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SolidFire pros and cons

Vendor: NetApp
4.1 out of 5

Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

SolidFire is highly scalable, accommodating expansion needs seamlessly.
Performance management is enhanced by full API functionality and consistent performance levels.
It is straightforward to scale up SolidFire according to business needs.
SolidFire is ideal for mid-sized businesses due to its compactness and speed.
Provisioning processes are efficient, reducing latency and optimizing data transfer, beneficial for quick data mining results.

CONS

SolidFire could improve its compatibility with other products.
SolidFire's technical support needs to be improved.
SolidFire should consider reducing the starting point from four nodes to two nodes to lower the cost.
SolidFire users may face some security issues at times that need improvement.
SolidFire's scalability concerns when compared to PowerMax or NetApp AFF series devices due to lack of shelf connectivity.
 

SolidFire Pros review quotes

it_user748332 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Architect at a consultancy with self employed
Oct 4, 2017
The square footage for doing development is at a premium when dealing with government networks. To be able to put a lot of IOPS in a lot of high-speed performing drives in a very small location which requires very little HVAC with very little power, it is very valuable to us.
Principl4cf9 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principle Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Oct 8, 2017
Being able to provide quality of service as promised.
it_user750603 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior It Systems Engineer at Billion Automative
Oct 8, 2017
The simplicity of it.
Learn what your peers think about SolidFire. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user750636 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Architect at Ciena
Oct 8, 2017
We can add a node, we add compute, we add storage, and we've had really good luck with that.
it_user750735 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Target
Oct 8, 2017
Templates are already predefined for it. If you're coding it up, it will take two days. You can pick up a template right there from the API, and it just works for you. Implementation done in 10 minutes.
SeniorStb88f - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Storage Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 8, 2017
Individual settings you can put on each individual volume, if you want to do that.
it_user750771 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Storage Administrator at Ensono
Oct 8, 2017
The scalability and being able to implement it quickly.
it_user750786 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Admin at Niaid
Oct 8, 2017
Greater IOPS, speed, it's all-flash. So seeing that everything is going to all-flash, all SSDs, SolidFire fits right in there with the emerging trend in IT.
it_user465198 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Oct 8, 2017
We can just buy them, scale them as we need on demand, and we don't have to spend so many front end cycles on designing the architecture.
it_user750804 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Oct 8, 2017
SolidFire is one of the products that does have great APIs right out-of-the-box. It works great. The tools and the other stuff seem to work a little better right out-of-the-box than the ONTAP stuff does, C-Mode.
 

SolidFire Cons review quotes

it_user748332 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Architect at a consultancy with self employed
Oct 4, 2017
It would be good to provide administrative access at the root level to be able to do things with the system, if need be.
Principl4cf9 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principle Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Oct 8, 2017
I would like to see integration with the cloud, number one. Being able to spin SolidFire in the cloud.
it_user750603 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior It Systems Engineer at Billion Automative
Oct 8, 2017
We are looking for, potentially, on the Active IQ reporting side, to do reporting based on the datastore. Right now, I can report on the whole SolidFire, or I can report on just a certain datastore or a volume. I'd like to take all of my VDI infrastructure, which as an example would be multiple datastores.
Learn what your peers think about SolidFire. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user750636 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Architect at Ciena
Oct 8, 2017
We had some false positives, power supplies failing, and that's really been about it. We had a couple of glitches during some upgrade processes but nothing that was really concerning to us.
it_user750735 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Target
Oct 8, 2017
So feature-wise, I would say more reporting tools that could be merged into it.
SeniorStb88f - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Storage Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 8, 2017
A little better segregation of the multi-tenancy. Right now, it's just VLAN-specific, that's all you can do.
it_user750771 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Storage Administrator at Ensono
Oct 8, 2017
It's a very good Windows-type solution. But we do a lot of legacy systems and the like. So it's getting that incorporated into it that would help us.
it_user750786 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Admin at Niaid
Oct 8, 2017
We have a large fiber channel infrastructure, and that's one area that we haven't seen implemented in SolidFire, its more iSCSI.
it_user465198 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Oct 8, 2017
When you set up the nodes, we have to serial into each one of these nodes to configure the IP ranges. It's still very easy, but it's time consuming.
it_user750804 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Oct 8, 2017
They could do a file-based NAS: SolidFire NAS-based. It's probably not its niche, but that is our direction, not to use block, and it's block. Solid state block is what it is.