NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

Our main use revolves around database management, specifically for Oracle and SQL databases, including large databases, and for handling unstructured file data within our organization.

We've been addressing our evolving needs, and it was a logical progression as our systems demanded greater resources and improved performance, so it became the go-to solution for meeting those requirements. The simplified infrastructure allows our storage team to allocate their efforts to other important tasks. They can focus on aspects like backup, automation, and proactive administrative duties, rather than constantly dealing with performance problems or troubleshooting issues.

Its top-tier performance ranks as the most valuable aspect. 

Secondly, the reduced frequency of drive failures leads to less time and resources spent on maintenance and replacements. I am highly satisfied with its exceptional, consistent performance, ensuring that applications run smoothly and reliably. It has proven to be highly effective, with the added benefit of utilizing a range of additional features, whether we're dealing with flash or lower-end disk storage solutions. 

It has greatly contributed to efficiency and improved performance in our operations, indirectly impacting cost management.

Offering the ability to actively write data on a single volume spanning multiple clusters is significant.

I have been using it for approximately four years. 

The stability is quite remarkable. Occasionally, there may be a component failure, but it's typically a non-issue due to the redundancy and built-in safeguards in place.

Scalability is commendable. You can easily expand the system by adding nodes or disks, and we've done this several times with successful results.

It stands out as one of the few vendors that provide a pretty good level of customer service. I would rate it eight out of ten.

Before adopting NetApp, we relied on Direct-Attached Storage solutions.

In terms of ROI, it meets our expectations and fulfills the intended purpose for which we acquired it.

The pricing is competitive when we compare it to other products.

We considered a few different competitors. However, what set NetApp apart was the fact that it offered a single array capable of handling both block and file storage.

When considering and evaluating NetApp, one of the key advantages to take into account is the unified single OS. You don't have to purchase different products and then struggle to make them work seamlessly together. Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

I use it primarily as a database storage solution, supporting various applications such as Oracle, VMware, and NFS SAN. It serves as a versatile storage platform for multiple use cases.

NetApp AFF has been highly beneficial for our organization as it caters to the growing demands of applications that require faster performance. 

Flash storage significantly enhances the administrator's role and contributes to lower latency, with some applications now running at sub-millisecond speeds, reducing overnight support calls. 

Compared to our previous setup with SATA and SAS, the transition to all-flash storage has been remarkable.

This transition has had a positive impact on our operations by significantly reducing the need for cooling and power resources. The reduced cooling requirements have opened up more space for future expansion.

One of the most valuable aspects is its robust data management features, such as compression, deduplication, and in-line data optimization. These features provide immediate storage efficiency gains without requiring additional post-processing. 

Furthermore, the ONTAP feature intelligently monitors volume efficiency and can automatically adjust or pause in-line efficiency processes when suboptimal performance is detected. This automation prevents resource wastage and ensures a more efficient and streamlined process, although manual adjustments remain an option.

It would be valuable to have more visibility and control options. Instead of having everything enabled by default, it would be helpful to be able to activate specific features as needed selectively. This would enable the monitoring of data efficiency in real-time without manual intervention. 

A graphical user interface displaying efficiency metrics, such as compression and deduplication rates, would be a great addition. This way, I could easily access this information without resorting to command-line operations and screenshots, streamlining the process.

I've been using NetApp AFF for about four years, but before that, I had a professional service background. In total, I have approximately eight years of experience.

Its stability features are excellent.

Scaling is straightforward, and we are pleased with the process.

While there have been a few issues that NetApp hasn't been able to resolve for our specific company, the majority of problems I've encountered have been effectively addressed with their support. Overall, we are quite satisfied and I would rate it eight out of ten.

Positive

The reduction in operational latency is quite significant, approximately around 40%. Efficiency gains have led to significant cost savings for us. We no longer need to invest in additional storage capacity unless we anticipate a substantial increase in I/O operations from our applications. We only purchase storage when it's necessary, ensuring that we acquire precisely what we need and understand the performance of our current aggregate effectively.

Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

We use NetApp AFF for daily maintenance. It's used to provision volumes for customers and other departments. 

NetApp AFF helps simplify infrastructure while improving business performance. Our databases and sensitive stuff are on all-flash arrays. Our team knows what to expect with all-flash, and we've been doing it for a while. We're happy with it.

We have fewer support issues because putting things on all-flash is much better. We still have to troubleshoot. That's always something we need to do. The speed of flash is always an advantage. Our customers are happy with it and don't complain too much. 

We use the NFS and SIP protocols a lot. The NFS is the most valuable feature.

The upgrade process could be a lot quicker, but it's still good as it is. The failovers and things like that are harder than expected. 

I have used NetApp AFF for almost 10 years. 

NetApp AFF is highly stable. 

The scalability is good. We can add extra controllers and create clusters. It's very doable. 

I rate NetApp AFF support eight out of 10. It's excellent. We've had no issues. 

Positive

We had normal disk storage instead of flash. NetApp AFF  offers much better performance. Higher throughput and less latency.

We have seen a return. Things are running better. It's less work for us, so it's good.

NetApp AFF seems to be fairly priced compared to other solutions like Oracle. 

I rate NetApp AFF nine out of 10. It's an excellent product. Use it, and you'll be happy. 

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.