NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Reviews

We use if for low latency, high performance, OLTP database. It's dedicated to a single application.

The benefits are better up-time, better response time.

Low latency.

It needs a better management tool.

We found it very stable.

Not very scalable.

We use tech support and it's pretty good. The system was stable so we really didn't need a lot of support or a lot of help. The few times we called, we got the right answer.

We were using ONTAP, a FAS system before, and we couldn't deliver the performance that was needed. We were missing our SLAs. We looked at some other solutions from other vendors and EF gave us the best performance, price, and value.

In terms of important criteria when selecting a vendor, and how important consistent low latency is compared with other criteria, I think what's important is the partnership that we have with them, the relationship that we have with them, that they are willing to work with us to find a solution.

At the end of the day, low latency was what geared us towards the EF. That was the best proposition on the table.

It gave us the performance we were looking for, at an excellent price that no one else was able to beat. We already knew the solution through the E-Series, so we knew how to work with this type of system, we had that familiarity. It's simple to manage. It was a no-brainer, in this case.

I think it's definitely worth taking a look at this solution.

The ease and the simplicity of setting it up. The managing and the administration's quite easy. It's easy to provision the storage.

It's easier to set up so I don't have to spend a lot of time administering it, and setting it up. Whereas the FAS systems are a little bit more difficult to set up. So it's the ease of operations.

I can't think of any right now. I've only had it for a couple of months.

It seems very stable. We've only had it a couple of months.

From what we've seen, it looks like it's going to be easy to upgrade. We haven't scaled it up.

Nexsan. The requirements of the end user dictated we get a different system from what we already had. We're a big NetApp customer, so we like to stick with NetApp. I guess that's why we went with it. It was a customer requirement. They needed a different type of, cheaper, faster storage.

It was pretty straightforward. We had one of the net engineers come outside and help us with it.

I think it came down to Nexsan and Net App. 

We also considered all-flash solutions that offered storage efficiency features, but EF seemed to fit our needs; plus the price was really good.

For the E-Series, it's going to be used for parking cameras, for camera storage, security cameras. Because of the functions, for video and the camera video, we didn't want any latency. We wanted it to be as fast as we could get it. 

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor are service, support, price, the product stability, and stability of the company.

If I were advising a colleague at another company who is researching this kind of solution, I would say take a good look at it because we haven't had any issues. It was easy to set up. We haven't had to do anything with support, but the documentation of it was very easy to follow. 

I know the education field gets better pricing than corporate worlds.

Ideally, the organization is trying reduce the footprint. Our current footprint is all on Lazy Theta and flash hard drives with Flash Pools and so on. To have one consistent platform that takes the same amount of data in less amounts of space is key. It is just a matter of getting to that next level of datacenter integration.

The primary use case for our All Flash EF-Series is currently being used for Vidya, with all subjects, Zinap, using our server to allow us to increase performance of our user experience on Vidya. We have high use cases for SQL databases. Most of our business critical applications use SQL to allow us to complete the DoD mission needs, so we have been using the EF-series for about two years now and everything has been going smoother and faster. We currently purchased 20 efi 60s with 1.92 terabyte SSD drives and it has been pretty effective, so far.

I would have to say performance at this point, because the application it is based on is so diverse.

Having low latency is always key, so if I had to rate it, I would rate it a 10 out of 10 of getting the best out of what we can - the best performance and low latency.

Better support technicians for CAPP.

So far, it looks good in terms of stability. It is easy to manage driven by new technology driven, Raytech. Having a singular thing to manage everything and hopefully optimizing the user experience altogether without the need to uplift and remove the expand.

It definitely meets our needs. What we hope for is that it all flies fast and once we get it in that we don't have to scale, because right now we have requirements of random 50 terabytes here and 100 terabytes there, so the ability to not need to scale and hopefully receive the benefits of the new features in 9.3 of reducing your footprint.

We have a lot of ONTAP NetApp Sales Engineers (SEs) helping us throughout the process. Some of the partners are being evolved with the beginning to get us acclimated to the new changes.

Their SEs are experts. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

Currently, all of our technology is on Legacy FAS systems that are end of life. We have taken the last one we can go to, and now, we have 20 sites and terabytes of data that we have to refresh and renew, so it is just a matter of time before we get to the next stage. In some instances, it is the HCI, and it other instances, it is the All Flash FAS, so it is not going to be a one-size fits all.

I was involved with the initial setup. The E-series are the easiest to set up.

The price is perfect. The price point that we're getting is very competitive in the market. Since we are buying in such a large quantity, they gave us a huge discount.

In some cases, we do consider Oracle ZFS.

Oracle ZFS is one of the vendors that's in our market arena because they don't have a maintenance policy. They have a contract internally that allows when they submit their cost estimates or their notes there is no maintenance because they have another contract vehicle that takes your maintenance. If NetApp had a similar contract vehicle to allow the maintenance to be excluded, that would significantly increase their business because their maintenance cost is killing them, or the major complaint I hear from my customers is their maintenance cost is insane.

So, in one instance we will go with NetApp. In the other instance, we will go with ZFS, because it is cheaper.

Take advantage of the node transfers that you can have with the SEs and getting to know them at their level where they are willing to help you in all aspects.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: support.

Our e-App system is dedicated for use with multiple apps.

We are currently going to buy some All Flash FASs next year to go with the 08300's and the 15.3 terabyte SSD drives. A huge order of 12 nodes, six AJ pairs should be imminent, second quarter for DoD.

Part of our business is data processing. Any time we can take processes that are slow, find the pain points and speed them up, it helps a lot of different parts of the business.

It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution. We've been using it to target database applications where there are particular files that really need more performance than we're able to give with our other products right now.

We've really had no issues. It's been a very stable product for us.

We’ve only used technical support to assist with some upgrades. I've always been very happy with them.

We were reaching the performance limits of what we could do with SAS at that time, and AFF wasn't really an option yet. We looked around and it was clear to me that I'd prefer to not go with another vendor. We had really good experience with FAS. I'd prefer to stay with a NetApp solution.

I was not involved in the initial setup; my admin was. It seemed pretty straightforward.

There weren’t any other vendors on our shortlist. We pretty much turned to NetApp very quickly, once it was clear that they had a product that we could afford and would meet the need.

When I choose a vendor, support is a huge consideration. I want to have a stable product that, when there are issues, they are prepared to take care of them; they understand what they are doing; they understand our needs. Affordability is also very important for us too. We found all of those things in NetApp. The pricing was reasonable. I have no complaints there. It could always be cheaper, of course.

I suggest looking at your needs and decide whether EF or some of the other NetApp products are more appropriate. If the EF is the most appropriate, I don't have any hesitation recommending it.

We depend on this product for our storage needs. We have a private-cloud deployment.

We use more than the All-Flash Arrays on site. We have a hybrid model with all types of storage including flash, SATA disks, and SSD.

We need a center related to NetApp in Egypt so that we can deal with them directly.

If the pricing of equipment were more discounted in Egypt then it would be better.

The implementation could be faster.

This is a stable solution.

This solution is scalable.

Here in Egypt, we do not have an official office or central point of support. This is our biggest complaint. We do not want to have remote support. Rather, we want an office here. It is very difficult to get an engineer here, on-site, from NetApp. This is true even pre-sales; we want to sit with the NetApp team, and not with partners. It's not that partners are bad, but it's better to meet with NetApp directly.

We did use another solution prior to this one, and we switched because of the technical support. It had originally started off quite good, but after a while, it was no longer good, which is why we switched.

The implementation of this solution took approximately one month.

The pricing of this solution is competitive with other vendors here in Egypt.

This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We use the on-prem deployment model of this solution. Our primary use case of this solution is for better speed for the database. 

The most valuable feature of this solution is its speed. 

The pricing could be cheaper and it should have documentation in more languages, specifically, Russian.

They should develop faster building for the next release. 

It's very stable.

We haven't really tested the scalability options. Only I use this solution. We have around 1,000 clients using the database. 

Their technical support is very good. The power went off and they called us around five minutes later to ask what was going on. Whenever we have any questions they have quick answers. 

The initial setup was straightforward. I read the documentation and it was simple for me. The deployment took around three days. 

The prices are average but in the last year we bought three of these and it was expensive. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. In order to make it a ten, they should make the price cheaper. 

I would recommend it. It is very stable, fast, and offers good support. It fits our needs. We don't have issues with it. If you need a stable solution, you should choose NetApp. We have two NetApp solutions in my company and we don't have problems with either one of them. 

Having the option of such high-speed storage in the data center is what makes it valuable. When a request comes in a for an application that requires something on flash, I have the EF to go. I know that whatever the application is, it can't beat it.

They could improve the product’s tools. We're going to tie it into our FAS system because the options we have with the FAS system are much greater than the options we have with the EF series. Things like the FlexClones, SnapVault, SnapMirror, all of that. Some of it's available on the EF series, but we like what we have in the FAS system. If the EF were to have that, we would not need to tie it into our FAS system.

It’s a stable solution. We have not had an outage in a year and a half.

It is scalable. We're about to roll it into our other NetApp products. That, along with the FAS system, makes it scalable for us, at least.

Technical support is good; maybe not as good as others, but they're good. It’s a case of finding the right person. NetApp's a pretty large company, with a vast array of protocols and products to dive through when you're trying to troubleshoot a problem. It just depends on the person you get when you call in. Sometimes, it's the best. Sometimes, it's not so much the best. They're good. They could always be better.

We have multiple hybrid solutions, but nothing pure flash like the EF. We have been using the hybrid solutions for five years. The trigger to moving to EF was that the cost of flash has come down, and the need for flash has gone up.

For initial setup, we had somebody onsite. We were doing the flash install along with the transition from 7-mode to CDOT. We had professional services onsite to assist us with that.

What is your use case? Depending on what your needs are, I would point to maybe the All Flash FAS. If it was just a one-off, one project, throw everything at it, then I'd say definitely the EF would be the most cost-effective solution.

For us, the most valuable feature is the performance. We have a very strong SQL workload that was struggling on several other providers, and it solved that problem for us.

If you're not using DDP, it is a little tedious to configure.

I've seen the new firmware with the 2800, and they've automated some things that were manual. It was a four-step process for every volume you wanted to create before, and it looks like they fixed that in the coming firmware, although from what I understand it will be a little while before it gets to the 550.

We've had it for about two-and-a-half years.

We have not had any down time with it at all. We had one controller failure in the two-and-a-half years, and was able to have that replaced with zero down time.

We have not had to expand the product yet. We sized it for what we thought was going to be growth for three years, and we have not outgrown it yet, so I don't see an issue with it.

We've had a very good experience with technical support, especially on the EF products. They reached out to us when we had the failure, and we had somebody onsite within four hours.

We have not had an issue from a performance or a technical standpoint. We had an issue with some monitoring that we wanted to do; finding the right person within NetApp to help us with that.

This was a new initiative.

Initial setup was pretty complex for us. We weren't able to use dynamic disk pooling, just because we were very concerned about performance. NetApp brought somebody onsite for us to help us out, and they recommended against using DDP.
They helped us with the first one, I think we had it configured in about four hours. We added another one six months later and did that ourselves.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor is the support infrastructure and pricing.

When we compared it to other all-flash arrays, it was the most cost-effective solution and really the most performant that we looked at.

My recommendation to my peers is that they know for sure what their performance needs are; that they size it properly to support those needs.

Performance wise, it's phenomenal. We haven't had to touch it much since we had it up and running.

Making configuration changes on the version of firmware that we have is a little bit more difficult than other products.