NetApp FAS Series Reviews

Clients like the fact that FAS systems can boot from SAN and Boot volumes.

The strong point is that our clients like this are RAID DP (Dual Priority). SnapMirror and MetroCluster features are also very useful for DC, DR solutions.

The biggest issue we face is parts delivery. There's no local warehouse in Myanmar, so if a customer encounters a technical problem like hardware failure issue, they have to wait a long time for replacement parts.

I have been working with it for more than five to seven years. 

I would rate the stability of the product an eight out of ten.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. It is pretty easy to scale. It's good for medium-sized enterprises and also for larger enterprises.

The setup is quite simple. It doesn't take a lot of time. It is quite easy and fast.  The exception might be creating key volumes, which can vary depending on the specific infrastructure involved. Some configurations might necessitate longer key volume creation times.

It's not the cheapest, but it's not the most expensive either. It's a fair price. However, the price could be more flexible for the clients.

Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten. It is one of the good products in the market. 

The customers also use a lot of EMC and HPE as well. In the current situation, we need to choose products with the best support, like EMC, with its rapid technical support response.

The NetApp service center in Myanmar here isn't the fastest at deliveries. The service center engineers are good, but it's not 100% reliable for support. Sometimes, there are delays that don't allow us to make the delivery on time, unlike with other vendors. So, the customers need to wait. 

We use it for storing our database data and for our virtual machines.

The best feature is its ONTAP product line for Ransomware protection. Another benefit is the hybrid and unified model. It also has features for file storage and block storage.

I was a little skeptical about the model. I wonder why the replication is included in the ONTAP One bundle when some customers may not require additional features. It should ideally be part of the ONTAP base bundle, even if there's a slight price increase.

I have been working with this solution for approximately two years now.

The solution is stable. We've had no issues with it.

The tool is scalable and meets our requirements for TVs. It handles beta bytes well. We are happy with its scalability.

The technical support and the supporting partner are great.

Positive

I work with HPE and Huawei OceanStor, too. HPE is great, but I'm not satisfied with Huawei OceanStor. I'm comfortable with HPE and NetApp FAS Series.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is a SaaS solution. and very easy to maintain. It’s not a high-maintenance device. It runs smoothly. We use it within our university and have up to a hundred concurrent user sessions. 

The deployment was handled by the partner from whom we made the purchase.

The product is on the expensive side, but the feature set is excellent.

I recommend the solution. Overall, I rate it a perfect ten because I haven’t encountered any issues since I’ve started using it.

We use the solution for its unified features of file and block protocols in a heterogeneous environment.

The solution's most valuable feature is deduplication. Also, its features for file and block protocols work the best.

The solution could be more flexible in terms of configuration. Also, they should increase the product range or configuration models for more storage options.

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

The solution is stable and highly available.

The solution is highly scalable. Its FAS2700 series can scale up to more than 1000 terabytes.

The solution has good technical support. Also, the logs created by the system are self-explanatory. So customers can quickly solve the problems. As a certified engineer, I have resolved all the queries.

The solution's initial setup process is straightforward.

The solution is more expensive than other vendors. Although, its cost depends on the use cases and configurations required.

NetApp offers bundled products along with the purchase of the storage system. Thus, the customers don't have to pay recurring licensing fees, including the upgrades. There is no expiry for storage licenses. The customers have to pay for support services. The price for the initial configuration might appear more expensive than other competitors. But it tends to be lower after a specific time.

The solution has a unique product line. It is suitable for small-scale as well as large-scale enterprises. I advise others to thoroughly understand their business requirements before buying the solution. If you need a FAS solution, go for NetApp. But if you require high-density storage, a direct-attached storage solution might be more suitable for your use cases.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The input and output per second performance are satisfactory.

The solution can improve on the replication features.

I have used NetApp FAS Series within the past 12 months.

The technical support is satisfactory. They need to invest more into the service.

We work with Dell EMC and Huawei.

I recommend NetApp on top of the Dell EMC since it's less complex.

The initial setup is not that complex compared to the other vendor. It's in the same level of complexity.

When we need to implement a less expensive solution we use Huawei. NetApp FAS Series is a little bit expensive compared to the average of the market.

I rate NetApp FAS Series a seven out of ten.

We offer the solution to customers with unified storage without any gateway.

Snapshot, deduplication, and compression features are valuable. I also like the product’s OS. The product is the most reliable because it is based on Linux.

NetApp needs to put its OS on a microchip rather than on disks. The product uses flash storage for caches. The solution could improve the cache memory in storage. Though the storage is being used for backups and archival, there is still room for improvement in the increment of cache memory and storage.

I have been using the solution for almost ten years. We are proposing the FAS2700 series to our customers.

I rate the tool’s stability an eight or nine out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a ten out of ten. We have almost 100 users in Pakistan. Our customers are medium and enterprise-level businesses.

We have a team of certified NetApp engineers. We are also very comfortable with the technical team.

Positive

The initial setup was fine. I rate the ease of setup an eight or nine out of ten. It took us one or two days to deploy the solution.

We usually get a scope of work from the customer before deploying the solution. We then plan everything and design the storage according to the scope of work.

I rate the solution’s pricing seven or eight out of ten. If we want a ransomware solution with the product or other extended features, we need to pay an extra cost. That’s why there are different licensing costs for the product.

Customers who want large-scale files can afford the solution. The product is very good for archival purposes and to protect large files. Overall, I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We have deployed a four-node cluster to host multiple services like NFS, CIFS, FCP, and iSCSI with SnapMirror enabled across the cluster.

NetApp FAS has provided an HA environment that has improved the up time of our entire infrastructure.

The most valuable feature for us is the combining of HA and SnapMirror.

I would like to see an improvement in the licensing on Data Mirroring (SnapMirror) features.

Currently, the newest release is not HCI friendly.

More than five years.

In my nineteen years of being a storage administrator, I have never seen NetApp storage cause significant downtime that was connected to hardware failure.

One of the big features of NetApp FAS is the clustering of storage, which allows you to scale up the whole cluster using different models. This is broad and each HA is expandable.

Their team is one of the best support services that I have encountered.

Previously we used the IBM N Series storage system. We switched because of its limited features.

The initial hardware setup is pretty straightforward because once you set up one node in the cluster, the whole system can be joined seamlessly. The setup for the NetApp hardware is a very short command menu that is user-friendly.

Our policy for the initial setup is to get service with the vendor. This provides a warranty just in case we encounter issues. NetApp support is highly knowledgeable about their product and they are trained to do the initial setup perfectly as planned.

Licensing is still proprietary which is one of the advantage of some Netapp devices to some of the storage systems.

We evaluated the HP and Dell storage solutions before choosing this product.

All SIFS and NFS are valuable. It allows our Windows and Unix teams to have a centralized point to share data between the two. When a potential army recruit provides info at various locations, FAS gives us a drop point where the system can pull info from various locations.

NetApp allows us to take arrays and pass through. NetApp now has the capability of both SIFS and NFS that we didn’t have before. We don’t need to have separate OS boxes. And we don’t have duplicate data.

I’ve found that I use command line more often than I thought needed. Some things should be done in the GUI, and command-line switches can be overwhelming and take up a lot of time. In a GUI, I can just hit options or boxes. However, cluster mode will address a lot of that, but 7-mode definitely doesn’t.

Some issues where some of my stuff is not failing over. I’m the eighth person handling the system, and my impression is that it wasn’t configured correctly. However, I very rarely have a problem. It’s been stable.

I haven’t had to scale in my department, but I foresee change in the near future because we’ll be taking on other portions of the government (medical, for example). Other portions will be somewhat isolated, but there is overlap.

I’m part of a five-person team with in-house support. If that doesn’t work, then I go to NetApp support. We work with specific people within NetApp. I like that tech supports sticks to it until the issue is solved and that they follow up. Any delays are on our end because we move slowly.

Five or six years ago, we used a Hitachi solution with fiber channel.

I wasn’t there, but I will be involved in the 8080 installation in 2 weeks. NetApp will come in and do it for us.

It’s difficult for us to get money, so make sure you get everything in order, because there’s no going back and saying “oh, I missed this or that”, so make sure you plan well and well in advance.

It does a good job at what it’s designed to do.

We are using NetApp FAS Series on all of your sites.

We use it in four major systems for productions in broadcast TV channels. 

I can say that we use it in Production and Archive environments according to the model and disk structure. 

I can say that we use it in Production and Archive environments according to the model and disks structure.We tested many storages. Netapp was the most successful in terms of performance. We did multiple HD ingests in real-time. At the same time, Editing teams edited on the ingested files. As Ingest, we recorded more than 20 HD cameras simultaneously. We chose netapp when we saw that it was successful in the tests we carried out according to our structure.

• First of all, I think it is very suitable storage for media.
• When editing and recording at the same time, its performance is quite sufficient.
• The fact that it is redundant for the controller provides sufficient security.
• I can share all volumes as a single space through the FlexGroup structure.
• You can manage departments independently by creating more than one SVM.
• Ontap is a very stable and reliable operating system.

There should be a separate admin web management for each SVM. We are currently managing all SVMs from a single admin interface. it is a problem.

Real-time performance monitoring requires good software. It would be great to be able to see the audit logs.

We have been using NetApp FAS Series for more than five years.

I can say that it is a stable product.

NetApp has a structure that can grow very easily. You can expand by buying suitable model shelves. You can expand by the value allowed by the controller.

We have opened cases with technical support in Europe. They can connect and together we resolve the issue.

At times we use support from the support site.

NetApp FAS Series can use the cloud services in the storage and can be upgraded to the cloud.

I could recommend this solution to other media companies to use. It's an easy product to use that is stable and has good performance.

I would rate NetApp FAS Series a nine out of ten.