All-flash storage is increasingly becoming the standard. Not surprisingly, players in this market regularly add models to their offerings or replace existing models. Today, NetApp introduces additions to the AFF A series and AFF C series. We outline the new models in this article.
When looking at storage needs, there is usually a distinction between storage where performance is most important and storage where it is more about the relationship between price and performance. Within NetApp’s unified offerings, this involves the AFF A series and the AFF C series, respectively.
NetApp AFF A20, A30 and A50
Earlier this year, NetApp refreshed the high-end offerings in its All-Flash FAS (AFF) line. With this line, the company is targeting organizations looking for a so-called unified storage offering, or storage that you can put file, block and object data formats on.
The AFF line, combined with the ONTAP operating system, plays a crucial role in the Intelligent Data Infrastructure that NetApp is building. However, the company doesn’t just want to target the high-end AFF A-series to the largest organizations with the deepest pockets. It also wants to make and keep it accessible to organizations with smaller pockets. After all, these may also have mission-critical workloads, without immediately wanting and being able to opt for the largest capabilities. That should be possible with the new NetApp AFF A20, A30 and A50 models.
With the latest models in the AFF A series, NetApp says customers get the advanced capabilities for which this series is known. Think especially of the extremely low latency of less than a millisecond, but also definitely the integrated protection against ransomware and better storage density. The smaller start capacities allow NetApp to offer the AFF A20, A30 and A50 at a lower price point. For example, the AFF A20 starts at just over 15 TB. Furthermore, NetApp says about the AFF A50 that it offers twice the performance over its predecessor, but that this model does so at a third of the rack space.
NetApp AFF C30, C60 and C80
No organization has only workloads that require the fastest of the fastest in terms of storage. However, all-flash is also increasingly becoming the standard for general purpose workloads. That’s what the models in NetApp’s AFF C Series are aimed at. 1.5 years ago, the company introduced this series, so it’s time for a refresh. NetApp is announcing that today, with the AFF C30, C60 and C80.
With the new models in the AFF C series, NetApp wants to give all-flash more density. It says itself that with this new series it is possible to cram a capacity of 1.5 PB into two racks. NetApp calls this industry-leading, a claim we cannot verify at this time. What we can say is that 1.5 PB in two racks is not something to sneeze at.
Whether NetApp’s claim is correct or not, it does make it clear that this part of NetApp’s all-flash portfolio is primarily aimed at providing a much higher storage density than organizations have been accustomed to until now. In other words, this is about replacing hybrid flash systems or systems still using HDDs alone.
Compared to less modern storage environments, all-flash systems can obviously offer a lot of gains in terms of square footage/rack space and also certainly power consumption. Note that the models in the AFF C series also have the integrated ransomware protection. That’s part of NetApp’s overarching Intelligent Data Infrastructure story.
News about StorageGRID
In addition to the ONTAP-based offerings within the AFF, FAS and ASA lines, NetApp still has some other products in its lineup. These are still doing well in the market, we heard from NetApp CEO George Kurian during NetApp Insight earlier this year. More specifically, these are the E/EF series and StorageGRID.
About StorageGRID, NetApp’s object storage platform, the company also has some updates today. These systems, along with the EF systems, are quite popular for setting up AI projects within organizations. For StorageGRID, NetApp today announced the latest software release. We are now at version 11.9. This latest version should make object storage systems more scalable and flexible. Think of more buckets and more flexibility in the type of node that can be deployed.
Finally, in addition to the new version of StorageGRID software, there is also an extension for the StorageGRID SGF6112 system. That gets support for 60TB SSDs. This makes it possible to double the density.
All in all, NetApp announces a lot of new products today. Affordability, scalability and storage density play key parts in all of them. These are very important for organizations who are looking to upgrade existing (less modern) systems. NetApp addresses many of the concerns organizations have about all-flash storage with today’s announcements. It is up to the market to decide when they are convinced and move to the latest technologies. Perhaps not for all of their workloads, but all-flash is getting more interesting for more and more of them, that’s for sure.
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