NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

NetApp has made data storage much easier.

I can get a NetApp and have it deployed within days instead of something else like we used to use Hitachi arrays. It required an actual team to come in and install. The ease and scalability are monumental.

The usability of actually being able to scale it out has been great.

ONTAP has delivered the most value to our organization. Also, the ease of ability to train other people to use ONTAP is great. It is very straightforward. I can take a brand new tech who is straight out of an internship, bring them in, show them how to do A, B, C, and D, and it doesn't deviate. It's the same no matter which cluster they touch.

I honestly don't have anything of note on how they can improve. They already exceed my expectations. 

We do constantly expand. We get new programs all the time. The fact that we can throw a C250 in and have it up and running in days makes life so much easier.

We actually recently got off of -two Gseries from Hitachi that were spinning disks, and we went to all flash arrays. All of the engineering issues that they had for all of their software programming, time delays, et cetera, are nonexistent anymore.

Money has been a serious constraint. The fact that they're making things more affordable is making our lives that much easier to keep up with our accreditations. We can show that we can save money by doing more with less, and we can do that with this solution.

We did evaluate other options. The speed on this solution is more. Cost was a big one in the decision making factor.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

Security is always the top concern. We'll always prioritize cybersecurity. I like the fact that the solution encrypts everything, that it is a trusted brand, that we know that we have the support in the event that anything happens. They back their product 100%.

As a pharmaceutical company, our data is very sensitive. It's critical to recover in the event of any incident. NetApp played a major role in our backup and recovery services.

The RPOs and RTOs are excellent. When we had a ransomware attack, NetApp helped us recover. NetApp has streamlined operations by providing faster operating responses and making data more accessible to users. The equipment they offer helped increase our performance.

I administer the solution, so I'm not involved with the design and decision-making, so I can't speak about our future planning. However, most of our files are on NetApp, which we have 50 sites using. I don't know about AI or other emerging technologies we may adopt. We haven't used AI, but the company is looking at that and security-related features, like AI-based ransomware technologies. ONTAP is on the roadmap. 

We plan to expand. All our storage is on-prem, but we plan to shift to the cloud, depending on the application requirements. Our roadmap includes migrating to the cloud and implementing AI. 

NetApp's backup and recovery are the primary features we use. We also appreciate data protection. NetApp's technology and hardware support all our requirements. Snapshot technology is hugely beneficial for backing up our data. 

Our environment is NAS-based. I don't have much exposure to NetApp on the block storage side. At the file level, the protocols they support are easy to use. This improves resiliency and helps us run the environment.

Our block storage is primarily Dell EMC, and we use NetApp for our AFF at the file level. We've heard many things about NetApp's block solutions, so it may be an excellent opportunity to look at NetApp from the block side of things and migrate. Dell EMC is relatively expensive, whereas NetApp is more cost-effective. I would like to explore all the new technologies and move our block storage to NetApp.

We did many POCs with companies like IBM, EMC, and NetApp and how they handled the file-sharing structures. NetApp came out on top for how it handled the files. It also beats the competitors in cost-effectiveness, which is the first thing a company looks at. 

I rate NetApp nine out of 10. 

NetApp allowed us to refresh our old systems with the new NetApp platforms. It allowed us to increase our capacity, our performance all over, and we are looking forward to utilizing more products in the future.

The ATL process, or the authorized-to-operate process, has been beneficial to the organization.

The ONTAP management software gave us the most beneficial bang for our buck. It allows our operation teams to manage the systems more easily than our previous tech solution.

The mirroring of two different sites is great. We're huge on that. We were not able to easily get that done with our previous solution. Using ONTAP and their SnapMirror technology allowed us to easily utilize their advantages in that space.

We want to consolidate under one solution. It'll be easier if we just had all of one product. That's what we're looking forward to.

They should just keep building on what they currently have. If they can continue to make it easier and more efficient and listen to customer feedback or do anything to automate the process will help a lot.

We're just getting into the solution and building on it. I can't say what needs to be improved.

Once we fully flesh out all of its capabilities, we will probably be able to provide some proper feedback.

Maybe more integration with other tech vendors and products, such as hypervisors. I know they're working well with Microsoft and VMware. However, they could integrate with more. If they can integrate more, it would be better.

We do have plans to expand in the future. We plan to continue to spread the solution across our sites where we need it the most. Hopefully, we'll have an all-in-one solution rather than having multiple storage solutions across our enterprise.

There's no competing option for us. We are a little bit on the budget side. This solution was able to deliver what we needed as far as requirements within our budget. Previously, we had Dell, and we're moving on to NetApp across the whole enterprise. 

In the future, we might look at something else depending on our use cases and requirements. As of right now, this solution is the one.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

The evolving cybersecurity landscape and proliferation of AI have been influencing our technology decisions a lot recently. We just recently made a commitment to AI in the space.

We're still in the process of the migration, so we're hoping that it will help with business and serving customers. We're hoping that it will be faster. We had previous file limitations with our old technology. We're hoping to better utilize the NetApp arrays to serve our expanding and growing business.

If the data is deduplicated, we'll hopefully begin to save space. We're also hoping it will allow our business clients to access their data faster, and we'll be able to read and write it faster as well using all-flash technology.

The C400 flash arrays have been very valuable so far.

We'll use it to secure data, back up that data, and replicate it to other data centers. We'll leverage it to take a holistic approach to data replication, backup, and accessibility.

We're assuming accessing and writing files will be a lot snappier with opening files will be faster. That's what we're looking at. We're hoping for a lot of speed.

We don't have it in production yet. We don't have areas for improvement right now. Once we put it into production and get client feedback, we'll have more visibility.

We did use a different solution. We made the change based on the price point and being able to open more files.

We looked into Dell and another big player in the space. We chose this solution based on the price point and the all-flash technology.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. We just got it. We're expecting it will be faster and that we'll see some good compression and deep replication on our data.

The evolving cybersecurity landscape and proliferation of AI influenced our technology decisions. It's a factor in every decision that we make. The security is very important. I know other vendors provide similar types of types of security, and data tech and data security as well.

We're using it all just for NAS right now. We possibly might use it
for SAN in the future and then maybe archiving.

We're very new to AI and it will be a consideration in the future. Cybersecurity for sure will also be a priority and data optimization is the most important. 

NetApp has enabled us to transition from legacy configurations and continue to do some of the same things we did before implementing NetApp storage. It helps us with simple things, like allowing us to grow a file system immediately. Customers can do their own self-restores. 

I've combined other NetApp systems into one of our newer platforms, taking other file-sharing solutions native to Windows or Mac and creating file shares, yielding a better return on our investment. At the same time, we are providing better resources and more efficient channels for files.

When we had another vendor, backups were not done efficiently, so we lost critical data. That's why we went with this solution. It has required us to think differently about how we will implement it. Anything we do needs some aspect of AI involved to help us because we don't have enough resources in terms of money or labor power. 

We have considered using WEKA.io or S3, but we have a solid history with NetApp. We have it in multiple layers, so we can't make those shifts without interrupting many business systems. Ease of use is one of those critical things. We're familiar with it. Making those changes is too much of a lift and would be costly. 

When you evaluate what it costs to bring in a new vendor or platform versus what you've already invested in that app, it makes that decision easy. Right now, I plan to start doing some more data tiering. We bought a storage grid we use for backup but want to use for data tiering. S3 will be a protocol we can use for clients needing to access things from various platforms. 

We want to add more. We want to build out our source grid infrastructure because that can allow us to do data tiering, backups, and another protocol to enable users to use data more efficiently. It's also secure, and all those things are part of our effort to be more efficient. You can't have one without the other. 

Our organization recently underwent a major upgrade, and we're expecting exponential data growth over the next few years. We must embrace what we currently have and the building blocks to grow and understand the demand. We have to do that seamlessly, but we can't do it with the same resources we have now. 

We could not consolidate resources between NFS and Sys services without the NetApp appliance or something like it. 

I rate NetApp 10 out of 10. 

NetApp is highly flexible. We can do things on the fly. Because the nodes are rock-solid, there is less downtime and maintenance. We don't have any downtime due to NetApp storage.

Our internal operations are rather static. We're a healthcare company, so we have the same product line. We don't have to fluctuate too much due to market pressure. The integration with VMware has streamlined the IT operations, where we can use vCenter to do half our BlueXP work.

One of the biggest challenges we had recently was SnapMirror. SnapMirror is rather old, but that shows how good it is. It hasn't been reinvented in so long. We're on-prem right now. I think hybrid integration with BlueXp to manage both storage types will greatly benefit us. We're not heavily involved in AI, but I am so happy that NetApp is with ARP and Cloud Insights. 

We plan to expand our NetApp usage to include more AI and ransomware protections. I want to strengthen our security posture with MFA and multi-admin approvals. We want to get off VMware and go right to Kubernetes. 

Our future investment will focus on cybersecurity. We've had partners who were attacked, infected, and went down. I won't give names. We weren't affected, but we were indirectly affected. We had to change how we communicated with them. It's coming from the top down that we all need to focus more on cybersecurity.

Unfortunately, cybersecurity throws a wrench into innovation. We only have so much money, tools, and people, but it's what you have to do. You can't just say that we're not going to do it, and we're going to develop a new product line.

We're not fully utilizing NetApp's Converge BlueXP, but it's a great help. It integrates on-prem and cold storage and provides disaster recovery. We'll see more benefits as it improves.

We implemented SnapCenter for SQL, which we provide to our customers for free. It provides hourly point-in-time recovery, which they weren't expecting, and we already had the license. They got it for free.

NetApp's price could be improved. All storage is expensive. NetApp is not cheap, but we can't return to anybody else now. We'd lose too much value. We'd be, reinventing ourselves.

We have used NetApp for 10 years.

We came from HPE and considered Dell EMC, but we're not in block storage anymore. We want the flexibility of NAS, and it wasn't hard to decide on NetApp.
It's come a long way, and we can train new employees that have never touched NetApp. They can get going in a week and start being administrators quickly using all the GUI tools. 

We've had instances before where we were on block storage with VMware. And if it fills up or anything happens, you have downtime. NetApp now gives us more alerts, so we expand it on the fly. It will auto-expand on the fly. So I think that's definitely a big outcome.

I only made the decision at the technology level about whether it would fit into our stack and provide for our needs. I never got involved in the cost, so I don't know if cost was a deciding factor. When we adopted it 10 years ago, NetApp was a different storage creature than everybody else. It was an easier decision. If we wanted to stay with block storage, we could go with anybody else, and they were almost identical at the time.

I rate NetApp 10 out of 10. 

NetApp allows us to provide resiliency in operations. We had some data center outages before, however, our operations under this service offering were untouched, unscathed. Due to that, we're deploying more of the product in our infrastructure.

We had many issues with our current NAS offering with the competitor's product. With some enhancements to the Apple stack, we're able to provide a better service. It also allows us to tier off older data at a cheaper cost.

We use StorageGRID, which is now our go-to archive platform. We're able to use that tool to archive a lot of other third-party arrays from Dell EMC and Data Domain, and specifically with the PowerScale platform, we're able to archive using their native tiering tools to the NetApp platform.

We're keeping our data archive for more than seven years. We needed a cost solution that was better than AWS. We looked at different vendor offerings, including ECS and VAST, and we chose StorageGRID over them.

The evolving cybersecurity landscape and proliferation of AI influenced our technology decisions. We wanted something that would integrate with some type of malware protection. And we did a POC on Cloud Insights, and then, used the BlueX Blue classification tool to identify the data, figure out who owns the data, and to provide some governance around our data. It's a really good product. 

Once we automate the provisioning process through our cloud portal, we're going to be presenting this as a better offering to our customers. Right now, it's behind the scenes. It's word-of-mouth. We still have a ton of studios and tons of other segments wanting to get on board with our tools. 

We had some issues with some of the product's POCs; however, once the bugs are all ironed out, everything is golden. We had a lot of issues with two-factor authentication using, for example, Okta.

We looked at a few other solutions, including Pure Storage and Dell EMC.

We chose this solution based on integration with automation tools such as Ansible and the native tools of fabric cooling, and native tiering within the product.

Our next goals would be to add some type of QoS to the platform and also be able to integrate with other cloud providers as we migrate stuff back from the cloud.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's really, really good.

While our main driver is innovation, upper leadership's concern is always cost. We're always pushed towards cost. We found a good solution with this product.

Our upcoming investments will be prioritized around data storage and optimization, cybersecurity, and AI. We're doing all three at the same time. We'll have to get the go-ahead from upper managers to pursue AI initiatives. At the same time, we're getting a big push from global security to do malware intrusion protection. 

We want a way to dedupe and replicate our data. We were using filers using SnapMirror, and now we're taking our snapshots across data center support on StorageGRID. 

It's helping us achieve our budget constraints while allowing us to work in other areas.

We are a semiconductor manufacturer. We use the solution for our data for manufacturing, design, research, and development. Our customers are satisfied. We deliver products on time, sometimes ahead of time. For our customers, the solution has contributed to the stability and the performance has contributed to the way we actually roll out our products. Partially our customer satisfaction is coming from the fact that we are always on time and our quality is high. And of course, storage reliability is one of the components of that.

The performance, reliability, and stability are all very good. 

NetApp has helped to streamline our internal operations and adapt to changing market conditions. Storage tools and protocols, like SnapMirror or FlexCache, have enabled us to move data more quickly and with more ease and handle distributed data pretty much without any additional hassle.

Over the years, the main features have been great, and the introduction of Snapshot has become really big. Most recently, it's been the addition of FlexCache.

We'd like to see data move faster. We have distributed data around the world and we'd like to synchronize and move data faster between our locations.

We'd like to have faster reaction time to particular needs.

We have been using NetApp since 1996.

We plan to deploy more servers to more locations and enable FlexCache for most of our data.

The customer support, the amount of experts that the solution has as a company, and then making them available to us, has been great.

There are a lot of competing companies, in particular, EMC and Pure Storage. We have the most familiarity with this product since we've been using it for over two decades.

We haven't tried everybody in the world, and we probably don't want to say that the solution is the best since we don't want them to rest on their laurels. That said, I would easily rate NetApp nine out of ten.

Now, all other companies are copying that solution's success.

The most important aspects of any solution are cost and innovation.