NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

We invested in NetApp technology to address our scalability and modernization requirements. Another platform we manage and aim to enhance with NetApp technologies is backups, currently residing on NetApp E Series. Each site has five to seven E Series systems handling backups. 

Compared to NetApp AFF or C Series, E Series is extremely reliable but lacks features, offering basic connectivity and performance but limited capabilities. For backups, we're looking to modernize our approach and leverage features like SnapLock for rapid recovery, increasing our capacity for mass restores in case of ransomware or other incidents. We're exploring the C Series with QLC drives, seeking the optimal fit and cost-effective solution. We anticipate the C Series ASAs will likely be the answer, providing the right balance of features and efficiency for our backup needs in the coming months.

NetApp technology has significantly improved how we operate and serve our customers. We were attempting to migrate from several legacy appliances that functioned adequately, but planning our next steps was challenging. Many vendors we worked with took a scattered approach. We would ask for a replacement block solution with specific features and a NAS solution with other specific features, both performing exceptionally well. 

One vendor offered nine different ways to achieve this, unable to clearly identify the best fit for us. This may not seem significant until we realize their largest competitor couldn't narrow it down to two options when we asked them to. It was almost a paralysis of choice within their own offerings. So, we switched to two or three other vendors who offered seemingly decent solutions, but it felt like a technological step backward. Their solutions were monolithic, difficult to scale, and challenging to work with in the future. My manager and I had prior NetApp experience at another organization, but our current location had no NetApp presence. It was a significant mindset shift for my colleagues and me. 

NetApp allowed us to move from a monolithic approach, where an array served a single purpose and was impossible to grow without spending millions to replace it, to a more flexible model. We initially purchased the AFF 8200 and A300 lines, which have served us well for several years. We've been able to scale horizontally with new projects and products requiring hundreds of terabytes of storage. Instead of buying entirely new systems, we can simply add more gear to the existing cluster and expand it. This approach has benefited not just a few specific products but the entire organization. It has enabled us to scale horizontally within days instead of months spent onboarding a new vendor, installing, configuring, and learning a new appliance, only to find it doesn't meet our needs. NetApp has made us more agile in implementing new solutions and has reduced stress significantly. We've moved from constantly planning new purchases and integrations to simply deciding if we need more and, if so, adding it to the existing cluster. It's been an amazing shift from being reactive to proactive, empowering us to focus on other tasks. What used to be a full-time job for one person is now easily manageable for our three-person team.

The ever-changing cybersecurity landscape and the rise of AI have significantly impacted our technology infrastructure. We've isolated a few nodes from a former cluster, leaving them to function independently - they're like the forgotten stepchildren, enduring hardship without complaint. Thanks to extensive automation, we never have to log into them. These nodes support SnapLock, which provides peace of mind knowing the data is undeletable - even by admins or support staff. Only the passage of time, specifically the expiration of compliance timers, allows for deletion. Ironically, I designed a system so secure that it's now impeding my own migration efforts. An audit volume with a 90-day compliance timer remains on an old cluster, and I'm forced to wait for it to expire before proceeding. This underscores the effectiveness of the security measures, even if they cause minor inconveniences. Cybersecurity and autonomous ransomware protection have significantly improved management's peace of mind. Previously, fine-tuning access controls were necessary to prevent unauthorized actions. Now, additional safeguards protect end users from unintentional mistakes caused by external influences. These safeguards act like bumpers in a bowling alley, preventing significant harm unless we make a mistake and allow it. This reassurance lets us focus on our work without worrying about phishing attacks or other security breaches.

I am working at a tech company where we use NetApp AFF to store our developers' data.

Two important features that NetApp AFF has are the performance and the capacity to save data against attacks in general or hardware failure.

The deduplication and compression of NetApp AFF are excellent. When you have a peering environment where you have multiple machines that are basically the same, all the blocks that are repetitive from one to another will save space. That is a really good feature.

The analytics help to check the movement of a deleted or moved folder. Once a month, we have this kind of situation where we have to look into it.

The ease of data access has enabled faster service delivery for customers. It is easy to get whatever data they like quickly across sites. That has made it much easier for us, but it is also quicker and easier for them to request things, and then they can get what they need.

We have one pane of glass. We do not have to waste a bunch of time. We can streamline even simple things like logging into individual applications or individual NetApp hardware. We can automate things and govern who has access to what, not only on the application and software side but also on the hardware side, and I love that. It keeps everything secure.

This week at NetApp INSIGHT has been great because it has offered a lot of additional information on things that we are looking into. We are new to NetApp, so ONTAP has been the thing that delivered the most value to our organization and changed things for us. Based on where we came from, it is a ten out of ten. Based on where we may be able to go with it, in terms of the expandability of the feature set and the vision that we have been hearing about this week, it is definitely a nine or maybe a ten.

We would not have been able to have the data access and the ability to control it the way we needed without this technology. We have multiple ways of access. We have flexibility and backup and disaster recovery opportunities for replication that we did not have before. That really helped.

We wanted data security through our NetApp technology investments. We wanted the ability to govern multiple pieces of hardware across multiple sites through a single pane of glass. We wanted to get very granular with what groups get what and all that. There is now a significantly easier way to handle all of that. We can do that more quickly for our business.

Previously, we were pretty limited in disaster recovery, backup solutions, and things like that. Snapshots and other features have dramatically improved our situation.

When it comes to AI, at this point, you cannot get away from AI. You are being shoved into it quickly. NetApp has allowed us to adapt to that. The journey is accelerating, and we are able to adapt much more quickly to it.

We are able to expand our flexibility in both data access and data security. It will allow the business to be freer to request things from us and to innovate in their space. They are free from having to worry about whether we have the technology to handle that or whether we have the expertise to handle that.

It provides simplicity. Previously, there was not any kind of unified structure to our multisite storage infrastructure. We now have multiple sites where we have been able to install NetApp, and through ONTAP and BlueXP, control all of them from one pane of glass, which has been very powerful for us.

I work in the defense industry. We have lots of data silos, more than there are colors of paint in the paint store. Trying to get people to agree on how and if they can combine those and how they can share them easily and securely is a big challenge. The solution has an architecture that emphasizes consistency above all else, and that's why they're successful. That's why, as an architect, I've been successful in convincing somebody to go ahead and buy it, consume it. They find not just performance or capacity improvements. They find operational improvements in ease of accessing the data, how consistently people can find what they're looking for quickly, and how they can integrate it with their applications. They provide not just storage. They provide a real solution.

In some cases, we design systems that have to go in strange places. They might have to go to space. They might have to go underwater. Having all manner of different data come into a system sometimes is not well understood. Is it block? Is it file? Is it something else? This solution has all of those services no matter what scale you buy. The result is that we don't have to wait until the customer knows what their data mix would be. We have a comprehensive solution that could accommodate anything. We can fly it earlier and get them in the air testing and prototyping much faster than they could have with other solutions. Customers have been very successful in places that probably no one else could have been thanks to the solution's consistency.

NetApp has impacted us pretty dramatically. Before, we didn't have standardized storage, so adopting the solution across our organization has allowed us the ability to provide data across all our sites and dramatically improve our backup and disaster.

We've recently adopted their Snapshot technology. Before, we didn't have any form of that. Having Snapshot, SnapMirror, and SnapLock really feels like we've added security to an organization and we really appreciate that.

The storage speeds have improved. We work with a lot of high-resolution imagery. Having this product has been a huge improvement. Our backups and disaster recovery plan have improved drastically.

The replication of data from on-premises to the cloud is very easy when we are using the SnapMirror technology. 

Being able to use FlexCache is the best part of this solution. It is something that on-premises users are using for their production. There are some users who want to use the same volume from the cloud. FlexCache helps us in providing that.

We have a unified storage to access the file and NAS. We can do all the things in the same solution. We do not need any other product or storage mix.

CVO and AFF technologies have delivered the most value to our company. I would rate AFF a ten out of ten, and I would rate CVO a nine out of ten. We are still exploring the cloud. AFF is completely packed, and with CVO, we have a few challenges that we are trying to solve. Taking a snapshot and cloning are some of the best things that we are doing with these technologies. CVO also offers cost-effectiveness.

NetApp has always been one of the best storage solutions on the market.

We are an 85% NetApp shop, and it has been extremely helpful. We've been able to save a lot of money with the introduction of the use of the tiering aspect and the flex groups. We're able to move data around on the fly.

From a VMware perspective and from a high-performance computing perspective, it is able to churn data as fast as we will do it. It's been great. We're able to identify a lot of data thanks to Cloud Insights. Generally, about 80% of data is not in use. To be able to tier that data automatically has been key. Then, being able to move the data to a specific place or on the fly to a different aggregate with a different disk has been a big benefit.

It's a three-tier architecture and it's separated. It runs over the network instead of hyperconverged infrastructure. It sells itself since it's centralized management. Three-tier is completely separated away from it. With centralized management, you actually have pitfalls where speeds and read/write operations are all slower. Having it separate and having a dedicated storage area network or a dedicated network attached storage, for us, just worked better. It's been faster.  

In terms of improvements, they could have a couple more things that are usually done through the command line. 

I see that they're making more improvements by adding things like SnapMirror to ONTAP Systems Manager, so maybe some more features in that area would be helpful.