NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

Ease of use: We're familiar with the NetApp platform and ONTAP. We're comfortable with the tool sets that it has. We've been trained on it as a group for quite sometime. We started out with IBM-branded NetApp with 7-mode. We've grown from 7-mode all the way into ONTAP 9.0. The cross training amongst players or team members allows us to help each other with issues that we deal with on a regular basis. We find that there's a lot of value in that.

We use it for a storage location for Riverbed centralized storage. We use it for VMware, VMFS volumes, and for our VMware platform. We also use it for iSCSI and for regular RDM server storage. We use it primarily for block-related storage.

We use it for multiple apps. It's enterprise-wide. We have eMARs. We have what they call the Obamacare Exchange running on it, and HBE for the State of Kentucky. We have a lot of VMware running on it, which have 1000s of servers that their VMDK files are nested in VMFS volumes which run on the AFF8080.

One of the primary reasons that we went with the AFF was because of the dedupe, the compression, and that it's not software-based, but it's hardware-based. It's inline.

Learn about the benefits of NVMe, NVME-oF and SCM. Read New Frontiers in Solid-State Storage.

• Performance
• Integration into the ONTAP
• The cost of the product itself

With the compression and dedupe, it's not necessarily a one-to-one gigabyte for gigabyte, where the compression and the dedupe allow you to buy a lot less, but to obtain a lot more storage capacity at the same time, hence getting the performance of SSD but they are not impacted by the two components of dedupe and compression. In summary, they don't get in the way of the performance of the product.

I would like to see a little more integration with some of the core fundamental components of OCI as part of the ONTAP OnCommand Manager, instead of it just being either all OnCommand Unified Manager or being able to see OCI and all of that it does. With what we pay for a node-pair and the OnCommand Unified manager, there ought to be at least a third of that integration in performance monitoring and alerting, and there's a lot there, don't get me wrong. We've got all the alerting and everything, but there should be a little more of the OCI bundled into the OnCommand Unified Manager.

In future versions, since we own every license that NetApp has except SnapLock. I would like to see SnapLock integrated into the platform, and not be an additional cost for a license.

We had every license when we purchased our platform. We're a major player in NetApp when you consider our total platform, as far as all the data that we manage is around about 12.5 to 13 petabytes. When you consider the size of our investment into NetApp, whether it's the AltaVault storage grid, E-Series 2800, FAS8060, 8080, or the AFF8700, we have a substantial purchase into all of their products at both the Commonwealth datacenter and also the alternate datacenter. When you consider we own every license that they have, except the SnapLock, and that's the one that we need the most right now for our stakeholders' legal purposes.

It's pretty good overall. With the auto-supports and the support SEs which are on staff when stuff goes bad and we have bad hard drives, we found that it's a pretty stable platform.

Also, all storage platforms have issues. There's things that go wrong with all storage platforms. There's no magic platform out there, but the response of the NetApp support staff, engineering, the ticketing, and the people whom help when you call in a ticket, they're very responsive and that also has a great value.

It's very scalable. Right now, at our primary site, we have four FAS8060 nodes. We have two node-pairs of 8080, and we're adding an additional node-pair of 8080 along with a node-pair of A700. At an alternate data site, we've got a node-pair of 8060 and a node-pair of 8080. We're adding a node-pair of 80200. For the upgrade at the primary site, the only portion of that would be considered risky is it has to go through change control when replacing the intercluster switch. Because we're expanding beyond the capacity of the original switch that we purchased, and it's very scalable, and we like the product.

They're always very good. Whether I contact them online or whether I call in, they're very diligent in following up and making sure issues have been resolved before they close the ticket.

Learn about the benefits of NVMe, NVME-oF and SCM. Read New Frontiers in Solid-State Storage.

We have multiple platforms. We have EMC, VNX7600s, and we just got rid of a VNX5600 and 5400 that were not able to keep up with the compute for what we were driving through them. We had on one of those systems, the VNX5600, we had 250 terabytes of free space that couldn't be utilized because the processing power on the platform couldn't keep up with what we needed. It was over-utilized, therefore we went with NetApp because it has the ability to handle the load that we throw at it.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was somewhat complex, because we did cutover from 7-mode, where we stood up a brand new platform, were having to move the data from one to the other, and were dealing with the outages that were involved, but also going from the seven-mode to the ONTAP and the clustering and how it is different.

I also do a lot of the infrastructure, as far as the fabric management, the ports, the trunks, and the fiber-connections from the NetApp platform or the NetApp cluster to the IBM Brocade Branded Directors. I do all of it: the zoning and the fabric management. It's very detailed and very complex. You have to really know what you're doing in order to get that set up properly. It is not on NetApp. That's just in general. If it was any system, you would have that to deal with.

Every time we go through an upgrade process or we have a new purchase, we look at what functionality is offered by each vendor/manufacturer and we don't purchase based on fidelity to a single vendor. It has to be based on:

1. Monetarily does it make sense for us to go with that vendor. Are they willing to work with us on the price?
2. What they're offering. Does it give us what we need?
3. Does it allow us scalability in what we're doing?

We just got finished purchasing a new node-pair of 8080, AFF8700, and an 8200. If Unity would have come in at a comparable price, we could have gone with them. We didn't simply because of the scalability of the product.

Look for these three major components when researching a similar product:

1. Supportability with tech support
2. Scalability
3. The stability of the platforms.

As far as AFF, we've had far better response and longevity of the actual drives themselves because they don't wear out as fast as a spindle drive does. I would say don't go with spindle. Go with All Flash unless it's archive.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Supportability
• Performance
• Scalability.

We're a hospital and we store all of our patient records on it. Everything that we do in the hospital is done on there. It does it for VMware as well as databases and Oracle, we do everything on it. It allows us to do our job.

Learn about the benefits of NVMe, NVME-oF and SCM. Read New Frontiers in Solid-State Storage.

The capabilities of ONTAP is what drives me towards NetApp.

Their ability to put more storage on smaller spaces through their deduplication compaction. Routines and thin storage are very valuable to us. 

An additional feature that I would like to see better support for is block level storage, where they understand what's inside the LUNs as well as the LUNs themselves.

Though with 9.2 coming out, there is very little else that I want. I think anything they add at this point is going to be just icing, because it's already meeting my needs.

It's very stable.

I like the scalability, the clusters, being able to add new nodes and such. It also makes for easy upgrades; you just add new nodes, move stuff off, and take the old nodes off.

They are very good, knowledgeable, and responsive. Though every once in awhile, you get a knucklehead.

Learn about the benefits of NVMe, NVME-oF and SCM. Read New Frontiers in Solid-State Storage.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

We were using an EMC solution before this one. We switched when we ran out of performance on what we had.

I was involved in the setup.

They preconfigured it at the factory and that is a pain in the neck. This should stop.

We evaluated EMC, Hitachi and NetApp.

When choosing a storage, it's a matter of management. Once you've bought the storage, all your time is spent in management. So, look at the software as well as the hardware.

We use it for block storage almost exclusively.

We are more likely to consider NetApp for mission critical storage systems because they have been excellent to work with and their product has been stable.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: support and performance.

While our VDI people are storing user profiles, we make good use of single name space. With application driven ride, VDI has driven us to use NetApp because they needed a single name space and there's just no vendor on the market that can do single name space with All Flash.

In the single name space, the profile pad need not be changed for various users. All the users of VDI can be pointed towards one profile source.

Our primary use case for All Flash is we put VDI on it and we put our Providence Health Systems work on Epic. Epic is our tier one app. We put all the NAS needs for the Epic app on All Flash, and we also put our user home directories on All Flash.

We would like to see permission repair technology built into ONTAP. We have it in EMC Isilon and we have been asking our accounting to take it to the engineering team. We want a job repair technology in EMC Isilon, in that app as well, so that app can refer to it and build on it.

Also, the product could be made cheaper.

We have been using it for eight months.

The stability is good.

It is certainly scalable.

We used tech support. They are good, smart, and responsive.

No, we didn't use a previous solution. We came to AAF 300 All Flash because we were refreshing all of our NetApp applications.

I am the lead for all NetApp installs. Every time we had a good installer coming onsite, so we make it easy for them and they make it easy for us.

We use All Flash for block and file storage.

We have been a NetApp shop for a while, even before AAF 300. Thus, our impression of NetApp has a long history. It's been good to us in providing the support and giving us the right solutions when we need them. Therefore, we have a good impression of NetApp.

I recommend NetApp. If someone is looking at a similar solution, I would give them the advice, "Go for NetApp."

When it comes to NAS services, they have better operating systems compared to anyone, even other vendors would have it, but NetApp has a long history of being in the market and large customer base. Therefore, they might have gone through various problems and solutions compared to any new vendors who are out there. Experience matters.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• How robust the technology is
• How reliable the vendor is
• How experienced they are.

• Performance
• Contingency, failover, and data recovery
• It's a good vendor.

They have always been really supportive, easy to get ahold of, and easy to work with.

The primary use case for All Flash is improved performance.

• Better performance
• More reliable systems
• Less space needed versus competitors of similar storage

Simplifying the solution for performance, though they are already working on it. Also, making the UI more user-friendly couldn't hurt.

Over five years.

It's very stable. We haven't had any problems in our environment.

It is very easy to scale.

We have a good relationship with our representatives through them. Our sales representative gave us a lot of information as far as moving forward with upgrading stuff.

It has been used quite a few times and we always have always had a good response from them. They are very knowledgeable.

It was very straightforward.

We use both block and file storage.

NetApp is the leader in the field for high performance and storage systems. They have always been our primary go to. We are more likely to consider NetApp for mission critical storage systems based on our experience.

Advice for someone looking at similar products: Just do the research beforehand and you'll be able to tell what vendors separate themselves from the rest as far as other companies' reviews out there. I would definitely recommend NetApp All Flash FAS.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: compatibility and communication. Being able to rely on them whenever we need them.

We have been able to construct a business intelligence environment with nearly instant reporting for our parks, so they can determine where resources need to be put during the middle of a day. So, if there's a rainstorm, they can determine that we need to move people to front gates, we need to move pizzas here, etc. It enables realtime actions to events.

Learn about the benefits of NVMe, NVME-oF and SCM. Read New Frontiers in Solid-State Storage.

The performance is the most valuable feature.

The primary use cases for our All Flash storage system are primarily server virtualization and data storage for unstructured storage. We use it for both block storage and file storage.

The only complaints I ever had was with OnCommand Unified Manager and Performance Manager, and they fixed them in the last version.

It's pretty reliable. We do our upgrades in the middle of the day, with parks open. If I'm not up at 3:00 in the morning doing an upgrade because of a risk, that's a great thing.

We haven't had to scale yet. However, we built it so if we do, it's very simple to do. We could probably do it with an onsite staff and not need professional services.

We have frequently used tech support. They are one of the best departments at NetApp. Without them, we wouldn't be able to operate the way we do.

Learn about the benefits of NVMe, NVME-oF and SCM. Read New Frontiers in Solid-State Storage.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

We had a different NetApp solution before. We actually started running the numbers, and due to the age of the systems, we were starting to lose multiple disks at a time. We were going to have a point where we lost data, so it was time to replace them. NetApp was the only vendor that really worked out during the quote process.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was very straightforward. By the end of the process, we had it down to where we were converting an entire park within 48 hours.

Definitely go with NetApp. You're going to look at other vendors. They may come in at a cheaper price point, but you will pay in the end with management costs and downtime.

Before purchase All Flash, we had a very high impression of NetApp as a vendor of high performance sound storage. It is still very high as it is the only vendor we would consider for mission critical systems based on our experience at this point.

We looked at some other vendors. They can't provide the single pane of glass management. We're a very thinly-staffed environment, and we need to be able to have a minimum number of people managing the maximum amount of resources. Other vendors don't do that.

For example, we looked at EMC. Their primary problem was the pane of glass problem. They offered three solutions to do what we're already doing with one. Nimble was the other solution which we looked at, and they were protocol limited. They could only do iSCSI, which would have required a significant architecture rebuilt for us.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• High availability
• Reliability
• Performance.

We have to be able to do the three P's. Get people in the front gate, sell them plush "Bugs Bunnies", and sell them pizzas. If we can't do that, we have a problem.

The most valuable feature is the support. If we have any issues, we can call into NetApp and their support is really good.

Speed and reliability of the data's access is the main reason why we went with All Flash. We mainly use All Flash for file storage.

With the new all solid state, it has really good performance.

We have had NetApp for many years. It's been reliable. If we have a disk go bad, they send it out with all the auto support features. We're hands off and all that stuff is being done behind the scenes. That's really valuable.

The primary use case is to put all of our data on NetApp, all of our primary data anyhow. Our SQL databases are Oracle databases. We even have all of our SIF shares on there right now just because we don't have that much. We're probably looking at 120 terabytes of data. We don't have that much, so we are able to put everything on All-Flash.

It would be nice to have better integration between SRM and VMware, as I've had some issues with that. Though this may just be our particular system and may not be a global issue.

Also, maybe include additional instructions on how to set it up properly.

We have been a NetApp customer for many years, so we had all SATA/SAS drives before. Just last year, we got the All Flash FAS system. Every year, it gets better.

We have been with NetApp for many years and haven't had any issues. If we do, NetApp is there to support us.

It's really good.

We had a vendor come in and they set us up.

Obviously depending on the price point, NetApp is obviously a little more expensive than your generic Dell SAN solution or whatever.

It's reliable. The speed is good. We've tried to push the thing to the max and it's almost impossible. The CPU of our host gets limited before the storage gets limited, therefore backup solutions for it is easy.

Depending on what your needs are, obviously NetApp would be the way to go.

We have our ESB system which was actually running on an older NetApp that was having severe latency. Therefore, we just implemented an All-Flash system this year, which dropped the latency by at least four times, so now it runs without any hiccups or problems.

The company as a whole definitely is far more lenient towards NetApp now that we have the All-Flash array because the major ESB system is now running without any problems. Thus, it's made a big difference in the outlook of NetApp for our company.

• Lower latency
• Easier to manage with the clustered system and everything with the newest ONTAP 9.
• Also it has the WAN acceleration between locations, which sped up our replication as well.

Higher communication: I love the professional services and I love everything that everyone's able to offer us, but I find sometimes we're not aware of all the things that NetApp can do.

With the new clustered system, because it has the switches in-between the cluster, it's far more redundant and far less likely to have any kind of outage, even if our network isn't as stable as we'd like it to be.

We haven't had to scale it yet.

I was the main engineer on the implementation. We had professional services that came out and helped us, install it and set it up, to make sure that everything was running properly, which was amazing. The set-up of the clustered system, while complex, was very necessary to ensure redundancy.

After it was set up, it was very straightforward getting moved over; pretty seamless for the most part.

Give NetApp a shot. There's a lot of other really good solutions out there as well. I'm pretty entrenched in NetApp personally because I think they do a great job.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Dependency and redundancy; just ensuring that we're able to stay up constantly. That's the biggest thing. It's because any downtime causes our stores not to be able to take transactions, that's not okay.

The benefits are automatic; the power consumption is very low with the All Flash and the performance is very high. So, it helped us to better serve our customers to do the VMware data source.

The scale up version of it is the most valuable feature. You can go to 24 nodes, which is very cool. We are primarily using VMware environment. We use it for VMware data source for our hosting customers. We have 32 petabytes of data on NetApp's storage, so we definitely use it for primary storage.

Going forward, I would like more performance analytics on it, on the area itself, instead of using some other tool.

It's very stable.

We have a 9.1 operating system on it, and it's very stable. We did an upgrade online, and we had no issues. We did a failover testing, and nothing. It's solid.

The scalability is good.

I use it for small issues, like how to configure using multiple VLANs. It was pretty easy to set up, and the technical support were very good.

We decided, as a company, to not buy any more disk storage for our primary customers, and that's the reason we needed All Flash. NetApp was a perfect fit because we could grow as we needed and it scales out the architecture works for us. We were looking for a high-performance, small, low footprint block rate, and NetApp fits in right there.

Very straightforward. NetApp already does all the installation for us. They just come in and set the IPs, etc.

It's a pretty solid solution. If you're looking for a block solution, or file solution, on flash, you definitely have to look at it.