A primary benefit is high reliability. They have very good price performance and configuration options. Being able to configure them in different ways, for different node types, was something we needed.

We're trying to keep all log files in our Hadoop server, which amounts to several terabytes a day of locked data that we need to analyze. Apollo allows us to use as few nodes as possible for this so that we have as much direct space capacity as possible. It gives us much more space per gigabyte.

We have been working with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center for around ten years. They are picking the hardware and they had picked this hybrid system. It has several different kinds of components in the system and we had worked with them for a long time. We knew that they were picking the stake of that stuff so that's why we selected this solution.

Just not having to manage traditional NAS has made a big difference. Not having to manage traditional volumes and aggregates and LUNs and things like that. Being able to be flexible when it comes to that, and Apollo has made that possible.

We are moving from existing 10-gig environments to a 40-gig environment. The ability to capture those high data rates is really important to us. We need to know what's going on in the network. We need to be able to explain to our customers any issues or problems, and where they might have occurred.

In the beginning we used Splunk in a virtual environment and the performance was quite hard on that system. So when we moved to the Apollo and all flash drives, we gained a lot of performance on that.

It enables us to implement software defined solutions very easily, because Apollo servers are certified for use with Linux systems, which is really a big thing for us.

It's allowed us to benefit from IP-based storage instead of using only fiber channel SAN storage. Also, I don't think we could have afforded that quantity of storage in a SAN array.

I'm just a general manager and I’m not really technical. However, it gives you a nice, better flavor of the monitoring. I have heard that it provides better management and you can see the possibilities.

The biggest benefit for us is a physical benefit in that we can save our very limited space. Again, it's a dense product, meaning we can fit several servers into our rack space.

The benefit is, as I said, we are compressing everything. In the past, we used StorageWorks P2000, plus SAN switches, plus three or four servers and so on. Now, we have two-rack units for everything. 

For a branch it's perfect because it's simplifying our life.

It's allowed us to compete with cloud storage providers like AWS to put together a scalable on-premises solution of more than 20PB at a similar pricepoint.