NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Reviews

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.

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.

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 for a transition off of our on-premises ONTAP and secondarily to add functionality as we migrate.

The ability to do a straight SnapMirror from our on-prem to the cloud with no other data transitions is excellent.

The simplicity of cloud.netapp.com has been helpful. The fact that you're managing your on-prem and cloud and Snapshots all through one UI makes it very easy.

We currently run ONTAP across multiple physical data centers, and our file services are critical for our firm. The ability to migrate and keep the status quo of protection of data and ease of management are the biggest benefits.

This meets our hybrid or multi-cloud business needs since it fits right in. We decided to go with hybrid cloud and multi-cloud. We wanted to continue working with the same vendors that we did in our physical data center. We've invested time, energy, and staff training to build those relationships. Carrying them to the cloud with little friction is critical.

We've been dealing with general pre-requisite infrastructure configuration challenges. Once those are out of the way, it is easy.

We've been reviewing and testing the solution for three months. 

So far, the product is as stable as anything else in the cloud. It's up to us to make sure if we need a high availability to put it in. Other than that, standard nodes allow for faster and easier deployments for lower critical environments. Stability-wise, the product has been fine.

Our global footprint is, with reduction, about 300 terabytes. 

I haven't attempted any scaling yet.

Technical support is as good as any other enterprise support. Luckily, we haven't had a call yet, so I can't really evaluate it properly.

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution. 

The initial setup is straightforward. Once you understand the prerequisites, the deployment from your cloud.netapp account is straightforward.

We work closely with our local SE that is assigned to our account. He brings in his cloud support team as needed for any questions and evaluations.

I haven't gotten deep into pricing. I can't speak to costs. 

We were looking at a few solutions, including AWS FSx for Windows. FSx for Windows, at the end of the day, was a step back from the abilities for file shares for us. We would be stepping back to a Windows-based file server versus NetApp Snapshot, SnapMirror, and global replication of functions. The other option was a complete platform shift, which would've been more of a migration platform than we were willing to commit to.

We're evaluating FSx for ONTAP as well. If that looks attractive, we will transition some workloads to that as well. Potentially, in the future, we could use Cloud Insights as the other NetApp product.

We haven't done any migration yet; we're in production. That said, the whole point is to have the ability to just extend our existing NetApp and valve structure straight to the cloud.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It serves all of our needs. I have not known the product over a long enough period of time to just rate it at a perfect ten out of ten.

The solution is for file sharing and networks. If we have a cluster in a network, for example, two servers needed to use a common file, NetApp is a good tool. You can spin up a network from the other cluster, so if your application is a multi-node cluster and you need a common place to share the drag with, you can use NetApp for that. 

At the time we implemented it, there wasn't any other solution. We needed a cluster, and we needed a common place where both nodes can share a file. There was not a good solution at that time besides NetApp. Now, there is. There's EFS. EFS is for Linux only. NetApp works for Windows. However, now, AWS is competing with NetApp with FSx. However, NetApp also has a feature for FSx.

The cluster needs to use a common file share, so NetApp just does that.

They provide extra security, backups, and many other features with it. 

One of the most important aspects is the flexibility to expand it. It's very scalable. 

We can easily file share with AWS. 

ONTAP is great for helping you migrate on-premise workflows to cloud environments. I would rate it a solid eight out of ten. It does what it's supposed to do. It was just expensive.

My impression of ONTAP against native AWS integrations is that FSx is much cheaper. That said, NetApp has more flexibility. Therefore, it is competitive against AWS. NetApp has an advantage in its class, and FSx has an advantage in terms of its low cost. FSx just lacks features.

In terms of ONTAP integrations with AWS native services like AWS Backup, NetApp uses AWS, so in a way, it's already backed up. If you want to provision one terabyte being backed up, they would provision ahead of time, so that way you protect your data. 

The cost needs improvement. Cost should go down. If you have a company with many servers, then the cost is down. However, if you're in a situation where you only need it for one function, then the cost can be overwhelming.

I've been using the solution for two years. 

It's pretty reliable. It's an HA solution, so even if one cluster goes down, another cluster can support everything.

The solution is extremely scalable. For example, if you initially subscribe to one terabyte, and then all of a sudden, you need two terabytes, you can dynamically expand it. You can add a feature within NetApp, and it will automatically increase it for you. You never have to worry about the space getting out of control.

Technical support is not bad. NetApp does a lot, quietly in the background. I don't even have to look for support for the most part. In most cases, when I do look for support assistance I get my questions answered. 

They could improve their response time. Once, there was an AWS outage and it took a long time to get a response. 

Neutral

We started using this solution before AWS developed its own tool called FSx. It's very similar to FSx. However, NetApp provides even more features than FSx does.

NetApp is a multi-cluster. Like FSx, the cluster is controlled by AWS itself, so you don't see that background feature. Unlike NetApp, all the deployment is in our control, so we can use that. Then there was a node feature that you can get with NetApp support in addition to the cloud support. Those are the key features. It's a little more expensive than FSx. However, there are good reasons for it.

We've been using NetApp for a while, so we'll just stick to it.

The initial setup was extremely easy. It was extremely simple to set up; it's a couple of clicks of a button, and it will then have an HA cluster for you. That's one of the good features of NetApp, the ease of setup.

I deployed the solution basically by myself.

We needed an HA solution, which we got from NetApp, so that's the only return we've received. Otherwise, we would have to go with another risky option. We do now have the option of moving over to FSx as well.

Cost-wise, ONTAP is a bit high.

We looked into FSx, which came out after implementing NetApp. We tried to use the AWS NetIQ solution with the EFS. That said, their EFS is only for Linux. There was a way to do EFS for Windows also by using Samba Share, yet that gets a little bit complicated and unreliable, so we chose NetApp at that time to keep things simple.

We have not reduced the amount of our storage with ONTAP. That was not our intention. We are not using NetApp to reduce our storage costs. We needed a reliable HA solution; that was our main goal.

We have not reduced any costs by using ONTAP. With our services, we are only using them for one thing. If we start using the product for many other functions, it's definitely a good solution. So we are trying to find other use cases for NetApp. The more we use it, the more we reduce costs.

NetApp does offer a ransomware solution, which AWS NetIQ does not offer yet. That said, we haven't faced an issue with ransomware yet. Still, that is one of the key features of NetApp that AWS does not provide yet.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. I'd rate it higher if the price were cheaper. 

My employer is a partner here in Brazil. We have clients using many different versions of the solution. Some clients are using private clouds and hybrid clouds.

Our clients use the solution as a Direct Access Recovery (DAR).

The volume is an amazing feature.

I would like to see more information about Cloud Volumes ONTAP using Google Cloud Platform on NetApp's website.

I have been using it for 12 years.

It is a stable product. I haven't had an issue with the stability of this product.

Its scalability is very good.

I haven't had any trouble with their technical support. I would rate them as 10 out of 10.

Positive

The initial setup is easy.

We need two engineers for the deployment of this solution: one for deployment and another for maintenance.

The pricing could be improved. It is a good product, but it is very expensive for me.

I would rate this product as 10 out of 10.

Generally what we show our customers are possibilities for using Cloud Volumes ONTAP for multi-cloud environments, to do disaster recovery and to back up sites.

Our company provides backup and DR professional services. We allocate people to support our customers' needs in these areas. We implement the solution that the customer requires.

By creating snapshots and a multi-cloud dictionary, the solution doesn't have to replicate all the data. The dictionary can point to some of the data on another site and create a correspondence between sites. It's going to lower the storage cost. For example, it saves my clients between 50 and 60 percent.

One of the features our customers like is that it can be used from one cloud provider to another. They can use it from Azure to AWS or vice versa. That way, they don't need to use the same provider for backups. If something goes wrong on the primary site, having the same data in another cloud service provider is important.

We have customers that are still using IBM mainframes and that very old SNA architecture from IBM. There are questions about how you interconnect the data on the mainframe side. Those requirements are just for our big customers. We have one, here in Brazil, that is very big that uses a lot of mainframe storage. But I don't know if it's worth it for NetApp to invest in developing products to include mainframes for a few customers.

We have been a NetApp partner for three years. We have been distributing this solution for about a year and a half.

I cannot precisely say what the SLA availability is for the platforms, but in general, the stability of the cloud service provider, whether you put it in AWS, Azure, or even in GCP is very good. There are very few moments during the year that those platforms have instability. Normally their availability is at "four-nine's."

We have people assigned to us from NetApp to support us in both pre-sales and post-sales. On the post-sales side, our customer may open a case with us and we will open a case with NetApp.

NetApp's support is responsive.

Positive

We started using Spotinst and then NetApp acquired the company. From that point on, we have done a lot of business together with NetApp.

The setup is familiar because many software as a service providers have created the same types of stacks and permissions and roles. We are able to use the same skills to do these kinds of installations.

Overall, the pricing of NetApp is aggressive and the pricing becomes more aggressive as the amount of data increases. The cost for a given volume of data that you are storing becomes lower. The greater the volume of data, the cheaper the license.

With increased volume, it is expected that the cost of each megabyte will be less. It's not a "wow," or a compelling feature. It's much more compelling when you say that, by using the solution, the data replication will be improved. Those are more technical arguments and better than saying if you increase your volume you're going to decrease your price per megabyte. Other features are also more compelling than that.

The licensing is very straightforward, with the cost based on the volume.

In the past, we have tried to resell other solutions, like Wasabi, and we evaluated the Commvault solution. NetApp has many solutions for us, not just the storage and itself. It doesn't just create a repository for saving things with a lower cost. NetApp has cloud products as well as an open-source project. That variety of offerings is the main aspect that is important for us.

We use it to store all kinds of data, both structured and unstructured.

The way that it has helped our organization is that it requires less time to manage. It's almost like a set-it-and-forget-it type of solution. We don't have to do too much maintenance. Compared to other products, it doesn't need so much babysitting. It's easy to set up and it works. It does the things it is expected to do.

In addition, it provides unified storage no matter what kind of data you have. It has multi-protocol support. It does shares and it does block, so it's a one-stop solution that can fit all of your needs. You don't need multiple solutions for your different types of data.

The most valuable features are that it's 

• reliable
• simple 
• performs well.

It also helps to keep control of storage costs.

The only issue I can think of is metrics, but I think they have improved that in the newer versions already. There should be an easy place to see all your metrics.

I've been using NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for more than 10 years.

It's very stable. We haven't had any issues since setting it up. It all depends upon the disk. The faster it is, the better the performance.

It is a very scalable solution. We are looking at how we can grow in the cloud and it can definitely scale in the cloud.

The support is good in general but the initial, frontline support could be improved. Because I have already been using the product for so long, when I call support I would rather talk to somebody who is a little bit more advanced or senior, rather than talking to the first-level support. Usually, it takes some time to reach out to their senior support. The advanced support is good. The frontline support can still be improved.

Positive

We've used Dell EMC in the past. We switched because NetApp definitely provides us with multi-protocol support and it is a one-stop solution.

It's fairly easy to set up. For a new SAN it takes a couple of hours to get the setup done. The additional configurations take another three or four hours. You can get the whole thing, a new system, set up within a day so that it is ready to go to testing.

Our implementation strategy is that we use CIFS shares and NFS shares in our environment. We also have block storage for SQL and Oracle. That has been our general plan all along. We separate these protocols by virtual servers. Once the necessary cabling is done, it's a matter of setting up the network interfaces for each, provisioning some storage, and testing things out. Overall, it's fairly straightforward.

I strongly recommend the solution. The biggest advantage is that it works as expected. There's less maintenance so you don't need too many people to support it and you save money in the long run.

We store our user documentation repository in NetApp. We are serving multiple divisions, and there are use cases grouped by divisions, by user access rights, et cetera. We also have specific requirements for the backups and restores.

The main use case for us in going with Cloud Volumes ONTAP was to ensure the IOPS or performance. There are other solutions available that are probably more cost-effective than NetApp, but given the criticality of our application, the performance expectations, and the availability, those were the factors that helped us to zero in on the NetApp solution.

In terms of administration, the portal which provides the dashboard view is an excellent tool for operations. It gives you volume divisions, usage rates, which division is using how much data, and more. The operations portal is fantastic for the support team.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP provides unified storage, no matter what kind of data you have. In terms of our data, it's mainly Word and PDF files, but we have a specific use case where applications are using XML files for document management.

The only area for improvement would be some guidance in terms of the future products that NetApp is planning on releasing. I would like to see communication around that or advice such as, "Hey, the world is moving towards this particular trend, and NetApp can help you do that." I do get promotional emails from NetApp, but customer-specific advice would be helpful, based on our use cases.

We started using NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP in production in April of this year. But we had been working with the NetApp team before that, from October of 2020, to get the configuration right in the test environment. Overall, we have been using it for about one year and two months.

There has been just one incident since we started using it, in which a node refresh needed to be done. The stability is pretty good with only one incident in 14 months. We're pretty happy with that.

We have been pretty impressed with the scalability because when we started, we had to immediately onboard two more divisions and it was pretty straightforward, once we had the base setup going. We were able to scale it up pretty quickly and we were able to do it on our own.

We are using Cloud Volumes ONTAP daily. Our departments are copying the files on it and sharing them. It's a part of their daily work.

At the project level, we are not looking to expand our usage of NetApp, but at the organizational level, there are plans. They are looking at additional use cases that can be  onboarded to NetApp.

After we deployed we had a couple of queries in terms of optimizing uses. We raised a support ticket and the help was available within a couple of hours. They had people on a call supporting us.

We're pretty happy with the support we're getting and with our account manager. Everyone is prompt in responding, so we're quite happy.

Positive

We used a typical Windows file share. Then, when we moved to the cloud, we worked with Azure Files. But in terms of performance and stability, we found that NetApp was way ahead of the other solutions.

Overall, the setup process was excellent. It was pretty straightforward but we also had NetApp engineers available and dedicated to us on a call when we were setting it up. To help us get going, there was tremendous support available, which was good.

The setup time was about six hours and there were about two hours during which we had conference calls with the NetApp team. 

The NetApp team was very helpful. The engineers worked with us to understand our use cases and advised us on the configurations. They weren't just checking what we were doing but were contributing to the overall setup. That was a good experience.

It's too early to comment on ROI because we're just a little more than one year into a five-year business case. We'll probably see a return in the third or fourth year.

The pricing of this solution is definitely higher than what the typical Azure Files and AWS solutions charge, but given the features and the stability NetApp has provided, we are okay with it. We are not complaining about the pricing.

We looked at Azure Files and the Amazon EFS file system.

The pros for NetApp were definitely the stability, performance, and availability, out-of-the-box. Even Cloud Volumes ONTAP can be set up in HA. With Azure as well as AWS, you have to have your own custom solutions on top of them. Another advantage with NetApp is the admin portal which has a very good dashboard. Because it gives a good view of usage in real time, decisions become easier for the business.

The only challenging part that we faced with NetApp was that it would have been good to have a sandbox available for a PoC scenario. Without it, what we had to do was get a trial license and set it up. With Azure and AWS, you go directly to the console and just provision it. With NetApp, we had that initial period where we had to set it up on a trial license for a month, and when that was getting close to expiring, we had to extend it.

First and foremost, test the use cases where you need availability and performance as the key drivers for a solution. In those scenarios, NetApp is way ahead compared to what the competitors offer. But given the cost of the other solutions, there has to be a three- to five-year view if you are going to go with NetApp. You will not see a return on your investment after six months or one year.

I'm happy with the way it is handling our use cases and meeting our performance requirements.