NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

• Speed
• Performance
• Low latency

We do not use it now for our customers, but just to manage our criticla internal CRM proposals. It helps us manage our entire CRM. We had problems with latency in the regular NetApp storage devices (many concurent access attemps for small data) and AFF has improved it.

The price needs to come down. Also, it has a learning curve and I needed to learn a lot to do the installation.

We had no problems with deployment.

From what I know, no problem at all with stability.

We have not scaled it yet, but we are thinking about it.

Customer service is perfect every time.

Technical support helps us every time.

We used IBM before, after the contract finished we tested NetApp, and from what I know it filled the hole. It’s excellent. It has flash pool disks on a cluster, and we switched as we got it for a good price. We have a dual strategy with Inter Telecom and normally we get good prices for NetApp products.

I set it up the first time myself. I needed to learn it and read the user guide for it, but it’s easy for technical people.

We tested many products, but no other flash ones.

I would advise you to make sure that you need flash as it is very specific and regular FAS may work for you. However, if you need flash, this is a good product to get.

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

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.

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

None.

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

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

It's fantastic. NetApp is awesome.

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

Buy as much as you can afford.

Shared storage for virtualized environments.

Reducing data fingerprint (deduplication) and speeding up access to data.

• Deduplication
• SnapManager
• Autosupport.

Synchronous replication and active-active environments.

First of all, we have very low latency. We just moved a good piece of our stuff over from spinning disk onto All Flash FAS. We didn't have performance problems before, but now we are screaming. Things are really fast with really low utilization now. We're surprised at the low utilization and high performance.

I like that they keep the same operating system as they do for all of their stuff, so you learn all their platforms. It's easy to learn and user friendly.

They haven't added all the features in that they have from everything else because they're still kind of new to the all flash game. They haven't added all the features in that you can get on a spinning disk system. It's getting there, but it's taking time.

We have not had any problems with stability.

The scalability meets our needs.

We have a support account manager through NetApp and he helps us out anytime we get stuck on something. We let him know about it and he jumps in and takes care of tickets or problems.

We used their professional services. They came in an installed it for us and it went really well; flawless. They just went in and took care of it all. Then we just put our configurations in and away we went. I thought it went pretty slick.

Currently, we are comparing NetApp Flash with HPE for one of our customers for one of our applications. We are comparing those. I'm not involved with that, so I don't know really how that's going, but I know that that process is under way.

I've been really happy with NetApp All Flash FAS, and I'd hope that others find the same success. I've been really happy with them.

Before we started working with it, we moved input data and resources over. We virtualized the environment over to all flash and it went smooth. We didn't have any problems with it. There wasn't anything crazy we had to do for it.

The most valuable feature of the product is its performance; we haven't really put it to the test yet, but just overall performance and taking our existing workload and smashing it really.

It has improved our organization with efficiencies for our developers and similar items; some of the work and the way they do it. It's actually improved their speeds quite significantly.

With the interface in System Manager, sometimes you have to go back into your aggregates from your SVM to see how your storage is going. It would be nice if you could see trends, so you don't have to keep tagging back and forth.

It would be nice to be able to see the aggregate status/capacity from the SVM view. I realize that it is logically located as a cluster-managed component, but to be able to quickly view the usage of the aggregate, from a capacity point of view when provisioning new volumes, saves having to browse back into the cluster view.

I’ve been using it for about nine months. But, as I’ve mentioned, we haven't migrated all that workload yet, so we haven't put it to the full test.

So far, so good; we haven't had any issue with stability.

NetApp’s very scalable.

Technical support has been indifferent at times. Probably about a year ago, I found the transition to the Indian tech support a bit difficult, at first, to deal with, in terms of quality, but that's improved. I've had a few dealings with them recently. I found them definitely a bit better now.

I was instrumental in saying, we need to go to the 8000 platform, full stop, because we'd been on the 3000s for quite some time. Over time, they kept growing, and the performance kept decreasing.

I used to work in the partner space. I'd see an environment with the 6000 series and we just threw everything at it; they didn't take a beat. So, I knew that by the time we were looking at upgrading to the 8000 series. I basically said, we need to forget about this smaller series and treat ourselves like a proper enterprise and go to the 8000s and get the right performance we need.

We actually had a partner assist us in setting it up, but it seemed pretty easy. It's a lot different with a cluster and IPs; you have to think about things differently. Other than that, it seemed pretty easy.

We did not really consider anyone other than NetApp. We've always had a good relationship with NetApp and we’re quite happy with how we can manage it.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with can be anything from cost to how they treat their customers. Some vendors can be quite arrogant. NetApp's always had a good setup. For me, I prefer to have the ability to call on our SEs when we've got issues and so forth. That's always been good. At the end of the day, at my job level, I wouldn't be making final choices for vendor selection any way.

Make sure you don't jump into something that you'll regret later on. I think a lot of people are jumping into other smaller vendors at the moment and I think they're going to get burnt one day. Really look deeper into the solution and the products.

I haven't really given it a full go yet, but so far so good.

• Performance
• Contingency, failover, and data recovery
• It's a good vendor.

They have always been really supportive, easy to get ahold of, and easy to work with.

The primary use case for All Flash is improved performance.

• Better performance
• More reliable systems
• Less space needed versus competitors of similar storage

Simplifying the solution for performance, though they are already working on it. Also, making the UI more user-friendly couldn't hurt.

Over five years.

It's very stable. We haven't had any problems in our environment.

It is very easy to scale.

We have a good relationship with our representatives through them. Our sales representative gave us a lot of information as far as moving forward with upgrading stuff.

It has been used quite a few times and we always have always had a good response from them. They are very knowledgeable.

It was very straightforward.

We use both block and file storage.

NetApp is the leader in the field for high performance and storage systems. They have always been our primary go to. We are more likely to consider NetApp for mission critical storage systems based on our experience.

Advice for someone looking at similar products: Just do the research beforehand and you'll be able to tell what vendors separate themselves from the rest as far as other companies' reviews out there. I would definitely recommend NetApp All Flash FAS.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: compatibility and communication. Being able to rely on them whenever we need them.

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

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.

The product is great for us now.

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

It will scale to our needs.

It's very high.

It's been perfect so far.

I looked at Pure Storage and we decided to get NetApp because they have SnapManager, which Pure Storage doesn't. I need to create a copy of the production DB and without SnapManager, I cannot do this.

Buy it if you need the speed and SnapManager.