NetApp FAS Series and DD Boost compete in the data storage and backup solutions category. Based on the features, NetApp FAS Series seems to have the upper hand due to its integration capabilities with VMware and the flexibility it offers, whereas DD Boost excels in efficient data backup thanks to its advanced deduplication and compression features.
Features: NetApp FAS Series supports multiple protocols, offers extensive space savings through deduplication, and ensures high availability. It stands out for its strong integration with VMware and the reliable Data ONTAP operating system. DD Boost is known for its efficient deduplication and compression, making it highly effective in fast, data-intensive backup environments. Its proprietary protocol significantly enhances backup speed and data transfer efficiency.
Room for Improvement: NetApp FAS Series could improve its pricing structures, SAN support, and user documentation. It also faces challenges with scalability and support speed. DD Boost could benefit from an easier-to-use interface and better integration with diverse databases. High costs and complex licensing and support renewals are also areas that need attention.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetApp FAS Series supports both on-premises and hybrid cloud deployment, providing flexibility across IT environments. It receives praise for its responsive and thorough customer service, though support quality can be inconsistent. DD Boost focuses more on on-premises deployments but is commended for its reliable and knowledgeable technical support, delivering effective problem resolutions.
Pricing and ROI: NetApp FAS Series offers a competitive feature set but is relatively high-priced compared to peers. Its ROI is positive, particularly in environments that harness its full features, such as VMware. Users need to factor in high initial and maintenance costs. DD Boost is often viewed as expensive due to additional licensing fees, but its robust performance and unique features justify the cost, offering substantial value in data protection and efficiency.
If you have the configuration well maintained and configured, you should have good efficiency and compression for the clients and for yourself.
They efficiently resolve issues raised under the service arrangement.
The support is technically very good.
When I had an issue, I just called and they connected and fixed it if something was wrong.
Sometimes, the support was inadequate because the initial architecture was poorly defined.
We are also using it ourselves for the SAN and CIFS protocol.
They often provide basic solutions, such as suggesting a failover or a power cycle, which are not the sophisticated solutions we expect from a vendor.
You need to be clear about your backup requirements to ensure it meets your needs.
NetApp FAS Series is scalable, and it is possible, but you need to pay.
The NetApp FAS Series is scalable and offers numerous solutions, but only if customers are willing to invest in the shelves.
In the two years I’ve worked with it, we only encountered one hard drive failure, which was easy to replace.
I never had problems with the stability of DD Boost.
Apart from one incident where the appliance failed to start due to a hardware issue, we have not had stability problems.
When panic occurs on the node, it reboots itself, and we have experienced numerous hardware-related issues.
Cleanup processes can slow down backup and restoration speeds during that period.
Dell Technologies are struggling to back up Office 365 and some open-source hypervisors like Proxmox.
The cost of support has become high, especially with the split between Dell and VMware, now charged per core.
Nutanix leads the business in this approach, and I feel that NetApp is missing some aspects, such as CPU, GPU, and RAM, in its AI portfolio.
There is an opportunity there for NetApp with Cloud Volumes ONTAP.
It was not possible to have a custom user inside ONTAP without the delete permission to delete the volume.
However, the recurring support costs are significant, and the price has risen after the Dell and VMware split.
Pricing is competitive.
The hardware, license, and all components are presented together collectively as customers see it as a complete proposal and will not break it down between license cost or hardware cost.
The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable.
From a technology standpoint, DD Boost offers some of the cutting-edge solutions around data protection.
The most valuable features of DD Boost include its speed, deduplication, and space savings.
DD Boost serves as a backup appliance providing data deduplication and synchronization, which accelerates processes.
While NVMe disks are expensive and require three disks for parity calculations, hard drives in NetApp FAS Series are inexpensive, making it more cost-efficient per GB, even with RAID tech implementation.
One important feature for customers is its ease of use and continuity, enabling seamless usage across on-premise and cloud environments.
At this moment, autonomous ransomware protection is the key feature.
DD Boost software delivers an advanced level of integration with backup applications and data base utilities, enhancing performance and ease of use. Dell also provides a DD Boost File System Plug-In (BoostFS) with DD Boost for even greater application support, which enables all the benefits of DD Boost for applications that use NFS for data protection. Rather than sending all data to the system for deduplication processes, DD Boost enables the backup server or application client to send only unique data segments across the network to the system.
NetApp FAS series is an enterprise-level storage system that provides a wide variety of data management services, including data protection, block and file storage, and data management.
NetApp FAS is designed to be highly scalable, allowing your organization to grow storage capacity on demand. NetApp FAS also supports multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel, as well as various storage architectures, including SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network-Attached Storage).
The FAS series has multiple data protection and data management features, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication, to help secure your data and manage it more efficiently. The system integrates with other NetApp products and solutions, to create a unified data management platform. The system can be deployed on-premise, on multi-cloud environments, or hybrid.
NetApp FAS Series Benefits and Features
NetApp FAS series provides its users with several key benefits and features, including:
Reviews from Real Users
NetApp FAS Series stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its speed, reliability, and a wide variety of features.
Adriano S., IT project and infrastructure service manager, writes, “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.”
Temitope O., a NetApp product manager at Hiperdist Ltd, says, “I like the unified management feature because sometimes you end up running a single protocol on the entire system. You rather have a system for a particular protocol and another system for other protocols, especially in a big environment like mine.”
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