NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

There's always a little room for improvement.

We have had no issues, but we never went to production.

The technical support is excellent. Anytime we've had any kind of questions, our rep can help us or we'll call into NetApp auto-support. We have not had any problems. Tech support is knowledgeable and their response times are good.

We compared this tool against EMC’s XtremIO head-to-head, and the NetApp blew it out of the water. There was no competition. We were already a NetApp shop, so they were our preferred tool anyway. It has more features and links to my OS, innovative CIFS, and deduplication. We had the knowledge of the system already. It wasn't reinventing the workforce.

The installation was pretty easy. It was my third setup, so it was nothing really new. There's only one minor switch that turns it into an AFF.

We use the system to do stuff that isn't quite out yet. We love to do some oddball things. We're one of the first to use NetApp shift to compete and migrate away from VMware. We didn’t run into any issues with it, and it beat the competition.

When looking for a vendor, it's usually value first, which is not the right way to do it. That's what it comes down to. The value and then next is feature set.

Support's good. The product seems reliable. The uptime is good. We haven't had any major failures or anything like that. It runs all of our SAN VMware infrastructure with no problems, really.

The tools that it has, such as OnCommand Manager and so on, they're helpful if you're not a CLI type of person. I actually like the CLI as well. They're both pretty easy to navigate, especially with the cluster mode. You can do the tab completions and everything in CLI now. That helps you to navigate through otherwise long commands.

SnapMirror, all the Snap technology, is pretty cool. You can do SnapMirror, the vault and everything like that.

The migration from 7-mode to cluster mode probably could be improved. The migration tool that they use, the copy free transition tool, it's new and it seemed like, while I was trying to get everything prepared, few people really knew much about it at NetApp. I had to make a lot of calls, send out a lot of emails to find out if the current version was going to do what we needed it to do. I was told, no it won't; then I was told, yes it will. I'd say they need to keep working on that migration tool.

I have been using NetApp for about three years.

We have not really experienced any downtime to speak of. I did a migration recently from a 7-mode system to a cluster-mode system. While we were doing some of the migrations of some of the live VMs, our older ones started to max out on its processes. It didn't necessarily create downtime. It just kind of messed up our migration a little bit. We had to basically stop, regroup and then schedule it for another weekend. That'd be the closest thing to downtime, but I don't really consider it downtime, necessarily.

It's definitely scalable, especially with cluster mode. You can just hook in another set of controllers, add disk shelves. It's definitely scalable.

I feel like it's going to meet the organization's needs moving forward. As I've needed to add storage to it, I just grab another shelf and hook it up. It pulls in all the disks; you create your aggregates and everything. As far as if we ever need to add more controllers, you just connect them into the fabric, they come up and you can start sharing files, LUNs and all that stuff. It's definitely scalable.

Technical support is really good, knowledgeable, and responsive. Even with the migration I did, they sent out a professional services engineer at no charge to help us complete the migration of going from 7-mode to cluster mode between new hardware as well. We weren't just upgrading one system from 7-mode to cluster mode, we were actually upgrading and migrating to new hardware, so they sent somebody out and he assisted with the whole thing.

The auto support and everything like that is good. When we've had a disc fail, they're calling, they're emailing, they're sending disks out. I get a disk the next day. Support is definitely good.

Initial setup is not too bad. The cluster system I did not too long ago; you just console cable into it. It's got a guided setup on the CLI. After that's complete, you're on the network. You can use your web browser and access the OnCommand Manager application and start configuring SVMs and all that stuff. It's not super difficult. I know there are products out there that are probably easier. I've heard that Nimble Storage is supposed to be one that's really easy to use. On a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of complexity and everything, I'd say NetApp stuff is probably about 7 for me. I've only been in SAN storage and everything for, like I’ve mentioned, about three years. I'm still relatively new to the industry of SAN storage. I'd give it about a 7.

I recommend the product. I don't have a lot of experience with other solutions such as EMC Storage, Nimble, Fujitsu or Hitachi. I've never really messed with any of them so it's hard for me to compare.

I've been doing IT for a while. There some complexity to the NetApp stuff. I know that there are easier solutions out there such as the Nimble one. But overall, the NetApp AFF is a good product. You just need to know what you're doing a little bit or you're going to rely on support and other people. Take the classes. Make yourself familiar with it. That's what I've been doing.

Dedupe (cost saving): We were able to achieve a lot more capacity than expected.

• More desktops on storage
• Ease of management

• Software packaging and ordering.
• We wanted to integrate with replication and Commvault options, and that was difficult.

We have been using the solution for about six months.

We have not encountered any stability issues.

We have not yet encountered any scalability issues.

I would rate the technical support at about 8/10.

Other solutions were not all-flash compatible.

Initial setup was easy.

Compare and look for your use case.

We evaluated Pure Storage, SolidFire, EMC Unity.

The migration plan should be clear upfront.

The most valuable features are the deduplication and compression, along with NetApp's Snapshot technology.

I'm looking forward to the compaction feature after the code upgrade in a few months.

We have been looking for a flash solution that scales horizontally along with a proven application integration stack. NetApp has been helpful and stable, and enabled us to buy capacity as needed, as well as help in quickly refreshing UAT/DEV environments as needed.

The product still uses the concept of decoupling hardware with multiple HA pairs where system resources like CPU/memory is bound to a single controller. This approach definitely helps keep the system more resilient and stable, but it makes the environment a little complex for the end user to decide where to place their application for best performance. This is being mitigated by a few of the performance and automation tools they provide, but it may not be the most efficient approach in real time.

I have used it for one year.

There were no issues with stability.

Scalability in regards to capacity hasn't been an issue. The product really scales well.

With regard to performance, storage pools/aggregates are tied to a single node, so a storage device/LUN can only use CPU/memory of that particular node.

NetApp technical support has been excellent for years and they are also improving with their deep software engineering skills/customer reports.

We used to deploy other large storage vendor products that didn't integrate well with the application stack. Automation and efficiency has been a driver in the company, which made us switch to NetApp.

Initial setup was straightforward.

Snapshot/FlexClone are the core licenses that I would recommend to others. Opt for a converged infrastructure like FlexPod, where the Cisco UCS server platform is involved.

We evaluated other large flash vendors including EMC and Pure. Every vendor has their own niche in the flash industry.

Decide your current and future requirements in terms of performance, capacity scaling, application (SQL/Oracle/SharePoint/Exchange/SAP) integration, storage efficiency (dedupe/compression), operational overhead, etc., and decide on a vendor based on it.

No vendor is perfect in every aspect, so chose the vendor based on your requirements and test them!!!

• CIFS (stable solution)
• Ability to support multiple protocols

• SVM application provisioning: makes it easier to provision applications for VMware, VDI, Oracle, and SQL.
• All flash: low latency and higher IOPS since it’s all flash.

Firmware upgrades consistently continue to be the weak spot in all NetApp products.

For 8 months now.

I have not yet had any stability issues.

I have not had any issues with scalability.

On a scale of 1-5, I would rate them 3.5.

On a scale of 1-5, I would rate them 3.5.

Initial setup was complex. In spite of the new CDOT 9, NetApp setup is still complex. It requires configuration of all the network interfaces, SVMs, which can become a little overwhelming.

NetApp is trying to stay in competition and are offering competitive prices to existing/new consumers. The key is being aggressive.

We looked at Pure Storage and Nimble.

Be prepared for a lot of configuration hiccups before being operational.

It is very user friendly. Someone in my position needs to be able to bring up and shut down the system quickly, efficiently, and shut it down if there's a power outage quickly and efficiently without having trouble. It also supports VMware, which is what we use; but we use the NetApp as our only filer.

I am trying to understand it more, so I can employ it better during high tense situations.

I have been able to manage the system easily myself since we got NetApp four years ago.

The Ilom's graceful shutdown feature is no longer there in the version that I have. I believe I'm using 7.0.x, using the FAS 2040 and also the FAS 2020. I don't know where to say it needs improvement because I'm just not that versed in it yet.

It is excellent in terms of stability. I've had no issues during the last six years that I've had NetApp. Just recently, on one system that's been out and had a lot of controversy about, we had a filer fail on us. We were able to get a filer the following day. It was excellent.

For what we do, I can have up to close to 120,000 separate widgets running simultaneously and delivering data to other systems; and everything works, no problem. I am currently trying to find out where we’re moving ahead from here.

Technical support is excellent.

I was involved in building it. I found it a little bit grueling to get my certification to build it, but I really can't speak to the NetApp filer documentation. The documentation that we use for it is different from what NetApp uses.

I didn't evaluate anything. That is done in the organization at higher levels than I am. I know that NetApp won the contract again, so they must be doing something right because we’re not going to give a contract to anybody for a bad product. Right now, I'm concentrating on our collapse-down strategy in which we're taking multiple systems and putting them all on one system. That's why I'm here. I'm curious to see how it's going to impact the filer: whether the filer is going to need to expand; whether we're going to be migrating to a new filer; and so on.

From a relations perspective, it makes us look better that we have the best foundation to run things that we can. It also provides cost savings because it has efficiencies we can gain with it.

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

The performance is probably the most valuable feature. It allows us to meet our customer's needs, being able to provide that level of performance that they need for their workloads.

There's always going to be room for improvement. I don't really have anything sticking out that's a major pain point or something that it's not doing that I need it to do.

Anything that I might like to have seems to be happening already, whether it’s the price coming down, tracking performance, or higher capacities; that work is already getting done or it already has been done.

We're interested or excited in getting to 32-Gb fiber channel. With their new models, NetApp will be moving to 32-Gb fiber. That would potentially raise performance and or lower our port counts, simplifying or minimizing the amount of cables we need to put in places. It would be a nicety, to be able to clean things up and simplify. It’s something I’m looking forward to.

It seems to be rock solid. We've not had any issues with it at all.

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

Since we've added the All Flash FAS, we have scaled up. We've added additional disk shelves; it seems to be growing just fine with us.

I don't think we've had to open up any cases, or needed any kind of tech support on it, other than working with our VAR setting it up.

I've contributed opinions regarding the decision to invest in the All Flash FAS.
We've been NetApp customers for quite a while, so we just kind of grew into it, from disk to flash cache, flash pool and then to all flash.

I was involved in the initial set up. It was very straightforward. Working with our partner, they tend to do a lot of the work on our behalf but it's still a pretty straightforward process. That were really no gotchas.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

The solution is great; the company is fantastic to work with. I cannot think of a bad experience that we've had with either the company and or the product itself. We've had issues but nothing that wasn't overcome and worked through and better in the long run for working through it with a good company like NetApp.

We're very pleased with it but then I guess we don't have a lot of experience with other things to maybe compare.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is the support. Everybody's going to have issues with something, but being able to resolve or remediate any issues as quickly, seamlessly and as open as possible is very important to us.

With the FAS, the most valuable features are the snap capability and remote snap.

We would like to be able to import the share as NFS and CIFS at the same time. I recently came into three different scenarios where I needed to share the same data both to Windows and UNIX. Samba was not a solution that we could use, so it would have to be CIFS and NFS to UNIX.

I’ve been using this for at least 5 years.

We have not had any downtime with the FAS series. It has been very good and stable.

Scalability is good. It's going to meet our needs going forward. We are in the process of adding drawers to it right now.

Technical support is good. The problem right now is that NetApp is in the process of discontinuing old disks and the new disks are not yet available. We were in the process of upgrading, and I had to buy old disks that are going to be end-of-life by the end of the year, but new disks are not available yet.

This is a good solution. I would recommend that they go for it.