NetApp AFF A220 All-Flash Storage System (AFF-A220)

The AFF A220 is NetApp's entry all-flash system from the FAS2700 generation. NetApp describes its entry AFF systems as two HA controllers on FAS2750 hardware with SSD media, so the 2U chassis carries the drives internally and grows with external shelves.

In NetApp's solution documentation, a single AFF A220 supports up to 144 SSDs (960 GB, 3.8 TB or 7.6 TB), more than 1 PB of effective capacity, and NAS throughput of 6.2 GBps sequential read with 375K small random-read IOPS at 1 ms or less. Root-data partitioning lets both controllers of a two-node cluster use all drives in the aggregate.

Host ports follow the FAS2700 layout: UTA2 data ports (0c/0d, e0c/e0d) for FC or Ethernet, or Cat 6 on e0c to e0f for 10GBASE-T, with e0a and e0b for the cluster interconnect and SAS ports 0a and 0b for shelves such as the DS224C. Serviceable parts are the boot media, chassis, controller (with any caching module moved across), DIMMs, drives, NVMEM battery, power supplies and the real-time clock battery.

Lifecycle: NetApp documents in-chassis upgrades to the AFF A150 (ONTAP 9.10.1P15, 9.11.1P11, 9.12.1P5 and later) or to the ASA A150 when configured as an All SAN Array. For an AFF A20, the A220 chassis is first converted to a DS224C shelf with IOM12 modules. NetApp quotes the AFF A250 at 45% or more performance over this system.

Confirm the model in sysconfig -a before buying a controller.

More from this family: NetApp Storage System.