NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Reviews

We use it for multiple cases. We use it for DR and backup tiering. 

We have some Oracle Databases in AWS that need backing up. We back them up to CVO. From CVO, we tier them out in a FabricPool scenario, then tier them off to StorageGRID. This way, we are putting minimum space on CVO, which has expensive storage. Instead, we are pushing them on a stream. This is really efficient in terms of performance and backup. I like it because we are able to restore quickly. 

We also use this for dev test data. For Oracle database, we are putting the data file for Oracle Database on a CVO data file. This way, we are able to replicate and clone the Oracle Database very quickly and efficiently with minimal space consumption.

It is much easier to control data since we can run queries across all our platforms with just one solution. Not only that, we can also monitor all the platforms with Active IQ, where we can see all the alerts, messages, and space consumption through a single application. This is regardless if the data is on-prem or AWS. It is much more efficient. 

The number one feature is the solution's space saving, which is great. 

They are on AWS and Azure. Because we use both cloud options, we have access through them from everywhere. It is a big colo facility, where we can have access to our data wherever we want. 

We use NetApp technology for deduplication and compression as well as the cloning technology and Snapshot. This usually helps us to restore everything. It is really helpful.

It is a unified solution for storing data across the board. This data fabric lets us have data across the board.

NetApp has a big problem with the HA pair model on this solution. If you want to use it with CVO, you need to run lots of tests. The problem with HA pair and CVO is that it has a huge impact on performance. We also can't use HA pairs with CVO because the cost is higher. It is really more expensive than a single node since you have to pay for the data twice, using their single-node solution with an AWS or Azure data center and causing redundant data. We have had many meetings and discussions with our NetApp account manager and their engineers about this issue since we can't have redundant data. 

Since it is too expensive, we haven't implemented the HA pair solution. Since we don't have an HA pair solution, we make the trade off of data loss. This happened once. We were lucky that we didn't lose data because we were able to recover it.

We were one of the first customers. We have been using Cloud Volumes for a long time. I think that it has been five years.

The solution is not stable when using single nodes. This is a problem. NetApp should work on this solution to make it more stable with HA nodes and resolve this issue.

NetApp has to make improvements on the scalability. It is not really scalable for a bigger scope because of many reasons. NetApp is limited to using six disks and the biggest disk size that they can use is just 16 terabytes. Six disks with 16 terabytes is not enough for a big environment. Right now, NetApp CVO can accept 350 terabytes, but it is 350 terabytes including tiering. In many cases, this is not enough for big data.

Initially, technical support was not good at all. We were one of the first customers and couldn't get any support from NetApp in the beginning. Then, we had to communicate with the guys from Israel through Slack, which was so difficult. In the beginning, I would rate the technical support as two or three out of 10.

Within the last year, it has gotten much better. Based on my experience, they help quickly every time that I call, which is great and more solid than before. I would now rate their technical support as seven out of 10.

Neutral

This was the first solution that we used. We were one of the first customers. There were very few options for solutions back then to utilize cloud storage.

The initial setup was great. It was so easy and straightforward. Everything was automated with no confusion.

It has saved us a lot of money. If we don't use it and want native AWS, then we have to pay three or four times more. 

We are also using it for other use cases. We use CVO for replicating product data to the dev test environment in AWS with a SnapMirror technology, using data from CVO to the dev test environment in AWS data using SnapMirror. This is much faster than any other solution that you can imagine for moving data from on-prem to AWS. We tried many methods, including some native AWS methods. We tried FTP server, file transfer, etc., but none of them were as fast and as quick as SnapMirror replication.

When we store more data with the solution, we can save more money. The savings depends on how many copies we make of each stage of the environment. If we need to clone the environment four times, then we save a lot of money. If we have to clone the data 10 times, then there are huge savings.

We evaluated AWS and Azure file transfers for replicating data between on-prem and cloud. We also tried AWS and Azure native volumes for cloud and those solutions were much better. 

The reasons that we went with NetApp:

1. The data fabric technology created a single standard for everything.
2. Cost.
3. Our familiarity with it. We didn't have to learn anything new.

If we wanted to use the AWS solution, we would have to manage two or three different platforms and pay more money than what we should have to pay, as some of the features don't even exist. If we wanted to, we could use AWS cloning, but it is useless because it uses more space, is more expensive, and takes more time.

We use NetApp storage when we want to use NFS methods. If we don't have to use an NSF method, then we use native cloud sets. So, we use both.

I recommend using this technology for now as there isn't another technology that can cover transferring data across sites, provide reliability of data, money savings, and space savings. If you want to compare these factors with any other solution, then NetApp is the best for now.

I would rate the solution as eight out of 10 because they still have to work on the HA pair issue.

It is for our databases and for Linux. We also use it for backups. We are replicating snapshots across, so we have different scenarios.

By implementing this solution, we wanted to achieve simplicity. We were trying to get away from reconfiguring everything all the time to work so that we could just get down and implement things within a very small window of time. They would not require a lot of reconfiguring each time.

The main benefit is accessibility. We are able to access it from anywhere. We are able to move things to what we need or are able to pull back the data when it is needed very quickly. We can restore the databases when I need to.

We have a single pane of glass. It helps a lot because time is always the essence. The simplicity comes in handy. It saves quite a bit of time. I do not have to sit down and do all the things. I am able to go in and hit a couple of things. I can deploy, modify, or do whatever needs to be done. It takes seconds versus hours. Once you learn the tool, it is very simple to work from the same point. When it first came out, it was very clunky. It took some time. It took some learning, whereas now, you can catch up pretty quickly. After you start to fine-tune it a little bit, you are able to work with it. Earlier, it was a pain.

I can see how much storage I have left and what I am working with. I can see the alerts. It gives me time to start working on what I need to procure at that point.

It has helped to right-size our workloads. It has been great. It has significantly dropped our downtime for volumes and improved the access for clients. It has helped out a lot in those aspects, so I can stay ahead of the game instead of behind the game. That is where that tool comes in handy. 

It is great when it comes down to pinpointing problem areas. It catches things before they become a problem, so I can keep my clients up and going and functioning. It has been great in that aspect.

I am a big fan of analytics because they give me the chance to be able to keep the clients up and going. That is my biggest thing because when they are down, we lose a lot of money, and we lose a lot of clients, so the ability to make sure that I am up almost 100% percent and being able to stay ahead of the game is a huge win for us.

The ease of use in terms of how the product works is valuable. We are able to work with it and deploy the storage that we need.

The dashboard is a little bit clunky. I like to see it a little bit more on the simplistic side. I would like to be able to create my own widgets and customize what I want to see a little bit more versus what is currently there. That would be helpful so that when I log in, I go straight to my widget or my board without going to multiple places to get to what I need to find or build.

We have been using NetApp ONTAP for 18 years.

It is very easy to scale. It takes next to no time to be able to do that. It is very simple and easy to do that part. You just need to get a license and add the storage.

I love NetApp support. If the first level cannot help you, then the next level can. We can get to them fairly quickly. If not, the reps or the sales can jump in and help us as well. We have never gone without some kind of help in one way or another. If there is a problem, they will jump on and bring on tier two and tier three, and write a script, or do whatever needs to be done. I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We have been mostly using the NetApp tools. We have been trying to stay native as much as we can for a long time.

It has been a while. From what I remember, it was not too bad. It could be a little bit more simplistic, but it was not too bad to be out. Once you learn it, it gets easier.

It is a great product. It gives you the heads-up for what you need. You can move clients around and access the clients from different locations. You can also do a restore when you need to be at different locations. That has helped enormously. It has helped drive the cost down. Our clients are able to stay up and function consistently. There are a good 30% to 40% savings. 

We did evaluate other products, but that was a long time ago.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

In some places, it helps to reduce the amount of our storage, but a lot of our data is very active and in very small files, so the system does not have enough time to keep track of all that. In one instance, we had a job, and we dumped roughly 25 terabytes in a day into the system, so for it to understand and try to reduce it and compress it, it sometimes does not have time because it is just so busy.

It has saved us on costs. I am not on the manager's side, but I have seen that the cost is better. I do not have the exact numbers, but it is probably two or three dollars per terabyte or something in that realm. Some of our competitors cannot beat that, so that does help.

A lot of our customers have their own cases. We create new volumes for each of those cases. One thing I have noticed is that it is very simple to move the data where we need to move it, delete it, or archive it if we need to archive it to StorageGRID.

We have a lot of challenges with ONTAP. We are an eDiscovery company. With ONTAP, sometimes we have issues where we are over the capacity of how many volumes we can have on a cluster. That is one of our biggest issues. The other bigger issue right now is keys. We do not have enough. NetApp itself does not give out as many volumes as keys. I do not understand that, so we have to shift and drive and do things like that to get our new data and make sure it is encrypted.

Their support and development teams can collaborate better to resolve an issue.

We have been using NetApp ONTAP for over five years for sure. We have the second-largest StorageGRID in the world with NetApp.

So far, we have not had any issues. There were only a couple of panics or something like that, but those are normal issues you deal with once in a while. 

Scalability is there. You have to buy ahead shelves and everything else to keep it growing. It is fairly simple.

We had some issues, but the communication was not there in terms of what they were doing and what the status was. It took us a couple of years to fix them. If they had kept us in check with that, it would not be as big of an issue. We have also dealt with PowerScale support. In the 7070 code, we had so many problems, but we worked with what they call the CodeRed team or the recovery team for a year. We worked side by side to fix those issues. Even some of the bigger management and directors tried to help us and keep us informed of what was going on. 

There is a bridge between NetApp's development and support teams. They do not know how to communicate with each other. Why cannot their developers talk with their support and work with them? To me, that is a collaboration. Their development and support teams need to collaborate more. In the case of PowerScale or Isilon, I did have the recovery team, and their recovery team had developers behind them.

Overall, I would rate their support an eight out of ten. 

Positive

I have used Isilon and PowerScale. I made the switch because we moved to a different company. One of the pros of the other solutions is how NFS integrates with SMB on Isilon and PowerScale. You could have an NFS mount with an SMB mount, and the permissions would not be stuck. With ONTAP, you cannot put them together. One reason is that a lot of their shares are more CIF shares. That is a Microsoft protocol, and NFS works more with SMB because that is the same language.

I was involved in the initial setup on some new systems, but not on the legacy systems. It is pretty straightforward like any other system when you set it up, but there are a lot more simpler pieces to it.

We have not gotten to the cloud yet because our company is too big for the cloud, and it costs millions of dollars to put it up there.

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP integrates with AWS native services. For us, it is not that big a deal, but we are looking at some of our smaller divisions overseas where it is more efficient to back up to AWS and other similar things, but we have not been able to implement it just yet.

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our organization utilizes a hybrid cloud in which Cloud Volumes ONTAP is a single node. We have multiple instances of Cloud Volumes on a single node in AWS, and we primarily use it to take snapshots for disaster recovery.

We save many snapshots at that location so we can redirect users if something happens on our primary site. 

The other use case is backup. We enabled SnapLock, which acts as the WORM, making those snapshots immutable. In other words, they can't be deleted.

Those are the two use cases. One is disaster recovery, and the other is to preserve a third copy of the snapshot. This is typically for Tier 1 applications. We have a third copy, and no one can delete the volume's snapshot. The end-users don't work with Cloud Volumes directly, but if our operational team needs to restore some files that aren't on-prem, they sometimes go to those instances in Cloud Volumes. That's only when they have to restore something beyond the date range of the on-prem snapshot.

The main benefit we get from this product is the ability to deploy it anywhere we want, whether that's on-prem, a remote physical location, or in the cloud. It doesn't matter from an operational perspective where it is. The command line and operating system are the same. 

If I give it to someone to manage, they don't know if the product is running in the cloud or on the physical location. That's great because you don't have to worry about knowledge transfer. The product runs the same regardless of how it's deployed. Cloud Volumes has also significantly improved performance and storage efficiency because it has capacity tiering, which is helpful if you're cost-conscious. 

It provides unified storage, so you can use it for NAS or block. However, we segregate a separate cluster for files and another for block storage. Fortunately, it's the same ONTAP operating system, so a user doesn't need to understand a different set of command lines or another method if dealing with block storage or files. It's all the same for them.

It helps us manage our native cloud storage. Cloud Volumes allows us to choose which storage types are applicable for us. In our case, it lets us choose a cheaper EBS storage, and then we can perform capacity tiering in S3. It gives us the flexibility to determine which type of native AWS storage to use, which is cool.

We mainly use Cloud Volumes for two features: SnapMirror and SnapVault. Those are the two that our use case requires. Data deduplication and capacity tiering are the main primary reasons we adopted the solution. The data is deduped and encrypted, and we use capacity tiering to cut down on our S3 storage costs.

The encryption and deduplication features still have a lot of room for improvement. 

We first deployed Cloud Volumes ONTAP four years ago.

Cloud Volumes has been stable so far. We haven't had many issues. If there are any issues, it's typically during an upgrade. Some tools are upgraded automatically through the cloud manager, but it's nothing major, and the upgrade has been smooth as well.

Cloud Volumes added an option to stack licenses to increase capacity. Before, you were only allowed one license per instance, which gave you 360 terabytes. Now, you can stack the licenses to add a second license of the same instance to get another 360 terabytes, totaling 720. 

That's vertical scalability, but we haven't scaled horizontally. We just use it for a single node per instance. We started with one instance, and now we are on the seventh. As we add new on-prem projects, they always require a copy of their data somewhere. That's when we deploy additional instances.

My experience with technical support has been positive overall. I would rate NetApp support eight out of 10. I would deduct two points because they don't have complete control of the solution. It's more of a hybrid setup. They provide the software level, but the underlying infrastructure is AWS. If there's an issue, it's hard to distinguish if Cloud Volumes is to blame or AWS. That's why I would say eight because there is that question. When you have multiple layers, it takes more time to troubleshoot. 

Installing Cloud Volumes is quick and straightforward. I can deploy an instance in half an hour. Compare that to an on-prem serverless instance, which requires a lot of planning and work with other teams to lay cables and plot out space in a data center. That takes three to six months versus 30 minutes. It's a big difference. We only need one staff member to maintain it. 

We used our in-house engineers to deploy Cloud Volumes.

As we store more data, we save more money using Cloud Volumes. The deduplication engine can find more commonalities as you accumulate more data, which has helped. Of course, it depends on the data type. It doesn't help if you have compressed data, but it's suitable for unstructured data.

Deduplication is one of the most significant improvements I've seen in the product. In the past, Cloud Volumes could only dedupe on the volume level, but now it can dedupe on the aggregate level, which means you can look at more volumes and commonalities. You have a greater chance to dedupe more data in that scenario.

We save on storage in general. One of the biggest selling points of Cloud Volumes is that you can deploy it quickly. You don't need to spend time and resources planning and setting up physical storage equipment in your data center. Real estate in a data center is precious, so cost savings makes Cloud Volumes enticing. In our case, we don't need a physical disaster recovery location. Anything that isn't Tier 1 goes to the cloud.

I rate NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP nine out of 10. 

Companies that want to move to the cloud want to have a DR in the cloud. However, moving a file share is very tough and requires a lot of work from scratch. If you have NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and if you have an on-premises storage scenario, it's very easy to replicate the workload from the cloud using the native application tool. You don't need to reengineer everything. It's very useful, and efficient.

If you use deduplication and compression on-premises, you will be able to do the same on the cloud. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP also helps save money in terms of file shares and storage. For example, if you have 50 TB of data, you will be able to compress it and pay for 25 TB of data.

You have control over configuration and retention as well. You can keep data for longer because of the in-built backup feature.

It's very easy to set up, and within 40 minutes, you can apply storage notes in Azure.

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP uses native replication, SnapMirror, for replication between two CVOs or from on-premises to the cloud.

The SnapLock feature helps with compliance, and even a rogue admin will not be able to delete anything.

The beauty of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is that it's very easy to use.

I implemented NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for an enterprise customer three years ago, and it's being implemented in my current organization as well.

I would rate NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP's stability at eight out of ten. 

You can scale vertically and horizontally, and I'd give scalability a rating of ten out of ten. The clients who use NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP are enterprise companies.

I would rate NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP's technical support at ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is easy, and I would rate it at ten out of ten. It takes about 40 minutes.

It is not a cheap solution because we need to pay for the license and pay for Azure resources as well.

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP needs to have customizable pricing options such as 10 TB increments. They seem to have only two options: 10 TB or 250 TB.

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is a proven solution, and I would rate it at ten out of ten.

Our primary use case is for shared storage. We use the solution to support our ERP environment, where our teams want to share storage between different servers/apps. We're mostly using it for NAS.

It's meant to do the same thing in the public cloud that we were doing in our private cloud. In the private cloud we can control the infrastructure, whereas in the public cloud we don't have as much control. This gives us a way to optimize resource usage in the public cloud, without overpaying or wasting resources.

It also provides unified storage no matter what data you have. It makes sure we have control of the data and that we know what it's being used for. The main thing for us is that we need to know what applications are consuming it and responsible for it. The solution helps us do that.

In addition, it helps us because we know what it's used for, who owns something, and who's accountable for those storage costs. Ultimately, it helps us reduce our storage needs and that's where we get our savings.

Compared to native cloud storage, NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP allows us to better manage shared storage.

I don't have a preference for any feature. It's meant to optimize storage and usage within the public cloud.

Something we would like to see is the ability to better manage the setup and tie it to our configuration management database. We manage our whole IT infrastructure out of that database.

I've been using NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for about three years.

As far as I know, everything is stable.

It's very scalable.

We focus on apps or IT services that are using it and currently the total is in the neighborhood of about five.

I haven't used technical support.

Neutral

We did not have a previous solution.

Our challenge is understanding all the different storage that we set up and being able to tie each storage that we create back to an IT service and, ultimately, a cost center. That piece was difficult to set up and we had to do some things manually.

As for the amount of staff required on our side for deployment and maintenance, it's very minimal.

We used NetApp to help with the setup. We focused on just getting things up and running, rather than making sure everything was set up the way we wanted it to be. Part of that was the JCI issue, and part of that was that the vendor might have helped us better plan and better organize.

Make sure you investigate what your requirements are going to cost you using the native cloud solutions versus what NetApp is going to cost you, to make sure you have a business case to go with NetApp.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using this solution is to make sure you have a proper foundation and design in place to manage everything from A to Z before you start deploying your first storage on NetApp.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP is used for disaster recovery right now, and the primary use case for our current clients and environments is CIFS. Most clients use Cloud Volumes ONTAP as a replication destination for CIFS. It's a way to back up their documents and files offsite for disaster recovery. They have VMs that they spin up and connect to. 

In most cases, we have not deployed anything that uses the service protocol, like iSCSI or NFS. It's strictly CIFS. We haven't used one solution—matching DR for CIFS volumes—which is a destination that replicates from on-prem to the cloud, but we've done DR tests with that. 

The other two instances we're currently running will be the same scenario, but we're not there yet. Right now, they are being used for SnapMirror destinations of CIFS volumes only, and that's all three. We've been running Cloud Volumes ONTAP in Azure as a VM along with a connector. They had one deployed before I took it over, but it's typically done within the NetApp Cloud Manager system. Once we connect to the Azure portal or subscription, we push out the CVO from there.

Our clients see most of the benefits. Cloud Volumes ONTAP provides offsite backups. We used to host our backups on physical infrastructure in a data center or on remote sites. There were a lot of storage costs for replication. By implementing Cloud Volumes ONTAP in the Azure portal, we eliminated the cost of additional hardware and everything you have to maintain on-prem in a physical environment and put it up to the cloud. That was a considerable cost savings for the customer.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP is a massive improvement in terms of manageability. It's easier for customers to perform certain functions from that interface, knowing it sits on a high availability platform. We don't worry about paying all these separate vendors for replication solutions. Other costs are associated with maintaining physical infrastructure in a data center, like electricity or storage space, RAM, and other hardware. It has improved our clients' bottom line because they spend less on disaster recovery.

The Cloud Manager application that's on the NetApp cloud site is easy to use. You can set up and schedule replications from there, so you don't have to go into the ONTAP system. Another feature we've recently started using is the scheduled power off. We started with one client and have been slowly implementing it with others. We can cut costs by not having the VM run all the time. It's only on when it's doing replication, but it powers off after.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP's interface could use an overhaul. Sometimes you have to dig around in Cloud Manager a little bit to find certain things. The layout could be more intuitive. 

I haven't been using NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for too long. It has been a little under three years since we started working with it. We were mostly doing a lot with data centers, so we only really started getting into cloud systems about three years ago.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP seems to be fairly stable so far. The only time we have issues is when there is a circuit interruption, but this product has been pretty stable. We haven't had issues with crashes or data getting corrupted. We've had interruptions due to internet problems or leaks between the sites. 

These are things we have no control over because they're different providers. That's the only issue that I've seen. But once those come through the actual system itself, it's been fine as far as resiliency, performance, and availability.

We can expand on it as needed. In particular, it's easy to add storage, and storage expansion is probably the feature we utilize the most. We don't mess with any other features, like within the protocols or anything like that. Those are fine, but storage scalability is pretty good.

Our clients' storage needs vary. Typically, it's somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 terabytes, but at least 15 to 30 terabytes. Each client is a little different, but the one that uses the most storage has a capacity of about 30 terabytes.

NetApp technical support is pretty good. We sometimes have to wait a bit, but they're good at resolving issues once they find out what the problem is. They come back with solutions, so I would rate them pretty well.

Deploying Cloud Volumes ONTAP can be complex at times, but I think it's a learning curve. You have to put in many different pieces, and it's not always easy to find the documentation you need on the web. Some parts are straightforward, but sometimes you need to do some digging before deploying. 

It really comes down to planning. When implementing, we ensure each case is planned and deployed to the networking part for Azure. We also put together a template. That way, other engineers can follow or use it as a guideline when building it. I make a basic template of the required information, configuration settings, etc. 

These were all deployed as part of a much larger project, which included new hardware that was upgraded. The Azure and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP were part of that upgrade experience. It was in conjunction with the client getting a new on-prem NetApp system and other infrastructure, like switches. Once everything was migrated, we implemented the Azure part in Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

We have a small team for handling deployment. I think they have maybe two people. One person could do it, but there is an alternative if somebody is out on vacation. The managed service division covers all the maintenance for our clients. The managed service team takes over all the backend IT work for our clients. Instead of having a full staff, the client pays us to manage the backend of their servers and other infrastructure. As a managed service, we go in and take care of their switching, patches, upgrading, etc.

We do all of the implementations for our clients in-house who are the end-users. We sell them the solution and deploy it for them.

I believe our clients see a return because they don't need to purchase hardware. It's much easier and quicker for them to get additional storage when needed compared to an on-prem system. 

They save on costs associated with ordering additional storage for a physical on-prem system versus expanding what you have and you pay a little more in Azure. One client saw significant cost savings on their electricity bill. They reduced their bill by almost half just by shutting these things off.

Our management and salespeople deal with pricing. I'm not part of the price negotiations or anything like that. I work on design and implementation.

I rate Cloud Volumes ONTAP nine out of 10. It's an excellent solution that is cloud-based, so you don't have to worry about leasing or purchasing hardware. All costs of purchasing lines and circuits are upfront. Since this product works over the internet, you only need data access, which most of them have. 

Overall, I would say this is better than an on-prem solution that requires physical hardware at remote sites. You don't need to invest in buying or maintaining physical hardware. In this case, you're paying a monthly cost for something. You can decide at any time to stop using it if you don't need it anymore. That's a problem with owning physical infrastructure. You have to dispose of it when you don't need it anymore. Cloud Volumes ONTAP is also easier to manage and upgrade than on-prem systems.

The primary use case is to use NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for unstructured data storage, both for Windows and Linux-based machines. We use both from an NAS functionality perspective, along with SMB and NFS file shares/exports, for storing unstructured data.

The solution enabled us to deliver on our cloud-first strategy. It also provided us some savings and consolidation capabilities from a volume perspective where we can run with less management. We can run higher volumes of unstructured data and store higher volumes of unstructured data as compared to other solutions.

• The data tiering capability
• Deduplication
• Compression

The data efficiencies are valuable, If we want to combine compression and deduplication.

It is valuable to us that it runs natively in Azure. 

Using this solution, we are also in control of our backups. In regards to disaster recovery, we don't have to rely on Azure or Microsoft to fail anything over. We are in control of backups and replication (or disaster recovery). 

With NetApp, you can integrate malware scanning or malware protection. This is something valuable that is not offered in SaaS solutions typically.

The solution provides us unified storage as long as it's unstructured data that can be accessed through a file share. We are in control of the portability of the data. We are not locked into Azure with this product. For example, if we wanted to go to AWS, there is that capability. If we wanted to pull this data or solution back to on-premises, there's that capability. Therefore, there is some flexibility in the control of the data versus being locked into a non-proprietary solution, e.g., just within Azure.

If they could include clustering together multiple physical Cloud Volumes ONTAP devices as an option, that could be helpful. 

The ease of data migration between devices could be improved somewhat. There is already some flexibility which is better than just migrating the data. However, that could potentially be further improved.

Including the evaluation period, it has been over two years.

The stability of this solution has been great. A couple of interruptions that we had were not really related to the product. They were more related to Azure, where we had a couple of issues with actual Azure hosts which run the virtual storage device and Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

There is a team of four people who are in the role of managing and administrating the devices. There are thousands of people who access it.

There is room for growth. We are just in the process of migrating an on-premise system. That will probably service 10,000 users. We started out using it mainly for unstructured data which would be less frequently used or Azure-native. Now, we are at the process of expansion. After using the product for a year and a half, we are comfortable migrating on-premises into our system.

NetApp technical support is good. They are receptive and want to make sure that you succeed in using their product. Overall, their Professional Services, setup, and support for the past couple of years, in comparison to other large companies that I have used in the past (like Microsoft, IBM, or Dell EMC support), has been as good or better than their peers. 

We have used the NetApp solution on-premise with one of our outsourcing providers. We have used NetApp before in Canada. In the US, we used the Dell EMC NAS solution. So, we have had some experience with NetApp as our company has used NetApp in the past for years, but those solutions were not entirely cloud-based. Cloud Volumes ONTAP is unique in that it runs the same familiar operating system that you would run on the on-premise NetApp system with some differences and specifics to Azure. There are a lot of synergies, but basically it's the same operating system. A lot of the things work the same as they would using the on-premise NAS. Currently, we use the solution in Asia and North America.

The initial setup is well-documented, so it's fairly straightforward. There are all these aspects where you need to have some understanding of what you want to achieve in the end. You also need to have in mind a final design of what the requirements are. Based on that, the initial setup is well-documented and not overly difficult.

Our initial deployment was a year and a half ago when things were fairly new for NetApp. Our environment was fairly complex because we needed an antivirus integration along with different things, so the initial setup took about two to three weeks. Then, setup of subsequent Cloud Volumes ONTAP devices, as we expanded the solution, would take one to three days. We followed the same steps that we established in the original deployment, and in some cases with a few improvements, incorporating lessons learned.

We knew what capacity we required. We knew that we wanted to configure backups and deploy disaster recovery. We also knew that we wanted antivirus scanning and integration as well as malware protection on the system. Therefore, we identified the requirements, then worked initially with NetApp Professional Services to deploy the solution.

In the past, we were working with outsourcers on-premise. Even compared to just standard Azure or other solutions available, this solution has allowed for probably 50 percent, or in some cases, higher storage savings.

From a scale or scalability perspective, the more data you store, then the more you can save. For example, the more data you can tear down from SSDs (from premium storage down to Azure Blob), then the more you're going to save. Scale certainly matters because as the more data you store, then the higher savings you can achieve. 

There are storage efficiencies built into the product. The tiering helps with keeping the storage costs under control, i.e., the tiering from primary storage to Blob storage or object storage helps. Also, the storage efficiencies, deduplication, and compression help to keep storage costs under control. Depending on what solution you are coming off of, a 50 percent savings in storage costs is achievable.

Some flexibility around the licensing model would help. The product is licensed based on capacity. Basically, the largest capacity license that you can buy is 368 terabytes. At this point, NetApp is addressing some people's concerns around this. 

I can stack licenses, e.g., two, three, or more 368 terabyte licenses can be stacked. However, I would like to see some more flexibility because you can't remove disks that you added from Azure. You would need to delete a whole disk group. When you have highly utilized Cloud Volumes ONTAP systems, you can get into a situation where you can't remove disks. This is something that I run into, so you need some flexibility with the licensing. 

NetApp could perhaps allow temporary bursts of capacity on the 368 terabytes. For example, if I'm rearranging my disk groups or disk aggregates, then I could add to the existing capacity and move my data around within the system to optimize capacity, costs, and performance. After that, I could migrate off the set of disks that the appliance is using currently, move data around, and delete the original source, but still stay under the 368 terabyte capacity. However, to do that data movement, a couple of sets of disks have to be assigned. At the same time, you might temporarily exceed that 368 terabyte limit. Therefore, that is something that could potentially be improved. 

I understand why there is a cutoff. Because if you're licensed for 368 terabytes, you should be using 368 terabytes. However, keeping in line with the elastic nature of cloud and flexibility of the cloud, some bursting of that 368 terabyte license capacity should be allowed. I think that would a good idea.

We looked at Azure Files and just regular file servers in Azure. We also looked at a couple of other not well-known vendors who are in the cloud, like SoftNAS. Basically, when we were exploring options in the cloud over two years ago. Now, when we started kind of the journey of trying to see what was available in the cloud over two years ago, nobody had the capabilities of NetApp. To date, I don't find that there is real competition for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP at the scale that they're doing it at. 

While I have been aware of Cloud Volumes ONTAP for probably over three years, it wasn't at the scale or refinement that we needed then. That's partly why we didn't go with that solution earlier. However, it met our requirements by the time we got on it.

The solution provides more granularity and feature-rich options than if we used management options provided by the native cloud service, like Azure.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.