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it_user750582 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineering Engineer at Cleveland Clinic
Vendor
The key features for us, in medical treatment, is its high availability and multiple layers of redundancy
Pros and Cons
  • "Performance is excellent. In fact, it's so fast that we're not really even taxing it all that much."
  • "​A lot of the tools that are built into the stock, ONTAP operating system, instead of having to buy the add-ons and things.​"

How has it helped my organization?

It gave us a lot more peace of mind, because before we had a SAN solution that worked - it gave us the ability to have Microsoft SQL clusters for our treatment. This adds an extra layer of protection with the high availability, the multiple layers of redundancy, having SnapMirrors so we can replicate and do snapshotting. It's just given us a lot of peace of mind.

When you've got patient-data, you've got to make sure it's there.

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

What is most valuable?

Probably the biggest single thing would be the high availability options, because it's medical treatment, so it's got to be pretty much up - because we do treatment with it.

Performance is excellent. In fact, it's so fast that we're not really even taxing it all that much.

What needs improvement?

I don't know if I could come up with another feature. Of all the new hardware we bought for the new building, it's the only thing that we've yet to have any troubles with.

Maybe the reporting tools, the performance reporting tools. Performance is excellent. In fact, it's so fast that we're not really even taxing it all that much. I know they're getting better on that but I suppose that's one thing I'd improve.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's been perfect. We haven't had anything wrong with it.

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

Buyer's Guide
NetApp AFF
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about NetApp AFF. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I think it's excellent. We haven't scaled it up yet because it was a new system, so we haven't added to it. Actually, we did add a shelf to it, but it's awesome. You just plug things in and they go.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support has been excellent. Excellent. We've had our resident engineer who comes out all the time and assists us on things. We went to add that shelf in, he came up. We wanted to make sure we were doing things right, as in adding the disk in, and where to put it, and how to balance the system. He came right up there and helped us the better part of an afternoon, and just showed us things, and what to do.

It was great. Never a complaint.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using Hewlett-Packard P2000s, and they were fine, but it was basically just a rack of disks that allowed us to do SAN solutions. They were actually pretty good, too. They didn't have the high availability features, and they couldn't do replication. They could do some snapshotting, but it was nothing like what we have now.

What happened is, it was kind of an end-of-life, they were getting real old, long in the tooth, and we needed more room. When the entire enterprise looked at vendors, they had brought on NetApp. When we looked at it, we thought, "This is great," and here we are. That's why we bought it. It just filled in. It did everything we needed it to do.

We've been extremely impressed with NetApp. I like the interface. I like all the tools they give us. The support is incredible. Our rep is awesome.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Hewlett-Packard, again, was one. EMC, because we do actually have some EMC stuff. And NetApp. That was basically our list. I think IBM was in there for a little while, but I think they kind of fell off. I remember hearing about it, but I didn't know anything about it. That was our short list.

What other advice do I have?

Our primary use case for the All Flash FAS is medical data storage. We use it for both block storage and file storage at the moment.

We're more than "likely" to consider NetApp for mission critical storage systems. It's already mission critical. This is cancer treatment. That's what it's doing.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor are support, features, and support. Can I say one twice? Because I know in healthcare, if something goes wrong, and we can't get it back up and running, patients are affected. If cancer treatments stop, it's really bad. Or somebody's mistreated? The feds come out, and it's a criminal kind of thing, so we've got to make sure that nothing goes wrong. So, I'd say support twice.

My advice to someone researching a similar product would probably be pay attention to growth, scalability. That was probably the other big thing with our P2000s. There was no way to scale. If we wanted to do something, we had to buy a whole other product. Once we ran out of room on that one thing, we had to basically look for something else. You have to do a data transfer. With the NetApps, we can just add on these racks of disks, and scale out with more controllers. I'd say that's it. Just make sure you pay attention to growth, and things like that.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user750639 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Storage Engineer at Providance Health Services
Vendor
Tech support is good, smart, and responsive

What is most valuable?

While our VDI people are storing user profiles, we make good use of single name space. With application driven ride, VDI has driven us to use NetApp because they needed a single name space and there's just no vendor on the market that can do single name space with All Flash.

How has it helped my organization?

In the single name space, the profile pad need not be changed for various users. All the users of VDI can be pointed towards one profile source.

Our primary use case for All Flash is we put VDI on it and we put our Providence Health Systems work on Epic. Epic is our tier one app. We put all the NAS needs for the Epic app on All Flash, and we also put our user home directories on All Flash.

What needs improvement?

We would like to see permission repair technology built into ONTAP. We have it in EMC Isilon and we have been asking our accounting to take it to the engineering team. We want a job repair technology in EMC Isilon, in that app as well, so that app can refer to it and build on it.

Also, the product could be made cheaper.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using it for eight months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is certainly scalable.

How are customer service and technical support?

We used tech support. They are good, smart, and responsive.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

No, we didn't use a previous solution. We came to AAF 300 All Flash because we were refreshing all of our NetApp applications.

How was the initial setup?

I am the lead for all NetApp installs. Every time we had a good installer coming onsite, so we make it easy for them and they make it easy for us.

What other advice do I have?

We use All Flash for block and file storage.

We have been a NetApp shop for a while, even before AAF 300. Thus, our impression of NetApp has a long history. It's been good to us in providing the support and giving us the right solutions when we need them. Therefore, we have a good impression of NetApp.

I recommend NetApp. If someone is looking at a similar solution, I would give them the advice, "Go for NetApp."

When it comes to NAS services, they have better operating systems compared to anyone, even other vendors would have it, but NetApp has a long history of being in the market and large customer base. Therefore, they might have gone through various problems and solutions compared to any new vendors who are out there. Experience matters.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

  • How robust the technology is
  • How reliable the vendor is
  • How experienced they are.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
NetApp AFF
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about NetApp AFF. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user527148 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
We have some OLTP applications. It is useful for that environment.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are speed, latency, and throughput. We have a few workloads where we need speed, high throughput, and fast response time. We have some OLTP applications. It is very useful for that environment.

How has it helped my organization?

In addition to what I’ve already mentioned, the other thing is we are short on rack space. We can fit a lot of this storage in less rack space. It actually helps us reduce our cost, and increase efficiency.

What needs improvement?

Right now, even though they say that you can increase the cluster to a certain number of nodes, internally, the HA is only in two nodes. It is two-node HA architecture internally in the cluster. I think they should try to really scale it out, as a solution. For example, if you have a four-node cluster. Internally, it's still like a two-node HA. You have two-node HA and two-node HA, and you can't combine that into a four-node cluster. That is, we can combine them but internally, it's still two-node clustering. If one node goes down, you are exposed. You are only on one node in your HA.

I have already spoken with the engineering folks. Maybe they can have a common back plane, so that every node can see all the shelves. They'll have to go to their hardware folks.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable. We have been using it for the last 2-3 years and so far, it's been very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We don't scale it too much because we don't want a lot of workload in the same cluster. I'm sure we can scale it if we want to.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is really good; very experienced folks; very helpful; and easy to reach them. So far, so good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using the hard disk version of ONTAP in our environment. We did a PoC with All-Flash. We saw the benefits of it, so we implemented it in our environment.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup was very simple, very straightforward. We knew exactly what to do, so it was easy.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing this product, we evaluated other options, but I don't think we can name them. We saw a lot of benefits. Here, we can have multiple protocols. The other vendors were only supporting specific protocols on their storage. We thought this would be more scalable in the future.

What other advice do I have?

So far, my experience with ONTAP is really good. It is highly available, easy to use, easily scalable, easy to implement, and so far, we are really happy with it. We are really happy with the performance, ROI, and the cost.

I would give it a perfect rating if they reduced the cost – it is still expensive – and then, what I have mentioned about HA.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a product are that it is highly available, scalable, and easy to use. It should be able to work in our environment, basically; in a mixed-workload environment.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user527103 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Administrator at Desire 2 Learn Inc
Consultant
Performance is the number one feature. As far as scalability, we can extend to new nodes and move data around at will.

What is most valuable?

For the All Flash FAS, performance is the number one feature, above the reliability and scalability. First of all, the All Flash FAS is extremely fast. We're serving something in the neighborhood of a trillion transactions per month in SQL. We are getting great performance, submillisecond. As far as scalability, we can extend to new nodes and move data around at will. It's been a really good solution.

How has it helped my organization?

We are a customer-driven solution. We're running the environment and have some very demanding customers that require zero downtime, extremely good performance, and the solution has worked out extremely well for us.

We have a software that is a learning environment for schools, higher education and corporate businesses. User software for learning environments. And they use our class as their learning environment.

We need everything to be reliable and to work fast, and we have absolutely found that with NetApp.

What needs improvement?

I'd like to be able to move volumes between virtual machines, for one thing. That’s a little thing that has bothered me. I think I'm pretty happy with what the feature set is right now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We had some bumpy roads early on, but it has been very reliable. We're doing very well with it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

With the ability to move data as soon as needed, we can expand and contract as we need to. It works out pretty nicely. We’ve had no issues in terms of scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

NetApp’s technical support is second to none. I have worked with other vendors that have not been quite as reliable. But, getting support to come out is easy and reliable, and it's always top-grade help.

I believe we have gone through EMC and Hitachi. I think that's it, actually. I personally worked with IBM. IBM’s support was pretty good, too.

If I was selecting a new vendor today, support would probably be the most important criteria for me. That has been the big differentiator for us; always pushing P1s for us. It's very easy to get support and prioritize it as needed; they help us extremely well.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I wasn't involved in that decision-making process, so I'm not sure what the driving force was. I was actually hired after the fact because I worked with NetApp in the past.

How was the initial setup?

I wasn’t involved in the initial setup, but I think the team found it fairly straightforward. We had good support from NetApp. We worked very closely with our account team. They walked us through very well and we had no issues getting going, as far as I know.

What other advice do I have?

I've been a NetApp advocate for many years, so I definitely say, look into it because of the performance, the stability, the scalability, the support.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user527337 - PeerSpot reviewer
Datacenter, NOC & IT Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
It definitely has some advantages for running database transactions. SnapMirrors will give us the opportunity to virtualize the database.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the speed. Quite frankly, we got a smoking deal on it. We like the integration with UCS. With the number of transactions we use, using NFS mounts has not proved successful in the past. AFF definitely has some advantages for running database transactions.

SnapMirroring is also valuable. Previously, we’ve just had localized storage in the servers with RAID 5 and we’d just run backups. Having SnapMirrors is going to be awesome. It also gives us the opportunity to virtualize the database. We can just snapshot the things. When one dies, rather than try to do a restore, we can just pull out the latest snapshot and let replication catch up from there.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've had it for about a year; possibly a little more. We've pretty much just done a proof of concept on it until right now. Right now, we are rolling our databases onto it.

We're using UCS for front end, and because we need the speed, we're spinning up databases with all the data on AFF.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I believe it will be a stable solution. I realize we're going to lose disks over time. That's the nature of SSDs. They’re are getting better, and I presume they are going to get better in the future. With our support for spinning disks in the past – we have very little monitoring – basically, the filer tells us, “Hey, you’ve got a bad disk,” and the next day the disk shows up. We have spares, so we just pop a new one in. We’ve had excellent support.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

As far as I know, it will scale with us. With our databases, we're not going to need that large of a footprint. However, we have some other projects that we're testing out at this time. I believe scalability will be an issue. As far as I know, we’ll just pop more shelves in and we’ll get the scalability.

How is customer service and technical support?

Technical support is outstanding, period. They're fast. We know people there. As a matter of fact, our previous engineer is now an SC again. He came from NetApp, worked for us for about seven years and now he's back at NetApp. Our former CTO was at NetApp. I think my manager was at NetApp. If not, he was at a partner of ours. So, we have a very good relationship. When we call for support, they answer. You cannot say that about everybody.

How was the initial setup?

A lot of what we've been doing is migrating from 7-mode. We have run into some pain points. I don't know that it's necessarily NetApp's fault. A lot of it is just our inexperience. Some things we hadn't really thought of; moving the LIFs, that sort of thing. We've had some major network storms that we weren't expecting. Had we read deep enough into the documents, I think we would've found that before we tried it.

What other advice do I have?

Depending on what you're looking for, I recommend looking at FlexPod as well as AFF. Price it out with some of the other solutions that are out there. I am not that familiar with what EMC and some of the others have to say. Compare and contrast, and figure out what is it you're trying to do. I used to be in the sales role in a very large company that's not around anymore. Customers always appreciated it if when I told them, “Hey, you're overbuilding this. You're going to spend way more than you need to.” That’s my advice.

When I select a vendor to work with, I look at a little bit of everything. With reputation, obviously, NetApp has the leg up there. We have a deep and longstanding relationship with them. When new vendors come along, we like transparency. We’ve had people come in and say, “Oh, we have this solution. It’ll butter your toast and fix all your problems, all at the same time,” and clearly that's not the case.

We had a vendor come in one time that was going to do quite a bit with our databases until they saw the size of our database. They very politely said, “Well, we can’t scale to that.” We thanked them, and I appreciate that kind of honesty. Obviously, we didn't do business with them, but later on down the road, if they came in and said, “We have a solution now,” I am more inclined to listen to that.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user527181 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
Speed is the most valuable feature. It supports all of protocols that we need.

What is most valuable?

I would say the speed is the most valuable feature; the performance. It's a lot faster than any other drives out there.

What needs improvement?

I don't know if we will be looking at more features because our company, the in-house environment, has been looking into going cloud, so it's not just NetApp. We need to look at cloud-based solutions, too.

See my initial setup answer as well.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for almost one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's been pretty stable. We've been using NetApp for 15 or 20 years now and we are more or less used to it. It's been stable; a lot of filers. Even when they go off support, sometimes we keep using it and they keep running.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Now with the CDOT solution, they definitely have made it scalable.

We use it in a lot of other venues, engineering or non-engineering. Earlier there was an issue where you were limited but after introducing CDOT, I don’t think scalability is an issue now.

How is customer service and technical support?

Technical support depends on what kind of support you buy from them. If it's a four-hour response time, then definitely, we have been given pretty good support. I think we have been getting consistent support.

It's not about finding one guy on the phone; you have the whole team behind it. If something is not acceptable to us, then we go ahead and escalate it to our sales team and then they drive it through. Sometimes you have to take some exceptions and escalate it.

How was the initial setup?

In the pre-CDOT era, upgrades were a nightmare. Replacing a node was not an easy thing to do and getting downtime was not an easy thing to do. After CDOT, I'm hoping we won't be running into that situation.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We've been using NetApp for a long time and our environment is already using all the NetApp features that they have been providing so buying AFF from them was an easy pick actually.

What other advice do I have?

When I select a vendor such as NetApp to work with, I don’t look just at the performance; I look at reliability, scalability, replication, disaster recovery; to be able to do this all efficiently, plus their SnapMirroring and snapshotting capability. We've been used to whatever features NetApp provides and when we look at any other storage company, they have certain pieces here and there but they say, we don't this or don’t do that.

What we see is that NetApp supports all of protocols that we need: NAS, SAN, iSCSI. It's all in one, all together.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user527394 - PeerSpot reviewer
VP IT at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
It allowed us to add flash to our existing platform.

Improvements to My Organization

It's simplified operations because our storage team is so used to managing all of our stores using a single platform and by just adding flash to that same platform – the existing platforms – simplifies our day-to-day operations.

Room for Improvement

Their technical support needs improvement.

Stability Issues

Stability is 100%. We haven't had any issues with NetApp over all of the years we've been using them; it's a great, stable platform.

Scalability Issues

On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give it a 10 for scalability.

Customer Service and Technical Support

With technical support, they need a little more help in there. I would give them an 8 out of 10.

Initial Setup

Initial setup it was straightforward. Because we're so used to the FAS systems already, it was easy to add the All Flash FAS system; it was so much easier to deploy.

Other Solutions Considered

We did a PoC against other vendors. The decision came down to the simplicity of the platform.

We tested an EMC, an ExtremeIO, and we also did a Violin as well. As far as performance metrics, Violin actually beat all the other vendors but because of the stability and the financial turmoil with Violin, we felt a little skeptic about investing in a company that we didn't know what they were going to be tomorrow. Again, because we're a NetApp shop, to us, that made it so much easier to make the decision based on that.

Other Advice

Look at the simplicity of the operations and the scalability of the products. Being a small company, we're big in storage but we have a small operations group, so I think simplicity just makes our team more efficient. Adding different tools or different storage vendors is just going to add a lot of complexity into our environment.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user527385 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Windows Engineering and Virtualization at a aerospace/defense firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
We deploy high-demand applications, and it's the fastest we can get through this vendor.

What is most valuable?

It's the fastest that we can get through NetApp. We're deploying all these high-demanding applications and it's the best of the best, so of course we went with it, being a big NetApp customer.

How has it helped my organization?

In the transportation industry, we have a lot of demand for analytics and on-demand data, big data, and AFF provides what we need in terms of the quick read and write.

We spend less time thinking about performance and more time being able to worry about actual problems and the customer. Of course, the customer is the most important part of business.

What needs improvement?

I would rate it higher if it didn’t cost as much. It's a bit pricey.

Other than that, it's got what we need. I don't really have any suggestions for what it doesn't offer. I'm happy with what it has. I think it's only gotten better, especially with the 8.3 release and obviously ONTAP.

Both the GUI and the command line have exactly what you need and I have no problem navigating either of them.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not encountered any stability or scalability issues; absolutely no issues whatsoever. The only issue is how fast we can put them in.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have rarely required technical support. Usually, it's just a one-off type thing and I've never had any issues getting what we needed out of them. They're always knowledgeable; never had a problem.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I was not at this company before they started using AFF.

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in the initial setup.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have not evaluated other options.

What other advice do I have?

Be sparing in capacity and don't just throw it around. Storage is cheap now, but AFF, as I’ve mentioned, is not cheap, so be cautious in how you use it. That’s something that needs to be analyzed before you start the process. It’s the kind of good homework to prepare. I think that goes for anything, but doubly for expensive flash. Just make sure that's really what you want and what you need.

When I’m looking at vendors, I need them to know exactly what they're selling to me does. I need them to know the competition, so they're offering a fair comparison and not just offering a vendor lock-in type situation.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free NetApp AFF Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: December 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free NetApp AFF Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.