The Netapp AFF A300 model is made in a 3RU chassis and is based on Flash technology. It belongs to the mid-range product offering and is in the same price segment as the NetApp A-Series. This model is positioned to work in modern data centers for the latest generation of cloud services.
NetApp AFF A300 is a progressive data storage system (DSS) designed exclusively to work with SSD drives. The manufacturer provides for the possibility of expanding the “raw” volume of the system’s disk space to 141 PB.
The current version of the ONTAP software is supplied with the device. This storage model is characterized by the highest level of fault tolerance in its class, cost-effectiveness in terms of resource consumption and high performance.
NetApp hardware
Main Features of AFF A300
The AFF A300 can be connected to as many ports per HA pair:
- 4 ports 1/10GBase-T (RJ-45);
- 4 ports 32 Gb FC;
- 16 ports 8/16 Gb FC;
- 24 10 GB FCoE SFP+ ports;
- 32 SFP+ ports for 10 GBE;
- 8 40 GBE QSFP+ ports.
At the same time, the maximum possible storage capacity of the entire storage can be 11.75 PB for each HA pair (up to 141 PB in a cluster with a total of 12 HA pairs). The AFF A300 supports connecting up to 384 drives per HA pair (up to 4,608 drives per 12 HA pair clusters in total).
The device’s cache memory is 256 GB for each HA pair (3072 GB in a cluster of 12 HA pairs). In total, 24 physical 2.5-inch SFF SSD drives can be installed in one 2U disk shelf.
The AFF A300 system can be connected to a HA pair by switches or directly, and also gives the user the opportunity to connect several HA pairs to a cluster: up to 12 pairs in the NAS or 6 in the SAN.
AFF A300 is supported in MetroCluster configurations:
- 2 nodes;
- 4 nodes: 2 switched or non-switched clusters and fabric-attached storage or 4 nodes with two active-active nodes on each site;
- 8 nodes (NAS): 4 clusters with a pair of nodes (with or without switching) and fabric-attached storage or 8 nodes with clusters having 4 active-active nodes per site.
Additional AFF A300 functionality
The standard ONTAP software supports the functionality of creating snapshots of the system (Snapshot) and data replication (both local SyncMirror and remote SnapMirror), and the function of dynamic editing of volume sizes Thin provisioning is also implemented.
In modern versions of ONTAP, there is an additional possibility of virtualization of storage — MultiStore (creating backups, restoring from backups, cloning and copying information, etc.).
The AFF A300 can work in full compatibility with modern top-level software solutions and virtualization software, providing information protection at the system and application level:
- SnapLock;
- XenServer;
- Oracle;
- SharePoint;
- SAP;
- Exchange;
- VSphere;
- SQL Server;
- Hyper-V SnapManager, etc.