My company evaluated different options, but AFF was definitely one of the front runners.

We implemented AFF to find the right balance between price and performance. We compared it with other options in the market, and AFF emerged as the best choice for our needs. What set AFF apart were its reliability and strong data protection features. Our VDI solution provided multi-site configuration support, which is crucial for replication and failover. In comparison, other options relied more on software and hypervisor layers to achieve what we needed. AFF met our platform requirements, and in a competitive market, it offered the best value for our customers. That is why our partnership with NetApp was the right choice for us.

We are using two other vendor products as well. One is from Dell EMC, and the other is HP. I say the best competitor would be EMC. We get the same level of support from EMC as NetApp. But it's hard to compare the two. Each vendor has its own way of providing the service. AFF doesn't work the same way the other vendor's product does. They both are unique and work based on their own design. However, the navigation makes a lot of difference for the end-users, like admins.

It depends on if you prefer working with the CLI or the GUI. I'm more comfortable on the CLI in admin roles, but I like the GUI over the CLI if I compare the same thing with the other product. Each product meets the needs of the use case in its own way, but the navigation style is different. Depending on your preference, you might feel more comfortable with NetApp or other products.

I evaluated NetApp, Dell, and HPE storage. I chose Netapp AFF because I had used NetApp earlier as well, so I was well aware of the performance of this solution.

We did not evaluate other options because it is part of a centralized storage offering with our company. We wanted to keep everything on the same level for ease of use for purchasing, operations, shared ownership, and everything else.

In terms of using other NetApp solutions or services, we use less of NetApp Cloud Services, but we do use Cloud Volumes ONTAP. We also use SnapMirror and FlexCache for a lot of the intra or inter-site capabilities.

We evaluated other options. 

Before choosing NetApp AFF our architect evaluated many options including Dell.

We did not evaluate other storage issues. 

We looked at Dell, Pure, and EMC, among other options. 

I like Pure. Pure has very low-cost copies of point-in-time databases that they can spin up immediately, and the developers, the database administrators, can have that hanging off the same disc at a low cost. It's just built off of the existing data, and I haven't seen NetApp come up with anything like that yet.

The Snapshotting, SnapMirror, SnapVault technologies, and just having all of those technologies, are really nice so that we can get a copy, SnapMirror, for example, in the data center, and we can have that spun up really quick. That's NetApp's technology and that's the advantage there.

We looked at HPE, and because we were using Dell and EMC and IBM storage prior to moving to NetApp as our global standard, we considered them.

When it comes to support for both file services and block services AFF is the 
top. The best.

We didn't have any other vendors on the list, although we had one team that tried to push HP on to us and we said no. HP was really the only other possible alternative that we had. We had tossed around a couple of other vendors, but we never really gave them any serious thought. We already knew NetApp, so it made more sense because they could integrate better and that was the main thing we were looking at. The level of integration. Since we had a NetApp that we've had for many years, it just made sense to stick with what we had, but a newer and faster version.

We evaluated IBM and Dell EMC, and Dell EMC was too expensive, and it didn't have the flexibility that NetApp had.

We evaluated Pure Storage and Nimble. I've used HPE 3PAR and Tintri as well. We've looked at a lot of different vendors. Most of them were better in terms of their upgrade process. Nimble and Pure have a hot upgrade process, which NetApp does not have. Although the cost of Pure is a lot more. Nimble was a good product, but they were bought by HP I think, so that will probably go away. I don't see it as much as I did before. We chose NetApp because of its speed and stability.

We considered a few different competitors. However, what set NetApp apart was the fact that it offered a single array capable of handling both block and file storage.

When I first joined the company twenty-three years ago, they evaluated various storage solutions before ultimately selecting NetApp. The key factor that led to this choice was NetApp's snapshot technologies.

We thought about using Dell, however, when it came to cost-effectiveness, we stayed with NetApp. I like the way NetApp is coded and its maintenance configuration. I know how to set up a NetApp; I prefer that over Dell.

We did not look at any other vendors.

We are using Commvault for backup purposes.

We use AFF a lot in MetroCluster architecture, with synchronous replication between two data centers. In this scenario NetApp has some very hard requirements, like a specific switch that is mandatory. Its competitors don't have all these requirements. So sometimes it's very difficult to win projects as a result.

But on the positive side, NetApp is very performant, very stable, and easy to manage. And when it comes to support for both file services and block services, NetApp is definitely better. We tried some of the competitors' solutions and with them it's not so easy. The NAS protocol is very good in NetApp.

The vendors on our shortlist were Oracle, Dell EMC, and Hitachi.

We chose NetApp because we were already using it, which make things simple, and its pricing. Also, some of NetApp's features are dominant in the market versus its competitors.

We have had such a good experience with NetApp that our next logical step up from our previous device was just another NetApp.

NetApp has been reliable for us. Their technologies have been rock-solid. That is why we felt comfortable going from their older model to their newer model, AFF, rather than looking for a new vendor.

We evaluated solutions like Dell EMC and HP. I think from the reputation that NetApp has, that was definitely the choice for us.

We did RFIs with the different solutions. We were looking at a NetApp, Isilon, and Nutanix. Those were three that we were looking at. NetApp won out primarily around simplicity and ease of automation. It's the different deployment models where you can deploy in the cloud or on-prem, speaks to its simplicity. Our environment is very complex already. Anything that we can do to simplify it, we will take it.

We also talked to Tegile and HPE, but nobody else offered up the functionality or snapshots. It was a no-brainer.

NetApp has been the leading goal standard of technology in terms of storage. There was never an option of exploring any other technologies.

I have worked with Nutanix as well. I would recommend either solution for a client based on what fits them rather than trying to make a solution stretch across.

At the time, I don't think we were considering any other vendors, only because we were moving towards becoming an all-NetApp shop. This was the go-to thing. We did have a relationship with NetApp before. We had previous spinning FAS arrays. We do have some E-Series and so on. We do have a good relationship with our NetApp reps, so that probably went into a lot of it.

We evaluated Dell, Hitachi and Pure. 

We chose the A300 model based on recommendations from existing users. There are lower-end versions, such as the A250 and A260, but we didn't explore them.

Other vendors were not really on the shortlist at the time. NetApp is our standard for now. In the future, I don't know if it will remain that way and we may re-evaluate other solutions. FlexPod may be our future or HCI, but we are using NetApp big-time and it is a successful solution for us.

The two vendors that made it through the evaluation process were Pure Storage and NetApp. We had Pure Storage and NetApp proof of concepts. Both of them performed admirably. Pure Storage beat out on the performance, but on price per terabyte, NetApp was considerablely cheaper.

We have products from HPE, Dell, and NetApp in our environment right now. They each have their share, and each one is equally working.

We considered solutions by EMC, but they were very quickly ruled out.

Comparing it to other vendors, there was more complexity when leveraging the features with the cost of the features available today, based on where the roadmap is. NetApp seems to fit our requirements for now.

The next closest option that we considered was Dell EMC.

We looked at Tegile, Violin, and Nimble. It came down to the management of the FAS itself, and the others seem slightly less mature in the market. It came down to trusting what we know works.

I don't have a lot of experience with other vendors. We've reviewed Pure Storage, and even though we didn't officially have Nimble in, we've talked to Nimble at a lot of booths in some of the trade shows. They are pretty much the same as Pure Storage when it comes to some of their features, restrictions and similar items. EMC, I don't have any experience to speak for.

We ended up going with some other vendors for our SAN environment; we went with Pure because at the time there was not an offering from NetApp on the flash for the SAN side of things. Now there is, the All Flash FAS, the SolidFire, or something like that. At the time, there wasn't, so that's the reason why we went to Pure.

We only evaluated NetApp, and we are slowly looking at VMware, VDI, and the cloud.

We went with this solution primarily because of the stability. I also see reducing a lot of storage and cleaning up a lot of stuff. It is pretty good at this.

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

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.

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.

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

Dell EMC, NetApp, IBM.

NetApp are our chosen vendor for IP storage.

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.

Normally, I work on IBM storage. Compared to those, this solution's efficiency is good. The IBM solution is an all SAN-based solution. 

Whenever we require block or file services, we only go with NetApp. As of now, I have not implemented any IBM Boxes for file services. Previously, there was the V7000 Unified, but it is not there now. Lately, we have migrated from IBM Box to the NetApp ONTAP Select system, which was serving IBM file services. We needed to move to NetApp because there currently is no system for file services when it comes to IBM.

Oracle ESSWebservice and Cloud Object Storage have huge tasks, making it difficult to implement them. 

Other vendors aren't as straightforward as NetApp when it comes to the deploying, installing, and configuring. NetApp works more efficiently. By saving time, you're saving money.

To be honest, we spoke to a lot of people. We spoke to Tegile, XtremIO, Pure Storage, SolidFire, and Nutanix just to understand the market because it felt like the storage market had moved on quite a lot over the last three years. Clearly, with us being an NFS house, it's all we've used. It came down really to Tegile or NetApp.

We chose NetApp because it was an easier deployment for us because we already know it. We've got the skills. We know that it works and, I guess, NetApp has just got a bit more experience in the market. Their ability to execute is kind of a known for us.

We've looked at EMC and Microsoft storage spaces. Neither one of them really compares.

My advice to someone considering this solution is that if you can afford it and you will be using it a lot, go for it. 

We also considered Dell EMC and Pure Storage. The biggest reason we picked NetApp was the ease of actually getting the data to the next iteration but also the other vendors don't have a product that supports everything we needed which is file services and block services. It's a one stop shop and I didn't really want to have to manage another box and a storage device at the same time.

NetApp does a good job of being able to provide a lot of options for its customers and supporting those options with information. Even before AFF, we always used NetApp for mission critical stuff.

We evaluated EMC, Hitachi and NetApp.

We evaluated EMC, Hitachi and NetApp.

We looked at VCE or the EMC equivalent. That was really the main consideration. HP was also considered, for 3PAR. Epic's recommendations for storage played a key role in the decision. Their comfortability with ONTAP and their flash. At the time, they were not very comfortable with the XtremeIO that was being offered up, what has happened with that product and the instability with that product. We're very glad that we did go with NetApp.

There were other factors too. Cost seemed to be lower with NetApp, but in the grand scheme of things the hardware component was a much smaller amount in the budget when you look at the entire cost of implementing Epic. Definitely cost plays into it. The elegance of the solution is another big key. The manpower required to administrate VCE and to patch it really requires someone to hand hold the entire upgrade process, whereas with NetApp it's a lot more flexible, it's intuitive and doesn't quite require that same level of administrative work.

NetApp is a good choice because it's not only for a normal application, but it can also integrate with Nvidia for AI solutions.

NetApp met our requirements.

We're using NetApp now as our hybrid storage. We have VMs on there. They wanted to put databases on the VMs. We said, "Well, we don't have the speed to put your databases on there. If you want to stay on the NFS structure with NetApp, the next logical solution is just to put you on All Flash, so we just throw some of those in the cluster and do a motion of your volumes over."

For All Flash, we have a SAN infrastructure and a NAS infrastructure. We use the EMC for the SAN infrastructure, for the block. NetApp is the only NAS we have. There's not much else we can look at besides Isilon. Isilon just isn't fast enough. It's slower than what we had them on at the beginning. NetApp was really the only logical choice for that particular environment if we wanted to use NAS.

We looked at Hewlett Packard, EMC, a Nutanix solution, and probably a couple more I can't remember. Nutanix had been way out there; just a totally different way of doing it.

We've had other vendors, and we've used their solutions. The performance hasn't been what it is on NetApp or the compression dedup rate hasn't been what it is on NetApp; with those other vendors, we get one of the two. We get both of those with NetApp; better performance, better compression, all of those things without sacrificing performance.

We weren't really considering any other vendors. We have a very good relationship with NetApp and we've been really happy with them.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is the support infrastructure; we have to have good support. For business-critical applications, if there's downtime – it happens – but we need a support organization and infrastructure that can help us. We'd leverage a support account manager to get the best out of support and we've had very good success with NetApp so far.

We looked at several other options:Pure Storage, Nutanix, and Tintri.

We chose NetApp because all of our other storage systems are NetApp. We just liked being able to leverage the knowledge that we already had in house. We didn't see a lot of value in having another siloed storage system out there that we had to support. Price-wise, NetApp was very competitive, more competitive than we had expected.

We evaluated Dell EMC and HPE storage.

The NetApp interface was very easy, as was managing things. Our experience with HPE, which we used before, was that it was quite a complex system to manage when it comes to the storage and volumes.

We have not evaluated other solutions, it's not worth it.

We did go through the whole vetting out process of scoring different vendors and NetApp won, when we went through a Greenfield environment.

We looked at other vendors (Kaminario, Pure Storage, Dell EMC, and IBM), but decided that it made the most sense to stay with NetApp. 

There were really only two on the shortlist: IBM and NetApp. We chose NetApp because we had an opportunity to make all of our environment NetApp.

Dell EMC was an option, but we liked the operating system of NetApp.

We evaluated Nimble, 3PAR, Dell EMC. 

We considered quite a few vendors before deciding on NetApp. We considered EMC Isilon and a couple other smaller vendors. We eventually chose the FAS, primarily because we already have the equipment and the environment. It doesn't really change our support structure. We don't have to learn anything new. Obviously, cost is a factor, too.

When selecting a vendor to work with, they have to have a good product, number one. They have to be a good partner. Cost is obviously a factor for everybody, but it's got to be something we need that solves our needs and meets our requirements. They have to be a good partner; it's not just, “Here, you figure it out.” They work with us to make it work, which NetApp does a pretty good job of, and then make it affordable for us.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options. We went with NetApp because we were already using NetApp. The strategic direction at the higher management level was to go with NetApp.

The choice was really simple: either going with a hybrid FAS or an all-flash FAS. We did a quick bake-off and the all-flash won hands down.

We did not consider any other vendors.

The most important criteria for me when considering vendors to work with has to be their interoperability between the platforms. NetApp has clearly done that.

Dell EMC. We looked at them briefly when they were EMC. We looked at IBM. But Epic pretty much says that NetApp sets the standard and we have to follow that.

There were other vendors on the list, primarily EMC and HPE, as they are the other players. NetApp came in at a better price.

I came from an EMC shop with block level storage and found that NetApp was a lot easier to manage and configure. From a learning curve, it was easy for me to set up and pick up.

We're multi-vendor. We do EMC and NetApp. We will look at others but most don't have the track history that we are looking for.

Before choosing AFF, we looked around a little bit, thought about some Cisco gear, but decided we just wanted to go with NetApp from talking with a couple of other utilities that we know, that work with us. They were using NetApp, so we just gravitated towards it.

In general, when I choose a vendor, the criteria that are important to me are stability, for one; longevity in the business already; and then, of course, word of mouth from other customers. How they treat their customers, how good are they at getting back to you. There’s nothing like having a fire and wanting your vendor to be there on the spot to fix it. Other than that, that's probably the biggest thing.

We did a bake-off with HP, NetApp and EMC, and picked the NetApp solution.

Pricing was a pretty big reason we chose NetApp, but it wasn't up-front pricing; it was pricing across the four or five years that we were going to keep the unit. We also chose them because of the amount of IOPS sent and the sub-millisecond latency requirement we had given them for performance metrics. Also, we were able to just add discs rather than add controllers, which we had to do with the HP and the EMC.

Generally, when we choose a vendor, we pretty much always go with Gartner because if we have the service, why not use it? NetApp is always up there, along with the other ones that I mentioned. That helped out a lot, along with the sales reps, of course. The technical team for both sides and the things that other customers say about it.

Before choosing this product, I didn't evaluate other solutions, actually. We already had this use case, in particular, running on a NetApp filer. It kind of was a natural progression to move it to a flash filer.

NetApp is the largest storage vendor in the market, purely based on storage technologies. I hope it stays that way.

Traditionally, we are limiting the number of our vendors. We still haven't ventured out to any other vendors. We have consistently been with NetApp.

Going forward, I would like to compare AFF vs Pure Storage based on all the parameters.

The last purchasing cycle, two years ago, it came down to a bake-off between EMC and NetApp. We've been a NetApp customer for quite a while, so our skill set is heavily invested there. Also, we're about a 50% file-based shop as opposed to block, so NetApp is a pretty good fit. I like their file solutions more so than EMC, that it's all integrated. It's not a bolt-on appliance.

In general, when I choose a vendor, I look for stability, supportability, and that the product has actually been adequately tested; that it's not beta.

We have an architect who looked at something from EMC, as well, but we're very well-ingrained with NetApp right now.

EMC was a possibility. I'm sure there were others. For me, it wasn't even a competition. I would have just said, "We're going with NetApp. We can talk about who's going to provide it but NetApp's the way to go." We were so heavily invested in NetApp already; also, most of our storage team had experience with NetApp and bringing in another storage vendor... learning curve and all that; we're already understaffed and over-utilized.

When selecting a vendor to work with, they have to be able to both support and anticipate our needs, communicate efficiently and clearly. Sometimes that means making changes in the way they do business in order to facilitate our needs because we have very little movement in the way we do business. We're a public school, a lot of stakeholders. We are beholden to explain ourselves to a lot of people. Those kinds of criteria are very important. Whatever we're buying has to be worth the money because we're not going to get it again very soon.

We looked for support, stability, and that we don’t have a vendor who would disappear two years later. That is one reason we didn’t chose Pure Storage, because we don’t know where they will be in a few years. We needed a trusted partner.

Before purchase All Flash, we had a very high impression of NetApp as a vendor of high performance sound storage. It is still very high as it is the only vendor we would consider for mission critical systems based on our experience at this point.

We looked at some other vendors. They can't provide the single pane of glass management. We're a very thinly-staffed environment, and we need to be able to have a minimum number of people managing the maximum amount of resources. Other vendors don't do that.

For example, we looked at EMC. Their primary problem was the pane of glass problem. They offered three solutions to do what we're already doing with one. Nimble was the other solution which we looked at, and they were protocol limited. They could only do iSCSI, which would have required a significant architecture rebuilt for us.

Before purchase All Flash, we had a very high impression of NetApp as a vendor of high performance sound storage. It is still very high as it is the only vendor we would consider for mission critical systems based on our experience at this point.

We looked at some other vendors. They can't provide the single pane of glass management. We're a very thinly-staffed environment, and we need to be able to have a minimum number of people managing the maximum amount of resources. Other vendors don't do that.

For example, we looked at EMC. Their primary problem was the pane of glass problem. They offered three solutions to do what we're already doing with one. Nimble was the other solution which we looked at, and they were protocol limited. They could only do iSCSI, which would have required a significant architecture rebuilt for us.

We evaluated other large flash vendors including EMC and Pure. Every vendor has their own niche in the flash industry.

I think we looked at EMC a little bit, but I think they were too expensive. They were out of our price range, and we wanted to go all flash. That's pretty much why we chose NetApp.

Initially, we approached multiple vendors for this kind of solution.

We have a NetApp on-site PSE and a systems manager – a NetApp group – sitting in our company. They suggested, “Why don't you explore this All Flash FAS for the VDA?” Then we evaluated the E560, a NetApp product, as well as AFF. We also evaluated other vendors such as XtremIO from Dell EMC.

Finally, for the simplicity and the flexibility, we thought of going with the AFF system.
This is a newer deployment. We used to use just the FAS system with the spinning HDD. We have changed it to all-flash.

We looked at Tintri for the VM piece of it. Finally, we went to the AFF.

In general, when I’m choosing a vendor, I look at what kind of products or aspects of the product we are looking for, whether they satisfy that or not, as well as performance. Third but not least is the cost, as well as how much difference it is from our current NetApp solution because our staff needs to be trained on that.

There weren’t any other flash storage vendors on our shortlist. We were already in a four-year cycle with NetApp, so we just stuck with the same vendor.

In general, when I look at a vendor, the most important criteria is that they have our interests at heart and want to partner with us. Since we're a non-profit organization, we need them to understand what we're doing because we don't have a lot of money to throw around. They have to invest in our belief of what we're trying to do. Cost is part of it, but we still try to pick the technology over the cost, first.

We did run the eval and our PoC through other vendors, other storage suppliers.

There were two other flash players, and we finally ended up going with NetApp All-Flash. The reason being the migration would be much easier. We added our existing cluster to the same cluster, so that we could do the migration whenever we are able to do it. We didn’t need a big downtime to migrate it.

Also, when we buy other technology, we have to have people to manage it. We need to decide whether, “OK, do I need to use the current talent pool to migrate to All-Flash, or bring in a new player where we have to support both?” It adds to the cost.

When we are selecting a vendor to work with, we look at whether they want to work according to our interest or according to the vendor’s interest, because we need to make sure they can support us in the long run; that they are reliable; and that they have good people who know the product and have a good attitude working with customers. Most of the technical knowledge and other things, you can acquire, but attitude is important.

We looked at a number of other flash systems and solutions for our latency issues. At the end of the day, we just decided to continue and move forward with another NetApp controller.

Reliability and availability are the most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with. We need them to be available. There are a lot of vendors out there that have a lot of people, but if you're building a reputation and you can't get the people you need, then it's a problem, regardless of how good the controller is.

We compared it to other vendors, and also with the return on investment we were expecting. This is cost efficient. We went to all the vendors to see how it would impact our IT budget.

We have been using it for a long time. As our storage increases, we keep on adding NetApps because we are happy with it.

We considered the product from EMC.

We had NetApp already, so they were always a front runner, but we were looking at EMC, EqualLogic. And even, instead of having a NetApp, a different DR solution altogether, where we would have a third-party replication system that could replicate our data - instead of having another All Flash FAS or another FAS on the other side - and just relying on a different DR system altogether.

Once we took into account the easy integration of everything, and how everything worked together, and since we already had that familiarity and that comfortability with it, it was easy to decide on NetApp; the company and the product.

Nimble was on the shortlist.

There was EMC and IBM.

NetApp has always had a good name in the industry for providing excellent solutions, especially with the added protection functionalities, Snapshot, SnapRestore, and SnapMirror features. It makes it easy to have One-Box that provides all the solutions a customer would need to protect their data.

We decided on NetApp because of ease of use.

Every time we go through an upgrade process or we have a new purchase, we look at what functionality is offered by each vendor/manufacturer and we don't purchase based on fidelity to a single vendor. It has to be based on:

1. Monetarily does it make sense for us to go with that vendor. Are they willing to work with us on the price?
2. What they're offering. Does it give us what we need?
3. Does it allow us scalability in what we're doing?

We just got finished purchasing a new node-pair of 8080, AFF8700, and an 8200. If Unity would have come in at a comparable price, we could have gone with them. We didn't simply because of the scalability of the product.

We only looked at NetApp for the all flash because we were already a NetApp customer. We weren't going to change vendors yet.

I wasn't involved in the decision-making process, so I'm not sure who else we were looking at, at the time.

We looked at XtremIO, Dell, Pure Storage, and Nutanix. We already have a NetApp environment, so it met our needs, and it was an urgent decision. There was no option, and we didn’t want to change back to block storage.

We looked also looked at EF from NetApp and chose AFF because of the snapshot technology.

We evaluated other options, including solutions by EMC, before choosing NetApp. The reason for our choice is that we already had NetApp in our environment, and the price-point is also a little better than the competing products.

We've been using some other vendors products as well.

I cannot disclose the name of the vendors that we are using to compete with NetApp. In the industry today, you can't really tell if there is a bad product or good product. It comes down to your requirements. As a customer, first you have to define your requirements. Then, you need to know what you need, what is your goal, how are you going to achieve it, and what your challenges are. We identified those and have compared some solutions. 

NetApp was our vendor of choice who could help us to fulfill our requirements, especially for some of the challenges that we were facing. NetApp has been able to help us with that.

We did not evaluate other options.

Other vendors, who do other similar solution products, envy the features that come with this NetApp product.

Our shortlist was Dell EMC and HPE. These are the vendors with whom I have worked. I feel all the vendors are very good, along with NetApp. However, NetApp has file-based and block-based features, which gives it additional value.

Our shortlist would have been EMC, NetApp, and possibly Dell. This was before Dell bought EMC. 

NetApp was there because of the NFS support. That's why we chose NetApp, because of the NFS support plus their compression and deduplication. The cost savings on that alone was worth it.

We have storage frames from most of the large vendors, so EMC would have been on the table, IBM would have been on the table, Hitachi. And really with the ecosystem that NetApp has built up around it, it just makes the most sense from a management perspective for sure. And the performance and value for money is there as well. It's a tough combo to beat.

We're constantly looking at other vendors to see what they have, in terms of this purchasing cycle. We weren't seriously looking at other vendors. Unless NetApp had completely dropped the ball on the platform and/or given us a quote that was completely unreasonable, I don't think we would have necessarily gone with anyone else.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is customer support, in the States, and then also an account team that allows us access to the back-end engineers. For example, at a recent NetApp conference, our account manager set up a meeting with us and some of the security back-end people from NetApp. We're able to have a 45-minute deep dive into what we need as a customer. These are the guys and gals who are actually implementing the technology, and supporting us. We were able to have that conversation, which was great.

I did not evaluate other options; that was it.

Before choosing this product, we did not really evaluate other options. We have an EMC VMAX 10K array, and the thing just sucks. We also used it mainly because we are required by politics not to be locked to one specific vendor. As an engineer, I can tell you that NetApp is the best solution; we all know that. We're slowly pushing management to try to change their model. What NetApp sells you that nobody else has is the feature set; you get the FlexClone, the SnapMirrors, and it's all very easy to use. God, the EMC is so difficult that it sometimes makes no sense. It's a very reliable solution. If you get it to work, it just works but then again, I have so many things I can't really do with it.

It's getting to the point that every time we get a new application, every time we get a new requirement for storage, we don't even think of the VMAX, we put it on the NetApp, because it's so much easier to work with.

For instance, we have a UAT environment that can't really work with the EMC, because the EMC doesn't have a FlexClone capability that the NetApp does. Every time something else or something new comes in, we have to ignore the EMC and just put it on the NetApp. For the stuff that's working there right now, it works great, but for the new things that come along, it doesn't work so well.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are the ease of use of course, stability, reliability, and feature set.

We did not, and when I joined, I proposed using NetApp and this was accepted.

We performed a good comparison between it and EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR, and decided to use NetApp. We chose NetApp because we had used them before and we know how to troubleshoot it. Also, no other vendor offers the cluster mode and isolation of the performance through virtual machines.

Our shortlist of vendors included EMC, NetApp, and HPE, because we have relationships with all of them. Ultimately, NetApp gives us more versatility.

Our shortlist was really just NetApp, in our situation. We're pretty much all NetApp. We didn't evaluate anything else for this particular project.

We were looking at NetApp and Dell EMC. However, NetApp is know for their NFS solution.

We also looked at IBM and EMC, but eventually we chose NetApp AFF because we already had people experienced with NetApp AFF. We did not want to invest in new technology completely.

EMC, we do a lot of Celerra and VNX implementations; HPE EDS, and Hitachi.

My experience so far, compared to other solutions, All Flash FAS has been pretty good. I think the documentation in NetApp is pretty good. I think the interface and your working tools are pretty good, compared to some of the other vendors where, with them, it gets complicated. I think other vendors have add-on components to their solutions. NetApp's seems to be native. Those are great benefits to us.

The way my company integrates with customers is our sales force checks with the customers, they decide on a solution and then it gets passed over to technical, which I'm part of. We inherit the solution and then we try to make the best of it. We do give our sales boys a lot of pros and cons for each type of vendor.

I suppose that's where the sales guy, when he has his initial discussions, works out a technical solution for the customer at a high level and then also works out a price point.

I'd say the price point's an important factor. I think a lot of solutions provide similar functionality and I think that the edge would really be the price point, for us. 

Sometimes the customer has had a relationship with another vendor and they get to a point where they'd like to move over to something new, because of support issues, or there might be some kind of issue with their sales rep. Lots of factors sometimes influence them. That's why it's important for our sales force to exactly understand what the issues are.

I'm coming from a HP MSA and they were just horrible. Very unfriendly. Disks failing every week. Every month.

We had a NetApp FAS8020 before and I thought it was great. We went from HPE to NetApp and there's no comparison. We looked at a couple of other vendors but they weren't as robust so we stayed with NetApp.

We looked at a company called Datrium. They were not robust enough to fit all of our needs. I looked at Nimble Storage. I don't remember what the other company was. I didn't actually talk to them, but I looked at their product. Everything's basically the same price and so why not just stick with NetApp.

We looked at EMC, HPE, and Fujitsu.

We tried SolidFire also and we liked it. But we don’t use it for Oracle, we use it for OpenStack. We also looked at other companies. For example, EMC, which is a good solution, but it's really expensive. If you compare it with NetApp, the performance is the same. When using NFS, the best is NetApp. For Oracle, we are using NFS. NetApp does not have a competitor for NFS.

We're a NetApp shop, and we've had a very good relationship with them over the years. Nonetheless, for certain purchases – obviously, for a big purchase such as moving into the flash arena – we wanted to be certain, so we did look at a few other options.

I felt like the AFF pricing was better. The fact that we had existing NetApp solutions and a great relationship with our NetApp partners was basically what won it there. I don't know that it necessarily does anything different than a competitor, but we've been very happy with it.

In general, when I’m considering vendors to work with, I like solid solutions. I like good support. You wind up trusting people after you get through a few solutions and through a few things with them. That's important to me.

We decided to invest in a new storage solution just because of the data growth that we needed. We're expanding our business content, meaning disaster recovery architecture. We needed to expand to an additional site.

As I’ve mentioned, we had Oracle’s Pillar Axiom line. We also looked at Compellent, which is Dell now, and Dell fired them. Then HP. We used to have an HP EVA as well. We used that before. We looked at HP's current solution. We weren't happy with that one.

We decided to go with NetApp over HP because of the experience we had with both of those organizations in customer service. NetApp, again, was far superior. Our requirements then to our reseller, or VAR, and NetApp was that we knew what our workload was and we needed to have a solution that would meet certain criteria, which was set on latency and bandwidth thresholds. The vendor, along with NetApp, was able to provide us with an evaluation unit that met those specs with flying colors.

We were looking at Pure Storage and a couple of other vendors who had all-in-one solutions.

• HP 3PAR 7400
• XtremIO
• Nutanix
• SimpliVity

We chose NetApp for a mix of reasons -- the price was great and also because we were working with NetApp before. It was really easy to migrate everything and keep everything using NetApp technology.

We evaluated HP and EMC. The main differences were the support, functionality, and cost of NetApp. 

We did consider using other vendors, but NetApp AFF was the best in terms of reliability.

We did not evaluate other solutions. Our history with Net App is that it is a stable platform and does what we want it to do. It's not extremely complicated, and it's something which is tangible that we have used and want to continue using.

EMC. We chose NetApp over EMC because support is good.

Hewlett-Packard, again, was one. EMC, because we do actually have some EMC stuff. And NetApp. That was basically our list. I think IBM was in there for a little while, but I think they kind of fell off. I remember hearing about it, but I didn't know anything about it. That was our short list.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated other options, but I don't think we can name them. We saw a lot of benefits. Here, we can have multiple protocols. The other vendors were only supporting specific protocols on their storage. We thought this would be more scalable in the future.

We've been using NetApp for a long time and our environment is already using all the NetApp features that they have been providing so buying AFF from them was an easy pick actually.

We did a PoC against other vendors. The decision came down to the simplicity of the platform.

We tested an EMC, an ExtremeIO, and we also did a Violin as well. As far as performance metrics, Violin actually beat all the other vendors but because of the stability and the financial turmoil with Violin, we felt a little skeptic about investing in a company that we didn't know what they were going to be tomorrow. Again, because we're a NetApp shop, to us, that made it so much easier to make the decision based on that.

I have not evaluated other options.

We went to several different vendors; the two top contenders were NetApp and Pure Storage. Ultimately, we went with NetApp for a couple of reasons: 1) the scalability of the clustering system, and 2) we're already a NetApp shop and so adding on to an existing NetApp environment made it quite a bit easier, especially with replication and data management techniques that NetApp already employed. The storage grid that NetApp is deploying across the infrastructure makes transparency and migration of data from one device to another environment a lot more seamless. Whereas Pure Storage is fast, NetApp is faster and their devices are data islands. Taking a step back, we just didn't feel Pure Storage was going to work for us in the long run.

Our only experience with Pure is the demos that they brought us; nothing more than that. We talked to several of their customer bases and although they claim a lot of nondisruptive operations, they tend to be disruptive.

We've worked with NetApp and it's kind of tried and true. We do upgrades, we do hardware replacements and everything is transparent and doesn't affect the users, which is really nice, especially considering we're a software-as-a-service company. The less we can take our customers offline, the better.

No other options were evaluated.

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.

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.

We looked at not only Netapp, but we looked at EMC which was the big one. Then we started looking at some cloud providers, but we actually moved away from that.

We had a very high impression of NetApp as a vendor of high-performance sound storage before purchasing AFF, and an extremely high impression of them afterwards.

We considered Kaminario and XtremIO. We chose NetApp in order to utilize current resources.

No other options were evaluated.

NetApp and Pure Storage were on our final shortlist. NetApp just came in with a better price point that my VPs and CIO couldn't refuse.

HPE 3PAR.

At this point, there really wasn't another player that was going to offer us familiarity with NetApp, for one thing, and what we needed.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are the ease of administration of an appliance; reliability of an appliance; and being able to adequately monitor what's going on with the appliance (which ties in with the administration of it). Support’s got to be on it, especially if it's in production. It's like, “We need help; we need it now.” The vendor has to be there.

Those are probably the three most important criteria. Price comes in there, but you pay a premium for those particular things. If the price point is right and those things are all right, then you've got a great thing going on.

We were already a NetApp shop, so for us this was just adding it to the cluster. And it was time for us to do that with a hardware refresh, so we really didn't compare to others.

We tested many products, but no other flash ones.

We can't decide for ourselves so we ask the market, this is what we want to do, what should we buy? Then markers come with the products. There isn't a lot of choice.

Because we're federal government, we really can't choose. We've had NetApp for years. I did evaluate a lot of other products. Honestly, at the end of the day, storage is storage and disks are disks; it's all the bells and whistles on the front. Other solutions could probably have accomplished the same task. Ultimately, it comes down to dollars and cents, but I'm not really involved in that side of it. I'm sure they chose NetApp because of the cost.

We evaluated Pure Storage, SolidFire, EMC Unity.

Currently, we are comparing NetApp Flash with HPE for one of our customers for one of our applications. We are comparing those. I'm not involved with that, so I don't know really how that's going, but I know that that process is under way.

We looked at a couple of other options, just to see. It was between the All Flash FAS, which, because we're primarily a NetApp shop, was our first choice; we looked at Nimble and Tintri as potential other options; and then we also talked to NetApp about SolidFire as well.

We ended up going with the NetApp solution because there wasn't enough of a compelling reason to switch to a different architecture, to a different competitor, to take us outside of our current architecture, standards. There wasn't a good enough reason to not make that decision.

The main criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are full feature sets within a product, multiple avenues for manageability, and tie-ins to other possible orchestration applications; something that fits very well into the modern architecture and the direction that the industry's going, with automation, cloud and service on demand; and the ability to tie in to all of those, seamlessly into all of those requirements.

Before choosing this product, I also evaluated EMC and Pure. The decision came down to what we were used to managing and what we trusted.

In general, when I’m looking at a vendor to work with, I look for honesty. That's all I look for. I understand they have to make money and I understand we have to spend money to get it, but I don't want to be taken; I don't want to feel like I'm getting taken as it's being sold to me.

We go through different vendors depending on what we're looking at. Last time, it was Hitachi, EMC and NetApp. One reason we decided on NetApp was that we were replacing a NetApp. We had high confidence it was going to work. Then, its pricing.

We were pretty heavily invested in NetApp. We did look at INFINIDAT, but it just wasn't something that we were comfortable with.

Dell EMC was our other option. Both Dell EMC and NetApp are partners of ours. We went with NetApp because of relationships and ease of set up.

starting from a fas 2554 it was the best solution

I didn't evaluate anything. That is done in the organization at higher levels than I am. I know that NetApp won the contract again, so they must be doing something right because we’re not going to give a contract to anybody for a bad product. Right now, I'm concentrating on our collapse-down strategy in which we're taking multiple systems and putting them all on one system. That's why I'm here. I'm curious to see how it's going to impact the filer: whether the filer is going to need to expand; whether we're going to be migrating to a new filer; and so on.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

Before choosing the All Flash FAS, I also considered Hitachi. We chose NetApp because NetApp is in our internal cloud, and that's what we were expanding. We didn't see the need to switch vendors at that point. NetApp's easier than Hitachi HNAS to get up and running.

For my manager, price is the most important criteria when selecting a vendor to work with. NetApp's been very competitive with pricing over the last 2-3 years.

NetApp's features are easier, and the capabilities are a lot more advanced than Hitachi and other vendors that we look at. The software's much more mature than the other vendors. That's why I like NetApp. It's easy to use. It's easy to get down to what you want to do with it; the features and capabilities are there.

We didn't really evaluate any other companies. This was the one everybody else was using. All of the reviews actually helped somebody make the decision. This solution had proved to be working; it was proven to be working at the time. We're very happy with it but we find it expensive.

I looked at Pure Storage and we decided to get NetApp because they have SnapManager, which Pure Storage doesn't. I need to create a copy of the production DB and without SnapManager, I cannot do this.

We always use NetApp for our file services.

We have pretty much considered everybody, from a Nutanix perspective to a Cisco perspective to a VMware solution and a couple other smaller mom-and-pop stores that are trying to get into the big data realm.

We decided to go with NetApp over the competitors because for a lot of the customers, their experience with NetApp, is what has driven us to use NetApp in a lot of our solutions; because of their experience in terms of support and in terms of usability; because we're not having to retrain on a new platform. That's a big one for them because that's more dollars they're having to invest.

The customer support is obviously a huge win for NetApp, even the pre- and post- sales staff. Then, the actual customer service representatives themselves do help. I would say that's probably one of the big ones. Once it's operational, as I’ve mentioned, it's very intuitive and very easy to use. Some of the setup steps, you get past those and it's easy to use and operate, and that's what they like.

The most important criteria when I’m selecting a vendor are ease of use and management. And the reason why is because, as we take more technology and compress it into a smaller space, the knowledge base required for one engineer to be able to manage and operate that environment becomes very large. So, the ease of use and ease of management would be the one key thing I would focus on.

Before and after we purchased AFF, we viewed NetApp as a vendor of high performance. They are a good vendor.

We looked at Pure Storage and Nimble.

We looked at Pure Storage, but only on paper.

We did not really consider anyone other than NetApp. We've always had a good relationship with NetApp and we’re quite happy with how we can manage it.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with can be anything from cost to how they treat their customers. Some vendors can be quite arrogant. NetApp's always had a good setup. For me, I prefer to have the ability to call on our SEs when we've got issues and so forth. That's always been good. At the end of the day, at my job level, I wouldn't be making final choices for vendor selection any way.

We knew that we needed SSD array.

The customer evaluated EMC and HPE.

We didn't evaluate any other options.

No other options were evaluated.