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See the full list of Top 10 Leading Flash Storage Vendors
Bottom Line:
Customers looking for an established vendor can look to NetApp, which has been in the NAS and storage array business for more than 20 years. It has a large installed base and has invested heavily in its Data ONTAP software suite to provide an integrated storage environment with a wide range of data services. Its all-flash array line can be clustered to as much as 70 PB, which is the most of any vendor in this guide. If you want storage volume with high performance and a breadth of data services, consider NetApp.
Jump to: NetApp AFF A800 Features Table
Company Description:
NetApp was originally known as Network Appliance. It went public in 1995. According to Jeff Baxter, Chief Evangelist, ONTAP at NetApp, the company provides hybrid cloud data services that simplify management of applications and data across cloud and on-premises environments.
NetApp has earned a spot in the Gartner Leaders category. Gartner said the NetApp architecture enables customers to create their own large scale-out flash array infrastructures. It has also become more flexible in pricing and discounts. However, Gartner analyst Valdis Filks mentioned limited integration with third-party backup providers for some NetApp arrays. Customers include Groupe Mutuel, Imperva, Exlatx, and the state of Nebraska.
Product Description:
The AFF A800 array delivers latency below 200 microseconds and throughput of 300 GB/s powered by a combination of NVMe SSDs and NVMe/FC connectivity. It also includes many cloud-integration choices for artificial-intelligence workflows. It offers a unified storage infrastructure that supports both SAN and NAS protocols.
650 Group added that Google Cloud Platform now integrates NetApp Cloud Volumes as a drop-down menu capability as part of the Google console. This allows enterprise customers to use Cloud Volumes to manage their data on Google’s cloud service while simultaneously managing their data on premise.
The new AFF A800 is the first available end-to-end NVMe enterprise platform powered by NetApp ONTAP 9.4 software.
Features:
Implementation:
Good, but may vary based on user. Straightforward for those familiar with NetApp. For others, however, NetApp AFF arrays can be complex to configure.
Technical support:
Good.
“Support has generally been pretty good. Occasionally there are struggles getting to the right people but, once you do, they know what they’re talking about,” said an IT manager at an insurance firm.
Raw Capacity:
2.5 PB effective capacity in a 4U chassis.
Can cluster to over 70 PB, the most of any AFA.
Performance:
- Latency below 200 microseconds
- Throughput of 300 GB/s
- 11.4M IOPS
RAID/Data Protection:
- NetApp supports metro-cluster replication but lacks active-active operations at the LUN level
- SnapMirroring and self-encrypting SSDs that are AES-256, FIPS 140-2 compliant
- NetApp also provides a full range of backup and data protection tools which integrate well with its arrays
Storage Saving Features:
Deduplication, and inline compression
Data Management:
- NetApp’s A800 uses clustered nodes via federation
- Unified storage infrastructure supporting both SAN and NAS protocols.
- Move workloads between storage tiers.
- Support for AWS, Google Cloud Storage, IBM Cloud Object Storage, Microsoft Azure, and/or any OpenStack Cloud Service Provider.
- 100GbE NetApp MetroCluster
NVMe:
End-to-end NVMe/FC host to flash array over 32Gb FC
Delivery:
Flash hardware delivered with in-line storage efficiency
Pricing:
Pricing not disclosed publicly.
NetApp AFA A800
| Features | |
|---|---|
| Scale-up | No |
| Scale-out | Yes |
| Capacity | |
| Raw capacity (no deduplication) | 79 PB |
| Effective capacity | 316 PB |
| Networking (Max speed in Gbps) | |
| Fibre Channel | 32 Gbs |
| Ethernet/iSCSI | 100GbE |
| Infiniband | No |
| FCoE | Yes |
| Performance | |
| IOPs | 11.4M |
| Throughput | 300 GB/s |
| Latency | 200 microsecs |
| Storage Saving Features | |
| Deduplication | Yes |
| Compression | Yes |
| Thin provisioning | Yes |
| Management | |
| Data encryption | Yes |
| Snapshots | Yes |
| Replication (synch or asynch?) | Both |
| Availability | |
| Percentage uptime (ex.: 99.999) | 6 x 9 |
| Non-disruptive software upgrades | Yes |
| Non-disruptive hardware upgrades | Yes |
| Warranty/Support | |
| Base warranty: array | Yes |
| Base warranty: flash | Yes |
| Flash replacement if drive/module wears out before warranty expires? | Yes |
| Gartner Magic Quadrant Rating | Leader |
| Price | Not disclosed |
