NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

We host NSS as a part of a cluster. We use AFF to support data analytics, machine learning, cloud integration, and SAP workloads as well.

ONTAP data management software has simplified our operations. Earlier, we had ONTAP clustering. We had multiple name spaces, but with the cluster, we were able to build a single name space, and we were able to host NFS sets and iSCSI in a single cluster. In this way, it has unified our workloads.

I have found the following features of NetApp AFF most valuable: Snapshot, snap clone, deduplication, and compaction. 

These features help with data protection. We host an exchange, so protecting our data and workloads is of prime importance.

This solution helps accelerate demanding enterprise applications. VMware workloads, the database, and Oracle Solaris are hosted on AFF, which means that our primary priority workloads are on AFF and that the secondary ones are on FAS. That includes the SAN national cloud.

Initiating Snapshot is not time consuming, and it is not tedious. That's the reason why FlexClone and FlexCache help us with our protection care strategy.

For ONTAP, in general, the deduplication ratio and Snapshot limitation are areas that need improvement. There is a global limitation on the number of Snapshots or clones that can be spun off of a particular Snapshot. If those limitations are increased, it might be helpful.

With regard to Fibre Channel and iSCSI, the block protocol is still not up to the mark. NetApp has not been a leader in file and block services.

SnapCenter is still not mature enough and has a grid at scale. It is still not up to the mark and is not delivering as promised when we initially invested in StorageGRID.

In terms of Oracle workloads, NFS workloads specific to databases, Snapshots, data production strategies, and SnapMirror, significant room for improvement is needed from NetApp.

Compatibility with multiple vendors has been a pain and continues to be so.

We have been using NetApp AFF for the last five years.

Initially, stability was a pain with ONTAP. Now it is much better. ONTAP crashes have reduced significantly to probably one or two in the last year.

The scalability of NetApp AFF is pretty straightforward. We can expand clusters and that's not a pain point. I'm happy with the scalability.

With regard to technical support, NetApp defines the severity of a ticket. However, even when there is a P1 level ticket that should be turned around in half an hour, there were cases where we would not receive resources for two hours. Sometimes, even after two hours, we wouldn't get the right resource. This is still a pain point and is ongoing.

NetApp's attitude toward support needs to improve quite significantly. If I were to rate NetApp's technical support on a scale from one to ten, I would give them a seven.

As for the initial setup, we were on FAS initially, and the migration was not smooth because the 7-MTT tool was not that mature. After the initial hiccups, however, the experience has been okay, and we are pleased with this product.

Building a cluster was not complicated, but ONTAP was not stable. I remember one upgrade that lasted for more than 24 hours. It took the same amount of time with FabricPool, and FlexCache still has loopholes. It is not efficient. There is still quite a lot of room for NetApp to strengthen its ONTAP core.

We were migrating data from 7mode to Cdot, and it was a new build. Also, ONTAP testing was new, so we didn't have many benchmarks to work through. The migration and ONTAP testing were not smooth. We had quite a number of problems, and we were forced to do a lot of upgrades. The issues related to compatibility had to be escalated to the highest level of the NetApp engineering team and the product build team as well. We worked closely with them.

As for deployment, we had some issues with switching at the cluster backbone when building a cluster. Other than that, it took us less than a month or so because we had professional services as well. We were able to build the solution in 90 days.

As a customer, the ROI is still not that great. I don't see a unique selling point for NetApp. The number of USPs has to go up for me to say that I can't live without NetApp. Right now, if our company wants to run our business with another vendor, we would happily do so.

The upgrade costs were huge.

We've gone through a rough patch on our journey with NetApp AFF, but now, it is more stable. For the most part, you won't have too many unforeseen experiences, and there is an 80 to 90% chance that you will get what NetApp promises.

One of the workloads that you may need to worry about is symlink-based applications. For example, eRoom won't work well. Symlink-based applications won't deliver the workloads.

We always have issues with a few Oracle workloads, even with the latest levels. You may need to be cautious regarding these areas and block, but other than these, you will get what NetApp promises. The deployment would also be straightforward.

I come from an EMC background and tend to compare this solution to it. The one thing that I love about NetApp is their SMB. That is, their NAS protocol is their strength. Block is their weakness. There were days when we would say that we would only buy NetApp for file and that we would never buy it for block. Even now, I think that seems to be the case, even though they have improved to an extent.

With regard to block storage, its compatibility to other applications, and the allied monitoring tools they supply, especially for block or file, NetApp is better than most. I have worked with EMC, HP, IBM. In terms of block, I would not want to invest in NetApp.

Unless NetApp is very concerned that the migration tool is not working as promised, I recommend investing in NetApp and getting a third party tool that can help seamlessly migrate the data.

If I were to rate NetApp AFF overall on a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at nine.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

As a company, we have been using AFF for around six to seven years.

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.

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.

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).

Positive

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Our primary use case for AFF is for databases.

The most valuable features of AFF are its speed and the responsive support from NetApp.

The only downside to NetApp AFF is its price.

I have been using NetApp AFF for eight years.

In terms of performance and stability, AFF is good for our current needs. However, if we require higher performance, we may need to invest in new hardware.

NetApp AFF scales well for our needs. We can continuously add more storage and capacity to expand the system, which has been a viable approach for us.

The support is great. When issues arise, the support team quickly addresses our questions and resolves problems efficiently. I would rate the support as a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have previously used Hitachi, but it is very slow.

The initial setup of NetApp availability can be considered medium difficulty. If you have experience with NetApp systems, it is relatively easy to medium in complexity. However, if you have never installed such a system before, it can be quite challenging.

NetApp can be expensive. It is worth noting that the cost isn't just in the hardware but also in the support, which can be a significant portion of the overall expense.

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

We use the solution to host the system data for VMs.

The solution's most valuable features are pricing and speed.

They should improve the solution's features for disaster recovery. Also, they should provide easier integration with multiple systems.

We have been using the solution for one and a half years now.

It is a stable solution.

We have 1500 solution users in our organization. It is a scalable product.

The solution's customer service is good.

Positive

I have worked with HP in the past. In comparison, NetApp has various protocols like NFS and CIFS. Also, it is much easier to use and integrate than HP.

The solution was easy to deploy and took half a day to complete.

Initially, I implemented the solution myself. Later, I took help from a reseller to review it. Also, two or three executives are required to maintain the solution.

The additional license for the solution costs 45k. It is relatively cheap compared to other vendors.

I recommend the solution to others and rate it as nine. It is very stable, reliable, and cost-effective.

The first use case is having normal CIFS and NFS shares use Active Directory integration with antivirus integration. Another use case is for VMware VCF in a TKG environment using NFS and a SAN protocol.

I am implementing the NetApp product for customers. I deploy CIFS and NFS shares for file access purposes and block access for VMware infrastructures.

NetApp AFF has helped to simplify our clients' infrastructure while still getting very high performance for their business-critical applications. One of our customers uses the vSAN environment in the release, then they use NFS for their VMware VCF environment and TKG environment. In this case, when they move to NetApp for the TKG and the VM infrastructures, they use AFF for block, CIFS, and NFS. It provides a single storage with NFS, block, and CIFS with deduplication, team provisioning, and compression. Everything is in there, which makes it very good to use.

The deduplication is the most valuable feature. When you have multiple systems with almost the same data, the deduplication helps save on capacity. It is why the box can be overprovisioned. This is very useful in the case where immediate space is required for an application or teams. It also provides good efficiency when provisioning deduplication compression. These efficiencies are very useful compared to other products.

AFF has helped simplify data management with unified data infrastructure (UDI) across SAN and NAS environments. This is very important. Nowadays, UDI is gaining market share for NetApp. 

Its virtualization knowledge is very useful. Also, the Active IQ technology of NetApp is very useful, which uses AI to give suggestions to customers.

The ONTAP data management software has simplified our clients' operations to an extent. The auto support feature gives unique notifications, which simplifies the management. Plus, there have been enhancements in the GUI compared to previous versions, which has simplified things. 

We use synchronous replication with SnapMirror. We can failover and failback very easily. We can failover the site to another, which is good.

It used to give us the volume where LANs should be placed when we created a LAN in the older version. However, in the newer version of ONTAP, it does not give where to place the LAN in the volume. So, that liberty has been taken away. If that was there again, it would be very good.

When we create a LAN, it has taken away the feature. For example, in older code, we used to be able to select the LAN volume for LANs to be placed in. In the newer code, it does not allow the volume to be selected. It creates a volume automatically based on a round-robin. 

I have been using this solution for almost two years.

It is a stable product. I have not faced many problems with the box. Wherever I installed or implemented the solution, it is running very smoothly without any issues. I have not received any complaints.

It is scalable. I can grow my data. When it comes to NVMe, it is also scalable in terms of capacity and scaling horizontally. For example, we can add multiple nodes in a cluster as well as multiple expansions. I feel the box is very capable in terms of scalability.

I implement it, then there is a separate team who works with NetApp support. From an implementation perspective, I have not gotten involved much with the support.

The documentation of NetApp is very good. When there are some issues, they can search the documentation and knowledge base. Therefore, you can get very good support before going to NetApp support.

The initial setup is straightforward for the customer. We require more in-depth disk management and understand how the disk will be distributed. Otherwise, it is simple.

The implementation of NetApp with CIFS and NFS is quite quick to deploy. When they came out with the latest models, they provided us with three protocols. Going forward, this will be very useful.

It takes one to two days to deploy NetApp AFF. Apart from the basic configuration, there are many things that need to be done for the integration part, like antivirus integration, LAN configuration, and NDMP configuration. Those all take time. So it can be done in two days, but it might take more time depending on what needs to be done.

We need to do planning for the IP address, cluster names, and all the stuff that NetApp provides for the cluster planning workbook. Once it is deployed, we do IP address assignment to the nodes, local tier configuration, and protocol configuration, then a company can start using the box.

Many customers are purchasing this NetApp solution, which is good.

Normally, I work on IBM storage. Compared to those, this solution's efficiency is good. The IBM solution is an all SAN-based solution. 

Whenever we require block or file services, we only go with NetApp. As of now, I have not implemented any IBM Boxes for file services. Previously, there was the V7000 Unified, but it is not there now. Lately, we have migrated from IBM Box to the NetApp ONTAP Select system, which was serving IBM file services. We needed to move to NetApp because there currently is no system for file services when it comes to IBM.

Oracle ESSWebservice and Cloud Object Storage have huge tasks, making it difficult to implement them. 

I would suggest customers use the box so they get a taste of NetApp. Then, they can compare the product and start using it. If NetApp supports them in their environment, that is very good.

I would rate NetApp AFF as nine out of 10.

The solution is primarily used for data protection and disaster recovery, business continuity, and cybersecurity.

We like the fact that we also use it and therefore can tell our clients about it from an actual user perspective, not just a sales perspective. 

No one has a price-to-earnings ratio that NetApp has, everyone's is inflated. NetApp's is below market, NetApp pays a two and a half percent dividend, NetApp stock has doubled in the past 12 months. NetApp's largest customer is probably the federal government, which uses more than 50% of NetApp, from my understanding, if you subtract cloud, although I'm not privy to understand how much cloud the federal government uses that is actually NetApp under the covers.

The fact of the matter is, if you need the top-selling, performing, file serving appliance to deliver your files to your end-users, NetApp pretty much invented the technology. While no one really can take credit for serving files, NetApp has been doing it for more than 25 years. They do it better than anyone. They have utilities around that. They can do three things that their competition can do with multiple different solutions. I'm sure there are some obscure things that they do in vertical markets that their competition does better, however, I'm not going to comment on radiology or genetics or things of that. They do a lot of things, yet, not like a Swiss army knife. They do a lot of things and are the best of breed of products put together.

Other manufacturers claim simplicity. In fact, frankly, they do have an advantage in that regard, however, they don't have the functionality. If you were to compare one of those products to NetApp, head to head from a feature perspective, NetApp would wind up in the top 10.

I'm not an engineer, so to a certain extent, it ain't broke, don't fix it. From my perspective, everything works well. 

They've already announced that they have some features in their next release that make the existing investment more usable, by adding software features to your existing legacy hardware investment. Features like the ability to add the S3 protocol, which is the storage protocol used by Amazon Azure and Google onto a NetApp filer for on-prem or co-located products.

I've been using the solution for a while. 

The stability has been good. There are no bugs or glitches, really. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are a few things here or there that are minor, however, everyone deals with something no matter the platform. 

To a certain extent, we offer the client basic tech support, meaning if a disc drive has failed we can send someone to replace it. NetApp has a very large tech support organization for their premium customers, where they will support third-party products like Rubrik, like VMware, like Combo - all kinds of third-party products that touch NetApp. 

Not every storage or NetApp deployment is open the box, put the NetApp in the rack, turn the on/off switch on, and click the wizard. It's got to interface in a hospital environment, has to interface with the medical imaging department, so in that regard, no product is easier or more difficult than NetApp other than how the storage device interfaces with what it's storing.

All tech support isn't great if they didn't do a good job setting up and all tech support is great if they did a great job for you, and I've had positive and negative experiences with every manufacturer's tech support. I would rate NetApp as one of the best. It's usually in-country. I have customers that are in South America, that are in the United States, that are in the UK, that are in Asia. I don't stay up nights worrying about their tech support.

The partner community, such as myself and my engineering team, usually get involved if there is a tech support issue that is not a manufacturing defect or a bug as we can't control that. We can only control the environment that we helped architect.

The initial setup can be both straightforward and complex. It's like buying a big toolbox filled with a million different tools, and wrenches and spanners and screwdrivers, and things of that type. You could use that toolbox to install a doorknob or could you use it to build a house.

If you wish to use every tool in your big toolbox, it's a complex environment that requires sometimes more than one skill set.

I'm a reseller and my company also uses it.

I just provide them the equipment when they need it, so I don't run it. I don't have the responsibility for the operation of it, only my own clientele.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

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 most valuable feature of this solution is its simplicity. It is easy to use.

I want an interface through ONTAP that look more like what it does for the E-Series with SANtricity. One of the things that I liked about the SANtricity GUI is that it is standalone Java. It doesn't have to have a web browser. Secondly, when you look at it, there are a lot more details. It shows the actual shelves and controllers, and if a drive goes bad then it shows you the exact physical location. If it has failed, is reconstructing, or whatever, it shows you the status and it shows you where the hot spares are. In other words, be rearranging the GUI, you can make it look like it actually does in the rack. From a remote standpoint, I can call and instruct somebody to go to a particular storage rack and find the fourth shelf from the top, the fifth drive over from the left, and check for a red light. Once they see it, they can pull that drive out. You can't get simpler than that.

There are a lot of features with ONTAP, and the user interface is far more complicated than it needs to be. I would like to see it more visual.

We have been using this solution for about three months

The stability is incredible. If you looked up the word "stability" in the dictionary, it would show you a picture of the A300 or the FAS8040 in a NetApp array.

Scalability is not a problem. When we got the new flash system, we were able to combine it with the old hybrid that included iSCSI, SATA, SAS, and flash, into a four-way cluster. It was all running before the end of the day, and we moved about four hundred terabytes worth of data between them.

I find the technical support for NetApp to be really good, although I'm a little biased because I used to be one of those guys back in the days under the E-series. If I have a question for them and they don't know the answer, they'll find the person who does. When I was a support engineer, that's the way I worked.

Both pre-sales and post-sales engineers are good. Our presales engineer has been a godsend, answering all of the techie questions that we had. If he didn't know something then he would ask somebody. Sometimes the questions are about fixing things, but at other times it is just planning before we tried something new.

We've had NetApp since day one. Within our organization, there are multiple other teams and almost all of them use NetApp on classified networks. We have a little bit of HP and I think there's a couple of EMCs floating around somewhere, but they're slowly going away. Most of them being replaced by NetApp.

Mainly, NetApp is very robust, very reliable, and they cost less. Nowadays with the government worried about costs, trying to keep taxes down, that's a big plus. It just so happens that it's a very good product. It's a win-win.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

I handled the implementation myself, although I would contact technical support to fill in any gaps that I might have had.

When we installed the new A300, we used NetApp Professional Services because the person who was brought in was able to do it a lot faster than I could. That is all he does, so he is exceptionally proficient at it. It took him about two and a half days, whereas it would have probably taken me a little over a week to complete.

The only thing that I can say about ROI is that our costs are probably going to be less than if we had stuck with our original idea.

We didn't have any other vendors on the list, although we had one team that tried to push HP on to us and we said no. HP was really the only other possible alternative that we had. We had tossed around a couple of other vendors, but we never really gave them any serious thought. We already knew NetApp, so it made more sense because they could integrate better and that was the main thing we were looking at. The level of integration. Since we had a NetApp that we've had for many years, it just made sense to stick with what we had, but a newer and faster version.

One of my favorite parts of this solution is that most of the day I sit there and do nothing, watching the lights go green on unify manager, knowing that they should stay green because it indicates that it is working. That's what I look for. It works, and most of the time I don't have to do a lot with it unless somebody wants some space carved out.

I've been in the storage business since 1992. I've been doing work with storage systems before there was such a thing as a storage area network (SAN) or network-attached storage (NAS). Those are buzzwords that came along about fifteen or sixteen years ago and I was well entrenched in storage long before then. My expectation is not very high other than the fact that it's fast and reliable. Other than that, as far as what we can do with it, it's capabilities, I have a pretty low bar because I know what storage can do and I know what it should do and the only time I'm disappointed is when it doesn't do it. I haven't experienced that with NetApp.

The only thing that I would change is the GUI, which is cosmetic. It will not make the product better, but it will make it a lot simpler for those of us who have to support the NetApp equipment, and we can do it in a more timely fashion.

My advice to anybody who is researching this solution is to buy it. Don't worry about it, just buy it. NetApp will help you install it, they'll help you with the right licensing, and they'll help you with all of the questions you have. They will even give you some suggestions on how you might want to configure it based on your needs, which is never accurate, but that's not the fault of the installer. It's usually because the customer doesn't know what they want, but you at least get a good start and they can make recommendations based on past experience. As far as price per performance, this solution is hard to beat. I'm a big supporter.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Our customers use the solution for its MetroCluster feature.

It would be helpful if they set up local warehouses for the solution.

We have been using the solution for five years.

I rate the solution's stability as a nine.

We have an enterprise company as our customer for the solution. I rate the solution's scalability as a nine.

I work as a support engineer and authorized distributor for the solution. Its technical support could be better as receiving the solution's spare parts takes a long time. When hardware failure occurs, we need to wait for its components to reach us from the metro city warehouse. It is a time-consuming process.

We used HPE and Dell as well. They provide better customer service than NetApp as they have local authorized partners. So we get a prompt response from them in case of any failure issues.

The solution's initial setup is straightforward.

Our customers deploy the solution with the help of an integrator. I provide consultancy and integration services as well.

The solution is moderately priced. I rate its pricing as a seven.

The solution is quite good. I recommend it to others and rate it as a nine.