NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

I use AFF to boost performance for tasks like general workloads, virtualized workloads, and high-performance databases. It helps me manage costs while delivering better results in these areas. 

Additionally, AFF has significantly simplified my infrastructure while maintaining high performance. It simplifies the infrastructure by allowing us to easily migrate and adjust workloads using SnapMirror based on our environment's needs. 

With multiple clusters, it offers the flexibility to distribute workloads effectively and adapt to changing demands. AFF has also reduced support issues. Customers usually only complain about performance when it's a real problem, but with AFF's flash storage, we have had fewer complaints. When issues do come up, they are often related to other parts like the network, not the storage itself, which makes troubleshooting easier. 

NetApp AFF's flash technology offers great performance. This feature has been my go-to for managing data and ensuring speed and reliability.

In terms of improvement, the support could be a little better but it has improved a lot.

I have been using NetApp for thirteen years.

NetApp AFF is very stable. I would give it a ten out of ten for stability.

The support has been good, with responsive assistance, especially at higher tiers. However, there were some language and repetitive questions issues with the first-line support, but it improved as it escalated to higher levels. Having account managers has been beneficial.

The initial setup was easy, similar to other NetApp FAS installations.

The price is a bit high, but it is worth it because we have fewer performance issues to deal with and it saves us time. Using multiple NetApp clusters also helps us move workloads as needed, which cuts costs.

Overall, I would rate NetApp AFF as a nine out of ten.

We use the solution to host the system data for VMs.

The solution's most valuable features are pricing and speed.

They should improve the solution's features for disaster recovery. Also, they should provide easier integration with multiple systems.

We have been using the solution for one and a half years now.

It is a stable solution.

We have 1500 solution users in our organization. It is a scalable product.

The solution's customer service is good.

Positive

I have worked with HP in the past. In comparison, NetApp has various protocols like NFS and CIFS. Also, it is much easier to use and integrate than HP.

The solution was easy to deploy and took half a day to complete.

Initially, I implemented the solution myself. Later, I took help from a reseller to review it. Also, two or three executives are required to maintain the solution.

The additional license for the solution costs 45k. It is relatively cheap compared to other vendors.

I recommend the solution to others and rate it as nine. It is very stable, reliable, and cost-effective.

We use it to create our volume groups for our ESX hosts, VMware, file storage, and Flash Pool for our images. We use it as a tier storage to our NetApp storage grid.

Snapshots, snap clones, backups, flexibility, and agility are valuable features. I like that NetApp AFF is easy to use. We can automate everything for our backups and use cases. It's fast and simple, and provides storage to all of our VMware ESX hosts. It expands easily as well.

Our latency is fine, and NetApp AFF provides us the best speed for our applications.

In terms of optimization of costs, NetApp AFF is a little expensive, but I don't mind paying for it.

The ability to connect to CVO and ANF is great, and as a result, it has a lot of flexibility.

I've been using NetApp AFF since 2016.

We haven't had any major problems with stability.

It scales well, and we haven't had any problems. We also have site storage with AFF C190, and being able to integrate with our other sites has been great. We have about 16 clusters in two different data centers for AFF.

My experience with technical support has been good. We have a primary TAM and pay for that service. They are very good at responding to our requests and needs, and I'd give them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We were on spinning disks with NetApp before, but we also had IBM XID. We switched to NetApp AFF because we were already heavy users of NetApp. We liked the cost, flexibility, and the ability to adapt to all of our workloads. Now, we're a single storage provider or user.

Our ROI is that we've been able to reduce our storage footprint by 30% by going to a single storage provider. We can FlexVol our environment.

I think the pricing and licensing are a little high, but compared to those of other storage vendors, it's within reason. After the three-year prepay, the extended warranty is a little expensive.

We evaluated IBM and Dell EMC, and Dell EMC was too expensive, and it didn't have the flexibility that NetApp had.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) at ten.

We use the solution for virtualization. We run VMware on it.

Before running AFF we ran regular SAS Disk Arrays. NetApp AFF greatly improved the performance.

The speed is great. That's probably number one in terms of features we appreciate.

The throughput is excellent.

It's useful for running production databases on.

NetApp AFF has reduced our operational latency. It has close to doubled it.

The setup process could be easier. 

I used NetApp AFF for six years.

I never had any major outages or issues with the platform.

Scaling is easy enough. Users can just throw another shelf in. It's easy to add hardware. 

Support is good. I've never had any issues long term.

Positive

We've used Dell EMC in the past, and we use Pure now. 

Pure is easier to manage just from an interface perspective, however, I would say the performance of both is close to equal. We chose AFF primarily for the level of performance. That said, the team that works for me has more experience with Pure. The issue we have is that the footprint is way smaller.

I was involved in the initial deployment of AFF. I've done it quite a few times and I find the process to be straightforward.

The deployment could be easier. Pure setup is way easier in comparison but I had no problem setting AFF up. 

The initial setup has a lot more steps in it than are probably necessary for a base deployment, unlike other vendors where it's more straightforward. It could be a little bit more streamlined.

I handled the deployment myself. 

We haven't quite witnessed an ROI. Eventually, it becomes cheaper as we go along instead of going all cloud, however, in the end, it's probably pretty close to equal.

They sped everything up initially. However, are there other products that have a better ROI? Maybe. Pure probably has a better ROI overall and especially when you start talking about Pure Evergreen and the way that they do their maintenance. That's a big difference that helps a little bit with the cost long term.

The pricing is  pretty in line with industry standards.

We did not evaluate other storage issues. 

We are a NetApp customer.

So far, the solution has not optimized our costs. 

Since using the solution, we have not been hit by ransomware. 

We do not use any other NetApp cloud solutions together with AFF.

In terms of rating the product by itself, I would give it a nine out of ten due to some of the usability differences that I know now. Overall, against other vendors, I would probably rate it eight out of ten based on the footprint size and some of the longer-term support features.

We primarily use the solution for SQL server-based applications.

The last customer I worked with wanted to improve the performance of SQL responses. They were having issues with multiple SQL statements taking time. Although it's not just a hardware-only solution, they had to do both, which meant replacing their previous hardware and, at the same time, improving their queries. That combination was most important for the customer.

Since I know NetApp's systems, staying with NetApp was one of the best features. For example, Flash is the solution for latency. It reduces latency. The SQL server benefits from all-flash storage, and NetApp is among the most responsive.

I actually did major projects where we used NetApp storage for some government agencies, and we were able to keep the storage where the government or the customer is able to own the storage while using AWS as their computing. That part was helpful to the customer.

The improvement I would like to see is not just about NetApp. Rather, it's about improving the hardware itself in terms of its lifecycle. How long is it going to stay as responsive, for example. Their rates have improved; however, there is still room to improve.

I'd like to see them continue with scalability and have the ability to scale more. Hopefully, it gets more compact than it actually is for the scale that we're looking for. 

When it comes to the cloud, they might need to improve in terms of making it clear why someone would use a NetApp solution over cloud-made storage. That part either needs to have improved technology or improved visibility to the customer. Why should I use that instead of something that seems to be less expensive? They need to explain that more than simply saying ROI is good and the TCO is good. People need a little bit more. It's not easy in this space for people to choose a product. When you go online, you want to have a simple way to choose.

I've been using the solution for about five years.

The solution is stable. It's reliable. 

The scalability is good with NetApp. It's fine for most people. There would be some places where it would be difficult, whatever you do.

We tend to work with environments based on petabytes. 

I like NetApp support. They're very consistent. It's not only the NetApp hardware that you get support with. It's also within that area where NetApp's hardware is, and even software is involved in a total solution with third parties. NetApp's support cares about the total solution and is willing to help.

There are always issues of who should be the right person to address items. Sometimes there's making sure that whoever owns this error is the person you're working with. It takes someone with experience from the customer perspective to know that it will be better if you work with NetApp on that level. That being said, sometimes it can get difficult.

Positive

I did previously use another storage solution.

I have been using NetApp for more than 20 years, and I know NetApp's technologies and support. There is reliability that there is going to be a continuation of technology, and so those are reasons why I continue to choose the solution.

The initial setup process is okay. If you are experienced, it is fine. 

While it's not easy, with the instructions they have, it's straightforward. It just takes some level of expertise or experience in NetApp solutions to be able to do it.

NetApp AFF optimized our customers' costs - or at least, the customer believes so. I didn't do a first-time TCO or ROI.

The pricing of the solution could be improved to better favor the customer. 

Since we've implemented NetApp AFF our clients have not been affected by ransomware attacks. My customer is not in that position, as they would be on-prem and unconnected.

We do use other NetApp services, mostly around volumes and cloud solutions. I have not had any hands-on experience with object storage yet.

I'd rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We use them for file services, email, as LUNs for servers, Exchange, Oracle, and SQL.

We've seen an overall boost in performance, going from a combination of solid-state and spinning disks to all solid-state. That has increased our ability to provide more performance and throughput for the services that we're hosting. That's the biggest deal for us. We do what we did before, but now we can do it on all-flash. It's just faster.

It accelerates virtualization and databases, which goes back to the performance. All-flash gives us the ability to provide the performance as it's needed and makes it easy to do and instantly observable.

The use of AFF with Oracle has made it much faster. It all comes back to how fast it is. And with SnapCenter, the backup piece is much better than it was before. We were using NetBackup, but SnapCenter allows us to back up with snapshots, which is something NetBackup did not allow us to do.

Also, the dedupe and compression reduce how much disk space we require. All of that really makes a big difference for us.

An extra benefit is that NetApp AFF All Flash FAS has really reduced support issues related to performance. When everything is going at solid-state speeds, it's a lot easier to find the problems, where there's slowness.

With all of it being in one software package, the ONTAP data management software has simplified our operations. We have the Enterprise licensing and that means we get all the tools that come with it. All of those tools, and their integration, make backup and restore very simple and very efficient.

The performance is outstanding when it's all Flash. That's the biggest bang for the buck that we get.

And everything that we use on NetApp that can back up with the NetApp tools—SnapCenter, SnapDrive, and SnapManager—makes our local and our offsite backup very simple and very easy to do.

I've been using NetApp AFF since 2007.

I don't know how to praise it enough. Parts of our environment are so old that it's amazing they even run, but they're still running. We had an overheating problem, the air conditioning went out, and they still ran. They're bulletproof, in my mind. We have many sites all across the country, and we really don't have any issues with the products. They just work.

We've never had an issue with scalability. We could scale as large as we want. We can go out and up, anytime we want to. I'm really impressed with their scalability.

NetApp's support is outstanding. Any question I have gets answered promptly. If it has to go back to engineering, they reach out to engineering and engineering comes back with the answer. They provide us with whatever we're looking for in a timeframe that is more than acceptable, usually above expectations.

Positive

About 10 years ago we used to have EMC. Then we had both EMC and NetApp, and we ultimately replaced all the EMC with NetApp. Back then, we went with NetApp because of the cost. We got more for our dollar.

The ROI is from the performance and the ease of backup.

NetApp AFF is somewhat pricey. If they weren't as pricey, that would be a big deal for us. It's worth it but if you could get a really nice car for less, you'd go for the "less."

If you can get a demo and run it in your environment, play it side-by-side against comparable workloads and you'll see the benefits very quickly.

We were using a NetApp 2240 Filer, which was spinning disk and a mix of SATA and SAS. We were trying to put a production SQL Database load on it and the IOPS were way too immense for it, so we ended up buying this AFF box. It solved all the issues, at the time. We haven't needed it for anything else.

The NetApp 2240 Filer was at our location in Mexico. Because we had so many issues with it, I was down there every other week during that entire summer. I was very relieved when we got this AFF in place and it resolved all of our issues.

It not only saves on travel, but it also saves on any latency issues and administrative overhead. We had more problems with spinning disk than we've ever had with an AFF.

Another advantage is that it helps simplify data management across SAN and NAS environments, on-prem and in the cloud. We have 96 production locations that each have a NetApp Filer of one sort or another. Administration and overhead could be a serious concern given that we have two guys, senior global storage engineers, to monitor those sites. But the fact is that we never have to worry about the sites that we have the AFF in. The ONTAP data management software is a part of that as well, simplifying our operations. Having two guys monitoring 96 sites would never happen without it.

There's no overhead. There is no replacing of disks or rebuilding of arrays. Every time you lose a spinning disk and it's in an array, you end up having to rebuild the array and it slows everything down.

It has cut our personnel costs in half. Along with all the other advantages I've noted, it has saved us a ton. Annually it has probably saved us well over $300,000.

NetApp AFF has definitely reduced troubleshooting and support issues for us. 

The benefits of being on AFF are the

• phenomenal speed at which we're able to ingest data and index it
• the IOPS.

I've been using NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) for about five years.

I want to call it a "Ronco." You Set it and forget it. We paid a premium for the AFF units but we never have to worry about them. They just work.

The scalability is phenomenal.

The tech support has been wonderful. We don't use them often, but when we do use them we always get the support we need. And sometimes they contact us with issues that we didn't know exist.

Positive

For storage we used both Dell and EMC. We switched because of the cost and the level of support. NetApp support is far better than anything we ever received from either Dell or EMC.

In terms of the solution’s Cloud Backup Services, back in the day, we were using a disk-to-disk-to-cloud solution for backup. NetApp had actually purchased a company called AltaVault and we used that solution. We were all onboard. Last year, NetApp announced that they were no longer going to support the AltaVault platform. We've since moved away from that but we do still have NetApp in Azure for our SAP implementation, but it's direct in the cloud, not a backup to cloud.

The initial setup was straightforward. It took under an hour to set up.

The only area where the product has room for improvement is the cost.

We looked at HPE, and because we were using Dell and EMC and IBM storage prior to moving to NetApp as our global standard, we considered them.

When it comes to support for both file services and block services AFF is the 
top. The best.

It's used for SAN environments and a lot of VMware utilization.

For our customers, the main benefit is the performance they get with NetApp AFF. We have a lot of feedback from customers about how their applications work faster and that they are very happy with it.

We deploy it a lot for VMware environments and, with VMware, we have nearly all the client's applications. We can have 500 or 1,000 virtual machines on the AFF. Sometimes they tell us that a compute application that, with earlier generations of storage solutions, took hours or days, takes much less time with AFF. For some customers, it takes three or four or five times less, with the new AFF.

Using NetApp AFF has also helped to reduce support issues. It's very stable and we don't have a lot of issues with it. I can talk a lot about this aspect because sometimes we provide support for NetApp. We have certification for level-one and level-two NetApp support. We only escalate the L3 support to NetApp. It's a very good technology with very few bugs.

In addition, the ONTAP data management software has simplified our clients' operations. NetApp is simple to manage. You can grow and reduce the capacity, and you can create a backup copy through replication with SnapMirror and SnapVault. There are a lot of features in NetApp and they are simple to implement.

The most valuable features are 

• performance
• storage efficiency, due to the compression and deduplication.

We use StorageGrid in two ways. The first usage is stand-alone to provide S3 object storage. And the second use case is to use FabricPool, the NetApp technology that moves a snapshot from the AFF to AWS. It's a very good solution because AFF is SSD technology, meaning the storage is expensive. It's very helpful to have the ability to move cold data, like a snapshot, out of the SSD.

We have an S3 protocol with the AFF, but there are a lot of limitations. The new ONTAP version has S3, but we can only do a very small volume.

Another issue is that for smaller customers, NetApp doesn't have enough disk sizes. You begin with a 980-gigabyte disk and the next size is 3.8 terabytes. There aren't any disk sizes in between. Competitors have more choices in disk sizes.

I have been using NetApp AFF since the beginning. I have worked with NetApp for more than 10 years.

We are a distributor, so we install a lot of storage for many customers. I have worked with all the models, including the AFF C190 and C220, the FAS8020 and 8040, the AFF A300, the AFF 700, and the biggest was an AFF A900.

The stability is very nice. I've worked with NetApp for a long time and the stability has been excellent.

We can very easily add volume with new disks and we can add more compute with more controllers. And we can refresh and upgrade hardware very easily. We do that very often and customers are very happy with this aspect.

NetApp support is very good if you have a very serious disaster, such as a service interruption. You can ask for help from L1, L2, or L3 and get someone connected with you. But when you have a less important issue, such as a bug or a feature not working as you want, but you don't have a service interruption, the support is very slow.

Positive

The initial deployment of NetApp AFF is easy. We can deploy it in a very small amount of time. The NetApp is pre-configured so you just have to run the setup, with some workloads that are already ready. In a few hours you can have production running on it. And for customers, it's very easy to learn how to use it.

The implementation strategy for each environment is always a little different, but the main architecture is very similar. We always do a workshop with the customer, at the start of a project, and we design it for their specific requirements, but overall, the architecture is always similar.

We have a specific service for the maintenance of NetApp, and that team has six people, but they maintain all our NetApp installations, not only AFF.

Our clients see return on their investment in AFF, due to the stability and efficiency. The efficiency is very important because we can buy fewer disks for more data.

The list price of AFF is too expensive. But we have a good connection with NetApp and we can get a very big rebate and that makes the price similar to the competitors' pricing. But I would tell NetApp that they need to be careful with the pricing of the new NVMe disks. They are way too expensive.

We use AFF a lot in MetroCluster architecture, with synchronous replication between two data centers. In this scenario NetApp has some very hard requirements, like a specific switch that is mandatory. Its competitors don't have all these requirements. So sometimes it's very difficult to win projects as a result.

But on the positive side, NetApp is very performant, very stable, and easy to manage. And when it comes to support for both file services and block services, NetApp is definitely better. We tried some of the competitors' solutions and with them it's not so easy. The NAS protocol is very good in NetApp.

Try it. It's a good solution. In a MetroCluster environment, I think it's the best solution on the market today, with flash technology. You can have flash and synchronous write between two data centers.

A lot of customers use NetApp with NAS and SAN. It's not a key point, but it's a good feature.