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NetApp FAS2050 - documentation kit

Mfg # DOC-2050-C CDW # 1298382 | UNSPSC 55101510

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This NetApp FAS2050 system provides a powerful range of technologies and features based on Data ONTAP to help increase storage utilization and the efficiency of your system and storage administrators.

This item was discontinued on October 06, 2022

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NetApp FAS2050 - documentation kit is rated 4.59 out of 5 by 70.
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Easy monitoring, very stable, and easily scalable What is most valuable? You can use different protocols at the same time. Monitoring is also very easy in NetApp FAS Series. There is a free tool for monitoring. What needs improvement? Its licensing cost can be improved. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is very stable. We have a lot of customers in Turkey, and we haven't got any major issues or complaints from our customers. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It is easily scalable. You can easily scale up and use old and new products together. NetApp products are very scalable. How are customer service and technical support? Their technical support is very good. They work very tightly with us. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is very easy. It can be set up in five to ten minutes. We have a lot of technical knowledge of this product. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? It is expensive. What other advice do I have? I would recommend this solution. I would rate NetApp FAS Series a ten out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? Private Cloud Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:partner
Date published: 2020-11-09T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Straightforward to set up and it scales well What is our primary use case? We are a solution provider and NetApp FAS is one of the infrastructure-related products that we implement for our clients. Our customers' use cases vary, where some of them use it as a backup target and others use it for the general workload. The primary use case is probably for general workload. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature is SnapMirror. What needs improvement? If our customer needs a high-performance storage solution then we don't recommend this product. Some of our customers complain about not liking the UI, whereas others say that they love it. Also, some say that the FAS is too slow and some say that it performs fine. It's all relative and depends on the customer as well as the use case. For how long have I used the solution? We have been working with the FAS series for about 10 years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The FAS series is very stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The product scales really well. How are customer service and technical support? The group that supports FAS supports all of the various NetApp products. I have found their support is responsive and thorough. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? I regularly work with solutions from NetApp, Dell, and HPE. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is straightforward. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price depends on the size and features. I've sold arrays for as little $20,000 USD and as high as $300,000 USD. It would be very difficult to give an average cost. In some cases, there are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. What other advice do I have? The suitability of this product depends on the use cases and the environment. For places where we sell it, it fits well. In places where it doesn't fit well, we would typically go with another solution like NetApp All-Flash storage, or something from another vendor. My advice for anybody who is implementing the NetApp FAS series is to make sure that it's the proper fit. Perform a detailed sizing analysis prior to making the purchase. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2020-07-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Easy to install and the backup features are powerful What is our primary use case? We used NetApp FAS for both block and file sharing but we have now switched to another product by HP. What is most valuable? The most important features are SnapVault, Snapshots, and SnapMirror. What needs improvement? Netapp closed their local offices in our country leading to no technical and sales support representation. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We've had issues with scalability because the product that we were using went end-of-life many years ago, and we were not able to expand because there were no spares available. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is straightforward and the deployment took just a few days. What about the implementation team? We had in-house experience for implementation and deployment. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Before choosing this product originally, we evaluated others and were ultimately impressed by the Snapshots, ShapVault, and SnapRestore features. These were what we really wanted, and at the time, we could not find another product that had similar capabilities. We had been using NetApp for quite some time, but the equipment was quite old and we wanted a new system. Between NetApp and HP, we chose HP because the NetApp support is not very good. They used to have partners in the country, but they have left. What other advice do I have? My advice for anyone who is considering NetApp FAS is that it is a good product and our only real complaint is the lack of technical support. If they live in a country where technical support is available then I recommend it. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2020-07-17T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Easy to manage with good data consolidation, visualization and snapshots What is our primary use case? We use the solution for data storage. We are customers of NetApp and I'm the assistant director of our company. What is most valuable? One of the valuable features of the solution is data consolidation and visualization - and snapshots of course. The solution is easy to manage. What needs improvement? We'd like to move to a solution that does more beyond just data, like starting to get more to servers and network specialization and data visualization and things like that. Server network and management specialization or consolidation. And also, trying to see a bit more single plane of glass in terms of managing, so that it gives you more insight in terms of what's happening. Ideally the solution should have one console, the ability to use a single plane of glass across the enterprise. Because we have one VRR, one size duplication so just to have one console where you can manage everything else in harmony would be a good additional feature. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using this solution for 15 years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? This is a stable solution. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is scalable at the data level because it uses aggregates so you can easily increase data. But of course it's dependent on your provision for growth reports. I don't know how many use the solution but our company has around 600-700 employees and we have two people dealing with maintenance on the product. It doesn't require more than that. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is very straightforward. If you're good, you can get it up and running within a week. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I think the pricing of this solution could be lower because really it's just storage consolidation these days. I think this technology has matured so much. It's time to make it slightly more competitive, it's on the high side for now. What other advice do I have? Obviously anyone looking at this solution must have primarily a data storage use case. If they have a strong case for data storage, it's a good solution. From there it's just a matter of managing work flows between SAN and NAS which requires planning. You can then manage your capacities very well if you know your data requirements. I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2020-09-09T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Resilient without disrupting the user experience and very stable What is our primary use case? We primarily use the solution for keeping our information reliable. In our case specifically, here at the operations location, we've got a MetroCluster for redundancy. What is most valuable? For us, the greatest aspect of the solution is the fact that it just runs. It is amazingly resilient. That's very important to us, because we are basically, with some exceptions, have a 24/7 operation. The newer features will be able to do things without interrupting the user experience, such as moving volumes on the fly, as well as adding and removing nodes to the clusters. That general set of features is pretty important to us. What needs improvement? The one aspect of the solution that's negative for us is also more unique to us due to the fact that we did a MetroCluster. The tiebreaker piece that does the monitoring of the two different locations, and determines if one is not talking to the network normally (or if it's truly down) is a little difficult. It feels like it was not designed from the beginning to fit well into the other pieces. It feels like it was thrown in at the last minute and it is not smooth. I've actually spoken to NetApp about that. I understand from a little bit of my research that they do have another product out. They've renamed it. I don't know how much they've changed it. I don't know if they have made that a better fitting piece or if it's just got a different name. I still have not moved to their most recent version. I believe they have incorporated several updates that I haven't had experience with yet. I'd hate to say, "Oh, we should put it that in there," and it's already there. For how long have I used the solution? We have different geographical locations. The different locations probably would have a different timeline in terms of when they started using the solution. The location I am sitting at is an operations-based charter for our location and we have had the FAS type filer for probably 12 years or so. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is very stable. It's quite reliable. We have it going 24/7. It doesn't crash or freeze. There aren't bugs or glitches, at least not that I have experienced. It's good. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Scalability is not something that I would have much experience in from this location. We're a smaller site with about 1500 users. It's not something that has to be extremely scalable at our location. From talking to my coworkers at the larger locations, I believe that NetApp has become more scalable than they have been in the past, so they're going the right direction. How are customer service and technical support? The solution's technical support is outstanding. We're more than satisfied with their level of service. How was the initial setup? In terms of the initial setup, the migration of the MetroCluster, in particular, is more complex. I handle the management and maintenance of the solution myself, unless I need the assistance of a consultant. What about the implementation team? We had a consultant come in and help us when we went from the non-clustered MetroCluster to the clustered MetroCluster for the different versions. That was a bit more than I wanted to tackle. I brought in the NetApp consultant to do that. I would say it was more complex than straightforward overall. The consultant even noted that when he was here that this is probably not something that, as a customer, he'd want to do on his own. The consultant was excellent. He laid out a very clear roadmap of what we were going to do and broke it into three parts so that we didn't have too much on our plates and we could make adjustments in between each part. In the end, it was pretty smooth. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? We haven't really done anything with the leasing options that they have recently come out with. We have instead outright purchased the equipment and all of the software that we use from them. It doesn't seem out of the normal range for other vendors. I don't really have a big pro or con stance on the pricing aspect of the solution. What other advice do I have? We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with NetApp. The FAS Series itself is not as complex as a MetroCluster configuration of the FAS. I would say if you're doing the MetroCluster configuration, it's worth it to get a consultant to assist. Almost every time that I have used a consultant, I have been very glad that I made the decision to hire them. I've done the incremental migrations on my own without difficulty, however, the big changes from platform to platform in particular, and from the non-clustered on tap software version to the clustered on tap software version are more difficult to perform. It's worthwhile to get consultants in those instances. The single FAS setup, I would say, the first time I did it, was probably the biggest learning curve. Regardless of the vendor, I would probably recommend having a consultant come in for the first time you're learning all the ins and outs of the solution. After that, the migration for the individual FAS and non MetroCluster FAS seems to be very manageable if you've got a certain level of experience. If storage is kind of an extra task for you versus your primary task, you're probably going to want to pull in a consultant regardless. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2020-07-27T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Reliable and easy to set up storage system; has good stability, scalability, and high availability What is our primary use case? My use case for the NetApp FAS Series is that it's a repository for the VM (virtual machine) and CIFS (common internet file system) share, or network share. How has it helped my organization? The NetApp FAS Series has helped simplify our infrastructure. There were times it also helped simplify our operations. What is most valuable? The NetApp FAS Series is useful, because it makes restoring a single file easy, but after that, nothing more. It's just a repository of the virtual machine, so I could use it or another solution, but it's reliable, e.g. it has two nodes with high availability, so this is the reason we choose to use this solution. This solution also accelerates virtualization, but not so much, because it's not an all-flash solution. The FAS2620 is a traditional solution with some cache, so it's not so fast, but it's enough for my company. AFF is all-flash, but this solution: FAS, is not all-flash, but people like it. What needs improvement? The NetApp FAS Series is not as high-performing for our business critical applications, because it's not an all-flash solution. It's also not as fast, so its speed needs improvement, but this could only be done if it's an all-flash solution. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using the NetApp FAS Series for eight years: four years for the first installation, then another four years for the second installation. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The NetApp FAS Series has good stability. I never had any issues with it, so I chose it for the second time. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? My impression on the scalability of the NetApp FAS Series is that it's good, but my usage is just below 50%, so scalability is not an issue for me. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? I've used a different NetApp solution, but I cannot remember the exact type of storage. The reasons I switched to the NetApp FAS Series is because I already knew the product. Another reason for choosing this solution is its reliability. I never had an issue with it in the eight years I've been using it. How was the initial setup? The initial setup for this solution was easy. Planning took one day and the setup took two hours. What other advice do I have? We don't use the cloud backup solution of the NetApp FAS Series. We just use it in a very basic way, and nothing more than a repository for the VM and CIFS. I do the tuning and the troubleshooting for this solution myself. I'm the only one managing it, e.g. the other members of the IT team are not involved in it, so it's hard to say if it does reduce IT support costs. We have not used the NetApp FAS Series in supporting data analytics, AI, machine learning, SAP, and Oracle workloads, nor did we use it to support any asynchronous replication for disaster recovery with MetroCluster. I never had an issue with this solution, so I never used their technical support. I'm rating the NetApp FAS Series a nine out of ten for availability and reliability. Disclaimer: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Date published: 2022-03-06T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Reduced the time to market for all of our products What is our primary use case? We are using the NetApp FAS3240 as an integrated solution with a FlexPod that is used to host virtual machines, databases, and applications. It's a large solution with resilience and good performance; to date, we haven't had any complaints about it. How has it helped my organization? We decided to use NetApp FAS because we needed to decrease the cost of running our infrastructure. When we moved to this solution, we concentrated all the resources on top of it so that if there's something we need, we can offer it up without spending much time or money on new resources. There is no more hassle, beyond attending to the demands of running the FAS. At the end of the day, we have reduced the time to market for all of our products, especially when we need to support our clients with new requirements. What is most valuable? The replication feature is noteworthy because it's faster than most and it uses little bandwidth. Then there's the friendly interface that the equipment offers. With this interface, it is very easy to manage. What needs improvement? I think this kind of infrastructure is mostly obsolete. To keep up with developments in this space, you need to move all these features to an All-Flash solution. Nowadays, we are working with a massive database involving big data and lots of information (even intelligence), and for these environments, it's not appropriate to run this kind of business. We feel that we need to move to an All-Flash environment in order to offer better performance for the client. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using NetApp FAS since 2010. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability is fine. There have been no problems to date. Since 2010 until today, we have replaced no more than seven disks, but it all depends on the facilities that you are using. I can say that based on this factor, it has been very affordable to use this solution. In general, it's a resilient solution with good performance. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We started with two instances, and now we are running four. It was very easy to scale them. We assembled them, connected them, and the business has been running very well. On the second upgrade that we did, it was quite different because they started licensing based on the capacity of the disks. I thought this was strange, but technically speaking, it was very easy to upgrade the environment with minimal knowledge needed. How are customer service and support? NetApp has very good support. I have no complaints about them. When you go to Active IQ, you have all the features you need. You can replace any spare within 24 hours, which is good for business. How was the initial setup? It was straightforward and took only five working days to deploy. I remember that in the beginning it took quite some time to replicate one side to another because the communication between the sides was not good enough, but once we upgraded the communication, it started running smoothly. What about the implementation team? We do the maintenance for the implementation ourselves. We have an agreement with the facilities that we have with NetApp, such that it's not tied to the supplier and we can maintain it by ourselves. We have a team which is prepared for this scenario as the first line of maintenance, and if we need more than what we can afford, we open a call and it's very straightforward to solve the problem from there. What was our ROI? As I have mentioned, we have been using NetApp FAS since 2010 and lately some infrastructure is becoming obsolete. However, after only three years of running it, we have had good results in terms of return on investment. We plan on switching out some of the end-of-life solutions with the rest of the amount invested. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? We have considered upgrading to an All-Flash solution but when we evaluated the cost-benefit we discovered that we don't have enough money to invest in it. To maintain the same technology with All-Flash would be too expensive for us. What other advice do I have? NetApp FAS is a fine product. I would rate it a nine out of ten. Disclaimer: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Date published: 2022-03-07T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Overall useful features, highly stable for production, and effective high-density volume services What is our primary use case? I use NetApp FAS Series for servers. I have a lot of virtual servers connected through it using a Brocade switch. What is most valuable? I have found all the features useful in NetApp FAS Series. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using NetApp FAS Series for approximately eight years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is highly stable. NetApp FAS Series is stable in production storage and for the high-density volume services. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? NetApp FAS Series is scalable. We have approximately 500 users that use this solution in my organization. We use NetApp FAS Series extensively in our organization and plan to upgrade it for SSD to be faster. We are running our production server on this storage and we use it every second of the day. How are customer service and support? We are not able to connect to the support of NetApp from Sudan. We have to go through many agents for support, which makes it difficult. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We previously used NAS storage and it was not stable. How was the initial setup? NetApp FAS Series is very expensive for us here in Sudan because we cannot purchase it from the vendor directly. What about the implementation team? We have three or four people that do maintenance and support of NetApp FAS Series. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? It is a one-time license charge for NetApp FAS Series to run and we pay annually for upgrades and support. What other advice do I have? I rate NetApp FAS Series a ten out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Does the job and is stable What is most valuable? I like it. When it is up and running, it does the job. What needs improvement? You always need a huge amount of hardware to fulfill a given setup. Its deployment can be complex, especially if you go MetroCluster. For how long have I used the solution? I started working with them about 20 or 21 years ago. So, it has been quite some time. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is stable. How was the initial setup? It is a bit complex, but it also depends on the setup. If you have got clustered systems of a multisite, it becomes complicated. It also depends on how familiar you are with the system. The better you know a system, the easier it is to deal with it. So, if you are already familiar with these kinds of systems, it is easy to deal with it. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? It definitely depends on the contract. It depends on where you buy it from, which features are you going to use, and what is your personal benefit of the features that you plan to use for the system. What other advice do I have? I would advise others to make use of most of the features that the system is going to provide because then the price is definitely reasonable. If you're just looking for mass storage without any of the features that are possible with the system, then it is too expensive. I would give it an eight out of 10. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2021-12-03T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Scalable, high performance, but more replication features needed What is most valuable? The input and output per second performance are satisfactory. What needs improvement? The solution can improve on the replication features. For how long have I used the solution? I have used NetApp FAS Series within the past 12 months. How are customer service and support? The technical support is satisfactory. They need to invest more into the service. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We work with Dell EMC and Huawei. I recommend NetApp on top of the Dell EMC since it's less complex. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is not that complex compared to the other vendor. It's in the same level of complexity. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? When we need to implement a less expensive solution we use Huawei. NetApp FAS Series is a little bit expensive compared to the average of the market. What other advice do I have? I rate NetApp FAS Series a seven out of ten. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2021-12-09T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Reliable, scalable, and stable storage solution which offers multiple features What is our primary use case? Most of my customers utilize this solution in the banking sector. They use it for their banking applications. They use it as their main storage. What is most valuable? One of the features that are so nice and which the bank loves so much about the NetApp FAS Series is its cloning feature. You can clone a database of any size, and when you clone it, the clone itself at the time it is created only occupies a very, very small footprint on the storage. It is when you sever the clone from the main database that you'll have a larger footprint. For example: You have a database of one terabyte, then you clone that, and it will occupy just a few gigabytes. This means you now have a clone which you can use for a number of things: reporting, backup, or anything you like. You can even use it to test a new product you are trying to bring into the market. However, the moment you sever the clone from the main database, then it becomes WORM-free terabytes on its own, so that's one advantage. The other advantage is that when you want to do a backup no matter the size of the database, you can do a snapshot. The snapshot takes up a very tiny space on the disc. From that snapshot, you can then take your data and migrate it to a backup storage. The backup storage could be via disc storage. It could be cheap and you can migrate it without any performance implications on the production systems, and that's very, very good. You can also do replication. You can do one-to-one replication when you have a multi storage and replicate it to under storage, which is located long distance from where you are running your production system. You can do one too many replications and that is okay. You can replicate the data, not just to another data storage, but to multiple data storages, so there's flexibility. This solution also has deduplication capabilities, so you can compress the data and deduplicate it so that the space to occupy, or the footprint becomes smaller. There is a lot of data management tools today, and in the past you have to buy your data management tools separately. At present, when you buy NetApp storage, all the software tools are made available to you as a bundle, so that's another thing I like about the NetApp FAS Series. What needs improvement? The only improvement to this solution that I can propose is for NetApp to make the price more attractive. If the price is more attractive, then it will have a bigger market share. I can't think of any other area for improvement because the price is the only one that really comes to mind. For how long have I used the solution? I've been dealing with the NetApp FAS Series since 2003. What do I think about the stability of the solution? This solution is very, very, very, very stable. Notice how I mentioned "very" a few times. You can rely on this solution because of its stability. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The NetApp FAS Series is scalable. How are customer service and support? Technical support from NetApp is excellent. How was the initial setup? In general, the setup for this solution is straightforward. If the customer is migrating from a non NetApp storage to a NetApp storage, what we have to do is to map all the data from the non NetApp storage to the NetApp storage, after we have done the initial setup and configuration. Once we've completed that, from there, the customer can use the NetApp FAS Series straight away. We've done quite a lot of that. An example is the case of Novacom: a telecommunications company. They were using EMC at that time, so we migrated that data from EMC to another platform, and it went very well. Now, if you're migrating from a NetApp storage to another NetApp storage, e.g. your current NetApp solution is already obsolete, then you want to do a technical refresh and you bought the latest version of the solution, so migration from NetApp to NetApp is the easiest. It will be the easiest data migration because all the tools are there. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Pricing for this solution is not very high, but could still be improved and made more attractive. What other advice do I have? I've been a NetApp reseller for more than 10 years. I've supplied NetApp storage solutions to quite a number of customers in Nigeria, particularly in Lagos, so I have familiarity with the NetApp products, but that doesn't mean that I've sold all the various types. I've not sold all the various types, but I've sold quite a lot of backup storages, even when they were still producing virtual tape libraries. My customers have been using NetApp for more than 10 years. In Nigeria, the most popular NetApp product is the FAS series. My customers always start with FAS. I've just placed an order for a NetApp Storage Acceleration Appliance (SA300) for Unity Bank of Nigeria. The NetApp FAS products: these ones are the most popular products in Nigeria, but there also other variants here. Scalability and reliability are what my customers like about the NetApp FAS Series. How long the full deployment for this solution takes depends on the complexity of the environment. It also depends on data volume. In some cases, you can get it done within two days, and in some cases you can get it done within one week to two weeks maximum. It could take up to two weeks when migrating from a non NetApp storage to NetApp storage. Otherwise, deployment can go very, very fast. My customers love NetApp a lot. The number of users of this solution, particularly those in the commercial banks, depends on the size of the customer base of those banks. The customers of the commercial banks are the ones interfacing with the commercial banking application, and there are usually millions of customers, but all of them cannot be on the application at the same time. There are also internal users of NetApp within the bank itself: the bank staff who are making use of it for their normal day to day work, e.g. when closing at the end of the day, at the end of the month, or at the end of the year, etc. When you take into consideration the customers of the banks, the number of users of this solution would be millions. I'm giving the NetApp FAS Series a rating of nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-01-23T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It's highly reliable, even under a heavy load, and it's easy to manage What is our primary use case? We are using NetApp FAS for some encrypted projects and to provide home direction for our users. What is most valuable? NetApp FAS is highly stable and reliable, especially under a heavy load. That is what I like most about the NetApp. What needs improvement? I would like to see NetApp add incident support. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using NetApp SAS for three or four years. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? If we needed to scale beyond what we have now, we could do it. I would say NetApp's scalability is sufficient for our needs. We have hundreds of users accessing the file system on a daily basis. How are customer service and support? NetApp support is helpful, and their technicians are knowledgeable. They usually respond fast. I would rate NetApp support eight out of 10. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We previously used a Dell product. I think the two solutions are very similar. I also worked with Visionet, but that is apples and oranges. I wouldn't compare NetApp FAS with Visionet because these are very different site systems—parallel site systems. What other advice do I have? I rate NetApp FAS Series eight out of 10. I recommend NetApp FAS because it's reliable and easy to manage. NetApp support is helpful. I encourage anyone to choose NetApp. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-01-18T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Helpful technical support, priced well, and high performance What is our primary use case? The NetApp FAS series is unified storage and can be used for the NAS or SAN environments. We had a customer that needed multiple protocols. How has it helped my organization? The solution has allowed the consolidation of multiple storage boxes inside the organization. This has reduced the footprint on the data center. From a management point of view, the organizations do not need to manage multiple boxes, they only need to manage one. What is most valuable? The solution has tiers inside which means we do not only need to use SSDs. What needs improvement? The user interface could be improved. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using the NetApp FAS series for approximately one year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is stable and has good performance. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is scalable and can be added on to easily if needed. How are customer service and technical support? The technical support is very good and supportive. Their technical support is very helpful and they are engaged from the beginning with the customer and until the project is finished. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? I have used other solutions in the past. How was the initial setup? The implementation of the solution was not that difficult. What about the implementation team? We used our internal team with the help of the NetApp professional service team to complete the implementation. What was our ROI? By using the NetApp FAS series solution organizations are able to reduce the power, cooling, and space required which reduces the overall cost of operations. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The NetApp FAS series price is very competitive compared to other solutions on the market it is a good choice. Which other solutions did I evaluate? NetApp FAS series solutions have advantages over their competitors because they support multi-protocol, all the levels of the software, such as duplication, compression, and replication. It is an all-in-one solution, the customer does not require to have multiple solutions to get SAN and NAS environments. What other advice do I have? I rate the NetApp FAS series an eight out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-09-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Helps to store files and for VSI and VDI What is our primary use case? I use NetApp FAS Series to store files and for VSI and VDI. What is most valuable? The solution is easy to use. What needs improvement? NetApp FAS Series could improve by being more secure. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using NetApp FAS Series for many years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I have found NetApp FAS Series to be stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is scalable. We have approximately 30 people in my organization using this solution. How are customer service and support? The technical support was satisfactory. How was the initial setup? The installation can be difficult but it depends on who is installing it. What about the implementation team? We use a technical team to do the implementation. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? NetApp FAS Series could be less expensive. What other advice do I have? I would recommend this solution to others. I rate NetApp FAS Series a nine out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from We were able to restore a lot of data in about an hour, although NetApp OnCommand, which has been a lot better recently, could still be made faster. Valuable Features The integration with VMware is the most valuable feature for us because we run a lot of VMs and the backup is very good when you run your VM in NFS. Improvements to My Organization We had a case when they had to restore a lot of data. We went back one hour and got back everything. The restore itself only took about an hour. Room for Improvement Some of the tools could be improved like NetApp OnCommand. This has been a lot better recently, but they could make it faster. Use of Solution We've been using it since 2005. Stability Issues It's very stable and I’ve never experienced any problems in 10 years. Scalability Issues It scales to our needs. Customer Service and Technical Support Customer Service: 8/10 - only because it is impossible to have a 10, as there is no one that good. We’ve had a good experience with their customer service. Technical Support: The solutions that are present on NetApp’s website are enough usually, but when it is tough for me to resolve it on my own I go to our consultant. Previous Solutions We did a long time ago. Initial Setup Initial setup was pretty straightforward. We started on a small scale and built it up. Implementation Team We implemented it in-house, but we use a consulting company to help. Now, we run it on our own. ROI It fulfills the needs we have for storing data well. We had a lot of storage spread out over many devices from many vendors and now everything is consolidated. It saves a lot of time. Other Advice Ask other people who use it as references are really valuable. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-12-10T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Saves space with deduplication What is our primary use case? Creating a DR site using SnapMirror technology from NetApp. How has it helped my organization? * NetApp improved our organization because their features are more friendly and create environment to tests, like dev. The FlexClone technology is easy to use. * The flexibility to create scheduling backups on the VMware platform is very useful when you need it. We can save space using VSC. * The migration of the volume on the cluster is very useful and easy to use. * It is very useful to verify performance problems on the any environment and move volumes to another aggregate without downtime to the application. * Compression of the backup Oracle by RMAN on NFS saves space 5:1, for example. What is most valuable? * Flexibility. * Saves space with deduplication. * All protocols on the same box. This means that you don't need to have a appliance to export. For example, an NFS volume on CIFs volume. * Easy integration to some cloud environments, like Amazon AWS. * Deduplication, now on cluster mode, runs on aggregate and no more on volume only. This means that you must put all their VMware environments on the same aggregate. If you have volume from prod, dev, and homolog that shares the same virtual machine, you will have a big gain on space saving. What needs improvement? NetApp for all these years has been improving their storage. The only area that could be improved is to lower prices for their All Flash FAS. For how long have I used the solution? More than five years. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? You must have "flash cash" if you used the box to Oracle, any database environment, or any application that requires a lot of reads all time. Which solutions did we use previously? We have used some solutions like Hitachi, Dell, and EMC, but NetApp has more flexibility and we decided to stay with NetApp. * My first case was migrate all solutions from Hitachi Storage to NetApp ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/netapp-all-flash-fas ) FAS on SAN with brocade. * Migrated all VMware environment to NetApp storage. * Migrated all backup solutions that were running on Veritas Backup to VSC on NetApp. * Migrated our whole Oracle database running on HDS storage to NetApp storage. How was the initial setup? Setup is very easy, but you need a partner to execute your first configuration, after that the administration is easy. What about the implementation team? The first setup must be done by any partner or a NetApp field engineer. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price it not low, but comparing features to other vendors, the price can be balanced. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-02-28T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It provides us with a single unified-type architecture for block-and-file-type data storage. But, if I'm running dedupe, fiber channel, and other protocols on the same CPU core, I can’t load-balance. Valuable Features * Dedupe * Also, our customers look for fast connectivity and cost efficiency. * It's TCP/IP vs. fiber channel, which tends to be more costly. Improvements to My Organization * Single unified-type architecture for block-and-file-type data storage * Ease of use * Being able to hand off things like snap shots directly to customers Room for Improvement They need to improve the go-to-market for all-flash and converged infrastructure. What is your goal-to-market vision, and when to get there? They’re too slow compared to others and what they’ve done in the past. They were the leader in dedupe, but now, it’s not such an innovative edge. It lacks flexibility in failover and failback, so we cannot granularly failover pieces. It's not easy to move one piece over to the other side. Also, from the overall workload standpoint, all protocols are handled in just one physical architecture. So if I'm running dedupe, fiber channel, and other protocols on the same CPU core, I can’t load-balance. I’ve seen issues specifically with EMP, one core is maxed out, and I can’t use the other cores to handle it. Stability Issues Fairly solid 5-9 array. FAS is a solid architecture in 90% of the environments. Scalability Issues Scalability especially in SMB range has been well-received. So long as the environment is sized correctly, it’s been good. Customer Service and Technical Support I have had both good and bad experiences, depending on what tier I get to initially. Now it’s tiered, whereas it used to be one senior guy. Other Advice If historically you’re a NetApp customer, it’s not as complex as cluster mode. It requires a lot more complexity – command line is not so friendly for storage admins. I’d recommend also sticking with what you know. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from We are able to increase performance by adding more heads to a cluster, but the free performance monitor doesn’t provide enough information. Valuable Features Management, for a person who’s not a storage administrator In a couple of weeks, you can get the basics of createing virtual storage, and carving out chairs and LUNS. Improvements to My Organization Doing more with less. I can do multiple protocols, storage efficiency, data protection tool, everything is in one solution/ecosystems. There aren't many vendors who can provide that without adding third party software and apps. Room for Improvement Our major issue with FAS was not having one pane of glass with all products attached to it. Other major issue is the free performance monitor doesn’t provide enough information. They want you to buy Insight, which is very expensive. Stability Issues It's rock solid. Scalability Issues I love cluster ONTAP. Being able to scale out and being able to increase performance by adding more heads to a cluster and being able to do hybrid with regular storage on same platform is huge. You can move out easily too, they provide you the tools to do that, adding a lot of value. Customer Service and Technical Support Great, I cannot complain. They’re there with you until problem resolved. Initial Setup It's straightforward setup. Depending on how you deploy, full SAN is complex, with NAS not so complex. You have to follow best practices when building out infrastructure. So, it’s not so different than deploying it with other vendors. Other Advice With storage, what works for me won’t necessarily work for you. Call your NetApp rep and tell him you want to test the solution. Get it on the floor and beat the hell out of it. Do a very thorough Proof of Concept. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Very easy to expand disks and manage CIFS What is our primary use case? Enterprise Storage for: * Block and file * SQL Server LUNs * Exchange LUNs * VM Storage. Backup of above via Snap products. How has it helped my organization? * Rock solid reliability * Easy to use * Very easy to expand disks and manage CIFS. * It has been over seven years with no outages. What is most valuable? * SnapManagers for SQL * Exchange and Oracle * SnapMirror for DR * CIFS management for shares/permissions What needs improvement? * Add wizards for newer, inexperienced users. * More modern GUI, not that it's bad. * ONTAP upgrades need to be much easier. For how long have I used the solution? More than five years. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-03-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It is stable and integrates well with other components What is our primary use case? We use NetApp as our primary storage. Because we are a system integrator, we managed more than 100 data petabytes of data of our customers. How has it helped my organization? It is very flexible. It integrates well with the public cloud and other components, so everything can be API driven. Therefore, it is very easy to automate it. What is most valuable? It is very stable and integrates very well with other components. What needs improvement? We would like to have further integration with some backup products. They have some of them already, but there could be more. We have already seen the new roadmap and a lot of our requested features are already on it. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is very stable. We use it for more than 100 petabytes. We do not have any issues. We have never lost data. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It acts as it was documented. How is customer service and technical support? I do not speak with the NetApp support. Which solutions did we use previously? We have always used NetApp, so we did not switch from another vendor. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was so straightforward. It was well-documented. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We have almost all vendors in our portfolio: EMC, Pure Storage, etc. As our stand up, we use NetApp because we are pleased with it. Other vendors have good ideas, but they are not yet implemented in NetApp, hopefully that will come one day. What other advice do I have? Use NetApp, it is good. There are more specialized products in the market, but NetApp is a very good general fit. We have a lot of product knowledge, and it is not 100 percentage perfect. However, we know where it behaves well, and where does not. Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We always check the vendor to make sure our clients are receiving the most value for their money. We want the best solution for customers based on their budgets, because it is stupid to offer a product if it if does not work within the customer's budget. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:System integrator.
Date published: 2018-07-24T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Double-parity RAID guarantees that our data stays intact What is our primary use case? The primary use case is for regular databases and file systems. So far it has been good. The performance is solid, it's robust, availability is solid. How has it helped my organization? We're able to keep data for a longer time because we are able to manage it well using the features that NetApp provides. It has also helped us to quickly deploy our test environment and finish all of our testing before we deploy on the customer side or the customer systems. It has really helped in our operations and our productivity. What is most valuable? One of the most valuable features offered is double-parity RAID, which guarantees that your data will stay intact. You can experience two disk failures and still be up. Another feature is the deduplication. It saves a lot of space. We're also able to provision storage and monitor which ones are really consuming storage. What needs improvement? I want to see the system automatically tier; we call it auto-tiering. When you use data, some of it goes cold. It is not hot data, so the system should automatically move that data to the SATA, while the hot data is kept on tier-one, the SaaS or SSD drives. For how long have I used the solution? More than five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability is solid. You can go over 3,000 days without a reboot or any downtime. It's so stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability is also good. You can scale on the fly, just connect the cables. If you're adding a controller or you're adding big shelves, it's easy to move. It's excellent. How is customer service and technical support? I'll give technical support a "good" rating because sometimes it's slow in getting people to respond, other times it's okay. Which solutions did we use previously? When I arrived at the company they were using NetApp, and we are still using NetApp. When selecting a vendor, I first look at how robust the solution is that they're proposing, and how available they are to answer calls if there are any issues. This is very critical. The robustness of the solution and the availability of the vendor to attend to queries are important components of my selection criteria. After-sales support is also very key. How was the initial setup? The initial configuration is very straightforward. You just cable up your system, power up, connect your power cables, connect to the console, boot up the system, do your system configuration, IP configuration, and all the other configurations, and the system is up and good to run. What other advice do I have? If I were to advise someone researching NetApp FAS Storage or a similar solution, I would want to understand what they really want. I would advise them to go with NetApp because it's unified storage. It supports both NAS and SAN environments, so whether you're doing block storage or you're doing file storage, it is a good solution. Also, the operating system that it runs is called Data ONTAP, and is cloud-ready, so in the future the file storage that you have can be deployed to the cloud. I rate this solution a 9.9 out of 10 because it's never failed me so I'm very comfortable with it. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-07-31T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The snap products allow the end-user to make restorations and perform offsite replications. Valuable Features * Redundancy * Snap technologies (snap mirror, snap shots) Improvements to My Organization The snap products allow the end-user to make restorations and perform offsite replications. Also, it gives us secure multi-tenancy. Room for Improvement Nothing that I can think of right now. Use of Solution We've used it for seven in years. Stability Issues It's pretty stable. We've only needed NetApp engineers to help with an issue once since we started using it. Scalability Issues Very scalable, haven’t reached its limits. Customer Service and Technical Support Generally goes well. Initial Setup Very straightforward from rack stack to configuration. Other Advice With FAS and other NetApp tools, they make for a very intuitive solution. It's simple to manage, very scalable, one-stop shop and many native things that make it very powerful. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It gives us continuous uptime and we can failover when needed, although sometimes there are bugs with firmware upgrades. Valuable Features * Uptime * Performance * High Availability * Disaster Recovery * NetApp as a company is doing well Improvements to My Organization * We can failover when needed. * In my organization, a law firm, brand recognition is important, and NetApp provides that. * It gives us continuous uptime. Room for Improvement Sometimes there are bugs with firmware upgrades. Deployment Issues Not with deployment, but, again, there are sometimes bugs when we perform upgrades. Stability Issues It just works, and when some drives go into failure status, it’s just a prediction of drive failure, letting us know when to get the drives replaced. Scalability Issues It scales pretty well, and the limit is how much you want to spend on blades, shelves, controllers, etc. Customer Service and Technical Support It's pretty good, they're very knowledgable. With other vendors who outsource support, there's difficulty getting knowledgable first-tier support, but with NetApp, that’s different. Initial Setup We had help in the installation, which made it straightforward. It was also complex because lots of planning was involved. Other Advice It loses points in upgrades from one version to another is not as smooth as it should be. Also, understand your requirements and see how it fits in. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Exceeded clients needs Valuable Features SyncMirror (for legacy to new platform migration, prior to CDOT availability), SnapManager Suite (for application aware data protection features, namely Oracle and Microsoft), FlashCache & FlashPools (for accelerating workloads, volumes and/or entire aggregates). Improvements to My Organization A customer was running legacy FAS3140's, 5+ years old, and began deploying VDI clients on their 10GbE network. Their storage became a bottleneck and seamlessly migrated to FAS8020's w/ FlashCache and all performance concerns have been removed, and users have complimented the performance improvement of their desktops! Use of Solution I'm a VAR and have been recommending FAS for 4+ years Deployment Issues None Stability Issues None Scalability Issues None Customer Service and Technical Support Customer Service: Very high. Local field support came onsite to the customer not to sell anything, but to introduce the support system at NetApp, and how everything works under the covers. Technical Support: Not much was needed for this particular client; however, tech support when needed has been very responsive and knowledgeable. Previous Solutions No Initial Setup Client handled, but very straightforward. Other Solutions Considered Long time NetApp customer, very happy with the solution. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:I am a consultant and reseller who works very closely with this client.
Date published: 2015-01-06T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from We're able to scale out with cDOT, although, depending on the use case, it needs a service catalogue you can walk through without having to use SE. Valuable Features * High Availability * Reliability Improvements to My Organization * Reliability * Performance level * Great history with it, and over the last two and a half years, it's been etter than others Room for Improvement Depending on the use case, it needs a service catalogue you can walk through without having to use SE. Stability Issues It's been great, and there's been no issues. Scalability Issues With cDOT, it's very easy to scale out, and that's the reason we went with it in the first place. Customer Service and Technical Support It's been great, and any issues have been taken care of right away. Initial Setup It was very straightforward and easy. Other Advice Pick your partner wisely, as they have a lot in your success. Go with someone with a history in FAS. Also, go with vendor that buys reference architecture and follows the methodology. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Since updating to Dynamix AX 2012, not a week has gone by that we haven’t fired up a clone to test a user, code, etc. Valuable Features * Clone – we updated to Dynamix AX 2012, and not a week has gone by that we haven’t fired up a clone to test a user, code, etc. * Disaster Recovery suite of functions * Quick backups that don’t impact system * Refreshes test environments quickly Improvements to My Organization * Reliability – hardware performs well, we’ve never had problems * Great support from Sirius * We’re able to recover a file if we need to Room for Improvement We use mirroring a lot, and if it had snap manager for SQL included, we could do that from one location. Stability Issues Rock solid. I’ve been at Wilson for three years and have also used it before at another company. We have a disk go out every once in a while, but no issue with FAS. Scalability Issues In the last growth, we went from a 3250 to an 8020. We’ve set it up to grow out easily by just adding trays. Customer Service and Technical Support Lately, a little slow to respond, but once you get someone, they’re very knowledgeable, although I haven’t had to use it a lot. Initial Setup I was familiar with 3250’s from another company, so I knew how to use the software, but Sirius helped us. So in that regard, it was straightforward. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Lesser resources needed for snapshot and recovery What is our primary use case? Used SnapMirror for replication and DR. It's a good case for a storage-based DR. Good results on RPO and RTO. How has it helped my organization? * Efficient usage * Good pricing * Good solution architects and deployment guys are available * Licensing is easy. What is most valuable? * Lesser resources needed for snapshot and recovery * Easy to manage * Recovery process is easy * Integration with other tools is available. What needs improvement? * Integration with most of the third-party BR tools * A clear roadmap for next releases should be available. For how long have I used the solution? Three to five years. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Business Partner
Date published: 2018-12-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Resilient storage but latency and IOPS could be better What is our primary use case? We use it for storage and it has performed fine, but now we need to upgrade. What is most valuable? We like its resilience. It's reliable storage. What needs improvement? I would like to see less latency and higher IOPS. For how long have I used the solution? More than five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Stability is very good. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I'm satisfied with the scalability. Which solutions did we use previously? We did our research and, at the time, NetApp was what we chose. Our most important criterion when selecting a vendor is reliability. The price is, obviously, always an issue but reliability and the quality of the product are most important. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was very, very straightforward. What other advice do I have? If you need reliability, definitely go for NetApp. I rate it at seven out of 10 because it has been very reliable but not very good when it comes to IOPS and latency. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-08-06T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from You can run a smaller aggregate with SSDs in the flash pool. What is most valuable? It takes your standard IOPS in your drives and it gives you much greater performance out of that aggregate. You can run a smaller aggregate with SSD ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/ssd )s in the flash pool, and it'll give you the IOPS of many more spindles. What it does is it brings your SATA disks aggregate up to the SAS speed, depending upon how many spindles you're running, and your SAS aggregates perform much better. How has it helped my organization? We had an IOPS problem earlier. We were running Citrix ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/citrix ) and we were having boot storms. Part of the problem was the aggregates that we had were too small. The boot storm would basically fill up the NVRAM. It was unable to write to disk because the disks were running full. The problem was solved by going to flash pools. It was great. What needs improvement? I have not given the FAS ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/netapp-all-flash-fas ) a perfect rating because the All Flash Array is probably going to beat it down, in terms of performance. I would give it a perfect rating if there wasn’t any ceiling. When you have some systems and you increase your disk IOPS by adding either All Flash Array or you add a flash pool, sometimes you move the bottleneck; you move the bottleneck up to the CPU. We did have that problem briefly. That was solved by basically moving some of the workload. That happened one time and we fixed it. By moving to cluster mode, it's going to be a lot easier to move the workload. We are moving in that direction. We're doing the first assessment and planning right now. What do I think about the stability of the solution? We do not have any stability problems, whatsoever. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? NetApp aggregates are scalable ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/netapp-all-flash-fas/by_topic/scalability_issues ). You can keep adding shelves. How is customer service and technical support? Technical support ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/netapp-all-flash-fas/by_topic/technical_support ) is very good. I've never had a problem. Usually the problem is being able to hear them in our data center. :) Which solutions did we use previously? I did not previously use a different solution. When I started working with the county, they already had the NetApp FAS. What other advice do I have? Go with NetApp; I haven't had a problem with it. The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are reliability and, for technical support, being there. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-11-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It helps centralize and simplify all connections into one box. What is most valuable? It gives us the flexibility to work with all protocols on the same Storage Box. The WAFL (Write Anywhere File Layout) is the best feature implemented on this storage solution. Also, the DataONTAP is very reliable and stable, and I haven't had any problems yet. If you configure NetApp using the best practices, you should not have any issues with the performance. Lastly, the de-duplication works very well with all applications in a VMware environment, and you will save a lot of space. In my experience we save more than 80% of the space using deduplication on the volume, and if you have allflash fas you will have gain of the 3:1 and 4:1 on the your storage on the all environment without lost performance. How has it helped my organization? All the protocols on the same box can solve all the configurations problems. They also help centralize and simplify all connections into one box. The feature snapmirror is too simple to configure and it is the best way to configure one storage environment with High Availability site to site. What needs improvement? Unify all backup software on the single tool to simplify the administration. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using NetApp products for Ten years, and currently i am working with models FAS6220, FAS8020 using all softwares available... What was my experience with deployment of the solution? I don´t find issues yet What do I think about the stability of the solution? No issues encountered. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No issues encountered. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: 10/10. Technical Support: 10/10. Which solutions did we use previously? In the past, I used, and still work with, solutions like Fujitsu and Hitachi, but when I have an opportunity to work with a NetApp solution, I don't want to go back. That's because the NetApp solutions give me more flexibility to work. How was the initial setup? I think it is easy, because I have implemented NetApp in the past. I don't know if someone without work experience would be able to execute the initial setup. However, if you apply best practices, you should not have an issue. What about the implementation team? I have experienced both in-house and vendor team implementations. Whenever it is done by the vendor, they are 10/10. What was our ROI? The ROI for NetApp is good, and if you use it on a VMware environment, the ROI will be even greater, and if you get the new solution Allflash FAS you will have a big gain of the storage like 3:1, 4:1 and many more dependending on the your application. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price, sometimes, is very high, but the ROI is guaranteed. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Ye I did, but I didn't find another solution that could centralize all the protocols into one box without an appliance. What other advice do I have? Study the NetApp solutions, and before you implement be sure to do PoCs. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-08-05T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from We are an online hotel reservations company, so if our website goes down we lose money at a very high rate per minute. It has been many years since we have had an outage due to storage because of FAS. Valuable Features * Reliability * Snapshots * Ease of tooling * Integration with our systems * It's multiprotocol Improvements to My Organization We are an online hotel reservations company, so if our website goes down we lose money at a very high rate per minute. It has been many years since we have had an outage due to storage because of FAS. Room for Improvement The performance needs to be improved. Due to the performance issues, we're moving to NetApp Flash FAS as it provides almost infinite performance. Use of Solution We've used it for nine years. Deployment Issues We've had no issues with deployment. Stability Issues The stability is excellent. Scalability Issues It's scaled well for us. Customer Service and Technical Support It takes a long time to resolve most cases. It requires an extensive amount of troubleshooting and tends to be very time consuming on our end in terms of collecting data for the engineers to work on. Initial Setup It's straightforward. I'd say, though, that it's medium complexity because it is not done in one day. Implementation Team We used a mixed team of in-house and vendor personnel. ROI I wouldn't know how to begin to calculate it. Other Solutions Considered That was a long time before I joined the company. Other Advice Do your research on clustered Data ONTAP as it is a very complicated product, much more complicated than the previous version. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:I used to work for NetApp as a consultant.
Date published: 2015-12-11T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from We now have the capability of both SIFS and NFS, and we don't need to have separate OS boxes. What is most valuable? All SIFS and NFS are valuable. It allows our Windows and Unix teams to have a centralized point to share data between the two. When a potential army recruit provides info at various locations, FAS gives us a drop point where the system can pull info from various locations. How has it helped my organization? NetApp allows us to take arrays and pass through. NetApp now has the capability of both SIFS and NFS that we didn’t have before. We don’t need to have separate OS boxes. And we don’t have duplicate data. What needs improvement? I’ve found that I use command line more often than I thought needed. Some things should be done in the GUI, and command-line switches can be overwhelming and take up a lot of time. In a GUI, I can just hit options or boxes. However, cluster mode will address a lot of that, but 7-mode definitely doesn’t. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Some issues where some of my stuff is not failing over. I’m the eighth person handling the system, and my impression is that it wasn’t configured correctly. However, I very rarely have a problem. It’s been stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I haven’t had to scale in my department, but I foresee change in the near future because we’ll be taking on other portions of the government (medical, for example). Other portions will be somewhat isolated, but there is overlap. How is customer service and technical support? I’m part of a five-person team with in-house support. If that doesn’t work, then I go to NetApp support. We work with specific people within NetApp. I like that tech supports sticks to it until the issue is solved and that they follow up. Any delays are on our end because we move slowly. Which solutions did we use previously? Five or six years ago, we used a Hitachi solution with fiber channel. How was the initial setup? I wasn’t there, but I will be involved in the 8080 installation in 2 weeks. NetApp will come in and do it for us. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? It’s difficult for us to get money, so make sure you get everything in order, because there’s no going back and saying “oh, I missed this or that”, so make sure you plan well and well in advance. What other advice do I have? It does a good job at what it’s designed to do. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-14T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Snapshots lets us revert accidental deletes quickly and easily, and although we had an outage when batteries were bad, it was a known defect and our fault for knowing this was an issue. Valuable Features Snapshot, because so much of it is on our end-user storage, our users often delete things they’re not supposed to. Having snapshots to revert these deletes quickly and easily is very valuable. Improvements to My Organization Our greatest advantage with it is ease of use, flexibility, and reliability. Room for Improvement Knowing what’s coming down the pipe, NetApp is headed in the right direction. In their five year roadmap, it provides what I need it to do. Stability Issues It's extraordinarily stable. We had one outage one-and-a-half years ago when batteries were bad, but that was a known defect on that particular model. However, that was our fault for knowing this was an issue. We've had two outages in 10 years due to something other than operator’s error. Scalability Issues Incredibly scalable. Not even touching what it could do. Between scale up and scale out, we’re not even close to reaching its highest potential. We have a four node NAS with the potential for 24 nodes. Customer Service and Technical Support It's fantastic. Initial Setup Once you’ve done one, it seems very intuitive. However, the first time seems very complicated. Other Advice Of all storage technologies I work on, it’s the easiest to learn and one of the most powerful. But you need to spend your time taking classes before digging in too deep. Get educated. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The integration with Windows for SQL exchange is critical, but it doesn't allow for live deduplication. Valuable Features: * High Availability – most important thing with all big storage systems * Flexible – it uses all different kinds of protocols (SAN, fiber channels) * Virtual Management Console – helps with and integrates with vSphere. I’ve deployed it, but haven’t configured it. Looks really promising. * Snap Drive – integration with Windows for SQL exchange is critical * Can update without taking the system down Improvements to My Organization: It’s a High Availability environment in which I haven’t had problems. We’ve only had one disk fail in a year. Quality of product is good. Room for Improvement: Tegile offers live deduplication. And NetApp can only be scheduled to dedupe in the background or for later. Also, the web page for downloading software could be more efficient (for example, getting instructions takes a few clicks). Make it easier for customers to download software. Initial Setup: The instructions didn’t provide for re-configurations from scratch and tech support were stuck too. The person who configured before had installed NetApp 8.2 on 7 mode. 8.3 didn’t support 7, which I wanted to do, so that’s why I had to reconfigure from scratch. Other Advice: First, make a lot of calculations of how much data you’re going to use and how much you’re using now. Compare the two and look into how you configure storage solution. How much data, how to split, etc. If you can’t spend that much on storage, you need to determine how to follow best practices to get as much storage as possible for the money. For example, if you have five shelves, you don’t need to worry about LUNs going offline. But if it’s just two shelves, like I have, you must be very careful about provisioning storage and use as much as possible. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-30T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from We can add additional heads with the same IOPS, but we need better documentation for customers to understand automation of APIs. Valuable Features The flexibility to use in OpenStack with multiple data types, Cinder, Swift, etc. Improvements to My Organization Feasibility to use multiple protocols to talk to device, be it direct attached or Cinder/Swift, and the ability to use it as storage behind guest instances on cloud (commonly known as boot-from-disk). Room for Improvement When speaking with the NetApp CEO, we told him that we need better documentation for customers to understand automation of APIs. We want it all there and robust. Boot-from-disk allows me to use disk from Netapp, and understand how to set that up should be documented so I can teach my staff how to do that. Use of Solution We've been using NetApp products for 15 years. Stability Issues No issues encountered. Scalability Issues As we continue forward, we can add additional heads with same IOPS. Customer Service and Technical Support I've never had to call tech support, but we’ve had them call us to tell us we were about to have a problem. Initial Setup It was very straightforward with OpenStack, very well-documented, and supported. I wasn’t an OpenStack admin when I started, so the ease of use was critical to me. Straight from the horizon dashboard from OpenStack and I was up and running in 15 minutes Other Advice * Define use cases because we’ve come across where we didn’t do so correctly, and we had to go back and re-architect everything. This was our failure. * Really engage with NetApp to understand how you use the nuances of things like the APIs. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Snap mirror gives us a way to snap to our two DR sites to instantaneously bring up VMs, but it lacks certain how-to guides. Valuable Features * Snap mirror as it gives us a way to snap to our two disaster recovery sites to instantaneously bring up VMs * Dedupe helps us to save a lot on OS files for VMs Improvements to My Organization It provides a relatively cost-effective solution, as we have all our virtual infrastructure on NetApp. Room for Improvement They should provide more specific how-to guides. For example, I want to implement Sharepoint, but how do I do that? Deployment Issues Upgrades are always hold-our-breath situations. I’ve been lucky, but I’ve heard horror stories. I’m also dead-ended. Stability Issues It’s been good. We haven’t had a complete outage (other than when our network the went down). We’ve had some challenges with hardware, but this was done non-disruptively with failover. Scalability Issues We’re still on 7-mode, but it still scales fairly well as the 6240 is a hefty machine. Customer Service and Technical Support It's used for repairs. We got outside help with set up and to put processes in place. Once done, it was seamless. Initial Setup Very straightforward. We’re using 7-mode, so nothing fancy, and I had no difficulties. There were a couple things I didn’t know, but our partner, DataLink, helped. Specifically, I didn’t understand the rate groups and when you expand aggregates, you have to do a full regroup, which wasted a lot of space. I had 16-disk rate groups, added five disks, and it unbalanced things. Other Advice Six to eight months ago, I would have said go for it, but now I’ve been getting a lot of doubts about the stability of NetApp itself as a company. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Its data compression saves a lot of capacity we'd otherwise have to have. It could improve by better integrating with other technologies like VMware, as there are some version conflicts. Valuable Features * Clustered data ONTAP * Data compression * High Availability * Snapshot technology Improvements to My Organization It helps us reduce costs because its data compression saves a lot of capacity we'd otherwise have to have. Room for Improvement It could improve by better integrating with other technologies like VMware, as there are some version conflicts. When you are using the newest storage virtual console, you cannot use VM Wall, the VM-specific firewall. Use of Solution We have been using it for a year for SQL databases. Deployment Issues We've had no issues with deployment. Stability Issues It's very stable and we've had no problems in the year we have used it. Scalability Issues It has scaled to our needs. Customer Service and Technical Support Customer Service: Customer service is good; we've had no problems with them. Technical Support: Technical support is good; we've had no problems with them either. Previous Solutions We used HDS before NetApp and we switched because of the snapshot technology and high-availability function. Initial Setup The initial setup was pretty straightforward, the implementation of the system was easy, and we had great support from the NetApp team. Implementation Team We used a vendor team who had strong expertise, and we are happy with the implementation. It’s important to have NetApp technicians implement the solution because it is helpful to have some experts. Other Solutions Considered No other options were evaluated. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-12-10T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Reasonable price, good file sharing feature, but the file system is not dynamic and the operating system is very cumbersome What is our primary use case? Our primary use case was NFS. It was used for designing chips. What is most valuable? The file sharing feature is most valuable. What needs improvement? Its operating system is very cumbersome. However, after you set it up, it runs pretty smoothly. Its file system is not very dynamic. It is very static. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is pretty stable. I would probably give it a six out of ten in terms of stability. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It is scalable to some extent. There is a limit, but then everything has a limit. We were using it at three sites across the US. We ran into this issue of hitting the limit just once in a while. When you are growing a cluster, you usually hit that limit. How are customer service and technical support? Their support was okay. I wouldn't say it was very great, but it was there. Occasionally, they would just go round and round in circles. They didn't know what to do with the case. They followed the sun model, which is followed by almost every company. If you open a case and the person is one hour away from his break or the end of his day, he would just say that he will have to give the case to someone else, and then you start all over again. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We have had different NetApp models. FAS has been around for a long time. The newer models are called AFF, and I have used AFF 300 and AFF 400. How was the initial setup? Its implementation was complicated. It takes a couple of hours if your network and DNS are ready. What about the implementation team? There was a NetApp SE on the site to help us. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? We purchased it for four years, and it wasn't expensive. It was reasonable. Every company has a different agreement with NetApp. We got everything we wanted with all the bells and whistles and all the features and functionalities. What other advice do I have? Its operating system is a little cumbersome, but it runs pretty smoothly most of the time. I would rate NetApp FAS Series a seven out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-05-14T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from A stable and scalable data management solution with a useful unified management feature What is our primary use case? I use NetApp FAS Series for storage consolidation, database management, performance, and data protection. We also use it for unified environments where you run multiple protocols. You can run it through a FAS or an AFF system. Our core applications are running on it, so it's always up. What is most valuable? I like the unified management feature because sometimes you end up running a single protocol on the entire system. Although it has the capacity to do multiple, you have to go the route to enable that. Sometimes it isn't convenient. You rather have a system for a particular protocol and another system for other protocols, especially in a big environment like mine. What needs improvement? Interfacing with the cloud environment could be better. I want to be able to move some cloud volume and integrate it seamlessly with my home on-premise storage. Sometimes I have issues with port permissions. NetApp probably needs to improve more on the integration side from on-premise to the cloud. Capacity management could also be better. The difference between AFF and FAS has always been an issue, but now we have the advanced disk partitioning technology on the whole FAS systems that can give us more usable capacity. That has been the bigger issue that I had with NetApp in terms of improvement, and they seem to be working on it now. For how long have I used the solution? I have been working with NetApp for more than ten years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It's a stable solution. The trouble we have with stability is the trouble we created ourselves. Once the system is installed and configured, it's stable. Except sometimes, we want to check out things, and they create some trouble for us. If it weren't stable, we wouldn't be investing in it for the past ten years. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? NetApp FAS Series is a scalable solution. We scale transparently, and we scale out and scale up. If we are scaling up with heavy capacity, it's very simple. Once we loop it, we have it and send it. We don't even have downtime for that. Sometimes it's tricky when we need to cluster several controllers and to scale-out many times. But it doesn't really have a major effect on our business. Sometimes we schedule it to let the business know that there might be some downtime for a period. We are finding ways to reduce the impact, and I think it's seamless. If I have to rate it, I'll give it 85%. How are customer service and technical support? My experience with technical support has been very good. In fact, most of the things I'm able to do, I learned how from the technical support team. They don't just work. They work, and then they allow me to learn with them. As they are doing it, they put me through, and I'm able to pick up one or two things every time I get their support. Although it's in two layers because of the kind of customer I am, we have what we call dedicated service accounts managers. Even before your issues come up, the guy triggers it, and then they are proactive in managing our whole system. But sometimes, we will have issues where we have to raise support cases, and we have a good contractor there. We have four hours of premium support. So far, we always get a response within four hours, and sometimes we have our resolution. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was a complex process, but it's better now. What about the implementation team? We use a local vendor and integrator most of the time to implement this solution. Initially, the system always comes with about three years of support. I have very good vendors around, and it's great all around. They also come around to support, but first level support, I do it by myself. When it gets complex, I invite the integrator and sometimes the OEM. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? It's not cheap, but at the same time, it's also inexpensive. It's somewhere in between. What other advice do I have? I would recommend this solution to new users because it's easy to implement. It's easy to install, it's easy to scale, and there is what we call investment protection. If there's a new controller that comes up, your existing controller can integrate with it. You don't have to trade in what you have. It always has forward compatibility and backward compatibility. I will always recommend NetApp FAS Series. On a scale from one to ten, I would give NetApp FAS Series a nine. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2021-04-27T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Reliable storage, easy to use, performs well, and the support is good What is our primary use case? We are using NetApp FAS Series on all of your sites. We use it in four major systems for productions in broadcast TV channels. I can say that we use it in Production and Archive environments according to the model and disk structure. How has it helped my organization? I can say that we use it in Production and Archive environments according to the model and disks structure.We tested many storages. Netapp was the most successful in terms of performance. We did multiple HD ingests in real-time. At the same time, Editing teams edited on the ingested files. As Ingest, we recorded more than 20 HD cameras simultaneously. We chose netapp when we saw that it was successful in the tests we carried out according to our structure. What is most valuable? * First of all, I think it is very suitable storage for media. * When editing and recording at the same time, its performance is quite sufficient. * The fact that it is redundant for the controller provides sufficient security. * I can share all volumes as a single space through the FlexGroup structure. * You can manage departments independently by creating more than one SVM. * Ontap is a very stable and reliable operating system. What needs improvement? There should be a separate admin web management for each SVM. We are currently managing all SVMs from a single admin interface. it is a problem. Real-time performance monitoring requires good software. It would be great to be able to see the audit logs. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using NetApp FAS Series for more than five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I can say that it is a stable product. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? NetApp has a structure that can grow very easily. You can expand by buying suitable model shelves. You can expand by the value allowed by the controller. How are customer service and technical support? We have opened cases with technical support in Europe. They can connect and together we resolve the issue. At times we use support from the support site. What other advice do I have? NetApp FAS Series can use the cloud services in the storage and can be upgraded to the cloud. I could recommend this solution to other media companies to use. It's an easy product to use that is stable and has good performance. I would rate NetApp FAS Series a nine out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-06-10T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Excellent and proactive support, reliable, easy to set up, and you can scale as many as you have What is our primary use case? We are mainly using this solution for file sharing, virtualization, and database storage. What is most valuable? The most valuable features are the NAS features and NetApp's excellent support. It's user-friendly, and I am happy with the dashboard, customization, and security. What needs improvement? For the most part, we don't have any problems. There is no NetApp infrastructure set up here in Greece. We don't have a representative with a technical department and someone who will help you in order to understand the product better. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using this solution for seven years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It's very stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It's scalable. You can scale as much as you can have. We have approximately 500 end-users in our organization. How are customer service and technical support? We have contacted technical support either by phone or via email, and sometimes they have contacted me first because they have noticed something in their systems. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was straightforward. What about the implementation team? We used an integrator to help us with the deployment. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I don't recall the price, but in general, pricing can always be better. What other advice do I have? I would definitely recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it. I would rate NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) an eight out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2020-11-25T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Scalable and reliable, but support could improve What is our primary use case? I am using NetApp FAS Series for file backups. What needs improvement? We're supposed to have used NetApp FAS Series for replication, but then one of the nodes failed, and then it's taken us some time to bring it up. The management console and disc partitioning could improve. For how long have I used the solution? I have used NetApp FAS Series within the past 12 months. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is stable. I would rate the stability of the NetApp FAS Series an eight out of ten. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is scalable. We have not done much scaling but we know it can. How are customer service and support? The support for NetApp FAS Series has not been great. How was the initial setup? The whole installation wasn't done right from the start. I think that's where the problem started. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? We are on a perpetual license. What other advice do I have? I would recommend I rate NetApp FAS Series a seven out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-11-10T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It saves a lot of time and minimizes downtime, which is important because we're a hospital and we can’t afford much downtime. I'd like more automation of the expanding aggregates and discs. Valuable Features * Snapshots * Mobility of data * High Availability Improvements to My Organization It saves a lot of time and minimizes downtime, which is important because we're a hospital and we can’t afford much downtime. If they can stop all downtime, it would be a big benefit for us and our patients. Room for Improvement I have a very small feature request: more automation of the expanding aggregates and discs. Deployment Issues We've had no issues with deploying it. Stability Issues The stability is very good. Scalability Issues We have six PB of data, and have had no problems with scalability. Customer Service and Technical Support The technical support is good. Previous Solutions We have had NetApp for a long time, and were one of the first customers in Belgium. Initial Setup If you are new, you have to learn the system, but once you know how it works, it doesn’t take much time to expand or install a new system. It was not difficult at all to learn the first time. Other Advice Over the past few years, they have evolved a lot in manageability and automation, so we are happy with the direction they are going in. They haven’t lost their eye on stability as well. Lots of new features without sacrificing anything. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-12-11T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It comes with an OS developed by its engineers, and its clustered data ONTAP, which supports clustering and high-level scalability. Valuable Features * Deduplication * High Availability Improvements to My Organization It provides us with a very effective storage solution. Room for Improvement The virtualization technology. Use of Solution I've used it for over three years. Deployment Issues Absolutely, it’s just some compatibility variance with some of the production environment aspects, like AV, and Archiving systems which needed to be integrated with. Stability Issues Not at all as the HA features are great. Scalability Issues NetApp comes with an OS developed by its engineers, and its clustered data ONTAP, which supports clustering and scalability to a high level. Customer Service and Technical Support Customer Service: The support team supports us as vendor partner with a lot of tools. And the auto-support feature is just as amazing as the product, whenever a disk fails or any issue occurred the features sends alerts to you and to the customer, and send you a replacement of the disk right away, in a very effective manner, and quickly, that you may do not notice that there’s an issue in your that disk. Technical Support: 10/10. Previous Solutions I deal with a lot of solutions similar in the concept with NetApp FAS, but when it comes to NetApp, there are too many features that means it worth it. Initial Setup It was clear and straightforward, as you console the device, and it boots, you configure and initialize the product, and as soon as that is done, you are ready to create your aggregates, volumes, and shares. Implementation Team We are an integrator, and we also have an in house device that we run our test labs on. The NetApp technical team is very supportive, and they can, in some complex and large projects, come and share the in-site implementation with their partner. ROI We can't calculate this. Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing Prices may seem to be a little bit expensive, but the features just makes you happy that you took the step, and licensing is all included except a very few features, with a high end and complex environment. Other Solutions Considered EMC Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We're a partner.
Date published: 2015-10-04T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The provision of HA has improved the uptime of our entire infrastructure What is our primary use case? We have deployed a four-node cluster to host multiple services like NFS, CIFS, FCP, and iSCSI with SnapMirror enabled across the cluster. How has it helped my organization? NetApp FAS has provided an HA environment that has improved the uptime of our entire infrastructure. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature for us is the combining of HA and SnapMirror. What needs improvement? I would like to see an improvement in the licensing on Data Mirroring (SnapMirror) features. Currently, the newest release is not HCI friendly. For how long have I used the solution? More than five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? In my nineteen years of being a storage administrator, I have never seen NetApp storage cause significant downtime that was connected to hardware failure. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? One of the big features of NetApp FAS is the clustering of storage, which allows you to scale up the whole cluster using different models. This is broad and each HA is expandable. How are customer service and technical support? Their team is one of the best support services that I have encountered. If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch? Previously we used the IBM N Series storage system. We switched because of its limited features. How was the initial setup? The initial hardware setup is pretty straightforward because once you set up one node in the cluster, the whole system can be joined seamlessly. The setup for the NetApp hardware is a very short command menu that is user-friendly. What about the implementation team? Our policy for the initial setup is to get service with the vendor. This provides a warranty just in case we encounter issues. NetApp support is highly knowledgeable about their product and they are trained to do the initial setup perfectly as planned. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We evaluated the HP and Dell storage solutions before choosing this product. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2019-05-08T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It behaves predictably during failure, but it needs better built-in monitoring as Insight is too expensive. Valuable Features It’s a decently mature product that has a lot of documentation and standards and is something to be relied on. Improvements to My Organization Predictable behavior during failure. In terms of performance, if you have two machines, you know they’re going to perform the same. Room for Improvement It needs better built-in monitoring. We can’t afford Insight, and v6.2 seems like it's a purposefully inferior product to make people buy Insight, which is way too expensive. Stability Issues It's not on Cisco’s stability level, but it’s a 96/100. Scalability Issues It’s scalable, but it could be easier. Just adding shelves might require additional cards and cabling, which can be difficult. Customer Service and Technical Support I’m happy with the support, as they’ve been able to solve whatever I throw at them. Initial Setup It’s complex as there’s a lot of variables involved. Not for the weak-hearted, if you haven’t done it before. Other Advice It loses points because of failures. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Since implementation, our performance has definitely increased, but they're upgrading the performance monitoring tool, which is the main thing I think needs improvement. Valuable Features I think that the flexibility with the volume, resizing, and performance. Improvements to My Organization I think that our performance has definitely increased. Room for Improvement I think that they are upgrading the performance monitoring tool, which is the main thing I think needs improvement. From version to version they are changing, and you want to see things improve – I think we will continue to see more and more benefits. Use of Solution We have been using it since 2013. Stability Issues Pretty solid in terms of stability. Scalability Issues We haven’t really grown it but I see a roadmap, the only problem there may be cost. It’s not an expensive product per se, but because of budget issues. People sometimes don’t evaluate the cost correctly. Customer Service and Technical Support NetApp overall has been really good in terms of technical support. Initial Setup Initial setup was hard a year ago, but now we just did another setup and everything was smooth. It’s gotten a lot better in the last year we’ve been using it. Other Advice If you are on the fence it’s been a very good product, you don’t want to build your own solution, you want to use the appliance for the flexibility. Overall performance has gotten a lot better. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It has the capability to use SAN, so it has a broad spectrum of use. I'd like to see more cohesiveness with a unified manager. Valuable Features * Software features, such as being able to do snapshots and file system optimization * High Availability -- components fail so this is a nice feature to have when failing over. There's no downtime, so we don’t lose data. Improvements to My Organization Good bang for the buck. Also, we use NFS generally, but FAS has the capability to use SAN, so it has a broad spectrum of use. Room for Improvement Tough for me to answer because I’m limited in my role, but the one thing I’d like to see most is more cohesiveness with a unified manager. I like the end product, but it’s not really all integrated and is convoluted with different managers. I would ike a single pane of glass, a single dashboard. Deployment Issues We see a lot of bugs in roll outs, and sometimes I think the first GA are late-beta deployments. My impression is they could have let it bake a little longer. But it could also be because of some of the environments it deploys in. Stability Issues Snap Manager v3.3.1 is a little buggy and NetApp doesn’t offer training course on it. So it could be what I’ve been taught by other people, or it’s in fact buggy, but likely a little of both. Hopefully they made improvements on 3.4. Scalability Issues 7-mode scales very well. I’m even more impressed with where they intend to go with cDOT, but it may be rolled out prematurely. Customer Service and Technical Support Tech support is usually pretty good, but occasionally there are some things that occur only on our site that tech support has issues. Other Advice Plan ahead and make sure you right-size it. How much head room do you really need? How many spindles are you going to attach? Are you really going to share workloads or do you want to separate some of those? We don’t segregate our infrastructure, which I don’t like, but all that costs money. But you should make sure that you have failover. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It provides us with redundancy and security, which is important because we hold a lot of customer information that must be secure and reliable. What is most valuable? * Redundancy * Snap mirroring * Home-drive capability, which looks at a user name and gives the correct rights to folder How has it helped my organization? * Rendundancy * Security We hold a lot of information for our customers, so the information has to be secure and reliable. What needs improvement? I'm not sure, because every time I’ve gone to them, they’ve said “yes, we can do that.” What do I think about the stability of the solution? I sleep well at night because of its redundancy. I hardly even know when it has a bad drive. The Call Home capability sends a message automatically if there's a bad drive to NetApp who then sends a new drive. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Amazing how scalable it is. As a comparison, we looked at EMC vBlock as well, and if you want to upgrade, you have to use a forklift. With FAS, you just put in new shelves or heads. How is customer service and technical support? They’re extremely technical. Everyone I’ve talked to has been very knowledgeable, and I can’t say anything bad. How was the initial setup? It was complex. There's a lot to do, but I had their assistance and went through everything step by step. So while complex, it was also simple. What other advice do I have? One thing that burned me, is that it surprised me how much overhead it uses, like 30% right off the top. So don’t forget the overhead. It’s not usable space, but that percentage is coming down. It all has to do with deduplication. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-06-14T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Provides ease of use and robust Snapshot functionality, but pricing is relatively high What is our primary use case? It is used as filer, for centralized file sharing. You use it, for example, for network drives from your Windows file. Performance is very good. It's reasonably fast, probably not the fastest. How has it helped my organization? What the customers, the end-users, like is they can rely on the Snapshot technology so they can do their restores themselves. What is most valuable? * Ease of use * Robust Snapshot functionality * You can use it in two datacenters with SnapMirror-ing. It has a very good implementation of the Active Directory services, so implementation into a Windows network is easy. What needs improvement? One thing that was missing for quite some time was the support for flash, of solid state disks, that has now improved. Another issue is the price which, compared to competitors, is quite high. The reason for switching to a different manufacturer is mostly because of the high price that NetApp has for the product. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability is good. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? For the use cases I have had so far, scalability has been sufficient. But I don't know where the limits are. If you go into hundreds of millions of objects, you will probably see limits. Also, performance-wise, it's probably not the fastest solution on the market. How is customer service and technical support? For the simple NetApp filer solution, we didn't have to use support. But for more complicated setups, MetroCluster for example, we had to call support. I would rate technical support at eight out of 10. Support is responsive, and we could then solve our issues. It took some time. It's not the perfect support that you would get with, say, Pure or Nimble, where they collect telemetry data - they always know what's going on with the system. I think with NetApp that's not possible. Which solutions did we use previously? Reasons for choosing NetApp include that it's probably the most solid, robust, and easy-to-implement solution. Which other solutions did I evaluate? For file servers, one alternative is Microsoft using standard Microsoft Windows Servers. Another solution is Huawei OceanStor; with the latest, version 5, they support mouse functionality. What other advice do I have? My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are to see that it has good market share already established, or that it has a robust roadmap with interesting products in the future, or that I have had a solid feeling with different products from same manufacturer. If I were only rating the NetApp solution without considering the price, I would probably give it nine or 10 out of 10. If the rating includes the price, it's more like a seven. If you're aiming for the easiest solution which will work, more or less, out-of-the-box and has lots of features, I would definitely recommend NetApp. If you're also bound by budget restraints, you should probably look at other vendors. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-04-10T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from We use the NAS functions for all our file shares, although I wish we could do dedupe for the entire system and not just a specific volume. Valuable Features NAS functions, as it's primarily used for all our file shares. We have other NAS devices, but this is easier. Also, High Availability is a valuable feature. Improvements to My Organization Snapshots are good, especially the snap mirror, which we use for disaster recovery and backups. Also, we have a lot of data centers (seven primary centers) and we deploy at each of them. Room for Improvement I miss their old support structure. We used to be able to call up and get an answer pretty quickly, but now it’s more arduous. It could be cleaner for dedupe, and I wish we could do dedupe for the entire system and not just a specific volume. Stability Issues It's highly reliable, but has had the occasional bug. We install patches or shut off features. Scalability Issues Depends on how you’re scaling. If wide, it works well. Vertical scaling not so well because we’re primarily SMB. No matter how brief, people don’t like being offline (e.g. baby monitors). Customer Service and Technical Support I’ve worked with them for over 10 years. They used to be stellar, but in the last three to five years, not as reliable. The quality of information you get from them is less specialist, and they've not broken it up so that you get routed to a particular technology, it used to be one senior guy who knew everything. Initial Setup There’s always networking issues, but not related to NetApp. Other Advice Other than tech support, it loses points because it could always be better. It depends on what you’re implementing. Consider carefully what you want to do – for example, have enough vLANs because you don’t want to be adding more later. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Easy to manage as a unified storage for diverse workloads What is our primary use case? We use this solution as general unified SAN storage for different workloads. How has it helped my organization? This solution provides us with easy management and great vendor support. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature is that this acts as unified storage, both SAN and NAS ( https://www.itcentralstation.com/categories/nas ), for all types of workloads. What needs improvement? Dedicated storage efficiency accelerators could improve the overall performance of the system. For how long have I used the solution? Four years. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:System Integrator
Date published: 2019-07-10T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It provides very good storage High Availability and data protection. The thing we'd like to see the most is the possibility of pairing LAN/SAN ports from different nodes. Valuable Features What impressed me the most about these systems are their excellent reliability, ease of administering (both in GUI and command line), and their very good documentation that is easy to access and understand. It provides very good storage, High Availability, and data protection by employing the use of two separate storage controllers that can take over each other's role as soon as any of them goes down. The technology has been improved even more after the introduction of the cluster cDot ONTAP OS. Improvements to My Organization NetApp systems are a good choice if you want a versatile unified system that's also capable of delivering performance. Our company has been using NetApp filers both as file sharing solutions (CIFS over LAN) and also as block storage (LUNs) for VMware ESXi hosts. Since we switched to the newer 2552 models, we now benefit from better data protection and improved storage capacity thanks to the clustered Data ONTAP OS. Room for Improvement The thing we'd like to see the most is the possibility of pairing LAN/SAN ports from different nodes. Currently, the systems only provide pairing (and thus redundancy) only at same-node level. Also, it wouldn't hurt having this sort of cross-functionality when it comes to choosing disks for aggregate structures. Right now, you can't integrate in the same storage aggregate disks from different shelves. Use of Solution I've had the chance to work a lot with NetApp FAS 2552 series and also have some experience with older models such as 2050, 2040, 3240 and 2240. I think it's a pretty reliable unified storage solution. The FAS 2552 model, especially, offers good performance and excellent reliability. My experience with similar storage systems is, currently, somewhat limited however. My company has been using NetApp for a few years now, over four I think, and I have come into contact with this technology for over a year. Deployment Issues When it comes to deployment we had our share of issues. Some of these issues are to blame on the vendor's lack of experience with the new models and ONTAP versions, but sometimes the systems themselves were faulty. Stability Issues The most recent issue we had involves a LAN card that couldn't be set on the correct bandwidth setting. In consequence, the vendor had to replace one of the node's motherboard. Scalability Issues There have been no issues with scaling it, other than during the actual deployment of new devices. Customer Service and Technical Support If you buy NetApp systems from third-party vendors, then you would be surprised that their technicians aren't exactly up to date with the latest ONTAP versions. NetApp releases new versions (with great improvements) so often that it's hard for some vendors to stay up to date with their technical knowledge base. However, when it comes to technical support from NetApp directly, they tend to have a very competent team and the reaction time is pretty decent. Perhaps their biggest strong point in this chapter is their public knowledge base which helps you solve on your own most of issues you can encounter with configuring and administering. Initial Setup All I can say is that if you take your time and study the NetApp documentation, you shouldn't have any issue, provided the initial setup was done properly by the vendor technician. Implementation Team Initial setup is usually performed by NetApp or the third-party vendor from whom you purchased the devices. Our experience with third-party vendors isn't the best due to reasons stated above. All other configuration and administration is done in-house. Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing When it comes to software licensing, I think that NetApp promotes a very fair system. Basically you only pay for the features you need (eg.: Cluster Mode, SnapMirror, SnapVault, etc.). Other Advice The best advice I can offer is to try and purchase it directly from NetApp in order to have a better chance of having a successful initial configuration from the first try. Also, make sure you purchase the system with a General Availability OS version as Release Candidate ones tend to be bugged. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-02-21T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Ability to use mirroring and SnapVault have made backup no longer necessary What is our primary use case? The primary use case is for standard CIFS/SMB file storage for Windows Clients in an ADS environment. How has it helped my organization? Samba on Solaris was a nightmare. Our situation improved with no Windows file servers, but at about 30 million files/folders, snapshot and backup functionality started to make trouble. What is most valuable? * Snapshots for user self-service restore * Ability to use mirroring and SnapVault have made backup no longer necessary. What needs improvement? * The WAFL is slow. * The adoption of flash by NetApp has also been lagging behind the trendsetters, like TMS, Nimble, and others. For how long have I used the solution? Three to five years. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-03-04T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The initial setup was quite easy and pleasing. Just enter some key values and there you go. What is most valuable? * Reliability * Rich features * Ease of management * Excellent support A reliable and easily managed storage system is a key performance factor. The system also has more features than we require. What needs improvement? Naturally, there would be room for improvement. As I see it, there could be more interfaces, more cache, etc., but those challenges are solved by just getting some other model. For how long have I used the solution? Four years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? None whatsoever. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No issues, as expansion was a breeze. How is customer service and technical support? We do use third party support. On a scale of one to 10, I would rate the support to be an eight. Which solutions did we use previously? During the years, we have had quite a few storage solutions, none of which did give us the same level performance, reliability, and manageability as the FAS-series has. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was quite easy and pleasing. Just enter some key values and there you go. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? For a number of years now, purchasing a storage system has been actually purchasing software. There is no plain storage anymore, more or less intelligent software solutions. Thus, licenses are required to fulfill the business demands. One considering between different storage system should carefully investigate what software options they get bundled in and what optional software they actually would need. Most storage vendors also have software, or licensing bundles, which may offer the required licenses considerably cheaper, but do also maybe offer licenses, which are not needed. Which other solutions did I evaluate? No other solutions were evaluated at the time. Actually, this system was familiar to use and fulfilled the business demands. What other advice do I have? You really can't go wrong with NetApp products, They perform well, are rock solid, offer good space saving technologies, and the support is above par. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-11-26T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from We can give people large amounts of storage for projects, and then remove it, though improvements could be made to the translation between 7-mode and cDOT. Valuable Features We have clusters, and can do non-distruptive upgrades with cDOT and can spin up VMs as needed. We have the flexibility to give people NAS storage. Improvements to My Organization With NAS storage in general, we can give people large amounts of storage for projects, and then remove it. For example, for SLS, they can spin up large amounts of storage to hold the output of modeling data, and when that’s done, they can delete it and move on. In that case, they don’t need the throughput. We have thousands and thousands of file shares and we’re able to offer up to one terabyte of storage, and this gives us high compression and dedupe. Room for Improvement For cDOT in general, improvements could be made to the little things, such as the translation between 7-mode and cDOT. If there’s some kind of backward compatibility or translation of certain functions from one to the other, that would be an improvement. Stability Issues It's very stable. Scalability Issues With cDOT, it's very good. It scales horizontally well, but not so well with 7-mode. Customer Service and Technical Support It’s top-notch support, very responsive and highly knowledgeable, very attentive to us as we have a monthly meeting with our TAM. Initial Setup It's straightforward in 7-mode, but using cDOT, it's terrible. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Integrated snapshot and backup capability What is our primary use case? NAS part of standardized virtualization platform, ranging from size from 15TB on-site solution to more than 500TB twin core datacenter. How has it helped my organization? * Cost effective storage for all performance levels (including all-flash) * Integrated snapshot and backup capability * Many protocols * Good service What is most valuable? * Integrated backup functionality (SnapVault and SnapMirror) * Option to mirror synchronously What needs improvement? * Automation readiness * API exposure * Adaptive storage quality of service For how long have I used the solution? Three to five years. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-02-28T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The storage efficiency provided maximum savings in our storage utilization What is our primary use case? We recently upgraded our NetApp environment from 7-Mode to Clustered ONTAP v9.3. Primary use cases are NFS and CIFS. NFSs are used for VMware data store while the CIFSs are for corporate file sharing. How has it helped my organization? Using the built-in Snapshots and SnapMirror technology, we were able to have better working data protection locally and off-site. The storage efficiency also provided maximum savings in our storage utilization. What is most valuable? * Snapshots * SnapMirror * Storage efficiency Other tools, like OnCommand Unified Manager and Config Advisor, help us a lot in managing our environment. What needs improvement? None at the moment for the box itself. We are very happy with the current capabilities of this hardware. Hopefully, the AutoSupport can be improved to be more proactive in certain cases. For how long have I used the solution? Less than one year. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? When getting new hardware, always tell the account manager that you are also considering other brands. They will be forced to adjust the price lower. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-07-01T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It's reliable and scalable and, in the event of failure, it’s highly available, but Unified Monitoring loses a bunch of funcationality that its previous versions had. Valuable Features The performance allows me to provide backend storage for large number of VMs and databases at a competitive price point. Room for Improvement Unified Monitoring v6.2 loses a bunch of functionality that previous versions had. For example, I took a cluster out of Unified Monitor, but Storage Monitor was still alerting me about it. 6.2 is not as comprehensive, but Unified Monitoring 6.2 will only be useful when it does everything. Insight’s price is just too expensive and unreasonable. Stability Issues It's pretty stable, even if it runs into something freaky, it keeps going. For example, mysterious a reboot, and nobody notices. It keeps working. Scalability Issues It scales to a point, and then you buy more hardware. Doing a head swap (swapping out controllers) is not as easy as it used to be. Customer Service and Technical Support It's better than Oracle, but actually pretty good. They're responsive, and help resolve situations. We have had a couple of issues, but 99% of the time, they get me an answer, although it may not be what I like, but it’s a definite answer within a reasonable time frame. Previous Solutions It's complex, not a trivial task. We can unbox it and deploy. There are many unpublished tech tips that NetApp engineers get that customers don’t (for example, how to save a disk). Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing The price-per-gig makes it the most expensive storage, more than EMC VMAX. So I’d like to see more aggressive pricing. Other Advice It's losing points on its value. The performance is nearly perfect, but it’s really expensive. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from I like that there are various modes and protocols you can use at the same time. Valuable Features * Multi Protocol * Scalability * Homogeneous hardware There are various modes and protocols you can use at the same time. For customers who use NetApp 7-Mode, I would rate Data ONTAP 8/10 and for Clustered Mode 7/10. Improvements to My Organization * Centralization of protocols within the same appliance * Software defined storage * Easy management * Scalability * Support Room for Improvement Migration from 7-Mode to Clustered Data ONTAP need improvement. It seems NetApp didn't know how to solve the main problem of migrating data from an old OS (7-Mode ) to Clustered. Use of Solution I've been using it for nine years, both using and implementing NetApp FAS series. Deployment Issues Deploying NetApp appliances is hard work. A lot of experience is required, mainly when your project runs a MetroCluster solution. Stability Issues There's an issue when you have a mix of a low-spinning disk (SATA 3TB ) and multi-protocol access (NFS, CIFS and FCP, and iSCSI). Data ONTAP performance with WAFL goes down on mid-range solutions with multi-protocol access. Scalability Issues We've never had an issue with Clustered Data ONTAP, but we did with 7-Mode solutions and large amounts of data in the PB range. Customer Service and Technical Support Customer Service: They have really good customer service. Technical Support: They have a good level of technical support when you escalate cases. Previous Solutions I've used EMC solutions in different companies. Initial Setup The initial setup was complex and you need experience. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-03-27T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It made the workload we needed possible because of its flash cache and we can perform LIF migrations with clustered Data ONTAP. Valuable Features The most valuable feature for us is the ability to perform LIF migrations with clustered Data ONTAP. Improvements to My Organization It made the workload we needed possible because of its flash cache. Room for Improvement It would be nice to be able to mix flash cache with other technologies. Use of Solution We've been using it for one month. Stability Issues It's very stable. Scalability Issues It scales for the kind of customers that we have. Customer Service and Technical Support We'd like to get more access to level-two engineers. Sometimes its been a difficult time explaining the problem to level-one people. This process is a little bit time consuming. Initial Setup The initial setup was straightforward. Implementation Team We did implemented it ourselves. Other Solutions Considered When we deployed flash cache, there was no alternative for it. It was the only available cacheing solution. Other Advice Flash cache is a great product. If it matches with the workloads, you should consider it. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We are partners.
Date published: 2015-12-11T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It's highly scalable, especially with CDOT, but they should make it faster and cheaper. Valuable Features * Snapshot * Snapmirror * FlexClone Improvements to My Organization * Huge time savings * Large storage space savings * In the end—time and money Room for Improvement They should make it faster and cheaper, but it does what we need it to do. Stability Issues Good overall. We’ve hit some bugs in the ONTAP code that’s caused it to crash. We’re just coming off of seven-mode, and I'm looking forward to the capabilities of CDOT. Scalability Issues It's highly scalable, especially with CDOT. We can scale out quickly. Customer Service and Technical Support It's very good, generally first tier are wiling to help us or get us to right person pretty quickly. Initial Setup It was complicated. We were coming off an IBM system five years ago. We got help for everything from cabling, terminology, and we had to relearn how we reconfigured storage. We got help from both NetApp and our VAR. Other Advice Just do it. Chances are the functionality that comes with the ONTAP software will be better than other products at a similar price. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Organizationally, it changed the way we do DR around NetApp replication How has it helped my organization? It changed the way we do Disaster Recovery (DR) around NetApp replication. What needs improvement? * Cluster mode needs to be more ubiquitous. * The process for going to cluster mode is expensive. What was my experience with deployment of the solution? Unexpected costs and some systems were not compatible with cluster mode. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Yes, we encountered stability issues with the LDAP integration and with user logins on the web front-end. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Nope. How is customer service and technical support? Customer Service: The customer service is awesome. Technical Support: The technical support is great. The partner company (Bytes) has a close relationship with us. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was straightforward, though there were a lot of hidden costs going to cluster mode and the amount of usable data was way lower than expected. What about the implementation team? We used a vendor team, and they were excellent. Which other solutions did I evaluate? EMC. What other advice do I have? Double up on the amount of storage that you expect to buy. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-11-02T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The most valuable features are the snapshots, the flash pool that we’re using, and cluster mode. What is most valuable? The most valuable features are the snapshots, the flash pool that we’re using, and cluster mode. When we are doing an upgrade, there is less of an impact on the customer when you use cluster mode. It still has some with CIFS, but at least it has less impact. How has it helped my organization? Compared to the previous solution, I would not say that it has really improved anything. We were with the HPE EVA before the NetApp. It takes more of my time to manage them, as opposed to HPE EVA, with which I created LUNs and it's done. I have a lot more tasks to do. At least now with NetApp, we can provide NAS services, which HPE EVA did not have. What needs improvement? I would like to see antivirus that works, and generally a working solution. They just provided Vserver DR, which is good. Now we need to have a way to do some tests only because to do testing we really need to failover to the second site, destroy everything, rebuild it, and failback. I really need a test mode that is not as destructive, at least. There is no test mode. Maybe there is with ONTAP 9. I’m not sure. That’s probably a feature that doesn’t figure into the short-term roadmap. For more detail: With Data Ontap 7 if something was wrong there was a real passthru that was protecting us against a loss of service if something was wrong with McAfee. Now with Cluster Data Ontap they introduce the AV connector and the passthru is not working correctly. We have delayed our migration to the c-dot environment for over 2 years now with open call at netapp. It tooks them over 8 months to admit there was a problem until a second customer get hit with the same problem we had. This has cause us service impact with our external customer, so we are running with the antivirus disable in our c-dot cifs shares since (at least they are used mostly by applications, not direct users). We have 2 specific cases that happen: * A McAfee agent upgrade that cause the Virus Scan Enterprise for Storage (VSES) to stop working * A bad config in EPO pushing an invalid user to start the VSES preventing it to be able to read the file on the netapp In September, a new version (1.0.3) of the AV connector that was supposed to fix these issues was available but it didn’t help the file access are still being denied. The test we did was for the second problem which is easy to reproduce. Just after that I was being interviewed during the Netapp Insight which has given that review. Since we have worked with Netapp and McAfee, I have seen no real intent to have a functioning passthru. They instead finger point McAfee for not replying. We have tried an hotfix from McAfee but it is still not working. For vserver DR this is a new functionality which is really good and very helpful for our DR solutions. The improvement that should be done to it is a better way to fallback, there is none currently so we need to delete all the setup, on the secondary : reconfigure it, copy everything to primary and then fail it back to primary. Then to reconfigure it properly, we need to delete, reconfigure and copy to the secondary. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is very unstable. We have a lot of issues with antivirus programs interrupting us from providing services to our customer. As soon as something happens with McAfee, the customer had problems with our services. With the 7 mode, we were okay. There was a real pass-through working correctly, so if something happened with the NT file server, the files were still being served to the customer. With cDOT, it's completely the opposite. It's completely out of service. We have a lot of service impact. We have been delaying the CIFS transition a lot because of this. How is customer service and technical support? We have been using technical support for over two years regarding services been down. Support was not efficient in that case. They are available. They tried. I was supposed to have a solution with the latest version. That was last week. I did the test, but it’s still not working. Before the admin, there was an issue, it took close to a year until a second customer had the same issue. Then, they finally admitted that I wasn't the problem. It was an issue with the software. That's certainly why I rate them poorly. Which solutions did we use previously? When we moved from HPE EVA to FAS, it was to have NAS services. For NAS, NetApp was probably the best one at that time. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was straightforward. I had no problem with that. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We also considered EMC at that time and HPE. For what we needed, NetApp was the best one. The most important criteria we look for in a vendor is good service and quality of the product. What other advice do I have? Properly define what you need first. After that, talk with people who know NetApp well, know how to set it up, and properly define the design architecture before doing it. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-01-03T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Enables us to handle business critical data with HA How has it helped my organization? Enables us to handle business critical data with HA. What is most valuable? * NAS stability * Simple customer support What needs improvement? Needs more SAN support. For how long have I used the solution? One to three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? No stability issues yet. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? No scalability issues yet. How is customer service and technical support? Eight out of 10. How was the initial setup? Works on administration, not implementation. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Not overrated, though there are products available in market with comparatively lower costs. What other advice do I have? Good for NAS and unified solutions. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-01-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Supports anything from Windows CIFS shares to UNIX NFS shares to block-level storage. What is most valuable? Its flexibility: It will support anything; from Windows CIFS shares, to UNIX NFS shares, to block-level storage; on the same platform; on the same disks; with the same interface. It's not specific to one set or another set. How has it helped my organization? I'm not sure that I can comment. This is what we've always used, so I have nothing to compare it to. It has a steep learning curve. Once you've reached the top of that curve, though, it's much easier to manage since it is all in the same system. You don't have a separate system to manage block-level storage or a separate system to manage other types of shares. What needs improvement? One of the issues that we have had with NetApp in upgrading over the years is that migrating data from one system to another is one-way only. If you have a new storage system that is going to replace an old storage system, where you're transitioning slowly from one to another, you can copy the data in one direction, but that same tool, which is typically used as a disaster recovery tool, can't be used to reset it back the other direction, as well. That level of backward compatibility would be very nice to have. What do I think about the stability of the solution? In the 20-some years I've been working with NetApp stuff, the system has caused one outage. Other than that, for any of the failure that it's had, the redundancy that is built into it, has handled the failure and left the systems up and the data available. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It is very scalable. It has gotten much more scalable. With every level, it's becoming more and more scalable. How is customer service and technical support? Technical support directly from NetApp is usually very, very good. As compared to others, the expertise that the individual that you talk to on the phone is usually very good. You can talk directly to an engineer, if that's required. We’ve actually talked to hardware development people on occasion, when that has been required. The support team is very knowledgeable and very accessible. Which solutions did we use previously? We invest in a new solution when the existing solution goes out of its initial support. We have been looking for new options for about six months now because the extended support is very, very expensive. How was the initial setup? I was involved in migrations from one system to another system. The initial setup, the cabling, the hardware side of it is tedious. Have NetApp come in and do the initial install of the physical system for you. It's definitely worth the time. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We are looking at Pure Storage. We have looked at and discarded an EMC option. That's why I recently attended a NetApp conference. We were looking to see the next level of the NetApp All-Flash FAS. We rejected the EMC option because we had an EMC piece of gear in-house that had a failure. It continued to operate, like it's supposed to. The problem was that the part on the piece of EMC gear that failed could not be replaced without causing downtime. It might as well have just caused the downtime initially. We have migrated everything off of that. It was a stupid little thing. It wasn’t like the backplane failed; it was a stupid little thing. I would not recommend it, and we will probably never go with EMC again. What other advice do I have? Take your time. It's a very dynamic market right now. Make sure that the information that you're getting on the system is for what's currently available and not for what they're expecting to have next quarter. Because, a lot of the next-quarter stuff is vapor, where they don't actually have it. They haven't gotten around to putting that in place, yet, and they promise and promise until they get money from you. That's one of the reasons why we're holding off on making a decision until the gear is actually available. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2016-12-12T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It's added benefits are thin provisioning, compressioning, and dedupe, which help with capacity utilization. Valuable Features Being able to run any flavor of files and block storage. It's easier to manage, and we’re looking to phase out legacy systems and to go with FAS. Improvements to My Organization It's easy to manage regardless of how you’re utilizing platform. It’s a Swiss army knife of capabilities. Flexible platform and software features are added benefits (thin provisioning, compressioning, dedupe), which help with capacity utilization. Still get a lot of return even if going with best-practices application. Room for Improvement Make sure there’s current centralized virtual desktops. I get caught in the upgrade matrix quite a bit, which is an indication that it hasn’t been tested. Need more currency in IMT. Stability Issues It's solid, with occasional issues that surface, but are quickly resolved. No one’s software is perfect. Scalability Issues It’s good, but you have to do a lot of homework to scale horizontally and vertically. You need to have sales and engineering to expend effort to do that homework. Customer Service and Technical Support We've frequently used it, and the quality will depend on which level of support you purchased. Premium support, I have no complaints as we get the right person who’s knoweldgable. Higher level guys take great deal of personal ownership over issues. I used their support as benchmark for our organization. Initial Setup It's easy. The more planning you do, the easier it gets. Other Advice The monitoring is key, and you must keep track of what’s going on. Be sure to use auto-support and have strong monitoring scenario in place. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The controllers are faster so we have more processing efficiency, and we're going onto the cDot platform, which is already an improvement. Valuable Features Today we use it for replication of our transaction data, and for storing data, for which we use the snap mirror feature. Primary and disaster recovery storage centers are connected. Snap mirror backup software does block level copy from primary site to the disaster recovery. Room for Improvement We’re going onto the cDot platform, which is already an improvement. The controllers are faster so we have more processing efficiency. Use of Solution We’ve been using it for the last six years. Stability Issues Stability has been very good. As far as we’re concerned, we update our systems (firmware, OS) consistently, so we don’t face any problems in that regard. Scalability Issues We've had no problems scaling. Our business has grown two and half times in size over six years, and we’ve added more disks and shelves, as well as upgrading controllers. We’ve done it without any down time. Customer Service and Technical Support Quite good. Recently we deployed micro-clusters with cDot, the first bank in India to do it. Initial Setup It was complex because we experimented by keeping data and system volumes separate. We don’t replicate the system volumes frequently. We were able to do it, although we used only 1/10 of the bandwidth with a combination of FAS and vSphere. Other Advice Configure it properly. Today we have HA with any data loss because we did it nicely, and took our time for the beginning. We got terrific support. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2015-10-22T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The scalability is good, but it's too expensive What is our primary use case? The product has been pretty stable. Though we have had a few issues, not on the ones that we are going to replace, but on a couple of other ones. On the ones that we are going to replace, we usually use them for file storage and Exchange. The others are mainly used for interface and iSCSI. How has it helped my organization? It has been a pretty stable environment, but over time our requirements have changed. Therefore, I don't think it's an issue with the system. We have put a lot of load on a lot more than what it can handle. So, it has taken a performance hit. I wouldn't put it down to there being an issue with NetApp. It's simply because it has more load on it than it can handle, so it has taken a performance hit. The only downside is in ease in management; it is not easy to use. What is most valuable? It is good to have a unified storage where you can have block and file level protocols. It has been pretty stable, but the capacity requirements have changed overtime. Our utilization has been very high, so the performance has taken a hit, which is why we are replacing it. What needs improvement? * Ease of management needs to be improved. * The power consumption for the FAS is a lot more compared to the new SSD arrays. Going forward, I don't want to be using the FAS again. I want to be using AFFs more. For how long have I used the solution? Three to five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It has been pretty stable. It has been pretty good, and when we have issues, the support has been great as well. I am pretty happy with the system, and the performance issues that we are experiencing have nothing to do with the NetApp system. It's simply because it has more load than it can handle. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability is pretty good, but it's too expensive. How is customer service and technical support? Technical support is cooperative and good. Which solutions did we use previously? We were previously using an old IBM SAN. We switched because we wanted to moved to a unified system. How was the initial setup? We had a reseller set it up for us, simply because it was a little too complicated. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? It's not a cheap system. It is very expensive. The pricing has been ridiculous every time that we had to renew the support. Initially, we have a three-year support contract when we bought the system, but the subsequent renewal of maintenance was ridiculous. This is why we have not been too keen on NetApp. What other advice do I have? I wouldn't recommend NetApp FAS. I don't understand why anyone would go for NetApp FAS when you can get the NetApp AFF, which is an SSD array, for almost a similar price or probably even cheaper. Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: * Cost effective solution * Performance * Reliability * A good roadmap. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2018-07-29T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Valuable features include thin provisioning, simple management, and fast snapshots What is most valuable? * Fast Snapshots * Thin provisioning * Simple management What needs improvement? With scalability, we feel the system is limited. For how long have I used the solution? From 2013 until now; four years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? No issues. The system is rather stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Yes, we have encountered issues. The system is limited by the number of enclosures. How is customer service and technical support? The tech support is very good. We use a third party support. Which solutions did we use previously? Previously, we used VNX5300 NAS. We found this one better suited to our needs. How was the initial setup? Initial setup was straightforward, not very complicated. What about the implementation team? We used a third-party for setup. Which other solutions did I evaluate? No, we did not. We were given direction from the University. What other advice do I have? I would recommend it to anyone. It is good for some of the NAS and VMware implementations. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2017-11-23T00:00:00-05:00

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