NetApp AFF A700 NVMe All-Flash Storage

By Mukesh Nigam, senior product manager, ONTAP systems group, NetApp, Inc.

NetApp, Inc. is announcing new products at NetApp INSIGHT 2020, the new ONTAP products include the AFF A250 and FAS500f systems.

AFF A700 system

Both are all-flash NVMe additions to the ONTAP family. AFF A250 introduces a cost effective end-to-end NVMe to entry-level systems, while the FAS500f introduces high-capacity flash to the ONTAP portfolio. Although these 2 storage systems expand the breadth of the ONTAP portfolio, I am excited about an enhancement to NetApp’s AFF system: A700 will now offer back-end NVMe storage. With NVMe capability on the AFF A700 system, the entire AFF A-Series family supports low latency end-to-end NVMe.

With the support for NVMe SSDs on the back end, along with the existing NVMe/ FC front-end host connectivity, the AFF A700 is an end-to-end NVMe system. If you already use AFF A700 systems, it’s now easier to adopt the new NVMe SSD technology. And new AFF A700 customers can take advantage of the latest technology. As customers are modernizing their data centers, 100GbE and 25GbE networking are becoming the de facto choices and AFF A700 systems can now connect to high-speed 100GbE and 25GbE host networks as well.

Investment protection with easy upgrades
AFF A700 storage systems continue to differentiate itself in the market with its sought-after combination of high performance, resilience, and flexibility to accelerate the most mission-critical workloads. More importantly, with its non-disruptive in-chassis upgrade capability, you can get the newest technology, cost-effectively, with an easy upgrade in the future. The front-end NVMe/FC makes it possible to achieve the performance, scale, and operational efficiency goals of emerging workloads such as AI/ML, real-time analytics, and noSQL databases. AFF A700 self-encrypting disk technology allows you to incorporate data-at-rest encryption in all your deployments with either the onboard key manager or Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) servers. Finally, AFF A700 also provides investment protections for existing customers who want to continue to use existing SAS-attached SSD storage.

With end-to-end NVMe, AFF A700 systems get a performance boost. In tests using a 100% random read Oracle SLOB workload, an end-to-end NVMe AFF A700 system is 85% faster at 500μs latency than AFF A700 system with FCP/SAS storage – a significant improvement.

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Additionally, we’re simplifying storage across the board, starting with how the AFF A700 system and the rest of the AFF and FAS portfolio is sold, configured, managed, and supported. The new ONTAP software offerings – now available on all AFF and FAS systems – give the flexibility to acquire software based on your deployment requirements. We’re also extending new support offerings with flat pricing for the life of the system on all AFF and FAS systems. These offerings add a new digital advisor with predictive capabilities and a high-touch support tier.

With these technology upgrades, the company is enhancing proven and trusted storage systems to help modernize your IT. You’ll continue to get the benefits of cloud integration and the NetApp Keystone consumption model to advance your journey into digital transformation. You can continue to use AFF A700 systems for mission-critical applications and workloads without compromising on the reliability, availability, and rich data management capabilities.

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