NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

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.

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. 

We primarily use the solution for service deck storage.

Scalability is the most valuable feature. The ones that I use are hot spot-able. If we need more, we can just throw in another drive. 

I like the fact that if my drive goes bad it doesn't crash automatically and the system will try to auto-save that data by moving it to one of the hot spots. Then we can just pull out that drive and throw our brand new one in and we'll remove it from the 2020 or 2040s. We went from 600 GBs to 1.2 TBs. We have plenty of storage. 

I like how easy it is to discover an issue and either resolve that issue or fine-tune that app to premium support to find that resolution. 

We've reduced operational latency. We use the 40 GB connection. In terms of latency between our storage and the VMs that we use, latency is almost nonexistent since we have the server and FAS so close together. We use a 40 GB fiber-optic connection on the back. We don't see any latency at all. We've reduced it to less than 5%. While you can never reduce it to zero, it's barely noticeable at this point. 

There are no big areas needed for improvement. 

Whenever we use it, I've never had a problem that couldn't be fixed with just a phone call. I've never really had any absolute dead zones on it. I can't think of a way to make it better than it already is.

The size of NetApp could be better. They're always about 40 pounds without the hard drives in them, so it would be great if there's a way to make them smaller yet keep the functionality. That would reduce the physical footprint.

I've been using the solution since 2012.

I haven't really come across any stability problems. It's pretty stable. It's fantastic. 

Data recovery is awesome. If we ever have any issue with having to recover any data on there due to the system and the way we have it set up, we can have it back within an hour. That's thanks to our backup system and the connectivity that we have between NetApp and our backup. 

We're using one with between 30 and 35 virtual servers. However, we have those together with 14 other stacks of the same size. 

I like the fact that they're very hands-on in finding that resolution for us. We've faced a lot of problems since we break the system on purpose just to make sure that when we go out to the fields and use it, if we have the same problem, we know how to fix it.

Technical support is excellent. We've never had a problem with them, and they always came back to us with an answer. Within 24 hours, we have our fix.

Positive

We have always used NetApp. We did not previously use a different solution. 

I've never deployed the solution. I've just worked with it directly. 

The best benefit I've seen using it was the data distribution between two different FASs for data backups. It should be fast, and it's super reliable. It's easy to do, and it's an almost hands-off way of setting up. That's where the ROI is for us. 

I've never worked with pricing. I can't speak to the exact costs.

We thought about using Dell, however, when it came to cost-effectiveness, we stayed with NetApp. I like the way NetApp is coded and its maintenance configuration. I know how to set up a NetApp; I prefer that over Dell.

AFF hasn't necessarily helped us to optimize FAS as we've always used it, and it's never been detrimental for us to use it.

I have not been affected by ransomware since deploying AFF. I wouldn't say that is due to any extra attention. The environments that I use it on, we're behind several mitigations for that.

We do not use any other NetApp services at this time. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

Our primary use for this solution is for production storage. We have got everything: VMware, SQL servers and file servers. It handles all of them.

NetApp AFF helped to improve our organization functions by improving our storage solution. We used to use tapes and that required a lot of effort and resources. Now the tape systems are all eliminated. We do onsite, offsite, SnapMirror, and SnapVault backups and it is a much better situation.

The most valuable features of the solution are speed, performance, and reliability.

The manufacturers are moving very fast with releases and additions of features. Versions 9.5 and 9.6 are already out and they are adding more and more features to every release. It has got way too many features as-is right now. The only improvement they need would be to make what they already have perfect.

The stability of the solution is very good. The reliability is just top-notch. We have not had any outage or unscheduled downtime. Sometimes a disk fails or the SSD fails, but it gets replaced without any users knowing about it because of service interruptions.

The scalability of the product is wonderful. It is just a simple matter of adding more shelves and provisioning more disk storage. 

Tech support is a place where there is room to improve the product experience. Tech support is one thing that I am not 100% happy with and I do not strongly agree with many people who feel it is pretty good. NetApp has a wonderful product, but the support is subpar compared to the other vendors like EMC. So there is clearly room to improve.

The response time when they are busy is not very good. Even the priority-one calls are supposed to have like a two-hour response time or a 30-minute response time. I do not get any calls in that timeframe until I push them through different channels — through the back end.

Also, the primary support call center is in India. I don't get to the real technicians from the support team from North Carolina or places like that until much later. I understand they are trying to filter out calls that do not need upper-level support, but I know what I'm doing. I already know exactly what the problem is and then I still have to go through what should be unnecessary screening. It seems like a lengthy process. In the meantime, I might have only one strand of high availability running, which is not a good situation and I feel very uncomfortable that I could lose service.

We knew that we needed to invest in a new solution as it was mostly a cost-effective decision. When the purchase of our AFF system was announced — which was an AFF8040 — it was not any more expensive than SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drives. So the cost was about the same and the solution was very effective. Sure enough, we made the right decision. It is performing very well, too, even though it is almost obsolete now.

The initial setup of the product was very straight forward to me. I'm certified on just about all the NetApp NCIE (NetApp Certified Implementation Engineer), all of those things like SAN, NAS, and Data Protection. So to me, it was very easy. I mean, they did a wonderful job helping set it up, but as more features are added it became more complex. Someone could easily forget to do one thing, like setting up a firewall, internal firewalls and stuff like that and leave some security holes. But it is fairly easy if you have some expertise and are a little careful.

We did not need any help with the implementation. I do everything myself.

I do not study the return on investment or any of those types of things because our department is just constant and we are not a profit center. We know what "I" is, we just do not know what "R" is.

At the time when we purchased the NetApp AFF, it was bundled into the hardware price. That made the pricing okay. If we were to add more shelves now, the licensing cost increases exponentially. It is probably cheaper to buy brand new hardware in the new model. It will be faster and bundled in with software for a promotion where they throw in all the licenses. It works out well.

Other vendors were not really on the shortlist at the time. NetApp is our standard for now. In the future, I don't know if it will remain that way and we may re-evaluate other solutions. FlexPod may be our future or HCI, but we are using NetApp big-time and it is a successful solution for us.

The solution's simplicity around data protection and data management is very good. The SnapMirror and SnapVault data protection is a wonderful thing. Also using snapshots in lieu of tape or disk backups is handy.

The solution simplifies our IT operations by unifying data management in an approach to staying in NAS (Network-attached Storage) environments. For example, our SAN (Storage Area Network) provides the performance. We have Brocade switches with a fiber channel connection to AFF, which matches the performance of the AFF. We also have the file services. Lots of files are serviced from that as well. We have virtualized all of the hosts and the physical machines to virtual machines. That saved a lot of money and resource and effort.

The solution is helping us to leverage data in different ways. It is just more reliability and simplicity and the performance helps the business quite a bit. We used to experience a significant amount of downtime and outage. We do not experience that anymore, so business probably is more profitable.

I do not have any direct insight into profitability. We are like an expense center and not the profit center: we do not use the computer to make money. We use the computer to support making gasoline and energy.

Thin provisioning allowed us to add new applications and purchase additional storage. The thin provisioning is an essential part of what we do because the SQL DBAs are the worst. They ask for one terabyte for future growth when they need only 100 gigabytes in reality. Without the thin provisioning, I have to give them the one terabyte that they have asked for, which is a waste of resources. So it is a cost savings feature.

The solution has allowed us to move large amounts of data from one data center to another without interruption to the business. It is affecting IT operations in a tremendous way. The reliability is key for the IT services. Not having any outage, unscheduled outage, or latency and performance issues are the most important key features.

The solution has helped improve application response time. We used to have some issues with poor performance when we had the SAS disks. Sometimes we had situations when the VMware was competing for the storage. Now the AFF is just much faster and provides all the data needed for VMware and SQL servers.

The solution has also reduced our data center costs. The thin provisioning, SnapMirror, and all of those features have helped our processes. I'm not sure of any exact amounts but the cost savings are quite a bit.

On a scale from one to ten where ten is the best, I would rate the product as a nine. The product itself is a ten. The services are a seven. But I highly recommend the product.

We use it for block storage.

It takes no time at all for our production instance to be snapped over to development and QA servers.

Because so many other features and products interoperate with NetApp, the IT team is able to expand our horizons and broaden our scope for future projects.

• SnapMirror
• SnapVault
• FlexClone capabilities

It takes a good administrator or someone with knowledge of the product in order to manage it. That was one of the downfalls that we had with AFF. We have a lot of offshore team whom we have to spend a lot of time training to be up to speed. However, once they're up to speed, they know the product pretty well, and it seems to be okay.

The hardware is a little difficult to configure and operate. However, with the configuration and operation, you get a different nerd knobs that you can use to design and critique the environment.

The stability is great. I like the capability and the upgrade functionality of all the clustered environment. We can go through and do an upgrade without worrying about any issues with the process. 

It takes a node offline, and we don't even receive an alert for that. We click a button, and it's done unlike other storage systems which are out there

One of the scalability problems that we've had is the amount of storage per node, as it is 600 terabytes. This still seems a little low. However, there is a compute issue with large capacity, so it's just smarter to add additional nodes into a cluster. So, the scalability is there.

Technical support is a little lackluster. Some of the issues that we've had were opening up tickets. They seem to be routed in the wrong direction or it takes one or two days to get a call back for simple tasks. However, if we want immediate assistance, we have to open up a Severity 1 case, and sometimes it's not a Severity 1. But if we need a response back within four hours, we'll open it as a Severity 1, then once they contact us, we can drop the severity of the ticket.

Calling technical support with NetApp, you talk to ten unknowledgeable people to get one half decent person. It becomes frustrating, especially if you have an immediate need for an enterprise outage.

We were running into a lot of storage roadblocks that were performance based. Also, the IBM product that we were using was at the end of life for 90 percent of our enterprise.

I spent 15 years with IBM. Anytime I go into a data center, and I see Big Blue, it is the first thing that I replace.

The initial setup was very straightforward, but complex. With the new clustered environment, you have to have a virtual server instance to run anything through the cluster, so you have to create a B server and a data logical interface to use block, then you create a separate lift if you want it to use files. The virtual instances have to be in place before you can actually use the product.

I did the deployment, integration, and migration. We've done two petabytes in less than six months, and we're almost done.

The experience was great when it comes to our virtual environment. It was a very simple process. We use vMotion and it moves everything across. It is a little more painful when it comes to standalone systems and Oracle Databases, but the integrated migration product (Foreign LUN migration) that they have, once configured properly, works well.

Our TCO decreased significantly because we were paying maintenance on nine different arrays throughout the country. We've condensed those down to three arrays, and our maintenance fees from the IBM product dropped by over a half million dollars a year, saving us $500,000 USD.

We just migrated two petabytes of data storage from IBM over to NetApp All Flash. Some of the performance improvement that we've seen is 100 times I/O and microsecond latency.

The two vendors that made it through the evaluation process were Pure Storage and NetApp. We had Pure Storage and NetApp proof of concepts. Both of them performed admirably. Pure Storage beat out on the performance, but on price per terabyte, NetApp was considerablely cheaper.

NetApp, being the behemoth company that it is, if you're looking to have a solution provider be end-to-end when it comes to file, block, scale, and cloud, NetApp is probably the leader of the market.

Depending upon an application, provision enterprise applications could take from a day to a week. A lot of times, if it's just a simple application that we need to install, it takes an afternoon. However, incorporating it and twisting the nerd knobs and making sure that everything is operating as efficiently as possible that takes a week of deployment to make sure it's on the right tiered disk and making sure it has the right connectivity and it is on the right network. Sometimes, on our old, antiquated network environment, it takes a little bit longer.

We might connect to public cloud in the future, but we are not connect at the moment.

I am a storage engineer at a government ministry. We enable our customers to use storage on-site because we are a government entity and don't use a public cloud. We enable almost all features available within the NetApp portfolio.

Governments are quite slow when it comes to business. I'm always trying to bring the storage side up to speed with current technology and hoping the rest of the organization follows. They're doing that but at the speed of a government. 

It's heading there, but when I got here five years ago, they had no plan for the storage infrastructure. I first needed to get everything on a level playing field to have storage for specific business cases like VMware, user data, and SAP HANA. I had to set everything up correctly. Now, I'm trying to step it up a notch to get to 2024. 

Our data includes every Dutch person's social security numbers, so we cannot have that on a public cloud. Our biggest challenge is to rebuild the public cloud privately. 

When I arrived, we were far behind anything that works on the market, so I first needed to get the basics in order. I am busy setting up ransomware detection and application policy rules. Once I complete that, the next step is to get AI within the data center.

I hope other teams from our environments, like the Linux and Yammer teams, will join. We already have a storage grid so we can use S3. That's not a problem. We use all those things. The only thing we need to do is build it ourselves. 

NetApp's most valuable features are ONTAP, FabricPool, and media storage.

I would like NetApp to be more aware of organizations that don't run it on a public cloud. Everything is built on the cloud, so if you want to run BlueXP in an environment like ours, it's a real pain because it wants to host too much info on the cloud. 

It causes some friction with the security guys. BlueXP is also there in complete dark side mode, but it's a significant hassle to install and create. You don't get all the features. You're trying to get the same out of it because you have your own data center, and you can't go out due to government regulations. 

I've been an admin working in the NetApp environment for a long time. I used NetApp with different companies before but have worked at the ministry for five years.

I've used their support multiple times. One aspect that stands out about NetApp support is that the system is yours. You have it in your data center, so it's your system. You can press any button that's in there. Nobody will say you can't do it. Support will say that it was foolish to press that button but won't stop you.

A lot of other storage vendors don't allow that. They have the interface they want you to be in. They say no if you need to do something under the hood because there is a problem. You have to go through support for that. But what if we have multiple issues? We don't need to go to support to make changes. I can run ConfigAdvisor, and support says it's okay. 

Positive

NetApp was deployed when I joined this organization. They asked me to help because I was already involved with NetApp. I'm constantly checking if someone has a better solution than NetApp, and the answer is "no" in most cases. Especially with old-fashioned NAS environments, I haven't seen a competitor that does a better job or costs less. 

I rate NetApp nine out of 10. I give it a high rating because of the support. Nothing is ever perfect. For example, ONTAP is a software solution with millions and millions of lines of code. Something can always go wrong with it. Bugs happen, but I like that you have a very good support organization behind it. I've found bugs that were so incredibly large that NetApp couldn't roll out systems to other customers for 48 hours until they solved the bug.

The solution is primarily used for various functionality. We separate storage from other companies. 

I like the FlexClone feature.

The CLI, the Power Shell, for NetApp is very good. You can do everything from the Command Line.

Storage is very reliable. You don't have to do much maintenance. 

It is stable.

It is very limited in terms of storage. You can grow storage only ten times more. You have a limit in terms of how much you can expand storage. It sounds like a lot. However, over the years, as you grow, it may be smaller than you think. You really need to plan for the future. I'm not sure if this is being fixed or not. 

The solution is expensive. 

I've used the solution for eight years.

The solution is very stable. I'd rate the stability ten out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't freeze. Once or twice we did have a crash. However, it rarely is disrupted. We were able to recover everything. 

The scalability is limited. You need to really plan for what you need. If you have it for a long time, you can run into issues if you need to extend beyond your means. It can be very difficult to expand. 

Generally, if you size properly, you can buy more shells.

It is very expensive to grow. 

We have about 60 people using the solution. 

We only opened one serious case with NetApp. Typically, we have another company that troubleshoots for us. They would be the ones that would open a ticket.

I used to use Dell PowerStore. It is very simple to set up. It's better for medium-sized companies that are pretty straightforward. 

We previously used HP around 16 or 17 years ago. I cannot recall why we switched to NetApp.

The initial setup has a moderate amount of difficulty. Dell PowerSTore is easier to set up. This is not difficult. However, it's not too complex. You just need to do more work in order to properly use the solution.

I cannot recall what the deployment process was, as it was a long time ago. The last time we did a deployment, it took two weeks. It was a special installation, and we have less storage capacity than expected, which caused issues. We had to install it twice. 

We only require minimal staff for deployment and maintenance. There isn't too much maintenance as you just configure it how you want and you leave it. Typically, the product is very reliable so it doesn't require attention.

We had a company that helped us implement the solution and handle any troubleshooting. 

We have witnessed an ROI. It is worth the price we pay for it. 

The solution is expensive. It is a perpetual license. You do not have to pay for it monthly or yearly. 

This is the latest version of the solution.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It is a very good product. 

I would advise those who want to use the solution to make sure they have a good budget. If they need to manage many environments, it's a very, very good option. It's great for enterprises. 

We use NetApp AFF products for file storage across multiple agencies in the State of Nebraska. We are a consolidated state, so all of the agencies of our state have consolidated files on NetApp products. We use AFF as our top tier solid-state storage for application and user data storage.

Different customers will have different needs, e.g., when you're looking at somebody who just has simple file service needs, then it's very easy. That can be met with many different products. But, we also like that you can build SVMs with different network profiles, vLANs, security protocols, etc.

We like the ability to create different SVMs on AFF products because they can create different vLANs and network access points for different customers. We can actually drop virtual appliances onto any customer's network. If they have different firewall and network profiles than each other, we can keep all of the data completely separated.

We can also meet the different needs for different Snapshot and backup policies. A Department of Labor or Department of Health and Human Services will have very different needs from just standard user profile folders.

We like AFF because it has a very high reliability rate with very high performance. We are using it for top tier performance on application and virtual machine storage, as well as just being able to separate out SVMs for different security and network needs for all of our different customers across the state. 

We use the Snapshot feature to simplify backups for data protection. We set different policies that let let our agencies choose what backup policy they want to have for their Snapshots. It's very simple. Users can be given the opportunity to look at previous versions directly from the Windows interface or they can call/put in a ticket seeking support from our IT group if they need a larger system restore, because their data is protected with NetApp and replicated as well.

Stability is great. We haven't had to replace a single drive. We haven't had any issues with the AFFs or compatibility issues. We haven't had any problems at all. It has worked exactly the same as our previous system but with greater performance.

In both our traditional cluster and MetroCluster, we have been able to scale very easily. We just add additional shelves of solid-state disk. They expand the storage array so we can just increase the aggregate sizes and assign more space. It's been very simple to scale.

Tech support is great with NetApp if you can get past Tier 1. A lot of times when you open a new case or do a direct dial-in with an issue, like with any support, you will definitely reach a Tier 1 level that is not particularly helpful until you get escalated to an expert. However, the experts that I have reached have always been great.

We have several different SAN and NAS products in our environment. With the traditional spinning storage, We are running into bottlenecks with performance problems. The AFF products have given us the opportunity to move people to all-flash high performance storage tiers, which will make their virtual machines, database servers, and SQL run much better in a flash environment for us than in a hybrid or spinning disk environment.

Switching to AFF has improved the performance of a lot of our virtual machines in a VMware environment. The number of support tickets that we receive has fallen to almost zero because of this, so it's been a real help for our virtual server support team.

We have used the solution’s thin provisioning to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. We use thin provisioning on all of our flash arrays at this point. It gives us the choice to be able to overprovision and take advantage of compression, compaction, and thin provisioning all at the same time. We can get more out of the purchases that we make.

I would like it to be a lot less expensive, but it's been a very good solution for us.

I would give it a 10 (out of 10). It's been solid. The performance is great. It has solved a lot of problems in our environment.