NetApp FAS Series Reviews

Our primary use case was NFS. It was used for designing chips.

The file sharing feature is most valuable.

Its operating system is very cumbersome. However, after you set it up, it runs pretty smoothly.

Its file system is not very dynamic. It is very static.

It is pretty stable. I would probably give it a six out of ten in terms of stability.

It is scalable to some extent. There is a limit, but then everything has a limit. We were using it at three sites across the US. We ran into this issue of hitting the limit just once in a while. When you are growing a cluster, you usually hit that limit.

Their support was okay. I wouldn't say it was very great, but it was there. Occasionally, they would just go round and round in circles. They didn't know what to do with the case.

They followed the sun model, which is followed by almost every company. If you open a case and the person is one hour away from his break or the end of his day, he would just say that he will have to give the case to someone else, and then you start all over again.

We have had different NetApp models. FAS has been around for a long time. The newer models are called AFF, and I have used AFF 300 and AFF 400.

Its implementation was complicated. It takes a couple of hours if your network and DNS are ready. 

There was a NetApp SE on the site to help us.

We purchased it for four years, and it wasn't expensive. It was reasonable. 

Every company has a different agreement with NetApp. We got everything we wanted with all the bells and whistles and all the features and functionalities.

Its operating system is a little cumbersome, but it runs pretty smoothly most of the time.

I would rate NetApp FAS Series a seven out of ten.

I use NetApp FAS Series for storage consolidation, database management, performance, and data protection. We also use it for unified environments where you run multiple protocols. You can run it through a FAS or an AFF system. Our core applications are running on it, so it's always up.

I like the unified management feature because sometimes you end up running a single protocol on the entire system. Although it has the capacity to do multiple, you have to go the route to enable that. Sometimes it isn't convenient. You rather have a system for a particular protocol and another system for other protocols, especially in a big environment like mine.

Interfacing with the cloud environment could be better. I want to be able to move some cloud volume and integrate it seamlessly with my home on-premise storage. Sometimes I have issues with port permissions. NetApp probably needs to improve more on the integration side from on-premise to the cloud.

Capacity management could also be better. The difference between AFF and FAS has always been an issue, but now we have the advanced disk partitioning technology on the whole FAS systems that can give us more usable capacity. That has been the bigger issue that I had with NetApp in terms of improvement, and they seem to be working on it now.

I have been working with NetApp for more than ten years.

It's a stable solution. The trouble we have with stability is the trouble we created ourselves. Once the system is installed and configured, it's stable. Except sometimes, we want to check out things, and they create some trouble for us. If it weren't stable, we wouldn't be investing in it for the past ten years.

NetApp FAS Series is a scalable solution. We scale transparently, and we scale out and scale up. If we are scaling up with heavy capacity, it's very simple. Once we loop it, we have it and send it. We don't even have downtime for that. 

Sometimes it's tricky when we need to cluster several controllers and to scale-out many times. But it doesn't really have a major effect on our business. Sometimes we schedule it to let the business know that there might be some downtime for a period. We are finding ways to reduce the impact, and I think it's seamless. If I have to rate it, I'll give it 85%.

My experience with technical support has been very good. In fact, most of the things I'm able to do, I learned how from the technical support team. They don't just work. They work, and then they allow me to learn with them. As they are doing it, they put me through, and I'm able to pick up one or two things every time I get their support.

Although it's in two layers because of the kind of customer I am, we have what we call dedicated service accounts managers. Even before your issues come up, the guy triggers it, and then they are proactive in managing our whole system. 

But sometimes, we will have issues where we have to raise support cases, and we have a good contractor there. We have four hours of premium support. So far, we always get a response within four hours, and sometimes we have our resolution.

The initial setup was a complex process, but it's better now.

We use a local vendor and integrator most of the time to implement this solution. Initially, the system always comes with about three years of support. I have very good vendors around, and it's great all around. They also come around to support, but first level support, I do it by myself. When it gets complex, I invite the integrator and sometimes the OEM.

It's not cheap, but at the same time, it's also inexpensive. It's somewhere in between.

I would recommend this solution to new users because it's easy to implement. It's easy to install, it's easy to scale, and there is what we call investment protection. If there's a new controller that comes up, your existing controller can integrate with it. You don't have to trade in what you have. It always has forward compatibility and backward compatibility. I will always recommend NetApp FAS Series.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give NetApp FAS Series a nine.

We use the solution for data storage. We are customers of NetApp and I'm the assistant director of our company. 

One of the valuable features of the solution is data consolidation and visualization - and snapshots of course. The solution is easy to manage. 

We'd like to move to a solution that does more beyond just data, like starting to get more to servers and network specialization and data visualization and things like that. Server network and management specialization or consolidation. And also, trying to see a bit more single plane of glass in terms of managing, so that it gives you more insight in terms of what's happening. 

Ideally the solution should have one console, the ability to use a single plane of glass across the enterprise. Because we have one VRR, one size duplication so just to have one console where you can manage everything else in harmony would be a good additional feature. 

I've been using this solution for 15 years. 

This is a stable solution. 

The solution is scalable at the data level because it uses aggregates so you can easily increase data. But of course it's dependent on your provision for growth reports. I don't know how many use the solution but our company has around 600-700 employees and we have two people dealing with maintenance on the product. It doesn't require more than that. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. If you're good, you can get it up and running within a week. 

I think the pricing of this solution could be lower because really it's just storage consolidation these days. I think this technology has matured so much. It's time to make it slightly more competitive, it's on the high side for now.

Obviously anyone looking at this solution must have primarily a data storage use case. If they have a strong case for data storage, it's a good solution. From there it's just a matter of managing work flows between SAN and NAS which requires planning. You can then manage your capacities very well if you know your data requirements. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We are a solution provider and NetApp FAS is one of the infrastructure-related products that we implement for our clients. Our customers' use cases vary, where some of them use it as a backup target and others use it for the general workload. The primary use case is probably for general workload.

The most valuable feature is SnapMirror.

If our customer needs a high-performance storage solution then we don't recommend this product.

Some of our customers complain about not liking the UI, whereas others say that they love it. Also, some say that the FAS is too slow and some say that it performs fine. It's all relative and depends on the customer as well as the use case.

We have been working with the FAS series for about 10 years.

The FAS series is very stable.

The product scales really well.

The group that supports FAS supports all of the various NetApp products. I have found their support is responsive and thorough.

I regularly work with solutions from NetApp, Dell, and HPE.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The price depends on the size and features. I've sold arrays for as little $20,000 USD and as high as $300,000 USD. It would be very difficult to give an average cost.

In some cases, there are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

The suitability of this product depends on the use cases and the environment. For places where we sell it, it fits well. In places where it doesn't fit well, we would typically go with another solution like NetApp All-Flash storage, or something from another vendor.

My advice for anybody who is implementing the NetApp FAS series is to make sure that it's the proper fit. Perform a detailed sizing analysis prior to making the purchase.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for keeping our information reliable. In our case specifically, here at the operations location, we've got a MetroCluster for redundancy.

For us, the greatest aspect of the solution is the fact that it just runs. It is amazingly resilient. That's very important to us, because we are basically, with some exceptions, have a 24/7 operation. 

The newer features will be able to do things without interrupting the user experience, such as moving volumes on the fly, as well as adding and removing nodes to the clusters. That general set of features is pretty important to us.

The one aspect of the solution that's negative for us is also more unique to us due to the fact that we did a MetroCluster. The tiebreaker piece that does the monitoring of the two different locations, and determines if one is not talking to the network normally (or if it's truly down) is a little difficult. It feels like it was not designed from the beginning to fit well into the other pieces. It feels like it was thrown in at the last minute and it is not smooth. I've actually spoken to NetApp about that. I understand from a little bit of my research that they do have another product out. They've renamed it. I don't know how much they've changed it. I don't know if they have made that a better fitting piece or if it's just got a different name.

I still have not moved to their most recent version. I believe they have incorporated several updates that I haven't had experience with yet. I'd hate to say, "Oh, we should put it that in there," and it's already there.

We have different geographical locations. The different locations probably would have a different timeline in terms of when they started using the solution. The location I am sitting at is an operations-based charter for our location and we have had the FAS type filer for probably 12 years or so.

The solution is very stable. It's quite reliable. We have it going 24/7. It doesn't crash or freeze. There aren't bugs or glitches, at least not that I have experienced. It's good.

Scalability is not something that I would have much experience in from this location. We're a smaller site with about 1500 users. It's not something that has to be extremely scalable at our location. 

From talking to my coworkers at the larger locations, I believe that NetApp has become more scalable than they have been in the past, so they're going the right direction.

The solution's technical support is outstanding. We're more than satisfied with their level of service.

In terms of the initial setup, the migration of the MetroCluster, in particular, is more complex. 

I handle the management and maintenance of the solution myself, unless I need the assistance of a consultant.

We had a consultant come in and help us when we went from the non-clustered MetroCluster to the clustered MetroCluster for the different versions. That was a bit more than I wanted to tackle. I brought in the NetApp consultant to do that. I would say it was more complex than straightforward overall. The consultant even noted that when he was here that this is probably not something that, as a customer, he'd want to do on his own.

The consultant was excellent. He laid out a very clear roadmap of what we were going to do and broke it into three parts so that we didn't have too much on our plates and we could make adjustments in between each part. In the end, it was pretty smooth.

We haven't really done anything with the leasing options that they have recently come out with. We have instead outright purchased the equipment and all of the software that we use from them. 

It doesn't seem out of the normal range for other vendors. 

I don't really have a big pro or con stance on the pricing aspect of the solution.

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with NetApp.

The FAS Series itself is not as complex as a MetroCluster configuration of the FAS. I would say if you're doing the MetroCluster configuration, it's worth it to get a consultant to assist. Almost every time that I have used a consultant, I have been very glad that I made the decision to hire them. I've done the incremental migrations on my own without difficulty, however, the big changes from platform to platform in particular, and from the non-clustered on tap software version to the clustered on tap software version are more difficult to perform. It's worthwhile to get consultants in those instances.

The single FAS setup, I would say, the first time I did it, was probably the biggest learning curve. Regardless of the vendor, I would probably recommend having a consultant come in for the first time you're learning all the ins and outs of the solution. After that, the migration for the individual FAS and non MetroCluster FAS seems to be very manageable if you've got a certain level of experience. If storage is kind of an extra task for you versus your primary task, you're probably going to want to pull in a consultant regardless.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use it for storing our database data and for our virtual machines.

The best feature is its ONTAP product line for Ransomware protection. Another benefit is the hybrid and unified model. It also has features for file storage and block storage.

I was a little skeptical about the model. I wonder why the replication is included in the ONTAP One bundle when some customers may not require additional features. It should ideally be part of the ONTAP base bundle, even if there's a slight price increase.

I have been working with this solution for approximately two years now.

The solution is stable. We've had no issues with it.

The tool is scalable and meets our requirements for TVs. It handles beta bytes well. We are happy with its scalability.

The technical support and the supporting partner are great.

Positive

I work with HPE and Huawei OceanStor, too. HPE is great, but I'm not satisfied with Huawei OceanStor. I'm comfortable with HPE and NetApp FAS Series.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is a SaaS solution. and very easy to maintain. It’s not a high-maintenance device. It runs smoothly. We use it within our university and have up to a hundred concurrent user sessions. 

The deployment was handled by the partner from whom we made the purchase.

The product is on the expensive side, but the feature set is excellent.

I recommend the solution. Overall, I rate it a perfect ten because I haven’t encountered any issues since I’ve started using it.

NetApp FAS Series provides all the essential capabilities of E-Series. It is a complete package and even more reliable than E-Series.

They should add all features from Flash Pool, Flash Cache, and other new features into the product.

I rate the product’s stability a ten out of ten.

I rate the product’s scalability an eight out of ten.

NetApp FAS Series is simple to set up.

We deployed the product with the help of our in-house team.

It is a moderately low-priced platform.

If you are looking for a solution with good scalability options, go for NetApp FAS Series. I rate it an eight out of ten.

The product is flexible. 

Everythink is ok. 

I have been working with the product for four to five years. 

The product is stable. 

The solution is scalable. It is recommended for medium companies. 

The product's setup is easy and takes one working day to complete. One person is enough to implement the solution. 

The product's pricing is reasonable. 

I would rate the product a nine out of ten. The tool is the best one in the market in terms of pricing and features.