We use this solution for NAS and SAN.
Infrastructure Team Lead at a pharma/biotech company with 51-200 employees
Enables us to have have a multitude of environments without having to worry about having spaces deployed
Pros and Cons
- "Multi-protocol is the most valuable feature for us. It does everything in one system: sifts, EBES, ISCSI, and fiber channel. Other systems don't do all that."
- "The procurement process could be improved. It takes a long time for us to receive stuff. The product is good. It's not the product, it's just that it takes forever to get it. It's not our reseller's problem; it's usually held up at NetApp."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
NetApp helped us with its ease of deployment and ease of use.
The solution's data protection and data management are also easy.
AFF has improved our response time by about 30%.
We have enough storage, especially with the enhanced deduplication and compaction. It is good to be able to have a multitude of environments without having to worry about having spaces deployed. We always have a good amount of space. We do have multi-performance, with different performance layers for slower and quicker storage.
What is most valuable?
Multi-protocol is the most valuable feature for us. It does everything in one system: CIFS, ISCSI, and fiber channel. Other systems don't do all that.
What needs improvement?
The procurement process could be improved. It takes a long time for us to receive stuff. The product is good. It's not the product, it's just that it takes forever to get it. It's not our reseller's problem; it's usually held up at NetApp.
Waiting for equipment is one of our biggest hiccups. I live in Pennsylvania and we flew out to Washington state to do an install. We were there for three days, but the product didn't show up. We left and the product came the next day. Then we had to send somebody else out. That's because things were getting held up in shipping and stuff like that. The shipping is my only beef with NetApp.
Buyer's Guide
NetApp AFF
February 2025
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Learn what your peers think about NetApp AFF. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
839,255 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is easy to deploy and it's scalable.
How are customer service and support?
I am happy with their technical support. It's not bad. We haven't had to use it very much, but I think they're proficient.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We had an AFF already there. We just upgraded. In my previous company, where I was for five years, we used NetApp extensively. So I had a lot of experience and interaction with it.
How was the initial setup?
We found the setup straightforward. I've been using NetApp for a long time, though.
What about the implementation team?
Our partner is a good friend of mine. I've worked with them for a long time. They work with a lot of other companies. They're huge NetApp distributors.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price of the upgrading of the solution is high. I could buy a whole unit of All Flash FAS 300 with a shelf for around $285,000. Yet if I want to add one additional shelf, it'll cost me $275,000. So they want you to upgrade by replacing it. It's cheaper to buy a whole new unit than to just scale-out. The upside is they last. AFF lasts us three or four years. So that's a good investment.
I don't think it's cost-efficient for a lot of people. Their pricing structure is not competitive at this point with other companies. Support is a fortune on it. Every three years you need to do a rip and replace for an upgrade. It's not an in-place upgrade.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Pure Storage and Nimble. I've used HPE 3PAR and Tintri as well. We've looked at a lot of different vendors. Most of them were better in terms of their upgrade process. Nimble and Pure have a hot upgrade process, which NetApp does not have. Although the cost of Pure is a lot more. Nimble was a good product, but they were bought by HP I think, so that will probably go away. I don't see it as much as I did before. We chose NetApp because of its speed and stability.
What other advice do I have?
I think it fits a multitude of needs. For someone who doesn't know how to provision storage, it gives you, SIPS and NAS storage. NAS storage gives you a SAN protocol so you can provision ISCSI fiber channel one, depending on what you're using it for. It's basically an all-in-one solution. It does everything for you.
I would rate this solution as nine out of ten. There have been a few times we've seen buggy releases on some of the ONTAP software upgrades. Nine is good, though. I never get a ten when we get our reviews. If you get a ten, there's no room for improvement. Nine gives you room to improve. If you give it a ten, they're not going to have any reason to improve.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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IT Manager at Synergy Computers
Good storage with ransomware protection and increased performance
Pros and Cons
- "Organizations can reduce data storage footprint and lower power and cooling costs, helping to adopt "Green IT.""
- "NetApp should have a local presence in Pakistan."
What is our primary use case?
The primary use case depends on business requirements and customer challenges.
NetApp offers two types of all-flash storage systems for different business requirements and challenges. They are also offering end-to-end NVMe-based storage systems within their all-flash product range.
NetApp AFF-A series and NetApp AFF-C series (recently introduced) are two different all-flash product verticals as per the following list:
- AFF-A Series: A150, A250, A400(Midrange), A800(High-end), and A900(High-end)
- AFF-C Series: AFF C190, AFF C250, AFF C400 and C800
The primary use case for AFF-A series models is where you need unified storage systems with extreme performance, end-to-end NVMe enterprise, or all-flash arrays, requiring the lowest latency and supporting twice as many workloads.
The NetApp AFF-C is the best fit where customers need a Unified(NAS+SAN) All-flash with capacity and affordable price. It is built on quad-level cell (QLC) flash technology to make it more affordable.
The organizations experiencing performance issues and looking to move from HDD to SSD flash and don’t want to pay an extra cost to get submillisecond performance for business-critical workloads, NetApp AFF-C is the best fit for them.
How has it helped my organization?
Organizations can reduce data storage footprint and lower power and cooling costs, helping to adopt "Green IT." Organizations can run more applications with fewer disks to maintain. They can also achieve a good ROI in making their product/services more fast in production.
The organizations can get extreme performance by using NetApp end-to-end NVMe enterprise all-flash arrays (like A150 and A250). The NVMe enterprise provides the lowest latency, supports twice as many workloads, and improves application response time.
What is most valuable?
All of NetApp's all-flash series storage arrays come with the NetApp all-flash software bundle by default.
NetApp also offers both "SAN-only" and "unified" options to make more flexible choices for customers.
There is a very long list of features that come by default in the NetApp all-flash software bundle; however, what I like the most are in-line deduplication, compression, and compaction, which saves up to 90% of expensive disk space, especially in a virtualized server environment.
The "autonomous ransomware protection" secures customer data from intruders.
What needs improvement?
NetApp introduced the C-series all-flash storage with the capacity to make their product line even more flexible and cost-effective. There is no significant improvement required that I could find so far.
However, NetApp should have a local presence in Pakistan. This will obviously boost the product sales cycle in Pakistan.
Other storage vendors get business only due to their presence specifically in Pakistan even if they are offering fewer or limited features in their product line.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been selling NetApp Storage Systems for the last 10+ years as a partner/reseller.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are a NetApp Reseller/Partner.
Buyer's Guide
NetApp AFF
February 2025
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Learn what your peers think about NetApp AFF. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
839,255 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior Storage Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Helps us manage data quickly
Pros and Cons
- "It simplifies data management for NAS environments with its ease of management, ease of share creation, and Active IQ feature. These features are good overall. It helps us manage data quickly and sufficiently. Also, compression features, like dedupe, give us a good ratio."
- "There is room for improvement in terms of support. I have noticed that if I sometimes call their customer care for a particular issue, they will give me another number and ask me to call that other team. It would be better if they could do a warm transfer. That would save customers time from calling all the numbers again and speaking to another team."
What is our primary use case?
We are mostly using it for ESX, i.e., a mix of both CIFS and NFS shares, and NAS purposes.
We have a team of four core NetApp trained people from the storage team who are managing NetApp. Two of them are in the learning stage, and I am one of them.
What is most valuable?
Performance-wise, NetApp is very good.
The NetApp FlexVol feature is helpful because we can copy large amounts of data in minutes as well as include data quickly. That is definitely one of its plus points as well as it being all-flash.
It simplifies data management for NAS environments with its ease of management, ease of share creation, and Active IQ feature. These features are good overall. It helps us manage data quickly and sufficiently. Also, compression features, like dedupe, give us a good ratio.
We are using ONTAP 9, which has simplified our operations.
What needs improvement?
There is room for improvement in terms of support. I have noticed that if I sometimes call their customer care for a particular issue, they will give me another number and ask me to call that other team. It would be better if they could do a warm transfer. That would save customers time from calling all the numbers again and speaking to another team.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using NetApp AFF for almost two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability has been pretty good.
There has been a lot of improvement on drive failures after the patch. Now, drive failures are negligible, which is a plus point.
Previously, there were SAP instances where we used to have a lot of issues, such as performance issues, P1, etc. However, with NetApp, those have been almost negligible.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We can extend the solution, per our wishes, which is also good. The environment for this solution is about eight to 10 petabytes.
The solution has been widely accepted by our management.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate their technical support as nine out of 10. Sometimes, it depends on to whom I am speaking. However, most of the time, technical support has been very good, apart from one or two negligible instances.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were using a different vendor for virtualization, then we switched to NetApp. The feedback from the VMware team is that things have improved.
We were using Oracle Veritas previously. Sometimes, their technical support was not that user-friendly. While the hardware was good, it needs to be good going end-to-end. So, if we had an issue, then they were not as helpful, technical support-wise, as we have seen from NetApp. Apart from that, the features that NetApp provides overall are better than what Oracle used to provide.
I have worked on HPE products, but that has primarily been on 3PAR, which is mostly for SAN protocols.
How was the initial setup?
I was not a part of the initial setup.
What was our ROI?
The data rate is faster because there are no spindles on it.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We are using Commvault for backup purposes.
What other advice do I have?
If you are looking for long-term stability, performance improvement, and data compression, NetApp is the answer.
There are a few sites where our other vendors' contracts are running out. Most of those are getting replaced with NetApp. That is definitely in the pipeline.
I would rate this solution as nine out of 10. I am holding back one point for future improvements.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Storage Administrator at Sensa ehf.
Provides us with quick options when restoring things for customers
Pros and Cons
- "It impacts customer retention because of its overall ease. When you are running a business, where time is a factor, that is the biggest selling point. Things happen really rapidly, when they happen, and being able to say, "Yeah, we can get this up and running in a day, if you want," or even less time in some cases. Sometimes, that can be what makes or breaks our case."
- "I don't like the newest GUI. It needs more options. Some features have been removed. Oversight is not as good in the new GUI compared to the previous version. Though, it might be something that we just need to get used to."
What is our primary use case?
We use it as the backbone for all our VM and Hyper-V infrastructure. We also use it as file servers for external users, so we have a couple of users who are connected to it for file server purposes. We have everything connected to it, e.g., we have a repository from Rubrik down to AFF.
We have our own customers for whom we have deployed the solution. For our hosting options, we use NetApp as well. Since we are selling hosted services and have customers connecting into our environment, the solution has definitely helped a lot from that standpoint.
How has it helped my organization?
When it comes to backups, it has given us quick options when restoring things for customers, using the ability to mirror Snapshots onto another cluster, having managed status, and using previous versions in Microsoft. It gives the customer the possibility to restore their items too. Backup size, in general, gets much smaller since it is based on mirroring a Snapshot rather than being repetitive.
It impacts customer retention because of its overall ease. When you are running a business, where time is a factor, that is the biggest selling point. Things happen really rapidly, when they happen, and being able to say, "Yeah, we can get this up and running in a day, if you want," or even less time in some cases. Sometimes, that can be what makes or breaks our case.
AFF has helped to simplify our infrastructure, while still getting very high performance for our business-critical applications. Having all these things working well on one solution is really good. We run this as the backbone for both Hyper-V and VMware as well as an archive location for Rubrik. So, it is great having one solution that can do it all.
It does what it is supposed to do for SAP and Oracle. Because of the ease of it all, you have a highly tunable, high performance storage system that alleviates a lot of problems. With its ease of management, you can quickly get your work done and go onto the next thing on your list.
We mostly use AFF to support when we mirror data onto a FAS solution to immediately spin-off a new environment, e.g., if something happened to the prior data.
What is most valuable?
NetApp Snapshots are one of its best features.
Its multi-tenant purpose: You can have one method for many customers with no interaction to one another.
The simplicity of making it work correctly is the most loved feature of it all.
AFF definitely helps simplify data management with unified data services across NAS environments.
The ONTAP system, when you know how it works, is really simple and intuitive.
What needs improvement?
I don't like the newest GUI. It needs more options. Some features have been removed. Oversight is not as good in the new GUI compared to the previous version. Though, it might be something that we just need to get used to.
For how long have I used the solution?
As a company, we have been using AFF for around six to seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is as stable as it can be. I would give the solution A+ for stability.
Throughout my career, I have only once had to deal with an instability issue, but it has nothing to do with NetApp as a solution or system.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is great and super easy. We are able to just connect, go through the UI, and select to expand the cluster. It is super easy even if you want to scale it out by having a Mirror setup, not a cluster, or pairing them together. By being able to do this with just a couple of clicks of a mouse button, it is superb.
We have thousands of customers, but there is not much to do for daily operations because it just runs. We have alerts setup in it, but we seldom have to do anything.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support has just been great. They have been fast and think out-of-the-box. They have helped us with issues that affect NetApp, but where NetApp is not the root cause of the problem.
I would rate NetApp's technical support between nine and nine and a half (out of 10). I have worked with other companies, and in comparison, I would easily give these other tech supports a rating of four or below (out of 10).
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have worked with IBM Storwize. In no way are these solutions similar. Most people who are buying and operating with AFF are buying a fully functional storage system. You are getting way more than just allowing someone a terabyte here or there, such as performance metrics, quotes, and service options. Because of this, I would not say that I have not worked with a competing product.
How was the initial setup?
One of the biggest impacts that this solution has had is on time to deployment. It takes a lot less time to set up a new infrastructure for a company. Our hosting setup went from being a couple of days to a couple of hours.
The initial setup depends on the goggles that you have on. If you are an experienced technician, then it is relatively simple. However, for a customer who just bought it and wants to set it up themselves, then it might be a little bit hard to figure out.
My implementation strategy is always that when we sell systems that we do the implementation ourselves. This is so the customer gets a fresh, good experience with a fully updated system rather than a controller that has older systems. We rely highly on the customer's satisfaction, e.g., they see the project for what it is instead of what it could be.
On average, the deployment takes roughly one day, and that is running through everything. It takes one day to get it up and running, setting up the first SVMs, ensuring all the connectivity, etc. In most cases, the greatest hindrance in the entire setup is the network setup, which does not have anything to do with NetApp.
What about the implementation team?
We go through it with the customer. We first figure out why the customer wants it and what they will get out of it, rather than out of their previous existing system. From there, we set it up with the customer. We address all the issues that they have been working on so they see profit for the solution rather than it just being a storage system that might alleviate the problems that they have had.
Normally, we only have two people who deploy it. Every time we are about to deploy, we always have someone for the NetApp setup and a network engineer working with us to set up the network.
What was our ROI?
I need to spend very little time monitoring it, and that helps with employee costs.
It is easy to take Snapshots, making them easily available for our customers and staff to be able to restore. As there are costs associated with helping the customer, because it's included in a contract, this brings in return on the investment because you can have it as an extra fee within a contract, even if you don't have to help out that much with it.
It really speeds up delivery time.
AFF has helped to reduce support issues, such as performance tuning and troubleshooting. When you have access to more tools, like Cloud Insights and OCI, that is definitely a factor. You are able to get an overview with OnCommand Insight (OCI) when you have an infrastructure with many customers, e.g., in our case, we have somewhere around 1000 customers ranging from small to big businesses. It connects items together, which helps with troubleshooting latency and unexpected performance issues. You can get them fixed significantly faster than you can in many other cases. For example, if you are running into problems with solutions that are made for running a simple VM against a machine that has a way to store space running across many disks, then it can take way longer time to figure out performance issues than with NetApp, where you are getting way more oversight of who is doing what.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing and pricing are fine. As a reseller for the product, we need to make the differentiation in the minds of the customer. They are not just buying some tool that does only one thing, e.g., showing a LAN for a customer. The pricing is fair for what it is.
If you need more options, then there will be more costs involved with the license, but that is not irregular.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have worked with Nutanix as well. I would recommend either solution for a client based on what fits them rather than trying to make a solution stretch across.
What other advice do I have?
Get yourself acquainted with the product and see what it can do. Many people may run into the issue of thinking that it can do way less than it can actually do.
We do not use their cloud backup services at the moment, because there hasn't been a strong enough business case. I would not call it priority, but we are definitely highly aware of the cloud backup services if an opportunity or business case arrives.
We don't work that much with SAN. Basically, we mostly use the solution for its NAS functionality. We do not have that many SAN cases.
Since our StorageGRID is really new, we haven't gotten the full effect of it yet. The native integration, where we can seamlessly move onto another media, is great. It is very intuitive and easy to work with.
Biggest lesson learnt: Keep it simple.
I would easily rate it as 10 out of 10, because it works like a charm. When you have a problem, it does exactly what it is supposed to do, with little to no effort.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Senior System Engineer at Colorado Judicial Branch
The inline compression and inline dedupe features are valuable.
How has it helped my organization?
Right now, we've seen a few different systems that we're running on the all-flash system, where we've seen performance increases with application functionality. We have databases running on there. The database query is running faster. The application is running faster in general. It has saved us by not having to tax the system to get the data access going quicker, less network usage. People using the applications are able to perform their tasks more quickly.
Learn about the benefits of NVMe, NVME-oF and SCM. Read New Frontiers in Solid-State Storage.
What is most valuable?
I'd say the biggest one for us, other than just being SSDs, was the compression; inline compression, inline dedupe. Previously, we used dedupe but compression in dedupe has helped a lot, just to be able to maximize our storage, not having to buy more disk and items such as that. That is the biggest one we've seen so far.
What needs improvement?
It’s difficult to say because there are already a lot of features that have been released that we didn't have previously, especially going from 7-mode to cDOT. ONTAP 9 sounds really interesting with better dedup and compression; the disk partitioning features that they are going to be doing with that. I'm eager to see what ONTAP 9 has. Right now, I believe were on 8.3, so we’re definitely going to be interested in upgrading that when it comes out.
I’m not sure if I see anything that's really lacking because there are so many features that we still have not taken advantage of that we could probably use going forward; no specific ones that I can see right now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've only had it about two or three months. We haven't had any issues since we've had it up. It's been in production and has been rock solid so far. I don't have a long-term say on that yet, but it's been really good so far.
Learn about the benefits of NVMe, NVME-oF and SCM. Read New Frontiers in Solid-State Storage.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We're not a huge shop. Our previous NetApps have always been a two-node setup. Right now, I don't really necessarily see us scaling out any more. We were pretty much a 7-mode shop previously; now, we're a cDOT for these 8080 AFFs. With cDOT, it's very nice how you can scale it out and add more nodes to it. I don't necessarily see us taking advantage of that anytime soon. It's nice to have the option there.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We've had 30-40 controllers for about five or six years now and we've previously had the NetApp 2000 series. We have kind of been a NetApp shop. We've had different vendors like Pure Storage previously come in just to talk about stuff. I think the main reason we went to All Flash was the price point.
When we were looking, we were doing a big project in which we were re-hauling a lot of our core infrastructure. We wanted to refresh the hardware on the NetApps. At the time, we were looking at doing a hybrid of spinning disk and SSDs; maybe doing flash pools and that kind of stuff. Then, working with our vendor and working with NetApp, we were going to need more space anyway so the cost of the new system plus additional shelves for the space was pretty much the same price at which they could give us an All Flash system. With the 4-to-1 compression and the similar features All Flash has to offer, it was kind of a no-brainer to move to that; a lot of performance increase as well, being on All Flash.
A lot of our workloads aren't really disk-intensive, so we don't really need all flash, so at the time it wasn't needed, but the price point that NetApp was able to bring it in at was a deciding factor. Also, at the time that we reviewed Pure Storage, a lot of our systems were using multiple protocols on the same controller; we were using fiber channel, NFS, CIFS. The Pure Storage systems, at least when we reviewed them at the time, they didn’t really support all of those protocols on the same controller. We would have to buy multiple systems to be able to cover all our protocols. That made them more expensive. That was definitely a disadvantage for them.
How was the initial setup?
I was in charge of the original setup. I worked with our vendor to help actually do the install and configuration. It went really well. Coming from a 7-mode background to a cDOT was definitely a lot different with the lists and similar items to configure. It was very straightforward. We pretty much got it on the network within something like 30 minutes; got our VMware environment pointed to it and within a couple of hours, we already had data on it in the first half of the day.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I don't have a lot of experience with other vendors. We've reviewed Pure Storage, and even though we didn't officially have Nimble in, we've talked to Nimble at a lot of booths in some of the trade shows. They are pretty much the same as Pure Storage when it comes to some of their features, restrictions and similar items. EMC, I don't have any experience to speak for.
What other advice do I have?
I've been using NetApp for a long time now, so I really like NetApp, especially with the new ONTAP features, with clustering going forward. Give a good look at NetApp. They have treated us well and their product has been really rock solid for us.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
System Architect at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Enables us to provide more and faster connections for our users and simplifies future hardware replacement
Pros and Cons
- "NetApp solutions are easy to maintain and upgrade."
What is most valuable?
NetApp solutions are easy to maintain and upgrade.
For how long have I used the solution?
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.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
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.
What other advice do I have?
I rate NetApp solutions nine out of 10.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Last updated: Oct 6, 2024
Flag as inappropriateData Protection Engineering at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Good snapshot capability and reduced data center costs through storage consolidation
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features of this solution are snapshotting and cloning."
- "The cost of this solution should be reduced."
What is our primary use case?
This solution provides storage for our entire company.
We have a unified architecture with NAS and SAN from both NetApp ONTAP AFF clusters.
How has it helped my organization?
This solution reduced our costs by consolidating several types of disparate storage. The savings come mostly in power consumption and density. One of our big data center costs, which was clear when we built our recent data center, is that each space basically has a value tied to it. Going to a flash solution enabled us to have a lower power footprint, as well as higher density. This essentially means that we have more capacity in a smaller space. When it costs several hundred million dollars to build a data center, you have to think that each of those spots has a cost associated with them. This means that each server rack in there is worth that much at the end. When we look at those costs and everything else, it saved us money to go to AFF where we have that really high density. It's getting even better because the newer ones are going to come out and they're going to be even higher.
Being able to easily and quickly pull data out of snapshots is something that benefits us. Our times for recovery on a lot of things are going to be in the minutes, rather than in the range of hours. It takes the same amount of time for us to put a FlexClone out with a ten terabyte VM as it does a one terabyte VM. That is really valuable to us. We can provide somebody with a VM, regardless of size, and we can tell them how much time it will take to be able to get on it. This excludes the extra stuff that happens on the back end, like vMotion. They can already touch the VM, so we don't really worry about it.
One of the other things that helped us out was the inline efficiencies such as the deduplication, compaction, and compression. That made this solution shine in terms of how we're utilizing the environment and minimizing our footprint.
With respect to how simple this solution is around data protection, I would say that it's in the middle. I think that the data protection services that they offer, like SnapCenter, are terrible. There was an issue that we had in our environment where if you had a fully qualified domain name that was too long, or had too many periods in it, then it wouldn't work. They recently fixed this, but clearly, after having a problem like this, the solution is not enterprise-ready. Overall, I see NetApp as really good for data protection, but SnapCenter is the weak point. I'd be much more willing to go with something like Veeam, which utilizes those direct NetApp features. They have the technology, but personally, I don't think that their implementation is there yet on the data production side.
I think that this solution simplifies our IT operations by unifying data services across SAN and NAS environments. In fact, this is one of the reasons that we wanted to switch to this solution, because of the simplicity that it adds.
In terms of being able to leverage data in new ways because of this solution, I cannot think of anything in particular that is not offered by other vendors. One example of something that is game-changing is in-place snapshotting, but we're seeing that from a lot of vendors.
The thin provisioning capability provided by this solution has absolutely allowed us to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. I would say that the thin provisioning coupled with the storage efficiencies are really helpful. The one thing we've had to worry about as a result of thin provisioning is our VMware teams, or other teams, thin provisioning on top of our thin provisioning, which you always know is not good. The problem is that you don't really have any insight into how much you're actually utilizing.
This solution has enabled us to move lots of data between the data center and cloud without interruption to the business. We have SVM DR relationships between data centers, so for us, even if we lost the whole data center, we could failover.
This solution has improved our application response time, but I was not with the company prior to implementation so I do not have specific metrics.
We have been using this solution's feature that automatically tiers data to the cloud, but it is not to a public cloud. Rather, we store cold data on our private cloud. It's still using object storage, but not on a public cloud.
I would say that this solution has, in a way, freed us from worrying about storage as a limiting factor. The main reason is, as funny as it sounds because our network is now the limiting factor. We can easily max out links with the all-flash array. Now we are looking at going back and upgrading the rest of the infrastructure to be able to keep up with the flash. I think that right now we don't even have a strong NDMP footprint because we couldn't support it, as we would need far too much speed.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of this solution are snapshotting and cloning. For example, we make use of FlexClone. We're making more use of fabric pools, which is basically tiering of the storage. That way, instead of having just ONTAP with this expensive cost, if we want to roll off to something cheaper, like object storage, we can do that as well.
What needs improvement?
The cost of this solution should be reduced.
SnapCenter is the weak point of this solution. It would be amazing from a licensing standpoint if they got rid of SnapCenter completely and offered Veeam as an integration.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This solution is very stable. We have had downtime, but only on specific nodes. We were always able to failover to the other nodes. We had downtime from a power outage in our data centers that was mainly because we didn't want the other side to actually have to take a load of an SVM DR takeover because we knew it was going to be back up in a certain amount of time. Other than that, we have had no downtime.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It seems to be almost infinitely scalable. Being an organization as large as we are, it definitely meets our needs.
How are customer service and technical support?
We have onsite staff that is a purchased service from NetApp, so we do not directly deal with technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to this solution, we had all these different disparate types of storage. It was a problem because, for example, but we'd be running on low NAS but there was all the extra storage in our SAN environment. The solution seems a little cheaper, but when you added the whole cost up, it was cheaper for us to just have a single solution that could do everything.
What was our ROI?
We have seen ROI, but I can't quantify how much.
What other advice do I have?
This is a really good solution that definitely meets our needs. It integrates well with all of the software that we're using and they have a lot of good partnerships that enable that. There are a lot of things that can bolt right in and talk to it natively, like Veeam and other applications. That can really make the product shine. I just wish that NetApp would buy Veeam.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Lead Technician at a non-profit with 51-200 employees
It helps us expand our business, manage and secure our data
Pros and Cons
- "The AFF series SSDs delivered the most value to our business."
- "NetApp can help in these endeavours by focusing more on security."
What is our primary use case?
To accommodate growth, we invested in the technology to manage data that must be retained for at least six years to comply with legal requirements. Consequently, as our data storage reaches capacity, the overall size of our storage grid has significantly increased.
How has it helped my organization?
NetApp has been essential to our data management for the past ten years. Our environment includes FAS 8200 and AFF 300 systems, with a storage group dedicated to aggregating clinical data for use in New York State. This enterprise-level solution has served us exceptionally well, and we rely on it heavily.
The utility of the SSDs with the AFF series. We have some high-performing databases and high-performing active computational use from those systems. So, that's been pivotal in terms of performance. We ingest a lot of data, and having the ability to deliver that data for our analytics is paramount.
Our company is constantly evolving, with new demands and features emerging. This solution helps us maintain momentum and stability.
What is most valuable?
The AFF series SSDs delivered the most value to our business. We definitely needed the horsepower. I would rate them nine out of ten. It is a high demand in our environment. So once we know that our developers and DBAs need that, everybody wants it. That's the only caveat, not giving it a ten because now, it's a demand that we need to get as much as we can regarding scalability. We also have other technologies that help out the storage grid because we have a whole storage box. Additionally, we must retain clinical data for a certain number of years to comply with state regulations, which prevents us from purging old data.
What needs improvement?
I am trying to take advantage of all available features to protect our data, especially considering the high risk of ransomware. To ensure data security, we will explore various options, including replicating data to our disaster recovery site. NetApp can help in these endeavours by focusing more on security.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for ten years.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate NetApp eight out of ten.
Given the evolving cybersecurity landscape and proliferation of AI, we are freshening up our cybersecurity, and AI is an initiative our senior management wants us to look into.
We were part of another organization that separated, and they always had NetApp.
We are investing in additional hardware and increasing our focus on NetApp resources to address expiring tools and facilitate expansion.
We expect the expansion to positively impact our organization, allowing us to scale our business.
Our company always has initiatives to expand its capabilities, and NetApp can help with that.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Last updated: Oct 6, 2024
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Updated: February 2025
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