NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

We use NetApp AFF to host all of our on-premises applications and data.

We use NetApp for artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, and we find the latency to be pretty decent.

Data protection and management is one of the best features of NetApp. We like the SnapVault, SnapShot, and SnapMirror, and we use those features extensively.

Our IT operations have been simplified by unifying data services. We have fiber channel, block data, NFS, and CIFS, and we can deploy multi-tenancy boxes from each one. Sometimes, we have all of the different data types in one box. You can add more clusters or more nodes to your cluster. It is easy for us to modularly grow if the need arises.

NetApp has allowed us to leverage our data in new ways, including our test scenarios. A lot of the time it is really hard to test production data because we do not have multiple copies of the same thing that we can use for testing. The solution is flexible enough to allow us to create multiple copies, then try out seven or eight scenarios, then pick which one will be the best going forward. We can do that all within minutes.

We have utilized thin provisioning so that we haven't had to purchase additional storage for our applications. The snapshot technology, unlike other ones, doesn't take up extra space when you're making multiple copies. This means that we don't need extra storage for our temporary tests. Once we are finished we delete the extra copies.

We have used this solution for moving large amounts of data between data centers. We are currently migrating data from a cloud in Atlanta to a cloud in Chicago, and we are using the SnapMirror technology extensively for this.

Using the all-flash solution improves our application response time, and it also has a smaller footprint. You can also tier it, depending on the needs of the application.

NetApp AFF has definitely reduced our data center costs. We have been increasing our storage but not increasing our footprint. I would estimate the savings to be thirty percent.

We have not tested tiering cold data to the cloud, but we are currently working on finding appropriate use cases.

Overall, this solution has really reduced our downtime and has made our lives a lot easier.

The most valuable features are the ease of administration and configuration, as well as the speed of deployment.

Using snapshots at each stage of the configuration for applications means that administration is easier because you don't have to worry about messing it up. It makes things a lot smoother.

On the fiber channel side, there is a limit of sixteen terabytes on each line, and we would like to see this raised because we are having to use some other products.

I have been using NetApp since 1998.

This is a stable solution. The dependability and reliability of the product have improved significantly over time, and there is redundancy built into the boxes. We don't worry about stability anymore.

Scaling this solution is easy. You can start small with one HA pair and add them as you go. You can make new clusters and add new nodes to clusters. 

The technical support for NetApp is decent. I mean, it's improving. I understand that it is hard to get people up to date with all of the new technologies but NetApp has done a pretty good job.

Using the online documentation, we are able to find answers most of the time. If not, we can find an expert who will come online and help us to get through. The combination of technical support, Professional Services, and online documentation has really helped.

Service is one of NetApp's strengths.

We were using a bunch of other products prior to using this solution, and we are still using some that have been deployed because of the sixteen terabyte limit on each line of the fiber channel.

The initial setup is not complex at all. It has been made easier compared to other vendors.

We're a big corporation and we have the expertise in-house. Once in a while, we use Professional Services to get through some situations. Our experience with them has been very positive and we have a very good relationship with them.

It is very hard to measure ROI, but we know that it is very good compared to other products. 

The price to performance ratio with NetApp is unmatched by any other vendor right now.

We have products from HPE, Dell, and NetApp in our environment right now. They each have their share, and each one is equally working.

I am a long-time user and I love this product. Over the years we have asked for improvements and they are doing a great job. I will be happy to see them continue to make improvements, overall.

My advice to anybody researching this type of solution is to look at NetApp. If they don't then they are missing out on great technology and a feature-rich product.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We have a pretty amazing story about using AFS. When I went into this organization, we had a 59% uptime ratio, and at the time we were looking at how to improve on efficiency, and how to bring good technology initiatives together to make this digital transformation happen. When the Affordable Care Act came out, it started mandating a lot of these health care organizations to implement an electronic medical record system. Of course, since health care has been behind the curve when it comes to technology, it was a major problem when I came into this organization that had a 59% uptime ratio. They also wanted to implement an electronic medical record system throughout their facility, and we didn't have the technology in place.

One of my key initiatives at the time was to determine what we wanted to do as a whole organization. We wanted to focus on the digital transformation. We needed to determine if we could find some good business partners in place so we selected NetApp. We were trying to create a better, efficient process, with very strong security practices as well. We selected an All-Flash FAS solution because we were starting to implement virtual desktop infrastructure with VMware.

We wanted to throw out zero clients throughout the whole organization for the physicians, which allowed them to do single sign-on. The physician would be able to go to one specific office, tap his badge, sign in to the specific system from there. That floating profile would come over with him, and then you just created some great efficiencies. The security practices behind the ONTAP solution and the security that we were experiencing with NetApp was absolutely out of this world. I've been very impressed with it. One of the main reasons I started with NetApp was because they have a strong focus on health care initiatives. I was asked to sit on the neural network, which was a NetApp-facilitated health care advisory group that focused and looked at the overall roadmap of NetApp. When you have a good business partner like NetApp, versus a vendor where a vendor's going to come in, sell me a solution and just call me a year later and say that they want us to sign something, I'm not looking for people like that. I'm looking for business partners. What I like to say is, "My success is your success, and your success is ours." That's really a critical point that NetApp has demonstrated.

Everyone looks at health care because health care has been an amazing organization to be in. We're seeing the transformation of how we're becoming a digital company. Every organization is becoming a digital company, and we're starting to see the advancements of technology really come in to place. Your new CEO is the patient, and that's the bottom line. That's my CEO. As an organization and as a technologist, I have to build a very strong patient-centric strategy that focuses the technology on the patient's needs, because at the end of the day, that patient could choose to either go to your organization or to another. We want to keep that good loyalty and that good specific patient in our organization, and we want to make sure that we are creating very strong, asynchronous tools that benefit a patient both inside and outside the organization. That's why I always say patient care is number one. AFS has supported our overall business initiatives.

Applications are a critical point. I think that All Flash FAS is an amazing thing when it comes to speed, efficiency in what it's doing. We've been very impressed with regards to it as well. We look at different initiatives, and we're starting to focus on different initiatives when it comes to data analytics and data mining. Having that specific availability, and making sure that we can focus on those initiatives and those strategies, we're very confident that the solutions that we are choosing with NetApp are going to give us the edge advantage of moving forward into the future.

I think when you look at artificial intelligence and at machine learning, you look at predictive analytics. You have to have very strong data silo in order to get that clean data. I think with all the data that we're creating in this health care organization, we need to make sure that we can create well-structured data which will allow us to data mine that information to come out with some good valuables, meaning better patient care, better ways to reduce readmission rates, better ways to increase revenue. There are so many benefits in regards to good, strong data mining that produce great analytic reports.

Right now we do have a very strong cloud initiative. We are moving forward to the cloud because the thing is I think the future of health care, the future of artificial intelligence improvements is really moving a lot of these health care organizations over to the cloud where there is that data mining capability of really bringing in all these algorithms and all of these good collaborations because collaboration is definitely key. If we can collaborate, and if we could start focusing on more of interoperability, meaning that we're sharing information more successfully, because right now, health care, has no interoperability. Everyone talks about interoperability, but we don't have interoperability. You go from one facility to another, it's like you're getting completely different services. I want that information from one facility to another to go and share information, which I think is going to be a success, because, you come to one facility, you get poked for lab results, you get exposed for radiology results, meaning radiation, then you go over into another organization that's saying that they can't retrieve your lab or radiology results and now we're going to have to re-poke you and re-expose you to radiation. Those are problems.

Another one of my main focuses is on cybersecurity initiatives and cybersecurity improvements. I think NetApp has really focused a lot on cybersecurity. I was really impressed on some of the cybersecurity sessions that they had because you figure health care's one of the most attacked sectors out there and we hear about these health care organizations being ransomed all of the time. If we do get ransomed, we need to think about how we are going to restore that information and making sure that we have the capabilities that are in place. NetApp has done a great job with it. They do see a huge priority when it comes to cyber security, so it's very important for them to continue to focus on those initiatives.

The user experience has been absolutely amazing. We're about 80% virtualized on the desktop standpoint, so we do utilize VDI very highly. Using the All-Flash FAS solution, we had to basically determine that there was going to be some efficiencies and some speed as well, too, because you figure we're giving all of these health care users a virtual desktop, plus the utilization of All-Flash FAS, we need to make sure that their specific process is really rolling and moving in an efficient way, because the health care industry is a fast-paced organization. We're basically taking care of patients' lives. The technology that we bring has to be very efficient to provide the best patient care that we can have, and NetApp All-Flash FAS has really proven that point.

Considering that NetApp has health care view and that really strong health care initiative, they really need to consider what they need to do next to improve better data sharing and to make sure that the information that we are sharing with one another is fully encrypted, meeting HIPAA and HITECH regulations as well.

Stability has been pretty amazing as well. I came to an organization that was 59% uptime which was throughout the whole enterprise. That's a major problem because when you start measuring downtime, that is a loss of revenue for the organization. Since I've implemented a lot of these new strategies, we have done a complete 360. We've implemented these strong technology initiatives that have really produced better business efficiencies. We went from a 59% uptime to a 99.9% uptime ratio, which is absolutely mind-blowing. If you look at the before and after pictures, it's going to blow minds because we've been able to do some amazing things. We're a three-time Most Wired winner, which is given to health care organizations, top health care organizations making the most progress of health information technology. It's been an honor to have been able to design the team that I have, the very strong core team, and the good initiatives that we've had together because I always say that we must leave our egos at home. Collaboration is definitely the key to digital transformation, and we need to come together to make a difference in the future.

Scalability, the improvements that we see with AFS, and the reliability has been such a critical element. I think the technology that NetApp has, especially when you look at a disaster recovery standpoint because you figure we're a health care organization and any type of outage is considered revenue loss, we really want to try to avoid those specific elements.

Tech support has been absolutely amazing. I think on the technical aspects as well, my staff is able to get great support from the NetApp technical support resources that we have. What I love about NetApp is they have a health care division. At times, it's such an amazing thing because if we have a healthcare-related issue, there's no one better than having prior CIOs from health care organizations that NetApp has hired, and that are part of the healthcare team, to help out with any of those initiatives and support problems. Support has been absolutely phenomenal.

We could definitely spin something up pretty quickly. It takes about ten minutes which is pretty quick. We have a very good team that does that as well.

The total cost of ownership has increased a little. When I look at building very strong, good strategies that get presented to the board of directors and the additional executive teams, I look at two things: I look at ROI and I look at total cost of ownership. At times, my overall goal is that I want to get out of the data center business. I know that TCO really does increase because you have that on-prem solution, but I think moving forward into the cloud-based initiatives that we have, we're going to definitely start seeing a decrease within that TCO because now we don't have all of this inventory to take care of. We're being a lot more efficient and a lot more agile as well too.

I am part of the NetApp A-Team. I've been a huge advocate towards NetApp. I would say that nothing is perfect, but NetApp is leading the way when it comes to digital transformation and digital efficiencies as well. Their focus towards health care has been out of this world. I would give that specific product a nine, moving forward to almost perfect ten.

We use data storage for our big environment. It creates an environment where students and teachers can work together. 

We did the installation two months ago. Now, we are reviewing its affect on behavior over time, which has been incredible. We have less latency within all applications. 

There are many reports accessing the applications. We receive them very quickly. We used to wait a long time for them. Now, you just need to wait a moment.

It takes us just minutes to set up and provision an enterprise application using AFF.

• The most valuable feature is the backup, which is fast.
  
• The data analytics are an incredible tool.
• The equipment is superior quality.
• If you need a replacement part, they will provide it.

We would like to have more behavioral reporting. We would also like to have more optimization and credit check reporting.

In addition, I am waiting for the version that has SnapMirroring with FlexGroup.

Stability is 100 percent. I don't have any downtime.

I am very impressed with the scalability.

The technical support is invaluable. If you need answers to a problem, they provide good answers. I am very happy with it.

If you are compare it with our last application, IBM FS840, AFF is incredible in comparison. 

The setup was not complex, but we have good project management skills.

We used an integrator who was very professional and helped a lot. They finished the implementation on time.

We have seen ROI.

Our TCO has increased by 15 to 18 percent.

I am not using VMs today, but maybe in the future I will.

We have not yet connected to public clouds.

We use it for medical systems.

NetApp has always been very reliable. We have never had any data losses. They are a work horse.

I found the reliability of it to be the most valuable feature because it supports all the patient critical systems in our hospital. We have had the NetApp system for 18 years with no downtime.

I would like to see if they could move the virtual storage machines. They have integrated a DR, so you can back to your DR, but there's no automated way to failover and failback. It's all manual. I'd like to see it all automated.

We have never had a failure.

Over the past 18 years, it has been extremely easy to upgrade to newer products and technology. We can upgrade as we move along. So, we have been able to keep up with the newest technology with zero downtime.

The scalability is endless. There have been no limits that we have come across yet.

Technical support has been excellent. We have local technical support. If we give them a call and need somebody onsite, they could be there within ten to 15 minutes.

I think we were previously using IBM FASt100 in the 2000s. From there, we moved on to NetApp.

I never found it to be complicated, but I have a lot of experience with NetApp setups.

After upgrades, it's very intuitive and easy to pick up. 

A NetApp support person did all our installations, upgrades, etc. Our experience with them was excellent.

We have been able to utilize and leverage equipment which was purchased a decade ago up until this past year. So, we were running disk shells for 13 years and all we were doing was upgrading the filings and controllers, and using the same disk shells. Therefore, we were able to do something where we didn't have to invest that much. Recently, we had to upgrade all our disk shells, but it was a lot less because the technology had changed a lot since those times. It is faster now, and we have SSDs. We have larger drives that are 4TBs and 6TBs. Everything can condense so we are saving disk shell space and rack space. We are paying less now than we did at that time. So, we've gotten our money's worth out of it.

Look at the different options that NetApp offers. Look for a model and option which fits your needs correctly. Don't buy a low-end product for a high-end job.

NetApps offers a lot of different options. Just take your time and work with the consulting teams. Lay out what your needs are to ensure you are purchasing what will help you be successful.

We have put our trust in NetApp, and they have given us the customer support and a stable, reliable product.

Sometimes, I have to get rid of the equipment and upgrade because it is no longer supported. It's not like we are getting rid of the equipment or upgrading because there's something wrong with it. It will last forever. I have had disk shells that we've had to just let go, which are still working, because they aren't supported.

NetApp All Flash FAS:

We're also using FlexClones, and we're able to flex clone our database to a test environment and a dev environment. We're able to keep it all underneath one storage system, so we don't have to manage multiple arrays to run test and dev.

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

NetApp All Flash FAS:

The speed and low latency are the most valuable features. My customers or users noticed an improvement in our EMR application, once we moved our SQL environment over to the AFF.

I think the OnCommand System Manager has been excellent. I like the newer version myself. We're not on ONTAP 9 yet, but I do love 8.3.

Pure Storage M20:

It's just simple. There's no clustering. You take that complexity away from NetApp, you get rid of the clustering. It’s a dual-node controller system. You can have dual or single aggregates, whatever, the same thing. But they don't do clustering. If you wanted to mirror that data off, you have to purchase another Pure, plug it into the expansion port and basically mirror between platforms. Whereas in the ONTAP, your data is clustered, you've got HA failover. You still have HA failover in Pure, but it is just on the controller only.

NetApp All Flash FAS:

I'm not involved in the price-making decision. I just throw the number at the manager and say, "Hey, this is what I want."

We're going to take a good look at Solid Fire for SQL environment.

I’m not rating it higher because when we piloted our AFF against a Pure Storage M20, we were getting much better deduplication out of our SQL database on the Pure product. I’m told that this has been improved in ONTAP 9. The deduping compression ratios are more on par with what Pure has been able to do. It's not an end-case decision. We have plenty of storage available. Our database is growing. We'd love to keep as small of a footprint as possible, but we still have overhead room in case it does expand beyond what we're expecting it to. Nonetheless, in the future, I'd like to see better deduplication out of SQL. That’s difficult to do; I get it.

Pure Storage M20:

I don't know what could be improved at this point. I haven't used it enough to know where they really are lacking in anything. It's fast, it's very easy to set up, it's very easy to maintain.

Nonetheless, there is no clustered data. Your data resides in a single point, so then it's up to you to mirror it, replicate it, copy it, however you do it; DoubleTake replication or if you buy another Pure product and do their onboard replication. I guess It all depends on your pocket book, really.

I would give it four stars because it's pricey. I do believe Pure was more expensive than the NetApp when we were pricing last time. Of course, that really varies on what time of the year it is. I think NetApp end of year is March or April. I'm really not sure when Pure's end of year is, but they call me every few months with a better price.

NetApp All Flash FAS:

It is very, very stable. I'm noticing a difference between it and my FAS 2230. Storage efficiencies are much faster. Deduplication is awesome.

Pure Storage M20:

We didn't see any issues with stability. Of course, we only ran a demo for 90 days.

NetApp All Flash FAS:

We're looking to scale it up because our FAS 3220 is coming up for maintenance renewal. We're thinking we'd probably be better off chucking a couple more shelves at the AFF, and running our vSphere environment off those shelves because we're not touching the controllers on that AFF. I hate to say they're running ideal with 2,000 SQL users on it, but it's running very well.

Pure Storage M20:

Scalability is pretty much the same as on NetApp, depending on what controller you buy, how many shelves you can attach to it.

NetApp All Flash FAS:

Technical support is hit or miss sometimes. Sometimes I get the run around. I have to go through multiple support engineers to help me out with whatever issue I'm dealing with at the time. Other times, they've been spot on: The first guy I get has said something like, "Oh I can fix that for you right now." I think it really depends on the complexity of the problem.

Pure Storage M20:

I did not use technical support for Pure.

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

NetApp All Flash FAS:

I was involved in the decision to invest in the All Flash FAS. We were modeling it against Pure Storage. We already had 3220 running for a couple of years, running VMware. I made the decision; I didn't want to split between multiple vendors. I wanted to keep it all underneath one hood. The AFF allowed us to do that. We could not put our SQL environment on spinning disk, obviously; not with the scalability that it's at or the number of users we have hitting it.

We were previously using Fusion IO cards, striped. They’re PCIe slot cards – some are on x8 slot, some are on an x16 slot – with Windows striped between all those cards. That was what I walked into when I was hired by AHN. They were using SQL mirroring. In the event of a system failure, they could always fire up the mirroring to resume production. Doing it with a NetApp has pretty much eliminated that all the way.

NetApp All Flash FAS:

I was involved in the initial setup, which was very smooth, very easy.

Pure Storage M20:

Initial setup was very straightforward. You plug in a management port, you plug in your iSCSI, your NFS or your fiber channel ports, and you're up and running.

Keep an open mind. Different vendors do different things in a different way. NetApp is highly complicated, it's very robust. In comparison, Pure's interface is about as simple as it gets. But they all support fewer protocols then NetApp.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is approachability. I like people I can talk to; if you get overly technical and it's all technical garbage and you're not really a personal type person. I hate to say it, but I base a purchase off that. If I'm going to be working with someone for a number of years, I want to make sure it's someone I can relate to.

It's great that software monitoring is all in one place instead of in different modules. It also provides us with real-time metrics.

We went from a FAS 2040 to an AFF 8040, and the evolution has blown us away. The deduplication technology that it gives us means that we are getting more storage for our money. It's a better value than disc drives.

Also, clustered Data ONTAP is valuable to us.

It gives us a platform that is reliable going forward. We only had one outage on the 2040 in five years, and we are expecting similar from the 8040. Our business is growing, so we don’t know exactly what to expect and we throw things at our network that are new. The new flash gives us the expansion we need later on without having to buy more controllers.

It would be nice to see a 1 GB portal for networking on the back rather than just the 10 GB that we can use as a backup. If we have an issue with the 10 GB, we can have the 1 GB cable as a backup while we fix the issue while running them in pairs.

We've been using it for three months for VMs, SQL, file storage, email, some Oracle databases, and SharePoint.

We've not had any issues with deployment.

We’ve done transfers, migrations, data copies in and out, and it hasn’t flinched. It's very stable.

It scales to our needs.

10/10. We haven’t had to use it yet for the AFF, but with the FAS they were excellent.

Technical support is excellent.

We use HP’s servers and are happy with them, but when we upgraded to flash for FAS, we looked only at NetApp and the other options that were potentially cheaper, but decided on NetApp in the end because we were happy with them.

Initial setup was straightforward. There is only a small amount of NFS and the rest of it is CIF, so setup is very simple.

We used a vendor team who were 10/10.

It will probably be within 12 month when we make back what we spent on this product in terms of the storage increase we’ve got. It's given us an increase in overall performance, which means we utilize less resources because it's quicker.

With the networking changes, the costs were £140,000. There were some very harsh negotiations going on, and they got this order 12 minutes before the end of their deadline for their end of year.

We looked at Tegile, Violin, and Nimble. It came down to the management of the FAS itself, and the others seem slightly less mature in the market. It came down to trusting what we know works.

It's quite a jump for us from where we are coming from. Try not to think of it as a complex item. Instead, think of it in terms of what you want it to do and what the business needs it to do rather than putting the kitchen sink in it at the start.

We're using NetApp to make sure everything is secure, in a single location, and easy to maneuver and manipulate when the time comes for it.

The storage solutions that we use allow us a lot more peace of mind.

We've had situations where our HVAC unit became unreliable, and we've had a number of occasions where we've had to shut down our services in order to preserve what data we did have. This solution has allowed us to maintain our data securely and safely, and we don't have to worry about it. We simply brought the service back up, and then all of our data was still there and intact. Our customers appreciated that.

The solution helped streamline our internal operations. It's pretty much allowed us to focus on larger tasks on hand versus constantly wondering how our storage is going to be. For example, we never worry: "Are we going to run out of it?" or "Are there any configurations that we have to consistently change?" Being able to focus on much larger tasks on hand and not have to consistently worry about our storage solutions has been a big plus. It's also allowed us to streamline things and put our focus where we really need to put it.

In terms of improvement, they could help with knowledge transfer. I'm working on sitting down and getting familiar with the different storage solutions and technologies that are already available and just need to keep myself abreast of what's coming up. 

One of our chief priorities is expanding our storage to the cloud. That's one of the biggest aspects that the client is working towards—putting a lot in the cloud instead of having an on-prem setup. It will be more agile, if you will, and allow our customers to effectively do their jobs with little to no interruption.

We haven't had any real challenges with it. Everything's been pretty smooth and straightforward. Of course, if we've had any issues, we can easily get on the phone with our reps, and they'll give us an answer nearly the same day or within 24 hours of us asking. They're really responsive. We've had very few issues, if at all.

When I came on board with my company, we were all already pretty waist-deep with this particular product. This solution is the only one we've used before, and we'll probably continue to use it in the foreseeable future. 

Future investments will be prioritized around AI. AI is one of the big aspects that we're working on. That, of course, eats up a lot of storage and, of course, working on shifting to the cloud instead of just on-prem. That's one of the aspects that we're chiefly working towards and making headway on. So it's a matter of just getting to the finish line. 

Our priority for our client is to be able to provide that service quickly, effectively, and on budget. Having our customers able to go forth and do whatever they need to do with little to no interruption or hiccups along the way is important. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I haven't really gotten too deep into it. I've gotten deep enough to know that I trust this trust this material. I'm pretty sure if I've had a lot more experience, it'll be a ten, sure enough. It is definitely a very solid system. I would recommend NetApp to anyone.

We use NetApp AFF for daily maintenance. It's used to provision volumes for customers and other departments. 

NetApp AFF helps simplify infrastructure while improving business performance. Our databases and sensitive stuff are on all-flash arrays. Our team knows what to expect with all-flash, and we've been doing it for a while. We're happy with it.

We have fewer support issues because putting things on all-flash is much better. We still have to troubleshoot. That's always something we need to do. The speed of flash is always an advantage. Our customers are happy with it and don't complain too much. 

We use the NFS and SIP protocols a lot. The NFS is the most valuable feature.

The upgrade process could be a lot quicker, but it's still good as it is. The failovers and things like that are harder than expected. 

I have used NetApp AFF for almost 10 years. 

NetApp AFF is highly stable. 

The scalability is good. We can add extra controllers and create clusters. It's very doable. 

I rate NetApp AFF support eight out of 10. It's excellent. We've had no issues. 

Positive

We had normal disk storage instead of flash. NetApp AFF  offers much better performance. Higher throughput and less latency.

We have seen a return. Things are running better. It's less work for us, so it's good.

NetApp AFF seems to be fairly priced compared to other solutions like Oracle. 

I rate NetApp AFF nine out of 10. It's an excellent product. Use it, and you'll be happy.