NetApp FAS Series Reviews

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.

Our primary use case was NFS. It was used for designing chips.

The file sharing feature is most valuable.

Its operating system is very cumbersome. However, after you set it up, it runs pretty smoothly.

Its file system is not very dynamic. It is very static.

It is pretty stable. I would probably give it a six out of ten in terms of stability.

It is scalable to some extent. There is a limit, but then everything has a limit. We were using it at three sites across the US. We ran into this issue of hitting the limit just once in a while. When you are growing a cluster, you usually hit that limit.

Their support was okay. I wouldn't say it was very great, but it was there. Occasionally, they would just go round and round in circles. They didn't know what to do with the case.

They followed the sun model, which is followed by almost every company. If you open a case and the person is one hour away from his break or the end of his day, he would just say that he will have to give the case to someone else, and then you start all over again.

We have had different NetApp models. FAS has been around for a long time. The newer models are called AFF, and I have used AFF 300 and AFF 400.

Its implementation was complicated. It takes a couple of hours if your network and DNS are ready. 

There was a NetApp SE on the site to help us.

We purchased it for four years, and it wasn't expensive. It was reasonable. 

Every company has a different agreement with NetApp. We got everything we wanted with all the bells and whistles and all the features and functionalities.

Its operating system is a little cumbersome, but it runs pretty smoothly most of the time.

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

• High Availability – most important thing with all big storage systems
• Flexible – it uses all different kinds of protocols (SAN, fiber channels)
• Virtual Management Console – helps with and integrates with vSphere. I’ve deployed it, but haven’t configured it. Looks really promising.
• Snap Drive – integration with Windows for SQL exchange is critical
• Can update without taking the system down

It’s a High Availability environment in which I haven’t had problems. We’ve only had one disk fail in a year. Quality of product is good.

Tegile offers live deduplication. And NetApp can only be scheduled to dedupe in the background or for later.

Also, the web page for downloading software could be more efficient (for example, getting instructions takes a few clicks). Make it easier for customers to download software.

The instructions didn’t provide for re-configurations from scratch and tech support were stuck too. The person who configured before had installed NetApp 8.2 on 7 mode. 8.3 didn’t support 7, which I wanted to do, so that’s why I had to reconfigure from scratch.

First, make a lot of calculations of how much data you’re going to use and how much you’re using now. Compare the two and look into how you configure storage solution. How much data, how to split, etc. If you can’t spend that much on storage, you need to determine how to follow best practices to get as much storage as possible for the money. For example, if you have five shelves, you don’t need to worry about LUNs going offline. But if it’s just two shelves, like I have, you must be very careful about provisioning storage and use as much as possible.

We use the product for SAN, block, and file storage. We use it for consolidation or sandbox storage in our VMware environment. We treat it as a sandbox-only box and leverage features from VMware for DC and DR.

The tool's most valuable features are ease of use, ease of access, expandability, availability, and performance. NVMe drives have improved their performance. 

NetApp FAS Series should improve its price, which is expensive. 

I have been using the product for two to three years. 

NetApp FAS Series is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

Initially, we encountered some challenges with the tool's technical support. However, it is stable now. 

We encounter some challenges during the tool's deployment. We try to train our engineers on it. The process which can be completed easily is sometimes time-consuming. 

I rate NetApp FAS Series a seven out of ten. Whenever we need unified storage, we recommend Data as a Solution.

NetApp FAS Series provides all the essential capabilities of E-Series. It is a complete package and even more reliable than E-Series.

They should add all features from Flash Pool, Flash Cache, and other new features into the product.

I rate the product’s stability a ten out of ten.

I rate the product’s scalability an eight out of ten.

NetApp FAS Series is simple to set up.

We deployed the product with the help of our in-house team.

It is a moderately low-priced platform.

If you are looking for a solution with good scalability options, go for NetApp FAS Series. I rate it an eight out of ten.

We used NetApp FAS for both block and file sharing but we have now switched to another product by HP.

The most important features are SnapVault, Snapshots, and SnapMirror.

Netapp closed their local offices in our country leading to no technical and sales support representation.

We've had issues with scalability because the product that we were using went end-of-life many years ago, and we were not able to expand because there were no spares available.

The initial setup is straightforward and the deployment took just a few days.

We had in-house experience for implementation and deployment.

Before choosing this product originally, we evaluated others and were ultimately impressed by the Snapshots, ShapVault, and SnapRestore features. These were what we really wanted, and at the time, we could not find another product that had similar capabilities.

We had been using NetApp for quite some time, but the equipment was quite old and we wanted a new system. Between NetApp and HP, we chose HP because the NetApp support is not very good. They used to have partners in the country, but they have left.

My advice for anyone who is considering NetApp FAS is that it is a good product and our only real complaint is the lack of technical support. If they live in a country where technical support is available then I recommend it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

• Snap mirror as it gives us a way to snap to our two disaster recovery sites to instantaneously bring up VMs
• Dedupe helps us to save a lot on OS files for VMs

It provides a relatively cost-effective solution, as we have all our virtual infrastructure on NetApp.

They should provide more specific how-to guides. For example, I want to implement Sharepoint, but how do I do that?

Upgrades are always hold-our-breath situations. I’ve been lucky, but I’ve heard horror stories. I’m also dead-ended.

It’s been good. We haven’t had a complete outage (other than when our network the went down). We’ve had some challenges with hardware, but this was done non-disruptively with failover.

We’re still on 7-mode, but it still scales fairly well as the 6240 is a hefty machine.

It's used for repairs. We got outside help with set up and to put processes in place. Once done, it was seamless.

Very straightforward. We’re using 7-mode, so nothing fancy, and I had no difficulties. There were a couple things I didn’t know, but our partner, DataLink, helped. Specifically, I didn’t understand the rate groups and when you expand aggregates, you have to do a full regroup, which wasted a lot of space. I had 16-disk rate groups, added five disks, and it unbalanced things.

Six to eight months ago, I would have said go for it, but now I’ve been getting a lot of doubts about the stability of NetApp itself as a company.

I use NetApp FAS Series for storage consolidation, database management, performance, and data protection. We also use it for unified environments where you run multiple protocols. You can run it through a FAS or an AFF system. Our core applications are running on it, so it's always up.

I like the unified management feature because sometimes you end up running a single protocol on the entire system. Although it has the capacity to do multiple, you have to go the route to enable that. Sometimes it isn't convenient. You rather have a system for a particular protocol and another system for other protocols, especially in a big environment like mine.

Interfacing with the cloud environment could be better. I want to be able to move some cloud volume and integrate it seamlessly with my home on-premise storage. Sometimes I have issues with port permissions. NetApp probably needs to improve more on the integration side from on-premise to the cloud.

Capacity management could also be better. The difference between AFF and FAS has always been an issue, but now we have the advanced disk partitioning technology on the whole FAS systems that can give us more usable capacity. That has been the bigger issue that I had with NetApp in terms of improvement, and they seem to be working on it now.

I have been working with NetApp for more than ten years.

It's a stable solution. The trouble we have with stability is the trouble we created ourselves. Once the system is installed and configured, it's stable. Except sometimes, we want to check out things, and they create some trouble for us. If it weren't stable, we wouldn't be investing in it for the past ten years.

NetApp FAS Series is a scalable solution. We scale transparently, and we scale out and scale up. If we are scaling up with heavy capacity, it's very simple. Once we loop it, we have it and send it. We don't even have downtime for that. 

Sometimes it's tricky when we need to cluster several controllers and to scale-out many times. But it doesn't really have a major effect on our business. Sometimes we schedule it to let the business know that there might be some downtime for a period. We are finding ways to reduce the impact, and I think it's seamless. If I have to rate it, I'll give it 85%.

My experience with technical support has been very good. In fact, most of the things I'm able to do, I learned how from the technical support team. They don't just work. They work, and then they allow me to learn with them. As they are doing it, they put me through, and I'm able to pick up one or two things every time I get their support.

Although it's in two layers because of the kind of customer I am, we have what we call dedicated service accounts managers. Even before your issues come up, the guy triggers it, and then they are proactive in managing our whole system. 

But sometimes, we will have issues where we have to raise support cases, and we have a good contractor there. We have four hours of premium support. So far, we always get a response within four hours, and sometimes we have our resolution.

The initial setup was a complex process, but it's better now.

We use a local vendor and integrator most of the time to implement this solution. Initially, the system always comes with about three years of support. I have very good vendors around, and it's great all around. They also come around to support, but first level support, I do it by myself. When it gets complex, I invite the integrator and sometimes the OEM.

It's not cheap, but at the same time, it's also inexpensive. It's somewhere in between.

I would recommend this solution to new users because it's easy to implement. It's easy to install, it's easy to scale, and there is what we call investment protection. If there's a new controller that comes up, your existing controller can integrate with it. You don't have to trade in what you have. It always has forward compatibility and backward compatibility. I will always recommend NetApp FAS Series.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give NetApp FAS Series a nine.