Overview
What is SolidFire (discontinued)?
NetApp acquired the scale-out flash storage startup SolidFire in late 2015. The product line was discontinued in October of 2023, and is no longer available from NetApp.
Net App Solid Fire offers a competitive product at an attractive price point
SolidFire is a great product
The Best All Flash Storage
Solidfire is a fast, solid, multi-purpose block array - great at what it is, but know what it isn't
Product Demos
Deploy and configure NetApp SolidFire Demo VM v12
SolidFire QOS Demo: Performance Management
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
What is SolidFire (discontinued)?
SolidFire (discontinued) Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
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Mobile Application | No |
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(9)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
NetApp SolidFire is a software solution that offers seamless deployment and easy accessibility of virtual infrastructures, leading to increased productivity and business performance. According to users, it solves infrastructure problems by providing straightforward deployment and significantly less time-consuming benefits of virtualization that make the most efficient use of physical hardware storage. This solution also allows users to focus on their skills and manage storage efficiently, reducing costs and workload while minimizing manpower usage.
Another significant problem solved by NetApp SolidFire is the ability to easily create and delete VM servers. Users note that this results in cost savings and better use of data center space. Additionally, it enables development and testing, scalability, flexibility, security, load balancing, backup, and recovery. Users appreciate the central management of virtual infrastructures which ensures security, access control, and variable management.
However, users have noted some downsides such as fuzziness on network and segment load which can affect security and access control. Furthermore, when loaded with many VMs, there can be a slowdown in performance. Nevertheless, users view NetApp SolidFire as an effective solution that provides a single software solution to manage virtual infrastructure centrally while improving hardware management by eliminating the need to manage it physically. Overall it helps businesses run more efficiently without sacrificing performance or security.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-3 of 3)- Speed is incredible.
- Ongoing maintenance is great.
- Price point was quite good.
- There seems to be an overarching view (with drill downs) of the entire infrastructure.
- You need a solid partner to implement this product initially.
- As this product is still integrating with Net Apps mature support systems, I still think that there is room for a better end to end experience.
- Flash Array Performance
- 100%10.0
- Flash Array Integration
- 80%8.0
- Data Compression
- 90%9.0
- Non-Intrusive Upgrades
- 90%9.0
- Simplicity
- 70%7.0
- Power Savings
- 70%7.0
- The ROI was quick - under 1 year
- Nutanix AOS and HPE SimpliVity (formerly OmniCube)
SolidFire is a great product
- Manages all flash storage
- Easy to understand GUI
- API documentation could use some help
- GUI can be slow
- Flash Array Performance
- N/AN/A
- Flash Array Integration
- N/AN/A
- Data Compression
- 80%8.0
- Simplicity
- 40%4.0
- Power Savings
- 40%4.0
- Helps take the burden off storage team for provisioning of new or expansion of existing storage.
- Reduced licensing cost.
Solidfire is a fast, solid, multi-purpose block array - great at what it is, but know what it isn't
- All-flash performance is very good, particularly on read-intensive workloads
- Performance scales linearly by adding new nodes
- Guaranteed QOS policies offer both a minimum IOPS and maximum IOPS with burst capabability, so its not just capping the upper limit of a workload
- Encryption at rest is integrated into the array platform
- Grid architecture ensures that ability to perform rolling upgrades online without severely impairing performance
- VVOL capabilities with the array allow granular control and visibility of the workloads
- Block-only storage platform
- Latency is higher than expected on write-intensive workloads (making it less effective for log applications and video)
- UI and marketing inconsistencies make it hard to know how close you are to your maximum performance - all IOPS in UI are reported in actual IOPS whereas the ratings and marketing all use 4K IOPS - users must manually equate actual Average IO size and IOPS to the 4K representation
- Solidfire's excellent support is being merged with NetApp's support and seems to be harder to navigate and receive the traditional high-quality support
- ActiveIQ portal is good for longer term views of the array, but it is sub-par compared to competitors like HPE's Infosight
- VVOL visibility in the UI is constrained - you can dig into details on a single volume but you are unable to compare performance of multiple volumes
The Solidfire fiber channel implementation is workable, but largely there is a checkbox. I cannot imagine any fiber channel shop is going to look at a Solidfire seriously, unless they are looking to move towards Ethernet based transport. Write intensive workloads struggle on the array. The double-helix data protection combined with the architecture can make writes more latent than expected - well into the teens and 20's of ms within the array.
- Largely allowed us to install and not have to manage the array (set it and forget it) - the array calls home and reports into Active IQ and Solidfire auto-generates cases based on events and is proactive in handling issues.
- Use of VVOL with the array has reduced the number of management points, but has introduced a new possibility of problems due to the VASA provider and vCenter dependency for VVOLs - it is something to be aware of if you choose to use VVOLs versus VMFS with vSphere. Use of VMFS and traditional LUNs bring less benefits, so there is a trade-off.
- The first major software upgrade hit a bug specific to our vSphere configuration which causes a major outage. The advertised behavior is a non-disruptive upgrade process and maintenance process. Maintenance has been nondisruptive during a hardware failure (node replacement) and during a drive replacement.
- Software updates to the array are guided by Solidfire and largely white-glove, handled by their support.
- HP 3PAR StoreServ Flash Storage, Dell EMC Unity, Tegile, IBM XIV, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and NetApp FAS series
- Solidfire is block-only, so NetApp FAS, HPE 3PAR, Tegile and Dell EMC Unity have the ability to also run file and block on the same array.
- Performance scale in a single array of Solidfire is matched only with other software-defined architectures like EMC ScaleIO
- Controller based architectures like E-Series, EF-Series, XIV and 3PAR usually are constrained by the controller's limits, Solidfire's software-defined, grid architecture breaks free of that
- Software-defined like Solidfire often has a higher base level of latency than controller-based arrays
- Solidfire's approach to manageability made it superior to the other arrays evaluated - because it was designed as all-flash and other architectures were designed for spinning disk and hybrid media pools, Solidfire eliminates a lot of the concepts of managing disk pools and tiers of storage and the simplicity is shown in the UI and in the management experience
- Solidfire's hardware appliance model allowed a white-glove approach to SDS not matched by Dell EMC's ScaleIO
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Existing Relationship with the Vendor