NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Reviews

We use Cloud Volumes ONTAP to back up ONTAP Select instances from our plants and distribution centers to Cloud Volumes ONTAP and Azure. We store a backup solution for all or most sites.

In terms of how this solution has improved my organization, we use a third-party backup solution, like Spectrum Protect from IBM to backup finances. That's not the best way to do it. Our choice was to move from that technology straight to using the same technology for backup, which is essentially NetApp. Cloud Volumes ONTAP is NetApp. It's the same technology which is where the efficiency really is. It's much more efficient than using a third-party solution.

It provides unified storage no matter what kind of data we have. Right now, it's just backing up Volumes but NetApp is a unified solution. In our case, it's really for file storage, NFS or CIFS.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP allows us to keep more backup. We can keep more backup because of the cost of storage in Azure versus what we have in our data center. This is also completely off-site from our data centers. We have two data centers close to each other, but this actually keeps us as an offsite copy too because it's far enough away. It does keep control of our storage costs from a previous backup technology because it's kept in Azure and it's cloud-based storage. It's not our on-premise storage, it's kind of a hybrid cloud solution.

We're saving around 20% on storage. 

It is the same technology that we run on our sites. All of the backup functions and recovery are similar. It's the exact same process. From a learning experience, it's the same. If you learn ONTAP itself, then you can do Cloud Volumes ONTAP without an issue.

The main feature of it is what we call "native backup technology." We're not using somebody else's technology backup, we're using NetApp. 

The other important part to us is the Cloud Manager. It gives us a single pane of glass to look at the environment. Everything is remote right now but we will be backing up some on-premise very shortly.

Lastly, the API and web services are fairly good. That is an important feature too. We write some code to do different things. We have code that runs to make sure that everything is being backed up as we say it is and we try to also detect places where we may have missed a backup.

I'm very happy with the solution, the only thing that needs improvement is the web services API. It could be a little bit more straightforward. That's my only issue with it. It can get pretty complex. 

I have been using Cloud Volumes ONTAP for a year. 

So far, we haven't had any downtime. 

It scales well. We can add to the license. We have a 100 terabyte license right now, but we can add to it very quickly.

There is very low maintenance because once you deploy it, you run your scripts and you can see what failed and not many things fail. So, it's pretty quick.

We did contact their support initially during the initial install. It was our cloud technical support. We had a resource from them. They were excellent. 

We switched to CVO because of the efficiency and architectural consistency because it uses the same technology. NetApp to NetApp is not trying to go to somebody else.

We were backing up Spectrum Protect and we were using SimpliVity backup at one time on the license, but essentially those weren't solutions and we moved totally away from that.

The initial setup was straightforward. You log onto their marketplace and deploy the Cloud Manager. Then it will deploy the actual CVO itself. It's pretty much a point and click. You have to set up some things ahead of time, like your Azure connections if you don't have them. Those can be more complex, but the actual solution itself was fairly straightforward.

There are prerequisites that have to be done like networking to Azure to your cloud and making sure that you have firewall rules in place. Those are more site-specific, like customer-specific issues. It's not really related to CVO directly.

It took about three months to deploy all the sites which are just for North America. This is also deployed within our company and in Asia. We have about 24 sites and we have a 100% adoption rate. 

We did the deployment ourselves. 

We never really got down to the TCO. We just know that it was at least 20% better. The only reason we would pick it and change everything is that it was cheaper and consistent with our architecture. 

We don't think it's that expensive when compared to what we were paying for the previous vendor. This is less expensive. Pricing is good. 

My main advice is to get your cloud technical support online. Make sure you have all the prerequisites properly done and you understand how to deploy the Cloud Manager. That's really the main thing.

Anytime we want to deploy new sites, we have to get the network people involved for firewalls because in our case, we're coming from Azure, which is where the CVO is, back into our company's network. The security protection is the most important lesson that you've got to get right. The security of your connections is important. 

I would rate NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP a ten out of ten. 

The main use case of ONTAP is for users to utilize SharePoint. From there, they need to access data where there are specific applications as well as an individual shared folder.

It is being used for application purposes as well as for individual user purposes.

We are using the latest version.

This isn't an isolated solution. We must have NetApp to support our faster access on a file protocol. We found the same solution on Azure is just as helpful when compared to the on-premise solution.

The solution provides us unified storage, no matter what kind of data we have. If we take a normal storage account in the public cloud, then it may not be active in terms of identity level. However, using NetApp, we can leverage the identity management control integrating with our AD. From there, we can gain the computer user's access and maintain the user side entity for who is accessing what.

On-premises, we are using the same NetApp. We find the solution in Azure to be more reliable and tailorable in NetApp with the same NetApp features because it gives us the most updated NetApp solution.

If you have a larger amount of data than normal in the cloud, it is easy to provision and maintain. Waiting for the delivery of the controller, the configuration of enclosures, etc., all this stuff is eliminated compared to using on-premise.

Eight months.

From my months' experience, I haven't seen a single point of failure within the ONTAP, except for Azure maintenance.

Scalability is a very good feature. If our data reaches 90 percent (or some threshold level), it automatically increases the storage within ONTAP without our intervention.

The solution helps us control storage costs. It is scalable. If we need more storage, then we can opt for a monthly or yearly option.

The technical support is good.

Once you register with NetApp Cloud Central, people will get in touch with you who can assist you with deploying your solution.

This is the first time that we are using this type of a solution in the cloud.

The initial setup is straightforward, but I would like NetApp to come up with an easier setup for the solution.

Deployment time depends on the client. On average, deploying the entire solution can take about a day (eight hours), if there are no issues.

For a standard storage implementation project, we need to have some shared storage for the client's application as well as the user groups and shared files that they have been using. To leverage this, we've been using this solution.

You need to go through the NetApp website and go through the documents regarding deploying ONTAP. If you experience any difficulties, there is a technical team to help you.

Some of the sales managers and other team members helped me setup the environment. They explained to me how the pay as you go and BYOL models work. If you need to the BYOL model to work, they will use some temporary licenses for a 30-day evaluation. They are there for you from beginning to end if you need assistance.

Because we went with the BYOL instead of pay as you go, we haven't seen ROI.

Using this solution, the more data that we store, the more money we can save. If you use traditional cloud providers, then you cannot manage unified lists. For that, you would need to follow a set of rules and some other stuff. You also need to have more people managing the entire environment. Whereas, NetApp provides a single point solution. 

They have a very good price which keeps our customers happy. 

Once we deploy the pay as you go model, we cannot convert this product as a BYOL model. This is a concern that we have. We would like NetApp to come up with a solution for this. For example, a customer may think, "Let's use this solution." Later, he realizes that, "This is our solution and I have this budget for the year. If we can pay upfront for one year, then we can reduced the amount we pay." This is currently not possible if we select the pay as you go model.

Your OCCM should always be the same as your ONTAP, e.g., suppose you have deployed one ONTAP, then due to some reason, you deleted it and also OCCM. Then, the next time that you want to deploy another OCCM and ONTAP, that same license won't work because the license is based on the OCCM serial ID.

We did not evaluate other solutions. We only evaluated ONTAP.

NetApp is an industry leader as well as we have experienced with NetApp on-premise. That is the reason we chose NetApp as a reliable partner.

We don't use the solution’s cloud resource performance monitoring.

I would rate this solution as a nine (out of 10).

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 are using it for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure in AWS. I believe we're using the latest version.

We were able to move our VDI environment into AWS. It has been a big performance boost. It has helped our customers all around the globe access virtual desktop.

Upgrades are much easier in terms of upgrading ONTAP. It is so much easier with CVO.

It provides unified storage and gives us better access to our data. We're able to manage it. I don't really see that any different than the on-prem solution, but it does give us the ability to manage access and permissions.

CVO enables us to manage our native cloud storage better than if we used management options provided by AWS. That's because we're more familiar with ONTAP. So, it is not like we had to change how we manage storage. That was the big thing, and it has an easier user interface. Managing AWS storage is also pretty easy, but to me, the easiest thing was the fact that we're familiar with ONTAP.

I do like the cloud manager. It is a nice way of managing our environment. It definitely is a nice tool to do basic ONTAP tasks such as setting up backups, creating volumes, and managing permissions.

I like how you can easily pair on-prem with the cloud and the cloud backup feature. I like the whole integration with on-prem and the cloud for SnapMirror relationships. 

I like the backup feature because it is all SaaS, and it is easy to set up. My data is encrypted in transit. 

The compliance feature is also good, but we haven't used it yet. From what I've seen in the demos, it is really a nice feature. I like the fact that we can analyze our data. We can do data analysis with artificial intelligence and categorize data. 

They definitely need to stay more on top of security vulnerabilities. Our security team is constantly finding Java vulnerabilities and SQL vulnerabilities. Our security team always wants the latest security update, and it takes a while for NetApp to stay up to speed with that. That would be my biggest complaint.

We have been using this solution for two years.

I haven't had a problem yet.

We have not had a scalability issue, so it scales easily. We are using about 20 terabytes. We have about 200 people who are using it on a day-to-day basis. They are mostly from the finance team.

We have plans to increase its usage. We are investigating it. It is all based on the business.

I've had many support cases. Sometimes, it takes a while for them to give me a solution that works. Sometimes, they give me a solution that works, but it depends on the problem. I would rate their support a seven out of 10.

We were using NetApp, so we were using NetApp arrays. The main reason for switching was that we wanted to move our VDI environment into AWS. So, the main reason was to use the NetApp in AWS. One of the reasons why we went with Cloud Volumes ONTAP was that it was easy to migrate our on-prem solution into AWS because of SnapMirror.

We worked with Amazon FSx for a little bit, but it wasn't really ready yet. It was just released, so we decided to stick with CVO.

It was straightforward, but we were mandated to use Terraform. So, I had to create a Terraform code, but it was easy to set it up. It takes a couple of hours to just set it up if you know what you're doing, but planning, designing the application, and everything else took about three months.

We had an on-prem solution running on arrays, and we wanted to move our VDI infrastructure into AWS. In terms of the implementation strategy, first of all, we wanted to figure out the kind of array and what can we do in terms of ONTAP to make it work. We had to set up a PoC and get some test users and a VPC in place. We had to get security rules and security in place. So, there was a lot of stuff just besides ONTAP. Obviously, we needed to get the whole cloud infrastructure in place to support the VDI users, and CVO was just one part of this project.

I did it myself.

Our users are happy, so I guess that's a good return on our investment.

It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees.

My advice would be to go for it. It is a great product. It is a great piece of software. NetApp is cutting edge when it comes to software in the cloud. I don't really have any warnings.

I don't know if we're saving more money by putting in more data. It does have tiers, and I guess there is data reduction that does help us save more money. We're using cloud on CVO, and we take advantage of reduction capabilities that do help us. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.

Our primary use case is data replication to the cloud.

Using Snapshot copies and thin clones for operational recovery is convenient. This technology makes things very easy.

The unified file and block-storage access across clouds and on-premises infrastructure have made things easier for us. It means that we do not face significant roadblocks.

The most valuable feature of this solution is that it makes our data readily available and we don't have to go through a lot of trouble to access it.

We would like to have support for high availability in multi-regions.

There is no support for Microsoft Azure.

I have been using this solution for three years.

The stability is very impressive and we have had no issues with it.

Scalability is not an issue because it is really expandable. If you don't know the structure of the business you can scale up, scale down, and do everything graphically.

We have not used NetApp technical support directly. We have been speaking with partners who are in our region.

We used the NetApp Cloud Manager to get up and running, and we found it very simple. It was very easy, and you don't have to be an engineer to get it working.

Partners from our region assisted us with the deployment. CW did a good job starting from scratch and getting everything up and running. When I would give a requirement, they would come up with all of the options that were available.

I have tried Pure Storage and EMC RecoverPoint, but ONTAP is easier to use.

I love this solution. They have a lot of features and they explore the market really well, whereas other vendors fail to do those things. ONTAP keeps evolving with the needs of the market and follows the trends.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We're trying to see whether it's a good fit to move our secondary storage to the cloud, which would then be in competition with ONTAP Cloud Volumes. However, ONTAP gives us a bit more flexibility. If it's cost-effective, good enough performance, and has all the tools we need, we will continue with it. So far it looks great.

ONTAP made us less reliant on in-house hardware. It has already changed the way we're looking at our investments, purchasing plans, and budgeting for the next three to five years. We are shifting more into the cloud OpEx rather than keeping our expenses on the hardware side. That is already a good outlook.

We're just using AWS for now, but the consistency of storage management between our own program and the cloud seems to be great.

The solution has definitely helped reduce our company's data footprint in the cloud. I don't have the numbers in my head. By using compression in the cloud and deduplication, it's something that definitely reduces all the data, probably by more than 20%. That is in comparison to using native cloud source storage solutions.

In terms of our company's cloud costs, we're still seeing about the same amount of money spent. However, it's shifting towards the OpEx part and that gives us the flexibility to scale up and down versus the investment that you have to do upfront in the beginning. It's the shift that we're interested in rather than the total amount at the moment. In the future, we might expect that the cost of the cloud solution will drop. Therefore in the future, we may also see the total costs go down.

For us, the value comes from the solution's flexibility, speed, and hopefully cost savings in the long term.

I would like this solution to be brought to all the three major players. Right now it's supported only on AWS and Azure. They should bring it to Google as well because we would like to have flexibility in choosing the underlying cloud storage provider.

The stability is perfect. We have had no problems. On-premises was also good, so I'm not worried about this.

The solution is definitely scalable on the cloud. On the cloud, you can scale almost infinitely. You don't have to worry about reaching any limits, so that's definitely very good. Also in performance levels, you can have underlying storage in the cloud allowing you to change the IOPS, or performance at latency on the fly. That is something you cannot do very easily on-premises.

Their technical support is great. We're using a partner in the Netherlands for support and we have a great relationship with them.

I first encountered NetApp at Insight 2018 Barcelona. I was there and talked to NetApp.

I found the initial setup straightforward. Cloud Manager is point and click, which makes deployment pretty easy.

We involved NetApp a little bit but it was to look at the product. It's so simple to use that we were able to do it mostly ourselves without a lot of help.

Take a look at it, try it yourself. It's one month for free, with no licensing costs from NetApp. Try it out. It doesn't cost anything but some of your time. It's pretty simple to run and see how it works.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. It's not a ten because the multi-cloud has to be in three layers.

The primary use case is storage of medical records.

The solution’s unified file and block-storage access across our infrastructure is invaluable. Without it, we can't do what we do.

The consistency of storage management across clouds affects our storage operations by making everybody go to object-based storage, which is not a bad thing. I don't care what cloud provider that you use, they all are based upon what AWS comes out with, which is their S3 object-based storage. NetApp is doing that with with StorageGRID, and that's why we have one and a half petabytes of StorageGRID now, because we have developers and they all want to use object-based storage. Everybody likes puts and gets, but I still prefer traditional NFS.

The ability to Snapshot and SnapMirror between locations is the most valuable. The solution’s Snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery works very effectively. If you want to automate it, use SnapCenter 2.0. Otherwise, do it manually. It's not that hard to do.

I suspect ONTAP will just end up being a portion that runs on StorageGRID. Ultimately, everything will be object-based, then you'll just have a little dock of ONTAP that will do your NFS and CIFS.

The on-premise NetApp is very stable. I can't speak to the cloud side.

It just works. I don't have problems with it.

It's very scalable. I even insisted when we ordered the latest ones that we get the interconnect switches. So, if we want to expand, we already have those in place.

We have used technical support. As long as they don't call me at four o'clock in the morning to tell me that a drive failed and they are sending me another one, I like it. They have a tendency to do that. 

We previously used Commvault.

I have used NetApp before at two previous companies. 

Compellent is what they already had when we acquired this other company. It would just crash constantly. It is not worth it.

It is pretty easy. It is sort of wizard based.

I have done it numerous times.

We did the last deployment ourselves.

It is reliable, and Commvault is not reliable.

Dell EMC sucks. They are not innovative. They haven't done anything in years.

NetApp is the best solution out there.

I would rate it as a 10 out of 10. I've been using the solution for a number of years. I have watched it increasingly get better, not worse.

The solution’s Snapshot copies and thin clones has affected our application development speed by speeding it up. However, we do so much through Ansible that this is really irrelevant. Theoretically, you should never care about your virtual machines. Your data should always be on NFS or CIFS exports so if a virtual machine gets messed up, you just blow it away and redeploy it. I can redeploy it faster than you can log into it and troubleshoot it, but the data's always here.

With dedupe compression, it does reduce our organizational footprint. Unfortunately, we have to hold on to everything for 20 years.

We are getting ready to use the solution’s inline encryption using SnapMirror.

The primary use is virtualization as well as filer storage, pretty much all the features of the ONTAP suite.

We don't have any cloud footprint for contractual obligations. So, it's all pretty much on-prem, but it's in a co-location.

We use it to replicate between data centers. It is for our DR site as well. We use it to create redundancy.

We do on-prem S3 for StorageGRID. The on-prem infrastructure is cheap. It works just the same. It's S3, so it works very well as far as integration and things that use S3 in our environment.

The most valuable features are the native filer capabilities because a lot of SAN providers don't do that. When they do it, they do it with an appliance or a secondary. With this, it is just baked in right there on the system that you require. You don't have to have anything extra.

The solution’s Snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are the best thing since sliced bread. Rollback is super easy. It's just simple, and it works. It's very efficient.

The stability is good. I've been with NetApps for a long time, so I've seen them fall and come back. However, with cDOT and all this new stuff, it is great. It just works.

We're not that big, storage footprint-wise. However, it's simple. You just add nodes. So, it works.

We have not really used the technical support.

We had previous experiences with deploying ONTAP at other companies successfully.

ONTAP makes our storage solutions more flexible. Traditionally, that's hard to do. ONTAP gives you those features which you typically have to build yourself.

It's straightforward. But you do have to know what you're doing. Things do what you expect them to do. There is quite a bit of initial setup, but with things like Ansible and all this new stuff that they're doing, it makes it much easier and automated. So, it's simple.

I did the deployment myself with a little help from our vendor's professional services.

We have had less downtime.

Cost is a big factor, because a lot of companies can't afford enterprise grade equipment all the time. They skimp where they can. I would recommend that they improve the cost.

This company that I work for now is just acquiring quite a bit of NetApp equipment. We will be doing SnapMirror. I have done it in the past at another company.

It does exactly what it does, and it does it well. It works, and that's what really matters at the end the day: uptime, functionality, and scalability.

I would rate it a nine out of 10. There is always room for improvement. No one is ever going to be a 10.