NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

Clustered Data ONTAP 8.3b3 is valuable. Also, valuable is the easy migration between our old NetApp solution and this one. It was painless, as there was no downtime and we saw immediate results.

Lower latency means faster end products. From development to the end, it now takes less time to compile a product and export it. The whole process of compilation, builds, and exports takes a lot less time. So instead of 10 builds per day, I can do three times as much.

Knowledge base on the internet needs improvements so that I can find my own solution for stuff. I'd also like better monitoring apps or software.

We've been using it for about six months for low latency and critical loads.

10/10

It's very scalable.

8/10

8/10

Before this we were using 7-Mode and other NetApp FAS products. We upgraded for speed and newer features.

The initial setup was really easy. It took three days to set up once we got it.

We used a vendor team with in-house personnel. The vendor team were 9/10.

8/10

• HP 3PAR 7400
• XtremIO
• Nutanix
• SimpliVity

We chose NetApp for a mix of reasons -- the price was great and also because we were working with NetApp before. It was really easy to migrate everything and keep everything using NetApp technology.

It's good, but not perfect. If you are already working with NetApp, this is the very clear choice.

AFF is our complete storage solution. We use it for SIP shares and VMware volumes. 

Upgrading from spinning disk to AFF increased the overall speed of our production servers. AFF helped us simplify our infrastructure and improve the performance of our business-critical applications. The administration has become more straightforward. We were on an old version of ONTAP. Now that we are completely updated, it's even easier on the latest version.

AFF works well for VMware storage.

AFF could introduce different subscriptions on the platform.

I have used AFF for three or four years.

AFF is stable. I don't have to touch it unless I want to. 

AFF is scalable. The ability to add shelves makes things easier.

I rate NetApp support 10 out of 10. I've never had a complaint.

Positive

We've seen a significant performance increase. Upgrading from the A300 to the A400 was a noticeable difference. 

I rate NetApp AFF 10 out of 10. 

I think NetApps improved our organization in customer experience and system management. It gives the customer options when they move their system to the cloud. I think the cloud solution from NetApp is very good for customers when they have a plan to use cloud services.

I like some basic features like Snapshot, FlexClone, and advanced features such as SnapMirror, and SnapVault. They also recently enhanced the market with Cloud Volumes ONTAP. I think that NetApp is a very good product.

It would be better if they just improved the performance of the system.

I have been using NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) for more than three years.

NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) is very stable.

NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) is very scalable. I think the scalability of NetApp is the best because they have a custom solution, and it can scale well.

NetApp technical support is very professional and good.

The initial setup isn't really completed. It's easy.

NetApp is a good choice because it's not only for a normal application, but it can also integrate with Nvidia for AI solutions.

I would tell potential users that NetApp is one of the best primary storage systems with many good features. I think it's a good choice for storage services.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) a nine.

I primarily use the solution for asically all my main data for all my ESXi hosts.

The product suffices and works.

The product is scalable.

The stability has been very good over the years. 

Technical support has been okay.

This particular solution is coming up at its end of life.

During the initial setup, you need to know what you are doing. There's a learning curve. There are simpler options available. 

I have been using the solution for seven years, although I am in the process of switching off of it right now.

The stability and performance over the years have been good. In the seven years I've had it, it has totally crashed twice on me. The stability is pretty damn good. You have to admit that.

The scalability is okay. You can scale it if you need to. 

Currently, we have 70 users on it. 

Their tech support is okay.  When I have issues like what I had, I usually just reach right out to my sales rep and they direct me in the right direction.

I just switched over to Pure, so my flash storage is more than adequate now.

However, previous to this solution, we did not use a different product.

In terms of the initial setup, you need to know what you're doing with it. That's another reason why I'm going over to Pure. It's much simpler.

I'm not impressed with their pricing.

I'm just a customer and an end-user.

I've got kind of a unique situation happening right now. I've got a NetApp DS2250 that's starting to fail - or started to fail about four months ago. I ordered the Pure Storage, and I got it in, cutting all the in-between stuff out. I was waiting for some 10 Gig switches to come in from Cisco, however, with a chip shortage, everything has been delayed. I'm still not getting those in until September. Pure Storage is not actually up and running. I'm limping along with my NetApp right now.

My advice to those considering the solution is to know what you are doing before you get started. 

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. I don't like the pricing and you do need to know what you are doing to use the product effectively, however, the stability is excellent. 

We use it for different machines, Oracle Database, super server database, and a few BDI projects.

The cloning and snapshot features are the most valuable. With snapshot backup, we can clone a big database in minutes. We take a lot of snapshots for clients in different environments.

The admin tools and the integration with other products and clouds can be improved. 

It should also be easier to identify and troubleshoot problems in this solution. It takes a long time, and it should be improved.

I have been using this solution since 2012.

Its stability is very good.

It is scalable. There is scalability for processing. We have small and large organizations as clients.

Their technical support is very good, and the documentation is also complete and useful for us.

Our clients were using other solutions, such as Hitachi, and they switched because of its scalability, functionality, and support.

The cloud setup is easier to implement. The on-premises setup is a little more complex.

We deployed it a few weeks ago. It took one to two weeks for planning and two weeks for final implementation, but it can take longer if there is any kind of migration or change of product.

We deployed it ourselves. We worked for NetApp from 2012 to 2015. We did a lot of implementations in Chile, Argentina, Columbia, and Peru. It is very familiar to us.

All features are included in the license, whereas with an EMC solution, you have to pay separately for extra terabytes. 

We evaluated HP and EMC. The main differences were the support, functionality, and cost of NetApp. 

Last year, NetApp started to move away from Chile and the Latin American region. They are not selling the solutions directly. They have an agreement with Lenovo to sell NetApp products worldwide with the Lenovo brand.

I would advise others to take the help of a good implementor and get proper certifications. It is also very important to understand what do you want from the solution.

I would rate NetApp AFF a ten out of ten. It is a great product with great support.

Our primary use case for NetApp AFF is unstructured data. We set up it up for high availability and minimum downtime.

This solution simplifies our IT operations by unifying data services across SAN and NAS environments. We are using it on the fiber channel side, as well as the iSCSI side, for both CIFS and NFS, so it across the entire infrastructure.

We have used NetApp AFF to large move amounts of data. We just recently did a migration using SnapMirror and SVM DR. We did have some scheduled downtime, but there was no unplanned disruption in service.

Even with this solution implemented, I still have to manage the storage side and the availability of it, so we still have to worry about it being a limiting factor.

The most valuable features are the flexibility and level of technical support.

This is a very reliable solution in terms of keeping the system online.

This solution should be made easier to deploy. A lot of systems nowadays just come with a box where everything is included. With AFF, you have to manage it, you have to install ONTAP, and you have to configure the networking.

The stability is good. This is a very reliable solution.

It can be set up as a cluster, HA, and when one node goes down the others hold the data, so the customer barely notices that there is a failover.

I would rate the scalability an eight or nine out of ten.

We can grow this solution very easily, just by adding storage. All we need to do is buy a shelf and expand the storage side of it.

I would rate the customer support an eight out of ten. They are really good in terms of responding to the customer.

We have a large amount of unstructured data, so we felt that AFF was the right solution for us.

In terms of complexity, the initial setup is somewhere in the middle. It is not straightforward where you can run it out of the box. You have to set it up and configure the network. 

We had a jumpstart, but I can handle the installation on my own.

We have not seen ROI so far.

We did consider using other vendors, but NetApp AFF was the best in terms of reliability.

In order to automatically tier cold data to the cloud, you would have to use third-party software.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Our biggest use cases for the AFF are virtualization and data bases. We use it for file storage.

For any of the performance intents of applications, it's just been night and day from when we put them on. We had them on spinning disk, then converted them to the AFF. The latencies have become really low and my customers are all happier for it.

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

Speed. it's very performance designed. It's designed to have a lot of high speed.

I like what they're doing with their management tools. It makes it really easy to manage them. They're always improving and going with those. It's been really great, especially with the APIs. We can use them to make our calls and to manage it. It's been good for us.

Cleaning up false positives on alerts. We get a lot of those. If we could find some way of not getting so many, so that the alerts that do come in are real and valid, and not so many false positives, that would make a big difference.

We've been really happy with their stability. We did run into a bug that nobody else knew about and they came up with a patch for us to help fix it, and it's been rock solid ever since. So we're happy.

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

With their clustered ONTAP we can scale as big as we need to.

I've been happy with them. They've gotten me the answers every time I've called in. I haven't had any problems with getting the escalation I need. I just ask for it and they're able to kick it up and get the response that we need.

It was a little complex. There were a few changes that we were not privy to. For instance, they had the 40 gig converged NIC that we didn't even know was available until we got it. Learning how to adjust that and manage that was a little bit different, it was a little bit of a learning curve, but it was not horrible at all.

We've been a customer of NetApp for a long time and they're a good, strong company and we have a close partnership with them. We are more likely to consider NetApp for mission critical storage systems based on our experience with AFF because they're a great company to work with. They put out some good products.

The most important criteria for us when selecting a vendor would be

• somebody who is stable
• somebody whose industry standing is a big deal
• and then price point.

They're a good strong system. I don't think that anything is perfect, but it's pretty close. It takes care of everything that we need. It's a fantastic solution. We haven't regretted getting it.

• High performance
• Good improvement in IOPS
• Less latency
• Easy to manage

Functionally it did improve our company. It improved internal customer performance.

It's good.

Scalability wise, it is also good, although we have not had to scale yet.

It is good. I rate it nine out of 10.

We have other storage as well but we have been using NetApp for a long time.

We have a weekly call with the NetApp representative, we have been getting that from them. From them we understood that we needed to get a new solution.

EMC. We chose NetApp over EMC because support is good.

Our primary use case is databases using NAS file storage. Our impression of NetApp as a vendor of high performance SAN storage before the purchase was that it's good. Now that we have it, we still think it's good. We are more likely to consider NetApp for mission critical storage systems because of the improvement in the performance.

In terms of selecting a vendor, in the case of PoC, we look for more support and faster responses.

I would advise a colleague researching similar products that this is the preferred solution.