NetApp AFF Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

System Specialist at Fujitsu Sweden AB

Dec 10, 2015

It sped up our data queries and we can work more efficiently. These queries are now done in seconds rather than minutes, affecting everything we do on a day-to-day basis.

Pros and Cons

"These queries are now done in seconds rather than minutes, affecting everything we do on a day-to-day basis."

What is most valuable?

It’s really reliable and fast. My customers have several other NetApp systems, but here they really needed the low latency.

Also, clustered Data ONTAP is valuable.

How has it helped my organization?

It sped up our data queries and we can work more efficiently. These queries are now done in seconds rather than minutes, affecting everything we do on a day-to-day basis.

What needs improvement?

I haven’t encountered anything the customer needs that this solution can’t do.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've used the 8080 for eight months and the 8060 for two months. They're used mainly for VMware products and SQL databases.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I haven’t had any stability problems yet with our current customers.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It scales to our needs.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service:

8/10

Technical Support:

We haven’t needed to escalate to NetApp’s tech support.

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

I went from working with NetApp FAS to AFF, so I stayed in the family. The customer was satisfied with their FAS system but needed lower latency, so it was a clear choice.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very straightforward. When you've worked with NetApp for a while, it is very easy to setup their new systems. If you are new to the system, then there is a learning curve, but NetApp provides great documentation.

What about the implementation team?

I implement it for our customers.

What other advice do I have?

It’s a great choice, and you are on the right path using this product.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user351144

Consultant at Grand Consult

Dec 10, 2015

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It allows us to shrink the maintenance windows and downtime, although it would be great to combine all the software solutions together under a single GUI.

Pros and Cons

"It allows us to shrink the maintenance windows and downtime and provides faster replications between systems because of the installed flash."

What is most valuable?

Clustered Data ONTAP
Snapshot implementation for SAP

How has it helped my organization?

It allows us to shrink the maintenance windows and downtime. It provides faster replications between systems because of the installed flash.

What needs improvement?

ONTAP has a lot of features that are really great, so I don’t think there is something missing that I'd like to have.

However, the best way to improve would be to have better management over the solutions globally (not a part of the software OnCommand, VFA, etc. installed). It would be great to combine all the software solutions together under a single GUI and people can just activate different features as they buy a license as apposed new installs each time.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using it for four months in a multiple system environment with a lot of small writes. This was installed for an SAP HANA system as the persistency layer.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There has been no downtime yet -- perfect stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It scales to our needs.

How are customer service and technical support?

10/10

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

We didn't have anything similar in use previously.

How was the initial setup?

It's a straightforward and easy setup. It was guided and we had the documents to install it. It took around two days of racking, stacking, and installation.

What about the implementation team?

I did the implementation myself.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked also looked at EF from NetApp and chose AFF because of the snapshot technology.

What other advice do I have?

It's definitely worth it if you need the speed.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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it_user346356

CTO at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 10, 2015

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It has SnapManager, something Pure Storage lacks, allowing us to copy production DBs.

Pros and Cons

"Because we have the flash array, the queries to find this out will be much faster."

Valuable Features

The speed is really the most important feature for us. The SnapManager feature is also very important.

Improvements to My Organization

It will reduced query time because we have a lot of them that take a long time to execute. We created the database because we need to know which product I have available in the warehouse, and this is most important thing for me. Because we have the flash array, the queries to find this out will be much faster.

Room for Improvement

The product is great for us now.

Use of Solution

We bought it recently and use it for BI and partially for SAP. We are planning on implementing ONTAP.

Scalability Issues

It will scale to our needs.

Customer Service and Technical Support

Customer Service:

It's very high.

Technical Support:

It's been perfect so far.

Other Advice

Buy it if you need the speed and SnapManager.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user346323

Operations Manager at OUTSCALE

Dec 10, 2015

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It’s the same OS as the regular NetApp FAS, so you don’t need to learn anything again. I'd like to see a one-click-and-start feature for the initial setup.

Pros and Cons

"We started with NetApp five years ago and are still with them now."

"Cluster mode setup was complex to do the first time, but everything else was straightforward."

What is most valuable?

Right now, it’s the ability to have full flash based solution with NFS that's most valuable for us. Because Pure Storage does not offer that, only block storage, we need NFS for our services to work.

How has it helped my organization?

It's improved the speed, obviously, compared to what we are used to, and the latency. It’s the same OS as the regular NetApp FAS, so you don’t need to learn anything again.

All the storage for the VMs are hosted on the platform of individual companies. When you host everything on NetApp, everything needs to grow and shrink for each customer. They don’t know what their customers are using it for, but NetApp allows us to be prepared for anything without knowing anything.

What needs improvement?

I'd like to see a one-click-and-start feature for the initial setup. That means software that just asks you a few questions and takes care of the rest.

For how long have I used the solution?

We're in the process of starting a partnership, and we've been a client for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

So far quite good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The 8080 is the biggest product at NetApp so you can scale very wide. With this kind of product we have no problems at all.

How are customer service and technical support?

8/10, the two points missing is the same with every tech support, even if the customer knows very well what the issue is. Tech support still needs to go through the script to arrive at the same conclusion.

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

We started with NetApp five years ago and are still with them now. At the point we started, there were no competitors. At that time, it was a really great choice and it still is today.

How was the initial setup?

Cluster mode setup was complex to do the first time, but everything else was straightforward.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked for support, stability, and that we don’t have a vendor who would disappear two years later. That is one reason we didn’t chose Pure Storage, because we don’t know where they will be in a few years. We needed a trusted partner.

What other advice do I have?

It is still cluster mode, and is complex to set up the first time. You have to plan a long time ahead during the initial setup because you don’t know how you will want to scale.

We only looked at NFS because that’s what we need. If you need flash speed and NFS today you only have AFF. If you are looking at SAN, check out all the companies and features to compare them.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. We’re starting to partner with them.

it_user346131

System Engineer at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 10, 2015

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The peak loads on a software install for VDI desktops now have lower latency. If the price for SSDs comes down and we can switch everything to flash, that would be an improvement.

Pros and Cons

"With the AFF, we have absolutely no problem at all."

What is most valuable?

The features most valuable to us are--

A-SIS deduplication
vServer DR, which is a new feature in v8.3.1

How has it helped my organization?

The peak loads on a software install for VDI desktops now have lower latency. Previously, we had a 3240 with HDDs. For normal operation the HDDs with flash cache were fine, but for virus scans and software installations/patching, we would start at midnight and end at three or four am. However, sometimes at four deduplication operations would start and that runs concurrently with the installation that isn’t complete. So as a consequence, we had terrible latency until 11 or 12 so our users were unhappy with that situation. With the AFF, we have absolutely no problem at all.

What needs improvement?

It’s still new so the only thing I can think of is if the price for SSDs comes down and we can switch everything to flash, that would be an improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for three years. We're currently running VDI on it with ONTAP.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

We had an easy deployment because we have a VMware environment where we use vMotion from the old FAS to the new AFF.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Very stable, 100% uptime.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It scales to our needs.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

8/10.

Technical Support:

8/10.

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

We used FAS and we switched because of the above reasons.

How was the initial setup?

It was straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We used a vendor team who were 10/10.

What was our ROI?

Straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The situation before was terrible; we had things to do and couldn’t. It was a high pressure situation. 3,000 people couldn’t work for four hours. Now they can start working on time.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No other options were evaluated.

What other advice do I have?

It’s a good product, performs well and is easy to get up and running. If you need the speed, go for it.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user332643

Enterprise Data Storage Engineer III at University of Kentucky

Oct 29, 2015

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If I need sub-millisecond 300,000 IOPS, Flash FAS will provide that for us. And although initial setup seems very complicated, it becomes intuitive afterwards.

Pros and Cons

"Hands down, the most valuable feature is the speed of flash."

Valuable Features

Hands down, the most valuable feature is the speed of flash.

Improvements to My Organization

With anything that’s flash, it comes down to speed. If I need sub-millisecond 300,000 IOPS, for example, Flash FAS will provide that for us.

Room for Improvement

I've not been using it long enough to know.

Deployment Issues

None.

Stability Issues

We’re just starting out, so hard to say. So far, so good.

Scalability Issues

So far, it looks like it's going to be incredibly scalable as I just install additional nodes as needed.

Customer Service and Technical Support

It's fantastic. NetApp is awesome.

Initial Setup

Once you’ve done one, it seems very intuitive. However, the first time seems very complicated.

Other Advice

Buy as much as you can afford.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user331812

VP Systems Integrator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Oct 22, 2015

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Being able to network multiple 880 series together to increase speed is nice.

Pros and Cons

"Flexibility, being able to network multiple 880 series together to increase speed."

Valuable Features:

The speed, we have multiple apps with high IO requirements (Hadoop, Mongo, and some monitoring tools), we’re using our monitoring tools to spin up and spin down our environment.

Improvements to My Organization:

Flexibility, being able to network multiple 880 series together to increase speed. We’re building a four head environment with goal of 500,000 IOPS/second. With the amount of data from monitoring tools and data storage, we need incredible speeds.

Use of Solution:

We've been using NetApp products for 15 years.

Stability Issues:

No issues encountered, and none are anticipated.

Scalability Issues:

As we continue forward, we can add additional heads with same IOPS.

Other Advice:

From what we’ve seen so far, we’re very happy with potential.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user331992

Senior System Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 22, 2015

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It introduced non-disruptive upgrades, but the initial setup could be streamlined.

Pros and Cons

"They’re easy and rock solid."

"The process for initial setup could be streamlined."

Valuable Features

ONTAP A3 was huge for me because it introduced non-disruptive upgrades, which is imperative in the retail business.

Improvements to My Organization

We have a lot of applications that utilize it, and it has ties for e-commerce. Anytime there's the slightest blip in availability, it’s noticeable across the entire enterprise. Upgrade and upware swaps are seamless.

Room for Improvement

The process for initial setup could be streamlined. I had a couple of instances that weren’t clear in terms of which direction I should go.

Use of Solution

We’ve used it for one year now.

Stability Issues

It's rock solid, we've only run into one small bug in the code. NetApp were very responsive in getting us to identify it, and providing us with a workaround. I have very little to do in management of FAS because it’s so stable.

Scalability Issues

We haven’t yet needed to scale. We only have two nodes, but I have plans to present to management for growth. I know it will be seamless in adding nodes in clusters. I’m not afraid to take it on because I know it’ll be easy.

Customer Service and Technical Support

They’re incredibly responsive. We found a bug in the virus scanner that was causing issue in our environment. They identified it and gave us workaround shortly which allowed us to stay online and productive until they provided fix with 8.3. We haven’t had a problem since.

Initial Setup

It was mildly complex. At the time, I had very little experience with seven-mode, and we had some falste starts with getting cdot configured. But we used the seven-mode migration tool for 20 terrabytes of data in two days.

Other Advice

I’m in love with FAS series and am chomping at the bit to get my hands on all-flash

What are you waiting for? They’re easy and rock solid. cDot is a gamechanger. The ability to abstract everything into the virtual layer makes management easier and gives you tremendous flexibility. Makes my life much simpler.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user244362

Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees

Jul 28, 2015

It's a single data management architecture that allows data to move between on-premise datacenters, cloud service providers, and hyperscale cloud providers.

Pros and Cons

"That is what the NetApp Data Fabric can do for data in any organizations."

The Register wrote a damning piece about NetApp a few days ago. I felt it was irresponsible because this is akin to kicking a man when he’s down. It is easy to do that. The writer is clearly missing the forest for the trees. He was targeting NetApp’s Clustered Data ONTAP (cDOT) and missing the entire philosophy of NetApp’s mission and vision in Data Fabric.

I have always been a strong believer that you must treat Data like water. Just like what Jeff Goldblum famously quoted in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way“, data as it moves through its lifecycle, will find its way into the cloud and back.

And every storage vendor today has a cloud story to tell. It is exciting to listen to everyone sharing their cloud story. Cloud makes sense when it addresses different workloads such as the sharing of folders across multiple devices, backup and archiving data to the cloud, tiering to the cloud, and the different cloud service models of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and XaaS.

But if we take a look at all these cloud offerings and also computing platforms in our own server room or in the data center, the on-premise infrastructure, the data landscape is NOT coherent. The data flow is not in harmony, and it is not congruent. If we imagine data as water, there is hindrance of data movement as it moves from one stage to another in the data lifecycle. This applies to almost every storage, system or cloud vendor today.

Even worse, organizations lose the control of the data along the way. When data moves out of an on-premise data center to the cloud, IT is almost passing off a large amount of control of their data to the cloud service provider.

Remember the Nirvanix story about 2 years ago? When Nirvanix went belly up, customers of theirs went to a panic mode. They were asked to remove their data within 2 weeks! One customer of Nirvanix had 20PB stored in the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network. How the F do you think that customer would have felt in that whole Nirvanix fiasco?

This is exactly what I mean about losing control of data.

As Cloud Computing gains a much deeper foothold into IT, the data landscape does not change. The data lifecycle does not change. Data still moves from an active stage to a passive stage, and perhaps back to the active stage when needed. Along with the data movement though its lifecycle, the value of the data changes as well.

That is what the NetApp Data Fabric can do for data in any organizations. A single data management architecture that is able to have data transcend from on-premise data platforms on NetApp (or 3rd party platforms using NetApp FlexArray) to the data platforms on hybrid clouds in cloud service providers and on to the data platforms of hyperscalers, and back. All these data movement is secure, and more importantly, allows organizations to maintain control of their data, wherever it may be residing.

I have put my views of NetApp Data Fabric in the picture below (pardon my Powerpoint skills).

The underpinnings and foundation of the Data Fabric is NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP. And with the latest release of cDOT 8.3.1, the technology has reached an important milestone to realize the single data landscape architecture.

Furthermore, I cannot recall at this moment of any storage vendor or cloud service provider adopting a philosophy like Data Fabric, which means that their customers would likely encounter hindrance of data as it moves through different premises or clouds. Just like water trapped in a watering hole, eventually it will dry up or become useless.

I am not trying deride the writer of the article, but instead of sensationalizing the NetApp story, perhaps it would be better to have a deeper understanding of where NetApp is now and where they are going. From the outside, they looked to be going through a rough patch right now, but as an ex-employee, NetApp has always been my little engine that could.

The intend of my response in this blog is really to help everyone open up their eyes because it is all about a single and secure data architecture. Clustered Data ONTAP happens to be the technology that makes this happens.

Remember … Data will find its way. There is no stopping that.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user186357

Solutions Architect with 51-200 employees

Jan 28, 2015

NetApp vs. XtremIO

Is there another storage platform as feature rich as NetApp FAS?

I think it is fair to say that NetApp FAS running Clustered Data ONTAP is a very feature rich platform – the move to the clustered version of ONTAP has brought many next-generation features including Scale-out and Non-disruptive Operations.

As a benchmark let’s compare FAS to EMC’s solutions – I fully appreciate that EMC has taken a best of breed approach, but my feeling is that for most non-enterprise customers this is not a sustainable strategy – customers want simplicity and ease of use, and you are not going to get that by deploying four different storage platforms to meet your needs.

I have chosen EMC because they are the overall market share leader and they have the broadest set of storage products available – so let’s compare FAS with VNX, VPLEX, XtremIO, Isilon and Data Domain:

NetApp FAS supports All-Disk, Hybrid Flash and All-Flash data stores - that meet the needs of any kind of application workload

The VNX is a very good All-Disk and Hybrid Flash array and XtremIO is a very good All-Flash array, but you need two completely different products to provide the functionality.

NetApp FAS eliminates silos and provides seamless scalability - to address Server Virtualisation, Virtual Desktop, Database and File storage needs in one scale-up and scale-out solution, that can start small and grow large

VNX is optimal for general Server Virtualisation and Databases and XtremIO excels when it comes to large scale Virtual Desktop and ultra-high performance database requirements. The VNX scales-up, but not out, and XtremIO scales-out, but not up.

NetApp FAS has fully unified SAN and NAS storage - to enable consistent management across all protocols and therefore flexibility in their use

VNX has a separate NAS OS which requires its own management (but it is integrated into a single UI along with SAN), XtremIO is SAN only and Isilon is NAS only.

NetApp FAS provides many storage efficiency technologies - including De-duplication, Inline Zero Write Elimination, Compression, Thin-Provisioning, Zero-cost Cloning and High-performance Double Disk Protection

XtremIO is excellent at all of these (just lacks the Double Disk Protection which I believe it will get shortly), neither VNX or Isilon are anywhere near as strong.

NetApp FAS has Flash optimised writes - with a SSD warranty that has no restrictions on the number of drive writes

As expected XtremIO excels whereas VNX and Isilon are not optimised.

NetApp FAS provides 24×7 continuous availability - including proven enterprise RAS, Non-disruptive Operations, and Metrocluster Site Protection

Neither VNX or XtremIO provide the ability to perform Non-Disruptive Operations like FAS. Introducing VPLEX does provide these capabilities along with excellent Metrocluster site protection.

NetApp FAS has integrated data protection - with near instant creation of snapshot based backups and automated offsite replication

Neither the VNX or XtremIO have these capabilities, to a lesser extent Isilon comes close, but it is limited to the workloads it supports (i.e. it cannot be used for Server or Desktop Virtualisation). EMC’s data protection solutions are typically built using their Data Domain De-duplication appliances and conventional backup software (interestingly they have started to integrate Data Domain directly with the replication engine within the new VMAX3 – no doubt a sign of things to come).

NetApp FAS is Public Cloud integrated - to support hybrid Disaster Recovery and Cloud Bursting

Currently there is no VNX equivalent of Cloud ONTAP for AWS, but this is expected sometime in 2015.

NetApp FAS is designed for VMware vSphere - with support for Virtual Volumes, VAAI, Site Recovery Manager and vCenter management

As expected VNX and XtremIO have support for all the relevant integrations with vSphere. Where FAS has an advantage is that NetApp have already announced support for Virtual Volumes so existing hardware will be able to take advantage of Virtual Volumes – not sure we will be able to say the same about VNX.

NetApp FAS is designed for VMware Horizon View - with support for high-performance hardware accelerated Full Clones (using VAAI) and Linked Clones (using VCAI), and up to 160,000 IOPS at 80% Writes per array

As expected for large scale Virtual Desktop projects XtremIO excels and the only area where it is lacking is that it doesn’t support VCAI as it requires NFS.

NetApp FAS is designed for Microsoft Hyper-V - with support for SMB 3.0 Continuous Availability Shares and Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX)

VNX has good support, whereas XtremIO lacks support for both SMB 3.0 and ODX.

I am confident that you could substitute EMC with any other storage vendor and you would end up with the same result – no single storage platform is anywhere near as feature rich as FAS.

So is FAS and Clustered Data ONTAP perfect?Absolutely not, there are undoubtedly areas whereby the traditional SAN arrays still have advantages (mostly around active/active controller architectures and metrocluster capabilities).

So what else would I like to see from FAS?

Sharing of drives across controllers – we are already starting to see this with the new drive and Flash Pools partitioning features
Detaching of the drives from the controllers – so that the failure of an HA pair within a cluster does not result in downtime
MetroCluster
- Granular fail over - so volumes or even Virtual Volumes can be “moved” between sites
- IP replication - either using FCIP bridges or native IP connectivity
- Active/Active - so volumes/LUNs can be active on both sides of the cluster
Erasure coding – to eliminate idle spares and enable rapid drive rebuilds
Encryption – provided by the controllers rather than drives
Advanced QoS – to enable setting of Service Level Objectives rather than just limits
Integrated file archiving – to move older files to secondary storage or the cloud

Conclusion

I truly believe that there is no single storage platform that comes close to matching the range of capabilities of a NetApp FAS, but what do you think?

Do you work for a vendor or are you an end-user of a competitive storage platform? If you are let me know what you think – what are the downsides of the FAS architecture from your point of view?

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. We are Partners with NetApp.

it_user264375Emergency Medicine Resident with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Jan 25, 2016

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NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and support?

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

How was the initial setup?

What about the implementation team?

What other advice do I have?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

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

How was the initial setup?

What about the implementation team?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

Valuable Features

Improvements to My Organization

Room for Improvement

Use of Solution

Scalability Issues

Customer Service and Technical Support

Other Solutions Considered

Other Advice

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

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

How was the initial setup?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

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

How was the initial setup?

What about the implementation team?

What was our ROI?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

Valuable Features

Improvements to My Organization

Room for Improvement

Deployment Issues

Stability Issues

Scalability Issues

Customer Service and Technical Support

Initial Setup

Other Advice

Valuable Features:

Improvements to My Organization:

Use of Solution:

Stability Issues:

Scalability Issues:

Other Advice:

Valuable Features

Improvements to My Organization

Room for Improvement

Use of Solution

Stability Issues

Scalability Issues

Customer Service and Technical Support