NetApp AFF A-Series vs. SolidFire (discontinued)

Easy interface and the accessibility of the features are effective and this solution functionalities on data migration and processing of different from other packages is amazing. NetApp AFF A-Series All Flash Arrays is the most secure platform for easy management of all the business and project data and the capacity planning tools and even the configuration options are the best and easy to use.

Incentivized

Well suited for companies who use NetApp Storage. This is one of the more performant offerings from NetApp and is highly customizable.

Incentivized

• Protective multiple project and business data is excellent.
• Solutions for data storage and data migration.
• Providing useful and quality data reports is effective.

Incentivized

• All-flash performance is very good, particularly on read-intensive workloads
• Performance scales linearly by adding new nodes
• Guaranteed QOS policies offer both a minimum IOPS and maximum IOPS with burst capabability, so its not just capping the upper limit of a workload
• Encryption at rest is integrated into the array platform
• Grid architecture ensures that ability to perform rolling upgrades online without severely impairing performance
• VVOL capabilities with the array allow granular control and visibility of the workloads

Incentivized

• As always, Netapp upgrades are really painful. I wish there was an easy way of upgrading Netapp.
• GUI is hard to use and CLI is even worse. GUI is confusing and you click all over the place before you get over the learning curve. CLI has changed from the 7-mode days and is very confusing to use. I have had scenarios where the support themselves use documentation to put in the proper commands.
• Like any array, Netapp's CDOT has it's own bugs in the software. We learnt the hard way when one of our nodes went down and a bug prevented take over of SCSI services which resulted in an APD situation on all our ESXI hosts. Was a nightmare rebooting all the VM's and ESXI's to relieve them of the APD's. People don't pay millions towards a storage platform to go through nightmares.

Incentivized

• There seems to be an overarching view (with drill downs) of the entire infrastructure.
• You need a solid partner to implement this product initially.
• As this product is still integrating with Net Apps mature support systems, I still think that there is room for a better end to end experience.

Incentivized

Our organizations primary storage platform is NetApp AFF-A900 nodes. All our storage requirements, be it storage visible to our compute either using FC or NFS is through these nodes. The shares or CIFS too are setup on these nodes. We also use the fabric pool to write the data to NetApps Storage Grid

Incentivized

I have not had to use support. However, others on my team have and have been impressed.

Incentivized

The IBM All Flash FAS was similar in performance and price, but we were already a NetApp shop. This made the decision easier to go with the NetApp AFF system so it would tie in with our SnapManager architecture, as well as keep the learning curve short.

Incentivized

All in all, Net App Solid Fire is a strong competitor to Nutanix AOS or HPE SimpliVity. It is conceded that there are plusses and minuses for the competitive landscape, however, Net App Solid Fire is a worthwhile competitor at a very competitive price point.

Incentivized

• Epic, our EMR providor, has very aggressive guidelines for performance. The Netapp AFF meets those guidlines easily eben in a mixed workload environment. This has helped us meet our business objectives by not having to diversify our storage platforms or vendors.
• Multi-protocol support (block (ISCSI/FiberChannel) or File (NFS/CIFS)) Allows us to use the Netapp systems to solve all storage requirements regardless of the system needing storage
• Clustered technologies along with non-disruptive movement of data between nodes on the cluster make hardware refreshes simple and allows the business to keep running without interruption even during massive data moves.

Incentivized

• Effectiveness
• Ease of use
• Cost savings by tiering

Incentivized