NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

NetApp solutions are easy to maintain and upgrade. 

NetApp allows us to provide more and faster connections for our users and simplifies future hardware replacement. That's why we purchased NetApp. 

Innovation is probably the most critical factor. We wanted the ability to refresh hardware. Our biggest pain point was running out of space on our current NAS. It was approaching the end of its life, so we needed to find a new solution to replace our existing hardware. 

Our future expansion into NetApp will probably be going from HCI back to just SAN solutions. Data storage solutions and cybersecurity are our investment priorities. 

We looked at Dell's PowerScale and Pure Storage's FlashBlade. The decision came down to the cost relative to the number of connections we could have and the amount of storage we could get. The NetApp solution was all-flash, so it was also faster in most cases. One solution was spinning disk, and it just got thrown out. 

I rate NetApp solutions nine out of 10. 

We're still in the process of the migration, so we're hoping that it will help with business and serving customers. We're hoping that it will be faster. We had previous file limitations with our old technology. We're hoping to better utilize the NetApp arrays to serve our expanding and growing business.

If the data is deduplicated, we'll hopefully begin to save space. We're also hoping it will allow our business clients to access their data faster, and we'll be able to read and write it faster as well using all-flash technology.

The C400 flash arrays have been very valuable so far.

We'll use it to secure data, back up that data, and replicate it to other data centers. We'll leverage it to take a holistic approach to data replication, backup, and accessibility.

We're assuming accessing and writing files will be a lot snappier with opening files will be faster. That's what we're looking at. We're hoping for a lot of speed.

We don't have it in production yet. We don't have areas for improvement right now. Once we put it into production and get client feedback, we'll have more visibility.

We did use a different solution. We made the change based on the price point and being able to open more files.

We looked into Dell and another big player in the space. We chose this solution based on the price point and the all-flash technology.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. We just got it. We're expecting it will be faster and that we'll see some good compression and deep replication on our data.

The evolving cybersecurity landscape and proliferation of AI influenced our technology decisions. It's a factor in every decision that we make. The security is very important. I know other vendors provide similar types of types of security, and data tech and data security as well.

We're using it all just for NAS right now. We possibly might use it
for SAN in the future and then maybe archiving.

We're very new to AI and it will be a consideration in the future. Cybersecurity for sure will also be a priority and data optimization is the most important. 

Our use cases are related to VMware Infrastructure.

AFF has helped us simplify our infrastructure. It's made our operations more stable and dependable. There's not much downtime.

It provides very high performance for our business-critical applications.

Moreover, AFF has helped to reduce support issues such as performance tuning and troubleshooting. Overall, it has been helpful. The system is very stable and reliable.

AFF has helped to reduce our operational latency and optimize costs very significantly. 

From an IT perspective, there's not a lot of babysitting. It maintains itself. It is a very dependable tool.

In future releases, I would like to see the ability to automatically mount SMB shares and file systems. 

We have been using AFF for seven years. 

I am happy with the stability of the solution. 

It is able to scale according to our needs. I can grow my storage capacity as much as I need, there is no limit.

The customer service and support are fantastic. They have been great. 

Positive

We used a different storage solution prior to AFF.

We made a switch to AFF because we wanted to keep everything consistent and wanted to have ONTAP everywhere. So, we decided to standardize on NetApp AFF for all our storage needs. It has been working out well for us.  

The initial setup was straightforward. 

The stability of AFF alone has been a significant ROI.

We evaluated other options. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

NetApp allows us to provide resiliency in operations. We had some data center outages before, however, our operations under this service offering were untouched, unscathed. Due to that, we're deploying more of the product in our infrastructure.

We had many issues with our current NAS offering with the competitor's product. With some enhancements to the Apple stack, we're able to provide a better service. It also allows us to tier off older data at a cheaper cost.

We use StorageGRID, which is now our go-to archive platform. We're able to use that tool to archive a lot of other third-party arrays from Dell EMC and Data Domain, and specifically with the PowerScale platform, we're able to archive using their native tiering tools to the NetApp platform.

We're keeping our data archive for more than seven years. We needed a cost solution that was better than AWS. We looked at different vendor offerings, including ECS and VAST, and we chose StorageGRID over them.

The evolving cybersecurity landscape and proliferation of AI influenced our technology decisions. We wanted something that would integrate with some type of malware protection. And we did a POC on Cloud Insights, and then, used the BlueX Blue classification tool to identify the data, figure out who owns the data, and to provide some governance around our data. It's a really good product. 

Once we automate the provisioning process through our cloud portal, we're going to be presenting this as a better offering to our customers. Right now, it's behind the scenes. It's word-of-mouth. We still have a ton of studios and tons of other segments wanting to get on board with our tools. 

We had some issues with some of the product's POCs; however, once the bugs are all ironed out, everything is golden. We had a lot of issues with two-factor authentication using, for example, Okta.

We looked at a few other solutions, including Pure Storage and Dell EMC.

We chose this solution based on integration with automation tools such as Ansible and the native tools of fabric cooling, and native tiering within the product.

Our next goals would be to add some type of QoS to the platform and also be able to integrate with other cloud providers as we migrate stuff back from the cloud.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's really, really good.

While our main driver is innovation, upper leadership's concern is always cost. We're always pushed towards cost. We found a good solution with this product.

Our upcoming investments will be prioritized around data storage and optimization, cybersecurity, and AI. We're doing all three at the same time. We'll have to get the go-ahead from upper managers to pursue AI initiatives. At the same time, we're getting a big push from global security to do malware intrusion protection. 

We want a way to dedupe and replicate our data. We were using filers using SnapMirror, and now we're taking our snapshots across data center support on StorageGRID. 

It's helping us achieve our budget constraints while allowing us to work in other areas.

I have used it for storage services.

NetApp AFF has helped to simplify our infrastructure while still getting very high performance for our business-critical applications. It has helped to accommodate a non-structured environment. I have a diversification of Windows and Linux in my network, and it has supported both networks.

NetApp AFF has helped to reduce support issues such as performance-tuning and troubleshooting.

NetApp AFF has definitely reduced the operational latency. It has reduced operational latency by 30% to 40%.

Its consistent stability is one of the things that I like, and the performance is also very good.

The dashboard needs improvement. The dashboard needs some uplift.

I have been using NetApp AFF for eight to ten years.

It is stable.

It is scalable.

We were using a small configuration Dell server. The configuration was not so high. We chose NetApp AFF simply because of its performance and stability.

The initial deployment was a bit complex. At the time of implementation, we created a parallel setup and gradually shifted from the old setup to the new setup.

We got it done directly from the NetApp support team.

I have not worked out the ROI. After implementing it, COVID came, and we did not work much on it. Its renewal is around the corner, and at that time, we will go into ROI.

Its price is quite competitive, but there is still scope for better pricing.

I evaluated NetApp, Dell, and HPE storage. I chose Netapp AFF because I had used NetApp earlier as well, so I was well aware of the performance of this solution.

Overall, I would rate NetApp AFF an eight out of ten. I would recommend it to others.

Its use cases include everything from high bandwidth to low latency, AI workloads based on NVMe drives, and all the way to our basic home directories and what I call common plop-and-drop drives for the teams. 

The challenge that we were trying to address by implementing NetApp AFF was that we needed truly high-speed storage to feed the GPUs for AI/ML workloads. We also had the financial responsibility of being able to lower the QoS when we just needed basic storage rather than Pure high-performance storage.

NetApp AFF has helped with faster data, and at the same time, we are able to work with our solutions team to set up FlexCache share so that we can more easily set up data pipelines and data life cycles. We can also integrate with our corporate systems for replication.

NetApp AFF has helped to simplify our infrastructure while still getting very high performance for our business-critical applications. The flexibility to keep everything on superfast NVMe but also tweak the QoS has allowed us to centralize more of our storage services. We need less rack space. We are using Keystone for financial responsibility. We have centralized and standardized a lot of our ITOps.

NetApp AFF has not helped to reduce support issues, such as performance-tuning and troubleshooting, because we have not had any issues yet that we had to take a look at, and I hope we do not.

NetApp AFF has definitely helped to reduce our operational latency. Especially with the speeds of the drives and the network links and the network topology that we are able to put together, for not just huge dense workloads, we are able to scale out horizontally so everyone can get the same speed. 

NetApp AFF has not saved us much cost, but the Keystone model that we are able to run AFF in partnership with has helped to save costs. Instead of making those huge capital purchases where we may purchase 500 terabytes and not use it, the consumption-based model has allowed us to be flexible. It gives us that financial flexibility to say, "We want to experiment with this more. Add it on." We can also say, "We do not need it. Take it back, and give us that plug-and-play option."

The ease of use for setting up our basic shares such as NFS and CIFS is valuable. It takes a couple of clicks to set up things like object shares. 

The ONTAP S3 implementation is not feature-complete as compared to StorageGRID. We had to move our lakeFS instance from ONTAP S3 based on AFF to StorageGRID.

The lab that I am developing has used NetApp AFF and NetApp storage for about two years, but I know that our organization, in general, has been using NetApp for storage for a long time.

I have not thought about it. It must be good because I have not had to think about it.

Based on your current needs and based on your inter-cluster switches, you need more storage added in, and you are good to go. You can create new aggregates and SVMs, and you are good to go.

The support is great. We have a dedicated team. I can work with our dedicated embedded professional services group. If it is a larger issue, I can send a message to our support ops engineer and get an answer right away, or even proactively.

Positive

This lab is brand new, we started with NetApp AFF. 

I am a nerd at heart, so I worked with our professional services group to do the rack and stack. It was pretty straightforward. It was based on the idea of centralized controllers with expanded disk shares. We were able to work with our professional services consultant to get it set up in two days or so.

We were able to have those huge savings as our lab was being stood up, and now, as our usage increases, our cost increases, and as our usage decreases, our cost decreases. We have been able to see that trend match up with how we are using it. 

We did not evaluate other options because it is part of a centralized storage offering with our company. We wanted to keep everything on the same level for ease of use for purchasing, operations, shared ownership, and everything else.

In terms of using other NetApp solutions or services, we use less of NetApp Cloud Services, but we do use Cloud Volumes ONTAP. We also use SnapMirror and FlexCache for a lot of the intra or inter-site capabilities.

I would rate NetApp AFF a 10 out of 10.

AFF has simplified our infrastructure and delivered high performance for crucial business applications. Our move to c-series, with C800 units, consolidates infrastructure, aligns with sustainability goals, and lowers costs. This has allowed us to operate with a smaller team and streamline our IT operations, bringing significant benefits. 

AFS has also reduced support issues related to performance tuning and troubleshooting. 

Additionally, AFF has optimized our costs, and it is the reason we are using this platform today. It has minimized our footprint, lowered power consumption, and reduced upfront costs and it has reduced operational latency to some extent.

The most valuable feature of AFF is that it offers better visibility and control over performance, ensuring it meets customer needs effectively.

One minor improvement could be making scale-up solutions with AFF more cost-effective compared to scale-out options.

We have been using NetApp AFF for quite some time.

AFF's stability is excellent, and I can't remember any major issues. It is also scalable, particularly when we expand our clusters, making it a smooth and seamless experience for our customers.

NetApp's support has been great. We have found value in their SAN services, which provide embedded support. Their teams are knowledgeable and responsive, offering a high-quality support experience that stands out among our partners. I would rate the support as a nine out of ten.

Positive

We switched to AFF from a previous vendor to get the best all-flash solution that met our price-performance needs.

AFF has helped us achieve our margin targets and deliver on our business goals. It has definitely provided a return on investment.

Pricing and licensing can be tricky. It is often a delicate balance between value and cost. However, I think NetApp is moving in the right direction, offering better value for the money.

We implemented AFF to find the right balance between price and performance. We compared it with other options in the market, and AFF emerged as the best choice for our needs. What set AFF apart were its reliability and strong data protection features. Our VDI solution provided multi-site configuration support, which is crucial for replication and failover. In comparison, other options relied more on software and hypervisor layers to achieve what we needed. AFF met our platform requirements, and in a competitive market, it offered the best value for our customers. That is why our partnership with NetApp was the right choice for us.

Overall, I would rate NetApp AFF as an eight out of ten.

We are a semiconductor manufacturer. We use the solution for our data for manufacturing, design, research, and development. Our customers are satisfied. We deliver products on time, sometimes ahead of time. For our customers, the solution has contributed to the stability and the performance has contributed to the way we actually roll out our products. Partially our customer satisfaction is coming from the fact that we are always on time and our quality is high. And of course, storage reliability is one of the components of that.

The performance, reliability, and stability are all very good. 

NetApp has helped to streamline our internal operations and adapt to changing market conditions. Storage tools and protocols, like SnapMirror or FlexCache, have enabled us to move data more quickly and with more ease and handle distributed data pretty much without any additional hassle.

Over the years, the main features have been great, and the introduction of Snapshot has become really big. Most recently, it's been the addition of FlexCache.

We'd like to see data move faster. We have distributed data around the world and we'd like to synchronize and move data faster between our locations.

We'd like to have faster reaction time to particular needs.

We have been using NetApp since 1996.

We plan to deploy more servers to more locations and enable FlexCache for most of our data.

The customer support, the amount of experts that the solution has as a company, and then making them available to us, has been great.

There are a lot of competing companies, in particular, EMC and Pure Storage. We have the most familiarity with this product since we've been using it for over two decades.

We haven't tried everybody in the world, and we probably don't want to say that the solution is the best since we don't want them to rest on their laurels. That said, I would easily rate NetApp nine out of ten.

Now, all other companies are copying that solution's success.

The most important aspects of any solution are cost and innovation.