We performed a comparison between NetApp FAS Series and NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) came out ahead of NetApp FAS Series. Although both products have similar deployment difficulty and quality of support, NetApp FAS Series has fewer valuable features and should move towards adopting more all-flash capabilities.
"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"The solution is scalable."
"Performance. Mostly with our default settings it's good. All of the factory settings are fine. We don't have to tune it."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to do QoS."
"The most valuable feature is the support. If we have any issues, we can call into NetApp and their support is really good."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the software bundle, replication, and cloud connectivity."
"We had some customers who were running virtualization workloads on classical spinning disks. We implemented an AFF system, and they got a huge performance boost out of it because the latency of the SSDs is simply much lower. Actually, most customers benefit from the improved latency and performance from the AFF systems."
"It's very stable. It's always there when we need it. With the Dual Controller, if one drops out, the other one comes right online. We don't use any iSCSI so there is a little bit of a latency break but, over the NFS, we don't notice that switch-on. We can do maintenance in the middle of the day, literally rip a whole controller out of the chassis, and do what we need to do with it."
"One of the main features that differentiate AFF from the FAS products, or some other technologies used, is the footprint of these arrays are significantly smaller than the traditional ones. Also, the performance that you get to these new arrays is really significant. You can see a huge difference there. By switching to it, we can achieve more storage performance and efficiency as well as in the long run lower down some of the TCOs due to reducing the footprint."
"We just migrated two petabytes of data storage from IBM over to NetApp All Flash. Some of the performance improvement that we've seen is 100 times I/O and microsecond latency."
"It changed the way we do Disaster Recovery (DR) around NetApp replication."
"The most important features are SnapVault, Snapshots, and SnapMirror."
"The most valuable features are compression and dedupe."
"It offers data compression and people management."
"Can use both SAN and NAS at the same time."
"Fast Snapshots"
"The solution is easy to use."
"It is very easy to expand disks and manage CIFS."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"It is on the expensive side."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"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."
"When comparing with Pure for example, with Pure you have no maintenance anymore and with NetApp, you still need maintenance."
"Its integration could be improved."
"There is room for improvement in terms of support. I have noticed that if I sometimes call their customer care for a particular issue, they will give me another number and ask me to call that other team. It would be better if they could do a warm transfer. That would save customers time from calling all the numbers again and speaking to another team."
"They should make these features a little more affordable."
"The ONTAP S3 implementation is not feature-complete as compared to StorageGRID. We had to move our lakeFS instance from ONTAP S3 based on AFF to StorageGRID."
"We have had trouble with restoring applications, and if there is more support for application-aware backups then that would be great."
"I don't work on the technical side of things, so it's hard for me to highlight areas of improvement, but maybe the price could be a little better."
"Currently, the newest release is not HCI friendly."
"The solution's configuration is not flexible."
"The NetApp FAS Series is not as high-performing and is not as fast. Its speed needs improvement, but this could only be done if it's an all-flash solution."
"Installation of the additional switches and ETP could be improved."
"The adoption of flash by NetApp has also been lagging behind the trendsetters, like TMS, Nimble, and others."
"The high cost of the product is an area of concern, so from an improvement perspective, the tool needs to be made cheaper."
"Needs to improve the adaptive storage quality of service."
"We would like to have further integration with some backup products. They have some of them already, but there could be more."
NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 281 reviews while NetApp FAS Series is ranked 5th in Deduplication Software with 98 reviews. NetApp AFF is rated 9.0, while NetApp FAS Series is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp FAS Series writes "Offers good performance and ". NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Pure Storage FlashArray and NetApp ASA, whereas NetApp FAS Series is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), HPE StorageWorks MSA, Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain), IBM FlashSystem and HPE StoreEasy. See our NetApp AFF vs. NetApp FAS Series report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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