NetApp All Flash FAS A700s Array Delivers Performance in Compact Form Factor

NetApp, Inc. introduced a performing enterprise all-flash array and a guarantee that give customers performance without compromise to meet the demands of the data-powered digital era.

All Flash FAS A700s array front and rear

The All Flash FAS (AFF) A700s array delivers performance in a compact form factor to modernize IT for demanding enterprise applications, analytic workloads and cloud integration. Customers can shrink data center footprint and power and cooling costs due to the flash density and industry storage efficiencies. The company also announced a All-Flash Guarantee that ensures up to 5X storage savings, depending on workload, giving customers confidence they will achieve the capacity and efficiency promised.

“IT transformation is a hot topic for organizations of all sizes with a goal to put data at the heart of their businesses,” said Simon Robinson, VP, research, 451 Research. “NetApp’s new AFF solutions offer any customer, regardless of size, the ability to deliver data management capabilities for different environments. Now any company can leverage NetApp’s AFF solutions to help them adapt to the largest and most disruptive IT shift in history.“

NetApp AFF all-flash A-Series array

AFF A700s: Class in performance, designed for cloud and maximum efficiency
The AFF A700s is part of the AFF all-flash A-Series, which includes the A200 entry-level system, A300 midrange system and A700 high-end system. A-Series storage systems offer scalable performance with data management and data protection from flash to disk to cloud.

The new model continues company’s track record for innovation, with an NVMe fabric-ready clustered architecture that runs the storage OS, ONTAP ^[1]. It supports industry inclusion of 15TB SSDs and 32Gb FC and 40GbE connectivity options.

Attributes of A700s include:

Fast enterprise storage. Based on a Storage Performance Council SPC-1 result ^[2], the AFF A700s achieved 2,400,059.26 SPC-1 IO/s at an average response time of 0.69 milliseconds. It is an performing enterprise all-flash array among the major storage providers and in the top three overall on the SPC-1 performance list.
Industry data-center efficiencies. TCO is improved through a dense form factor that reduces power consumption by 11x, rack space by 19x, and support costs by 67%. Customers can deliver more than 600,000 IO/s and 1PB of capacity in four rack units.
Cloud-connected all-flash array: As with the entire AFF portfolio, customers can future-proof their infrastructure with an open solution that connects to public clouds from AWS, Azure, IBM Cloud and more, while retaining visibility and data control across cloud and on-premises environments.

The All-Flash guarantee provides a workload-specific efficiency guarantee that scales up to a 5:1 data reduction ratio. Customers get the storage efficiency and capacity firm’s promises, or the company will cover the costs to make up the difference. The guarantee is available for the entire AFF family.

“Decision makers across the enterprise know that all-flash technology offers the speed and responsiveness needed to quickly extract value from data,” said Joel Reich, EVP, products and operations, NetApp. “NetApp’s new AFF all-flash arrays provide even stronger proof of how our innovation accelerates results and dramatically improves data center economics. With NetApp enterprise storage, IT leaders can be confident in the performance of their applications, on-premises or in the cloud, and direct their energies to the strategic projects that improve customer satisfaction and drive growth.“

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Customer embrace of AFF innovations fuels company’s growth in All-Flash market
The AFF series is a storage array for enterprises of all sizes that need to simplify and modernize their enterprise data infrastructure. Customer embrace of the AFF value proposition-performance, simplicity, future-proofed-has resulted in ten consecutive quarters of triple-digit growth for this product line and contributed to the company exceeding $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate for its overall all-flash business. Industry recognition of firm’s all-flash momentum includes:

Leader in the Gartner, Inc.’ Solid State Array Magic Quadrant
Fastest growing all-flash provider, expanding twice as fast, year over year, as the overall all-flash market ^[3]
Storage provider that can deliver end-to-end visibility across a hybrid cloud, thanks to software innovation. The company is tied for number one in revenue share in the storage and device management software market^[4] on the strength of firm’s OnCommand Insight software.

“NetApp’s All Flash FAS systems provide us with a simple and secure infrastructure to help us continue to evolve our data center while providing first responders with instant updates when it is most critical. Our 24-hour analysis captures data from 2,000 weather stations, 17 radar systems, numerous meteorological satellites, and more than 200 international data sources. NetApp helps us get critical weather data into the hands of first responders faster to improve safety and save lives,” said Alexander Harth, head, user support division, DWD, Germany’s national weather service.

“Speed is paramount in business today. Whether it’s delivering new business applications to employees or new products to customers, accelerating time to market increases revenues and enhances customer satisfaction. NetApp’s new AFF systems provide our clients with a suite of high-performance platforms for workloads that require agility and performance to support continued business growth,” said Jason Anderson, chief architect, Datalink Corp., an Insight Enterprises, Inc. company.

“To ensure that NetApp AFF arrays deliver the maximum speed and responsiveness for connecting to mission-critical applications, organizations need modern storage networks based on Gen 6 FC technology. Brocade’s Gen 6 FC solutions enable NetApp flash environments to operate at 32Gb/s performance and provide unprecedented visibility into VMs and storage I/O performance,” said Jack Rondoni, SVP, storage networking, Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.

Resources:
Get perspective from partner Red8 in blog
Video: Hear how AFF helps customer DWD
All-Flash Guarantee program

^[1] IDC Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker 2016 Q3, December 2016 (Open Networked Enterprise Storage Systems revenue).
^[2]Storage Performance Council SPC-1 result
^[3]IDC Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker 2016 Q3, December 2016 (Open Networked Enterprise Storage Systems revenue).
^[4]IDC Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker 2016 Q3, December 2016 (Open Networked Enterprise Storage Systems revenue).