NetApp OnCommand [EOL] Reviews

I primarily use OnCommand or ActiveIQ as a monitoring appliance for NetApp. It connects to any site on-premises or can connect to the cloud in a limited sense. It provides a GUI for managing various on-premises NetApp activities. It scans storage, provides warnings when volumes are full, monitors snapshots, and offers error message notifications if there is defective hardware.

The ease of configuring NetApp FAS series is noteworthy, as they support multiple standards like iSCSI, NFS, Fibre Channel, and NVMe. NetApp's data efficiency protocols are unmatched in the industry. ActiveIQ offers significant improvements in data monitoring and error notification. It provides crucial data management features and has versatile support for various protocols and standards, making it a one-size-fits-all storage solution.

ActiveIQ only provides read access and does not allow making changes directly. Making it capable of executing changes to NetApp would be beneficial.

I have used OnCommand for over ten years.

I consider NetApp to be versatile. It supports many different protocols and standards, allowing us to perform various tasks with a single NetApp device.

I find NetApp's support to be top-notch. They work with level one, level two, and level three support teams. Although it may take time to reach knowledgeable personnel, their assistance is very good.

Neutral

The decision to use NetApp was largely due to their well-rounded approach and superior support compared to other solutions. Storage is critical to our operations, and we chose NetApp for its reliability.

When I purchased the NetApp FAS series, it was configured slowly to fit the growing nature of our business.

NetApp collaborates with us to provide deals when possible, optimizing storage based on business requirements, allowing us to save on costs for unnecessary storage space.

At the time of selection, NetApp offered the most rounded solution with strong support, contrasted with other vendors offering more limited features.

My overall rating for NetApp OnCommand is seven out of ten. 

The solution offers unmatched data efficiency protocols. Improving ActiveIQ by allowing it to execute changes to NetApp would make it even better. 

OnCommand is an appliance that connects to the NetApp which is a monitoring appliance. The tool provides alerts on events and errors of NetApp. 

I am impressed with the product's ability to warn us whenever something is wrong with the system. It is connected with Active Directory and Exchange. Whenever there is anything wrong with NetApp, the solution will alert you to an event error, post which you can start to troubleshoot. 

The tool is not intuitive and the menus are confusing, especially the snapshot view. 

I have been using the product for ten years. 

The solution's stability is very good. 

The tool's scalability is very good. When you add you add a new NetApp Controller or a cluster, you need to add the IP addresses and verify the credentials.

The solution's tech support is very good at replying. I am only impressed with the first level of support fifty percent. However, support is good at higher levels, like second and third. 

The product's setup is straightforward if you plan the IP addresses and setup the VMs. 

The tool is cheaper than EMC but more expensive than HP and Pure Storage. I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. You need to have a look at NetApp documentation which is outstanding. It is an outstanding product and I am very happy with it. However, supporting the tool is a little bit more complex than other products. 

We use this solution to provide storage and applications to our users.

With the new version 9.11.1, the System Manager functionality was improved - you can do more operations using GUI. Also, multi-user authorization is a nice new feature.

One of the main features is the ability to run the block and file storage from the same system.

There could be better performance in block storage and the GUI could be improved because not every operation is available. You need some operations in the CLI.

I have been using the solution for approximately 10 years.

The solution is scalable. However, for every cluster, you have to consider it separately. You have to do a lot of configuration. There are approximately four people using the solution in my organization.

The initial setup is very complex. There are new file systems that are better, such as Pure. For maintenance, we limit the storage size when needed.

We used a vendor to help us with the implementation.

My advice to those wanting to implement this solution is that the file storage is good, but the block storage is not good. I would recommend this for storage but not for the block storage.

I rate NetApp OnCommand a five out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is for centralized storage. We are silver partners of NetApp and I'm a technical manager.

Snapshot is the most valuable feature.

The solution lacks the ability to generate reports from Snapshot. The latest version is not quite as user-friendly as the older versions in terms of basically managing the system. It takes time to learn it and work out how to configure. It could be simplified.

I've been using this solution for nine years. 

I haven't come across any bugs and our customers have integrated NetApp without any issues. We have a team of six people dealing with maintenance and four of them are comfortable in deploying and supporting the solution. 

The technical support is not very good and could be significantly improved. 

The initial setup was straightforward. 

NetApp is competitive in terms of licensing costs. 

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

In OnCommand Unified Manager, we can monitor the entire cluster as well as configure data protection through Unified Manager. 

At present, OnCommand Unified Manager has just the monitoring and data protection features. It would be better to add some features for entire cluster management and storage management. 

Automation should also be included so that instead of separately accessing Unified Manager and OnCommand Workflow Automation, we can work in a single window. It is very much required.

I have been working on different NetApp OnCommand products for around 13 years. 

NetApp OnCommand is actually a suite containing different products. Each NetApp OnCommand product contains different features. OnCommand Workflow Automation is about automation. OnCommand Unified Manager is the main product in NetApp OnCommand.

It is very stable.

It is scalable.

Their technical support is very strong. They respond immediately. An auto ticket is generated, and accordingly, they respond. 

When we compare with other similar kinds of products from Dell EMC and HP, the price of NetApp OnCommand is reasonable.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. They need to add the OnCommand Workflow Automation feature, performance feature, and storage management feature in OnCommand Unified Manager.

The most valuable feature is the system manager itself. The system manager helps us to manage our NetApp server with a user-friendly GUI instead of a CLI, but sometimes we also need to use the CLI, because some features are not available in the GUI. Most often, we use it to create aggregates, storage virtual machines, volumes, shares (like CIFS and NFS), and also to present disks (from NetApp) on some other physical or virtual machine to perform several tests.

On the other hand, the GUI gives us fast (simple) configurations, simplified management, extensive administrative capabilities, unlocking the power of clustered Data ONTAP and also clustered scale-out storage.

There are always areas for improvement, but they need - 

• Intuitive browser-based GUI;


• Wizard-driven configuration to get up and running quickly;


• Automated non-disruptive (Data ONTAP) upgrade;


• Storage provisioning and disk aggregate management;


• CIFS, NFS, iSCSI, FC, and FCoE configuration;


• Snapshot and SnapMirror management;


• SnapVault support;


• Storage virtual machine management;


• Monitoring of HA pairs;


• Support for SVMs with Infinite Volume;


• User interface enhancements;


• Support for storage Quality of Service (QoS);


• Support for all NetApp FAS systems and FlexArray software;


• Support for NetApp All Flash FAS; and


• Built-in reports and dashboard summarizing data around inventory, capacity, and efficiency at the enterprise level.

It would be great if the GUI can perform the same configurations as the CLI can, but we know this is difficult to implement. For example, it would be nice if there could be an option (after ONTAP installation/configuration) to manually deal with root aggregates (of course with needed restrictions). In some cases, you need to modify its size if your storage is full or something, and of course if root aggregate has some free space (in our test cases we always had). 

Also, we are missing more graphical diagrams, maybe warnings or some help that can be useful to manage with NetApp more easily (in cases when you are not really sure if something could go wrong).

We haven't had issues with deployment.

We haven't had issues with stability.

We haven't had issues with scalability.

We currently don't have flash arrays at our company, but we are very interested in how can flash arrays deal with our challenges to get the best results. With a purpose-built flash architecture, we can fundamentally change the way we approach storage. The nature of flash storage allows for much faster data transfer rates as compared to traditional spinning disks.