NetApp ONTAP Reviews

ONTAP is Netapp's data management solution for on-premise and cloud datastores.

ONTAP itself hasn't really "improved [our] organization", but the Netapp IP that we leverage THROUGH ONTAP is a cornerstone for our data management and our disaster recovery/business continuity programs.

The solution is extremely stable and easily scalable.  The snapshot capabilities protect against data loss due to corruption and human error, the snapmirror replication methodology provides efficient disaster recovery, and the data compression/deduplication technologies provide amazing storage efficiency.  Add to that the seamless management of hierarchical and object storage on-premise and in the cloud and you have a compelling solution for broad data management under a single platform.

The ONTAP UI is constantly evolving, and it is always a work in progress.  Several management constructs (e.g. disk aggregates) have been removed from ONTAP and relegated to the command line only, seemingly to streamline the UI.  It would be nice if future releases would allow us to turn the features we actually use back on.

Since 2005.

Rock solid and bulletproof.

It's scalable. You can have many, many nodes in a cluster. You can have multiple clusters as well. It can scale up or out.

Overall, my experience with Netapp support has been excellent.  Like all large tech providers, they have had occasional lags in their support services, but I have had very few major problems, and I have never had an issue that they could not or would not resolve.

Positive

Many years ago, we were an EMC shop, but we moved to Netapp in 2005, and have never seen a reason to leave the Netapp platform since.

The initial complexity really depends on the architecture required to support each customer's data needs.  That said, once the systems have been set up, ongoing maintenance is very straightforward.

We absolutely used a vendor team, and I would recommend that most Netapp customers do so.

We've never really calculated the ROI, but the value of Netapp's compression and deduplication technology should not be underestimated and will become all the more important as we increasingly move workloads to and from public clouds.

Great enterprise-grade IP is never inexpensive, but Netapp successfully delivers a lot of value for the money.  Netapp offers its data management solutions in an ala carte fashion which makes licensing a bit nebulous, but there are valid arguments on both sides.

Find a good channel partner.  If you are in a very large shop with plenty of storage experts, then you might go it alone.  For the rest of us, having a capable partner to help with architectural and technical considerations is a total game changer.

I have been using this solution for the past year to store our data. We are utilizing a combination of multiple instances, around 20 to 30, and configuring the storage with NetApp ONTAP. 

It functions like shared storage, the data that we use in the instances is stored with NetApp ONTAP. We have configured it as shared storage.

It's very easy to configure, and once we did that, we could use basically everything. Any amount of data can be stored without any issues. 

I did not face significant issues with reliability. It is a multi-edge deployment, so it is always operational. 

I never encountered slowdown issues. We run many instances at all times. Our customers have never reported any slowdown issues with NetApp ONTAP.

For administration, there is no user interface present for NetApp ONTAP, so I have to rely on the ONTAP CLI. 

Also, the documentation for the ONTAP CLI is not comprehensive. It provides only a few examples, which are not helpful in solving issues. More examples would make it easier for me to understand.

I have been using this solution for the past year.

I have not faced many issues with stability. Sometimes, I encounter problems taking backups. Occasionally, a few megabytes of data are missed during backup. When backing up, data coming into the snapshot is not always captured. Such issues are rare, occurring once or twice out of 40 to 50 snapshots.

This solution is flexible and elastic. Whenever I am running out of data, I am able to immediately add some terabytes, and it scales up right away. I do not spend much time adding data or storage capacities, whether upsizing or downsizing.

I am a direct customer and I'm receiving premium support. They are direct customers to AWS. We have cloud-based support. AWS may contact NETAPP directly if there are issues. Whenever I send an email, an immediate response comes from their end. It is a good feature of their service.

Neutral

I used something else related to Windows, however, I eventually migrated to NetApp ONTAP. The number of customers were growing and it became hard to manage storage, and there were limits with Microsoft. ONTAP scales well. We never face issues with performance or availability either.

The initial setup was very difficult; it required ten to 12 people to configure, making it a very large process. Migrating to NetApp ONTAP was a tough process. However, after the migration, everything went well from that day onward. It takes one to two weeks to migrate the data over to ONTAP.

Originally, we configured it first in some nonproduction environments. After that only, we took the initiative to do the production. That was after around one month. There was a full POC and a lot of research. After that, only we configure these two productions. Overall, it takes about one month's time.

Once configured, maintenance can be managed by two or three people.

Maintenance revolves around managing disk space since it is a shared storage. We have to monitor that. 

I need a dedicated team, as there is much work to do in the configuration phase. 

Pricing is confidential and handled by management, not users. 

I would rate NetApp ONTAP between seven out of ten. The documentation is very hard to read, and they do not provide good examples for consideration. 

We manage our data systems with NetApp ONTAP through either the command-line interface or the graphical user interface.

We implemented ONTAP because it provides a unified management interface for all storage, simplifying administration by using the same language for both SAN and NAS environments.

NetApp ONTAP is user-friendly.

The auto-completion feature now simplifies ONTAP management by streamlining command-line operations. When entering commands via the CLI, auto-completion suggests relevant options, improving efficiency and reducing errors. This enhanced functionality has proven effective in managing various storage environments, consistently delivering the expected performance.

We have tested ONTAP in several environments, and its performance has met our expectations.

ONTAP reduces human error by providing helpful auto-completion features, eliminating the need to memorize all commands.

ONTAP helps improve our cost savings because NetApp products are competitively priced compared to IBM and Dell.

We realized the benefits of ONTAP immediately.

Our organization is short-staffed, and ONTAP's ease of storage management is well-suited to our small team.

ONTAP's GUI does not encompass all the features available in the CLI. Some functions can only be executed through the CLI.

I have been using NetApp ONTAP for about eight years.

I would rate the stability of ONTAP eight and a half out of ten. There are bugs from time to time, especially in new versions. If we upgrade, there might be issues with some features, but it is generally stable.

Our previous product faced scalability limitations requiring a complete replacement. However, recent systems, particularly the new NetApp systems, demonstrate significantly improved scalability compared to their predecessors.

The technical support is good.

Positive

Our company used various storage solutions from vendors like Dell, IBM, and Hitachi. However, NetApp ONTAP stands out due to its consistent core functionality, even with feature updates, maintaining simplicity compared to other complex solutions.

The complexity and duration of a NetApp ONTAP deployment depend significantly on the chosen approach. Building a new ONTAP environment from scratch typically takes around two weeks, while migrating an existing storage infrastructure from another vendor to ONTAP can increase the deployment time to two months due to the added complexities of data transfer, compatibility considerations, and potential application downtime.

In my experience of almost 25 years, ONTAP was less time-consuming than most other products I've worked with.

NetApp ONTAP is moderately priced. The tag price is more competitive for the value we get.

I would rate NetApp ONTAP nine out of ten.

We have NetApp ONTAP deployed in multiple locations with 2,500 users.

NetApp ONTAP requires maintenance for upgrades, adding features, and replacing failed disks.

I will recommend ONTAP. It is advisable to consider a proof of concept.

We have multiple data centers in different countries where we need local access to shared storage and network storage. 

We have AFF platforms and FAS platforms from NetApp for either hot storage purposes or cold storage, with cold being our backups and hot being for our production applications. 

The types of storage volumes we have are for virtual machine hard disk storage. We currently are using VMware and will be switching away from that due to the Broadcom license situation, but NetApp ONTAP works very well with VMware as it is integrated effectively. We rely on it for that. 

Additionally, we use Kubernetes and have numerous applications hosted in that environment. We use multiple protocols for persistent volumes including NFS, iSCSI, and NVMe over TCP. These comprise our main use cases.

The fact that NetApp ONTAP supports NVMe over TCP is a significant advantage. This newer technology is very performant. We have faced some issues with it, not specifically due to NetApp ONTAP, but due to Linux kernel bugs which are being addressed currently. Because it's a newer protocol, there are some issues, but having access to that particular protocol with low-latency network storage is one of the best features.

Another valuable feature is the number of Ansible modules provided by NetApp. We use these to automate the setup and configuration of the NetApp ONTAP cluster and to create actual volumes. It has a REST API, which the Ansible modules likely use under the hood, but the fact that there are multiple ways to automate the storage is fantastic.

The system provides alerting for misconfigurations with links to knowledge-based articles for corrections. 

Upgrades of the NetApp ONTAP operating system can be configured for full automation, though we prefer manual control.

They could expand what is possible to do with automation as there are gaps in the Ansible module coverage they have. There is certain functionality that NetApp ONTAP offers that these modules are incapable of handling. They do have some generic Ansible modules, so you can use the module and run a CLI command with that, which allows you to accomplish everything in a way. It would be better if they had more modules tailored to specific use cases where you don't need to wrap the CLI commands, keeping with the Ansible declarative framework. It's not a major gap in functionality, however, expanding the automation capabilities they already have would be beneficial.

I've used the solution for about two years.

We haven't seen a regression. The use of the newer protocol, NVMe over TCP, has added some instability compared to using iSCSI, but there hasn't been a true regression.

The NetApp ONTAP cluster works with HA pairs of controller nodes that are paired up for redundancy purposes. 

You can expand your NetApp ONTAP cluster by adding more of these HA pairs. When we have just one HA pair in our cluster, NVMe over TCP works flawlessly with our Kubernetes Linux volumes. 

However, when we have multiple HA pairs in the NetApp ONTAP cluster, we start seeing issues with attaching volumes to Kubernetes nodes and mounting them into Kubernetes pods. This seems to be related to an issue in the Linux kernel with the handoff between different HA pairs.

The quality of support is very good, though it varies depending on who is handling the issue. The response times are fast, however, with some of the bigger issues, such as the NVMe over TCP and Linux kernel problem, more effort was required. 

When we reached out, they remained continually engaged, and while we had to push them to reach out to Linux distribution providers such as Canonical for Ubuntu, once they started the engagement, everything proceeded smoothly. 

Overall, there are no substantial complaints with the support.

We haven't used another SAN or NAS system, as NetApp is the only one we've used in that category. 

However, we have used network storage in the form of GlusterFS, an open-source storage platform that relies on commodity hardware. With GlusterFS, multiple servers can be used as nodes or peers in a Gluster cluster. We used the free community version for years and encountered regular bugs that impacted performance. These bugs were not always fixed quickly. 

We also experienced compatibility issues between certain versions of the Linux kernel and Gluster. The performance was slower, partly due to the nature of the Gluster protocol being more NAS-oriented. 

With NetApp ONTAP, we can use SAN protocols that are more performant due to their block-level nature. The biggest gap with Gluster, aside from performance, was the lack of paid support, which is included with NetApp ONTAP and has proven invaluable.

The initial setup was straightforward. The main challenge was learning their concepts and understanding the different components needed within NetApp ONTAP to enable applications to access data. This included networking setup, configuring disks in the platform, and setting up storage virtual machines to separate permissions and group different use cases. We were operational within three months.

The pricing is high. That said, we received favorable pricing at Intel due to the company's large NetApp ONTAP deployment across different organizations. While we're not in the IT department (we're in a shadow IT team), we benefit from the bulk pricing deals. 

Despite this, it remains expensive. A significant advantage is that hardware purchases include support for multiple years, eliminating the need for annual support agreement renewals. 

When considering the included support, technology upgrades, and extensive platform testing, the enterprise-level pricing provides considerable peace of mind.

Based on comparison with other enterprise companies we've received support from, NetApp ONTAP performs better than others. While they sometimes require additional pushing, they deserve a rating of nine out of ten. 

We're using it as a file-based solution. The majority of our business users are file-based. We're also using it for virtualization for backup storage. Its programs are very good.

We are also evaluating the All Flash FAS solution. 

The group that I work with is media-based, so we usually use large files as compartments. 

We do use ONTAP for our mission-critical applications.

We save space through deduplication. While it depends on the application that we're using, we can save anywhere from 2G to 3G, which is really good.

• It is easy to manage. 
• A novice can use it.
• The Snap features of ONTAP.
• It has all the good features that everyone wants.

It takes them a few seconds to do a failover. I hope they can reduce this to milliseconds or at least drive it down to less than two seconds. Some of their competitors are already doing this.

Stability is very good. 

You can scale it however you want, depending on your data center footprint. I don't see higher limitation for how far you can scale. It's the same interface so you don't have to worry about managing it.

I would rate the tech support as a nine out of 10. We get the support when we need it.

The initial setup is straightforward. We did not have to worry about the configuration, as NetApp comes in and installs it.

We used a reseller, who was really good, for the deployment. 

We are seeing ROI from ONTAP. Within three years of using the products, we barely saw any complications with its usage. We have been using it for over ten years now.

ONTAP has helped our organization reduce its overall cost of storage (somewhere in the high millions).

1. 1. We receive the best support for a lower price point.
   2. The price point is very competitive and inexpensive compared to what you receive from other vendors in the market. 

We just started knowing NVMe over Fabric. We haven't used it but I think it's a great idea. They are trying to make the data closer to the CPU, so it will give you more confidence.

Our approximate cost per IOP is $0.18 USD to $1.00 USD depends on the scale of the site. 

We use it for both our all-flash FAS and traditional FAS systems. We have a relatively large FAS 9,000 cluster.

It's easy to manage and has a good CLI, API, and GUI. It also has good role-based access control, allowing me to grant specific commands to users without full administrator privileges. It's a mature product that works well.

ONTAP encompasses the entire operating system, including the file system layout on the backend is valuable for me. 

There is room for improvement in areas related to hardware constraints—for example, more storage efficiency, especially in terms of deduplication. You don't have a global database for deduplication like some competing systems do. So, you can benefit from storage efficiency when you have a large-scale data system.

Another area of improvement is pricing. Pricing can be complex to decipher. It's not just about ONTAP; it involves hardware costs and capacity licenses.

There are some somewhat obscure features like managing QTree's and other relatively obscure things. So, I would like to see more clarity on that front.

I have been using this solution for eight years. The previous cluster data was also on top of ONTAP, but just an older version, called ONTAP 9.

Currently, we use version 9.12. 

I have seen an ROI. It's extremely reliable, very easy to manage. I've been able to reduce the number of people I have managing the storage systems because of the software.

Our pricing with discounts is reasonable, but it may vary for others. If you're paying rack rate, it might be a different situation. But I think with our discount level, the pricing is reasonable.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

Our primary use case is for serving the file server files. File storage is for the member offices and accessing that data.

From the capacity perspective, it has helped us because of the thin volumes, deduplication, and compression features.

ONTAP provides the ability to dole out Qtree shares as needed. Team volumes is a benefit.

The cloud features, the ability to go into the cloud would be a feature I'd like to see improvements on.

They could also improve on their ability to back up storage.

It's stable. It has good monitoring tools to help monitor activity and take action if necessary.

The scalability is good. 

We do look at tech guides and the Knowledge Base articles and then engage support. The account teams are always available.

We were using Dell EMC. We did an initial evaluation with the reseller consultants, based on that we went forward. We wanted to diversify everything so that we could get more benefits from the features.

The initial setup was good, flexible, forthcoming, and straightforward. 

We used CopperTech. They were good to work with and very responsive. They look at every scenario.

The deduplication and compression features have helped us save storage costs.

We have been able to save about 10 to 15% on space using the space consumption features. 

The approximate cost per IOP is around 50 cents. 

I would rate this product a nine because of its ability to upgrade easily and the scalability.

Definitely look at the compression, deduplication, and the ability to grow into the cloud, consider any product that has these features. 

ONTAP runs our Tier 1 data center. We use it for running all our virtualization, backups, etc.

Where the DBA is doing all the migrations and testing within our database, we have Tier 1 and Tier 2 data centers and do a lot of testing across them. The ability to create a FlexClone and immediately test everything which needs to be done then revert back within minutes, if needed, is phenomenal for testing.

FlexClone has been great for R&D. We've been doing a lot of testing, implementing Oracle DBAs and getting them into the thick of things.

I would like more diagnostic generation. Right now, it's a pain to go into the controller and do a full diagnostic and export. If that could be streamlined in any way and not be so tedious, because it's a pain to go through all the different steps and have the command memorized or have to look it up. If there was some way NetApp could incorporate it into the native ONTAP command center, that would be great.

I've never had an issue with it. Same with the upgrades, we have had no issues from 8.2 to 8.3 to 8.4. The stability has been great for four years.

We are in the process of doing a huge data center refresh. We will find that out very shortly about its scalability.

The technical support is great. It's the best I've ever encountered. I can email and have everything resolved at three in the morning within half an hour. I have had some late night calls to their guys techs, and it's been phenomenal.

I probably leverage NetApp's engineers too much, but we have a good working relationship with their contacts. They usually handle everything within a few messages, so it has been great.

The initial setup was straightforward for me. I am a storage engineer, so I'm familiar with it. Even our network engineers that have to set it up using NetApp diagrams had no issues with it.

We have used CDW in the past. However, we are now going with NetApp directly.

CDW was great. We didn't have too many issues. However, for our work particularly, there wasn't a enough value-add to stick with a third-party. Therefore, we are now doing everything directly with NetApp.

I have seen ROI. NetApp is streamlined, reducing costs. ONTAP is the best.

If you start narrowing down NetApp versus price point, then comparing it to the feature set and take away all the bloat that other companies will try to add on, there is no other option. It comes down to just NetApp.

We have some strict requirements because we are a defense contractor. It came down to NetApp and one other big company (Dell EMC). ONTAP's ease of use and our familiarity with it along with the reps, who are great about keeping us informed about training, etc. It made it a no-brainer for us to go with the solution.

We chose NetApp because of price and it's a no hassle solution. We're doing a trade study, so we asked all vendors for quotes, etc. We asked our NetApp reps, and they gave us what we needed within a timely fashion. 

Dell EMC sent us eight people, who insisted on a two hour meeting. They keep trying to oversell us crap that we don't need. It felt very forced. Whereas our NetApp guys, they would rather undersell us than have us buy stuff that we don't need. I appreciate their upfront and honest attitude.

You can't switch out a hard drive without an EMC rep coming out, where NetApp is streamlined.

There is nothing it can't do. It satisfies all my needs. It is straight to the point and has great updates.

We are doing a trade study right on all the things that we would like to have and everything we have hard requirements for, and NetApp meets both.