NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Reviews

We use this solution to manage all of our NetApp storage.

We have been having good luck with this solution's snapshot copies and thin clones, in terms of operational recovery. We are looking forward to encryption for the snapshots.

Our version does not support inline encryption using SnapMirror, so we're not at that point yet.

With respect to this solution's unified file and block storage access, we only use block-storage and it fits the needs of our customers. We serve internal customer bases, which feed the customers on the outside. For us, it is the right fit.

We don't have anything in the Hyperscaler environment right now. Everything is internal to us.

This solution has helped us because it is easy to use. The ability to find things in the GUI and being able to restore things has been really simple for us.

The Snapshot copies have helped increase our application development speed, especially in testing because we can blow things up and restore it really quickly. Speed to market is where it really helps.

In terms of the consistency of storage management across clouds, this is something that is critical to us because we have several locations. Each of those locations has the infrastructure in place, including some that are overseas. It has become more and more critical for us to manage those things centrally.

In our case, using this solution has not helped to reduce our data footprint in the cloud. If anything, it's growing.

I would like to see better integration with Active IQ. I know they're making strides for that, and some of the tools are being mimicked in Active IQ now so that I can look at the same information. If the footprint looks right and the GUI looks the same to us, it'll be more effective for us down the road in the long-term.

Encryption is very important for us going forward because we sometimes store data out of the country, and sometimes overseas. We are looking forward to more in terms of encryption, including the inline encryption for SnapMirror and things of that nature.

We have had no problems with the code levels, or anything else. We get the occasional bugs as everybody does, but the code, overall, has been really good for us.

We haven't hit the upper boundaries of the solution, so I don't think that scalability is going to be a problem for us in the near future.

The technical support has been pretty good. Whenever we open a ticket or a case, they've been really responsive.

The initial setup and subsequent upgrades have not been difficult for us.

The documentation and the reference architecture on the NetApp portals are very well defined.

We deployed the solution ourselves.

We did not use the NetApp Cloud Manager during our initial setup.

The speed to market with the encryption has really been a nagging thing for a lot of folks in our industry, so I'm glad to see that they're finally getting around to encrypting things, including the traffic in between SnapMirrors.

NetApp has been around for a long time. They're an established company and there's a lot of big companies using NetApp, so I think that the new stands for itself. When you're comparing it to other companies in the industry, NetApp is one of the leaders.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The primary use case of NetApp in our company is providing NAS services. This includes both CIFS and NFS.

I have been working with ONTAP for five years. So, I started with NetApp ONTAP 7-Mode, and now, I'm working on NetApp ONTAP C-mode. My familiarity and skill with this product is quite good.

Autodesk has been using this product for more than five years. 

The most valuable feature of Data ONTAP is it's very user-friendly, It gives the administrator or engineer a lot of scope to look into the locks. It has a fair amount of visibility into what is happening. We do not have to depend on the support all the time. 

If you have a fair amount of experience with NetApp, you can work on it very easily.

NetApp could certainly improve on the support side. They do not need to improve so much on the product side for now, because we have procured a high end system.

Stability is quite good. However, when it comes to bugs, this is where we are taking a hit. We have ended up in situation where new releases of the ONTAP create an issue in our current infrastructure. We either need to go back or find a solution to fix the bug created by the bug. This is the issue that we face now.

We are not putting a lot of stress on our environment, about a five out of ten.

The scalability of NetApp is good. In NetApp, we have close to three petabytes of data.

We cannot compare the scalability of the on-premise solution with the cloud solution because cloud works in a different way from the on-premise version. 

When it comes to the logical partitions, the scalability is fine. Though, after a set time limit, you need to procure physical boxes to increase your storage capacity.

I would rate the technical support as a five out of ten.

When it comes to support provided by NetApp, they have room for improvement. Every time we go through their support, we end up answering the same routine questions. We don't reach out to support without doing our initial troubleshooting. After, our initial troubleshooting, we find something, then we reach out for support. Once we reach out to support, support takes us back to the same basic level of troubleshooting, which takes away some time in urgent cases. This is where NetApp support should create an improvement plan.

We did not consider anyone else for NAS.

NetApp is a user-friendly solution. I would recommend it to colleagues, because of its user-friendliness for implementation and running your operations.

I use the on-premise version of this product.

Our company is in the transition to the cloud. We are focused on cloud solutions going forward.

The primary use case for our customer is disaster recovery. They had an array that was reaching end-of-life, and they were trying to decide whether to go with a refreshed new array on-premises or go with CVO in a cloud. The chose the latter.

Our customer is a large organization that has just merged with several other organizations, so they have a lot going on. It was important for them that the time to market was very short, so they needed to deploy fast and get it set up with minimal impact to the business and their IT staff.

Our customer does not use the inline encryption using SnapMirror.

This business is only using file access and no block access. NetApp provides much of their file access across their infrastructure, so this being a DR solution allowed them to have the tertiary copy.

They use Snapshots and I believe they use clones, as well, but I do not have any specific data.

Currently, they are only using AWS, but they certainly are looking at alternatives to save money.

The data footprint in the cloud has expanded since the implementation.

Using NetApp CVO has definitely reduced our customer's overall spend. However, I think that their cloud costs have probably gone up a little bit.

They do not make use of the functionality to move data between hyperscalers and their on-premises environment.

Our customer finds SnapMirror to be valuable.

NetApp CVO needs to have more exposure and mature further before it will have greater acceptance.

This solution has been deployed at our customer's site for about three months.

The stability has been really good. It has only been deployed for about three months, but they have had no issue so far.

Scalability is very good. If they need to expand then that is one of the features of this solution, easy expansion. We haven't seen any issues there. They haven't expanded it yet, but certainly, the functionality exists.

Our customer was previously a NetApp shop, and they were already familiar with SnapMirror, so upgrading to the current solution was a no-brainer. They saved money and have the same functionality.

The initial setup is straightforward and easy, with no learning curve involved.

The NetApp Cloud Manager works well, and the customers are happy with it.

Our customer has not specifically seen ROI. However, they did a calculation that showed they saved money by not buying another on-premises solution. So, there is some return on investment there, I would say, or a TCO saving at least.

The customer was happy with NetApp and did not look at any alternatives.

My advice to anybody who is researching this type of solution is to definitely take a look at NetApp for all of the cloud-specific products that are out there now. I think that NetApp is definitely a leader when it comes to the cloud approach, especially compared to other storage vendors like Pure. Pure is definitely playing catch-up to NetApp.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The tool integrates very well the contents that are deployed there. Each aspect is well structured and responsibly what allows it to advance and achieve success. 

This tool allows working with clean and safe servers. We made a complement and therefore we made progress in optimizing each launch platform in a matter of days.

One of the features of this tool is the ease of use, in addition to the control access and the dynamics with which it is structured.

It does not have tutorials in languages such as French, German, Spanish. Adding these options would improve the support service of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

We use it for file storage.

It is mainly being used with our Windows environment.

• Ease of file storage.
• Ease of use.

The data tiering needs improvement. E.g., moving hard data to faster disks.

It is pretty stable. We do not put too much stress on it (about 45 percent).

The scalability is very good. Our environment is 25TBs.

I have not used NetApp's technical support.

Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good, but it was a test system, not a real purchase. 

We went through the AWS Marketplace because we were testing the product and have not evaluated the pricing yet.

I would recommend NetApp because it is a stable product.

The AWS and on-premise versions of the product are about the same. 

It is currently not being used in the AWS environment. It is just being tested. The integration and configuration seemed okay.

Our primary use for this solution is disaster recovery. We protect our data by replicating using SnapMirror and storing it in a public cloud.

We use this solution's Snapshot copies as part of our data management and data protection strategy. We store these on serial volumes in a public cloud.

The inline encryption using SnapMirror has helped us to address concerns over data security in the cloud. Our enterprise data is private and is protected, but it is still available for our business.

The most valuable features of this solution are SnapShot, FlexClone, and deduplication.

Only AWS and Azure public clouds are currently available from China, and I would like to see support for Aliyun (Alibaba Cloud).

The stability is very good for us because it is required for our operations. We have had no problems with it.

ONTAP makes it easy to scale our infrastructure. It is important for us because our business has increased rapidly.

I used cloud central to set up our Cloud Volumes.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.