NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Reviews

There are so many things to talk about around the use cases associated with the tool. There are so many reasons why I started with NetApp, and I am still selling it even after I started my own company. I have worked with the product's partner who used to sell NetApp. There is one use case for NetApp that only the technology people can speak about, and it is about its unification area.

To date, no other storage facility has been able to unify all the protocols for storage, specifically if you are talking about the NAS or SAN environments. NetApp has solved the problem of unifying different environments. When we talk about performance, NetApp's performance is flexible and not rigid. There is a lot to talk about the tool when I meet the customers. Not all people want to really talk about the tool's use case and prefer to speak more about their needs. In general, people talk about what they need to solve their problems.

The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's support to be top-notch because it is an area that has changed a lot in the product. NetApp's support has changed mainly because of the franchise that offers support on behalf of NetApp. NetApp needs to ensure that the agents who work in the franchise companies need to be qualified enough to offer support across Africa.

The only challenge with NetApp products is how the support people are handling the support services now.

I have been using NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays for seventeen years. I currently use NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays A800.

You can't compare NetApp with all other solutions. It is the most stable tool because it offers high availability.

It is a scalable, agile, flexible, and unified solution.

Around 80 percent of my customers use the tool.

I started my journey with NetApp, Commvault, and Veritas Backup in 2008.

The product's initial setup phase can be managed easily and completed in 20 to 30 minutes. It is one of the fastest storage tools that you can implement.

One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to renew the license.

You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication.

All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We utilize NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays for banking data, hypervisors, and databases in our productive environment.

The simplicity of the project and the storage opportunities are valuable. Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market. We've implemented more than ten systems similar to this, and they all function seamlessly. We've even tested them with an end-to-end fiber channel over Ethernet on the six hundred series, and everything operated smoothly.     

I've observed an issue when creating a new storage solution with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. If we turn off the cache on the controller, we encounter packet flooding. It's a technical issue that I believe could be addressed for better functionality, although it doesn't seem critical.

I have been using NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays for six years.

In our fifty years of use, we haven't encountered any issues. We haven't needed to change drives; we installed the system, and it operates smoothly. Our only action is to add new drives when our storage capacity decreases.

During our performance tests, we experimented with the system using twenty-four drives to gauge its performance capabilities. We haven't utilized the system with more than twenty-four drives.

It's quite beneficial. We communicate a couple of times per year, and they address all our inquiries.

Positive

We’ve used a variety of storage solutions, including HPE 3PAR, HPE CBA, XP 12000, XP 20000, Hitachi VSP, Dell EMC, and IBM StoreWise, among others. However, currently, we mainly utilize IBM and Fujitsu storage systems, alongside NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We don't use all of these simultaneously; we've transitioned from some and are presently focused on using IBM, Fujitsu, and NetApp products.

It is easy to deploy. The deployment takes a couple of hours.

They provide licenses upon purchase, so there's no need for additional licenses. Regarding additional expenses apart from the standard licensing fees, such as for support or maintenance, there aren't any. Updates take around twenty to thirty minutes, including rebooting the systems, and we haven't faced any problems with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We utilize various other storage solutions like Fujitsu, IBM, and Dalian SIP, but NetApp EF-Series stands out as we've had no issues throughout the entire year of usage.

I find it cost-effective. When evaluating it against other storage options like Apache DSP, Pure Storage, and Huawei Barada, the performance seems comparable, and the overall cost is lower compared to other storage options offering similar performance.

Overall, I would rate it 10 out of 10 and absolutely recommend it.

My company uses the solution to store our files, virtual machines, and also our ERP tool, which is from SAP.

The most valuable features of the solution are that it has NetApp Snapshot capacity and it offers resilience in recovering files. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is the best solution for storage purposes in the market if you currently face any storage problems.

The initial setup phase of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is not straightforward and needs improvement.

I have been using NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays for five years. My company is a customer of the solution.

It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

It is a highly scalable solution since it allows you to add more storage easily. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

My organization has 315 users of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays.

The initial setup phase of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is not easy. Probably every customer will need a specialized partner to help them create the volumes to let them store files, virtual machines and create a NetApp Snapshot policy, which is not an easy task and requires NetApp professionals.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

The deployment process of the solution took around two to three weeks.

The return on investment from the use of the product was visible because of the stability, resilience, and support from NetApp. If there were any problems with NetApp, NetApp would call for support or arrange a call back from NetApp's support team. NetApp's support team is outstanding.

The pricing of the solution is expensive, considering the initial investment required. Considering the life cycle of NetApp, the initial investment is high if you buy it for five or seven years. At the end of the product's life cycle, it could get cheaper, but the initial investment in NetApp makes it one of the most expensive solutions.

I recommend the solution to others and suggest they seek the services of a specialized partner, or else the deployment could fail. Suppose your company doesn't have enough size. In that case, the initial pricing may be very high, especially if you do not have professionals inside your company that could manage the solution. The deployment might fail if you cannot pay for a specialized partner.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

The basic use cases are for extreme performance applications, databases, converged infrastructure, virtualization like VDI, and scenarios requiring low power and cooling with high streaming performance. Examples include oil and gas, banking, and any industry needing these features.

Its cost-effectiveness is a major selling point. Compared to other storage vendors, the EF-Series offers excellent value for its price. It's truly a leading product in the industry.

The only major drawback is the replication between EF-Series units. Both the EF-series and NetApp are marketing this feature, but it is not functional yet.  

However, I believe NetApp is actively working on improving this feature and implementing the replication feature between storage systems. 

We've been a NetApp partner since 2010, so we're familiar with the EF-Series.

It's a highly stable product. I'd rate it a nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. It's best fit for mid-range and high-end enterprise clients. 

It has two models. The EF300 model caters to lower-end to mid-range, while the EF600 is for highly scalable enterprise solutions. So, medium and enterprise benefit most.

It can also be offered for lower-end solutions. If a customer or organization is small, it can be scaled from small to enterprise.

The customer service and support are really very good.

Positive

As a solution provider, we don't use specific products ourselves, but sell them based on experience and knowledge. 

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy. It is almost ten; it is very easy to setup.

It's a storage system that can be used in both on-premises and cloud environments as part of a larger solution. However, it's important to note that the entire solution, including compute and storage, can be cloud-enabled if needed.

It can be deployed in as little as 30 minutes.

If one is cheap and ten is expensive, then I'd rate the pricing a three.  

Overall, the solution is best in class. I'd rate it a nine out of ten.

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are used for system backups. We mainly use it to store our ERP.

The hardware and software of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are easy for us to use.

We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily.

I have been using NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays for approximately nine years.

The solution is stable.

I would rate the scalability of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays a ten out of ten.

All of our IT specialist department is using the solution, which is approximately 10 people.

The technical support has been very good.

The time of deployment depends on the management system but typically takes one hour. Some of the processes are difficult and others are simple.

We used vendor support for the implementation, we had a good experience.

We have five people for the deployment and maintenance.

The cost of our license is approximately $200,000 over three years for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. There can be additional costs for storage. For example, if you want to have eight terabytes.

We have recently upgraded our system and will not need to update it for more than three years.

My advice to others is all-flash systems are better than other systems.

We will continue with this system and if we need more capacity or performance we will upgrade the solution. We know this solution's software, hardware devices, and support are very good.

I rate NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays a ten out of ten.

A disadvantage of NetApp stems from the fact that it does not have a product, like Isilon, that offers object-oriented storage.

NetApp needs to focus on making its product more compatible with other tools and curb the extra charges they attach to their standard licenses.

I have experience with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I have been selling the solution for the last three to four years. I am a reseller of NetApp products.

Compared to Dell Unity XT, what I see as an advantage in NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is the fact that it is more scalable. You can get a box from the same series of NetApp if you want one and a half petabytes of space. Owing to the aforementioned reasons, I recommend the solution to bigger companies.

The solution's technical support is not as good as it is supposed to be since you have to push them to get support. I rate the technical support a seven to seven and a half out of ten.

Neutral

I don't think NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays has advantages over Dell Unity XT because when I compare them technically, I feel Dell is better. When I sell five boxes of Dell, I sell one box of NetApp.

The deployment phase of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is tricker when compared to Dell. NetApp has a typical operating system that is known to them only.

Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately. The licensing model of NetApp is not intuitive enough.

I would say that it is an okay product that is not bad. A few people specifically ask for NetApp products.

The performance of the product is good.

I don't have any recommendations for people planning to use NetApp products since I don't like their solutions.

I rate the overall product an eight to eight and a half out of ten.

I usually run a POC for our customers.

The solution is very good. It offers very good performance, and very good data services to customers. 

The ONTAP is excellent. 

SnapMirror is very useful. It allows the customer to be able to see the entire relationship. It's one of the best features of the product.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

For the most part, the solution is stable.

The technical support has been pretty good for the most part.

The solution should really build out a more hyper-converged product. In Indonesia, there are many competitors for hyper-converged products, such as Nutanix and VxRail from Dell. Those products in particular are so strong. They need to improve the NetApp for hyper-converged solutions. Whereas, NetApp for storage is still pretty strong in Indonesia.

The dashboard could be simplified. There are many, many features on NetApp, and they could be combined onto one centralized dashboard for ease of use and access.

The stability so far has been very good. It's a reliable solution. For AFF, I still have not noticed any bugs, for example.

We mostly deal with medium-sized organizations.

When we have an issue we still cannot open a ticket yet as we are working when the customer has not yet sent an IPO, and so we cannot open a ticket. Typically, we ask for help from NetApp Southeast Asia. They are helpful. We request via email, and they always tend to help us.

The setup process is okay for the common line installation. I'm familiar with the process, so it is okay.

When we reach an issue in customer, it can take a long time. However, when there's no issue in the customer environment, we can set up it very fast.

In terms of the cost, I do not handle the price or the payments at all. I can't speak to how much the solution costs or what the licensing structure is like.

I'm working as pre-sales for NetApp. I help the NetApp team to test the POC for the customer. My company is a distributor of NetApp in Indonesia.

We might not use the latest version of the solution. We use the AFF Series and the C Series.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We're mostly quite satisfied with the solution so far.

Its performance is most valuable. This solution is much faster than other as well as older storage solutions. The performance of the system is very good. We are getting 50 times better experience than the older storages. We are using AFF 300. It also has native cloud integration and most of the features.

Its pricing should be better. Its price is competitive, but they need to improve the pricing. They have different licensing models, which they need to improve.

My expectation was cloud integration, which they have, but it is a different license. Therefore, people cannot enjoy it. If I want to use it, I need to pay extra. There is a cost involved for everything, but it should reach everyone. It is similar to having a Rolls-Royce, but you need to pay extra for the key. If you want the key, you need to pay.

It is very stable.

We have around 3,000 users. We plan to increase the usage of this product.

Their technical support is good. I am satisfied with their support.

I have been using only NetApp in this company, and it is good. I also have experience with solutions from Hitachi, EMC, Dell, IBM, HP, and others.

It is very easy. It hardly took four hours.

We used an integrator for deployment, and we are satisfied with the experience.  

They need to improve its pricing. The storage market is dying. So, they need to improve the price because it should reach all people. NetApp is one of the top ones, and they are charging a little bit of royalty as compared to other storage solutions.

I would rate NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays a ten out of ten.

The majority of my clients wanted to establish a MetroCluster operation and wanted their business to be stable using multiple data centers. That is why they wanted storage that was going to provide a place for their virtual machines.

Some of the valuable features include MetroCluster switchover, in terms of disaster recovery, it is easy to use, and flexible.

I have been using the solution for almost one year. 

In my experience I found the solution to be stable. 

The solution is scalable.

There could be an improvement when it comes to SLA support, it could be faster. In case of emergencies, when you need urgent feedback from the support, it is delayed because you need to make multiple calls. 

The initial setup for installation was straightforward. 

The installation took one day to configure.

Most of my customers pay for the license on a yearly basis. It can be expensive depending on the capacity number.

When you are dealing with a virtual machine or on-premise, one of the in-demand storage is NetApp. Veeam is also compatible with NetApp, you will not have any concern, it is a total package. 

I rate NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays a nine out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution for databases.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the performance of the database access.

It's simple in operating and for maintenance. Also, they provide a warranty for the I/O output.

All-Flash is made by Solid State Disk, it's not like HDD or spinning disk.

The price is important, and we would like to have it less expensive.

Better integration with other brands is important so we would like to see it easier to integrate.

I have been using this solution for approximately one year.

We are using one of the older versions, with a capacity of 12 TB.

This solution is stable. All-Flash has drives that are very stable. If dropped it's not broken. It's not the same as a hard drive and the old-style hard drive. It won't be damaged by a power surge.

We have 50 users, some are administrators and others are different businesses.

Technical support is good. If we have some issues, especially from NetApp, they give us an early warning system. When there is a potential error, it will come up and let us know immediately that it will occur. This prevents it from crashing.

The initial setup is straightforward.

It's very simple to run the application and run the database. It's more measurable with little to no variables.

It took less than a week to deploy.

We did not use an integrator, we used the resources from our company. We have a team of five engineers to deploy and maintain this solution.

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is an expensive product.

I will continue to use this solution. I think that the technology is still the latest one. 

If there is more development storage technology in the future with other venders then I will consider using another solution.

Depending on the business needs, there are variables to consider with the expense. It's still worth purchasing as the support is good and also the performance is very good.

Some of the engineers are still considering changing to a cheaper solution but they worry that the support and maintenance will not be as good.

I would recommend this solution. From my experience, this is still the best product available.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.