NetApp ONTAP Reviews

I am working on cloud development while on contract with a big organization. We utilize NetApp extensively as part of our cloud storage strategy throughout the enterprise. We use NetApp ONTAP quite a bit in both PoC type projects and production. We are managing petabytes of information and a worldwide cloud in multiple data centers.

NetApp ONTAP enables us to deliver services to customers predictably, which is crucial in our line of business.

Implementing NetApp ONTAP is a very important part of our storage strategy. We could see the benefits of NetApp ONTAP immediately upon implementation, but all clouds essentially work the same. You charge for space, but you get over-allocation and deduplication that save space, which is how the company generates revenue.

It is hard to pinpoint which NetApp technology delivers the most value, but currently, most of our business relies on block volumes, focusing on the ability to create these volumes with features such as encryption at rest, encryption in transit, and various data organization and compression capabilities.

We have successfully implemented encryption in transit using TLS, which is a standout outcome that may not be commonly supported by competitors in the vendor space.

There are several features that I find valuable in NetApp ONTAP. Some of the technology is based on the older feature set, so there is stability which is paramount for our technology strategy. 

The ability to do online upgrades in a clustered setup is absolutely crucial, and I extensively use new features such as replication and backups for certain cloud features in the enterprise.

NetApp ONTAP has several limitations that we encounter, primarily related to large enterprise clients. They do not affect small clients that NetApp may have. While these limitations are clearly described, some issues require us to develop workarounds. Particularly for large setups, there are constraints, such as the limit of 1,000 active FlexVols per NetApp node, which affect large-scale deployments with tens or hundreds of thousands of active users, but NetApp directly works with us. We have NetApp residents who are essentially NetApp people present in our organization. We have a direct line of communication with them, and they try to implement strategies to overcome some of the deficiencies on our request. That indeed was done multiple times.

Another one is scalability. While NetApp ONTAP is generally very scalable, we encounter some scalability constraints that are particularly related to large enterprise setups rather than those faced by medium-sized clients.

NetApp ONTAP is generally very scalable, but there are some scalability constraints related to large enterprise setups.

The quality and responsiveness of support are generally good. Fundamental issues receive immediate attention. If you have real issues that affect your clients, they will look at them immediately. Resolution-wise, some issues are resolved very quickly, while updates requested by us may take longer. Some updates took more than a year for implementation.

I would rate their support an eight out of ten. I am happy with their support overall.

Positive

I have used alternatives to NetApp ONTAP during my career, including EMC as one of the notable options. EMC was the older technology during my usage. Some features of ONTAP are on par with other technologies. Other alternatives may not have the same limitations as ONTAP, but they have different limitations that NetApp does not have. 

Feature-wise, NetApp is competitive. Our organization doesn't make decisions lightly. Numerous architects did a comparison between NetApp and other systems before they even selected NetApp as a technology to go with. That happened quite a while ago even before me being on that contract. Feature-wise, they're on par with the competition.

The initial deployment with NetApp ONTAP can vary. Simple setups are easy to deploy but require specific NetApp expertise and architectural approaches. There could be problems later on with NetApp implementations if your initial features are not configured correctly. There is a difference between implementing NetApp on a small scale versus at a large scale like our organization. We process significant volumes of transactions, sometimes millions per second, so making proper architectural approaches is essential.

There is maintenance involved. It has at least three different components. The first one is the hardware maintenance, because things do not work well sometimes for a variety of reasons. Some components go bad, and we have a huge number of NetApp arrays. We have to have maintenance of the hardware done, which may not be NetApp-related at all. We have to have version upgrades. NetApp makes it somewhat easy, but some of the things have to be looked into. One specific example is that NetApp has a concept of key managers. In other words, they encrypt information at rest. However, they can use an external key manager. In other words, the client can bring their own encryption key, which is not even known to us for privacy reasons. The key is stored in an external box, and if that box is unavailable, that volume obviously becomes inactive as well. If you have inactive volumes like that, NetApp will not allow you to do upgrades. You can only do upgrades if all volumes are accessible. That is not always possible in some cases, so we have to have some special handling to do that. NetApp does work with us. They do have a strategy in some way to go around this limitation. However, it's not quite that easy. So, the software maintenance is not quite as easy to do.

There are also upgrades that relate to features. Some of those are easier to implement than the others, and some require license changes. That's where things sometimes get complicated because the user licensing scheme changes. You need to understand what the change is, how to get the new type of keys, how to install new hardware in ways that it will not conflict with the old one, when it can be done, and so on. It is sometimes not easy. Regular maintenance is fine, but upgrade-related maintenance varies, but it is no more complicated than any of its competitors, because I encountered similar issues with the competition as well.

Key challenges that NetApp technology addresses for our business include providing disk storage with a 99.999% uptime. It allows us to maintain a very high SLA, which is essential for our services, as without it, customers are unwilling to pay.

We continuously expand our use of NetApp ONTAP. For example, implementing the new TLS tunnel encryption for shared volumes has significantly enhanced our encryption capabilities without introducing complexity. It allows us to do encryption for shared volumes without implementing complicated encryption and transit technologies.

It's difficult for me to say. We have a wholesale contract with NetApp. We also have NetApp ONTAP On-Demand activation for certain things. We also have some preferential pricing for licenses. The licensing that I see here doesn't apply to other clients in the field. NetApp is expensive, but so are the competitors, making it hard to ascertain precise retail value. However, based on my perspective, NetApp pricing appears competitive.

I was not present when NetApp was selected. We consistently evaluate other offerings, but there are no indications of plans to replace NetApp ONTAP.

Overall, I would rate NetApp ONTAP an eight out of ten. While there are opportunities for improvement, they generally perform well and maintain a strong position within the market.

I work at an educational institute that conducts medical research. We use NetApp for unstructured storage, including both SMB and NFS file shares. In the past, we have also used it for SAP and for Fiber Channel presented storage, specifically for Oracle databases. It is mainly for unstructured storage and research data.

It meets our needs by providing the necessary shares to store our data. It is reliable, fast, and always available when needed. It is also very flexible regarding provisions. It helps to serve our storage needs.

CIFS and NFS protocols have delivered the most value. NetApp ONTAP offers very reliable CIFS and NFS protocols. By and large, the product itself is very reliable hardware-wise. 

The aggregate system needs improvement. I understand how they are alleviating this issue with all the FlexGroup volume. I understand the concept and how they get past the limitations of how much storage can be presented to a user. Currently, it is capped at about 300 terabytes, but there are situations where more is needed. The aggregates, in our case, are capped at about 800 terabytes. A way to alleviate that is by using a FlexGroup volume, which can exceed 800 terabytes, but that opens up a whole new set of issues for the future.

I have used the solution since 2002.

It all depends on who I get on the phone. I would rate their customer service a six out of ten. Bringing it back to the US would be great because I do not like dealing overseas.

Neutral

We definitely plan on continuing to use NetApp, but we are looking at other options. We also use Pure for a point solution for some applications. Pure is nothing but solid-state, and it has always been very pricey. Unstructured data for the researchers does not necessarily need performance, so it has always been an expensive solution. Over the last five or six years, Pure has developed effective SMB and NFS protocols, so they are catching up to NetApp in that respect.

We evaluated other solutions. NetApp has the best software in the market. After that, it is potentially EMC. The hardware is not the selling feature; it is the software. It was way ahead of anybody else in the way you can move data.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. It is very good.

We use it for everything, like the NAS and SAN functionality. It's a back-end for the host VMs and the Microsoft SQL Database, which is directly attached to them. We also use all-in-one file servers.

We got rid of about 25 Windows file servers, which is great. We don't have to patch them every month anymore. We now have an all in one solution, which are virtual storage machines (SVMs). For example, previously, executives would try to use presentation material on the file server and the screen would not come up for a long time. Now it come up instantly.

We use it for our mission-critical applications, such as SQL Databases and NetApp AFF.

It has multiple uses. It does everything in one box. 

I would like them to support NetApp All Flash in upcoming NVMe versions. We have an AFF8040 and NVMe version 9.4 does not currently support it. 

I would like to have an easier connection to the cloud on the back-end. Something that brings the cold data out to the cloud and brings it back when needed. We want ONTAP to do this.

While the data efficiency features are great, I want to see more efficiency and compression type of technology.

It works. It is great and reliable. We haven't had any issues. Hardware failure is rare. We have no performance issues with our AFF.

When a disk failed, it was automatically detected. They sent me a disk and I wasn't even aware of it. It happened on Sunday and they sent me a disk on Monday morning.

Scalability is awesome with a cluster node, not only can you scale up, but you can also scale out.

ONTAP tech support needs some improvement, but it has improved quite a bit.

Previously, the support center was in India and Asia. They had some communication problems but their technical skills were not up to par. Then, they pulled the technical support back into North Carolina, as this helped a lot. I can talk to a Level 1, which most of the time I don't need. When I have an issue, I know exactly what I'm talking about. I know there's a bug and need to go to Level 2. Also, our large corporation global team gets involved as soon as I open a case, and they put me through to Level 2 or Level 3, which helps a lot.

We were previously using Hitachi with NetApp. However, Hitachi is lacking in all the features. Our companies chose Hitachi because it was cheaper, but this was back in the early 2000s. Hitachi doesn't have any NAS functionality. File systems could not be migrated unless we connected to a Windows system, then Windows provided the file system function.

We looked into this solution because of its high availability and disaster recovery. We are in a dangerous business because something could blow up and everything would be lost. So, offsite backup replication, SnapMirror, and SnapVault are very important.

It was extremely easy to set up from day one.

I implemented everything myself.

It has helped us reduce the overall cost of storage. Replacing the Windows license alone provided us savings. 

We have been able to save a lot of space because there is deduplication and compression.

Just buy ONTAP and go for it.

When we were considered products, we also looked at Dell EMC. Previously, Dell EMC products only provided SAN functionality. We had to buy separate Celerra as NAS heads to attach to the SAN back-end. 

NetApp has much smarter way of doing everything. Their Snapshot technology, by just copying the index, is much better than Dell EMC, which forces you to cut a snapshot, taking up I/O.

Data Domain has a lot better deduplication technology than NetApp, and that is bad for NetApp. 

We have been using Fibre Channel, but we are planning on moving over to NVMe. We're on a 32G Gen 6 switches and HBA cards. We need to convert it to see how it will affect the speed, but it should drastically increase the performance of the connection.

NVMe over Fabric with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure is wonderful. It is easy to convert. We don't have to do much at all. It's just a matter of how we present. Instead of using WWPNs, we use an IQN number. So, it's connecting the same volume over iSCSI and Fibre Channel mixed. We just have another means to talk to the hosts.

We manage all of our storage with it. In terms of the version, we're in the process of going to the newest version. It's probably 9.12.

Resiliency is the big one for us.

Its ease of use, for the most part, through the interfaces is valuable.

It's very expensive.

I have been using this solution for over 10 years.

I'd rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of stability.

I'd rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of scalability. It's being used by the entire organization of about 400 people and probably 300 or 400 systems.

We have plans to increase its usage. I just bought up a whole bunch of new equipment.

I'd rate them a 10 out of 10. If possible, I'd rate them even higher.

I didn't use any other solution previously.

It was largely handled by NetApp themselves with me watching. So, it was pretty simple for me. For the actual software or system deployment itself, there was one person.

We have seen an ROI.

It's very expensive.

I'd advise others to go for it if they can afford it. It's very expensive, but I like it because of the support and because of its ability to just work without me having to touch it very often.

I'd rate it an eight out of ten.

I have about 500 volumes that I manage, and I love it.

It's a good thing to have a reliable storage. Our whole business relies on it. Our two main mission-critical systems, which are EBS system (Oracle Financials) and Banner, which is our database for student services, are stored on NetApp. We need it to be reliable, efficient, and quick, which it is. 

They run on AIX and are stored on ONTAP.

My experience with NetApp is its very easy to learn and intuitive. I can figure out just about everything. 

I love the System Manager. I don't even need to remember commands. I love its ease of use.

I wish tech support would be better. I wish I could talk to somebody more easily and qualified, because this is way it is supposed to be. At the moment, you talk to an entry level people, and sometimes they know less than you. You waste two to three hours with them. Finally, they send you to a higher level person who  knows something. This is something many companies need to improve.

It is very reliable. We have not lost one byte of data. There was even an occasion about three months ago where one of my nodes went down. It was recovered and nobody even noticed.

I don't worry about stability. Even when a disc goes bad, I know it will replace itself. NetApp will send me an email, “We'll send you this tomorrow.”

Scalability is very good. Now that we have an AFF A300, it will be even better. You can add more to storage on live. Before, when we had the 3220s, you only had two nodes, so you had to buy another two nodes to scale. 

Sometimes, tech support is slow to answer. However, I'm seeing this as a trend in all companies, even IBM.

I've been using ONTAP for about ten years. I started with the 3140s, then went to the 3240s, and now, I just upgraded to the AFF A300. 

I went from an 8.17 node to 9.3 cluster nodes. This was a big change. I still have a lot of things to learn. For example, the migration was done using the 7-Mode migration tool, which was tough.

We used a reseller for NetApp for the deployment. They were good.

I have been able to save space using ONTAP, particularly now on the new system. By default, you get compression, deduping, etc. We have saved at least 20 percent in terms of space.

We received a super deal for our new machine, so we were happy with the price.

I did not consider anyone else. I love NetApp.

There are some new companies out there, but you take a chance on them. With mission-critical systems, you need a stable company. You cannot play around. NetApp systems will work when things go wrong.

My experience with ONTAP has been very good. It is very reliable.

I might use ONTAP for machine learning. AI. and real-time analytics in the future. Next year will be very interesting as we upgraded to an AFF A300, so that's a new ballgame. I wouldn't mind getting into the cloud.

I am not using NVMe yet. Maybe next year, I will venture into that. I am only using Fibre Channel and iSCSI right now.

I used NetApp ONTAP to provision storage resources for stakeholders in the environment.

What I appreciate the most about NetApp ONTAP is that the customer service is great and documentation is also great. 

I can't think of anything they can do better right now. There is maybe a bug they can fix, or simply a feature that I would request for future release that would make my life easier. However, I have nothing specific at this time. They could maybe offer even better documentation.

I don't currently use NetApp ONTAP. I did use it for a few years spanning my career up to last year, June.

I have never seen any instability with NetApp ONTAP, such as lagging or crashing. It never froze up.

It's really scalable.

What I appreciate most about NetApp ONTAP is that the customer service is great and documentation is also great. The quality of the support for NetApp ONTAP was pretty responsive, always following up. I would rate them about an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have used alternatives to NetApp ONTAP and can compare it to something. I used OneFS as an alternative. In comparing them, I preferred NetApp ONTAP more.

The initial deployment when I first started with NetApp ONTAP was easy to learn how to use. It took some serious learning to fully understand how to use NetApp ONTAP. 

I felt comfortable within a couple of days. I don't know if I would say that I became an expert, however, I certainly knew enough to get my job done.

I saw the benefits of using NetApp ONTAP after some time.

I'm not really familiar with the pricing of NetApp ONTAP. It depends on what the use case is when it comes to maintenance. A lot of times, I have to manage my resources for NetApp ONTAP. It's the use case that determines how much management I have to do.

I have used alternatives to NetApp ONTAP and can compare it to something. I used OneFS as an alternative. In comparing them, I preferred NetApp ONTAP more.

I was a customer of NetApp and had no partnerships with them, just a user of the product basically. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the solution overall as an eight.

We use it for SMB and CIFS for different departments. It is also used for HIPAA and FTC compliance.

Management, deployment, and compliance are much easier. We're doing NetApp Volume Encryption (NVE), so it has increased the security model as well.

We use ONTAP for our mission-critical applications. E.g., at our pharmacies, we started loading data onto our NetApp systems.

• Ease of use.
• Ease of expansion.
• It doesn't go down and is very reliable.
• It is quite fast. 
• Since we have a hybrid solution, we can accommodate for the performance that we need.

We would like more building performance monitoring. Right now, we have to buy separate products. 

It has been very stable. We haven't had a significant outage. We do take time and test as if we were going to go down, but we haven't gone down yet.

Because we are using ONTAP Cluster Mode, if we want to increase, we add nodes or pairs of nodes. It is that easy.

I would rate technical support as an eight of ten. Sometimes, we have had some delays, on holidays and weekends, getting the right resource for a specific problem.

When we need to escalate an issue, there can be a delay when they have to find somebody. Besides that, our experience has not been bad.

We used and still use Dell EMC.

We used NetApp for the deployment. Right now, we are using a VAR, World Wide Technology, for NetApp operations.

Our experience with World Wide Technology has been good. It's a fantastic company. Whenever we have had issues, if NetApp is not prompt, they almost immediately try to resolve them. They have their own resources. We have increased our support by having them as a middleman.

We have seen ROI, especially with the deduplication. We have a high ratio of deduplication and are way past 70 percent of our VDI, as we have almost 400TBs on our VDI. We have been able to save at least a quarter of a petabyte of space.

The solution has helped our organization reduce its overall cost of storage by allowing us to have multiple sites using the multi-tenant security model, segregated from each other, while at the same time using the same resources.

Our cost per IOP is three to four dollars, but we have a hybrid solution. Therefore, we have SSD and spinning disk running together.

In the past, you didn't have to buy separate products. They were mostly included with the purchase. In the end, it's more expensive to buy it separate than together. If you are going to need it, one package at the beginning is cheaper.

I don't like this nickel-and-diming. I like an all in one solution.

NetApp is a lot better at replication and easier to set up for replication than its competitors.

Dell EMC is expensive in comparison to NetApp, but its reliable as well. We like them too.

We looked at Pure Storage and some other vendors, but were not convinced it was the direction that we wanted to go.

Do a PoC and compared against your current solution. ONTAP is very intuitive.

We use the solution for analytics and monitoring. Our monitoring system uses both Splunk and Log Insight and the analytics are tie into NetApp. 

We haven't used NVMe, but are looking forward to it. To my understanding, it is not ready yet to be implemented on NetApp or any other product. However, we're ready to start testing it as soon as the product's available. 

My use case for the solution includes both business and personal aspects. Personally, I run a lot of file and storage activities at home, managing database operations, and I prefer using NetApp as my backend storage to store data in the cloud instead of relying on third parties storage. 

For the business case at my company, we utilize it effectively, and I support it myself by troubleshooting NetApp issues. In our organization, we mostly use NetApp ONTAP. We also use some features that come with NetApp, such as Cloud Insights and Systems Manager.

NetApp ONTAP has addressed key challenges for our business, especially because our cloud organization provides technology for customers. Our clients have requested multi-protocol support over the last few years. Before NetApp ONTAP, we had services that only supported a single protocol. Now, we have a product that allows customers to launch a single service usable by multiple and different clients, rather than needing to deploy two different products. That's the main game changer for us.

NetApp ONTAP has significantly improved our customer satisfaction and enabled faster service delivery at my organization. It makes it easier to launch and scale for customers. It performs better than other storage systems we've had before, and it supports multiple protocols. Big enterprise customers want storage systems that accommodate various client machines, including Linux, Windows, or Mac. It helps ensure that users can access the same backend effortlessly. Previous services were limited to a particular technology focus, but with NetApp ONTAP, this is no longer an issue, leading to a big win for us.

In choosing NetApp over other vendors, the primary reason was its accessibility and integration capabilities. It works well across various machines, whether they are Windows, Linux, Mac OS, or different types of servers. The hybrid usage is also beneficial for backups and disaster recovery, whether on-premises or in the cloud. I utilize the SnapMirror feature for disaster recovery, and its multi-availability zone support allows customers to launch in different zones to maintain access to their data even if one goes down.

When considering the evolving cybersecurity landscape and the increase in AI, NetApp ONTAP stands out with its own security features. It offers SnapLock for extra security and integration with Active Directory for user authentication. It helps manage secure access for customers in their organization while ensuring that users can authenticate using their username and password. We have never encountered any security issues because NetApp ONTAP includes security defenses built into the service, allowing end users to secure their data effectively.

NetApp ONTAP has absolutely been a game changer for our organization. We support and use different storage services, but this is the first time we have a service and storage that supports multiple protocols, such as SMB, NFS and iSCSI. It has been very helpful, especially for big enterprise customers that want to use these protocol services. It has been a big game changer for us and a big boost over the last few years.

The best features of NetApp ONTAP that I appreciate include its security and compliance aspects. It supports Active Directory for access authentication, requiring users to be domain members authenticated by the domain administrator. There is also antivirus integration for added protection. NetApp ONTAP complies with numerous certifications, such as PCI and HIPAA, which are critical in our industry.

NetApp ONTAP supports different protocols and gives very good performance. It scales very well and can integrate with different client machines. It also works well for backup and disaster recovery.

They can make it more accessible to individuals beyond just enterprises. Many everyday users gravitate towards storage solutions such as Google Drive or OneNote, so making NetApp services more user-friendly for everyone would be beneficial.

They could focus on making it more user-friendly. Currently, many users need a certain level of NetApp knowledge to operate it effectively, often relying on command-line interfaces that demand IT or technology skills. While there is a GUI available through Systems Manager, a lot of management still occurs at the command line, so enhancing the GUI for better usability could be a key focus area.

For our next technology investments, I believe that the AI aspect will be significant. Given the current landscape, many companies are investing in artificial intelligence, and we aim to do the same. I envision having AI or some form of service integrated with our NetApp ONTAP solution in the coming months or years to facilitate easier data searches for end users.

I've been using NetApp ONTAP for three years. When we launched it in my organization, I started supporting it.

There's always room for improvement for every service. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

It scales very well for me. I always use it, and I've enjoyed using it. It has very low latency. It gives the maximum throughput possible. I would rate it an eight out of ten for scalability.

We have 500 to 1,000 users. Our clients are small, medium, and enterprise businesses.

My experiences with NetApp's support team have always been very positive. Their engineers know their stuff and perform well, so I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Positive

When it comes to return on investment and time savings, personally, I've saved a significant amount of time because of NetApp's multi-protocol support. I don't need to set up different services for Linux and Windows. Considering this, I would give it a nine out of ten.

The price could be a little bit cheaper, but you get what you pay for. I would rate it an eight out of ten for pricing because it reflects the quality of the service offered.

We work directly with NetApp ourselves to expand and add different features. There are a lot of features that we add on top of NetApp based on our customers' requests. We talk to our customers and ask them what else they would like to see. If it is a feature demanded by multiple customers, we work with NetApp to see if such a feature can be added to the service itself.

Overall, I rate NetApp ONTAP a nine out of ten. To elevate the solution to a ten, I believe adding AI integration would be crucial.