They need to improve its pricing. The storage market is dying. So, they need to improve the price because it should reach all people. NetApp is one of the top ones, and they are charging a little bit of royalty as compared to other storage solutions.

I would rate NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays a ten out of ten.

On-premises

The most valuable feature is just the speed. Our databases perform much better since we moved over to it. That's really our value. We use it for SQL and Oracle. The DBAs are happy.

The end-user experience has improved the organization as a whole; the customers that the DBAs serve. All the application folks are happier, now that their databases are running better.

I guess the user interface could be a little more streamlined. There are too many different menus you have to go into. I've used other interfaces on other storage arrays that are just more streamlined, more intuitive. Overall, it's not that bad. It's really just a minor tweak.

Other than that, I really don't see anything.

We've had it up and running for two years and have had no problems with it; stable for us.

We haven't scaled it yet. We haven't added any storage to it yet, but I've worked with these arrays in the past, and I know they're pretty easy to scale out.

I haven't had the need to use technical support.

We wanted an all-flash array for our databases. We have a previous relationship with NetApp. We decided to just try it out, and it worked out.

Those actually were on a different vendor storage array. They were on SAS drives, and we moved it over to the all-flash from there.

Initial setup was easy. I've had experience with it in the past. Even if you don't, it's not that bad, really.

We looked at NetApp flash vs IBM. We compared EMC vs NetApp Flash. There were a few other smaller vendors.

We eventually went with NetApp because we had a previous great relationship with them.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are stability, direction, and service/support; great support. Those are the big ones for me.

I don't think anything's perfect. They could make a few minor tweaks with the user interface, and maybe a few more little things they can tweak, but other than that, it's pretty solid.

If you want cost-effective, fast disk, this is really a good solution.

Cost: it's a lot cheaper. It's a lot cheaper than what the other vendors have for the same type of environment. It saves us money.

The ease of use is the most valuable feature; something that we can use for a flash and all-flash type of environment that we can really put a heavy workload on. It gives us an environment to where we can really push a lot harder. We have multiple vendors in our establishment. We have NetApp, EMC, IBM, HP; we have pretty much all of them.

We do a lot of in-house, application-dependent type things, where we find the different niches to the different things. Certain things they do better. We've found that it actually does very well on some of our higher-end applications.

I would like to see a way for NetApp personnel that are used to the FAS and the CDOT systems, to be able to easier translate that experience and knowledge into using the EF series. There are some differences in there and it will throw off, when you're trying to train somebody, as far as bringing in somebody new into the group. When they're supposed to be responsible, it's another technology for them to try to learn. Something that would help port that process; make them similar in how the manageability of it is functioned.

Obviously, everything can be improved on so I won't ever give anything a perfect rating. But as far as the manageability, being able to port between the two and have to do less training in-house from a customer point of view, that would be the part to improve.

We have not had an outage with it yet. Other vendors, we have. We've had an actual high-end frame completely go down on us.

We haven't done too much with scalability yet in our environment, so I don't really know. From my point of view, I can't answer that one.

I have used technical support but to me tech support for the EF is the same as the tech support for the rest of the NetApp environments: pretty quick, pretty easy. It's a lot more fluid.

I requested it, but I didn't make the decision.

We knew we needed to invest in the EF series mostly because we have a lot of files, we have some CDOT systems that we have in there with the 8060s right now, and we knew that we had some environments where we're looking at XtremeIO and so on. We were trying to find something comparable to it and, honestly, within our company, there wasn't a whole lot of knowledge that there were more options.

I brought it up and said, "Hey what about these guys?" And they said something like, "Oh, they don't have it." And here it is. That was what brought it in. We were using XtremeIO and I wanted to move over to this, because of cost.

XtremeIO, when it got bought out by EMC, the cost went up and the support model for EMC is the same across all products. However, now it's even more, because you have to call EMC and then EMC points you over to a third party and it's troublesome.
The advantage of XtremeIO is the GUI system, which is extremely easy. It really is. It's based off of almost like the old XIV. The XIV system from IBM was an extremely easy GUI, just slide. It's almost like using a Windows system and they kind of ported that into the XtremeIO, which made it easier for that as far as the manageability side of it. However, as far as flexibility, it didn't have a whole lot there.

Besides NetApp and XtremeIO, we brought another one in-house and it didn't make it through the first stage. We pushed it and actually crashed it. You shouldn't see a flash crash but we did.

Reliability is the most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with.

I was involved in the initial setup; I helped built it out in the lab.

We normally have the vendors come in and actually do the physical build-out of the systems themselves but then, once they start doing the next part, which is the configuration, they bring us in, it's simple. It was very simple. There wasn't a whole lot for us to do.

Make sure you truly test the possible solutions one-on-one against each other and not just let the vendor tell you the answer. A lot of times, their answer is dependent on the criteria that they use to give it.

The basic use cases are for extreme performance applications, databases, converged infrastructure, virtualization like VDI, and scenarios requiring low power and cooling with high streaming performance. Examples include oil and gas, banking, and any industry needing these features.

Its cost-effectiveness is a major selling point. Compared to other storage vendors, the EF-Series offers excellent value for its price. It's truly a leading product in the industry.

The only major drawback is the replication between EF-Series units. Both the EF-series and NetApp are marketing this feature, but it is not functional yet.  

However, I believe NetApp is actively working on improving this feature and implementing the replication feature between storage systems. 

We've been a NetApp partner since 2010, so we're familiar with the EF-Series.

It's a highly stable product. I'd rate it a nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. It's best fit for mid-range and high-end enterprise clients. 

It has two models. The EF300 model caters to lower-end to mid-range, while the EF600 is for highly scalable enterprise solutions. So, medium and enterprise benefit most.

It can also be offered for lower-end solutions. If a customer or organization is small, it can be scaled from small to enterprise.

The customer service and support are really very good.

Positive

As a solution provider, we don't use specific products ourselves, but sell them based on experience and knowledge. 

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy. It is almost ten; it is very easy to setup.

It's a storage system that can be used in both on-premises and cloud environments as part of a larger solution. However, it's important to note that the entire solution, including compute and storage, can be cloud-enabled if needed.

It can be deployed in as little as 30 minutes.

If one is cheap and ten is expensive, then I'd rate the pricing a three.  

Overall, the solution is best in class. I'd rate it a nine out of ten.

Our company used this solution primarily for databases. The customer who currently uses it mainly uses it for the data store. He uses it as a single silo with the storage it offers, so he implements the project and uses what he needs to. The solution is not that flexible that you can change the workload so it depends on what you designed before. So you have to compute for your load or for your use before you do the setup.

The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our databases. What's great about this solution is that it speeds up our data store because it is a cheap solution for flash performances.

What I really like about this solution is that it is easy to use and the implementation was straightforward. The availability is another feature that stands out for me, as it offers a variety of ways to connect to our customers. 

One thing that may need to improve is the software monitoring as it is based on a work station that is serviced to give support to the management. The manager may not be as fast on board the controller, so it needs something else to make it easier to manage. Managing the storage is, therefore, the only single point of failure.

We have been using NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays for ten years, but currently only one of our customers are still using it. He is using the EF560 version of this solution.

We've used the NetApp EF-Series for ten years and it has been extremely stable. 

I think the scalability of the solution is really good. We can scale with the space, but not with the computation capabilities or with the controllers. I believe the reason for this is that it is an old style storage system. There are some new products on the market that are more agile and more scalable. 

I am not sure how many users our customer has, but I think it is about 100 users. The scalability would depend on the kind of VM system they're working on.

The technical support is very good. The solution doesn't require that much maintenance because it's quite easy and very robust as a storage system. When we did call in the help of support, they responded quickly and offered the correct solution. 

Our client used another solution before but they found that the NetApp EF-Series is much faster when it comes to performance. And they saved a lot of money with the cost of the fast drives.

The initial setup was straightforward and having fewer features to install makes it really simple. You only need a strong internet connection and once you've applied it onto the network, it is easy to find the managing software and to set everything up.

The deployment took no longer than 50 minutes. Once installed, you only need to supply the management IP address and after that, depending on the number of the LANs to be implemented, everything is complete. 

The biggest part of the job is first to configure the IP address for the management. The maintenance is really simple and you can upgrade without interrupting services. When implementing, the main job is to do some configuration, implement the LANs, the zoning and the masking. After that, it will stay as it is for a long time. I believe firmware updates can be handled by one person alone. 

We never use an integrator - we do our installations ourselves. And so far we haven't experienced any trouble.

Our license is fully integrated now, so we don't have any additional payments. We do use volume cryptography, but I believe it is free.

I will rate this solution a nine out of ten because it has limited storage. Before you take on a project, you must know how much storage you need, but once you focus on the system, it will give you great performance, reliability and ease of use.

A disadvantage of NetApp stems from the fact that it does not have a product, like Isilon, that offers object-oriented storage.

NetApp needs to focus on making its product more compatible with other tools and curb the extra charges they attach to their standard licenses.

I have experience with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I have been selling the solution for the last three to four years. I am a reseller of NetApp products.

Compared to Dell Unity XT, what I see as an advantage in NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is the fact that it is more scalable. You can get a box from the same series of NetApp if you want one and a half petabytes of space. Owing to the aforementioned reasons, I recommend the solution to bigger companies.

The solution's technical support is not as good as it is supposed to be since you have to push them to get support. I rate the technical support a seven to seven and a half out of ten.

Neutral

I don't think NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays has advantages over Dell Unity XT because when I compare them technically, I feel Dell is better. When I sell five boxes of Dell, I sell one box of NetApp.

The deployment phase of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is tricker when compared to Dell. NetApp has a typical operating system that is known to them only.

Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately. The licensing model of NetApp is not intuitive enough.

I would say that it is an okay product that is not bad. A few people specifically ask for NetApp products.

The performance of the product is good.

I don't have any recommendations for people planning to use NetApp products since I don't like their solutions.

I rate the overall product an eight to eight and a half out of ten.

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are used for system backups. We mainly use it to store our ERP.

The hardware and software of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are easy for us to use.

We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily.

I have been using NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays for approximately nine years.

The solution is stable.

I would rate the scalability of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays a ten out of ten.

All of our IT specialist department is using the solution, which is approximately 10 people.

The technical support has been very good.

The time of deployment depends on the management system but typically takes one hour. Some of the processes are difficult and others are simple.

We used vendor support for the implementation, we had a good experience.

We have five people for the deployment and maintenance.

The cost of our license is approximately $200,000 over three years for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. There can be additional costs for storage. For example, if you want to have eight terabytes.

We have recently upgraded our system and will not need to update it for more than three years.

My advice to others is all-flash systems are better than other systems.

We will continue with this system and if we need more capacity or performance we will upgrade the solution. We know this solution's software, hardware devices, and support are very good.

I rate NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays a ten out of ten.

On-premises

The primary use case of this solution is for banking services. It is one of three of our production systems in which we store all of our customer's data. 

Thirty percent of our production traffic for our company is stored with this solution.

The deployment model used is a private cloud.

The main advantage of this solution is performance. 

This solution does not have any compression or deduplication, but instead gains better performance through concurrency.

We cannot share data in what is described as a trunk port, which is a disadvantage.

Technical support is an area that needs improvement.

In the next release, I would like to have staged access. The administrator would be able to connect to all of the storage and see real-time performance and issues, not only in the web interface. If the administrator is working on the console they should have access to all interfaced controllers.

I have been using this solution for two years.

I have had a couple of technical tasks, but I think that they have good technical support when you inquire about hardware. They have a problem when you ask about software-related issues. 

When you have a hardware issue, it is reloved within the time limit described and agreed to in the SLA. 

When it's a software-related issue, it is difficult to find an engineer that can help you. You spend time describing your issue to a person who then says that they can help you, but it will take time. A week later you explain it again. 

Only when they prioritize your request, will they assign an engineer to resolve your issue.

The initial setup was easy. I spent an hour with the setup. 

One of the last initial setups I performed was difficult. It was on IBM Storage and the manual stated that you could connect to an IP address. It was supposed to work but when you connected to this address it did not ping and you cannot connect to them.

We had to connect with the console and create a cluster manually. This took approximately five hours. In the last two years, since the deployment, I have not had any issues with it.

It is very easy, and even a person with a minimal background could do it with no problem.

We are not talking about using this for all of our data storage, as that can be very expensive. We have singular pricing for the solutions we use.

Vendors who provide all-flash storage have singular pricing that depends on a couple of factors.

If we compare this storage solution with Concurrent, the price is the same, but the performance is much better.

The pricing is comparable with other competitors and similar in mid-range solutions, and for high range solutions, it would depend on our requirements or needs.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.