NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

The first use case is having normal CIFS and NFS shares use Active Directory integration with antivirus integration. Another use case is for VMware VCF in a TKG environment using NFS and a SAN protocol.

I am implementing the NetApp product for customers. I deploy CIFS and NFS shares for file access purposes and block access for VMware infrastructures.

NetApp AFF has helped to simplify our clients' infrastructure while still getting very high performance for their business-critical applications. One of our customers uses the vSAN environment in the release, then they use NFS for their VMware VCF environment and TKG environment. In this case, when they move to NetApp for the TKG and the VM infrastructures, they use AFF for block, CIFS, and NFS. It provides a single storage with NFS, block, and CIFS with deduplication, team provisioning, and compression. Everything is in there, which makes it very good to use.

The deduplication is the most valuable feature. When you have multiple systems with almost the same data, the deduplication helps save on capacity. It is why the box can be overprovisioned. This is very useful in the case where immediate space is required for an application or teams. It also provides good efficiency when provisioning deduplication compression. These efficiencies are very useful compared to other products.

AFF has helped simplify data management with unified data infrastructure (UDI) across SAN and NAS environments. This is very important. Nowadays, UDI is gaining market share for NetApp. 

Its virtualization knowledge is very useful. Also, the Active IQ technology of NetApp is very useful, which uses AI to give suggestions to customers.

The ONTAP data management software has simplified our clients' operations to an extent. The auto support feature gives unique notifications, which simplifies the management. Plus, there have been enhancements in the GUI compared to previous versions, which has simplified things. 

We use synchronous replication with SnapMirror. We can failover and failback very easily. We can failover the site to another, which is good.

It used to give us the volume where LANs should be placed when we created a LAN in the older version. However, in the newer version of ONTAP, it does not give where to place the LAN in the volume. So, that liberty has been taken away. If that was there again, it would be very good.

When we create a LAN, it has taken away the feature. For example, in older code, we used to be able to select the LAN volume for LANs to be placed in. In the newer code, it does not allow the volume to be selected. It creates a volume automatically based on a round-robin. 

I have been using this solution for almost two years.

It is a stable product. I have not faced many problems with the box. Wherever I installed or implemented the solution, it is running very smoothly without any issues. I have not received any complaints.

It is scalable. I can grow my data. When it comes to NVMe, it is also scalable in terms of capacity and scaling horizontally. For example, we can add multiple nodes in a cluster as well as multiple expansions. I feel the box is very capable in terms of scalability.

I implement it, then there is a separate team who works with NetApp support. From an implementation perspective, I have not gotten involved much with the support.

The documentation of NetApp is very good. When there are some issues, they can search the documentation and knowledge base. Therefore, you can get very good support before going to NetApp support.

The initial setup is straightforward for the customer. We require more in-depth disk management and understand how the disk will be distributed. Otherwise, it is simple.

The implementation of NetApp with CIFS and NFS is quite quick to deploy. When they came out with the latest models, they provided us with three protocols. Going forward, this will be very useful.

It takes one to two days to deploy NetApp AFF. Apart from the basic configuration, there are many things that need to be done for the integration part, like antivirus integration, LAN configuration, and NDMP configuration. Those all take time. So it can be done in two days, but it might take more time depending on what needs to be done.

We need to do planning for the IP address, cluster names, and all the stuff that NetApp provides for the cluster planning workbook. Once it is deployed, we do IP address assignment to the nodes, local tier configuration, and protocol configuration, then a company can start using the box.

Many customers are purchasing this NetApp solution, which is good.

Normally, I work on IBM storage. Compared to those, this solution's efficiency is good. The IBM solution is an all SAN-based solution. 

Whenever we require block or file services, we only go with NetApp. As of now, I have not implemented any IBM Boxes for file services. Previously, there was the V7000 Unified, but it is not there now. Lately, we have migrated from IBM Box to the NetApp ONTAP Select system, which was serving IBM file services. We needed to move to NetApp because there currently is no system for file services when it comes to IBM.

Oracle ESSWebservice and Cloud Object Storage have huge tasks, making it difficult to implement them. 

I would suggest customers use the box so they get a taste of NetApp. Then, they can compare the product and start using it. If NetApp supports them in their environment, that is very good.

I would rate NetApp AFF as nine out of 10.

We use it mostly for user file data. We are also providing data stores for our VMware platform.

It helps simplify data management with unified data services across SAN and NAS environments. It has also simplified our infrastructure, while still giving us high performance for business-critical applications, and that was mostly due to the arrival of cluster ONTAP. Things really got a lot easier with that.

It also helps to accelerate databases in our environment. First of all, there is the reliability of things staying online and the small response time as well, from the MetroCluster, for all of the data that we're serving; and the applications are talking to the MetroCluster. It provides a very fast response time.

The typical snapshots are one of the benefits. Also, in addition to the NetApp MetroCluster, we also have two eight-node HA clusters. And the solution makes our work easier.

NetApp AFF has also helped to reduce support issues such as performance tuning and troubleshooting, and that's true even though we are quite self-sufficient in our knowledge of our clusters and of NetApp in general.

There is room for improvement with the user interface. There are a few things that cannot be done in the GUI. We do a lot of things through the CLI, but that's grown out of a lack of ability to do them in the GUI. An example is QTrees. You can manage them within the GUI, but the GUI is missing a few options. Also, the graphical design of the GUI for that part doesn't fit the windows on your screen.

I have been using NetApp AFF for about eight years.

The reliability is one of the most important elements. Since we went to cluster ONTAP, we have really found it to be reliable. Previously, we were running NetApp with a lot of 7-Mode systems. The transition to cluster ONTAP wasn't easy, but in the end, it's way more reliable. What we love about the MetroCluster is that we do not have to worry about data being on one site. The reliability is one of its best features.

The only issue we had, once, was when we moved to another data center, but that was not NetApp's fault.

Scalability of the solution is great, but expensive.

We always get what we need from their technical support, but what I find annoying is that you always have to go through all the various levels of support. That has definitely improved, but you always have to go through the front end, explaining what your environment looks like and what the impact of the issue is. But that's the only complaint I have about the support.

It would help if they had a customer profile and could look it up and. When I create a case, I try to put in as much information as I can, but it's not always read. I get a standard email back from NetApp that says, "What does your environment look like?" even when I have put all of the information in the case, upfront.

Positive

We used two separate 7-Mode clusters and we SnapMirrored the data to the other side. We moved to NetApp AFF because of the speed and because solid-state disks were the new technology at the time.

The initial setup and deployment of NetApp AFF is pretty straightforward. A lot of terms that were used in 7-Mode became easier and were more clearly stated when we transitioned to cluster ONTAP.

Our transition lasted a year or so. We had a lot of data to move. We used the 7-Mode transition tool. My entire team of six people was involved.

The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. But if you have to buy any more disk space, it can be quite expensive. We had some internal discussions with people who wanted to store a lot of graphical data and we gave them the pricing for that and they were really horrified about the pricing of a single shelf.

We did not look at any other vendors.

With the all-new cloud availability, it's really important to think about the necessity of having your data doubled up over two data centers. With the cloud becoming more pervasive, the entire government is thinking of dropping physical data centers and going to managed, private cloud. My advice would be to think through whether you really need the functionalities of a MetroCluster. I like them a lot, but cost-wise, the cloud could be a great option.

The main purpose of the AFF is to work with applications that require high-intensity I/O operations. For example, we run some open-source DBs, as well as Oracle, that require high-intensity I/O. We also have a high-performance computing setup.

We have two locations. In the first location, we have an AFF cluster. In the second location, we have an AFF cluster that works in combination with ASAs.

Our environment is primarily made up of open-source applications. 

We are not using the NetApp cloud backup services. Instead, we have a storage solution on the back end and AFF on the front end. In this setup, we have high I/O with a low storage expenditure.

Our company is mainly concerned with software development and we have VMs as part of our infrastructure. We have a large number of VMs and they require a large data capacity, although we don't know which ones require high-intensity input and output. The reason for this is that some scenarios demand a high level of I/O, whereas, with others, the demand is low. We have AFFs set up at the front end, and at the backend, we have ECD boxes, which are the storage grid.

We treat the system as a fabric pool setup. When a high level of I/O is required, the data will be stored on NetApp AFF at the front end. We created a policy so that pooled data will move automatically to the lower-end capacity units, which are configured from the storage unit.

NetApp helps to accelerate some of the demanding enterprise applications that we have, in particular, our database applications. 

NetApp AFF has helped to simplify our infrastructure while still getting a very high performance. Prior to setting up AFFs, we had latency issues. Now, things are more balanced, including the volumes that are on SAS or SATA.

Using NetApp AFF has helped to reduce support issues, including performance-tuning. About a year and a half ago, we were experiencing some performance issues. Lately, this has not been the case, although occasionally, we still have problems. We are exploring whether it is the server hardware or an issue with VMware and drivers.

The ONTAP operating system has made things somewhat simpler, although we don't use it very much. I normally work on the CLI so for me, it is not a big difference. That said, as features are released with the latest versions, I review them to stay updated.

We also use NetApp's StorageGRID and the combination of it with AFF has reduced our overall cost while increasing performance. We see benefits on both sides. 

The most valuable feature is its ability to handle high-intensity read and write operations. It works very well in terms of this.

We recently started using the volume encryption feature, which is helpful because there are some federal projects that require data at rest to be encrypted.

SnapMirror is another feature that we use, but we don't have MetroCluster set up. SnapMirror is used for replication across multiple geographical data centers. In these locations, we have products and we are exploring how to minimize the bandwidth while improving DR capabilities. With respect to the DR, we don't use the AFF in secondary nodes.

In some situations, we would like to have an additional storage shelf but do not want to use an SSD. Unfortunately, AFF won't work in conjunction with SATA. Having these together might give some benefit in terms of capacity.

We would like to have a feature that automatically moves volumes between aggregates, based on the performance. We normally need to do this manually.

In some cases, we would like to have the ability to expand our units to handle two additional target ports. As of now, we are using four or eight target ports, which come with the A300 model. There are situations where we need to extend this but we have limited slots available. 

We have been using NetApp AFF for the past six years.

The stability of this solution is fine.

The scalability is seamless. Without any downtime, we can upgrade and scale-up.

As of now, we have a 40TB SSD front-end fabric pool capacity. At the back end, we have a two-petabyte storage grid. We are not experiencing any performance-related issues, although we have encountered a few time sync-related problems.

I have also worked on an IBM DS8000 series and some similar products from EMC.

IBM had released the 8700 with the AFF configuration. However, I was with another company at the time. The majority of my experience is with NetApp using the CLI, but with the IBM product, I was using the GUI. I prefer the CLI in both systems.

With respect to the pros and cons between the vendors, it is difficult for me to judge. Each filesystem has benefits with respect to the vendor and the technology that they use.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is not a big, complex job.

We are in the process of setting up and transitioning to a Hybrid cloud environment, but it takes some time. We are currently exploring it. We have thousands of servers in AWS and Google cloud, and we have an internal VMware cloud as well.

The NetApp team helped us with the deployment and also helps with the patches.

We invested a lot of money in our NetApp AFF set up but we have a huge capacity. We balance it that way.

NetApp AFF is an expensive product, although not compared to other vendors.

We chose the A300 model based on recommendations from existing users. There are lower-end versions, such as the A250 and A260, but we didn't explore them.

Based on my experience, whether I would recommend this product depends on what the budget is. We have to determine whether we are achieving the right cost for the right product because the budget is the primary objective. Some cases may not require the capacity. Perhaps, for example, software-defined storage can manage it. To decide, we need to see what the application is, how much demand it needs, and what kind of performance it requires. All of these things need to be reviewed before we decide which products suit which situation.

Overall, NetApp AFF is a good product.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case for AFF is for databases.

The most valuable features of AFF are its speed and the responsive support from NetApp.

The only downside to NetApp AFF is its price.

I have been using NetApp AFF for eight years.

In terms of performance and stability, AFF is good for our current needs. However, if we require higher performance, we may need to invest in new hardware.

NetApp AFF scales well for our needs. We can continuously add more storage and capacity to expand the system, which has been a viable approach for us.

The support is great. When issues arise, the support team quickly addresses our questions and resolves problems efficiently. I would rate the support as a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have previously used Hitachi, but it is very slow.

The initial setup of NetApp availability can be considered medium difficulty. If you have experience with NetApp systems, it is relatively easy to medium in complexity. However, if you have never installed such a system before, it can be quite challenging.

NetApp can be expensive. It is worth noting that the cost isn't just in the hardware but also in the support, which can be a significant portion of the overall expense.

Overall, I would rate NetApp AFF as a ten out of ten.

Our customers use the solution for its MetroCluster feature.

It would be helpful if they set up local warehouses for the solution.

We have been using the solution for five years.

I rate the solution's stability as a nine.

We have an enterprise company as our customer for the solution. I rate the solution's scalability as a nine.

I work as a support engineer and authorized distributor for the solution. Its technical support could be better as receiving the solution's spare parts takes a long time. When hardware failure occurs, we need to wait for its components to reach us from the metro city warehouse. It is a time-consuming process.

We used HPE and Dell as well. They provide better customer service than NetApp as they have local authorized partners. So we get a prompt response from them in case of any failure issues.

The solution's initial setup is straightforward.

Our customers deploy the solution with the help of an integrator. I provide consultancy and integration services as well.

The solution is moderately priced. I rate its pricing as a seven.

The solution is quite good. I recommend it to others and rate it as a nine.

We use them for file services, email, as LUNs for servers, Exchange, Oracle, and SQL.

We've seen an overall boost in performance, going from a combination of solid-state and spinning disks to all solid-state. That has increased our ability to provide more performance and throughput for the services that we're hosting. That's the biggest deal for us. We do what we did before, but now we can do it on all-flash. It's just faster.

It accelerates virtualization and databases, which goes back to the performance. All-flash gives us the ability to provide the performance as it's needed and makes it easy to do and instantly observable.

The use of AFF with Oracle has made it much faster. It all comes back to how fast it is. And with SnapCenter, the backup piece is much better than it was before. We were using NetBackup, but SnapCenter allows us to back up with snapshots, which is something NetBackup did not allow us to do.

Also, the dedupe and compression reduce how much disk space we require. All of that really makes a big difference for us.

An extra benefit is that NetApp AFF All Flash FAS has really reduced support issues related to performance. When everything is going at solid-state speeds, it's a lot easier to find the problems, where there's slowness.

With all of it being in one software package, the ONTAP data management software has simplified our operations. We have the Enterprise licensing and that means we get all the tools that come with it. All of those tools, and their integration, make backup and restore very simple and very efficient.

The performance is outstanding when it's all Flash. That's the biggest bang for the buck that we get.

And everything that we use on NetApp that can back up with the NetApp tools—SnapCenter, SnapDrive, and SnapManager—makes our local and our offsite backup very simple and very easy to do.

I've been using NetApp AFF since 2007.

I don't know how to praise it enough. Parts of our environment are so old that it's amazing they even run, but they're still running. We had an overheating problem, the air conditioning went out, and they still ran. They're bulletproof, in my mind. We have many sites all across the country, and we really don't have any issues with the products. They just work.

We've never had an issue with scalability. We could scale as large as we want. We can go out and up, anytime we want to. I'm really impressed with their scalability.

NetApp's support is outstanding. Any question I have gets answered promptly. If it has to go back to engineering, they reach out to engineering and engineering comes back with the answer. They provide us with whatever we're looking for in a timeframe that is more than acceptable, usually above expectations.

Positive

About 10 years ago we used to have EMC. Then we had both EMC and NetApp, and we ultimately replaced all the EMC with NetApp. Back then, we went with NetApp because of the cost. We got more for our dollar.

The ROI is from the performance and the ease of backup.

NetApp AFF is somewhat pricey. If they weren't as pricey, that would be a big deal for us. It's worth it but if you could get a really nice car for less, you'd go for the "less."

If you can get a demo and run it in your environment, play it side-by-side against comparable workloads and you'll see the benefits very quickly.

We are using it for storage.

Before, retrieving data or searching for something on the application would take some time. But since we migrated to NetApp, retrieving of the data happens quickly. It's fast.

In addition, we can easily manage the volumes on the NetApp application. We are getting very good, high performance and it has simplified our data management jobs, such as creating volumes. If our hard drive fails, we can reinitialize the process, and do many other things. It's very helpful.

NetApp has helped to reduce support issues due to performance or troubleshooting as we do not have such issues. We have not faced any performance issues since installing this device.

In addition, the ONTAP data management software has simplified our operations. We use it for high-availability of our file system. If any hard drive goes down, it will automatically be recovered.

We use NetApp AFF to support cloud integration and SAP Oracle. It has made the Oracle WebLogic site very fast and we can deploy the machines very easily. We can assign storage to the server visually, and use it to manage the storage.

The speed of data retrieval is the most valuable feature. We mostly use it for our SAP database and we are getting good IO from the hard drive.

Also, NetApp AFF helps simplify data management with unified data services across SAN and NAS environments.

I have been using the NetApp AFF A400 system for the last three months.

We have had no issues with its stability. It has been up 100 percent of the time since we installed it.

We can increase the storage if needed.

Currently, 60 percent of our storage is in NetApp. Another 20 percent is in HPE, and we use Synology storage for the NAS.

Their support is very good. Whenever I have contacted them, whoever has dealt with me has been good.

But the cost of support is quite high.

Positive

Our HPE system was old so we switched to a new one.

The deployment was not complex, but it was done by our vendor team. Still, it was easy. It was not a big deal.

Our experience with our vendor team was good. They are quite a good technical team with good knowledge.

We only installed it three months ago so it's too soon to talk about ROI.

There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost. The cost is very high compared to other devices. The HPE storage we used before was less expensive. NetApp is also more expensive than Dell EMC.

We evaluated Dell EMC and HPE storage.

The NetApp interface was very easy, as was managing things. Our experience with HPE, which we used before, was that it was quite a complex system to manage when it comes to the storage and volumes.

We host data for our users via CIFS and NFS protocols.

This is a physical appliance.

We found its Snapshots to be quite valuable. They allow us to restore data, in a timely fashion, that has accidentally been overwritten, modified, or deleted. That is the biggest feature. 

In terms of the footprint, it is far more efficient. It has smaller, higher-capacity drives than our older unit. In terms of space, power, and cooling, it has simplified things.

The newest version of ONTAP has a bit of a learning curve because you need to learn where things are to find them. It is not impossible, but when you are accustomed to the older version of ONTAP, it just takes a bit getting used to it, but it is about the same as before.

The front-end of ONTAP and its web UI could be improved. It has been a little while since I interacted with the interface, but my recollection is that because of the learning curve and things moving around, it is less intuitive than the previous version. 

We purchased it over a year ago. However, we really started using it several months ago. We had originally set it up in our old data center, then we decided to move it to our new data center before using it in production. It has been up and running for six or seven months.

So far, stability has been good. We haven't seen any problems. It has been just a few months, but even going back to the previous model of the NetApp NAS that we've had, I can't fault the stability. It has been extremely stable.

Because of the small footprint, the device allows for easier scalability in terms of rack space. Our previous solution used up almost an entire cabinet in our data center, which makes scaling a bit challenging because you need to find another cabinet, then cable across cabinets. This device is a lot easier because of its small footprint.

We have about four rack units in total. At this point, I don't anticipate any physical expansion. If we are going to expand, it will probably be to the cloud for a variety of reasons.

Our experience with NetApp's support has been superb. They are very proactive. I have nothing but good things to say about NetApp as well as our reseller that we work through, Indocurrent. The combination of Indocurrent and NetApp has led to a fantastic experience for us over the past year. I hope that doesn't change, and it hasn't changed since we went live with AFF.

I would rate NetApp's support as 10 out of 10.

Positive

We have seen performance improvements between AFF and our older NetApp, which was several years old.

We moved to the AFF model for performance, going from just spinning hard desks to all-flash. Also, its deduplication rate is another positive that we have seen. We have been able to extend it further than its physical capacity by utilizing the deduplication that the platform offers.

We don't have a SAN environment. We are just using it as a NAS. It is not any more or less complicated than our environment was before. We are still utilizing the same things, like export policies, quotas, qtrees, etc. that we were using with our older platform. It is about the same as it was before. 

The deployment was done over the course of a couple of months. This was mostly scheduling time on our end to work with the integrator. We then had to schedule time to go prep it to be moved from Manhattan to New Jersey, before moving it, setting it up, and getting things back online. So, it took a couple of months to get set up.

For customers who had it moved or shipped directly to the device's final destination, it shouldn't take that long to set it up if you have either a quality integrator or a substantial amount of experience with NetApp. 

Because I worked with our reseller, Indocurrent, we had someone who had a substantial amount of experience with NetApp. I wasn't as hands-on in terms of deploying it, but I was there with him as he deployed it. I watched him, observed him, and learned from him. Learning from that person was actually helpful. 

It was very straightforward working with the reseller. They have always been responsive to us. I have nothing but good things to say about our reseller/integrator. I would recommend Indocurrent as a reseller.

The amount of time that our IT support spends on it is minimal. Therefore, any cost savings would be negligible.

I looked at other vendors for other potential projects and thought NetApp's pricing was very competitive.

We are in the process of procuring the necessary license to do SnapMirror and back that data up to the cloud via AWS. Hopefully, we will be using that shortly.

We have had such a good experience with NetApp that our next logical step up from our previous device was just another NetApp.

NetApp has been reliable for us. Their technologies have been rock-solid. That is why we felt comfortable going from their older model to their newer model, AFF, rather than looking for a new vendor.

It is a good platform. If you don't have a lot of in-house experience setting things up physically, I recommend working with a good reseller. Find a good reseller whom you trust that has experienced staff and work hand-in-hand with them. You learn as you go, then once the device has been deployed, you can manage it for yourself.

Take advantage of NetApp's knowledge base and support site. It has a lot of very good documentation and how-to guides that explain how to accomplish what you want to accomplish. 

Get comfortable with the ONTAP command line because it is a very powerful tool that would allow you a lot of flexibility in terms of accomplishing many tasks. Where you might need multiple clicks and screens in the ONTAP web version, the command line allows you to do things with a relatively simple command.

I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10.