NetApp ONTAP Reviews

It's our main storage platform for our business applications. We have SQL and we do a lot of video editing. We also have a lot of media and sound data. Radio stations and TV stations keep some of their data on it.

Primarily, I do the data replication, the disaster recovery. Often someone will say, "Hey, I deleted this thing yesterday, can you get this back for me?" It's good that we have all those incremental Snapshots at different points in time that we can refer back to, to get them whatever they need.

Or we'll have someone download a virus, something malicious that corrupts a whole folder-tree of files. We can easily go back to right before they did that and just grab everything back. There are also ransomware attacks where they hold your data hostage by encrypting it. We can easily just go back and grab the data from before the attack. We can look back at the footprint and see when the whole tree was changed and restore the whole folder or the whole subset of folders. We might be down for two hours from it. An attack like that hasn't happened in the last nine months, but it has happened in the last two years.

It has also helped us reduce our overall cost of storage. Through dedupe and compression, we save a lot of capacity. Without that, we'd obviously have to buy more capacity. The last time I checked we were saving about 40 percent over our previous storage.

One of the things I find most valuable is the way they do the Snapshots, taking incrementals at points in time.

We just upgraded to 9.3, which is not the latest version, and it has some adaptive QoS built in. We have been using WFA for that. I'm interested in checking that out. I'm really glad they added it.

They use a lot of PowerShell for managing things and there are still a few things that you can't do through PowerShell cmdlets that you can do in the native CLI. It would be nice if they got more of those added in.

It's very stable.

It's very scalable as well.

The tech support is really good. We go through a support provider, Datalink, and those guys are really good. Anything that they don't have immediate knowledge of will be quickly escalated to NetApp and they're really quick about getting an engineer on it and getting us a solution. If we need a part replaced - of course, it depends what level of support we have for that particular system - everything is usually pretty quick.

In terms of a previous solution, when I joined this team they were already using NetApp. We did upgrade our controllers from 6290s to the 9000 but that was because of the age of the system. It was out-of-support and the support cost to maintain them got higher and higher as the years rolled by. It was cost-effective to invest in a new controller.

I wasn't part of this team when they initially set up all the storage, but we've had some upgrades, and we've gotten new controllers and added them to the cluster, and taken some out. All of those steps have been really straightforward.

Our reseller is Datalink and our experience with them has been really good. We've used them for several years. They negotiate really good prices for us and they give us really good support. If we need someone at a remote site, they'll schedule someone to support us at that site.

I don't handle the numbers, but the biggest ROI, to me, would be the ease with which we have our data protected.

We did look at Pure Storage and they were comparable in performance but they didn't have as many features. The gain in performance, for us, didn't offset the loss of the features, coupled with losing the relationship, or hurting the relationship, that we have with NetApp and Datalink.

The Pure system didn't have a way to do the iSCSIs that we need to use, and the impact to the relationship, to have a one-off system that didn't match the rest of them, didn't seem worth it to us.

In terms of NVMe over Fabrics, we no longer have any Fibre Channel. That was all phased out before I got on the team. In general, NVMe over Fabrics is good, it's quick. We aren't yet using machine-learning, AI, or real-time analytics but that is something we're looking into.

We use it for the NAS solution. We have a NAS infrastructure with NetApp ONTAP.

The product is good at deduplication. Also, the new automation feature is good, as it saves us a lot of time.

• SnapMirror
• SnapVault
• Deduplication
• The compression.

I need to be able to validate how the host is performing from the storage, as I am concerned about the host performance and storage connectivity to the host.

They have to improve on the data and monitoring tools.

The stability is good. They have point in time recovery, and they don't have any single point  of failures. 

The FAS series is good. In addition, they have around 10Gs for management, which is nice.

I love NetApp's scalability. We started in three areas, and now, we have grown to 16 areas. It is that good at scaling.

Technical support is not in person nowadays. We have to wait a long time to get an engineer. Then, most of the time, their engineers are not good enough to understand our problems. While we might not be able to explain the problem well, or they are not able to understand the problem well, their solutions are slow to resolution. The response time for tickets is bad nowadays.

Half of the setup is straightforward. However, when we want to do customizations and networking configurations, it is quite challenging. The issue is that we cannot fit NetApp's configurations to our organization standards.

We have a NetApp consultant for all types of deployments. He has been wonderful to work with as he is always helpful.

The top two vendors that we considered were NetApp and Dell EMC. 

We are also considering some white labels for HCIs, but these solutions aren't shortlisted yet.

If you need something in the NAS area, consider or test the NetApp products.

On the storage and box side, NetApp is really good at what they do.

We primarily use it for our file server environment: all our home shares, group shares, etc.

From a recovery credibility standpoint, we can recover data quickly. We are able to failover to remote sites. We can do that within minutes versus hours in the past. So, it is a lot faster.

• Reliability
• Snapshots
• SnapMirror

Snapshot and SnapMirror technologies make it easier to replicate data to disaster recovery scenarios. We can't do that with certain vendors as easily. 

I would like to see more integration into the cloud, as we are pushing to do more cloud-based compute. It is just easier to get the storage and everything synced up there and move to the cloud. We want NetApp to keep down the cloud integration path. It still needs some improvement. Overall, there needs to be more cloud integration in all NetApp products. 

NetApp needs make sure that we don't have any downtime and also keep improving on the non-disruptive pieces to avoid bringing systems down.

It is stable. We usually don't have any issues with it. Our updates have been solid.

Scalability is good. Now that we have the ability to add more nodes to the cluster, it's better. It allows us to grill our clusters allowing them to be larger and faster, without having to buy a whole new system. We have some other competitor devices in the house that are not that scalable, like Oracle.

Overall, it has been pretty good. We usually can get responses quickly, bug fixes, and whatever we need. It is easy to escalate issues.

We have been using ONTAP for a long time. Previously, it was an old files system called Novell NetWare. It was old, and this was a lot easier to deploy in our remote locations and receive data back for disaster recovery.

The initial setup was straightforward. There were not a whole lot of issues with it. 

Give it a look. It's reliable. Now, with ONTAP Select and the ability go to virtual machines, it gives you a lot more flexibility that you didn't have before.

We use the solution to manage storage. It comes with the hardware.

It is a basic storage management software. The integration is good.

Sometimes, we face problems with support.

I have been using the solution for four to five years.

I rate the tool’s stability a nine out of ten. We do not face any glitches or downtime.

I rate the tool’s scalability a nine out of ten. It is pretty easy to expand.

The support team is in a different country. The response time of support for our region must be improved.

Positive

The solution is not complex to work with.

The vendor does the setup.

The product is a bit expensive. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.

I recommend the product to others. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

NetApp ONTAP is the obvious choice for what we're doing, which is the simplification of a hyper-converged environment.

The most valuable features of NetApp ONTAP are its data redundancy, performance, storage catering, snapshot technology, and NetApp Insight. From a reporting mechanism, the solution fits our needs perfectly.

With NetApp ONTAP, the technology is all there, but its management process needs some simplification. Compared to NetApp ONTAP, Pure Storage, for instance, is a better model.

I have been using NetApp ONTAP for the last 25 years.

We've had just one failed disk in the last five years since I deployed the solution.

I rate NetApp ONTAP a nine out of ten for stability.

The solution's scalability depends on the environment you've got set up. For instance, if you're using NetApp clusters, it's easier to scale. If you're not using NetApp clusters, it gets more complicated to scale. Approximately 400 users use NetApp ONTAP in our company. These 400 people are internal users, but the customer base is much bigger.

I rate NetApp ONTAP a seven out of ten for scalability.

The solution’s initial setup is complex.

We used the help of NetApp professional services and one of our other vendors for the solution's deployment.

NetApp ONTAP is a pricey product, but you pay for what you get. I rate NetApp ONTAP a five out of ten for its pricing.

Just one person is required for the maintenance of NetApp ONTAP.

I have a lot of experience with other vendors. I always choose NetApp ONTAP because no other solution meets our requirements. I would recommend NetApp ONTAP to other users.

Overall, I rate NetApp ONTAP a nine out of ten.

Our client's primary use case is for the storage aspect of the solution, mainly for the block size.

The reliability of the storage is the solution's most valuable aspect.

The hardware of the solution is very reliable and there are hardly any issues at all. There rarely are failures, especially when you compare it to other vendors, which have a higher failure rate.

For example, HPE tends to be more prone to disc failures. In the case of ONTAP, this is extremely rare.

The OS is very user-friendly. Due to the fact that the architecture of the system is the same, once we learn ONTAP, we don't have to worry about drastic changes. Other vendors tend to change their products, and then we have to re-learn everything again, including the complete UI and configuration. With NetApp ONTAP, once you learn it, only a little bit of updating is required.

The solution is very easy to configure.

The solution is more for mid-range companies. 

The integration could be improved. There used to be an integration product called Snapper Tech, however, it's not available anymore. The vendor-partner relationships need to be improved across the board.

The back-up side of the solution could be improved, as could the archive. We still have to rely on third-party backup programs and other archiving solutions. If it was offered by NetApp itself, it would be much better.

The solution seems to be changing and moving towards the cloud and it will require many changes in order to be able to adapt to this shift.

I've been dealing with the solution for almost ten years at this point. It's been a long while.

The solution is easily scalable. It can, due to the features itself and the Cluster ONTAP features it supports. There are additions that need to be purchased so that the customer can scale, however. Other than that, yes, you can scale it well.

The solution best suits medium and enterprise customers. The price is small compared to other companies. 

So far, we've been very satisfied with technical support. They are quite knowledgeable and responsive.

The initial setup is not complex at all. In fact, if you compare any other storage, ONTAP is easier to install, implement, and manage than other options. 

We deploy it for our customers.

In order to scale, you do need to purchase add-ons.

I'm on the partner side, and therefore not an end-user.

I would recommend the solution. Its cluster and storage are quite good.

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten. We enjoy working with it.

We are using it for the cloud and storage: NAS and SAN.

• SnapVault
  
• Snapshot
• Deduplication
• The replication progress
• It is easy to migrate data from one storage array to another storage array using SnapMirror technologies.
  

If they could come up with some more automation, this would be helpful.

I have never had an outage.

Scalability is good. You can expand the storage with disks, which is good.

I haven't had to contact technical support, but their support is 24/7 if I needed it.

We were previously using NetApp MetroClusters. We have tested in the lab, NetApp MetroClusters, and have run into issues. I have come up with tie breakers, which are like witnesses our virtual storage arrays. One storage fails and another storage array will be active all the time. In this case, if a tie breaker is down, NetApp doesn't know how to deal with the data. It gets confused. NetApp should come up with a solution for this, such as a physical witness.

It's very easy. It's not complex.

We used NetApp for the deployment. They know how to deal with issues and follow best practices. It's always better to have them install the storage.

With other vendors, we need to buy a separate license for a third-party storage, but with NetApp, you don't need to buy a license, as it will come up with the storage. 

I can recommend NetApp. If you need a solution, use NetApp.

The primary use case for this solution is the storage and backup.

Previously we didn't have DR, but ever since we purchased the NetApp server, we are able to use SnapMirror and then create DR scenarios, so that's been a huge benefit.

This solution has helped reduce the overall cost of storage space in our organization by allowing us to use one data center, instead of two, and then allowing us to replicate the data; so that saves us money to buy more storage.

We have been able to save space by using this solution.

SnapMirror. DR replication, it's very useful that we have backups.

I would like the ability to perform backups in the cloud. That way you don't have to worry about building the data center. Everything's already in the cloud.

It's very stable. We never had any data corruption or data loss, so, it's been very stable.

I would say we have platinum support, so they're really good for our work, so they're really good. You get what you paid for.

Previously, we didn't use any other solution. NetApp came out and gave us a demo and it just works. 

Yes. It was very straightforward. Very easy. The PSE came in and showed us how to do it. We followed the instructions and it just works.

EMC, Hitachi, and IBM. We chose NetApp because of its ease of use. 

Our approximate cost per IOP is at least a couple of million.

I would give this product a rating of 8 out of 10. There could be improvements, its proprietary software so it can be pricey.

I say give NetApp a try. Its very simple to install and easy to use.