NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

We have been using the FAS series product, and AFF is pretty similar to the FAS products, as it still runs the ONTAP operating system. They are using AFF because that comes with all-flash disks, which gives us better performance with a smaller footprint. We use that mainly to start our block and NAS data.

One of the best things about the AFF products is its integration with NetApp StorageGRID, which can give you the ability of tiering to the cloud or StorageGRID. Whether it is on-prem or off-prem, tiering is the industry trend right now. One of the ways that these products help us is by using the new ONTAP version as well. They identify the cold data sitting on our main storage arrays, consuming the very expensive media and moving that to the cheaper storage tiers, whether it's on-prem, StorageGRID, off-prem on a public cloud, or a private cloud. With this integration as part of the Data Fabric, we have been able to lower some costs of storing data on-prem.

One of the main features that differentiate AFF from the FAS products, or some other technologies used, is the footprint of these arrays are significantly smaller than the traditional ones. Also, the performance that you get to these new arrays is really significant. You can see a huge difference there. By switching to it, we can achieve more storage performance and efficiency as well as in the long run lower down some of the TCOs due to reducing the footprint.

The one thing about NetApp products is they've been using the same operating system among all of their products, e.g., FAS or AFF. That feature makes it easier to manage and operate those environments because you don't really need to learn the whole new things or train all your engineers on new technology. Overall, it helps with the operations. It's not that complicated. It's easy to manage and operate.

I'm at the NetApp Insight events and seen that new features and functionality are either in the roadmap or coming. However, I think adding more features to make it more cloud enabled will help us with cloud tiering and simplify the whole cloud operations when it's integrating with our on-prem AFF products. That is one area where we would like to see more improvements from NetApp.

We have been using NetApp products for a while.

NetApp has been stable. It is one of the vendors who we trust to put our production workload on it for numerous reasons. The AFF can survive disk failure. Although, the flash disks have longer life spans, everything is redundant. We haven't experienced any significant issue with these arrays. I would call it is it's six nines. There are even more arrays when it comes to availability and stability.

Every time you contact the vendor for the technical issues that you have been dealing with, the level of support you get or the time it takes for you to get your issue resolved really matters and depends on the issue itself (how complicated it is). Sometimes, the support may send some requests to the technical team to gather logs and send them back to support. How many of these logs you have to collect or if you have to engage another vendor's support come into effect when you are trying to find out how fast an issue can be resolved. In general, when you open a case with NetApp support, usually if it's a P1 or P2 case, usually they are very fast when it gets to the point that we need to escalate to the next level of support. So far, we have had a good experience with NetApp. For most cases, they were able to help us resolve the issue as fast as possible.

It has improved the application response because the array using the SSD disks are also an NVMe compatible array. We are also using the NVMe host (HBAs) because our fabric is also NVMe compatible with some of the hosts running some mission critical applications with that, AFF, and the back-end storage. We have seen good improvement in the performance of our applications.

We've been using some other vendors products as well.

I cannot disclose the name of the vendors that we are using to compete with NetApp. In the industry today, you can't really tell if there is a bad product or good product. It comes down to your requirements. As a customer, first you have to define your requirements. Then, you need to know what you need, what is your goal, how are you going to achieve it, and what your challenges are. We identified those and have compared some solutions. 

NetApp was our vendor of choice who could help us to fulfill our requirements, especially for some of the challenges that we were facing. NetApp has been able to help us with that.

I would never give a 10 because there is always room for improvement for any technology. From zero to 10, I would give about an eight to nine to the AFF products because we have been very happy with them so far.

We primarily use NetApp AFF for file storage and VMware.

Coming from a financial background, we are very dependent on performance. Using an all-flash solution, we have a performance guarantee that our applications are going to run fine, no matter how many IOPS we do.

We use NetApp for both SAN and NAS, and this solution has simplified our operations. Specifically, we use it for SAN on VMware, and all of our NFS storage is on NAS. They are unified in that it is the same physical box for both.

This solution has not helped us to leverage data in new ways.

Thin provisioning has allowed us to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. This is one of the reasons that we purchased NetApp AFF. We almost always run it at seventy percent utilized, and we only purchase new physical storage when we reach the eighty or eighty-five percent mark.

I find that we do have better application response time, although it is not something that I can benchmark.

As a storage team, we are not worried about storage as a limiting factor. When other teams point out that storage might be an issue, we tell them that we've got the right tools to say that it is not.

I think that the DR applications are the most valuable, including Snapshots and SnapMirror. They are one of the market leaders in this regard. It is a very solid platform that has been in the market for a while.

Technical support can be a little slow when it comes to escalating through levels of support.

We have had trouble with restoring applications, and if there is more support for application-aware backups then that would be great.

We have rarely had an issue where there was an outage. Whenever we have an issue, we can rely on NetApp support.

We are running in cluster mode, which is known for its scalability. I would say that it is good.

The technical support has been all right, but it takes a while to get a hold of the right person because you've got to go through the level one, level two support. But, after a while, you get the support that you need.

We do have experts within the company, so we only go to NetApp's support when we have a very serious issue that we need to work on.

Overall, it has been all right.

We have used NetApp for a very long time. Our reason for implementing AFF was that we wanted to go for an all-flash solution. We didn't want to keep using hard disks, but we still wanted to continue using SnapMirror and Snapshots. This was the way to do it.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward, at least for me. I've deployed NetApp before in my previous jobs, and it was easy with my experience. That said, it is not very complex.

We used Professional Services from one of NetApp's partners, Diversus, to assist with our deployment. Our experience with them as been good. They are one of the top NetApp partners in Sydney, Australia. 

We did not evaluate other options.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Mixed sharing between Windows and Linux using CIFS and NFS is the best solution you can experiment with.

• It provided an amazing response time for all apps, with websites getting better stability, and QA for all final users.
• Implementation to share volumes between Windows IIS and .NET, and between Linux Apache and PHP. 

The best is you can use the same volume for different flavors of OS. In fact, that feature gives solutions to some cases where you have limitations for some applications when it does not support the OS, maybe when you have old apps that are not possible to migrate.

• Its incredible performance
• Stability
• Proactiveness for possible errors
• Powerful tools for management.

Communication with the customer for showing and exploring the new technologies is available.

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 use it for data storage, applications, and CIFS shares.

Through its Cluster-Mode, it's quicker. It also improves Exchange and SQL Databases.

• Compaction
• Single-instance storage
• Its compression features

I am still trying to wrap my head around all its features.

The stability is solid. It doesn't fail on us, which is exactly what we want. We are in a critical business that we can't have any percentage of downtime. Therefore, if it stays up, that is what we want. We have been dependent on NetApp for almost a decade now.

For capacity of storage, we manage about three petabytes of data. It is exactly what we need in terms of scalability.

Technical support is first rate. We are very satisfied with it.

Our last solution was at end of life and warranty. We went from NetApp to NetApp, so we stayed with NetApp, but we move to the latest, greatest solution.

It's always a little bit complex when you're trying to integrate a new piece of hardware, with cluster mode as well. There's always a learning curve, but with that curve, there is knowledge which stays with me for the life of that technology. So, that learning curve is essential.

We were migrating from Data ONTAP 7-Mode to its Cluster-Mode. Therefore, we had to get swing gear, then do the migration from loner gear and back onto our new gear. This was a bit difficult. It took us several months to do multiple migrations. Fortunately now, we are on Cluster-Mode and don't have to do that again.

We used a combination of a reseller/consultant. They did a great job handholding us all the way for any type of issues that we had with mission critical data. E.g., multimillion dollar uptime everyday ensuring we had virtually no issues.

We have seen ROI, especially in terms of data points and availability.

We did not evaluate other solutions. Our history with Net App is that it is a stable platform and does what we want it to do. It's not extremely complicated, and it's something which is tangible that we have used and want to continue using.

Figuring out the basics as to what NetApp offers. It is not something that you can just dive into as you will need to have a bit of background knowledge of it. However, there is plenty of help out to to learn the technology, and it's very tangible. 

Give it a go. I would recommend it. We are very satisfied with it and the whole deployment of it. We have almost seamlessly transitioned our production environment into a completely new hardware environment on the back-end.

We are using it for VMware and Hyper-V data stores.

We have probably doubled the number of virtual machines that we've provisioned since getting an AFF.

It has done everything we have needed it to do.

• Space savings
• Performance
• Deduplication
• Compression

It's been very stable. We only had a few upgrade issues. Other than upgrading, it has been 100 percent completely stable.

It should scale far beyond our needs. I don't think we will ever hit the edge of it.

Support has been good. I've had a few cases where support wasn't able to answer the question or they took quite a while, but majority of issues have been answered fairly quickly.

We were at the edge of the performance on our previous system. We took a risk with the AFF because it was more expensive than going with the newer model of what we had, but it was definitely worth it.

The initial setup was straightforward. I'm very familiar with NetApp, so it's more of the same. I didn't have any problems.

I did the deployment myself.

The cost savings has been higher than I expected.

Our space savings through dedupe and compression is over 50 percent, so we are saving. I think our 8080s has 20TBs. We are saving at least 10TBs and that's over 50 percent of the capacity that we're using.

I would like the pricing to be cheaper.

Our shortlist would have been EMC, NetApp, and possibly Dell. This was before Dell bought EMC. 

NetApp was there because of the NFS support. That's why we chose NetApp, because of the NFS support plus their compression and deduplication. The cost savings on that alone was worth it.

It's worth the slight increase in cost for performance. In the end, you save money in the long-term (ROI).

It has resulted in more customer revenue. We've got a very diverse crowd as far our customers go. Different customers are asking for faster, more performance, more service, and AFF pretty much delivered that.

The performance. The flash performance helps move data pretty fast.

I don't know if it's really specific to AFF, but metrics as far as performance. I would like to see a lot more of that.

Also, ZAPI is kind of difficult to use. You know, it's SOAP-like, it's not really SOAP. I would like to see it more of a REST-based JSON, instead of XML.

One of the biggest things that would really help is if it were driven like AMQP on the EMS would be really nice, so I can actually see when things are being created instead assuming things are created based on API calls.

It's very stable. I don't think I've noticed any problems with it at all. It's one of those things you don't really think about until you run into a problem. I haven't run into a problem, so it's actually very stable.

It's scalable. As far as NetApp products go, in general, they're very scalable.

I haven't used it directly. We have residents so usually, if I need support, I go to the resident or one of the Professional Service guests that works with us. But the support they provide is excellent.

I'm generally not involved in initial setup. Usually where I get involved is after it's gone through RDS, and I do the automation orchestration as far as our customers' provisioning and billing, etc.

For the most part our use case is databases. We use AFF for both block storage and file storage. We've got arrays for both. We've got a very mixed NetApp setup. We've got some that are just AFF, some that are AFF FAS systems - flash pulls and the like.

I've always been a fan of NetApp. I've dealt with other vendors but I like NetApp because when we need support, they're usually there, they show up, whereas other vendors don't quite do that. As far as AFF specifically, it's just another good product that NetApp put out. We're definitely more likely to consider NetApp for mission critical storage systems in the future, based on our experiences with AFF due to the support that NetApp provides. Very good support

When selecting a vendor to work with, the most important criteria for me are

• support
• generally performance - if it's a performing product
• scalable is always good.

I would pretty much tell colleagues to go with NetApp because of the support. When something goes wrong, that's usually the most important thing to me: how do I get support? NetApp's always delivered on the support side.

One example is we're moving a legacy application over. I'm actually in the middle of a project for that right now, where it's four Windows servers each with eight terabytes, that our actuary department uses for data analytics. With the efficiencies on the AFF, that eight terabytes has gone down to about two and a quarter of actual capacity used. So we're going to save a lot of space there, in addition to letting them run more simulations and get more simulations done more quickly because of the storage being so much faster than what they're on now.

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

Some of the best things about AFF are that it integrates seamlessly with what we're used to for FAS as well. We can use the same ecosystem, OnCommand Unified Manager, but get the performance, the raw performance of flash. It's great that way.

I think that's the most important thing, the integration with the existing features that we already have and existing management systems. Among those features are the ability to do SnapMirror or SnapVault for data resiliency and backup. The other features are the data efficiencies, compaction and inline dedup compression, that let us use it more efficiently too. Those are huge on the list.

Looking at the road map that's out there, I think they're heading in the right direction. Additional performance, additional data efficiencies, that's what everybody wants right now.

And then the integrations that I'm really excited about - and part of the reason I'm here at the NetApp Insight 2017 conference - is to look at the integrations with AFF and things like StorageGrid Webscale. So you're getting even more efficiency out of the platform and offloading cold blocks that you don't need right away.

We haven't had any issues, even going back to the longer experience I have with the FAS platform. They're typically few and far between, especially compared to some of the other vendors we've worked with. When we do uncover an issue, we typically get escalated to the right teams and get it worked out.

It's really good. There are some that things that could be done better there, like NetApp is doing; it's other products like Webscale and SolidFire. As long as you're aware of the design considerations, it's very, very easy. Shelves go in like a snap. As long as you make sure you have the proper compute to go with it, you're good to go.

We're not really having scalability issues, it's just you have to make sure that you're not exceeding the capacity of your heads when you're expanding your logical storage out, that's all.

It has caused problems for my company in the past, but I think that was the result of not having storage administrators with a high level of proficiency and knowledge of NetApp. They made some very poor sizing decisions, but you can't blame the vendor for that. It's more of the admins' fault for not specking them out properly.

For the AFFs, I don't know if we've had to specifically leverage NetApp support yet. I don't think we've had an issue major enough that we've had to reach out. That's been more on the FAS side.

Support has generally been pretty good. Occasionally there are struggles getting to the right people but, once you do, they know what they're talking about.

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

Yes and no. We're in the process of retiring some old storage frames, old Hitachi frames actually. I believe it's just disk-based. There are actually three different Hitachi frames and they're different. One is all flash, one is hybrid, and the other one is purely disk-based. So there's a mix. We have another all-flash platform that we could move workload to, but the NetApp fit the workload a lot better for this in my opinion. So it made sense.

The original intent was actually to extend our NAS - we primarily use NetApp for NAS and a lot of our environment. But we've pitched the AFF that we just installed, the A700, primarily as a SAN platform. So we're really trying to leverage more towards that now.

It will eventually be used for both block and file storage. It was originally slated for file usage NAS, but we're leveraging it more for block.

I had worked with NetApp as block storage in the past, and I always had a high opinion of it. I think NetApp is the best in the industry at providing a unified platform for file and block. Hands down.

We don't get too deeply involved in the cost analysis, but management and engineering rely heavily on the input from myself and my co-worker on the storage team, for these kinds of decisions, on a technical level.

We had Pro Services, but we were heavily involved.

For someone who is experience with any NetApp platform it's very, very straightforward, very similar to anything else that you would do. Obviously there are some specific guides, specific to AFF. You want to make sure you're following those best practices, but other than that it's a cinch. It's something that I could have done on my own without Professional Services, that's how easy it was.

We have storage frames from most of the large vendors, so EMC would have been on the table, IBM would have been on the table, Hitachi. And really with the ecosystem that NetApp has built up around it, it just makes the most sense from a management perspective for sure. And the performance and value for money is there as well. It's a tough combo to beat.

We have a 8080 EX HA pair, an 8040 HA pair, and an A700 all in the same cluster. That's our production cluster. We also run an AFF8040 for non-production and then a couple of other FAS heads: two HA pairs, 8040s for DR. So we've got some NetApp spread around.

Based on our experience with AFF, we are definitely more likely to consider NetApp for mission critical storage systems in the future because it's the same quality and the same value for money as we have always come to expect from them.

This is the direction the industry is going. My personal opinion is that SaaS 15,10k is going to be dead, completely within the next three to five years. Everything is going to be flash for performance and cheap and deep SATA, probably object storage for archival. I just think this purchase puts us better in alignment with where the industry is headed as a whole, it's more future proof.

When it comes to the most important criteria when selecting a vendor to work with I think what's important is performance, value for money and, in addition to that, having support that's easy to work with, that can get you the answers quickly when you need them. That is the other big thing.

I give it a nine out of 10 because there's always room for improvement. I don't think anything is perfect in IT, but it's pretty darn good. It's really pretty impressive technology when you get it running.

What would make it a 10 goes back to what we talked about above, with the additional integrations and single panes of glass and getting a whole functional flow; what NetApp keeps pitching on the roadmap as the "Data Fabric," getting a single pane of glass for everything in your infrastructure and tying it all together.

Advice as far as choosing a solution? Everybody's requirements are different, but if they don't have NetApp at the top of the list as candidates, they're doing something wrong.