NetApp AFF A-Series is ideal for high-performance storage in enterprise environments. It efficiently handles large-scale data and provides reliable storage for virtual machines, databases, and critical applications.
NetApp AFF A-Series stands out for its speed, reliability, and robust data protection features. Users find its management easy and appreciate the efficiency in handling large workloads. Its seamless integration with cloud services and high data transfer speeds with reduced latency enhance its appeal. Scalability and support for various applications make it a top choice for enterprises. However, there is room for improvement in documentation, technical support response time, and third-party application integration.
What are the standout features of NetApp AFF A-Series?NetApp AFF A-Series is implemented across industries to support virtual machines, large databases, and critical applications. It's particularly valuable in financial services for fast transaction processing, in healthcare for managing extensive patient records and imaging data, and in tech companies for supporting development environments and big data analytics.
It has given us a stable, consistent, high-performance platform to run our enterprise software, including file shares and just about anything else. We're a VMware vSphere shop and run this solution for that entire system. It's really given us a leg up for general production purposes.
We also own a disaster recovery site. We use SnapMirror to get all of our important volumes moved over there. It's been a very good fit.
The amazing aspect is that whenever we have come up with an issue where we need to get something done, and it wasn't necessarily available, they could add it within the next revision of the software. We've had several iterations of the solution's hardware. We're on our second generation of FlexPod.
Ten years ago, we had to update our SQL servers. Moving LUNs from an old version to a new one was quite a process. However, recently, we just did something similar. We moved from AFF a 200 to a 250. Since they've updated the ONTAP software, this time around, it was non-disruptive, and it took less than a weekend.
We're a manufacturer. All of our ERP software is dependent upon fast performance and connection to this hardware. So when there was an issue years ago when something was wrong or slow, that prompted us to say, "Can we check storage? Can we check the network?" Ever since we've gone up to all-flash FAS systems, there's never any questions about performance when it comes to storage. There's been a huge leap from spinning disks to SSDs. I'm hoping with the next update, we'll go to NVMe and we'll have similar experiences.
Last year, we refreshed the SAN at our headquarters. We signed a Keystone agreement with the ability to pay for storage as a service at an excellent price point yet still have the hardware on-prem. I manage the hardware, and, for me, it's the best of both worlds. We've just come up with a situation where, finally, after some time, we're going to need to buy some additional storage. In previous situations like this, it usually meant the purchase of an additional shelf at a large price. Now we have Keystone, and we're locked in at that price per tebibyte. We just have to say that we want to add 25 tebibytes and they take care of it. It's worked out really well.
We work ISO 27001 certified. Since I manage the enterprise storage, we use SnapMirror, and we're currently using Veeam for backups. Thanks to what this tool provides, we are able to get through that portion of our certification without a problem. No changes, no rectifying. It's very slick.
Our company's goals include maintaining a level of consistency. We're never going to be on the bleeding edge. We're never going to have the super fastest abilities. We want something that works, is easier for us to manage, and has a better growth path. For us, in the past, in the need for additional disk space, if we didn't do the sizing right in the first place, buying additional disks was incredibly expensive. Now, with Keystone, that's no longer an issue, and that's what we like.
I really don't have a lot of complaints. In the past, there were issues. However, they've really done a great job of reaching out. We have never wanted super high performance. We want something that's going to be up and working all the time, and this solution has done a tremendous job with that.
We have been a customer for more than 15 years.
Things have gotten so that the performance of the solution's systems has gotten so good. Our SQL or Microsoft SQL shop is running that on physical hardware. We're an AFF FlexPod shop, so it's Cisco UCS Blades. Now we're talking about the next server and SQL OS upgrade. We're talking about going virtual all the way. The information I've gotten has pushed me forward that, yes, virtual is the way that we need to do it. We don't have the internal resources, so we're going to engage a third party to help us do that. I don't have any hesitancy now to recommend that virtualizing SQL is going to be a good move.
We do most of our growth through acquisition. If we buy additional manufacturing companies, and they're large enough that they require a SAN, it'll be a NetApp SAN, almost certainly. The other thing is that we are on the verge of refreshing. We have a bunch of more 2620s out there, which have gone end of life. I have them under third-party support, but I want to get newer controllers, and I want to get the ability to run a newer version of ONTAP. There are so many great features in the newer versions of ONTAP. We're at 9.11.13 right now which is stable, and has high performance. There's so much great stuff in the newer versions that I want to get to.
We've only had to reach out a few times to support, and most of it is for issues like a failed hard disk or things like that. We've only had one situation where we had a failed controller, and they really went the extra mile to make sure that we got up and in production as soon as possible.
I've been lucky in that one of the original storage engineers I worked with is now an employee. I can always just reach out, send an email to him, and he will either say "Yes, that's something you should look into," or he'll say, "No, you're going down a blind alley there." To have a technical resource like that is phenomenal.
We were originally an EMC Shop 15 or 16 years ago. They weren't looking to the future. They were set in their ways, and they didn't want to do things that were a little adventurous. This solution has always been willing to take risks.
We were able to get pricing that was very similar to what Pure has. And for a lot of situations, the only thing Pure had was that they were cheaper. They wanted to keep us as a customer, and they were flexible. End-of-quarter pricing discounts help. We're we're comfortable with this product. They're bringing us an entire new storage system in what would have been a lot of work on our end.
Every time we've done a refresh, it's been my fiduciary responsibility to look for options. We looked at Pure last time. We are heavily leveraged into NFS for hosting our VMs. Pure doesn't, despite its low price, have any NFS offerings. That was one of the many reasons we continue to stick with NetApp.
I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.
Since we're a privately held manufacturing company, we tend to buy the lowest level hardware. For example, we bought a manufacturing company, and we needed to buy a SAN. So we got a 2750, which is near the absolute lowest end. However, that fits our purpose. The fact that no matter what SAN we're running, they're all running ONTAP is a boom for management. That said, I hope that they will continue to not ignore the low end and continue to offer products, like the FAS line that will fit a purpose for a location that's just looking to put up a couple of VMware ESXi hosts and to have NetApp SAN for shared storage and for things like SnapMirror. That would make us happy. We're never going to be buying petabytes worth of storage.
We have not stepped into AI at all yet. That said, NetApp does security additions built in ONTAP which is a good barrier against malware and ransomware. We're definitely leveraging that.
We're going to leverage their anti-ransomware and anti-malware since cybersecurity insurance is important. Every company needs to have it. We manufacture parts for the car industry. Some have said if you're not ISO 27001 certified and if you don't have cyber insurance, they're not going to do business with us. A lot of our decisions are driven by customer requirements. I have a very good reseller that I work with.
Future goals include cybersecurity. I'm going to try and push for an additional set of controllers to have another set of places to store SnapMirrors locally. Then we have an existing 200 that I would like to use as a repository for backups and snapshots and things like that.
We have to be flexible enough to be able to grow as needs arise. This product gives us the foundation to have that growth efficiently, whether it's the purchase of a new filer or the additional purchase of an additional disk.
