NetApp FAS Series Reviews

Enterprise Storage for:

• Block and file
• SQL Server LUNs
• Exchange LUNs
• VM Storage. 

Backup of above via Snap products.

• Rock solid reliability
• Easy to use
• Very easy to expand disks and manage CIFS.
• It has been over seven years with no outages.

• SnapManagers for SQL
• Exchange and Oracle
• SnapMirror for DR
• CIFS management for shares/permissions

• Add wizards for newer, inexperienced users. 
• More modern GUI, not that it's bad. 
• ONTAP upgrades need to be much easier.

The primary use case is for standard CIFS/SMB file storage for Windows Clients in an ADS environment.

Samba on Solaris was a nightmare. Our situation improved with no Windows file servers, but at about 30 million files/folders, snapshot and backup functionality started to make trouble.

• Snapshots for user self-service restore
• Ability to use mirroring and SnapVault have made backup no longer necessary.

• The WAFL is slow.
• The adoption of flash by NetApp has also been lagging behind the trendsetters, like TMS, Nimble, and others.

NAS part of standardized virtualization platform, ranging from size from 15TB on-site solution to more than 500TB twin core datacenter.

• Cost effective storage for all performance levels (including all-flash)
• Integrated snapshot and backup capability
• Many protocols
• Good service

• Integrated backup functionality (SnapVault and SnapMirror)
• Option to mirror synchronously

• Automation readiness
• API exposure
• Adaptive storage quality of service

Creating a DR site using SnapMirror technology from NetApp.

• NetApp improved our organization because their features are more friendly and create environment to tests, like dev. The FlexClone technology is easy to use.
• The flexibility to create scheduling backups on the VMware platform is very useful when you need it. We can save space using VSC.
• The migration of the volume on the cluster is very useful and easy to use.
• It is very useful to verify performance problems on the any environment and move volumes to another aggregate without downtime to the application.
• Compression of the backup Oracle by RMAN on NFS saves space 5:1, for example.

• Flexibility.
• Saves space with deduplication.
• All protocols on the same box. This means that you don't need to have a appliance to export. For example, an NFS volume on CIFs volume.
• Easy integration to some cloud environments, like Amazon AWS.
• Deduplication, now on cluster mode, runs on aggregate and no more on volume only. This means that you must put all their VMware environments on the same aggregate. If you have volume from prod, dev, and homolog that shares the same virtual machine, you will have a big gain on space saving.

NetApp for all these years has been improving their storage.

The only area that could be improved is to lower prices for their All Flash FAS.

You must have "flash cash" if you used the box to Oracle, any database environment, or any application that requires a lot of reads all time.

We have used some solutions like Hitachi, Dell, and EMC, but NetApp has more flexibility and we decided to stay with NetApp.

• My first case was migrate all solutions from Hitachi Storage to NetApp FAS on SAN with brocade.
• Migrated all VMware environment to NetApp storage.
• Migrated all backup solutions that were running on Veritas Backup to VSC on NetApp.
• Migrated our whole Oracle database running on HDS storage to NetApp storage.

Setup is very easy, but you need a partner to execute your first configuration, after that the administration is easy.

The first setup must be done by any partner or a NetApp field engineer.

The price it not low, but comparing features to other vendors, the price can be balanced.

Enables us to handle business critical data with HA.

• NAS stability
• Simple customer support

Needs more SAN support.

No stability issues yet.

No scalability issues yet.

Eight out of 10.

Works on administration, not implementation.

Not overrated, though there are products available in market with comparatively lower costs.

Good for NAS and unified solutions.

NAS for the enterprise including unstructured data, EPIC Systems + the other 3,520 applications. I love those innovative healthcare data solutions that let me securely manage vast amounts of patient data (32.9 PB), use and share it enterprise-wide, and gain efficiency of scale through cloud solutions and virtualization.

Home directory access & Innovative clinical data and IT storage solutions from NetApp to share patient data across the continuum of care. Through improved flexibility and efficiency, NetApp solutions helps improve my healthcare workflows so you can deliver better patient care

Powerful
Easy to use
High availability

DFM

OCI

Data fabric

FPolicy

Cluster-mode

Hybrid cloud solution

I have found it to be expensive.
It is good as a NAS, but not a good option for SAN.We use it for storing medical images.

Some

Not yet

Customer Service:

Solid

Technical Support:

Good

Pure Storage for SAN

OK

Vendor team

18 months

Research fully

EMC

Think carefully before you jump into NetApp. There are so many competing products and you should do a proof of concept before you buy it. I'm a bit worried since NetApp is competing against the big boys like IBM and EMC. So what happens if NetApps get acquired by one of the big boys? Will they be around in another 3-5 years?

• Reliability
• Rich features
• Ease of management
• Excellent support

A reliable and easily managed storage system is a key performance factor. The system also has more features than we require.

Naturally, there would be room for improvement. As I see it, there could be more interfaces, more cache, etc., but those challenges are solved by just getting some other model.

Four years.

None whatsoever.

No issues, as expansion was a breeze.

We do use third party support. On a scale of one to 10, I would rate the support to be an eight.

During the years, we have had quite a few storage solutions, none of which did give us the same level performance, reliability, and manageability as the FAS-series has.

The initial setup was quite easy and pleasing. Just enter some key values and there you go.

For a number of years now, purchasing a storage system has been actually purchasing software. There is no plain storage anymore, more or less intelligent software solutions. Thus, licenses are required to fulfill the business demands. One considering between different storage system should carefully investigate what software options they get bundled in and what optional software they actually would need. Most storage vendors also have software, or licensing bundles, which may offer the required licenses considerably cheaper, but do also maybe offer licenses, which are not needed.

No other solutions were evaluated at the time. Actually, this system was familiar to use and fulfilled the business demands.

You really can't go wrong with NetApp products, They perform well, are rock solid, offer good space saving technologies, and the support is above par.

• Fast Snapshots
• Thin provisioning
• Simple management

With scalability, we feel the system is limited. 

From 2013 until now; four years.

No issues. The system is rather stable.

Yes, we have encountered issues. The system is limited by the number of enclosures.

The tech support is very good. We use a third party support.

Previously, we used VNX5300 NAS. We found this one better suited to our needs.

Initial setup was straightforward, not very complicated.

We used a third-party for setup.

No, we did not. We were given direction from the University.

I would recommend it to anyone. It is good for some of the NAS and VMware implementations.