NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

We are in the process of moving to AWS and we are using this solution to help move all of our data to the cloud, using the tiering and other functionality.

We have approximately fifty AFF clusters spread across three locations.

We plan to use this solution for artificial intelligence and machine-learning applications, but we are still in the PoC right now. It is something that my team is working on.

Our DR and backup are done using SnapMirror.

This solution has helped simplify our IT operations. We can easily move data from on-premises to the cloud, or from one cloud to another cloud. NetApp SnapShots and SnapMirror are also helpful.

The thin provisioning has allowed us to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. We are shrinking the data with functions like deduplication and giving almost two hundred percent. It is very helpful.

This solution has allowed us to move very large amounts of data without affecting IT operations. We have moved four petabytes to the cloud. We have moved data from on-premises to the cloud, and also between clouds. It is easy to do. For example, if you want DR or a backup in a second location, then you just use SnapShot. If you have a database that you want to have available in more than one location then you can synchronize them easily. We are very happy with these features.

Our application response time has been improved since implementing this solution. The AFF cluster is awesome. Our response time is now below two milliseconds, whereas it used to be four or five milliseconds. This is very useful. 

The costs of our data center have definitely been reduced by using this solution. The power consumption and space, obviously, because this solution is very small, have been reduced.

We have been using this solution to automatically tier cold data to the cloud. I would not say that it has affected our TCO.

This solution has not changed our position in terms of worrying about storage as a limiting factor.

The most valuable features of this solution are the deduplication and the ability to move data to different clouds. We have been using Cloud Sync and Cloud Volumes, and we have moved four petabytes using Cloud Sync.

It would be very useful if we could do the NFS to CIFS file transfer, but it is not supported at this time.

We are finding limitations when it comes to moving data to AWS.

We have been using this solution for ten years.

The stability of this solution is fine. We have not experienced any downtime or any issues.

Scalability is something that we are spending time on, but it is an internal issue related to seeking financial approval. The scalability of the solution is not a technical issue.

The technical support for this solution has always been number one. There is no doubt that they are getting more responsive and more technical.

We performed a PoC using Cloud Volumes and Cloud Sync, and we were happy with the time, durability, and availability.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward.

We can install this solution ourselves.

We have seen ROI from this solution.

We evaluated a solution by EMC, but we found they their filesystem was not as robust. That is the reason that we chose NetApp.

We are really happy customers and this is a solution that I can recommend.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

VMware datastores over NFS for DL585 G7 hosts on a 10G switch.

NetApp FAS was unable to keep up with the I/O. A200 has performed without a problem.

Having separate storage virtual machines with completely different setups for NFS and Windows solves problems the FAS has when the domain controllers are unreachable.

The system commander web management is good, but it is easy to make bad configurations, and it takes a lot of jumping around to work a single issue.

AFF is our primary source for our data centers. We use it for our multi-tenancy data center. We like the crypto erase function available on the SSDs and we needed the high performance, IOPs that you can get from SSDs.

This solution makes everything a lot faster. The time to move data around, boot, and migrate VMs is much faster. The speed has also helped improve performance for our enterprise applications, data analytics, and VMs.

We like the high security, self-encrypting drives, and the NVMe.

I need faster Fibre Channel over Ethernet. They top out at 10GBs today and I would like that to go to 40 or 100.

I find it very stable. Everything's been up and running well. We actually had an outage in our testbed data center and everything shut off hard and came back up without any problems.

The tech support is good, although I don't use them that much. The product is good. 

We have always been a NetApp customer, it's a very good product. We knew that we wanted more performance. It wasn't a hard decision. 

The setup was pretty complex. There was a lot of compliance and there was a lot of security requirements, but it went pretty well.

It took us two to three days to set up and provision enterprise applications using AFF because we're a little different. We do short duration uses which means that we build everything from scratch, tear it down, and build it again. 

Our total cost of ownership has increased. SSDs are expensive. 

In the early days, we were considering Dell EMC but we decided to go with NetApp because its adoption across the DoD is widely understood.

The user experience is the same as it ever was, only faster. 

I would rate this solution as a nine. It's not a ten because we would like to see the faster speeds on the Fibre Channel over Ethernet. AFF is definitely a good product. 

We use data storage for our big environment. It creates an environment where students and teachers can work together. 

We did the installation two months ago. Now, we are reviewing its affect on behavior over time, which has been incredible. We have less latency within all applications. 

There are many reports accessing the applications. We receive them very quickly. We used to wait a long time for them. Now, you just need to wait a moment.

It takes us just minutes to set up and provision an enterprise application using AFF.

• The most valuable feature is the backup, which is fast.
  
• The data analytics are an incredible tool.
• The equipment is superior quality.
• If you need a replacement part, they will provide it.

We would like to have more behavioral reporting. We would also like to have more optimization and credit check reporting.

In addition, I am waiting for the version that has SnapMirroring with FlexGroup.

Stability is 100 percent. I don't have any downtime.

I am very impressed with the scalability.

The technical support is invaluable. If you need answers to a problem, they provide good answers. I am very happy with it.

If you are compare it with our last application, IBM FS840, AFF is incredible in comparison. 

The setup was not complex, but we have good project management skills.

We used an integrator who was very professional and helped a lot. They finished the implementation on time.

We have seen ROI.

Our TCO has increased by 15 to 18 percent.

I am not using VMs today, but maybe in the future I will.

We have not yet connected to public clouds.

We use it for our VWware environment. We run virtual machines and our plan is to migrate all of them to the All Flash platform.

The improvement for us has been space savings on the All Flash FAS platform. The data space savings are almost three times better than the what we have right now, a two-to-one ratio.

Regarding the user experience, it's pretty fast. For applications where they require a high throughput, this platform is pretty solid. It also helps improve the performance of enterprise applications, data analytics, and VMs because it's pretty fast. We are on a different level of tiered platform, where the All Flash is completely hybrid, SSD aggregate, so it tripled the performance for the customer.

The most valuable features are high performance and encryption. It also provides aggregate level dedupe.

The system is pretty stable but most of the ONTAP versions are not really stable. There have been multiple bugs in different ONTAP versions. The hardware is really stable but we see some glitches here and there with the software. That's how the system works.

Right now, we are on a pretty stable version: 9.3.8.

We have not had to scale it. We have a two-node cluster.

Technical support has been pretty good. We have had to involve them two or three times per month.

Our old solution was working fine but the system was going out of support so we needed to do a refresh.

It is straightforward. The whole cluster configuration is pretty straightforward. Just bring up the node and add to the existing clusters. We didn't see any difficulties.

It takes us one day to set up and provision enterprise applications using this product. Migration takes a lot of time but provisioning is setting up the cluster and that takes one day.

We used NetApp Professional Services and they were pretty good.

Because we are government, it is an open contract. People have to bid on government projects. We don't have a say in the options.

I would say this is a good solution but talk to the NetApp guys and see how it really fits in your environment.

We do not connect it to public clouds at the moment. We have plans to do so in the future, depending on the use cases.

I rate the product at seven out of ten. Their system is pretty good but we are still facing a few issues, mainly on the software side where there is an SVMDR. We had it in the previous configuration. We did an ONTAP upgrade but had some issues replicating the whole configuration. There are a few other glitches here and there. Other than that I would say it's pretty stable.

• The compression
• Dedupe
• The speed

With the ONTAP, the flexibility is also a nice feature.

We've had quite a positive response since we've moved to the AFF for our VCD and our VDI environments. The feedback from the end users and the virtualization team that manages it has been very positive.

We have a fairly large vCloud, vCloud Director (VCD) environment, which we use for our AFF systems, that and VDI. We use it all for file storage.

It is solid.

It scales out very well. We have not had any issues trying to move anything around or when it comes to expansion. We haven't had to expand the AFF yet, but other ONTAP systems are very easy to expand.

They're very professional. They usually find the issues, within the first couple of calls. The software support for all the SNAPManager products, sometimes the support is a little iffy on that, but the hardware support and the ONTAP support have always been pretty solid.

We had some issues with SNAPManager for Exchange around Snapshots not getting deleted, and it's been an ongoing problem for us. We haven't really come up with a solution yet. That's still been a problem. It's gone around the block a few times in support. In support you get a new guy, they start over with a case, that's been the frustration.

It was all disk space, it was on a FAS system, it wasn't AFF. We switched because of growth. The amount of IO that we needed from our existing system just couldn't handle it.

I felt that NetApp was a little late to the game, but I guess that made them a little bit more mature when they got there. However, I've always been a fan of NetApp, an advocate.

I was involved in the initial setup and it was very straightforward.

We looked at Pure. We looked at some of the Nutanix stuff, but it just wasn't what we needed.

I have been an advocate of NetApp for a long time. It's a good company, has good equipment, and good support. I am more like to consider NetApp for mission critical storage systems based on my experiences with AFF.

Our current AFF is not part of a cluster of NetApp FAS systems, we have other systems that are multi-node clusters.

Definitely, heavily look at NetApp and its AFF solution. It's a rock solid platform. That's my recommendation.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: stability and longevity. That's why I'm looking at some of the other Flash providers out there. They haven't been around long enough really for us to know that they're going to be there when we need them. NetApp has been a pretty solid vendor for us.

• Performance
• Reliability
• Scalability

They're important because it's critical user data. As a global bank we need to make sure that users' data is accessible at all times; that there's no outage window or things like that. Performance is key.

The consolidation, the physical rackspace. For example, we've got a project ongoing at the moment in consolidating our footprint from 20 rackspaces down into two. I think we've got a 70-80% footprint reduction in going from old FAS controllers to AFF.

There's not really anything that's standing out at the moment.

Perhaps the node count on a block basis, even though we don't really use it that much for block, but that would be one.

The only other thing from our point of view would be, on the storage efficiency side, the compaction storage efficiency - there's no way of seeing that on a volume level, you can only see that on an aggregate level.

We've had All Flash installed now for coming up to two years. I think it was February, 2016 that we put in the first All Flash array.

The All Flash is very good. So far it seems more reliable, there's not been any issues with it.

Good. We've not really had much scalability, so far, to grow that much on the AFF, but what we have had to do has been good.

Very good. As an enterprise, trust me we've got quite a lot of the account team that were involved with this, so quite a lot of NetApp staff helped us out in the build, the design, the configuration, the maintenance, etc.

We were using NetApp. We were using FAS NetApp, and it was just the new system, the new growth that we needed.

Straightforward. No different to any old system that we've put in before, so an AFF is no different to a FAS.

Dell EMC, NetApp, IBM.

NetApp are our chosen vendor for IP storage.

The primary use case for our All Flash FAS is user data: Windows user file data, application data, NAS IP data. We use file storage.

We've just got a great partnership with NetApp. We've got NetApp installed in over 52 different countries. I think our hardware install base is over 600 systems globally. We've got a very good relationship.

We are more likely to consider NetApp for mission critical storage because of the reliability that we get with them, the support that we have with them, the infrastructure that they have available.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor are

• Manageability
• The customer base that they have
• What enterprise accounts have they got
• Cost is the main thing

By manageability I mean how easy is it to manage the infrastructure. You don't want to manage a complex infrastructure and have multiple use cases, of having issues which are hard to manage. Having a single vendor and being able to manage it through a single support center makes it much easier.

My advice to a colleauge considering a similar solution would be: Depending on the work load that you've got, that you require your systems for, if you're looking for high performance NAS then you'd look at NetApp. But you've definitely got to be able to manage the estate that you've got, so depending on the size of the infrastructure that you have would determine the solution that you choose.

I like the speed and that it's easy to set up. We are now using the compression and the dedupe, which is very useful in saving a lot of data space.

As I’ve mentioned, we are using the compression to save data space. We do a lot of vaulting. We have our primary storage and our secondary storage. For our secondary storage, we always had to buy big SATA disks but now we can use compression to actually save buying monstrous disks and use compression to save our secondary vault for data.

I'm hearing about compaction, I kind of want to find out more about it. I guess it's another level of compression on top of things. I’d like to just see where it takes off from there. I know that the speed of the disks isn't going to be the bottleneck anymore. As far as the NAN technology coming out, I want to find out what the feature design is for NetApp on that, too.

So far, I haven’t seen any features in other solutions that I'd like to see brought in to AFF. I'm pretty impressed with the way we run things for what we have so far.

They could always improve the pricing. It is relatively expensive. When we priced things out before, it was priced by how many GBs you need for whatever you need, how many TBs. Now, it's terabytes compressed. You're looking at a compression tool, so you don't need as much hardware to get the same amount of space. It actually is saving space in our data centers, so we're getting a lot of improvements with heating and cooling, and with tile space; half the data center's coming back. For the past two years, we've been really ramping up on different technologies and decreasing our data center space. We've been looking at AFF now for over a year now. We've been running more and more of those in.

I've been running the AFF systems now for over a year.

We have not had any stability issues. We can do vault moves and everything else. It gives us flexibility, mainly in our VMware environment, because we're all NFS. We’re able to buy new equipment, retire equipment, swap things in and out very easily.

We have not had any scalability issues so far. It's scalable, depending on what your network switch is; we're running ten-node clusters right now.

Sometimes we use technical support. It depends on who you get. The last couple of people I had were helpful. We use professional services. For example, when we do an upgrade two or three levels up, we'll mostly use professional services or our contacts. For any kind of upgrades, we'll get recommendations from technical support, and so on. They've been great.

Our main kick off was our VDI environment, our work stations, heavy writes. Typically, we were running SAS disks and they were doing good but for the right performance, you really had to have huge aggregates to carry that load. With AFF, you don't really need that because the IOPS are there and it can handle it.

Initial setup has been easier and easier because we used to set older systems up with SAS and aggregates and everything else. Now, it's kind of, start it up and let it go. It's getting a lot easier, at least on the hardware setup.

We mainly run NetApp for our NAS environment but for SAN, we run some of the other vendors. However, that's kind of coming around. People are seeing what these AFF systems are doing and I'm actually doing some testing in our SAN environment for some of the NetApp stuff, too. It might be a good thing. We'll have to see.

We do a lot of work with our NetApp professional services or just design teams. Get help with them to start it out, so you have some kind of baseline. Don't just go run out there and buy something. (I guess if you have the money, you can go out there and try it.)

We've been working with a pretty good support team that we get to bounce things off of.

I can't find anything bad about them. It's been a big improvement for us.
When I look for a vendor, support is important to me. You want to be able to buy a piece of equipment, run a piece of equipment, you don't know anything about, and know that somebody can support it, so that when something does crash, they're not going to just say, "Oh, call somebody else," or run away from you. Support is very important; I would think so.