NetApp AFF - All Flash Reviews

The features most valuable to us are--

• A-SIS deduplication
• vServer DR, which is a new feature in v8.3.1

The peak loads on a software install for VDI desktops now have lower latency. Previously, we had a 3240 with HDDs. For normal operation the HDDs with flash cache were fine, but for virus scans and software installations/patching, we would start at midnight and end at three or four am. However, sometimes at four deduplication operations would start and that runs concurrently with the installation that isn’t complete. So as a consequence, we had terrible latency until 11 or 12 so our users were unhappy with that situation. With the AFF, we have absolutely no problem at all.

It’s still new so the only thing I can think of is if the price for SSDs comes down and we can switch everything to flash, that would be an improvement.

I've used it for three years. We're currently running VDI on it with ONTAP.

We had an easy deployment because we have a VMware environment where we use vMotion from the old FAS to the new AFF.

Very stable, 100% uptime.

It scales to our needs.

8/10.

8/10.

We used FAS and we switched because of the above reasons.

It was straightforward.

We used a vendor team who were 10/10.

Straightforward.

The situation before was terrible; we had things to do and couldn’t. It was a high pressure situation. 3,000 people couldn’t work for four hours. Now they can start working on time.

No other options were evaluated.

It’s a good product, performs well and is easy to get up and running. If you need the speed, go for it.

The speed, we have multiple apps with high IO requirements (Hadoop, Mongo, and some monitoring tools), we’re using our monitoring tools to spin up and spin down our environment.

Flexibility, being able to network multiple 880 series together to increase speed. We’re building a four head environment with goal of 500,000 IOPS/second. With the amount of data from monitoring tools and data storage, we need incredible speeds.

We've been using NetApp products for 15 years.

No issues encountered, and none are anticipated.

As we continue forward, we can add additional heads with same IOPS.

From what we’ve seen so far, we’re very happy with potential.

It has a good interface. Its configuration and flexibility are also good.

Its integration could be improved.

I have been using this solution for a few years. I am using NetApp FAS AFF A300.

It is stable.

It is scalable.

I am satisfied with their technical support.

I have been using NetApp solutions for the last 15 years. I have also used EMC, which is also good, but flexibility-wise, NetApp is better.

Its initial setup is easy. The deployment took a few days.

I would rate NetApp FAS Series a ten out of ten.

We use it for data storage.

We have more storage capacity. Managing it is easier and it's available anytime we want it.

• Ease of use
• Availability

Everybody's moving to the cloud. We, as a financial company, are moving to it as well. We need to find out what about the security of the information that we have on it. That's the main thing that they need to talk be talking about. How secure is that information?

The stability is extremely good. It's very stable. We've been running it for about four years now. We haven't had any hiccup with it so far. Okay, there have been a few here and there, but they have been easy to resolve with the engineers that we have.

The reason we have it is that it's very scalable.

Technical support is excellent. We have an excellent team with NetApp. They help us and they are available anytime that we need them.

We knew we needed to invest in a new solution because everybody is moving forward. We don't want to stand still.

The initial setup was straightforward. They had all the codes with them, they just implemented them on the system and, next thing we knew, it was up and running.

We used a consultant for the deployment. Our experience with them was extremely good. They knew what they were talking about, they made it easy, and didn't take a long time.

The amount of data that's stored is increasing day by day. We are a financial company so we have new customers every day and we need to keep their information safe and secure. It definitely has that return on investment in that we didn't have to invest in something else, outside of what we have now.

There was one other option we looked at but it didn't have the scalability. It also didn't have the support that we needed. The experience that we have with NetApp support is excellent.

I would definitely encourage colleagues to go ahead with it. I have had a great experience with it. I would definitely encourage them that this is the way to go.

I rate this product at ten out of ten. It's easy. Once you know your way around it, there is nothing to it. You can do it in a flash.

The valuable feature for us was, we started our VMware solution on a mid-tier NetApp solution. When we went to All Flash FAS our changes went form about a 5 or 10 millisecond response time to 1 millisecond. The systems actually started acting like real computers, not like a virtual system.

The benefits for our organization are that our customers actually noticed, and that's pretty hard to do sometimes. It was really good because they actually noticed the response times changing and that our virtualization system actually became more responsive for them.

Our stability has been very good. We haven't seen any down-time for five or six years probably.

Scalability on NetApp is unforeseen. I'm sure we're going to buy more. I'm sure the fact that we are using clustered NetApp, we can take that stuff and move the next heads into the next cluster and then just migrate things, and nobody notices in the background. That's probably the best thing about the scalability.

The technical support is really good. We don't use it that much because I have a few guys on my team that are really good with the product. But the technical support, whenever we need them, is great. We actually work with Sirius Computer Solutions, our partner. They help us figure out where we should upgrade to. They'll come in and they'll do technology things to make sure that we are going for the next solution that will help our product.

We did the initial setup. I would say it was an eight out of 10. There were some issues but it was okay. They helped us fix it, and we figured it out. That's mostly because we just like to do it ourselves, because we want to see what we're doing and what's in our datacenter.

Yes, we evaluated other solutions but the NetApp solution seemed to be the best one for what we were doing, and for simplicity of moving from the current solution to the next solution.

If a colleague was evaluating storage solutions I would tell them to buy NetApp. The decompression, the dedup, all those things that happen, are just better then everybody else's platform.

• The Flash component for performance
• The management
• ONTAP
• The features that ONTAP now has with the availability to work with the cloud.

We have seen a speed improvement, and our applications are a lot faster.

Probably on the management side of things. It is very complex.

Probably six months.

Not really.

It is pretty scalable.

Tech support is very good, so give it an eight out of 10.

It was an older system. It was a disc based system. So, we were looking for performance improvement.

It was a natural progression from the previous system, so it was just more of an upgrade rather than a new system.

It was reasonably straightforward. We received a lot of knowledge on the net about ONTAP systems, so the setup has improved.

The NetApp ONTAP system is a very good system to work with and use. Very versatile and once you know how things work in the NetApp world, then it makes it very easy to keep the systems for a long time, to work with them, and they work very well.

It is a brand new system, and it works extremely well. Performance improvements are as expected.

• Easy to manage.
• It's quick. It's very fast.
• We've been getting something like 27-to-1 compression, so it's been really good.

Because of the speed and storage efficiency, we have no complaints from the customer and we don't have to buy as much space, because we can compress it.

I know we're looking at cloud solutions, so maybe if they have something cloud-based, that might be something. It could be important soon. Right not it's not but it could change soon for us.

Two years.

We haven't had any down-time yet. So far the disks are really reliable, so I'm happy about that.

We haven't had to buy any new flash for a while because of the compression. So far, being able to compress the data has been able to help us save money on buying more disks.

I haven't had to use it yet. I've been able to do it myself so far.

NetApp's been responsive on other issues. So far, on the flash side, I haven't had any issues to have to call them.

We needed something quick for our SQL DBAs, so that was the recommended path that we take, and it's been great so far.

We were using the 600 Gig drives, regular SCSI drives, and they weren't fast enough. We switched because of the complaints of how slow the disk worked prior to us moving over to the flash.

We had a vendor help us, but it seemed like it was pretty straightforward.

Our primary use case is for SQL databases. We use it for block storage.

We are more likely to consider NetApp for a mission-critical storage system, based on our experience, because of the speed. We have a cluster, so the high availability. Those are the two.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Dependability, like at 3:00 in the morning, if I need help, they're there. That's really number one for me.
• The willingness to be able to train me so I can do it and I don't have to constantly call them.

Those are the two, my major factors.

To a colleague in another company who's researching a similar product I would say, "Go for it." If they don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night saying their backups are slow, they've got to go with the fast disks.