NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

We invested in NetApp technology to address our scalability and modernization requirements. Another platform we manage and aim to enhance with NetApp technologies is backups, currently residing on NetApp E Series. Each site has five to seven E Series systems handling backups. 

Compared to NetApp AFF or C Series, E Series is extremely reliable but lacks features, offering basic connectivity and performance but limited capabilities. For backups, we're looking to modernize our approach and leverage features like SnapLock for rapid recovery, increasing our capacity for mass restores in case of ransomware or other incidents. We're exploring the C Series with QLC drives, seeking the optimal fit and cost-effective solution. We anticipate the C Series ASAs will likely be the answer, providing the right balance of features and efficiency for our backup needs in the coming months.

NetApp technology has significantly improved how we operate and serve our customers. We were attempting to migrate from several legacy appliances that functioned adequately, but planning our next steps was challenging. Many vendors we worked with took a scattered approach. We would ask for a replacement block solution with specific features and a NAS solution with other specific features, both performing exceptionally well. 

One vendor offered nine different ways to achieve this, unable to clearly identify the best fit for us. This may not seem significant until we realize their largest competitor couldn't narrow it down to two options when we asked them to. It was almost a paralysis of choice within their own offerings. So, we switched to two or three other vendors who offered seemingly decent solutions, but it felt like a technological step backward. Their solutions were monolithic, difficult to scale, and challenging to work with in the future. My manager and I had prior NetApp experience at another organization, but our current location had no NetApp presence. It was a significant mindset shift for my colleagues and me. 

NetApp allowed us to move from a monolithic approach, where an array served a single purpose and was impossible to grow without spending millions to replace it, to a more flexible model. We initially purchased the AFF 8200 and A300 lines, which have served us well for several years. We've been able to scale horizontally with new projects and products requiring hundreds of terabytes of storage. Instead of buying entirely new systems, we can simply add more gear to the existing cluster and expand it. This approach has benefited not just a few specific products but the entire organization. It has enabled us to scale horizontally within days instead of months spent onboarding a new vendor, installing, configuring, and learning a new appliance, only to find it doesn't meet our needs. NetApp has made us more agile in implementing new solutions and has reduced stress significantly. We've moved from constantly planning new purchases and integrations to simply deciding if we need more and, if so, adding it to the existing cluster. It's been an amazing shift from being reactive to proactive, empowering us to focus on other tasks. What used to be a full-time job for one person is now easily manageable for our three-person team.

The ever-changing cybersecurity landscape and the rise of AI have significantly impacted our technology infrastructure. We've isolated a few nodes from a former cluster, leaving them to function independently - they're like the forgotten stepchildren, enduring hardship without complaint. Thanks to extensive automation, we never have to log into them. These nodes support SnapLock, which provides peace of mind knowing the data is undeletable - even by admins or support staff. Only the passage of time, specifically the expiration of compliance timers, allows for deletion. Ironically, I designed a system so secure that it's now impeding my own migration efforts. An audit volume with a 90-day compliance timer remains on an old cluster, and I'm forced to wait for it to expire before proceeding. This underscores the effectiveness of the security measures, even if they cause minor inconveniences. Cybersecurity and autonomous ransomware protection have significantly improved management's peace of mind. Previously, fine-tuning access controls were necessary to prevent unauthorized actions. Now, additional safeguards protect end users from unintentional mistakes caused by external influences. These safeguards act like bumpers in a bowling alley, preventing significant harm unless we make a mistake and allow it. This reassurance lets us focus on our work without worrying about phishing attacks or other security breaches.

We recommend NetApp for all our clients that have traditional infrastructures with two servers and some companies that are in manufacturing or the public sector. We have many different experiences with NetApp.

NetApp AFF has helped our clients simplify their infrastructure while delivering high performance to their business-critical applications. We have a lot of clients that use SQL Server with NetApp, and we have noticed improved performance. We usually recommend NetApp AFF instead of SaaS because it's much faster.  We've gotten a lot of positive feedback from our customers about the reduced latency. 

We use NetApp AFF mostly as a NAS solution, but we do some SAN with it. Basically, we're just doing file services for the most part.

We're running an AFF A300 as well as a FAS8040 that is clustered together with the AFF A300.

We're not allowed to use cloud models.

We don't use NetApp AFF for machine learning or artificial intelligence applications.

With respect to latency, we basically don't have any. If it's there then nobody knows it and nobody can see it. I'm probably the only one that can recognize that it's there, and I barely catch it. This solution is all-flash, so the latency is almost nonexistent.

The DP protection level is great. You can have three disks failing and you would still get your data. I think it takes four to fail before you can't access data. The snapshot capability is there, which we use a lot, along with those other really wonderful tools that can be used. We depend very heavily on just the DP because it's so reliable. We have not had any data inaccessible because of any kind of drive failure, at all since we started. That was with our original FAS8040. This is a pretty robust and pretty reliable system, and we don't worry too much about the data that is on it. In fact, I don't worry about it at all because it just works.

Using this solution has helped us by making things go faster, but we have not really implemented some of the things that we want to do. For example, we're getting ready to use the VDI capability where we do virtualization of systems. We're still trying to get the infrastructure in place. We deal with different locations around the world and rather than shipping hard drives that are not installed into PCs, then re-installing them at the main site, we want to use VDI. With VDI, we turn on a dumb system that has no permanent storage. It goes in, they run the application and we can control it all from one location, there in our data center. So, that's what we're moving towards. The reason for the A300 is so that our latency is so low that we can do large-scale virtualization. We use VMware a tremendous amount.

NetApp helps us to unify data services across SAN and NAS environments, but I cannot give specifics because the details are confidential.

I have extensive experience with storage systems, and so far, NetApp AFF has not allowed me to leverage data in ways that I have not previously thought of.

Implementing NetApp has allowed us to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. This is true, in particular, for one of our end customers who spent three years deciding on the necessity of purchasing an A300. Ultimately, the customer ran out of storage space and found that upgrading the existing FAS8040 would have cost three times more. Their current system has quadruple the space of the previous one.

With respect to moving large amounts of data, we are not allowed to move data outside of our data center. However, when we installed the new A300, the moving of data from our FAS8040 was seamless. We were able to move all of the data during the daytime and nobody knew that we were doing it. It ran in the background and nobody noticed.

We have not relocated resources that have been used for storage because I am the only full-time storage resource. I do have some people that are there to help back me up if I need some help or if I go on vacation, but I'm the only dedicated storage guy. Our systems architect, who handles the design for network, storage, and other systems, is also familiar with our storage. We also have a couple of recent hires who will be trained, but they will only be used if I need help or am not available.

Talking about the application response time, I know that it has increased since we started using this solution, but I don't think that the users have actually noticed it. They know that it is a little bit snappier, but I don't think they understand how much faster it really is. I noticed because I can look at the system manager or the unify manager to see the performance numbers. I can see where the number was higher before in places where there was a lot of disk IO. We had a mix of SATA, SAS, and flash, but now we have one hundred percent flash, so the performance graph is barely moving along the bottom. The users have not really noticed yet because they're not really putting a load on it. At least not yet. Give them a chance though. Once they figure it out, they'll use it. I would say that in another year, they'll figure it out.

NetApp AFF has reduced our data center costs, considering the increase in the amount of data space. Had we moved to the same capacity with our older FAS8040 then it would have cost us four and a half million dollars, and we would not have even had new controller heads. With the new A300, it cost under two million, so it was very cost-effective. That, in itself, saved us money. Plus, the fact that it is all solid-state with no spinning disks means that the amount of electricity is going to be less. There may also be savings in terms of cooling in the data center.

As far as worrying about the amount of space, that was the whole reason for buying the A300. Our FAS8040 was a very good unit that did not have a single failure in three years, but when it ran out of space it was time to upgrade.

The ease of data access has enabled faster service delivery for customers. It is easy to get whatever data they like quickly across sites. That has made it much easier for us, but it is also quicker and easier for them to request things, and then they can get what they need.

We have one pane of glass. We do not have to waste a bunch of time. We can streamline even simple things like logging into individual applications or individual NetApp hardware. We can automate things and govern who has access to what, not only on the application and software side but also on the hardware side, and I love that. It keeps everything secure.

This week at NetApp INSIGHT has been great because it has offered a lot of additional information on things that we are looking into. We are new to NetApp, so ONTAP has been the thing that delivered the most value to our organization and changed things for us. Based on where we came from, it is a ten out of ten. Based on where we may be able to go with it, in terms of the expandability of the feature set and the vision that we have been hearing about this week, it is definitely a nine or maybe a ten.

We would not have been able to have the data access and the ability to control it the way we needed without this technology. We have multiple ways of access. We have flexibility and backup and disaster recovery opportunities for replication that we did not have before. That really helped.

We wanted data security through our NetApp technology investments. We wanted the ability to govern multiple pieces of hardware across multiple sites through a single pane of glass. We wanted to get very granular with what groups get what and all that. There is now a significantly easier way to handle all of that. We can do that more quickly for our business.

Previously, we were pretty limited in disaster recovery, backup solutions, and things like that. Snapshots and other features have dramatically improved our situation.

When it comes to AI, at this point, you cannot get away from AI. You are being shoved into it quickly. NetApp has allowed us to adapt to that. The journey is accelerating, and we are able to adapt much more quickly to it.

We are able to expand our flexibility in both data access and data security. It will allow the business to be freer to request things from us and to innovate in their space. They are free from having to worry about whether we have the technology to handle that or whether we have the expertise to handle that.

It provides simplicity. Previously, there was not any kind of unified structure to our multisite storage infrastructure. We now have multiple sites where we have been able to install NetApp, and through ONTAP and BlueXP, control all of them from one pane of glass, which has been very powerful for us.

I work in the defense industry. We have lots of data silos, more than there are colors of paint in the paint store. Trying to get people to agree on how and if they can combine those and how they can share them easily and securely is a big challenge. The solution has an architecture that emphasizes consistency above all else, and that's why they're successful. That's why, as an architect, I've been successful in convincing somebody to go ahead and buy it, consume it. They find not just performance or capacity improvements. They find operational improvements in ease of accessing the data, how consistently people can find what they're looking for quickly, and how they can integrate it with their applications. They provide not just storage. They provide a real solution.

In some cases, we design systems that have to go in strange places. They might have to go to space. They might have to go underwater. Having all manner of different data come into a system sometimes is not well understood. Is it block? Is it file? Is it something else? This solution has all of those services no matter what scale you buy. The result is that we don't have to wait until the customer knows what their data mix would be. We have a comprehensive solution that could accommodate anything. We can fly it earlier and get them in the air testing and prototyping much faster than they could have with other solutions. Customers have been very successful in places that probably no one else could have been thanks to the solution's consistency.

NetApp has impacted us pretty dramatically. Before, we didn't have standardized storage, so adopting the solution across our organization has allowed us the ability to provide data across all our sites and dramatically improve our backup and disaster.

We've recently adopted their Snapshot technology. Before, we didn't have any form of that. Having Snapshot, SnapMirror, and SnapLock really feels like we've added security to an organization and we really appreciate that.

The storage speeds have improved. We work with a lot of high-resolution imagery. Having this product has been a huge improvement. Our backups and disaster recovery plan have improved drastically.

The replication of data from on-premises to the cloud is very easy when we are using the SnapMirror technology. 

Being able to use FlexCache is the best part of this solution. It is something that on-premises users are using for their production. There are some users who want to use the same volume from the cloud. FlexCache helps us in providing that.

We have a unified storage to access the file and NAS. We can do all the things in the same solution. We do not need any other product or storage mix.

CVO and AFF technologies have delivered the most value to our company. I would rate AFF a ten out of ten, and I would rate CVO a nine out of ten. We are still exploring the cloud. AFF is completely packed, and with CVO, we have a few challenges that we are trying to solve. Taking a snapshot and cloning are some of the best things that we are doing with these technologies. CVO also offers cost-effectiveness.

NetApp has always been one of the best storage solutions on the market.

We are an 85% NetApp shop, and it has been extremely helpful. We've been able to save a lot of money with the introduction of the use of the tiering aspect and the flex groups. We're able to move data around on the fly.

From a VMware perspective and from a high-performance computing perspective, it is able to churn data as fast as we will do it. It's been great. We're able to identify a lot of data thanks to Cloud Insights. Generally, about 80% of data is not in use. To be able to tier that data automatically has been key. Then, being able to move the data to a specific place or on the fly to a different aggregate with a different disk has been a big benefit.