NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

The most valuable features are the low latency, high IOPS, and the ability to have a very small footprint with a large amount of data. The free controller upgrade program is a plus.

We've taken the conversation around performance out of the picture now, and brought it more onto the application side.

Simplification is probably the key thing right now; making the interface and the user experience a lot simpler, more streamlined, more like a lot of startup companies now do, so that there aren’t as many bells and whistles, knobs to tweak, so that you basically have a single pane of glass to do all your work. I see that getting better in this product, but not there yet.

Started in 2014, using a FAS8080 with all SSD storage.

Stability is excellent. We haven't had any issues with it.

It works pretty good. When we need more storage, we just add another shelf or just add additional controllers to the cluster if additional performance is required.

Excellent

We have used technical support on occasion. It’s been pretty good. It depends on who you get and when you get it. Overall, it's been good.

We were not previously using something else; we were always a NetApp customer before. We just wanted flash. We were using and we still are using spinning discs.

The All Flash storage was a direction from the upper management: This was before the All Flash FAS was available. Reduction of the physical footprint of storage by going to SSD storage from traditional SAS or SATA drives. Reduced power and cooling requirements.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was straightforward, because we actually did an all-flash FAS before there was an All Flash FAS. We bought a FAS system with the SSD shelves and made it into an all-flash FAS before NetApp had an offering. Since that time we have bought additional NetApp All Flash storage and deployed AFF systems to various datacenters across the globe.

We ended up going with some other vendors for our SAN environment; we went with Pure because at the time there was not an offering from NetApp on the flash for the SAN side of things. Now there is, the All Flash FAS, the SolidFire, or something like that. At the time, there wasn't, so that's the reason why we went to Pure.

The advice I’d give depends on what the need is. If you're looking for a NAS-type device that's all flash, NetApp's still pretty much the king in the NAS environment.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is cost, and then of course whether or not they're a willing partner. That's one reason why we stayed with NetApp as long as we have: They're not always interested in selling us something as much as coming up with solutions for some of our problems.

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 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.

We are in the process of moving to AWS and we are using this solution to help move all of our data to the cloud, using the tiering and other functionality.

We have approximately fifty AFF clusters spread across three locations.

We plan to use this solution for artificial intelligence and machine-learning applications, but we are still in the PoC right now. It is something that my team is working on.

Our DR and backup are done using SnapMirror.

This solution has helped simplify our IT operations. We can easily move data from on-premises to the cloud, or from one cloud to another cloud. NetApp SnapShots and SnapMirror are also helpful.

The thin provisioning has allowed us to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. We are shrinking the data with functions like deduplication and giving almost two hundred percent. It is very helpful.

This solution has allowed us to move very large amounts of data without affecting IT operations. We have moved four petabytes to the cloud. We have moved data from on-premises to the cloud, and also between clouds. It is easy to do. For example, if you want DR or a backup in a second location, then you just use SnapShot. If you have a database that you want to have available in more than one location then you can synchronize them easily. We are very happy with these features.

Our application response time has been improved since implementing this solution. The AFF cluster is awesome. Our response time is now below two milliseconds, whereas it used to be four or five milliseconds. This is very useful. 

The costs of our data center have definitely been reduced by using this solution. The power consumption and space, obviously, because this solution is very small, have been reduced.

We have been using this solution to automatically tier cold data to the cloud. I would not say that it has affected our TCO.

This solution has not changed our position in terms of worrying about storage as a limiting factor.

The most valuable features of this solution are the deduplication and the ability to move data to different clouds. We have been using Cloud Sync and Cloud Volumes, and we have moved four petabytes using Cloud Sync.

It would be very useful if we could do the NFS to CIFS file transfer, but it is not supported at this time.

We are finding limitations when it comes to moving data to AWS.

We have been using this solution for ten years.

The stability of this solution is fine. We have not experienced any downtime or any issues.

Scalability is something that we are spending time on, but it is an internal issue related to seeking financial approval. The scalability of the solution is not a technical issue.

The technical support for this solution has always been number one. There is no doubt that they are getting more responsive and more technical.

We performed a PoC using Cloud Volumes and Cloud Sync, and we were happy with the time, durability, and availability.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward.

We can install this solution ourselves.

We have seen ROI from this solution.

We evaluated a solution by EMC, but we found they their filesystem was not as robust. That is the reason that we chose NetApp.

We are really happy customers and this is a solution that I can recommend.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

VMware datastores over NFS for DL585 G7 hosts on a 10G switch.

NetApp FAS was unable to keep up with the I/O. A200 has performed without a problem.

Having separate storage virtual machines with completely different setups for NFS and Windows solves problems the FAS has when the domain controllers are unreachable.

The system commander web management is good, but it is easy to make bad configurations, and it takes a lot of jumping around to work a single issue.

AFF is our primary source for our data centers. We use it for our multi-tenancy data center. We like the crypto erase function available on the SSDs and we needed the high performance, IOPs that you can get from SSDs.

This solution makes everything a lot faster. The time to move data around, boot, and migrate VMs is much faster. The speed has also helped improve performance for our enterprise applications, data analytics, and VMs.

We like the high security, self-encrypting drives, and the NVMe.

I need faster Fibre Channel over Ethernet. They top out at 10GBs today and I would like that to go to 40 or 100.

I find it very stable. Everything's been up and running well. We actually had an outage in our testbed data center and everything shut off hard and came back up without any problems.

The tech support is good, although I don't use them that much. The product is good. 

We have always been a NetApp customer, it's a very good product. We knew that we wanted more performance. It wasn't a hard decision. 

The setup was pretty complex. There was a lot of compliance and there was a lot of security requirements, but it went pretty well.

It took us two to three days to set up and provision enterprise applications using AFF because we're a little different. We do short duration uses which means that we build everything from scratch, tear it down, and build it again. 

Our total cost of ownership has increased. SSDs are expensive. 

In the early days, we were considering Dell EMC but we decided to go with NetApp because its adoption across the DoD is widely understood.

The user experience is the same as it ever was, only faster. 

I would rate this solution as a nine. It's not a ten because we would like to see the faster speeds on the Fibre Channel over Ethernet. AFF is definitely a good product. 

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 our VWware environment. We run virtual machines and our plan is to migrate all of them to the All Flash platform.

The improvement for us has been space savings on the All Flash FAS platform. The data space savings are almost three times better than the what we have right now, a two-to-one ratio.

Regarding the user experience, it's pretty fast. For applications where they require a high throughput, this platform is pretty solid. It also helps improve the performance of enterprise applications, data analytics, and VMs because it's pretty fast. We are on a different level of tiered platform, where the All Flash is completely hybrid, SSD aggregate, so it tripled the performance for the customer.

The most valuable features are high performance and encryption. It also provides aggregate level dedupe.

The system is pretty stable but most of the ONTAP versions are not really stable. There have been multiple bugs in different ONTAP versions. The hardware is really stable but we see some glitches here and there with the software. That's how the system works.

Right now, we are on a pretty stable version: 9.3.8.

We have not had to scale it. We have a two-node cluster.

Technical support has been pretty good. We have had to involve them two or three times per month.

Our old solution was working fine but the system was going out of support so we needed to do a refresh.

It is straightforward. The whole cluster configuration is pretty straightforward. Just bring up the node and add to the existing clusters. We didn't see any difficulties.

It takes us one day to set up and provision enterprise applications using this product. Migration takes a lot of time but provisioning is setting up the cluster and that takes one day.

We used NetApp Professional Services and they were pretty good.

Because we are government, it is an open contract. People have to bid on government projects. We don't have a say in the options.

I would say this is a good solution but talk to the NetApp guys and see how it really fits in your environment.

We do not connect it to public clouds at the moment. We have plans to do so in the future, depending on the use cases.

I rate the product at seven out of ten. Their system is pretty good but we are still facing a few issues, mainly on the software side where there is an SVMDR. We had it in the previous configuration. We did an ONTAP upgrade but had some issues replicating the whole configuration. There are a few other glitches here and there. Other than that I would say it's pretty stable.