NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

We primarily use the solution for service deck storage.

Scalability is the most valuable feature. The ones that I use are hot spot-able. If we need more, we can just throw in another drive. 

I like the fact that if my drive goes bad it doesn't crash automatically and the system will try to auto-save that data by moving it to one of the hot spots. Then we can just pull out that drive and throw our brand new one in and we'll remove it from the 2020 or 2040s. We went from 600 GBs to 1.2 TBs. We have plenty of storage. 

I like how easy it is to discover an issue and either resolve that issue or fine-tune that app to premium support to find that resolution. 

We've reduced operational latency. We use the 40 GB connection. In terms of latency between our storage and the VMs that we use, latency is almost nonexistent since we have the server and FAS so close together. We use a 40 GB fiber-optic connection on the back. We don't see any latency at all. We've reduced it to less than 5%. While you can never reduce it to zero, it's barely noticeable at this point. 

There are no big areas needed for improvement. 

Whenever we use it, I've never had a problem that couldn't be fixed with just a phone call. I've never really had any absolute dead zones on it. I can't think of a way to make it better than it already is.

The size of NetApp could be better. They're always about 40 pounds without the hard drives in them, so it would be great if there's a way to make them smaller yet keep the functionality. That would reduce the physical footprint.

I've been using the solution since 2012.

I haven't really come across any stability problems. It's pretty stable. It's fantastic. 

Data recovery is awesome. If we ever have any issue with having to recover any data on there due to the system and the way we have it set up, we can have it back within an hour. That's thanks to our backup system and the connectivity that we have between NetApp and our backup. 

We're using one with between 30 and 35 virtual servers. However, we have those together with 14 other stacks of the same size. 

I like the fact that they're very hands-on in finding that resolution for us. We've faced a lot of problems since we break the system on purpose just to make sure that when we go out to the fields and use it, if we have the same problem, we know how to fix it.

Technical support is excellent. We've never had a problem with them, and they always came back to us with an answer. Within 24 hours, we have our fix.

Positive

We have always used NetApp. We did not previously use a different solution. 

I've never deployed the solution. I've just worked with it directly. 

The best benefit I've seen using it was the data distribution between two different FASs for data backups. It should be fast, and it's super reliable. It's easy to do, and it's an almost hands-off way of setting up. That's where the ROI is for us. 

I've never worked with pricing. I can't speak to the exact costs.

We thought about using Dell, however, when it came to cost-effectiveness, we stayed with NetApp. I like the way NetApp is coded and its maintenance configuration. I know how to set up a NetApp; I prefer that over Dell.

AFF hasn't necessarily helped us to optimize FAS as we've always used it, and it's never been detrimental for us to use it.

I have not been affected by ransomware since deploying AFF. I wouldn't say that is due to any extra attention. The environments that I use it on, we're behind several mitigations for that.

We do not use any other NetApp services at this time. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for databases, including Oracle, SQL, PostgreSQL, and VMware. 

We're moving some data warehouses over as well as our main financial system.

The NVMe flash cache is the most useful feature. It lowers transactional speed even more.

We have found the ease of use to be excellent. Everybody's got expertise in it.

AFF helped reduce our operational latency. Since we started using it, we've improved by 20%.

AFF has helped us optimize our costs. We partnered with StorageGRID on that, and so we tier our data with StorageGRID and use AFF for the hot data, and then we tier it off to StorageGRID, which is really helping with that.

I do not have any notes for areas of improvement. 

There's a lag with StorageGRID. It's off of this tier-three disc. After a few days, we sluff it off to StorageGRID, and then if all of a sudden, they need to restore that data, it takes a while to spin it back up and write it back to that. What would be great is if they could actually make StorageGRID so that it's pretty fast and has a fast recall. That being said, that's a recovery issue. 

In the past, NetApp designed it so that you have a 70% threshold. You would never fill up past 70% since you need to have that room available. Whereas with Pure, I can fill it up to 110% of what they listed and it's still going at full speed. NetApp can't do that. They need to build in more capacity to ensure users don't lose 30% of a buffer off the top. 

I've been using the solution for six years. 

The stability is fantastic. They're really coming as close to a high availability system as you can get.

In the past, with the controller failover, you'd have to rely on the other controller. It was a little bit hit or miss. AFF has really stepped it up to where I'm not lagging on performance when it fails over if it's an upgrade, update, or something like that. I don't have to worry as much about controller failure anymore.

Scalability is great. It's just expensive. That's why we would go with StorageGRID. Due to supply chain issues, I already know that these flash drives are so expensive. We're paying through the roof for those drives even on a discount. Therefore, while scalability's great, we can't really afford it. I can't go and buy a $4 million system. 

Technical support is pretty good. It is hit or miss. For the most part, it's good.

The main complaints I get from the engineers are that they'll just say, "it's a future release, and that future release is just too far down the road, and we need to get that done right away." Whereas we see a pain point now, and we would like to see them fix our problems right now. That said, we understand we're not the biggest customer on planet earth. 

Neutral

Before AFF, we used Hitachi. We switched to simplify from the fiber channel over to NAS. We were looking to simplify and make the network the cost point instead of having fibre channel expertise and network expertise.

I was not involved in the initial setup of the solution. 

We've probably optimized our costs by 70%.

We have seen ROI in terms of less latency on applications and users being able to get more done more quickly. The experience is really good with StorageGRID unless you're doing restores, and then they've got to restore that data. That's the only thing that's lagging. That said, the return on investment has been great since the DBAs and the other customers get more done and get more cycles accomplished with that enhanced IOP performance.

The pricing is palatable; we can swallow it. We're a longtime customer and we view our relationship as a partnership, not just a one-time deal. They have taken good care of us.

We looked at Dell, Pure, and EMC, among other options. 

I like Pure. Pure has very low-cost copies of point-in-time databases that they can spin up immediately, and the developers, the database administrators, can have that hanging off the same disc at a low cost. It's just built off of the existing data, and I haven't seen NetApp come up with anything like that yet.

The Snapshotting, SnapMirror, SnapVault technologies, and just having all of those technologies, are really nice so that we can get a copy, SnapMirror, for example, in the data center, and we can have that spun up really quick. That's NetApp's technology and that's the advantage there.

I have not used BlueX, their cloud management aspect.

We haven't seen any ransomware attacks. Security's pretty closed off. They're not going to tell us if something happens, so it's hard to gain visibility. We'll just know that we've got to do a restore or something. That said, we haven't lost anything.

We do not use any other NetApp cloud services. We just use StorageGRID and the AFF right now. FSX looks intriguing. We'd be willing to test it in the future. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's a good product.

The main service of those devices is for use at our offshore platforms and that's where they'll be heading. We have a lot of data offshore, seismic data, and it needs to be stored in a reliable system. The main use case is to store the core business data from the platform at our offshore site, so that it is safe.

In general, NetApp AFF helps simplify data management across SAN environments. We have several solutions within our company and we are converging all the data from those solutions into NetApp by mounting volumes and LUNs in our SAN environment. It allows us to concentrate all the data reliably in one platform. It also gives us a single pane of glass so that we can manage all the data properly. We can visualize and get a holistic view of what we have and how secure the data is. We have the bigger picture. It gives us a lot of flexibility when it comes to better management and using it has been an awesome experience.

Because it gives us a single pane of glass, it helps us to analyze the system itself and gives us a realistic view of what's going on: the issues, the warnings, and the errors. As a result, we can easily prevent a lot of problems, and that is something that we couldn't do previously. It also facilitates the troubleshooting process due to the high volume of information that it gives us. It definitely helps reduce support issues. But in terms of reducing IT support costs, it's still a little too early to talk about that. We know it is going to affect things in a good way, but we don't have enough data about that yet.

The file system in NetApp makes it easy to read and write data. It actually speeds up a lot of the operations that we are performing on a daily basis. With several of our virtual machines, we have noticed that the performance has increased quite a bit. In terms of writing, reading, and storing the data, the performance of the VMs has increased significantly. We are pretty happy with that so far.

ONTAP has also simplified our operations and that means we don't need a lot of people to manage the infra. NetApp makes it so easy. We can allocate people to other projects and those people can gain new skills in other platforms, rather than just working in NetApp itself.

We wanted the replication and SnapMirror and those types of features in case an event occurs. That way, we have a proper system so that we can recover the data properly. One of the main features that we love about the system is the ability to create snapshots. NetApp makes a lot of snapshots in a short space of time.

Also, the speed of data recovery with NetApp, at the time we need it, is an important feature that we love.

The deployment itself, compared to other platforms, should be a lot easier. We don't find it all that complicated because we have been doing it for such a long time, but it should be a bit easier. They can improve that.

When it comes to the connectivity on the back end, where the hardware is concerned—the cabling and the like—it could also be simplified to ease the communication between the nodes and between the other components of the infrastructure. I still find that a little bit complicated. I know that SAN, itself, is quite complicated. It's not the same approach as the hyper-converged solutions, but there are always ways to improve. NetApp's engineers should try to tackle that so that integration between devices, including the cabling at the back, is simplified.

Another thing that could be simplified is the Service Processor setup. That is something that requires you to perform a lot of tasks before it is completed.

Also, joining clusters should be a lot easier. With one or two commands you should be able to complete that.

I have been using NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) for the last year. 

It is a very robust solution. It doesn't break easily, even when we have power failures, which is something we have in this country. NetApp gives us the resilience we need. We know we can trust NetApp.

The scalability is very good.

The documentation is crystal clear and easy to follow.

Positive

The systems we have offshore needed to be upgraded. That's why we decided to upgrade them to NetApp. It is a solution that we have used previously in some of our other companies and we know the solution is very reliable.

For file services, we used to have Synology, but that was for small projects. It's pretty tough to compare because the magnitude of what they were serving is completely different.

The initial setup is complex. It should be easier.

The initial deployment took three days, and that was working on it two or three hours a day. We got two appliances, 2750s, at the end of last year and we completed the setup about three weeks ago. We set up the volumes and the v-servers. We are currently configuring the system and, in the next month or so, the appliance will be done and it will be transferred to the new site offshore.

Our deployment included initializing all the disks, doing the network configuration setup, including the IPs, the mask, the gateways, the DNS, et cetera. Then we had to apply the licenses for all the services. Next, we had to create the volume structure. Then we could start mounting them on other devices so that we can integrate the storage itself with the rest of our system.

We have five people working on the solution.

We started doing it by ourselves and then we had to call for help from a consultant. We were completely satisfied with our experience with that consultant.

Get it, because it's reliable, stable, robust, and it serves the purpose.

NetApp's performance in India is excellent. I have been in this industry for 26 years. The support and services are also excellent. My downtime is minimal. The support for their solutions is superb. Years ago, we all used tape drive backup. We approached NetApp about an alternative, and they offered a good ROI compared to what we used to use. 

It was a game-changer for Salesforce. We also use NetApp as object storage for Rubrik. We've streamlined many things in those areas. We use many workflows, and the performance is good. 

NetApp has improved our performance based on our business requirements and streamlined our production activity. I rate NetApp's technology 10 out of 10. Availability and performance are key areas in which NetApp has improved us as an organization. It raises our performance by two or three times and provides additional space. 

NetApp's All-Flash storage solution has delivered the most value for our company. All-Flash is an excellent technology that delivers high performance for our workloads. We are happy with that.

NetApp could improve its security and AI features. In the latest version, I would like to see some ransomware protection.

I have worked with NetApp solutions for 26 years. 

The significant difference between NetApp and competitors is support, price, and performance, which are all excellent.

I rate the NetApp solution 10 out of 10. 

NetApp helps us grow while maintaining the stability of our data. In the national justice ministry, we are using a StorageGRID and the AFF application. It's a good, flexible tool that we can adapt.

We value NetApp's ransomware protection the most.

The web management interface has fewer options than the on-prem console.

We have used NetApp since 2010.

I rate NetApp 10 out of 10. 

The storage aspect is the main area we utilize.

NetApp has provided us with a lot of flexibility. It helps us a lot with fast deliveries. It offers simple management.

The design has been great. It checks all the boxes with less struggle compared to other technologies. 

The knowledge base could be improved. We want to continue to learn things and move forward.

We do plan to expand usage. This product is our primary storage.

We considered solutions like Dell and EMC. This product just checked the boxes. Security was also a big factor when deciding which to choose.

Our goal moving forward is to get the latest technologies as needed. In the future, upcoming investments will center around AI, data storage and optimization and cybersecurity. We might leverage AI and how we do things internally and assess what we can and can't improve.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We have Cloud Volumes on top of our RDR instance and SnapMirror from on-prem to that.

We use AFF to replicate the data from our on-premises data center to the cloud.

The changes to the forms of our databases have been the most valuable aspect. We have a large healthcare information exchange in New York. It has better efficiency and good performance of larger systems. It's really noticeable.  

It has served to process data, serve our clients, and keep the systems up reasonably well. I'm trying to have data protection with everything incorporated into the systems in the environment.

It has good scalability and keeps the systems stable, performing, and running well. We have a lot of data. We're continuously testing a lot of data. We're expanding and growing. It makes sure that we can have everything running, keep uptime, and have everything protected and secure. It makes sure the data is relevant rather than being out of sync.

We leverage many features that NetApp has provided, like FlexPoint, to rapidly build systems. The performance is noticeable.  

AFF has helped to reduce our operational latency. Latency hasn't been too much of an issue, especially for large, higher-performing systems. We migrate most of our production to AFF. 

NetApp AFF helped reduce support issues such as performance tuning and troubleshooting combined with Active IQ; those things have made it. We don't have many issues with the AFF systems.

All of the features are good. With Flash, we have high-performing databases. Having that kind of performance has been valuable.

Moreover, the simplified infrastructure has become easier to manage. We have a small team, so it's made it less difficult to keep things going. 

It's very intuitive to work with, and all the seamless tools and applications come together. Our team isn't big, so it's more manageable.

It's more about protecting data backups because the cache databases we use don't have any native controls like queuing for snapshots and stuff like that. 

We're working on trying to improve this with Ansible. More Ansible integration is the key right now. We would like to have more automation with Ansible and better ways to protect the data because we have application encryption. We need more leverage and native encryption tools that NetApp provides.

We have had this solution for three years. 

It's pretty stable. Our issue is growth. In terms of stability, it's very dependable. 

It is scalable. 

Generally, the support team is spot on, and helps us out a lot. The issues are few and far between. 

Generally, if we have issues, they're really specific, like Cloud Volume issues, replication, or tweaking because of our growth and data. 

Positive

There's an incentive to keep the uptime. Having it on high-performing hardware has improved and kept things going. There are fewer issues and we have higher processing.

NetApp has been the leading goal standard of technology in terms of storage. There was never an option of exploring any other technologies.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We are still going through some challenges because of application encryption. Challenges would be duplication and things like that.

Our IT department has two AFF clusters, but we also install them for our customers. We deploy them for tier-one use cases, like virtual machines, databases, and anything that needs fast, hot data. 

We've recently started using NetApp's cloud solutions, but our German customers are still reluctant because of the security, data management, GDPR, etc. Now, we have our cloud that we can sell to customers with Meta products. Cloud backup and cloud tiering are the two primary ones, but we also sell Cloud Insights to some customers.  Customers need backup services, but they often lack a separate data center where they can store their backups. The cloud is the most natural way to store the backup.

Our customers have latency issues or requirements for very low-latency applications. This is the problem they are addressing with AFF because it's the fastest system they can get. It's still the best solution for SAP or other databases.

We have checked other flash systems from different vendors, and the AFF is still the best because of the multi-protocol support, for example. Others only do block or file services in a very basic way. AFF does everything in one box. Now, with type 1, you don't even need to license the specific features. You can start with block storage and move to file later or the other way around. That's a plus for all customers.

I'm from Germany, so we have lots of metro clusters. The ability to have two sides that are redundant across hundreds or thousands of kilometers is critical for our customers. We have several hundred customers with metro cluster systems, so that is one of the best features.

Our customers need reliability for the data. They don't want the data to go down if something happens to the data center. They need synchronous replication to another location, and the metro cluster is the only solution that works in these scenarios involving distances of 100 or 200 kilometers. 

Feature-wise, AFF is already a top-tier system. I think that sometimes, the price is an issue for some customers. It isn't so much of a problem now that there is the C Series and the ASA, both of which are a little better price-wise. That's not much of an issue anymore. In the past, that was a concern because not everyone needed a high-performance system for every workload. Some customers only required that level of performance for a small segment of their workloads, but they still needed to buy a bigger system. We can address that issue with the C Series. 

We have used NetApp AFF since it came out. My company has been a NetApp partner since 2004, and we were using the FAS systems before, but we started selling AFF to our customers as soon as it was introduced. 

NetApp AFF is rock-solid. The stability and performance are top-notch. It's hard to recall a broken NetApp. In 20 years, we've installed more than a thousand base systems, and we've never had user data corruption.

The scalability is good because it can scale out a cluster of up to 24 nodes. Usually, our customers only have a two-node cluster, so scalability is not so much of an issue with us.

I rate NetApp support seven out of 10. It depends on who you get. You can get unlucky. We usually do the first-level support ourselves because we are a partner. Sometimes, NetApp support could be better. When the customers escalate, it can feel like everything's starting from scratch. These are rare cases. I'm not directly involved in support, but that's what I hear when something doesn't work. 

Neutral

We've been installing fast-flash systems for 20 years, so I'm highly experienced with them. The complexity of the deployment depends on the customer's environment. Some storage systems from other competitors might be easier for the customers, but we are a service provider, so we do the installation and train the engineers. From the end customer's perspective, it doesn't matter if the system is easy or not because they don't need to install the system. 

We do the training, installation, and heavy lifting. The system is a bit more complicated to install compared to other competitors. We can offset this because we are highly trained and have all the experience required.

I'm not familiar with the financial and operational details. I'm more of a technical guy. However, our customers wouldn't buy these products if they didn't see a reduction in TCO.

I rate NetApp AFF nine out of 10.