NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

Our primary use case for AFF is for file storage.

It simplifies IT operations.

Thin provisioning enables us to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. Thin provisioning is obviously heavily utilized so we don't have to buy a new kit.

AFF has enabled us to move large amounts of data from one data center to another. It has also affected IT operations by greatly improving resilience.

AFF SSDs have improved application response times. We've seen a five-fold decrease in the latency figure.

Datacenter costs have decreased because of the smaller footprint and less power usage. In one system we saw six racks go down to half a rack. It's probably five to one in terms of actual data space.

Speed, reliability, ease of use are the most valuable features. 

The overall latency in your environment is very good. 

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

The simplicity around data protection and data management is very good. We use SnapVault for data protection which works very well. SnapMirror is also good. We mainly use the command line a lot, so we don't tend to use many provisioning tools.

We have had issues with CIFS presentations and outages, so if that was removed, we could do seamless upgrades without affecting CIFS presentations. That would be an advantage. That's about the only improvement I can think of.

It's stable.

Scalability is very good. 

The technical support is very good. We haven't had any issues. 

Initially, the setup was complex because it was new and very different, it was 7-Mode to cDot. We got a lot of support from NetApp so it wasn't an issue. It was just complex, but they provided the assistance we needed.

We are integrators but NetApp consultants also help.

We always use NetApp for our file services.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. Nothing would make it a ten, nothing is perfect. I would advise someone considering this solution to buy it!

The primary use case of this solution is for its speed. We're using the AFF as a cache disk. We have terabytes of data that we have to move quickly off a system. The only way we could do that is with the 40 gig backbone that all-flash array provides and the speed of the disks.

Besides for the speed, one of the most valuable features that the AFF gives me is the robust hardware that it has. It's simplistic. It deploys very easily. It's already built from the factory to take advantage of the all-flash array.

I would describe the user experience of the solution as very simplistic. There's a very easy GUI to use, and then when you need to get very, very detailed, you have a robust command line that you could do anything you want with to enhance performance for your solutions. Really what we're using the AFF for is solely for speed. We really need the power of the backbone and the speed of the disks because we have to move so much data.

Setting up and provisioning enterprise applications take minutes. It's just not difficult. We only have to use the GUI, curate the spaces, and go. I've set up entire NetApp systems in a morning.

I don't need anything improved. This solution does what I need it to do. I would like to see a cleaner GUI and better help pages. The solution itself doesn't bother, a lot of times it's that after it's installed. I have more issues with the support after the setup. I want it to be more simplistic than it already is and I would love to see the GUI be more simplistic.

Still implementing.

So far the system has been excellent, no complaints. NetApp has always been built as a massively fault-tolerant system. If we have a problem, it just doesn't show it. 

Scalability is excellent. If we need more space it's a no downtime solution. It's harder to get the funding than it is to get the solution itself.

I go to tech support with difficulty because I installed NetApp for many years I know what to expect when I call. When I don't get the support tech that I'm expecting and I'm trying to get to the right one, it can get very frustrating for me to push my way to the right person. NetApp has the right people, it's just a matter of getting to them.

I installed NetApp for many, many years. The initial setup of NetApp is very simplistic. Even as an installer, for years upon years, there's a giant poster board that I still use to this day, because that tells me exactly where my cables are supposed to go. It just gets me off the ground quickly and then it's just a matter of following the GUI and knowing what you're doing.

I would rate the product at least an eight. I should give it a nine, if not a ten, but there's always room for improvement. 

I would tell someone considering this solution that it's expensive, but it's worth the money. You're going to get the speed and the backbones that you need to accomplish what you do. If you need that kind of speed and that kind of performance, you can get it out of the AFF.

Whenever we face any issues with performance, particularly any performance with our high outreaching storage site, we are recommended to use an all-flash service, because we rely on our primary solution at all times. If it seem like there are issues, we have bring in different vendors as a buffer. We have adopted an all-flash primary solution with this use case.

From the automation point of view, we want zero down time for our clients with good scalability and good performance. Client satisfaction is the most important to us.

We haven't received any negative feedback yet. If we are not receiving any complaints from the client side, then it says that the client is okay with the product.

This solution helps us improve performance for our enterprise applications, data analytics, and VMs.

• NetApp AFF is based on Unix, which makes it secure.
• The file-based protocol supports NFS and CIFS.
• Capacity and latency with the AFF are good. We haven't seen a delay of latency nor performance issues. No issues have been recorded from the client so far.

There are some bugs with the solution which need to be fixed.

The client should not record with any type of stability issues, whether it be latency or features being affected. We should not find any module portions being affected because of performance issues. There should be continuous good performance as long as product performs.

The scalability is good.

For vendor coordination, the technical support has been good. They do good work and analysis on things that I need. They specifically provide good answers to my questions.

Our previous solution had issues with capacity, monitoring, and performance. These are the core areas where the customer was feeling the pain. So, we get them to a different place with a proper solution and fix for the issues. I feel like AFF has the features the customer needs. 

Other vendors, who do other similar solution products, envy the features that come with this NetApp product.

Our shortlist was Dell EMC and HPE. These are the vendors with whom I have worked. I feel all the vendors are very good, along with NetApp. However, NetApp has file-based and block-based features, which gives it additional value.

We have connected this solution to public clouds. We have different clients using the public cloud solution. Our public cloud has clients signed up for SAP HANA. There are many applications which are running on front-end databases, like Oracle, MySQL, etc. 

We are mostly using it for NAS, CIFS, and NFS protocols.

Logical data might be very high, but the physical data, because of efficiency features (such as, dedupe, compression, etc.), has been greatly reduce data. Therefore, we are getting 10 to 20 times the efficiency on this product.

Data efficiency is the most valuable feature of NetApp.

I would like to see aggregate level encryption in the next release. This is critical.

Disk level encryption is already in the solution, but it is very costly. Its pricing should come down.

It is stable.

It is scalable. On the NFS side, we have around 24 nodes, so that is pretty scalable. Also, the scale up is very high.

Technical support is always great from NetApp. It is the best.

We were not previously using another solution.

The initial setup is very easy.

We have seen ROI from the product.

We were looking at NetApp and Dell EMC. However, NetApp is know for their NFS solution.

This is the best solution in the market.

NetApp is a good company. I use to work there.

The big benefit is the performance increase over the previous versions and the previous systems.

Also, to be able to do things such as moving machines around, moving volumes around, the little maintenance and everyday things you need to do. The tasks become that much quicker, and that makes it that much easier to do. You're not, say, waiting for a Storage vMotion to take half an hour to run, where on an all-flash system if it takes half the time of what you were used to. That's awesome.

In addition, less time that you have to worry about troubleshooting stuff.

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

Ease of use. To integrate it into our virtual environment is very easy, the integration with VMware is very nice. I think it's better than other vendors have. It makes it easy, even for people who aren't familiar with NetApp, to use. For example, a virtual administrator or Windows administrators who just come to it and need to provision a virtual machine that could use the VSE easily, as opposed to having to know how to connect this and that, specifically.

Also, for disaster recovery, the SnapMirror; FlexClone for being able to do testing on the fly is pretty awesome. Being able to do tests very quickly, and within seconds have a clone up that you can attach to your virtual environment; and you can even have it automated, so you don't even have to do too much of the work.

To be able to have that flexibility, do testing, do failover, disaster recovery testing, and restores with snaps that are super easy.

I've definitely thought about this at earlier times, where I would probably have more stuff than I do now. The integration is pretty good.

I think there could probably be some more functionality out of like the VSC-type of plugins for the virtual environment.

The backup-type of functionality that comes from NetApp is okay, but I could see some enhancements in that regard, too.

It's definitely impressive. I haven't had a problem with the system. Been running it for about nine or 10 months now. It's stable, absolutely, 100%.

We have a smaller environment, just a two-node cluster, one our primary side and one on our secondary side. One of the benefits that NetApp brings to the table is being able to add nodes to it if you want to, if you need more storage or you need more power, more processing speed - and boom! You can just add nodes and that's it.

I've used them many times. There are always some techs that are better than others, but I've found that NetApp support is better than some other vendors, even non-storage related vendors, whose tech support you have to call.

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

We mainly run virtual environments, VMware NFS. We were previously using just SATA and SaaS disk and we went to the All Flash and the performance was way better. It was a great improvement over the previous system.

We maxed out our previous system in terms of its space and also the IOPS and the actual performance we were getting out of it, as we continued to grow.

We were a small company. Our parent corporation rolled us into our own corporation, we did an IPO. Then we grew a lot from that, so we had our older system that we had previously and, as we grew, we threw more databases and the like at it. We saw the performance was definitely not able to keep up. Once we implemented the All Flash FAS, it really wasn't an issue any more.

It was very straightforward on the setup.

The upgrade was actually very easy too. We didn't even really need to do a traditional migration when we did our "migration" to it. We didn't have to do the setup by migration tool. It was easier to set up the new cluster next to the old one, and then set up intercluster links and SnapMirror all the data over, and then just bring that volume. We did a planned failover, like we would for a disaster recovery, where you just bring up the new system, bring down the old system; that's how we did it.

Actually, we took that old system to make our disaster recovery, so we just sent that to our failover site and then we already had the data in sync too. We didn't have to do that whole process of syncing the data across the LAN, we were able to do it right next to each other on our LAN, so it was super fast, and then sent over our system, and then just resume the SnapMirrors.

We had NetApp already, so they were always a front runner, but we were looking at EMC, EqualLogic. And even, instead of having a NetApp, a different DR solution altogether, where we would have a third-party replication system that could replicate our data - instead of having another All Flash FAS or another FAS on the other side - and just relying on a different DR system altogether.

Once we took into account the easy integration of everything, and how everything worked together, and since we already had that familiarity and that comfortability with it, it was easy to decide on NetApp; the company and the product.

Right now we just use it for file storage. We were using block and file. I'm going to be using block in the future as well.

In terms of my impression of NetApp as a vendor of high profile SAN storage, before I purchased AFF, I always liked NetApp. I was always impressed by the company in general, as a NetApp customer previously. But the All Flash FAS definitely has even increased that and enhanced my opinion of them more, based on the functionality, the new stuff in ONTAP 9. We were using an older 7-Mode system, so the transition was pretty easy; and just the overall benefits of the system and the new functionality.

We are more likely to consider NetApp for mission-critical storage systems in light of our experience with AFF because of the reliability, the ease of the failovers, and the high availability of the system.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor include responsiveness of the company to their customers, what they need and they want. I feel that NetApp has a very good finger on the pulse of their customer. They have good relationships with their partners and the third parties, so it is a very easy transition when dealing with NetApp partners. It makes the actual buying, and dealing with the quoting, very simple.

Also, in selecting a vendor, support is definitely an important issue; having someone to lean on if there is an issue - and when there is a mission critical issue - that you know you can rely on. It's important to have someone who is going to respond right away, so that you're not waiting for someone useful to help you.

Do as much hands-on testing as you possibly can. It's hard to test it out in the real world. The NetApp Insight conference is cool because you can see the product up close and personal, and they do demos and labs. But definitely do your research, as much as you can and pick something that works, that makes sense for your company, and organization as a whole.

It supports our virtualization, our VMware environment.

We're more nimble. We can move from block to file. The ability to have all of the efficiencies that come with it. The dedpulication, the compaction, the compression, give us those capabilities to get more bang for the buck.

The fact that we can move forward, increase capacity, update hardware, without having to take an outage.

There are a bunch of features that are available but aren't vetted for enterprise use yet, at least not in my environment.

Better stability, not releasing features until they are fully functional, or at least giving us a software train that doesn't add them until they are fully functional and proven. Right now, the long-term support model is nice but it still has features in it that are not ready. At least not for our environment.

NetApp's base solution is very solid. The latest, greatest features of course are not always that stable. We avoid those. If we stick with the tried and true, we have no problems. It's very stable.

It's extremely scalable. With the cDOT, you have the ability to add many, many nodes, and that gives you that capability of also being able to upgrade portions of it without taking the entire thing out.

Technical support, the first wave is a little bit rough sometimes to deal with. However, once you get to the right resources, it's quick in action.

It's actually kind of hard to deal with the first level because of the questions and we already have visibility into the triage sheets that they are asking us the questions from, and we've already gone through those. So we've moved beyond that dependence on the first level because of those triage sheets that are publicly available on the website.

It's been there as long as I've worked there. So, before that, CIFS, user shares, that kind of thing. It was never really an option for high performance storage.

We've been using Netapp for many years, long before I even came to the company.

It was very straightforward.

We're multi-vendor. We do EMC and NetApp. We will look at others but most don't have the track history that we are looking for.

We use AFF for both block storage and file storage. We are more likely to consider to NetApp for mission critical storage systems based on our experience with AFF. With clustered data ONTAP, it's actually a true enterprise solution that has upgrade paths that don't require actual downtime.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor solution is the ability to deliver in the long-term.

The TCO makes it a very desirable solution. The efficiencies are more than worth the money. It means you can have a small footprint but support a lot of different solutions within the datacenter.

The primary use case for our Flash FAS is general storage for our hypervisor, software as a service provider. We primarily use it for storing our applications, web servers, file servers, and whatever other applications we have. We mainly utilize the AFF platform for the high performance and the deduplication capabilities. The management is a lot simpler on an AFF.

• Deduplication
• Compressions
• Simpler management
• The performance is great.

I'm not sure there are any additional features which I want to see, except for maybe more compatibility within the hardware universe and more compatibility for cables and other hardware. Some better integration with the E-Series to give us more options to scale. The other issue though is a completely different product called HCI, so this might not even be an AFF request.

It would be helpful if the compatibility matrix was a bit better. That's what we run into a lot. Our datacenters have a need for more flexible cabling and NetApp has very strict guidelines on what kind of cables you use. That's the only reason why I wouldn't rate it a 10 out of 10, but everything else is great.

Stability is very good.

Regarding scalability, on a scale of one to 10, I'd say about a five.

Tech support is great. I'd rate it as a nine out of 10.

The initial reason for going to NetApp was that our original solution, which was Dell Storage, just wasn't cutting it. We did our own in-house testing, performance-wise, resilience-wise, etc. The Dell Storage just wasn't cutting it. Dell's other solution at that time was Compellent, and NetApp was just better. The initial reason we didn't go with NetApp was because of cost, but they were able to meet us in the middle and we just went from there.

Not straightforward, there is a learning curve when it comes to AFFs, but once you understand the setup it's pretty easy.

Our initial perception of NetApp was it's extremely expensive and a little too inflexible. However, once we did get into the NetApp ecosystem, we realized that the cost effectiveness was greater than we originally thought.

The cost effectiveness is due to deduplication compression, the number of managed hours that we need to maintain the system, and the flexibility of NetApp which is geared toward keeping their systems more resilient.

I would check to see that you're okay with centralized storage because that's what NetApp's bread and butter is. If you want a centralized storage platform that is bulletproof, NetApp is great.

We use AFF for both block storage and NAS storage. We are more likely to consider NetApp for mission critical storage systems based on our experience with AFF.

We have some specific workloads that are pretty demanding that struggle on spinning media. We're looking to leverage All Flash FAS to meet the workload demands of some of our real high IO clients. That's primarily why we're looking at it.

The benefits are yet to be seen. We're currently putting it in right now. It's not in production yet. It's still being installed. We tested it. We're expecting a significant workload increase from our previous-generation platforms, but we'll find out soon enough.

We just have experience with it in our testing. We tested it. It was a lot faster. We haven't put a full production workload on it yet. We expect it to be much faster.

I think it is on the product roadmap already, but I would like to see more of the cloud pools and tiering. Obviously, some workloads need the speed of flash, but some workloads also have pieces of it that don't. They'd be able to leverage the speed, but then age data moving off to object, spinning media or whatever would definitely be good for the future. It’s currently lacking that right now, but it's on the roadmap that I've seen, so I think they're heading that direction.

I’ve been probably using it for a good nine months. We had some thorough testing and looking at what workloads we can fit on it. Then, we've been through a six-month install process. That's an internal thing for us.

We haven't used it much in production yet, but as far as we can tell, it is stable.

We haven't really scaled it yet. We expect it to be scalable.

We have not used technical support specifically for this product, but in general, it's hit or miss. Sometimes, when we first call in, we get some medium-level resources that don't really solve our problems right away. Once we get to the escalation or higher-level guys, they're usually really, really good.

Our production environments are currently normal, non-flash FAS appliances. They are stressing the hardware significantly, so that's why we looked at All Flash. They run thousands of compute nodes. They want to run more but they can't right now, because the system is already maxed out. We're hoping they can scale that and run a lot more on the all-flash array.

Initial setup is pretty straightforward. Especially hardware-wise, it's not much different than what we currently have; we're pretty used to installing.

We considered quite a few vendors before deciding on NetApp. We considered EMC Isilon and a couple other smaller vendors. We eventually chose the FAS, primarily because we already have the equipment and the environment. It doesn't really change our support structure. We don't have to learn anything new. Obviously, cost is a factor, too.

When selecting a vendor to work with, they have to have a good product, number one. They have to be a good partner. Cost is obviously a factor for everybody, but it's got to be something we need that solves our needs and meets our requirements. They have to be a good partner; it's not just, “Here, you figure it out.” They work with us to make it work, which NetApp does a pretty good job of, and then make it affordable for us.

Look at TCO. Most people look at flash and just look at it as being expensive: “Can we avoid it and use something cheaper?” There are other savings besides just the straight-out, raw cost.

I think it does what we need pretty well. I can't give it a perfect rating because we haven't thrown a giant production workload on it to see how it scales and works. So far, it's doing what we need it to do.