NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

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 it for data storage for Citrix VDIs.

The improvement to our organization is in the ability to put more into the same storage platform. We came from EqualLogics and the ones we had didn't have that nice compression and deduplication to get a little bit more out of the storage.

Also, the protection of the data, being able to replicate between sites easily. We were a "backup shop". The replication doesn't quite back up so I haven't won that fight yet, but at least it protects us offsite, easily.

The most valuable features are deduplication and compression, so we get more out of our storage. The replication is also important.

I would like to see a little more flexibility in customizing some of the SnapMirror stuff. We have been having a little trouble and, in the first round with tech support, they say, "Well, this is how we do it."

It's not exactly throttled but it's limited in the number of connections it makes. We would like to be able to tweak that, to increase it a little bit, because we don't have half a dozen large areas that we are protecting, we have more like 40 or 50 areas. They run into each other a little bit and I don't want to spend time on them.

It's very stable. It's always there when we need it. With the Dual Controller, if one drops out, the other one comes right online. We don't use any iSCSI so there is a little bit of a latency break but, over the NFS, we don't notice that switch-on. We can do maintenance in the middle of the day, literally rip a whole controller out of the chassis, and do what we need to do with it.

We have not needed to scale it.

Technical support is generally very good, once they get a good idea of what the issue is. Occasionally you need to be a little more specific about your problem to get the right team working on it. But they're normally very good, very responsive, efficient, knowledgeable, and very patient. They're willing to take the time to make sure you understand their analysis and their recommended solution.

The reasons we switched were performance and the number of IOPS in the previous product. It was an older product which was dog-slow. Some of the larger file servers were the worst. And that played out to everything else that was sharing the storage with it.

There were a few initial setups. Two of them were relatively straightforward and one of them was a little bit more complex, the AFF8080. On that one there were a lot more network interfaces to figure out where they go.

We also leveraged the IP Spaces which was really good because we house some data for an affiliate, rather than somebody in-house, so that was amazing.

We used a reseller for the deployment. The only problem with doing it that way is that I find we did not have a good idea of the current roadmap. On some of the projects we purchased for, we might have made a different decision had we known what was coming six or nine months down the road.

Some of that was on us. We probably could have pushed for that, but having that reseller "middle-man" made it more difficult.

We haven't had the time to do a proper analysis of ROI yet.

The next closest option that we considered was Dell EMC.

Try to get behind the sales guys to the people who do pre-sales tech support to really understand the roadmap and other aspects of the product. The sales guys are great but they're sales guys. If you can get to the tech guys behind them and really talk to them about what your problems are, and what you are trying to attack, I feel that works much better.

Our whole storage environment is based on NetApp. We provide an enterprise network that offers storage for various entities that require on-demand storage, including databases, web pages, and other large-scale storage requirements. We are also getting into AI-generated content, which requires even more storage space.

NetApp provides an opportunity to scale out if necessary. Because NetApp has so many different systems and products, we can provide as much storage as needed. We could implement it anywhere because it always has backward compatibility.

The organization I work for adopts Zero Trust and prefers NetApp for that. It's embedded in pretty much everything we do. We also use other competitors, like Dell, but in terms of storage, nothing is as good as NetApp. We're getting into the AI realm because the organization I work for understands that it's coming fast. We're talking to them about storage possibilities for AI-related resources that will soon be needed. 

NetApp offers the best value in terms of storage and compatibility. The solution is compatible with every product we use, including Dell and Cisco. NetApp is at the forefront of innovation. They've been doing this for a long time, and they provide excellent support to their partners. 

We once lost some virtual machines and we could restore the virtual machines quickly from our NetApp backup. 

We don't have any challenges with NetApp. We only need to update it on emerging software and versions that are put out or any enhancements that they've included or things that they've deprecated. NetApp's product is superior, so our engineers must stay on top of all the features and things that they've taken away.

We've used Dell EqualLogic and VMware vSAN storage. Dell EqualLogic servers may not work with other server types, whereas NetApp is compatible with everyone. We've already spoken with our NetApp sales reps, and they're in the process of getting us quotes on the new AI-focused systems. Our organization must scale fast and avoid a bottleneck where we can't scale as needed on demand. 

I rate NetApp solutions 10 out of 10. We are using maybe 50 percent of NetApp's capability. There's so much more that we don't touch on. Coming to these events, you learn about the new and upcoming software they've been working on. 

It is used for separating locations from a network cluster and also to store the data and create a backup on another location for bigger companies.

NetApp is like a one-point central management. For example, one can put everything on the right version and control the whole environment from one software solution. It's easy to have an insight into monitoring and stuff. The solution is easy to manage.

The user interface should be more user-friendly and configuration could be easier.

I have been using NetApp AFF for two years.

It is a fairly stable solution. There is rarely a problem and everything runs fine.

It is a fairly scalable solution, though some things are more easily scalable than others but the possibilities are endless. Presently, sixty customers are working on the solution.

The customer support team of NetApp is good.

The initial setup is not very simple. As I always use the CLI for configuration, it is easy. But the nodes' and cluster configuration can also be done with GUI.

The solution is deployed by connecting everything in different locations and then implementing the solution that will be sold to customers. The deployment is done by three engineers, which include two senior engineers and myself.

The customers need to pay for the license.

I would recommend NetApp to people with a budget and looking for a simple solution for a small environment. But for complex environments, NetApp can be an overkill.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

This is a storage solution. 

I like that you can switch protocols and features on and off, depending on how I architect my domain. From the business side of things, it supports file formatting, the main protocols, and the hot swapping of disks and features. 

This is an expensive solution that could be cheaper.

I've been using this product for several years. 

The stability is good. 

If it's a data center enterprise-fed product, it is scalable. Some of the base models are not scalable, but these products are generally scalable.

Deployment time depends on the size of the organization. If you have engineers, the implementation can be done in-house. 

It's important to ensure that your use cases are suitable for the product prior to investing in the purchase of it. I recommend this solution and rate it eight out of 10. 

We host NSS as a part of a cluster. We use AFF to support data analytics, machine learning, cloud integration, and SAP workloads as well.

ONTAP data management software has simplified our operations. Earlier, we had ONTAP clustering. We had multiple name spaces, but with the cluster, we were able to build a single name space, and we were able to host NFS sets and iSCSI in a single cluster. In this way, it has unified our workloads.

I have found the following features of NetApp AFF most valuable: Snapshot, snap clone, deduplication, and compaction. 

These features help with data protection. We host an exchange, so protecting our data and workloads is of prime importance.

This solution helps accelerate demanding enterprise applications. VMware workloads, the database, and Oracle Solaris are hosted on AFF, which means that our primary priority workloads are on AFF and that the secondary ones are on FAS. That includes the SAN national cloud.

Initiating Snapshot is not time consuming, and it is not tedious. That's the reason why FlexClone and FlexCache help us with our protection care strategy.

For ONTAP, in general, the deduplication ratio and Snapshot limitation are areas that need improvement. There is a global limitation on the number of Snapshots or clones that can be spun off of a particular Snapshot. If those limitations are increased, it might be helpful.

With regard to Fibre Channel and iSCSI, the block protocol is still not up to the mark. NetApp has not been a leader in file and block services.

SnapCenter is still not mature enough and has a grid at scale. It is still not up to the mark and is not delivering as promised when we initially invested in StorageGRID.

In terms of Oracle workloads, NFS workloads specific to databases, Snapshots, data production strategies, and SnapMirror, significant room for improvement is needed from NetApp.

Compatibility with multiple vendors has been a pain and continues to be so.

We have been using NetApp AFF for the last five years.

Initially, stability was a pain with ONTAP. Now it is much better. ONTAP crashes have reduced significantly to probably one or two in the last year.

The scalability of NetApp AFF is pretty straightforward. We can expand clusters and that's not a pain point. I'm happy with the scalability.

With regard to technical support, NetApp defines the severity of a ticket. However, even when there is a P1 level ticket that should be turned around in half an hour, there were cases where we would not receive resources for two hours. Sometimes, even after two hours, we wouldn't get the right resource. This is still a pain point and is ongoing.

NetApp's attitude toward support needs to improve quite significantly. If I were to rate NetApp's technical support on a scale from one to ten, I would give them a seven.

As for the initial setup, we were on FAS initially, and the migration was not smooth because the 7-MTT tool was not that mature. After the initial hiccups, however, the experience has been okay, and we are pleased with this product.

Building a cluster was not complicated, but ONTAP was not stable. I remember one upgrade that lasted for more than 24 hours. It took the same amount of time with FabricPool, and FlexCache still has loopholes. It is not efficient. There is still quite a lot of room for NetApp to strengthen its ONTAP core.

We were migrating data from 7mode to Cdot, and it was a new build. Also, ONTAP testing was new, so we didn't have many benchmarks to work through. The migration and ONTAP testing were not smooth. We had quite a number of problems, and we were forced to do a lot of upgrades. The issues related to compatibility had to be escalated to the highest level of the NetApp engineering team and the product build team as well. We worked closely with them.

As for deployment, we had some issues with switching at the cluster backbone when building a cluster. Other than that, it took us less than a month or so because we had professional services as well. We were able to build the solution in 90 days.

As a customer, the ROI is still not that great. I don't see a unique selling point for NetApp. The number of USPs has to go up for me to say that I can't live without NetApp. Right now, if our company wants to run our business with another vendor, we would happily do so.

The upgrade costs were huge.

We've gone through a rough patch on our journey with NetApp AFF, but now, it is more stable. For the most part, you won't have too many unforeseen experiences, and there is an 80 to 90% chance that you will get what NetApp promises.

One of the workloads that you may need to worry about is symlink-based applications. For example, eRoom won't work well. Symlink-based applications won't deliver the workloads.

We always have issues with a few Oracle workloads, even with the latest levels. You may need to be cautious regarding these areas and block, but other than these, you will get what NetApp promises. The deployment would also be straightforward.

I come from an EMC background and tend to compare this solution to it. The one thing that I love about NetApp is their SMB. That is, their NAS protocol is their strength. Block is their weakness. There were days when we would say that we would only buy NetApp for file and that we would never buy it for block. Even now, I think that seems to be the case, even though they have improved to an extent.

With regard to block storage, its compatibility to other applications, and the allied monitoring tools they supply, especially for block or file, NetApp is better than most. I have worked with EMC, HP, IBM. In terms of block, I would not want to invest in NetApp.

Unless NetApp is very concerned that the migration tool is not working as promised, I recommend investing in NetApp and getting a third party tool that can help seamlessly migrate the data.

If I were to rate NetApp AFF overall on a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at nine.

The primary use case is availability, performance, bandwidth, and throughput with respect to our applications.

We are currently using an on-premise solution.

The user experience is fantastic. I'm looking forward to the AFF 800 storage box, which is all-flash with NVMe technologies. This will certainly give a boost to our applications, and make for a better user experience.

The most valuables features is the response time that we are receiving from the AFF storage box. We are looking for performance and delivery times of the response from the host, which we are happy with.

We are looking forward to the all-flash NVMe which is coming out.

Going forward, I would like improvement in the response latencies, capacity size, cache, and controller size. It also needs more fine tuning in regards to all-flash and AML workloads.

Even though the complete workload will fill out the AFF storage box, it will give us sustained stability.

One of the key features of the AFF storage box is its horizontal scalability.

Our new business initiatives, which are coming, demand more IOPS and performance. Our applications are scaling, which demand more performance in a very short span of time. This solution will improve technology driven things.

The technical support is fantastic. No one else is like their team. We're happy with them.

Our previous solutions were Hitachi, Siemens, and NetApp. We switched to AFF because it had all-flash, better performance, and better response times. It also scales better.

We used to do applications running on mechanical disk. With the introduction of SDDs and AFF All Flash, this has given us substantial improvements in our applications' performance.

The initial setup was easy for us. The consultant was always there to support us. They have always been helpful in understanding the technical points, how it will help us going forward in terms of implementation, future scalability, and possible upgrade of storage components.

We used a NetApp consultant for the deployment, who we have also used for the sizing. Our experience with them was very good.

It does have good ROI.

We are able to set up and provision enterprise applications using AFF quickly. We have seen tremendous performance, stability and growth in it. 

NetApp met our requirements.

It is the first company who introduced NVMe protocols, which is end-to-end. It also has very good response times.

The NVMe technology that we're evaluating will certainly help us with artificial intelligence going forward.

We use it for our high-performance requirement, low-latency requirement databases. That's at the core of the retail application; what we've connected are non-virtualized AIX databases running Oracle and DB2.

The valuable features are the high performance and low latency that the retail application requires.

We have a six-node NetApp cluster for our regular 8080 FAS systems, and we have two cluster nodes with All Flash FAS, so it enables us to manage this high performance, low latency, application workload in the same fashion as we treat all of our other data; the SnapMirrors, the SnapVaults, the snapshots, the user control. We can use the same toolkits for everything.

It provides ease of management and the ability to manage it as one unit.

One of the limitations we found with the All Flash FAS, using ONTAP version 8.3.1, is that we could not do foreign LUN import directly to the 8040. We had to stage that through the other cluster node before they ended up in the regular place. There were some limitations and some gotchas on the initial migration path.

It was installed about a year ago, and the full workload was deployed around March of 2016.

Stability has been good. We have had no stability issues at all whatsoever.

There have not been any latency issues.

So far, we have about 40 TB of raw space. On top of that, comes all of the inline compression, the dedupe and all of those features and functionalities. It's not a huge system but it's IO intensive. It's on the order between 40,000 and 80,000 IOPS.

Technical support is pretty good. We don't call on support all that often. We're well handled in house. For the AFFs, we haven't really had too many support issues at all.

We replaced 2 E-series, and the decision was made to get a larger cluster mode system with two nodes of All Flash FAS, specifically so it would be one cluster, and could be managed as one cluster.

I was involved with the initial setup. It was fairly easy; a little bit different from a traditional FAS but very well managed by NetApp as the install engineers.

I don't see the price of it, but my company must think that it provides plenty of value at whatever price we are paying for it.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options. We went with NetApp because we were already using NetApp. The strategic direction at the higher management level was to go with NetApp.

The mix we currently have with 8080 for traditional spinning disk workloads for VMware and file sharing – those kinds of things – mixed in a cluster with the All Flash FAS system, does everything we could possibly ever ask of the system. One set of management tools, one set of skills to manage all the capability, I think it’s an excellent solution.