NetApp FAS Series Reviews

I provide NetApp FAS Series to my customers. Currently, I have installed the solution for a couple of broadcast customers or TV channels. Since TV channels are 24/7 on air, redundancy, availability, and stability are very important. We are a system integrator company, and for TV channels, cloud operations, ingest operations, live editing, performance, and stability are very important.

The most valuable feature of the NetApp FAS Series is its stability. We had a system installed five years ago, and we never touched it. It is very stable, and we never met with any performance issues. Also, the solution's management and administrative interfaces are very useful and user-friendly. The solution's technical support is very good in Turkey.

NetApp FAS Series should introduce an FTP application for the broadcast and post-production market. NetApp's older version had FTP, but they removed it. Some customers need to use external FTP servers, and some low-cost storage solutions have a built-in FTP. A lot of automation systems still use FTP for middle-class customers.

I have been using NetApp FAS Series for five years.

Three years ago, NetApp had an office in Turkey. They decided to move their office to a distributor a couple of years ago. The distributor hired the same NetApp employees for technical support and sales.

Now they have enough experience for support, and the current NetApp distributor keeps very high spare parts in stock. They provide 24/7 technical support, which is very important for our customers.

Positive

When you compare the price and performance, it is better than EMC Isilon. Performance-wise, EMC Isilon is better than NetApp FAS Series. So if a customer has enough budget and wants better performance, I will offer EMC Isilon.

The structure of both solutions is a bit different. NetApp FAS Series is a mix of scale-up and scale-out, but EMC Isilon has only scale-out. I offer EMC Isilon for some projects, and for others, I offer the NetApp FAS Series. However, most of the time, I use NetApp because Turkey is a price-sensitive country. So most of the time, NetApp FAS Series' price and performance are better than EMC Isilon.

The NetApp FAS Series is more scalable than EMC Isilon because it can scale horizontally and vertically, while EMC Isilon can only expand horizontally. And every time you need to buy a controller with a disc. For NetApp FAS Series, you can scale up capacity if you don't need more performance. EMC Isilon provides capacity and performance, but if you don't need more performance, you don't need to pay more.

The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is reasonable for its performance. If the customer just needs a solution for archive storage, NetApp becomes expensive because the customer doesn't need so much performance for archive storage. For such requirements, we can offer other local storage solutions to customers. It actually depends on the customer's budget.

I always get the bundle price, and I don't buy separate licenses because they have some bundle packages. I don't have separate license pricing.

I recommend NetApp FAS Series for users who need high performance and capacity because of its price, performance, and stability. I recommend NetApp FAS Series for Turkey because of its good technical support in Turkey. The support team provides spare parts for big cities like Istanbul and Ankara in four hours.

Overall, I rate NetApp FAS Series a nine out of ten.

We use the solution to store all kinds of data. It's an efficient way to store data in a centralized place instead of trying to store it in individual locations.

The solution's most valuable feature is its absolute reliability. We have used a MetroCluster setup that duplicates all data and system pieces, ensuring absolute redundancy.

The solution’s pricing is expensive.

I have been using NetApp FAS Series for 15 years.

The initial setup of NetApp FAS Series is not very easy. The last time we did an upgrade, it took around three days.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup a seven out of ten.

NetApp FAS Series is a reasonably high-priced solution, partially because we select the configuration that duplicates the entire system. However, our management decided that it was worth the cost.

The two biggest things we look at are the solution's reliability and the support of the vendor. Excellent technical support and very good reliability are the solution's primary focuses.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I used the solution in our company to check Bash shell, specifically from when my organization started to function. For managing patches, the best storage my company prefers is NetApp FAS Series.

The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that the tool is good and serves as a relevant product at a global market level. My company receives good support for the tool, and the solution also offers many local support engineers.

The high cost of the product is an area of concern, so from an improvement perspective, the tool needs to be made cheaper.

I have been using NetApp FAS Series for seven to eight years. My company currently uses NetApp E-Series E5600. The tool was purchased in 2015 and is used in our company's data center.

It is a scalable solution.

My company had around 3,000 users of the solution.

The technical support offered for the solution is very ordinary and usual, meaning it is not very good.

Currently, my company has moved from NetApp FAS Series to a solution from Dell.

The product's initial setup phase was not complex. If you have knowledge or technical know-how, then everything is easy with the deployment and installation part. The tool offers an easy setup phase.

The steps to deploy the product depend on the requirements of the organization. I always recommend Dell EMC and IBM over NetApp FAS Series. In general, NetApp FAS Series is a very good product. Nowadays, NetApp has many new features, owing to which customers have started choosing NetApp to get access to its new features and the new architecture that is launched and available in the tool.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The setup phase of the tool is good since there is no need for a network change when shifting from NetApp FAS Series to Dell.

The price of NetApp FAS Series is the same as Dell's cost, so I don't think there are any comparable elements in the pricing part.

The tool is expensive.

The solution's areas, like NFS and SSD, were useful for storage and management in our organization.

Only recently did my organization use Dell's data backup solution. Also, the recovery part was managed by Dell's software along with the backup area.

The integration capabilities of the product are good and easy to use.

There are no challenges in the product, and everything is normal when it comes to NetApp FAS Series.

In terms of performance improvement, the perfect architecture that the tool provides is good.

There are a number of benefits that are offered not only by NetApp but all the other types of storage products in the market. Organizations should use storage products like NetApp, Dell, IBM, Huawei, or Hitachi for data security safety. For good performance, there is a need to use some storage device.

I rate the overall tool a seven out of ten.

The tool is used for multiple protocols like NFS and iSCSI.

The solution provides fast performance.

NetApp is costly when compared to Dell.

I have been using the solution for more than eight years.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

The product does not allow us to add disks. We need to add a completely new disk shelf to scale the product. The solution is suitable for enterprise-level businesses.

The support is very good. I am happy with the response time and quality of support.

Positive

We are using Dell because it is more feasible to use.

I will recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

NetApp has greatly increased our ability to offer storage and data throughput for jobs and services we provide to our customers, enabling them to further enhance their development and modeling work.

Switching to NetApp allowed us to grow the ESXi environment we use as a backbone, increasing storage, throughput, and speed. We could also increase the number of virtual machines we could host, greatly increasing the productivity and speed at which customers develop and manage the software that they create.

We could streamline our operations by adding controllers to increase the capacity we could use. Our environment is isolated, so utilizing some of NetApp's tools allowed us to better manage the clusters, the management host, and the additional requirements for the system's inputs and outputs.

The most significant outcome for us has been growth. We can get the storage off the server, increasing our virtualization and the number of file systems we can offer our customers. There was a time when we had one site that would order 30 different servers to complete the mission. With the new setup, I can do the same with four servers and a single node.

One pain point that drove us to adopt NetApp was a reduction in staff. My team originally had four people to support 30 sites and 600 customers on average.  Now we're down to me, my partner, and a contractor. NetApp has helped us grow and keep pace with the requirements. 

We've been tasked to develop an AI base incorporated with the bigger company Okay. They want us to extend down and expand our site to 40 additional sites and company subsites. The company wants to look into developing that through 2024 and beyond. 

We expect to expand greatly. I have to be careful with our spending, so it's a little hard to get things approved because of how the company is, but this is the task we've been given, and the number of networks that we support will require us to increase our NetApp systems across multiple networks.

We hope to create a cloud simulation of what's out there so the technicians know that the cloud is somebody else's computer. However, we need to develop that so our end users don't confuse what they perceive as the cloud with what we are actually providing to them.

Our investments will focus on cyber security and data storage because the amount of information they need to store in that repository is tremendous. We also need to simulate what's out there regarding Zero Trust and duplicate what the broader company is doing on a smaller, isolated scale. 

For innovation, we expect to present to company leaders what things could look like for other mission providers and all the additional offsets they have in other environments. We must present a way forward for them to move in future developments and outlines of how they place the equipment and provide the equipment to their outside entities.

We had the 840 model, but it became outdated, so we brought in some fast 2750s, and we plan to add some 250s to step up with technology. The ONTAP tools make managing VMware easier.

We look forward to using NetApp's zero-trust technology. We've been looking into new ways to develop it, and we've got a hybrid FlexPod situation because we do not use Cisco UCS servers. However, we still use that capability due to security requirements that are tied to Cisco. It allows us to address the zero-trust architecture as we develop it for our site.

It's hard to find in-person training that fits our schedule in our area. They offer a lot of online training, but we need somewhere to go because we can't really get away from the office. 

Dell EMC and HP are two storage providers we looked at. We decided to go with NetApp because of the high-quality support we get for Cisco systems and the fact that we can actually make a single call to Cisco or NetApp to get answers from either. 

We're in a disconnected environment and their standalone support systems that don't require cloud access or access to a host provider help. We can take some of our logs off the system and email them to tech support. It helps us because we don't always need somebody to come from the vendor for an on-site visit. 

Support is always our priority. When NetApp develops new technologies, we appreciate that they're willing to share that information and provide a roadmap outlining a transition from where you are to where you could be. This is a critical factor in choosing them as our storage provider. 

I rate NetApp solutions 10 out of 10. You have the right tools, knowledge, and phenomenal customer service, so it helps with everything we're doing and enables us to complete our mission quicker and easier. We can't just reach into the cloud to get support. NetApp allows us to call and start those tech cases. It's great.

I've been involved in daily operations like ratio to volume and aggregate monitoring. I've also worked on the ONTAP 9 manager, as well as an ONTAP upgrade of the operating system. I've also done a small implementation along with my colleague.

The use cases depend on the customer's specific needs. Factors like workload, legal requirements, and desired protocols would determine if FAS is a good fit. 

For example, if the customer has a large database workload, we might suggest AFF instead. But for most other cases, we can recommend FAS because it's more economical compared to AWS.

Most of the important features are already included, like compression, deduplication, snapshots, and more. 

More integration would be beneficial. Moreover, cost is always a factor. Some people choose EMC or Dell because they perceive NetApp as being more expensive. But we do have other products, like support for other models, that are more cost-effective.

So, the pricing could be improved. 

I've been using it since 2017.

It's a stable product. No issues there.

It is a scalable product. I've seen it used at a bank in India with a large number of users and also at another customer site with about 250 users.

We've reached out to support when facing technical issues, such as hardware failures or processing problems. We log a call with NetApp support, and we've always received proper support. No issues there.

The initial setup is not complex. It's quite straightforward.

The deployment itself usually takes around two to three days. However, if there's data migration involved, it could take longer. 

On the first day, we would onboard the box and do a hit-run test. Then, on the second or third day, we would do the implementation. 

If there's data migration, that would add some time to the process. But overall, the installation and setup can be done within two to three days.

For deployment, a team of two to four people is usually sufficient. It depends on whether it's a large-scale or small-scale deployment. But two to three people are generally okay.

It is worth it. It's very good for customers. Once a customer uses NetApp hardware, I don't think they'll go for other vendors or OEMs. They're getting the service, so there are no issues.

The licensing cost is on yearly basis. 

It's the best for the environment. No issues. Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.

I can recommend it to others as well. But, it's important to check the pricing against competitors to ensure it's competitive.

The most valuable features are the snapshots, the flash pool that we’re using, and cluster mode. When we are doing an upgrade, there is less of an impact on the customer when you use cluster mode. It still has some with CIFS, but at least it has less impact.

Compared to the previous solution, I would not say that it has really improved anything. We were with the HPE EVA before the NetApp. It takes more of my time to manage them, as opposed to HPE EVA, with which I created LUNs and it's done. I have a lot more tasks to do. At least now with NetApp, we can provide NAS services, which HPE EVA did not have.

I would like to see antivirus that works, and generally a working solution. They just provided Vserver DR, which is good.

Now we need to have a way to do some tests only because to do testing we really need to failover to the second site, destroy everything, rebuild it, and failback. I really need a test mode that is not as destructive, at least. There is no test mode. Maybe there is with ONTAP 9. I’m not sure. That’s probably a feature that doesn’t figure into the short-term roadmap.

For more detail:

With Data Ontap 7 if something was wrong there was a real passthru that was protecting us against a loss of service if something was wrong with McAfee.

Now with Cluster Data Ontap they introduce the AV connector and the passthru is not working correctly. We have delayed our migration to the c-dot environment for over 2 years now with open call at netapp. It tooks them over 8 months to admit there was a problem until a second customer get hit with the same problem we had. This has cause us service impact with our external customer, so we are running with the antivirus disable in our c-dot cifs shares since (at least they are used mostly by applications, not direct users).

We have 2 specific cases that happen:

* A McAfee agent upgrade that cause the Virus Scan Enterprise for Storage (VSES) to stop working
* A bad config in EPO pushing an invalid user to start the VSES preventing it to be able to read the file on the netapp

In September, a new version (1.0.3) of the AV connector that was supposed to fix these issues was available but it didn’t help the file access are still being denied. The test we did was for the second problem which is easy to reproduce. Just after that I was being interviewed during the Netapp Insight which has given that review.

Since we have worked with Netapp and McAfee, I have seen no real intent to have a functioning passthru. They instead finger point McAfee for not replying. We have tried an hotfix from McAfee but it is still not working.

For vserver DR this is a new functionality which is really good and very helpful for our DR solutions. The improvement that should be done to it is a better way to fallback, there is none currently so we need to delete all the setup, on the secondary : reconfigure it, copy everything to primary and then fail it back to primary. Then to reconfigure it properly, we need to delete, reconfigure and copy to the secondary.

It is very unstable. We have a lot of issues with antivirus programs interrupting us from providing services to our customer. As soon as something happens with McAfee, the customer had problems with our services.

With the 7 mode, we were okay. There was a real pass-through working correctly, so if something happened with the NT file server, the files were still being served to the customer. With cDOT, it's completely the opposite. It's completely out of service. We have a lot of service impact.

We have been delaying the CIFS transition a lot because of this.

We have been using technical support for over two years regarding services been down. Support was not efficient in that case. They are available. They tried. I was supposed to have a solution with the latest version. That was last week. I did the test, but it’s still not working.

Before the admin, there was an issue, it took close to a year until a second customer had the same issue. Then, they finally admitted that I wasn't the problem. It was an issue with the software. That's certainly why I rate them poorly.

When we moved from HPE EVA to FAS, it was to have NAS services. For NAS, NetApp was probably the best one at that time.

The initial setup was straightforward. I had no problem with that.

We also considered EMC at that time and HPE. For what we needed, NetApp was the best one.

The most important criteria we look for in a vendor is good service and quality of the product.

Properly define what you need first. After that, talk with people who know NetApp well, know how to set it up, and properly define the design architecture before doing it.

Primarily, we use them as backup targets. Additionally, we utilize them as archives or for slower-performing tasks, serving as masters for our customers.

The most valuable features are compression and dedupe. Since we mainly use them for backup purposes, being able to compress and deduplicate data is crucial. 

There are some technical limitations, but it would be great to have in-line deduplication and in-line compression for the FAS series as well. These would be improvements on current features.

I have been using this solution for around seven years. We are currently using version 9.11.

It's very stable. I use it on a daily basis. I would rate it a ten. It's extremely stable.

I find it to be scalable both vertically and horizontally. It's a ten. It's super easy to scale.

I really like NetApp's support. 

Positive

It's very easy, I think, once you know the product. I would rate it a ten, with one being difficult and ten being easy.

The deployment took around three to four hours. I upgraded it, created and joined it to a cluster, and then configured it accordingly.

We do make money from it. I would rate it around a six or seven.

I would rate it an eight out of ten, with one being low and ten being expensive. In general, I find NetApp to be very expensive. That's the main issue I have with them. So it's a drawback in terms of pricing.

There are additional costs depending on the bundles you choose to purchase.

I have worked with similar systems from some Microsystems in the past, but that's about it.

I would advise them that it's a stable, functional platform, especially if they are already using other NetApp products. I highly recommend it. 

Overall, I would rate it a nine. It's a great product. The NetApp FAS Series is super stable and doesn't give us any problems. It consistently performs backups as needed and handles all the tasks we require. It utilizes the same excellent operating system as the enterprise-grade NetApp products, which is fantastic. Most importantly, it just works. I don't have to spend a lot of time managing, fixing, or troubleshooting it. It's simply there and working flawlessly.