NetApp FAS series vs NetApp SolidFire

Likelihood to Recommend

NetApp FAS is a great platform to solve a large variety of different problems. It is ideal for large organizations that have a variety of different business scenarios and locations. This ability allows global support organizations to have standard tools and methods even in a variety of use cases and site sizes. On the flip side, this flexibility is also sometimes the weakness of the platform. In very specialized use cases/areas such as low latency with flash this can be a detriment. We still seem to use specialty arrays to solve these point requirements.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Mechanical or Industrial Engineering Company, 10,001+ employees

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Solidfire is a good, multi-purpose array for iSCSI environments. Grid architecture allows incremental, linear expansion of the array both in capacity and performance. The all-flash is a very high performance, low latency platform for a lot of applications. The way the company has architected the platform allows for continual upgrades and removes the lift-and-load replacements if you stay with Solidfire in the future. The Solidfire fiber channel implementation is workable, but largely there is a checkbox. I cannot imagine any fiber channel shop is going to look at a Solidfire seriously, unless they are looking to move towards Ethernet based transport. Write intensive workloads struggle on the array. The double-helix data protection combined with the architecture can make writes more latent than expected - well into the teens and 20's of ms within the array.

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Philip Sellers

Solutions Engineer

GigaomInsurance, 1001-5000 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

NetApp FAS series

NetApp SolidFire

Flash Array Performance

Flash Array Integration

Data Compression

Non-Intrusive Upgrades

Simplicity

Power Savings

Pros

Backups are a piece of cake with Snapshot technology.
Disaster recovery plans are made much easier with SnapMirroring to remote locations.
The support is incredible. Auto Support makes it incredibly easy. The Auto Support website also gives you a great view of your NetApp deployment.
Redundant paths make updating and maintenance much easier with no downtime.

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Verified User

Technician in Information Technology

Education Management Company, 201-500 employees

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Speed is incredible.
Ongoing maintenance is great.
Price point was quite good.

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Hospital & Health Care Company, 51-200 employees

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Cons

We have had too many troubles with the controllers, had one die completely, and are now fighting an issue where the two don't communicate.
They try to nickel and dime you with extra costs for additional features.
Software upgrades are too difficult.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Restaurants Company, 10,001+ employees

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API documentation could use some help
GUI can be slow

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Computer Networking Company, 10,001+ employees

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Usability

NetApp FAS series 8.0

Based on 1 answer

It does have a really nice and easy to use web interface to do pretty much anything you need with it. It was very simple to configure our volumes and luns and connect them to our VMWare environment using the interface. It has options to rename, shrink, grow, and other things with our luns and volumes. It was nice and easy to read graphs to see where you stand on your storage usage at a glance.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Restaurants Company, 10,001+ employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

NetApp FAS series 7.7

Based on 3 answers

NetApp support in Brazil is managed by its partners. We know in other countries, such as the US and NO, they have support directly from Netapp. We have a very good NetApp partner working with us since the beginning, on both the implementation and daily support. Very few cases needed to be escalated to NetApp support, most of the cases are handled and satisfyingly closed by the partner.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Oil & Energy Company, 10,001+ employees

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NetApp SolidFire 8.5

Based on 3 answers

When we have had problems, the response on the Solidfire side has been strong, but not perfect. As they scale and integrate into NetApp, support from regions outside of the USA are having a more difficult time diagnosing and addressing issues for complex problems. The Boulder, CO, and Raleigh, NC, support teams are both extremely strong and provide top-notch support. ActiveIQ is a great support tool both for NetApp/Solidfire and for the customer. The proactive support tickets opened have been helpful. The node-based support has been excellent - meaning when we had a DIMM fail, they sent a replacement node - no time consuming troubleshooting of internal components to fix the issue. Upgrades are handled by SF technicians, so it feels white-glove

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Philip Sellers

Solutions Engineer

GigaomInsurance, 1001-5000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

We ultimately went with the NetApp FAS series based upon the recommendation of our trusted reseller. The device implementation fit directly in with the bigger infrastructure plan/rollout we were in the middle of. However, I did my due diligence when researching the recommendations, and after careful comparison and fact checks, NetApp rose to the top as the most mature and stable platform that did exactly what we needed, and at a price we could accept.

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Vin Campbell

IT Director

Sahadi Fine FoodsRetail, 11-50 employees

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SolidFire was chosen over these other service providers because of relationships we have with the company, with our reps, and with the local Denver presence. We also are a partner, and we felt that the solution stacked up technologically very well against the competition and was more cost effective.

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Verified User

Technician in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 51-200 employees

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Return on Investment

We rely on NetApp FAS for data replication as well as application and data protection integration capabilities.
Negative impact is it has a 5 years life cycle and as a result we find leasing the equipment has provided better ROI than the expense associated with owning and maintaining after the life cycle support ends.

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Hospital & Health Care Company, 11-50 employees

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The ROI was quick - under 1 year

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Hospital & Health Care Company, 51-200 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

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Free/Freemium Version

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Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Rating Summary

NetApp FAS series

NetApp SolidFire

NetApp FAS series

NetApp SolidFire

NetApp FAS series

NetApp SolidFire

NetApp FAS series vs NetApp SolidFire