NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Reviews

We use the on-prem deployment model of this solution. Our primary use case of this solution is for better speed for the database. 

The most valuable feature of this solution is its speed. 

The pricing could be cheaper and it should have documentation in more languages, specifically, Russian.

They should develop faster building for the next release. 

It's very stable.

We haven't really tested the scalability options. Only I use this solution. We have around 1,000 clients using the database. 

Their technical support is very good. The power went off and they called us around five minutes later to ask what was going on. Whenever we have any questions they have quick answers. 

The initial setup was straightforward. I read the documentation and it was simple for me. The deployment took around three days. 

The prices are average but in the last year we bought three of these and it was expensive. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. In order to make it a ten, they should make the price cheaper. 

I would recommend it. It is very stable, fast, and offers good support. It fits our needs. We don't have issues with it. If you need a stable solution, you should choose NetApp. We have two NetApp solutions in my company and we don't have problems with either one of them. 

We use if for low latency, high performance, OLTP database. It's dedicated to a single application.

The benefits are better up-time, better response time.

Low latency.

It needs a better management tool.

We found it very stable.

Not very scalable.

We use tech support and it's pretty good. The system was stable so we really didn't need a lot of support or a lot of help. The few times we called, we got the right answer.

We were using ONTAP, a FAS system before, and we couldn't deliver the performance that was needed. We were missing our SLAs. We looked at some other solutions from other vendors and EF gave us the best performance, price, and value.

In terms of important criteria when selecting a vendor, and how important consistent low latency is compared with other criteria, I think what's important is the partnership that we have with them, the relationship that we have with them, that they are willing to work with us to find a solution.

At the end of the day, low latency was what geared us towards the EF. That was the best proposition on the table.

It gave us the performance we were looking for, at an excellent price that no one else was able to beat. We already knew the solution through the E-Series, so we knew how to work with this type of system, we had that familiarity. It's simple to manage. It was a no-brainer, in this case.

I think it's definitely worth taking a look at this solution.

More things get done faster. Time is money. If we have systems that are down for more than 10 minutes, that's $10,000 out the door, basically. They want true speed and being able to get up there.

The speed is the most valuable feature. It's a really good system. It's really fast; the speed's the best thing. It's one thing we love. Everybody wants to have everything faster and faster and faster. Knowing the speed's there, that's the best thing, along with the size and storage. I'm interested in the new stuff that's coming out, with the 32 terabytes. It will be interesting.

Once I play with it a bit more, I'll find out more about areas with room for improvement.

Cheaper pricing is always good. NetApp has been doing everything the right way. They've been figuring out things really well, going in the right direction.

I’m looking forward to the new shelves, the new disks and their sizes; how small you can get for lots of storage now. The size and speed are just amazing; always a good thing. Smaller systems save on electricity, save on space. We shrunk our server room down. We actually rebuilt it. We didn't have enough space for people to sit. We needed more office space. With everything so small, we cut our server room down and fit more people in. Our head count can go up and everything. People had jobs.

I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better.

I think stability is really good. We just started using them now. We're just getting into it. We're getting more and more systems as we go along. So far, everything has been stable; we have not had any problems. It's all new.

We never used flash arrays or anything like that before. This is all SSD and this stuff is all new to us.

We'll find out about scalability. I think it will be perfect. We have small sites. We just purchased a big site, a half-a-million dollar site, for Plymouth, Michigan. We'll find out how that works out, scaling up from that point. We used to do the shelves, the SATA shelves, the SAS shelves and so on. Flash is completely new and any SSD drives is all completely different to us. It will be interesting.

I haven't dealt with technical support yet.

We go off a price list. We kind of figure out what best fits the needs of each site. We have hundreds of sites in US and Canada.

We just wanted the speed. Everybody wants better IOPS and that was basically the reason why we chose it, to have better speed. Our sites need to be up; they need to be running.

We previously used regular SATA and SAS shelves, strictly disk shelves and so on; no flash, no arrays, nothing like that.

Before choosing this product, we did not really evaluate other options. They’ve looked at IBM and EMC. They've looked at that for some servers but most of the time, everything we stick to is with NetApp. We don't go all over; we stick strictly with NetApp.

So far, it's been fitting our needs. I've not had any issues with it, but it's all brand new to me. Right now, the install is great; everything is running fine; we haven't had any problems.

Go with the NetApp EF-series All Flash Arrays, if you want good quality, reliability, speed and size. I think that's the way to go nowadays; flash is amazing. I'd give it the thumbs up to do it. Spend the money. It might cost a little more but the quality is the best, for me. Sometimes, you have to spend money for good quality.

When selecting a vendor to work with, the most important factor for me is the relationship. We've had a great relationship with our sales managers and sales reps and we saw them at a recent conference. That's a key thing. You get the support you need. If something happens, they're on top of it, fixing it right away. Good service is the most important factor.

The most valuable feature for us is the ability to move the workload between peers. It also has a huge advantage of helping us cut down on power consumption.

Almost all of our infrastructure is on cDOT, and now we are able to have a single point of management for all our data.

It's very difficult to manage the CLI. Also, the license model needs work. If you read the label as probable, you need to pay for a license for all the features, even if you are using just one.

We've been using it for one year.

I guess at the end of this year or the beginning of the next, we will finish the migration of the whole infrastructure.

9/10 - The problem is about the failover of the interfaces for some problems. We had some issues last week because of the interface of a cluster physically remained up, but we had a report noting issues with traffic management on it.

8/10

8/10

No previous solution was used.

It was simple.

It was done in-house.

We looked at EMC and IBM, but we chose EF because of the need to take snapshots and to save it to another system.

It must be evaluated depending on the workload of the applications.

We depend on this product for our storage needs. We have a private-cloud deployment.

We use more than the All-Flash Arrays on site. We have a hybrid model with all types of storage including flash, SATA disks, and SSD.

We need a center related to NetApp in Egypt so that we can deal with them directly.

If the pricing of equipment were more discounted in Egypt then it would be better.

The implementation could be faster.

This is a stable solution.

This solution is scalable.

Here in Egypt, we do not have an official office or central point of support. This is our biggest complaint. We do not want to have remote support. Rather, we want an office here. It is very difficult to get an engineer here, on-site, from NetApp. This is true even pre-sales; we want to sit with the NetApp team, and not with partners. It's not that partners are bad, but it's better to meet with NetApp directly.

We did use another solution prior to this one, and we switched because of the technical support. It had originally started off quite good, but after a while, it was no longer good, which is why we switched.

The implementation of this solution took approximately one month.

The pricing of this solution is competitive with other vendors here in Egypt.

This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Having the option of such high-speed storage in the data center is what makes it valuable. When a request comes in a for an application that requires something on flash, I have the EF to go. I know that whatever the application is, it can't beat it.

They could improve the product’s tools. We're going to tie it into our FAS system because the options we have with the FAS system are much greater than the options we have with the EF series. Things like the FlexClones, SnapVault, SnapMirror, all of that. Some of it's available on the EF series, but we like what we have in the FAS system. If the EF were to have that, we would not need to tie it into our FAS system.

It’s a stable solution. We have not had an outage in a year and a half.

It is scalable. We're about to roll it into our other NetApp products. That, along with the FAS system, makes it scalable for us, at least.

Technical support is good; maybe not as good as others, but they're good. It’s a case of finding the right person. NetApp's a pretty large company, with a vast array of protocols and products to dive through when you're trying to troubleshoot a problem. It just depends on the person you get when you call in. Sometimes, it's the best. Sometimes, it's not so much the best. They're good. They could always be better.

We have multiple hybrid solutions, but nothing pure flash like the EF. We have been using the hybrid solutions for five years. The trigger to moving to EF was that the cost of flash has come down, and the need for flash has gone up.

For initial setup, we had somebody onsite. We were doing the flash install along with the transition from 7-mode to CDOT. We had professional services onsite to assist us with that.

What is your use case? Depending on what your needs are, I would point to maybe the All Flash FAS. If it was just a one-off, one project, throw everything at it, then I'd say definitely the EF would be the most cost-effective solution.

The ease and the simplicity of setting it up. The managing and the administration's quite easy. It's easy to provision the storage.

It's easier to set up so I don't have to spend a lot of time administering it, and setting it up. Whereas the FAS systems are a little bit more difficult to set up. So it's the ease of operations.

I can't think of any right now. I've only had it for a couple of months.

It seems very stable. We've only had it a couple of months.

From what we've seen, it looks like it's going to be easy to upgrade. We haven't scaled it up.

Nexsan. The requirements of the end user dictated we get a different system from what we already had. We're a big NetApp customer, so we like to stick with NetApp. I guess that's why we went with it. It was a customer requirement. They needed a different type of, cheaper, faster storage.

It was pretty straightforward. We had one of the net engineers come outside and help us with it.

I think it came down to Nexsan and Net App. 

We also considered all-flash solutions that offered storage efficiency features, but EF seemed to fit our needs; plus the price was really good.

For the E-Series, it's going to be used for parking cameras, for camera storage, security cameras. Because of the functions, for video and the camera video, we didn't want any latency. We wanted it to be as fast as we could get it. 

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor are service, support, price, the product stability, and stability of the company.

If I were advising a colleague at another company who is researching this kind of solution, I would say take a good look at it because we haven't had any issues. It was easy to set up. We haven't had to do anything with support, but the documentation of it was very easy to follow. 

I know the education field gets better pricing than corporate worlds.