NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

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. 

We use the solution mostly for virtual workloads, VMware, databases, and also the VDI infrastructure.

We can provide all the SLA performance-wise and high availability to the business. We are trying to maintain compliance with all business SLAs.

The ONTAP cluster, the scale-out, and the architecture are great.

We are a large-scale company, and our growth has been pretty significant over the last five or six years. We like the scale, and the way NetApp grows, so that's why we use it. It's mostly for block storage.

NetApp data helped to reduce our operational latency to some extent. We've saved maybe 20%.

We have not been affected by ransomware since using the solution. 

The NetApp support could be better. NetApp can improve a lot on hardware upgrades and proactive support.

In the past, AFF has helped optimize our costs. However, not anymore since NetApp has increased its prices. The optimization we had previously is not the case anymore.

Recently, we have had some support issues that we definitely have some concerns with.

I've been using the solution for eight to ten years. 

The stability is good. I'd rate it eight out of ten. 

The solution is scalable. We are in a large enterprise, so that fits our requirements. There is about 30 to 35 petabytes of data and a block size of close to 25 to 30 petabytes of data.

Technical support could be better and should be more proactive. 

We've also had some production outages. Due to one upgrade, for example, there was a significant outage.

Neutral

I'm also familiar with Dell EMC.

We've used PowerMax, and we have used StorageGRID. 

We use AFF as this is the main environment for our corporate environment.

NetApp has been in the environment for quite some time, so we have built that comfort level with the product. 

I was involved with the initial deployment of the solution. The setup was complex on our end. Our internal processes are difficult as we have such an extensive environment. For example, we must go to security and do all the reviews and assessments. It's our internal program. There's nothing on NetApp.

We worked directly with a third party on the deployment and with NetApp. Overall, the experience was okay.

The pricing has definitely increased significantly as compared to other competitors.

I have not used NetApp BlueXP.

We are looking into FSx ONTAP. We are trying to do the pilot program on FSx ONTAP, and we will probably use that in the cloud in AWS.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. We've only really had some support issues and some issues around performance sometimes. 

We use the solution for virtualization. We run VMware on it.

Before running AFF we ran regular SAS Disk Arrays. NetApp AFF greatly improved the performance.

The speed is great. That's probably number one in terms of features we appreciate.

The throughput is excellent.

It's useful for running production databases on.

NetApp AFF has reduced our operational latency. It has close to doubled it.

The setup process could be easier. 

I used NetApp AFF for six years.

I never had any major outages or issues with the platform.

Scaling is easy enough. Users can just throw another shelf in. It's easy to add hardware. 

Support is good. I've never had any issues long term.

Positive

We've used Dell EMC in the past, and we use Pure now. 

Pure is easier to manage just from an interface perspective, however, I would say the performance of both is close to equal. We chose AFF primarily for the level of performance. That said, the team that works for me has more experience with Pure. The issue we have is that the footprint is way smaller.

I was involved in the initial deployment of AFF. I've done it quite a few times and I find the process to be straightforward.

The deployment could be easier. Pure setup is way easier in comparison but I had no problem setting AFF up. 

The initial setup has a lot more steps in it than are probably necessary for a base deployment, unlike other vendors where it's more straightforward. It could be a little bit more streamlined.

I handled the deployment myself. 

We haven't quite witnessed an ROI. Eventually, it becomes cheaper as we go along instead of going all cloud, however, in the end, it's probably pretty close to equal.

They sped everything up initially. However, are there other products that have a better ROI? Maybe. Pure probably has a better ROI overall and especially when you start talking about Pure Evergreen and the way that they do their maintenance. That's a big difference that helps a little bit with the cost long term.

The pricing is  pretty in line with industry standards.

We did not evaluate other storage issues. 

We are a NetApp customer.

So far, the solution has not optimized our costs. 

Since using the solution, we have not been hit by ransomware. 

We do not use any other NetApp cloud solutions together with AFF.

In terms of rating the product by itself, I would give it a nine out of ten due to some of the usability differences that I know now. Overall, against other vendors, I would probably rate it eight out of ten based on the footprint size and some of the longer-term support features.

Our primary use for NetApp AFF is backup for our production. It's more for our database for all of our retail for Nordstrom. We've got to keep it running every day, so we've got to make sure that we have all the databases backed up for three years, or more.

We use NetApp AFF for artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, and there is no latency that I can see. It has been pretty solid.

This solution is pretty simple when it comes to data protection and data management.

After we implemented NetApp, we noticed that the deduplication and the latency changed a lot. Rather than buy more disk space, we now compress a lot of stuff and we have more storage. Overall, we have more storage and less latency, which saves us money. I would say that we save between half a million and three-quarters of a million dollars, yearly.

We use our data in the same way. This solution benefited us in that it was hard to convince our upper management to buy more disk, so this helped out.

The thin provisioning helped a lot, and it was probably the biggest key. We noticed that we were short in certain areas and we needed to add more room for VDI. With thin provisioning, we weren't using as much, and with not much latency on it.

Being able to move large amounts of data from one data center to another has helped us. We have a data center in one office and another one that is about a hundred miles away. We share a lot of data between these two sites. There is almost no latency, so it works out perfectly. When we have an incident, such as a power outage at one site, we automatically have a backup on the other end. Also when one side is down, we're still available, although we're limited to certain things on one side. Overall, the backup is pretty good.

We are currently discussing the possible relocation of resources.

I would estimate that our application response time has improved by twenty to thirty percent. For example, our photo studio application is faster.

At this time, we are examining out data center costs and considering a different data center.

Using NetApp has helped alleviate worry about storage being a limiting factor. Had I been asked this a year ago, it would have been a different story.  The additional storage means that things are easier and running more smoothly, and we don't have to worry about it breaking down.

The most valuable features for us are controlling the snapshots, the ease of reverting back, and scheduling.

NetApp AFF is very good at cleaning up your storage.

The stability is good but there is room for improvement with other options.

Stability is good, although there is always room for improvement.

We are working on scaling this solution right now. It is a big part of what we want to do, including moving to the cloud.

Technical support for this solution is good, and I've never had a problem. They are straight to the point and give you a lot of detail on what to expect or what you might run into. Whether you call or get support online, it is pretty good.

We started looking into NetApp AFF because our previous solution was outdated, and we were having storage problems. They were older FAS storage, also by NetApp.

We were interested in getting something a little better, including improvements in the storage and the latency.

The initial setup was straightforward. It's always been very easy with how everything works, and their support has been pretty solid too.

We worked with partners for implementation and deployment. Our experience with them was pretty good.

Having our VDI work better is important to us because our work-from-home employees can work a lot better, which helps save money.

We only evaluated NetApp, and we are slowly looking at VMware, VDI, and the cloud.

We went with this solution primarily because of the stability. I also see reducing a lot of storage and cleaning up a lot of stuff. It is pretty good at this.

We are looking into a cloud version in the future.

My advice for anybody who is researching this type of solution is to consider several things. If they are trying to save money, think that they'll have to buy more disk, or want to clean up what they have, I think that they should go ahead with NetApp AFF. It makes a big difference, especially if you see the thirty percent improvement that we have seen. It's a pretty big jump.

This solution is very good, but nobody is perfect.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The solution has made our lives easier by providing many different storage efficient features and data protection features. In the past two years, they've really accelerated their future offerings, and that has really helped us better secure our environment and also increase efficiency.

One of the main features we use is FlexCache. By using FlexCache, we were able to move a limited set of data to remote locations much more quickly than having to replicate entire datasets and improve customer satisfaction in terms of quicker access to data and even having access to data to a closer location to where they are and that has provided tremendous value for us.

Without this solution, it would have made things a lot slower in terms of getting the data set that's important for customers to access.

FlexCache currently works only on reads. The writes actually go back to the source. The product just introduced writing back locally, and the feature hasn't been rolled out yet. When that works as we expect it to, that will bring it to the table.

Better pricing would always be appreciated.

When new ONTAP cloud versions come out, they need to have fewer bugs.

We're pretty much using every single feature that the solution offers, aside from BlueXP. We're evaluating that too. We're in a cloud model and we're in the early stages of moving some workloads in.

We've explored other vendors. I can't say which; however, compared to many other source vendors, this product is unique in terms of providing a comprehensive portfolio of features that others simply don't have. It's much more unified than all the others. That's why we chose them.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

It's pretty comprehensive; we're always looking for better efficiency.

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.

Our primary use case of this solution is for SAN block storage. 

We don't use AFF for artificial intelligence or machine learning applications.

It has improved the way my organization functions because it has enabled us to host a very fast, multi-tenant private cloud solution.

AFF has improved application response time by a lot. 

This solution has helped us to stop worrying about storage as a limiting factor. We know we've got enough storage left and it's easy to manage, so we can tell how much real storage we do have left.

We use SapMirror a lot but the speed of the AFF is also very valuable. 

The overall latency in our environment is very low because it's All Flash and we've got 10 Giga dedicated to the storage network

AFF's simplicity around data protection and data management is pretty good. With the NetApp volume encryption, we're getting data at rest encryption right now. It was very easy to turn on and very easy to manage with the onboard key manager.

It has enabled us to add new applications, without having to purchase additional storage. We've over-provisioned our storage quite a bit, simply because we know we've got time before people will grow into it.

It has not reduced our data center costs. NetApp charges a pretty penny for their stuff. 

The next release desperately needs NFS4, extended attributes.

In terms of what needs improvement, the NAS areas are a little behind on technologies. For example, SMB 3 is not quite up to speed with a lot of the storage spaces stuff. NFS4 doesn't support some of the features that we need.

It's rock solid. 

Scalability is expensive. 

Their technical support is very good. We use them quite a bit and we have had good experiences with them.

We've been with NetApp since I came on the project and because I had NetApp experience before I brought it with me.

I've set up a NetApp network previously. The setup was pretty straightforward.

We used an integrator and we had a very good experience with them.

We've looked at EMC and Microsoft storage spaces. Neither one of them really compares.

My advice to someone considering this solution is that if you can afford it and you will be using it a lot, go for it. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. To make it a perfect ten it would need to be cheaper. 

We use it for high performance, block storage, and file storage. 

The highest performance need apps are usually deployed on AFF. We're using adaptive QoS to identify what applications require higher performance and moving those volumes over to the AFF.

We are able to offer higher performance to meet the business needs. We see far less issues with applications complaining about not getting the throughput they need, the IOPS, or that they are getting to high of a latency. We put it on AFF and the issues go away.

The user experience with AFF is fast and secure, with continuous access to data. Our users typically don't know where we're putting their data unless we have some benefit in telling them. If they say, "It's not fast enough," we put it over here, and they say, "It's good now. We're happy." Though, we have to be judicious in how we move it, because storage is a bit expensive. Although, the higher storage efficiencies somewhat compensate for it.

The solution is providing IT more headroom so we can give higher performance to more applications. Like every business, our data footprint is growing. Our applications account is growing, and we're just able to keep up with it now somewhat better than we were before.

We are spending less time putting out fires, so there's a tangible benefit right there.

• It has extremely high performance. 
• The storage efficiency is far superior to a typical FAS.
• The administration is ONTAP, so it's not like you have a new platform to learn. Everything is consistent with what we have been doing for years.

On the roadmap, NetApp is improving the solution's storage efficiency, compression algorithms to achieve more space savings, and the management interfaces. We are looking forward to these feature additions in the next release.

Like every NetApp platform, it's very stable. Occasionally, we hit a bug, but you encounter that everywhere. We've never had any problems specific to AFF. Overall, our problems with NetApp products have been minimal. It is a solid platform.

It scales well, probably more so than the FAS. Because of the storage density with the SSDs, we can't buy enough SSDs to max one out.

As with all NetApp tech support, it's outstanding. It is the best in the industry. It is very easy to escalate.

We didn't technically switch solutions. We just augmented it because we have been a NetApp customer for awhile. Thus, we're going from FAS to AFF, which is just a natural progression.

The initial setup was not complex. Even though it's a higher performing platform, you run it, manage it, and administer it the same as you do any FAS.

We have a VAR, Tego Data Systems, whom we work with closely. They know our environment as well as we do. So, when we come to them with a need, we don't have to spend a lot of time feeding them background. They're ready to hit the ground running.

Our TCO has probably stayed about the same per terabyte of user data.

We looked at other vendors (Kaminario, Pure Storage, Dell EMC, and IBM), but decided that it made the most sense to stay with NetApp. 

I would look at the performance of AFF, its reliability, and its outstanding tech support. 

AFF is the wave of the future. Spinning disk will be going away and it just makes sense to go where the industry is going.

AFF helps us improve performance for our enterprise applications, data analytics and VMs. We have moved our primary data stores for production over to AFF, and a lot of the problems that might happened have gone away.

To set up and provision enterprise applications using this solution is quick. We're integrating it with ServiceNow, so it is a hands-off storage allocation. A user submits a request and can have storage in five to ten minutes.

We are not yet connected to any public clouds.