NetApp SolidFire SF19210 Storage Node
Mfg # SF19210-01
CDW # 4081454
| UNSPSC 43201835
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NetApp SolidFire SF19210 Storage Node is rated
4.40 out of
5 by
23.
Rated 5 out of
5 by
LeadEngia5ea from
Has great APIs right out-of-the-box, but it is not fitting our pattern to go to NAS
What is most valuable?
It is fast. By default, its APIs expose pretty much all of its configuration items. On the ONTAP systems, we use WFA to expose the APIs, where with SolidFire, everything is pretty much out-of-the-box, so the customers like it. The main uses are virtual machine environment. This is internal, on a private cloud. In India on most of their workstations are on virtual machines, and those all are hosted on SolidFire.
SolidFire is one of the products that does have great APIs right out-of-the-box. It works great. The tools and the other stuff seem to work a little better right out-of-the-box than the ONTAP stuff does, C-Mode.
How has it helped my organization?
It's doing SAN, so that would be the major difference. We use NFS file storage much more than we use block storage. SolidFire is our only block storage offering right now. Honestly, we're kind of phasing block storage out, but it's filling that gap for applications that claim they need block storage and can't use file-based. That's kind of its role.
It is just filling the gap of the block client, because maybe 10% of our clients have to use block storage and have a good technical reason. The other 90% we've gotten on a NAS.
What needs improvement?
They could do a file-based NAS: SolidFire NAS-based. It's probably not its niche, but that is our direction, not to use block, and it's block. Solid state block is what it is.
If it was the same price as C-Mode and did file-based storage, because this is what our company is heading towards.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
It is pretty low-maintenance for upgrades and support issues. We haven't messed with it much. We have set it up, and we have the capacity so we haven't added a lot to it either. I have not had any issues with it.
Setting up new clusters is pretty straightforward. ONTAP is great, and it is really easy to use and setup.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable. I forget we have it sometimes, because once we have it configured, it just up and runs. Plug and play, the GUI works and the APIs, customers can use them. Everything is kind of there, therefore, it is very low-maintenance.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have not scaled it a lot, because there are some niche environments running including the virtual workstations. So, I don't know how well it scales.
How is customer service and technical support?
Customer Service: It is fine.
Technical Support: That is a problem we have. When we call tech support, we have to open a tunnel to the SolidFire device, then tech support can get in and look at it. The tunnel keeps closing on them. So we'll open the tunnel, 10 minutes later I'll get a phone call. "Hey, the tunnel closed. Can you open it?"
The only way to keep the tunnel, and I think it might be an issue with our proxy on our end, but something is closing the support tunnel. I don't know if it is a NetApp issue. We haven't been able to fix it on our end, so I don't know if they can give me any feedback on it, but it is a chronic issue. We have to babysit that tunnel, and I don't know why.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We would probably use SolidFire more, except we're getting more bang for our buck with our purchases of ONTAP right now, and the deal we made with NetApp, so it's more of just a cost decision. Because we're going NAS, it doesn't really fit the pattern of where we're going, because everything is being presented via NFS, so it's just block storage. That would be the reason the footprint is not growing.
However, as long as the price is right, it is a no-brainer on block.
What other advice do I have?
If they are using block storage, then it is very user-friendly. It's easy to use out-of-the-box. I was not a storage admin when I came to this team. I was a server guy, so it was all new to me, and SolidFire was the easiest thing for me to pick up. We had old 7-Mode systems. We had C-Mode. We had Isilon systems on EMC, and SolidFire was in a day, you knew how to do everything. It is just a real easy setup.
We don't have a reason to not use solid states. I don't know why we'd use anything else at this point other than solid state.
Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:
For a storage vendor, it is price and stability are probably the main thing. We like vendor support, but we have a huge internal IT shop with a lot of engineers, so we don't need that much support and hand-holding. It's really the following:
* Management
* A cost decision, who gives us the best deal.
* Stability.
If there's stability, and we haven't had stability issues with NetApp, they are a better deal than EMC, so that's why we've been using them. We were an EMC shop until three or four years ago.
Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Date published: 2017-10-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
it_user527406 from
I like the way It is implemented from a node perspective. I use the QoS settings to maintain a standard of performance for the VMs.
Valuable Features
I like SolidFire ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/solidfire )'s technology and the way that it is implemented, from a node perspective instead of having a controller shelf architecture. One node can control everything, but if the node goes down, obviously the other nodes can bring everything back up. Going into the next generation data center, that's very compelling, as well as being able to use QoS settings and maintain a standard of performance for the VMs and things that are underlying it.
The SolidFire's technology and architecture allow for a more fluid and dynamic data center. It moves away from the controller and shelf design philosophy to a node design. This means that each node has the ability to control the entire cluster. In essence, you have the same number of controllers as the shelves.
If a node goes down, the other nodes easily take the load. This is accomplished both by the node technology as well as the Double Helix technology. If needed, you can easily remove one node and ship it to another location or attach it to a different cluster, with very little effort. The implementation of the structure is fairly easy, as well. Our first 5-node cluster from the box to serving data (for testing), took about five hours.
Improvements to My Organization
The biggest advantage is going to be the QoS settings, being able to maintain a level performance for our customers on whatever application that they're running at that particular time. For us, a business advantage is implementation time; our first cluster, four hours from un-boxing, racked, stacked and having it up and running.
Stability Issues
We've had issues with the stability of our platform. We're a hosting provider and we've pushed it to its limits. We've found some of the bugs. The nice thing is that SolidFire has worked with us to correct those issues, bring new OS versions online to help correct whatever problems we've run into.
Scalability Issues
Scalability is excellent; it scales very easily. I can scale from a sizing perspective as well as an IOP perspective very easily. I can add a new node to the cluster. Within about an hour or an hour and a half, it's up and running. I have more space right then and there. Power and cooling is minimal as well.
Customer Service and Technical Support
The technical support is great. I've never had an issue with the technical support. When we open up a ticket – whether it's email, phone, whatever it happens to be – we usually get something back fairly quickly; they'll jump on the problem. We can give them access to the arrays or the clusters fairly easily so that they can figure out what the issues are. Getting new nodes or hard drives or whatever, in-house, usually happens fairly quickly. I have had a couple of issues with that in the past. Nothing major, but that's probably where they lost some of their points.
Initial Setup
I was responsible for the initial setup in our Chicago data center; it was extremely easy. We had one of the SolidFire NetApp engineers with us when we did it and, as I’ve mentioned, it was four hours from opening the boxes to having it up and running.
Other Solutions Considered
We've evaluated three or four different all-flash type solutions ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/enterprise-flash-array-storage ). We actually went with one of the other solutions first. We ran into a very large bug about a year or year and a half ago, with an all-flash solution, and that particular provider was having issues correcting it. They still really haven't corrected it, so we can't push it as hard as we want to. When we were starting to look at a different solution, SolidFire came back with a good pricing model for us, as well as being able to meet the demands of what we're trying to deal with, and provide a rip and replace solution on our storage area that worked awhile back.
Other Advice
Evaluate everything. But if you're looking for an easy-to-implement solution from an all-flash perspective, really take a look at SolidFire. Try to get a PoC in house and run from a proof-of-concept perspective. The API's implementation is all very easy. You can look at it from your power and cooling aspects as well. That's the advice I have: Do a good proof of concept on the flash storage.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-10-19T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Rahul Ranjan from
Brings scalability and performance and the API is not complicated; coding is quick
What is most valuable?
If I go ahead and put it up with the OpenStack, the OpenStack stuff goes so smoothly with SolidFire, increasing the capabilities of the VMs to bring them up. I think it's just fantastic.
Also, the scalability, as well as the performance, and then the way it goes with the API part of it. That is the amazing part. The API, it's not that complicated. You can choose an item, you can go ahead with PowerShell, anything; it's not that complicated to go ahead. Templates are already predefined for it. If you're coding it up, it will take two days. You can pick up a template right there from the API, and it just works for you. Implementation done in 10 minutes.
How has it helped my organization?
It will save a lot of implementation time, complexities; and then you don't have to go ahead with networking the OS separately. It's all one in the same place.
What needs improvement?
I think there are some reporting tools like Grafana.
Kubernetes is already there, and VMware is already sorted out. I just came out of that particular session right here at NetApp Insight 2017 and that was amazing.
So feature-wise, I would say more reporting tools that could be merged into it. I'm not sure if you've heard something called Data Protection Adviser, it's a reporting tool. The way you are monitoring your environment, I think it's important.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I don't see any disk failures or support cases being logged. I would say, to be precise on the percentage, it's 15% better than what other people provide.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability, I've done a couple of times during the year and it's amazing. Petabytes, whatever you're bringing up, it's all good.
How is customer service and technical support?
I haven't used it directly, but I know how many cases have been raised, and it's quite on the low side.
How was the initial setup?
It was 85% straightforward. The other 15%, you need to understand certain aspects, you need to understand your environment. It's alright that you're bringing up NetApp, and then SolidFire, but then how exactly are you going to configure it in your setup? That's going to take a little bit of time. Otherwise, once it is there, it's all good.
What was our ROI?
I think one of the reasons we chose SolidFire is because it is definitely giving us good results on the costing part of it. It definitely has an impact on it. To be straightforward, it works for that.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
There were a couple of them: Hitachi, EMC. But I'm pretty much into NetApp's side of it.
What other advice do I have?
If you're bring up cloud in-house and you're still not aware of OpenStack Kubernetes, that's the way ahead. If you are putting up NetApp in the background, I think you're all sorted out. Your cloud is all prepared, so all done.
The way I see it, there's the scalability and the complexity part of it. And then errors are huge, and when I say huge I mean they are costly. So the way I compare it with other products, maybe the other vendors, the cost is a major factor.
And with that, there is complexity, work in silos, so right now it is coming to OpenStack and then beneath you have NetApp SolidFire, it's all simple. No more complexities.
Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:
* Implementation, it should be quite simple to understand.
* It should be customizable; it should not be that the vendor is saying, "No, this is something that we are providing, it cannot be customized for your environment." That doesn't work for me. It should be as customizable as possible
* Costing of course
* The support that comes with that
We are an enterprise level company. SolidFire is definitely uniquely valuable to a company of our size, because the way the market is going ahead, on the cloud. Large companies have got their old stuff kept in old datacenters wherein you have huge, costly storage boxes of course, and you want to bring that up. So SolidFire is something that is giving you a migration platform. I mean, it's a steady platform for you, the way you prefer it.
I would say go ahead with this and then if they are good with the API part of it, configuration specifically with Python or OpenStack, just go for it.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-10-19T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Enterpri6a79 from
With the footprint being smaller, and performance being way up, we're able to increase IOPS
How has it helped my organization?
We went from huge NetApp arrays to essentially a half a rack with the same amount of space that was required as far as data drives. With the footprint being smaller, and performance being way up, we're able to increase IOPS, which will give us better capability to actually mimic the production network on a government network.
What is most valuable?
* Power
* HVAC
* Density of drives
The square footage for doing development is at a premium when dealing with government networks. To be able to put a lot of IOPS in a lot of high-speed performing drives in a very small location which requires very little HVAC with very little power, it is very valuable to us.
With our Solidfire, we're going to be doing things like DevOps for ease of use. We're going to be able to expand in a condensed environment with a lot of IOPS to create a very small footprint on an all-flash array using a web interface, which makes it easier for some of the lower technicians to use it.
What needs improvement?
I'm seeing what I want to see. They're expanding and doubling the I/O per every 2U on their new 19210, or something like that. I'm looking forward to getting in there and testing it out as well. I'm really liking the performance of the network.
However, it would be good to provide administrative access at the root level to be able to do things with the system, if need be.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It seems pretty stable. At the beginning, they bring their engineer out. They actually set it up for you. That was a really good thing.
However, when we wanted to change how we want to do it and basically start it over, do some hands on training with some of the architects who would be working on it, one of the issues was there wasn't an admin password at the BIOS level to restart it over. We actually had to contact NetApp to come back out, or we had to contact them and get a one-time password. This was painful.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
This thing uses a model like Lego blocks to be able to not only mix and match different models, but to be able to expand or scale out based on what the demand is currently. It gives me the opportunity to go from two to three nodes up to as many nodes as I need without having to put out an upfront cost that's way high. Especially when you're talking about development networks, this gives me the opportunity to provide the customer with a solution upfront which is high-performing. Then as the years go by, I can scale it out way further, especially if demand increases.
How is customer service and technical support?
Tech support was fine. The fact that I had to contact tech support just to get administrative at the BIOS level was kind of painful. But other than that, yeah, lovely.
Which solutions did we use previously?
Density is the key here. Getting high-performance drives in a small package was what we were looking for. We still continue using NetApp, just a newer system, and when we want old flash arrays.
What other advice do I have?
Definitely give it an opportunity; put in on a network, then put the different loads on the system and show how they do QoS across those loads to make sure you've got the guaranteed bandwidth.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-10-04T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
SeniorStb88f from
We don't need to set SLOs for applications, everything is tier-one; but needs better multi-tenancy segregation
What is most valuable?
* Ease of use
* Performance guarantees that you can set
* Individual settings you can put on each individual volume, if you want to do that
* Ability to scale up, scale down whenever you want
* Scale-out ability, and the ease of adding a cluster - When you get a new node, if you farm out the datacenter tasks like we do, there is no technical ability required for them to plug it in and connect it and we can just add it.
* Open RESTful APIs are great
How has it helped my organization?
It's provided us the ability to not be concerned with setting SLOs for whatever application we're using. Everything is pretty much tier-one.
Our primary use case is virtualization, right now. We initially purchased it to be incorporated into our own internal cloud, OpenStack-based, KVM-based, so we use it for that. And, we've also branched into standard VMware as well. So we have both.
Based on those use cases we get really good efficiencies. We do a lot of encryption. We initially didn't have any because we were using it for anything, any LUNS, Oracle, whatever, and we didn't get the efficiency. So we positioned the use case over to virtualization and we're getting good efficiencies that way; to make it more cost effective. That's one of disadvantages, the actual cost. We haven't gotten there yet, but...
What needs improvement?
A little better segregation of the multi-tenancy. Right now, it's just VLAN-specific, that's all you can do. There's no authentication domain separations, things like that. For example, the NetApp product has storage virtual machines, which has a lot better segregation, and a lot better multi-tenancy, a lot better role-based access. That's probably the biggest thing that I would say, so we could actually use it for different tenants.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've had some issues with hardware failures, and for them to resolve that it's actually meant replacing nodes. Otherwise, the stability is pretty good, all we've had is hardware failures. And they're built for a smaller scale, so before they were purchased by NetApp it was just, "replace the node, it's easier to replace." Any other field-replaceable unit, anything that breaks is, "replace the node," except the power supply or the disk.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We're impressed with its scalability.
How is customer service and technical support?
For the most part, it's been pretty good. We've had to use it a lot for what I explained earlier, the hardware failures. This was mostly before it was integrated into NetApp support. We haven't really used them recently, so I don't know how the assimilation into NetApp support has taken effect.
What other advice do I have?
We purchased SolidFire for customer facing applications, they're all internal, house-developed applications that we sell to customers, to financial services.
When selecting a vendor to work with what's important to me are
* support
* viability - are they going to be around?
Support is the big one. Is it just reactionary support, or proactive support? You need both of those.
I gave it a seven out of 10 based on what I've already explained. In the past, they seemed like more like a small company - and they were. But what I explained before, the hardware replacement, just replace a node. That's a small company.
Make sure that you have the performance requirement for it, because its price per gigabyte is a lot more than other solutions out there, if you don't need the performance requirements. You can get by on all-flash unless you have the need to guarantee performance on specific volumes.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-11-05T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Carl Samuel from
Facilitates ease of administration and provides greater IOPS and speed
What is most valuable?
What I like about SolidFire is the ease of administration. It's a slight deviation from what we are used to before the ONTAP interface. SolidFire comes with its own interface and APIs, and that makes it much more intuitive and a little simpler to use when we're creating volumes, and managing it.
It's very automated. One of the presentations we saw this morning here at NetApp Insight explained that if a workload is more demanding, it accommodates increasing workload, without us, as admins, having to go in and do the manual administration. So it seems to be intuitive as to what's taking place within the system and the workloads.
Greater IOPS, speed, it's all-flash. So seeing that everything is going to all-flash, all SSDs, SolidFire fits right in there with the emerging trend in IT.
How has it helped my organization?
Less complaints from the database administrators as to why an application is so slow; we always get blamed, everything goes back onto storage. SolidFire takes that away from the equation. Now we have a fast system, so the admins have to go back and see where the bottleneck is.
What needs improvement?
I'd like to see a fiber channel being implemented in it. We have a large fiber channel infrastructure, and that's one area that we haven't seen implemented in SolidFire, its more iSCSI.
It's not a deal breaker, its just something that we would like to see. And I believe they mentioned it will be implemented soon, so we're just waiting for that part to be added into it.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We are still doing testing, but so far from what we've seen, it seems to be a very rock solid system. But like I said, we still doing testing as to how good and how fast it is.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We haven't done much scalability testing yet. We've only had it for a couple months, so we are still preparing our tests, a range of tests, to see how scalable and how suitable it is for our environment.
So far I like what I see. I like how it's able to self-heal for advanced workloads, the ease of management, and all SSD. It's a great trend we're heading towards.
How is customer service and technical support?
I have not used technical support. We looked at the documentation. We had minimal input from our accountant team. We're a very experienced NetApp shop. So we more or less know how to manage storage systems. And again, SolidFire, it's very intuitive as to how you go about using it.
Which solutions did we use previously?
We had a large implementation of spinning disks, hard drives, and they would fail often. We went to all-flash for our ONTAP systems and SolidFire began all SSDs which ensured that we would have fewer broken disks. We'll have longer up-time, running.
How was the initial setup?
I was involved in the hands-on setup of it. We racked it, we provisioned the IP addresses and we did the administration part of it.
It's a little bit different from the ONTAP systems. This is more of a Linux-type setup. But it was intuitive, it wasn't that difficult.
What was our ROI?
I cannot speak for the cost. The cost is actually on a higher level than I am at. I'm actually the administrator, so I look at what and how the product works. The cost is for my manager. He takes care of the costs.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at EMC, we looked at Pure Storage, and we also looked at DDN. And for what we needed to do, none of those vendors fit the bIll. None of those had been there to give us what we needed.
We also considered hybrid storage. But SolidFire is a specialized product. For hybrid we can use a fast product line. But SolidFire, it's designed, as far as we see, for a specific use case and that's why we are targeting it for our workload.
What other advice do I have?
For SolidFire, we're looking into better IOPS for database workloads and for other VM use cases. We purchased it for customer-facing applications, mostly for database administration-type work.
We are an enterprise level company, but we are federal. SolidFire is uniquely valuable for a company our size because our company scales, we're supporting thousands of users. And with SolidFire, we can handle the workload.
For us the most important criteria when selecting a vendor are reputation, reliability, support. All these things we have gotten from NetApp.
NetApp has been out for a long time, they know the storage business. And they've been very responsive to our needs when there are issues. Our contact team, they're right there to support us and make anything that we need right.
Look at the reputation of a company, the innovation, how they are able to support their customer needs. And seeing that many of the companies are doing pretty much the same thing, which one stands out in the reviews. That's very important.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-10-18T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Steve Rennick from
Horizontal scalability enables us to add a node, compute, and storage, and results in cost savings and better efficiencies
What is most valuable?
For us it's the horizontal scalability. We traditionally run our private clouds for our R&D engineering on AFF, which worked quite well. But we ran into IOP-driven scalability. So instead of adding more clusters and more HA pairs with all-flash disks in an AFF scenario, we were able to just scale with SolidFire. That is so much better because we can add a node, we add compute, we add storage, and we've had really good luck with that.
How has it helped my organization?
Our use case is all private cloud right now, running OpenStack. All internal, for our internal R&D and engineering.
For us, moving into a private cloud area was a big step for R&D. So while we are just in our infancy right now, it has made a big difference in storage efficiency. Traditional workloads that we ran on AFF, we saw better deduplication ratios, and efficiency ratios on SolidFire than AFF for our workloads. It's a very IOP-driven environment, very IOP intensive, and the SolidFire handles that quite well using the QoS for IOP.
What needs improvement?
We're really in our infancy right now for what we use it for. We haven't really gotten into a lot of the advanced features and functionality of SolidFire because we get so many things out of the OpenStack overlay. For now it's doing what we wanted it to do.
Anything we've had, were covered by Hotfix. We had some false positives, power supplies failing, and that's really been about it. We had a couple of glitches during some upgrade processes but nothing that was really concerning to us.
Everything has been resolved.
It happens with any product. It wasn't anything that stood out for us, to be a red light.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's been really good. We've had no issues, we've had non-disruptive upgrades, non-disruptive hotfixes, which is really great for the customer - the R&D customer. They don't like any disruption. Disruption is money to them. So we have been really satisfied.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Great. For us, budget wise, just being able to say we know this workload is coming down the pipes for new design, a new ASIC chip, anything like that. We can predict what the cost is going to be versus having to buy disk at another solution. It's great for us.
How is customer service and technical support?
Any small, minor issues that we've had have been resolved by support really quickly and support has been extremely good with SolidFire.
Which solutions did we use previously?
We had initially purchased AFF for this solution and, while it met our needs, we thought that SolidFire might be a better fit based on how we wanted to configure OpenStack and what our workload was; and again, for the scalability in terms of IOPs and how we have to grow that for AFF versus SolidFire.
Purely the scalability, being able to add a node, add compute, add storage, and being able to restrict IOPs for specific applications and workflows is a really a huge benefit for us.
How was the initial setup?
I was involved. We did a proof of concept, set it all up and then we ended up adding on to that. We turned our PoC into production and then we added more nodes, and more nodes. We've gone from a five-node initial proof of concept to, now, a 15-node cluster.
The initial setup was easy. Very simple. We were up and running in less than an hour I think, which was really easy; after it was racked and stacked, etc. Very, very easy to get going.
What was our ROI?
I can't really speak about SolidFire's impact on operational cost compared to other storage platforms because all our other storage platforms are NetApp. The scalability for us, it is a cost-savings, so if we hit a certain number of IOPs within an AFF system we have to add another pair of controllers and we have to add more disk. There are also bottlenecks for AFF, for how many SSD shelves you can run for those specific clusters, whereas with the SolidFire side we are just able to add nodes on and get what we need. They're both great solutions that fit the use case a lot better.
I'm not sure it's uniquely valuable to an enterprise-type company like us but I think it's unique in how it operates. That whole "add a node, add compute, add storage" has been done before but I think they really do it right with their all-flash technologies. Some of the other vendors don't do it with all-flash and run into bottlenecks for IOP and the like. I think SolidFire has really done a great job with that. They have done a really good job with storage efficiencies versus a lot of other vendors. A lot of the other vendors are add-ons for things like deduplication or compression/compaction. So I think SolidFire has done a great job with that.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
It's all been NetApp products. There's been AFF FAS and then we just thought we would look at SolidFire because we've had such great luck with AFF and FAS for many, many years. We've been a long standing NetApp customer and it just looked like a good solution for us to try, do the proof of concept, and it worked out well for us.
We did not consider hybrid storage for this specific use case, but we do have hybrid storage from that NetApp in other parts of our infrastructure. We are also adding some other tiers of storage into this cloud solution, potentially storage grid and potentially some other FAS-type thing for protocol-based access.
What other advice do I have?
The most important criterion when selecting a vendor to work with, for me personally, is partnership. I think it's also important that the vendor has vision. I think it's important that they are willing to collaborate with customers and not just throw solutions at them. I think they should really want to understand your workflows, how they can benefit you and how they can make your life easier in terms of automation or efficiencies or performance. I want to find that they actually really care about what you are doing, as opposed to just throwing a solution out there.
Do your due diligence. Do proofs of concept. Make sure that you try to break it with what you are trying to do, and make sure you engage the vendor. Tell them exactly and share exactly what you trying to do and let them help you build the correct solution. Especially with NetApp, they have such a huge portfolio. You might be thinking traditionally you have experience in AFF or FAS but SolidFire might be a good fit, or E-Series might be a good fit, or cloud ONTAP might be a good fit. So it's important to engage the vendor and find out what the best solution is for your use case.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-11-02T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
it_user527382 from
The most valuable features are their QoS, the scalability and the serviceability of the environment.
Improvements to My Organization
We have approximately 8,000 VMs that we had been running on our traditional storage system and it simply was not able to keep up with the workload, so we've migrated all that to the SolidFire product. Provisioning times have gone down and a lot of the random errors from different things that we've seen across time kind of all went away. It's made everything much more efficient. It has saved us time.
We do a lot of tear-downs and rebuilds in non-production environments, so those processes have been reduced to minutes. It's been tremendously beneficial for our development.
Valuable Features
The most valuable features for us are their QoS, the scalability and the serviceability of the environment. Our ability to add nodes or take nodes out for service and the QoS policies we're able to wrap around volumes are all very helpful.
Room for Improvement
The upcoming release is supposed to have much richer VMware virtual volume (VVOL) support, which is something we're very interested in. For our particular environment, we also use the VMware Integrated OpenStack, and so our VVOL adoption is waiting on VMware because they have to update their VIO product, but that's definitely a direction we want to move.
Stability Issues
It's been rock-solid. We have not had a single incident. We've not had any latency issues.
Scalability Issues
It is very easy to scale. We started with our non-production cluster. I think we started off with six nodes. It's now a 14-node cluster. That's a seamless process. It just worked. No down time, no service disruption, nothing.
Customer Service and Technical Support
I have dealt with technical support many times. They’ve been very good. What they tout is they only have level-three engineers; there aren’t the normal layers of trying to get to somebody who can actually answer your question, because the first engineer you get ahold of usually knows the answer. If they can't, they basically have direct access to the engineers and developers. It's amazing; it works very well.
Previous Solutions
We had some NetApp 8040s and 6220s, which we still use for certain workloads because the SolidFires only do block; they don't service our NFS workload. The NetApps we had were flash pools, basically spinning disks fronted by SSD. Even with that configuration, they weren't really able to keep up with our workloads, so we needed something that had a lot higher throughput, so we started looking at all-flash technologies.
At the time, we didn't feel the NetApp offering was as mature as it needed to be, though we didn't technically evaluate that. We looked at ExtremeIO, we looked at Kaminario and finally the SolidFires. The ExtremeIO was really expensive. The Kaminario seemed slightly better but we liked the scalability story around the SolidFires. We then talked to some other customers who had them and confirmed that they really did live up to what the marketing hype said, and that sold us. For our highly dynamic VM workload, it's what the platform was built for, and it was a really good fit for us.
Initial Setup
The initial setup was very smooth and straightforward. Basically, you put an initial configuration on each of the nodes and then they form a cluster, and then as you add additional nodes, you make it a member of the cluster. Originally, we had done that using their GUI. The last couple of clusters I built, I used their APIs to do it; very quick and painless process.
Other Advice
Look at SolidFire. It sounds cliché but it's true. For us, it worked really well.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-10-20T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Steve Kulinski from
Scalability, being able to increase and decrease quickly, enables us to serve our customers faster
What is most valuable?
The scalability and being able to implement it quickly.
Because we're a service provider, we have customers that need to grow and need their data increased quickly, so it helps us with that. We're also incorporating SolidFire into being our cloud-providing mechanism, so it allows customers to get in and out of our cloud, as well as move into the main cloud.
How has it helped my organization?
Because of the scalability and being able to add and decrease quickly, it allows us to service our customers at a quick rate, versus how they normally would have done it.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see more of the fiber channel connect, legacy-type, Linux-type front-ends to it. That would really help in our environment.
It's a very good Windows-type solution. But we do a lot of legacy systems and the like. So it's getting that incorporated into it that would help us.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
So far we haven't had any problems with it. I think it's a very good product so far.
Which solutions did we use previously?
NetApp overall has been very good at helping us incorporate things quickly. The SolidFire was a quick, scalable solution. You can add nodes as quick as you need them.
Where we were before that was bringing in and setting up whole arrays and then trying to get the pieces we need. The scalability with that is a lot tougher because you're not scaling the nodes, you're scaling strictly storage, unless you bring in another whole set of clustered environment, which takes time.
How was the initial setup?
We actually had a partner come in and set it all up for us and get us started with it. We didn't have to do it ourselves.
It was quick. It's not very complex. It went in very quickly. Basically added it to the network and it was ready to go.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We've got quite a few different vendors on our floor today. Just about any vendor, you name them, is on our floor. For the applications, and what we were trying to move towards, the SolidFire seemed to fit every niche we were looking at, for the part we brought it in for. It was a very good product.
I don't think we looked at much in the hybrid. SolidFire met all the criteria of what we were looking for, for that part of our infrastructure.
What other advice do I have?
We purchased SolidFire, in some aspects, for customer facing application. We have started to bring SolidFire into our house to use for our own applications, versus just using it for our customers.
The most important criteria when selecting a vendor to work with are, I would say, performance, ease of of using, how to incorporate it in to our datacenter. And that's one of the things with ONTAP - that it's able to be used on SolidFire - we know ONTAP. It made it a lot easier than to have to bring in a different application, learn something new. So that also helped in our decision, it was the ease of bringing it in.
I didn't give it a 10 out of 10 because, like I said, the things that we need it for, that we're still missing - some of the Linux and the Unix-type connections - that would really help it.
Given the ease, for the value of the product, it's a great thing to bring in and start going to the cloud with.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-11-05T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Travis Zenk from
Gives us performance, ease of use; we can recompose 350 desktops in a fraction of the time it used to take
How has it helped my organization?
We previously had another storage vendor, and we would recompose desktops of 350 VDI desktops or virtual desktops, and it would take us 10 to 12 hours. We then implemented the SolidFire on that same subset of users, the 350 desktops, and we could do it in an hour and a half. It's almost a ten-times savings as far as time for recomposing in our environment or infrastructure.
What is most valuable?
* The simplicity of it
* Ease of use
* The flash array
* Performance
* Reporting
What needs improvement?
We are looking for, potentially, on the Active IQ reporting side, to do reporting based on the datastore. Right now, I can report on the whole SolidFire, or I can report on just a certain datastore or a volume. I'd like to take all of my VDI infrastructure, which as an example would be multiple datastores, which I would select, and then do reporting on that for dedup, compression, IOPS - all the different metrics that we currently measure in the SolidFire. It'd be nice to be able to selectively pick what you want to monitor, as far as reporting.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Very good. With the exception of a couple drives that reported bad, we've had zero issues from that thing in two and a half years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability's easy. In the automotive industry, we don't know how fast we're going to go and when. It's really unpredictable. So, the scalability was a big feature for us when we were looking for a new storage vendor. We've already added to our cluster two separate times by adding nodes. We've already done that process twice in two and a half years.
How is customer service and technical support?
Hit and miss, to be honest. I've had some bad experiences, I've had some good experiences. All-in-all it's been good, above average, but I have had some unfortunate experiences.
On the negative side of it, I'm working on support, and I would get not enough detail or the support tech would say, "Check the manual." They'd send me the manual, and its a 680-page manual. We're all busy. I have a job too. I don't have time to read through 680 pages. Send me the three, four, five pages that I need that's effective to my problem.
And ultimately just follow-up in another situation where we're working through a case. They tell me I'm fine. Then, a month later, they tell me I've got a problem on my SolidFire array, and all of a sudden. That was not told to me for the past 30 days, and it kind of caught me off guard from a communication standpoint. To me, the customer, I felt it could have definitely been improved.
Which solutions did we use previously?
Number one was reliability. We had a competitor of SolidFire that was never up, we had multiple downed outages where our whole business was down, and we have 20 dealerships or rooftops. Being down is not acceptable. Obviously, reliability was a big thing, and then, obviously, the scale out and getting to a flash array for VDI was very important for us.
In terms of solving those challenges, it's simple, it's straightforward, it literally just runs itself, and the scalability. When we need more space or storage array, we can just add to our cluster, which is huge, because we can't predict growth in our industry for automotive.
How was the initial setup?
Very straightforward, very easy. We put in a four-node cluster in under two hours, three hours. It was very simple.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We were down between SolidFire before it was acquired by NetApp, so this would be even pre-merger, and our other one was Pure Storage. We chose this solution because of the flexibility to scale out compared to the competitors, such as Pure; along with cost, at almost about a three-to-one cost difference.
Operational costs, flexibility. The more nodes you add the more cost it is, but it's definitely significantly cheaper compared to other competitors that are on the market.
We did not want to consider hybrid storage because we previously had hybrid storage, and we had problems with our VDI, our virtual infrastructure, to where we wanted to get flash array. All flash was a big deal for us to get to.
What other advice do I have?
Primary use case purchase for us was VDI or virtual desktop infrastructure, with the intention of VDI and our whole assortment of load, for the server infrastructure.
Important criteria when selecting a vendor would be reputation, accountability. Support was big for us as well, knowing that support will be there, ten-year, long term. And just durability, and knowing it'll be there.
Regarding advice for a colleague researching this type of solution, do your research, obviously. Check it out, give SolidFire a fair chance if that means you're demoing, bring it on for a bake off, definitely do so. It's worth your time and effort to look into SolidFire and what it has to offer.
It comes down to reliability, and it just runs. It just literally runs itself, which is all I could ask for.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-10-17T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
it_user527100 from
It can allocate a certain number of IOPS in your throughput to your LUNs.
What is most valuable?
The quality of service features are valuable. They are able to allocate a certain number of IOPS in your throughput to your LUNs. That's something that's a little bit more difficult using traditional methods.
VDI ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/virtual-desktop ) is a perfect use case. If you have ones that need more performance than others, it's easier to allocate it on a prolonged basis for a VDI environment for your specific virtual desktop users.
How has it helped my organization?
Right now, we're still in the testing phase but I think it definitely helps in the sense where, with traditional SAN ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/enterprise-san ) architectures, you have to architect what kind of disk you need and how many of those disks you need in your storage pool and things like that. With the SolidFire, it's really just a number and it’s really just a matter of typing in that number for that certain LUN or whatever it is that you want to allocate for your users.
What needs improvement?
I now know their best practices associated with allocating IOPS to your LUNs. I wish that was more apparent to me when actually configuring the system. That's really the only feedback so far.
Also, in a competitor's solution, they have this ability to tell you what platform you should buy next to expand your environment based on your current needs and your predicted needs for the future. It tells you what models to buy. Maybe SolidFire could do the same thing.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's stable. We haven't had any stability issues at all. It works really well.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have not had any scalability issues at all. I think it scales out really well. We've tested it with cloning multiple VMs at the same time. The numbers it generates are pretty impressive.
How is customer service and technical support?
I did have an issue where, when I was deleting stuff, it did not detect that I had deleted something. I just reached out to the SE and he gave me the script to unmap the blocks that I had originally used. That was the only time I had an issue. They were great, excellent, and responsive.
Which solutions did we use previously?
Management of traditional SANs was becoming cumbersome. We wanted to look for a more efficient solution. That's why we started looking at SolidFire.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was very straightforward, easy. I've used all the hyper-conversion platforms before and I think we got it up and running within an hour or so. It was very simple.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We also looked at hyper-converged infrastructure ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/hyper-converged-infrastructure ) competitors.
We actually have both in our environment. We're really assessing both at the same time and trying to see which might be better for certain use cases. One is more storage focused and the other one's computing and storage. There's that problem, too, where you just want to compute. Expanding on storage is more difficult with the hyper-converged stuff but with SolidFire, you can just expand on the storage without worrying about compute.
What other advice do I have?
Start small, then expand. That's what I would do.
I think the solution was very simple and easy to set up, which I really appreciated.
To give it a higher rating, I'll have to thoroughly test it and have a better understanding of the whole architecture and the solution and also the capabilities I’ve mentioned.
When I look for a vendor such as NetApp, some of the important criteria are the market space, their customer support, and how responsive they are from the account manager to the SEs, not just tech support but also the other guys involved in the organization, too.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-11-09T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
it_user527121 from
It delivers stable and efficient data storage.
How has it helped my organization?
We're currently working on the Element X operating system with SolidFire, because we're trying to break the combination of hardware and software. We're going for the Element X implementation, where you can use any hardware you like. That's also something where SolidFire's very supportive. Maybe we end up buying the SolidFire hardware anyway, but it's a nice option. You have no vendor-lock; you can purchase the software from SolidFire and use some appliance from other vendors.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for about two years now. We launched our new product at the beginning of 2015 in Europe and deployed it in the US in the middle of 2015.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's absolutely a consistently stable solution. We have, currently, up-times of 100% and no data loss at all, not even the slightest. That's one of the major points why we went for flash array storage and not local SSD storage, which is, of course, faster, when you look at the IOPS, but the redundancy is just missing. SolidFire was delivering not only stability, but also a lot of efficiency with the data storage.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is a very interesting point for us, especially with the new licensing model SolidFire now offers. We can just add new appliances without purchasing new software. That will be very relevant for us in the future, especially since we added new data centers all the time over the last year. We started with one data center in Europe, we added another one and another one, and now we're provisioning it in four data centers all around the globe.
How is customer service and technical support?
Technical support is very good. We had some minor issues when we started the US data center, because we did not reach the performance level that we were promised and that we had in the European data centers. We figured out, it cannot be a hardware problem; it must be somewhere within our implementation. The SolidFire guys were very, very supportive and now, with over-provisioning, we reach levels that are far beyond the guaranteed levels.
Which solutions did we use previously?
The product we have been building was brand new, so we didn't have any legacy we had to deal with.
How was the initial setup?
For us, it was very easy to do the initial setup because we built part of the building blocks just around the storage appliance. That made it very easy for us to grow with SolidFire in, basically, the storage.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We were really looking for the highest performance combined with very specific requirements regarding the platform. Of course, we looked at the NetApp portfolio, but they couldn't offer anything that matched our requirements in both ways. All of a sudden, our upper management came up with, "Look at these guys. they're doing great job.", and that's how we ended up with SolidFire.
Of course, we evaluated some other vendors, as well, but the package that SolidFire delivered was simply the best. It was not only the performance or price. In fact, the price is quite high compared to other vendors, but what we really loved about SolidFire was the agility of the team. If you deal with really large vendors, like EMC, NetApp, or HPE, you do not have much leverage when it comes to, “We want that, we need that and please change the product this way.”
SolidFire was very open, their support was great, and they fixed a lot of problems on our side with their solution.
When my company selects a vendor, the reputation is not a key factor for us. That's why we looked at SolidFire in the first place. For us, it was very interesting to work with a small provider. We always try to get some leverage there; that we can influence the development. That's why we focus, in the evaluation also, on small vendors. Of course, we looked at different providers, like Pure Storage, Nimble and so on, but in the end, SolidFire delivered the perfect package for us.
After NetApp acquired SolidFire, we were a little afraid that it wouldn't work out, because we all have seen acquisitions that went totally wrong. As soon as we got the word that they were acquired, we immediately started looking at other vendors. But, at the moment, we're still really happy with them and it seems that the combination really works out. What happens with NetApp is, now that we're looking at the rest of the NetApp portfolio, because the integration of SolidFire seems to work quite good, the other products get more interesting for us as well.
Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Date published: 2016-12-28T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
it_user465198 from
Simple to scale up, scale down; we don't have to spend so many front end cycles on designing the architecture
What is most valuable?
Simplicity is definitely up there. It's not my number one. Number one is scalability. Simple to scale, scale up, scale down. When you look at something like a VMAX, there's a ton of pre-planning that has to happen to buy them. And then, if you didn't plan well, you're going to have a messed up implementation. With the SolidFires, I don't have to think about those things. We can just buy them, scale them as we need on demand, and we don't have to spend so many front end cycles on designing the architecture.
Also, green initiatives. Power, cooling, datacenter footprint. Ultimately, it's about cost, on that front. I think we can tie that one to some capex and opex. The front-end, I was just really talking about soft savings. We have a large company. We have an aging workforce and we can't just keep acquiring highly skilled employees as people retire.
How has it helped my organization?
It's the overall simplicity of the platform in that you can learn to operate one of these in half a day. You can stand them up in half a day. Whatever you need to purchase, it has a simple bill of materials. It's great.
Also, agility, absolutely. It takes a typical IT company months, and especially large companies like ours, months and months and months, to acquire gear. We spend a long time to plan, design, and then eventually get our quotes, review these bills of materials, make sure we get everything that we need correct, and it's just a complicated process. It takes time.
What needs improvement?
When you set up the nodes, we have to serial into each one of these nodes to configure the IP ranges. It's still very easy, but it's time consuming. If I have a 40-node cluster, it just irritates me. I really wish that they would use IPv6 Autoconfiguration to discover the other nodes and let me just do it by configuring one node.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I don't have a good answer. When we try to make these changes from VMAX, SolidFire, people say, "Well what's the risk-reward?" The risk is you either stay on a legacy architecture that's not going to be growing or developing. Like our VMAXs. Or you make a change. You go with the future. Go with something that you know is going to continue to develop and evolve. I think that's the key.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I do wish we could get a little more scalability on it. I feel confident we could scale one to the size of a fully blown out VMAX. But it'd be great if I could scale out to the size of two or three blown out VMAXs, like we would have in our enterprise datacenters.
How is customer service and technical support?
I called technical support once, early on. So I don't know how that's changed with NetApp acquisition.
Which solutions did we use previously?
We're replacing VMAX. All-purpose, general compute, block storage for the enterprise.
The biggest challenge is for block storage. What we're talking about here is, really, support. They're spinning magnetic drive disks. Sometimes we deal with some performance issues and if we didn't do a lot - if we did not have all the right information to get requirements from our customers so that we can architect the appropriate size solution - then it'd blow up on our face.
With a SolidFire I think that problem goes away. I just ask, "How much capacity do you need?" And I'm good.
How was the initial setup?
Cake. Easy. Too easy.
What was our ROI?
We expect that it'll take some time but we expect that it would reduce our operational cost, absolutely.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
EMC.
We considered hybrid storage but they were eliminated because they're a legacy architecture, for most of them; with bolt-ons. And the other ones were dual control or architectures; we are not about scale up anymore. We want scale out.
What other advice do I have?
When it comes to selecting a vendor, first, we don't deal with small vendors typically. We don't generally want to buy something that's VC-backed. We probably would not have considered SolidFire pre NetApp acquisition. But after it was acquired by NetApp, then we said, "Okay look, this company's not going go away overnight." So that's one criterion, that's a big one.
And the second is, am I going to get a commitment in the level of support that I get. When I buy this, are we going to be working together like we're partners, that we're in the same boat together?
We're an enterprise level company and I think SolidFire is uniquely valuable to a company our size. Because the price to get in there, that initial footprint, it's somewhat high. I think for the small business, I think Pure is killing it over there. I talked to them, I think Pure has got a great product, an all-flash product. But its dual controller and they're not going to play in a space where we're going to have hundreds and hundreds of connected hosts, and I need all those front-end ports. It's just not going to work. That's why, while Pure was interesting, they washed out for us pretty early. They would work great, I think, for our small robos, our small sites.
If a colleague at another company was researching a similar product I'd say make sure whatever you're looking at, you're not buying a legacy architecture with bolt-on flash drive. That's what we're trying to get away from, the pitfalls, because they're always tied to poor architecture decisions; things like cache-slot ratios to disk. We end up seeing that they have other problems. We definitely look at something that's designed ground up with flash in mind. And secondly, a company that's definitely going to be around.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-10-18T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
it_user527361 from
We have a much smaller footprint in our datacenter, reduced overall operating expenses
How has it helped my organization?
Just moving away from traditional spinning disc to solid state storage is a step forward, and user applications obviously are performing much faster. We have a much smaller footprint within our datacenter, so we've able to reduce overall operating expenses within our datacenter; shrinking costs for our business. It's been a fantastic improvement all round.
What is most valuable?
* The resiliency of the platform
* No down-time with the product itself
* Overall performance of the solution
* The dedupe
All of the feature set has been fantastic.
What needs improvement?
Really, everything our business needs, the solution currently has. Some of the other things that we are really looking forward to are some of the CloudConnect abilities.
We only have one array today, so we want to add an additional arrays in a different datacenter so then we can actually do some of the Snapshot mirroring. That capability is already there, we just don't have an additional solution for it. Right now, for us, there is not much else that we really need.
I do like their automation, some of the things that they've actually built in with their PowerShell. A lot of that stuff will help us automate our day to day operations. They've been on track with everything that we're looking for and it's just a great solution.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've run it for a year and a half, we've done multiple code upgrades, there's been zero impact to the business when we do a code upgrade. During our testing we actually demoed unplugging an entire node from the solution just to see if there was any impact to the business, there was none. In a year and a half there has been zero down-time and it's been really a solid product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scaleout, the ability to just add additional nodes without needing storage vMotion, moving anything on the virtual side around, has been really great to see. We actually just recently went through and added an additional node, we did that seamlessly; no impact to the business, no impact to our users. Our application set just continued to run. All of the LUNS just expand once the new node is added, you really can't ask for anything better.
How is customer service and technical support?
Honestly they have probably one of the best technical support staff we've worked with. One of the things that we did do during our PoC, is we actually made support calls at two in the afternoon, asked specific questions. We actually opened up support calls at 2am, just to see if we would actually get the same response which is exactly what we saw. It was good to see.
How was the initial setup?
Simple, easy, adding an additional node is easy, just a couple of cables, there's no complexity at all with the solution.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at Texas Memory, we looked at Violin Memory, we looked at XtremIO. All those solutions just didn't compare with what we could do with SolidFire in terms of performance, support, product stability. SolidFire definitely just blew the competition away.
What other advice do I have?
I would definitely say have a look at SolidFire, just because of the scalability, the ability to add additional nodes, the resiliency of the product. There are definitely other solutions that may come in and say they can do everything that SolidFire does, but in our testing we were unable to find a solution that mirrored what SolidFire could do. I think it just makes a lot of sense to just continue down that path with Solid Fire.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-11-22T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Steven Law from
You can have more tenants and more application with less space and less dollar per gigabyte
How has it helped my organization?
With this solution, you can actually do more with less. You can have more tenants and more application with less space and less dollar per gigabyte. By increasing the utilization up to four or five times someone can get more with less.
In Asia, a lot of people are still using the Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel is actually the best part of NetApp SolidFire. By providing the journey, we enable the customer to actually experience the new technology but without the need to make a lasting investment. We have to transition to the next generation because whatever SolidFire is offering it's not common hyperconverged work. It is actually for the centrifugal outlook but, it is not about the Fibre Channel. It's no longer required, The transition to next-generation infrastructure is where the Fibre Channel switch is required.
What is most valuable?
The quality of service for minimum iOS to maximum iOS in a multi-terminal environment is very powerful. The SQL service feature is the best part of SolidFire.
What needs improvement?
They took away the centrifugal outlook and it is not included anymore which is unfortunate. Additionally, I think there is room for improvement needed with its storage capability. A bigger node is needed.
For how long have I used the solution?
Three to five years.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The quality of service is unique. There's no one who does it like NetApp. Additionally, we can allow customers to do more with less while using this solution.
Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:I am a reseller.
Date published: 2019-01-21T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
associat541638 from
Some of the valuable features are compression, deduplication, and thin provisioning.
What is our primary use case?
Primarily this is used as the backend iscsi SAN for our oracle 12c RAC implementation.... 2 x 2-node clusters, plus 3 add'l servers (dev/qa/stg). We also use now for some limited-use VMs (vmware), and have implemented the VVOL configuration that SF makes available. We debated using this for non-prod data for Oracle or not, but two things swayed our opinion. 1) We would not incur a huge disk-space penalty for having dev/qa/stg there as the de-dupe functions would come into play, and 2) we can guarantee IOPS so we know that regardless of what we do in dev/qa, it won't incur a perfornance penalty for production volumes.
How has it helped my organization?
The compression and de-dupe have been great in terms of space-savings, especially for our prod/stg/qa/dev DB instances (where you gain add'l savings for the de-duped data); the QOS for IOPS helps us to ensure that no non-prod action can be deleterious to our production-stack data
What is most valuable?
* Expandability (incrementally and non-disruptive
* Compression/Deduplication/thin provisioning
* Recovery from failure/data-protection
* Guaranteed IOPS per volume
* Simple browser web-admin (with extensive out API interface)
What needs improvement?
The level of monitoring could be better. They give you access to stats and it is very informative. But you really need to do your own internal availability monitoring. Perhaps they just assume you are. And part of the thing, perhaps an adjustment on my part is needed, is that because something like a drive failure is handled internally and data-blocks are re-duplicated automatically, a failure somehow becomes less urgent. That is not second nature to me.
Having said that, 1) support reaches out if there is an issue, and 2) the on-line reporting is pretty good and only getting better.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There were no issues with stability. We've had 1 failed drive so far, and gone through 2 firmware upgrades - including reboots of invidual nodes, one at a time - and everything continues to "just work".
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There were no issues with scalability. Far from it - see previous comments
How is customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
Customer service was good. I haven't needed much so far. We prefer to be our own source of knowledge and reach out to clarify or confirm something.
Technical Support:
Technical support is good and helpful. While you can schedule the node S/W upgrades and have them take care of, I had them walk me through it, as we were in pre-production at the time. Knowing/understanding more about the process gave me a better feeling.
I don't like black boxes, so anything I can understand or wrap my head around things provides comfort. The nodes are ubuntu ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/ubuntu-linux ) and they leverage ubuntu/debian update mechanisms. These methods are well-known and understood, so no re-inventing the wheel was necessary here.
Which solutions did we use previously?
We have some older EMC ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/dell-emc ) boxes that were not sufficient to the task. We wanted an AF ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/all-flash-arrays ) (all-flash array).
How was the initial setup?
The setup was quite simple. Even though we had help, it would not have been required. To date, we've added 2 add'l nodes with no outside assistance.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented in-house, although SF sent a technical staff members out to us. He allowed us to pick their brain and ask questions, which was very helpful.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I believe the initial buy-in/purchase is more expensive, because you are starting out with 4 (minimum) nodes. It then becomes cheaper and easier to expand and grow.
For example, compared to the more traditional dual-controllers+shelf, expanding to a new shelf was a pretty big investment and you needed to fully populate it with drives).
That uses the same controllers, so you have added capacity but not performance. Whereas, adding another node is a relatively simple operation. You don't even have to add all the drives right away. Licensing is via your support contract.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did an extensive evaluation of several products and vendors, looking at SF, Kaminario ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/kaminario-k2 ), Nimble ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/nimble ), Pure Storage ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/pure-storage ), EMC ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/dell-emc ), and HPE ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/hewlett-packard-enterprise ).
Price was a factor, but it was not the only factor. We are not a huge shop, but are growing, so we wanted something that had a solid architecture for now and for later.
We wanted it to be as bulletproof as possible, and yet be able to change/grow with us. The more standard, dual-controller-with-1-shelf can survive with a controller failure, or 1+ drive failures, but what about a shelf failure? While this is unlikely, it is still a possibility.
With SF, a few minutes after a drive failure, the data (blocks) that were located on that drive are re-duplicated elsewhere. In a very short time (a few minutes), you are fully-protected again. And as long as you have sufficient spare capacity - you can lose an entire node with no data-loss and reportedly only a small performance hit (even software upgrades are non-disruptive, as they are done 1 node at a time).
That entire node's data is re-duplicated elsewhere on the remaining nodes. If you don't have a node's worth of spare capacity, that becomes more problematic, of course.
What this also means is, as you add nodes, for increases in both capacity and performance, a.k.a. the scale-out model, you also get faster recovery times in case an entire node fails.
Adding nodes is a simple as:
* Adding a node to the cluster
* Adding the drives.
Data is re-balanced across the new nodes automatically. Removing/Decommissioning a node is just as easy:
* Remove the drives from the cluster
* Allow data to be re-located
* Remove the node from the cluster
There is another unique option. Let's say I grow to 10 nodes, but the LOB application changes, and the role is no longer the same. I can break that into 2 x 5-node arrays and redeploy in different roles.
_______
update: since doing the initial review, we have added two additional nodes. Very easy to do, the data re-balancing (distribution) is done automatically.
What other advice do I have?
I'm not sure why SF isn't more popular in the SMB space. To my mind, it offers a unique combination that isn't easily matched in the marketplace. Kaminario seems to be the closest. I haven't had it long enough to truly "know" the product, but will happily revisit this in 6-12 months.
Since the intial rollout, we have implemented VVOLs on SF with our VMware 6 setup. Once setup - the initial configuration and communication, plus the SPBM policies - it is quite easy to use, and allows the vmware admin to do it all without having to touch the SF webadmin URL - even setting IOPS per volumes is done there. Very nice.
Lastly... scaling up, either for perf. or capacity (more likely), is so much of a non-issue that it is hard to over-state:
- predictable cost: you are adding a node, you know how much they cost. No "threshold" where you have to add add'l controllers, or a new shelf, nothing like that
- no (minimal) impact to add to a running system. They _say_ that when data is re-balanced (across the new node(s)), you have a percentage perf. hit, but we have not noticed this (and we've added 2 add'l nodes so far).
- in fact, adding OR removing nodes requires no downtime, literally a 'non-event'
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-07-09T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Principl4cf9 from
Enables us to accommodate extreme needs, like burst IOPS, and to solve the "noisy neighbor" problem
What is most valuable?
* Being able to provide multi-tenant applications
* Being able to provide quality of service as promised
* Being able to accommodate extreme needs, like burst IOPS
* Finally, being able to solve the "noisy neighbor" problem
How has it helped my organization?
We were able to migrate some applications from spinning media to SolidFire, and we were having "noisy neighbor" problems before.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see integration with the cloud, number one. Being able to spin SolidFire in the cloud. The hybrid cloud vision means that you should be able to run your application anywhere, on-prem or off-prem, so any product should meet that.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's quite stable. We had some issues. Luckily, we had a "phone home" thing. But it's pretty stable. I think it was a disk failure early on, and it was catching the disk failure a little late. But then they had this upgrade and they fixed it. It was a one-time thing.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The product is horizontally scalable, which is very good, which is what you need these days.
How is customer service and technical support?
They're very knowledgeable. They provided us good documentation.
Which solutions did we use previously?
Our biggest challenge was QoS - not getting guaranteed IOPS at the volume level.
How was the initial setup?
It was straightforward, because we were given a VM, and that was doing the installation, so it was straightforward.
What other advice do I have?
Our use case is to provide quality of service and guaranteed IOPS.
Replication is okay, meaning they do two copies, they are routing two copies. We're not going more than that, because of the cost. I'm satisfied.
The first and foremost criteria when selecting a vendor is that the vendor should have a unique niche. Number two, they should know what they're doing, meaning technical support. Whether it comes to technical support or e-sales. If they're not able to answer my questions on time, then it's a problem. The third is being able to integrate with my existing environment.
To a colleague researching a similar solution, I would say look for a stable company and look for a company that has good backing. Look for a good price versus performance ratio.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-10-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Alan Sheehan from
Helps us deliver service levels to our users through automation, makes provisioning much easier
What is most valuable?
Getting predictability in our analytics for space trending, performance analytics. We use to correlate data with other tools that we have. If we get complaints about any kind of performance metric issues, whether it's storage related or something on the virtual side, we use it to pinpoint what the actual issue is. It has proved really useful for that.
How has it helped my organization?
Part of the reason we went this route was we did that storage design workshop with NetApp. So we went for QoS-driven design for our new array. It really helped us not only in delivering the service levels to our users, but also automating that. So it makes it a lot easier for provisioning. It also makes it a lot easier to guarantee performance for our end users.
What needs improvement?
Nothing I can think of that they don't know about right now. They're looking at making some of the custom widgets and reports a lot easier to deal with. They're heading down that direction already, so I don't think that's a big deal.
For example, the ease of use with the reporting. Right now it's not impossible, but you have to know Sequel. It's a little time consuming to get those customized reports in there.
For how long have I used the solution?
About seven months now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's great. At first there's a little bit of a learning curve, but once we got past that everything is rock solid.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
So far it's been great. We've have not had any issues. We've added some more data into it, it hasn't choked on it.
How is customer service and technical support?
We've used them twice. They were great.
How was the initial setup?
It was really easy. We had Professional Services delivery with it. We worked with the NetApp CI team to implement. That's about as straightforward as you can get.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-11-01T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
reviewer970524 from
Competitively priced and easy to use with great technical support
What is our primary use case?
The solution is primarily used as an on-premises VMWare based application provisioning platform.
What is most valuable?
One of the most valuable thing aspect of the solution is the fact that it's all in one and all in a very small physical footprint. It has all of your major components, including your storage area network, servers, and networking footprint.
The delivery of the product is very fast and the solution itself deploys quickly, it is up and running within hours.
The product is competitively priced and technical support is good.
You can easily and effectively scale this solution. It's one of the main selling points and one of the features that makes it far superior to competitors.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been dealing with the solution for about three years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of the solution is amazing. There aren't bugs or glitches. There isn't freezing or crashing. I find the solution reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is unbelievably scalable. It's one of the solution's main characteristics that differentiate it from other similar products. If a company is looking for something that can scale easily, this is that solution.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support of the solution is quite good. They are responsive and knowledgeable.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is pretty straightforward, deployment is lightning fast and very easy.
What about the implementation team?
In House
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing of the solution is fair and definitely competes in the marketplace. We have no monthly cost. We bought the product outright with all licensing included and have support with them for three years.
What other advice do I have?
I'd recommend the solution. Implementing it is a breeze, support is good and scaling is easy. If you do not have a lot of technical capability on-premise, that would certainly be a leading reason to look at this solution.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2020-08-20T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Mir Gulzar Ahmed from
Simple to deploy and has good stability
What is our primary use case?
Because I'm also a PC guy for my company and in Pakistan there is not a third-person specific guy for a client or specific job, we are also doing the very tough job as the IT specialists. So I have to look after the solution, the technical stuff, and also the deployment. I am personally working in all three departments. I have to because it's my job as the head of IT in my company. We had a vendor, so we are actually giving solutions to others. Regarding SolidFire, it's a very good storage solution when you are looking for a software defined data center.
SolidFire provides seamless performance across your storage system when you need to scale up. Other storage systems do not do that.
Your customer doesn't want to learn a lot of software stuff and only wants to learn one piece of software, and does not want to learn the storage system. That's where SolidFire comes in, because its software is really good for defined data centers and virtualization.
What I mean is, if a customer doesn't need a centralized storage system but does need a data center which is capable of being an agile software defined storage system, then they should choose SolidFire, However, if they need a big centralized storage SAN, they shouldn't choose SolidFire.
What is most valuable?
In terms of SolidFire's most valuable features, simplicity is the key component and key feature of SolidFire. It doesn't mean that the administrator or the buyer do not need to learn about the Create Read Group or something like that. But the visioning of the space through the host is its simplest key. SolidFire's deployment engine has a lot of adhered solutions from NetApp and it has the hyperconvergance infrastructure. If the customer needs a hyperconverged infrastructure on the backend you should just use SolidFire storage system. When you use a software defined storage system it's really, really good.
It's really simple to deploy. You don't need to learn a lot. When you compare the NetApp storage system with SolidFire, both are very simple to deploy, but compared to the other products from NetApp's software defined data centers, SolidFire is very easy to deploy.
What needs improvement?
SolidFire should start from two nodes instead of the four nodes. That's the only thing. In a lot of solutions, we have to use four nodes, that's the better thing. But as a starting point, two is better. That's why their starting point is expensive.
There is another thing - they should have a mixed option, too, like other solutions have. If you get around the two things, then you can also compete with the cost. The other options have mixed solutions. That's why they are cheaper.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is really, really good related to other storage systems. Other software defined data centers do not have that much storage scalability. SolidFire is very scalable and that's really good.
But here, I want to show you one thing that is really important at the starting point. The starting point of SolidFire is really a little bit on the expensive side, but from a scalability perspective, as a total cost of ownership, if you go for it then it's not so expensive. But the starting point is more expensive than other storage options, because if you want a scalable solution, of course, the starting point will be expensive.
How are customer service and technical support?
The product is really amazing, so I will not even think about the technical support because it's so easy to manage. There is no problem when you apply the solution according to the requirements and the documentation. You don't need support. In comparison other storage systems like Oracle, and others, have lots of problems and you need support. But with NetApp I only need the support to replace the component and that's easy to do. Also, the fault frequency of NetApp is really low compared to other storage systems.
I didn't experience any kind of problem which took a long time with NetApp support, but I did find a lot of problems which held me with support for other storage solutions like Oracle and EMC. Even with EMC, the third party support is better at NetApp. So the problems are very low. This is very important because the backend engine is very strong. This is really a very smooth experience through the warranty period and of course after the warranty period. I got very good support from NetApp.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
One thing I would advise people is regarding the price. This is a very important point here. When you go for being a gold partner, not as a customer, then you should get a better discount. And if you get a better discount from NetApp, then it can compete with any other solution. But here, it is really important to tell the customer what the total cost of ownership is, not just the starting point, because at the starting point, it's still a little bit expensive. But when you have a backend gold partnership, then you can tell NetApp, "Okay, NetApp I am competing for the cheaper solution." Then you can get extra discounts to sell the product.
But then in parallel, you must inform the customer. If you want a Ferrari, you have to tell them that. You have to tell the customer, "Technically, it is very good." You have to convince your customer that if they want technical ability, agility, simplicity and real ease of management plus a lot of other things, then you have to pay for that. There's no free lunch at all. Somebody has to pay.
What other advice do I have?
We are in a crisis situation for everyone, for customers, for partners, for principals, manufacturers. We need a specific solution to move on in the world, to the new normal. So for solutions, CI (continuous integration) should be in the future of IT. CI is the future, it is easy to apply. You don't need to buy frequently - just buy once and scale out.
HCI is the key component in SolidFire. So I think for the customers who want their IT to have a continuous support and continuous business, then they should choose HCI solutions. I'm going to choose from NetApp or from any kind of hardware manufacturer, but the future I believe is CI. I believe that the best HCI is the NetApp HCI.
The difference between SolidFire and other storage is that it is a stand alone storage. No one has that software or that scalability. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate SolidFire an eight.
The only thing is the initial cost because we have to convince the customer that he has to pay more. That's the only thing in this case. It's not an overall technical, scalability, or simplicity issue. The price factor brings it down to eight. Otherwise, if any partner is a gold partner and they get the good discount then I can easily give SolidFire a 10.
Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2020-10-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Arnaud Salmon from
Good functionality, excellent performance, and integrates well with other solutions
What is our primary use case?
The solution is primarily for a hyper-converged solution, and the hyper-converged solution with NetApp HCI is to address the most common workloads, generic workloads, also workloads around VDI. It's primarily for everything around performance, around software like the CAD suite, and around scientific completion.
What is most valuable?
The performance with the QoS is its most valuable aspect.
The integration with VMware is excellent. There are different plugins to manage the SolidFire storage from the vCenter level. That I really appreciate.
SolidFire even as a standalone storage platform is excellent.
I would say in terms of architecture and in terms of functionality, the product is quite good.
It's block access storage, however, for block access storage we have the guarantee of performance.
We have the duplication and we have the encryption with this solution. We have almost all the standards needed for storage with SolidFire. In terms of protection, with the level of protection we can set between the SolidFire nodes, it's very good.
What needs improvement?
The only thing I would see as a drawback of SolidFire, is that it's a storage that we can address only with the iSCSI protocol and no other protocol such as FC, or things like that, unfortunately. It's probably the only point that I can see that is not positive compared to other storage solutions.
It would be ideal if the solution could be more open with access protocols.
Sometimes we have to be careful when we need to add some storage. I'd say some tips and some best practices with respect to that would help.
You don't have business continuity with SolidFire. I think it could be a nice feature to have in the future.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been working with this solution at my current company for one year, however, in my previous position I worked with SolidFire solution for two years. I'd say I have around three years of experience with the product.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I've never had any issues with SolidFire's stability, except once. We had a problem with a node, a problem with a motherboard. In fact, with the protection level, we changed the motherboard without any disruption in production and in storage services. If we can change like that from one motherboard of another, and change an entire SolidFire node without disruption, it's okay and I'd consider that quite a stable product. It was even done without performance issues as I recall. From this point of view, it's really a really nice, reliable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is quite good. I don't have a number in mind, however, I know that when SolidFire is part of the HCI product from NetApp, we can scale up to at least 40 SolidFire nodes. That is quite good for a full SSD solution. On that side, it's really enough to address the most common storage needs.
How are customer service and technical support?
The only time I had an issue was with a motherboard. In fact, with the SolidFire technology, NetApp was able to acquire Active IQ. Active IQ is the software layer that is pushing all information on the health of the SolidFire platform.
Therefore, the support is really quite proactive, in fact. Each time there was something to do, a component to change, or an upgrade to do on the platform, it was followed by emails from the NetApp support, who would remind me of necessary changes. Even with Active IQ, we've had advice on what we could do on the system to get better performance or better organization about the data that resides on the SolidFire platform.
It's got really great proactive support, and we're quite satisfied with them.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not complex. It's pretty straightforward. There was some information we needed to get before installation, such as IP addresses, due to the fact that we were with an iSCSI storage and we needed some IP addresses for each node that composing the SolidFire storage solution. That said, when we have all that in an array, when we have all the information ready to go, the installation process is really easy, quite fast, and well-integrated when we want to provide this kind of storage to VMware.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Within HCI, the whole solution is considered to be quite extensive. As just a storage solution, however, SolidFire is at the same level of pricing as a full SSD solution like ASF. It really depends on what the customer's needs are. That said, it's quite well positioned in terms of price.
What other advice do I have?
We're a distributor.
SolidFire is on its own standard storage platform, and, as it's embedded with HCI from NetApp, adds to the storage for the hyper-converged solution.
There are a lot of use cases for SolidFire within HCI. It can address most of the workloads we have on the customer side. It's really something. We can build solutions that really fit the customer and we can size the compute as needed.
For the VMware server, we use ESX, and we can also add into the compute nodes some CPU cards for all that is graphic or scientific calculations. On the storage side, we can build the storage we need with the SolidFire nodes. We can really address on one side, the computer needs, and on the other side, the storage needs. In fact, that's the value of HCI by NetApp. What is nice with SolidFire is that the QoS is embedded, and for each volume you create, you put the QoS on it. And you're sure to grantee the service level agreement for the customer, depending on the workloads he needs.
Overall, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten. It doesn't quite have the same amount of options and features as Pure Storage. Yet, it's pretty impressive.
The only recommendation I have to others is on the network side. You need to really get all the information required before you try to deploy this solution. That's all. It's a little work to do beforehand, however, it's really important to address everything before implementing SolidFire.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:partner
Date published: 2020-11-17T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
PatrickStienhuber from
Scalability provides good benefits, but too expensive to use company-wide
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability. That is the biggest benefit of using this solution.
What needs improvement?
The entry-level for this solution is so high that we had to use other solutions for some of our smaller office locations that are in different parts of the world. As a consequence, because we could not use it across our entire organization, we have changed to something else. I would like to see the entry-level changed so that you can do really small systems with SolidFire.
This solution would be improved if it were made to be more compatible with other products.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this solution for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is the biggest benefit of using this solution.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support for this solution can be good and bad. If you have a really big issue then it's bad because it takes quite a long time for the issue to be solved.
There are different levels of service. You can have a technician who is able to do the troubleshooting and is allowed to set up the commands.
If you just have questions with no due date, or you just have to fix a small package, the support is good. You always get the answers you need. However, in critical situations, we have had problems. For example, in the last three years, we spend three or four hours on the phone with support where nobody could escalate our tickets.
If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?
We have had to stop using this solution because the price was too high for global implementation. We are now using NetApp MetroCluster. We were happy with the functionality and switched only because of the price.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of this solution is straightforward.
I would say that you can deploy this solution in an hour if you know how to do it.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price of this solution is more expensive than others.
What other advice do I have?
The suitability of this solution depends on the use case, so anybody who is researching this solution should take care to consider their use cases first.
I cannot think of any additional features this solution needs, but there is a long list of improvements.
I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-11-02T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
reviewer1560501 from
Easy to manage and deploy with a straightforward setup
What is our primary use case?
The solution is our upper-tier all-flash shared storage for our customers. We have shared virtual private cloud environments that we serve storage to. This solution is our high-tier flash storage offering.
What is most valuable?
The product is easy to manage and deploy. It's got full API functionality and the performance is pretty steady.
The initial setup is pretty straightforward.
What needs improvement?
We have had some issues with it scaling as high as the marketing says it can. We've got some very large clusters of up to over 20 nodes and when you get to that size your upgrades tend to take a long time or just waste. We tend to have issues beyond 20 plus nodes.
The upgrade process could be better. Lately, we've had lots of hardware having general issues with lots of failures. It seems like every month at least we're replacing an entire node, as opposed to just dry failures which you would normally expect, or small components. It seems like we have to replace an entire node pretty often. The hardware reliability isn't quite there.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution since 2014. I've had it for the last seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product is pretty stable. As far as the software side of it, how it works, it's got the double helix protection. It's very redundant. However, due to hardware issues, we've had some performance problems as a node fails and it takes all those drives out of commission. That's partly an issue with capacity management, however, just as a result, we've had a plan for much lower usage.
We need to have a much bigger buffer there to deal with node failures to ensure it doesn't impact performance. If you're running at 70% and you suddenly lose a node now you're hitting cluster full alarms and that can impact performance as well as the ability to continue creating volumes and things like that for customers.
Other than that, it works as expected as far as maintaining redundancy. We've never had a problem with losing data or anything like that, even with those hard work failures.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability may be a function of the distributed nature. When you do an upgrade on a 20 plus node cluster, it's going to go through and upgrade each node one at a time. As a result, for example, it can take sometimes upwards of 48 to 50 hours to complete as you're going through this one step at a time. It can be stretched out due to the fact that you can only do one node at a time and hold off during the day if needed.
One thing that we run into during the upgrades is we have had cases where very large volumes become disconnected. Some of that might just be that we need to limit the size of the volumes that we support. However, for our customers, we have had issues with nodes rebooting and a volume might be disconnected from the ESXi for longer than the period that the ESXi can tolerate and then you get all paths down.
Right now, we have hundreds of end-users on this solution. We are a service provider and likely have thousands of users if you take into account our customer's user base.
We're not planning on expanding SolidFire. We're looking at different options just for our work for a private counter environment. We're going towards more of an HCI architecture. SolidFire may stick around as a dedicated platform or just an all-flash option, however, it's not going to be our primary shared storage.
How are customer service and support?
I've never really dealt with technical support. There was another engineer that mostly dealt with them. The times that I dealt with support, they were pretty knowledgeable. That was definitely before NetApp purchased SolidFire. Their support was top-notch. Since then, if we can get past the first layer of support, it seems to be better than what I would expect, however, there have been issues with calling in and not getting the right support. It just takes time to get past the level that isn't as knowledgeable as the next level up.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I'm also familiar with Pure, NetApp, and VNX.
Pure's are more traditional to controller architecture as opposed to the distributed architecture of SolidFire. It's also all-flash, just like SolidFire. It's even simpler than SolidFire in terms of deployment and management. They've got an active controller configuration so that upgrades are essentially transparent as you upgrade a node or scale. It's just the way that the architecture's designed on the back end.
How was the initial setup?
We have found the initial setup to be fairly easy. The implementation process is pretty smooth. It's self-explanatory.
We've got two people dedicated to the SolidFire array. We have several in our data centers and we have a whole support task force that deals with tickets. However, in general, there are two people that are the platform owners that ensure everything's up to date and any things are being resolved as needed.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
While I don't know specifics about the licensing costs or procedures, my understanding it's comparable to other products. We did a comparison with Pure recently and the per-gigabyte charge was within a range of five to 10 cents difference.
What other advice do I have?
We are currently a customer and an end-user.
I did not use the latest version of the solution. We were a couple of years behind. We were most recently at version 11. I've been out of the operations group now for the last, probably eight months or so, however, it's my understanding that they recently updated it, however, the last one I worked with was version 11.
I'd rate the solution at a solid eight out of ten simply due to the hardware issues which are pretty impactful lately and the issues with the upgrades that we've seen lately.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-11-10T00:00:00-05:00