I've observed an issue when creating a new storage solution with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. If we turn off the cache on the controller, we encounter packet flooding. It's a technical issue that I believe could be addressed for better functionality, although it doesn't seem critical.

The initial setup phase of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is not straightforward and needs improvement.

It says NetApp on the badge, but it’s not a NetApp product. NetApp acquired the product so it is missing a bit in the integration and management performance monitoring.

The only major drawback is the replication between EF-Series units. Both the EF-series and NetApp are marketing this feature, but it is not functional yet.  

However, I believe NetApp is actively working on improving this feature and implementing the replication feature between storage systems. 

We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily.

There is a lot of room for improvement. What I don't like is that they do not create barriers in the areas. The data management is based on the software and they do not use segmentation on the storage. That is the main problem - there is no segmentation. You cannot segment the data on the database. You put the data there but you don't know where the data goes on each disk. The information will be there but there is no segmentation. There needs to be improvement in data segmentation.

In future releases, I'd like to see federation and segmentation. Those are the big problems with NetApp at the moment. Compared to HP, Dell and HPE 3PAR, they cannot do the federation which is very important. We have to do remote replication and work with two or more storage sites in different locations. If I have a site and I have a second or third site - they require working federation and NetApp cannot do this right now.

The EF Series has the web services outside the box, not inside. It doesn’t have the full OS, like Data ONTAP. You have to have a proxy web service that interfaces with all of the EF Series and you develop your application through that. I would like to have that interface inside the EF Series, so we don't have any dependence on the proxy service.

I’d like to see bigger, faster, better hardware, of course. I think that is the way the hardware is trending anyway; bigger, faster CPU, better software, fewer bugs, all that stuff. Those are things I trust NetApp to do. It's a company that's doing it right to get all the hardware and software to work together seamlessly.

Nonetheless, there are a couple of other things that NetApp hasn't done right. For example, NetApp still relies on the SAS bus of the backbone, so you still have the SAS controller. That’s a bottleneck for doing the lightning speed of flash. That's the limitation of flash. The industry right now is moving to NVMe. That stuff actually goes directly to the bus. It's actually faster. That's the first one.

As I’ve mentioned, a full OS like ONTAP for the EF Series is another one; actually have a shell and people could work directly on that. It's easier than using a proxy command through another machine. It's a limitation for us to work on.

NetApp is famous for redundancy, data protection, replication and so on, with ONTAP. I’m looking for a solution in the EF Series; a solution to mirror the storage off the chassis, off the data center, such as SnapVault or SnapVolumes. They don't have that yet. That's something I keep comparing with ONTAP because we were probably the biggest customer back in the old days with NetApp for Data ONTAP. I'd like to see those features come on over to EF Series as well.

Its pricing should be better. Its price is competitive, but they need to improve the pricing. They have different licensing models, which they need to improve.

My expectation was cloud integration, which they have, but it is a different license. Therefore, people cannot enjoy it. If I want to use it, I need to pay extra. There is a cost involved for everything, but it should reach everyone. It is similar to having a Rolls-Royce, but you need to pay extra for the key. If you want the key, you need to pay.

A disadvantage of NetApp stems from the fact that it does not have a product, like Isilon, that offers object-oriented storage.

NetApp needs to focus on making its product more compatible with other tools and curb the extra charges they attach to their standard licenses.

I guess the user interface could be a little more streamlined. There are too many different menus you have to go into. I've used other interfaces on other storage arrays that are just more streamlined, more intuitive. Overall, it's not that bad. It's really just a minor tweak.

Other than that, I really don't see anything.

At this point, we haven't really gotten that far in our stages of it. The scalability is what we need. The administration is really easy. The best way I can say this is, keep on keeping on. It's going to grow organically.

If anything else, I would like to see higher-capacity drives, as they come out; I have heard that 15 TB are out on a different NetApp series. Getting those on the EFs would be nice. That's maybe a pipe dream. The EF series doesn't have them quite yet. I don't think they're really designed yet for the EF series, from what I’ve heard from a couple of solutions engineers. If that happens, great; if it doesn't, great.

I would like to see a way for NetApp personnel that are used to the FAS and the CDOT systems, to be able to easier translate that experience and knowledge into using the EF series. There are some differences in there and it will throw off, when you're trying to train somebody, as far as bringing in somebody new into the group. When they're supposed to be responsible, it's another technology for them to try to learn. Something that would help port that process; make them similar in how the manageability of it is functioned.

Obviously, everything can be improved on so I won't ever give anything a perfect rating. But as far as the manageability, being able to port between the two and have to do less training in-house from a customer point of view, that would be the part to improve.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any improvements other than perhaps better integration with some of our Cisco products.

We cannot share data in what is described as a trunk port, which is a disadvantage.

Technical support is an area that needs improvement.

In the next release, I would like to have staged access. The administrator would be able to connect to all of the storage and see real-time performance and issues, not only in the web interface. If the administrator is working on the console they should have access to all interfaced controllers.

It needs a better management tool.

I can't think of any right now. I've only had it for a couple of months.

Better support technicians for CAPP.

We need a center related to NetApp in Egypt so that we can deal with them directly.

If the pricing of equipment were more discounted in Egypt then it would be better.

The implementation could be faster.

The pricing could be cheaper and it should have documentation in more languages, specifically, Russian.

They should develop faster building for the next release. 

They could improve the product’s tools. We're going to tie it into our FAS system because the options we have with the FAS system are much greater than the options we have with the EF series. Things like the FlexClones, SnapVault, SnapMirror, all of that. Some of it's available on the EF series, but we like what we have in the FAS system. If the EF were to have that, we would not need to tie it into our FAS system.

If you're not using DDP, it is a little tedious to configure.

I've seen the new firmware with the 2800, and they've automated some things that were manual. It was a four-step process for every volume you wanted to create before, and it looks like they fixed that in the coming firmware, although from what I understand it will be a little while before it gets to the 550.

I'm a big fan of the cluster shell and everything on the FAS series. I know the E series kind of has its own OS. (I think NetApp purchased them.) To my knowledge, that doesn't even exist in the same way. A lot of that is to provide the IOPS that it does because it doesn't have to focus on all that other stuff. From a manageability perspective, I like the look and the feel of the FAS series better than the EF. I think it's more straightforward and simplistic. Even if it's not to that extent, I would like to see it move a bit more in that direction; a little more manageability, a simpler management interface. It's not necessarily that it's way overly complex. It's just that it's not as easy as the FAS series.

It's very difficult to manage the CLI. Also, the license model needs work. If you read the label as probable, you need to pay for a license for all the features, even if you are using just one.

Monitoring and management handling in enterprise environments could be improved.

I'm not too hands-on with it, so I don't have any major input on things it needs or things it should have. As long as its functionality is there for me to use, as somebody just to use the storage on it, that's all I need it for. I'm very simple.

Once I play with it a bit more, I'll find out more about areas with room for improvement.

Cheaper pricing is always good. NetApp has been doing everything the right way. They've been figuring out things really well, going in the right direction.

I’m looking forward to the new shelves, the new disks and their sizes; how small you can get for lots of storage now. The size and speed are just amazing; always a good thing. Smaller systems save on electricity, save on space. We shrunk our server room down. We actually rebuilt it. We didn't have enough space for people to sit. We needed more office space. With everything so small, we cut our server room down and fit more people in. Our head count can go up and everything. People had jobs.

I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better.

All-Flash is made by Solid State Disk, it's not like HDD or spinning disk.

The price is important, and we would like to have it less expensive.

Better integration with other brands is important so we would like to see it easier to integrate.

One thing that may need to improve is the software monitoring as it is based on a work station that is serviced to give support to the management. The manager may not be as fast on board the controller, so it needs something else to make it easier to manage. Managing the storage is, therefore, the only single point of failure.

The management interface, while very reliable, it seems a little old now and could maybe use a little modernization. Instead of having a management tool, more like a management interface or similar to the HTML5 version of the ONTAP off the FAS, such as OnCommand System Manager.

The solution should really build out a more hyper-converged product. In Indonesia, there are many competitors for hyper-converged products, such as Nutanix and VxRail from Dell. Those products in particular are so strong. They need to improve the NetApp for hyper-converged solutions. Whereas, NetApp for storage is still pretty strong in Indonesia.

The dashboard could be simplified. There are many, many features on NetApp, and they could be combined onto one centralized dashboard for ease of use and access.

For us, in our country, the solution is a bit expensive. They should try to work on a better pricing model for our market.

NetApp could improve the speed of the rebuilding rate.

I would like to have the ability to replicate data between All Flash and other NetApp storage systems.

Better monitoring should be implemented.

Our file system sitting on a controller.

They could improve overall scalability through performance. Denser capacity, which is doable, it is what the competition is doing.

The product might be improved with additional features for encryption. I think they do not do enough with encryption and that would make it more flexible and useful.

I would also like to features that better support the product implementation with cloud solutions. If the problem we need to resolve is with cloud solutions, the product is not so easy compared to other products for easily integrating the cloud data. A cloud solution is important to implement.

The price of the All Flash solution is very high.