NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

With any new technology, it comes down to the user experience. Once the system is up and running, I feel that the user experience itself sets it above several of the other competitors.

For us, it's mainly about being able to transition data from one location to another rapidly, and even do incremental updates. So, that aspect of ONTAP allows us, as well as our customers, to be able to leverage great geographic distances in order to seamlessly still present their data in one location.

The one thing that could promote NetApp's ONTAP product line to the next level would be a single pane of glass to manage all of the storage and networking resources involved. That's the big one. That would absolutely be a life-changer.

Stability has not been a concern once the system is up and running. However, before the system is up and running and during the installation, we've had some instances, but those aren't necessarily all a NetApp caveat. Those could be different hardware that's being installed in, different steps need to be taken. Getting through those sometimes is cumbersome.

We've put in several requests for some different scalable options because we provide one type of hardware. I would say that scalability went in the wrong direction when we went to NetApp Select. We had a meeting set up with the CTO at a recent conference and we were hoping to discuss different options going forward.

They actually decreased the ability to scale with the new Select platform.

The pain point specifically is with our customers. They're needing to be able to take big data with them. Most people have that data center mentality and believe that I can always reach back into the data center. However, in some of the environments we work in, it's a DIL environment, which is Disconnected, Intermittent or Limited bandwidth. In those environments, taking some of that big data with you and being able to sync at a later time is paramount. NetApp ONTAP gives us that functionality.

For me, it was the actual installation onto our company's hardware. There are several instances that came down to the unknown. The NetApp engineers, as well as my engineers, could not necessarily predict the installation difficulties. Once we overcame those, and started creating application notes for both our company, as well as NetApp's company, I believe it will help others down the road. It could help the software engineers to program different options into the installation.

We have pretty much considered everybody, from a Nutanix perspective to a Cisco perspective to a VMware solution and a couple other smaller mom-and-pop stores that are trying to get into the big data realm.

We decided to go with NetApp over the competitors because for a lot of the customers, their experience with NetApp, is what has driven us to use NetApp in a lot of our solutions; because of their experience in terms of support and in terms of usability; because we're not having to retrain on a new platform. That's a big one for them because that's more dollars they're having to invest.

The customer support is obviously a huge win for NetApp, even the pre- and post- sales staff. Then, the actual customer service representatives themselves do help. I would say that's probably one of the big ones. Once it's operational, as I’ve mentioned, it's very intuitive and very easy to use. Some of the setup steps, you get past those and it's easy to use and operate, and that's what they like.

The most important criteria when I’m selecting a vendor are ease of use and management. And the reason why is because, as we take more technology and compress it into a smaller space, the knowledge base required for one engineer to be able to manage and operate that environment becomes very large. So, the ease of use and ease of management would be the one key thing I would focus on.

Given NetApp's strength, size and customer base, they bring a wide array of knowledge to any solution. It's just trying to find the right solution within the NetApp portfolio that will meet the customer's needs. Instead of overselling the solution, find the one that meets their requirements the best and pursue that. The NetApp sales team, as well as their support, has done a good job at helping us to realize where those little niches are, to fit in the problems.

The ability to recover your data really fast is valuable, as is the availability and accessibility of the data.

It helped us a lot with our storage infrastructure because we were using another vendor, XtremIO. prior to this and things were really slow. We used to have to fight fires every day because users were not able to access their files or the files were not responding the way they should.

I see room for improvement everywhere because the technology is here. We are using it and every day we are trying to improve. That's the reason why I haven’t rated it higher.

Specifically, the current pricing bothers me; pricing is very high. It's expensive. That's the reason why I can't just provide a review and hope that people would jump onto it; pricing is usually a driving factor for a lot of companies. It’s a major issue, even though my company had the money and they spent it. Nonetheless, we had to prove that it was the solution we were looking for. A lot of other companies would not be able to afford this type of solution, so they would have to look for alternatives. Those alternatives would be other companies, start-up companies that are pretty much doing the same thing. Sometimes they are better than the ones that were the innovators.

It's been really stable as long as you have it configured correctly.

As with stability, it's been really scalable as long as you have it configured correctly.

Technical support is very good. I like the call home feature, where we don't even have to do anything. Most of the time, we don't know that anything’s broken and we receive an email saying, "Hey, go fix it." So, it's good.

We didn't really evaluate any other companies. This was the one everybody else was using. All of the reviews actually helped somebody make the decision. This solution had proved to be working; it was proven to be working at the time. We're very happy with it but we find it expensive.

Do your research. Find what would work for you. Find what's affordable to you. Most of the time, we purchase stuff without thinking about the maintenance. Maintenance is usually a killer when it comes to all these things because once you own it, you think you are done with spending money but maintenance becomes a very big issue for a lot of companies. After a while, they drop the support and everything. At that point, there's a new version that's out there and you can't use it, so that's when you have to dump all the money you just put in and start with something new. Study your environment. Make sure you are getting what you want. What you need.

We automate a lot with our NetApp All Flash system.

We use AFF for block storage, because we need a lot performance in all of our systems and databases.

1. Performance
2. We need Snapshot.

We installed NetSender to test it. I think it could be a good solution. It is very small now, but will probably become bigger in the next few months to years.

It is stable. We have a network cluster. For two years now, we have not had any issues. It is good.

The scalability is good. We scaled out three to four months ago. There were no problems.

I have used the technical support at times. They are always good.

It is pretty expensive compared to other solutions. I would give it a seven or eight out of 10 in price (where 10 is expensive) compared to similar solutions.

Before and after we purchased AFF, we viewed NetApp as a vendor of high performance. They are a good vendor.

Until now, I have had no problems with the system. I would recommend this solution.

The customer improved its time to market.

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

I have found three main features to be valuable:

Ease of use: Business continuity solutions are not typically so easy to manage from a storage admin prospective

Storage Efficiency: Inline compression, inline reduplication, and other inline features allow space-saving without losing performance

Performance: All flash disks allow extreme performance at low latency

There should be more functionality regarding tiering of the oldest data.

The solution is very stable.

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

The solution can scale-in and scale-out.

I would rate the level of technical support 10/10.

The customer previously had the NetApp solution based on hybrid disks.
They don't have a business continuity solution.

It took one week for the startup to pepare the storage for use. We have migrated about 150TB of data in six months (VMware, Oracle, SAP, filesystem, etc.).

Licensing is very simple: all flash solutions include the entire license. Regarding pricing, storage efficiency can lower the cost per TB.

The customer evaluated EMC and HPE.

Involve a competent and certified partner.

Performance.

• Application performance
• Less capacity required due to storage efficiency

More performance features. We need our jobs to run faster.

Yes, it is stable.

Yes, it is scalable.

Helpful for troubleshooting.

We did not have a previous solution. We chose NetApp because we have other NetApp systems.

It was an easy setup. It was done very quickly.

The most valuable feature of AFF is that it has a very fast response time. This is a very crucial performance for us.

It needs higher IOPS. Pure Storage is better with that.

We've been using it for two months.

We had no issues with deployment.

It hasn't crashed, so it's been stable so far.

It scales to our needs.

Customer service is good.

Technical support is very good.

We were running on NFS.

The reason the initial setup was straightforward is because we've got clustered Data ONTAP on their hybrid system, so we know how to do the installation on our own.

We implemented it through NetApp.

We looked at Pure Storage, but only on paper.

It depends on your workload, as you have to add an SSD, so take it only if you need it because the whole thing is expensive. On the other side, if you do need this solution and it does not meet your expectations, you should change your settings, and move from NFS to fibre channel.

We primarily use it for storage for VMs and backup units.

We use this solution on a daily basis. In Sweden, typically small to medium-sized companies use this solution.

MetroCluster functions, SnapMirror functionality, and ease-of-use are the most valuable functions for us.

Their backup software could be improved.

In the next release, I would like to see a complete S3 protocol. Also better compatibility and integration with VM-ware.

I have been using AFF since its release.

Nowadays, AFF is very scalable — ever since they implemented the ClusterMode. I think it's very easy to scale, both up and out. It's also very stable.

They provide different types of support. When an accident happens that impacts your business, they respond very fast and give very good help. Sometimes, when you have problems with their software, it can take a long time — that should be improved. Overall, their top functions, operating systems, the storage controller, they are very strongly enforced.

The initial setup is very simple. How much time it takes depends on the size and what the initial setup should be. It can be a long process.

We do everything from the initial setup, to the integration with system backups, the whole chain, including the hardware, the software, the daily work, as well as the daily administration as well.

It depends on how you look at things, but they are in a higher price range.

They have different license models. You can get a license model where everything is included, but you can also purchase more licensing and buy what you need. It really depends on what you buy.

I would absolutely recommend this solution to other companies.

All-flash performance and density are two important things for us. In terms of performance, we have a humongous database. Before this solution, we had a lot of performance issues. With this tool, we were able to nail them down to at least 20-30% performance gain. In terms of density, I don't have the numbers, but it is definitely better than the older disk-based solutions.

The business benefit is the rate. If you have better performance from your critical ERP applications and databases, that's a gain from the cost perspective. We are able to manage our data centers better from the space perspective. Those two pieces are the key benefits.

At a recent NetApp conference, I got a lot of good ideas from the sessions where they are trying to bring in a newer AFF. That should be good. I am looking forward to the SolidFire integration. That will give us more benefits.

I have not used technical support personally, but we do use technical support on our operational issues. The team is getting pretty good response from them.

This is where my organization's innovation comes into the picture. They keep their eye on the market and what's going on. We started that relationship around two years ago and we started ten years ago with NetApp.

We also keep an eye on how we can improve from a data center perspective. We are a big data center provider and we look at how we can make our data center more cost effective.

The ROI is good. AFF is definitely pricier than other solutions, but the price gets compensated by performance and the density.

When looking for a vendor, I definitely look the product they are offering. I look at what the change is and how it will make a change for us. I look at the costs and benefits, the ROI, and the operation.

I am not technical, so I cannot give technical advice. However, I am part of the decision-making process at my organization. We are the central hub of providing the whole infrastructure to the company. We do a lot of homework. If we decide that we want to go with this solution and we can prove the ROI to our senior leadership, then that's that. We are then on it.