NetApp FAS Series Reviews

Most of my customers utilize this solution in the banking sector. They use it for their banking applications. They use it as their main storage.

One of the features that are so nice and which the bank loves so much about the NetApp FAS Series is its cloning feature. You can clone a database of any size, and when you clone it, the clone itself at the time it is created only occupies a very, very small footprint on the storage. It is when you sever the clone from the main database that you'll have a larger footprint.

For example: You have a database of one terabyte, then you clone that, and it will occupy just a few gigabytes. This means you now have a clone which you can use for a number of things: reporting, backup, or anything you like. You can even use it to test a new product you are trying to bring into the market. However, the moment you sever the clone from the main database, then it becomes WORM-free terabytes on its own, so that's one advantage.

The other advantage is that when you want to do a backup no matter the size of the database, you can do a snapshot. The snapshot takes up a very tiny space on the disc. From that snapshot, you can then take your data and migrate it to a backup storage. The backup storage could be via disc storage. It could be cheap and you can migrate it without any performance implications on the production systems, and that's very, very good.

You can also do replication. You can do one-to-one replication when you have a multi storage and replicate it to under storage, which is located long distance from where you are running your production system. You can do one too many replications and that is okay. You can replicate the data, not just to another data storage, but to multiple data storages, so there's flexibility.

This solution also has deduplication capabilities, so you can compress the data and deduplicate it so that the space to occupy, or the footprint becomes smaller. 

There is a lot of data management tools today, and in the past you have to buy your data management tools separately. At present, when you buy NetApp storage, all the software tools are made available to you as a bundle, so that's another thing I like about the NetApp FAS Series.

The only improvement to this solution that I can propose is for NetApp to make the price more attractive. If the price is more attractive, then it will have a bigger market share. I can't think of any other area for improvement because the price is the only one that really comes to mind.

I've been dealing with the NetApp FAS Series since 2003.

This solution is very, very, very, very stable. Notice how I mentioned "very" a few times. You can rely on this solution because of its stability.

The NetApp FAS Series is scalable.

Technical support from NetApp is excellent.

In general, the setup for this solution is straightforward.

If the customer is migrating from a non NetApp storage to a NetApp storage, what we have to do is to map all the data from the non NetApp storage to the NetApp storage, after we have done the initial setup and configuration. Once we've completed that, from there, the customer can use the NetApp FAS Series straight away. We've done quite a lot of that.

An example is the case of Novacom: a telecommunications company. They were using EMC at that time, so we migrated that data from EMC to another platform, and it went very well. Now, if you're migrating from a NetApp storage to another NetApp storage, e.g. your current NetApp solution is already obsolete, then you want to do a technical refresh and you bought the latest version of the solution, so migration from NetApp to NetApp is the easiest. It will be the easiest data migration because all the tools are there.

Pricing for this solution is not very high, but could still be improved and made more attractive.

I've been a NetApp reseller for more than 10 years. I've supplied NetApp storage solutions to quite a number of customers in Nigeria, particularly in Lagos, so I have familiarity with the NetApp products, but that doesn't mean that I've sold all the various types. I've not sold all the various types, but I've sold quite a lot of backup storages, even when they were still producing virtual tape libraries.

My customers have been using NetApp for more than 10 years. In Nigeria, the most popular NetApp product is the FAS series. My customers always start with FAS. I've just placed an order for a NetApp Storage Acceleration Appliance (SA300) for Unity Bank of Nigeria. The NetApp FAS products: these ones are the most popular products in Nigeria, but there also other variants here.

Scalability and reliability are what my customers like about the NetApp FAS Series.

How long the full deployment for this solution takes depends on the complexity of the environment. It also depends on data volume. In some cases, you can get it done within two days, and in some cases you can get it done within one week to two weeks maximum. It could take up to two weeks when migrating from a non NetApp storage to NetApp storage. Otherwise, deployment can go very, very fast.

My customers love NetApp a lot.

The number of users of this solution, particularly those in the commercial banks, depends on the size of the customer base of those banks. The customers of the commercial banks are the ones interfacing with the commercial banking application, and there are usually millions of customers, but all of them cannot be on the application at the same time.

There are also internal users of NetApp within the bank itself: the bank staff who are making use of it for their normal day to day work, e.g. when closing at the end of the day, at the end of the month, or at the end of the year, etc. When you take into consideration the customers of the banks, the number of users of this solution would be millions.

I'm giving the NetApp FAS Series a rating of nine out of ten.

Creating a DR site using SnapMirror technology from NetApp.

• NetApp improved our organization because their features are more friendly and create environment to tests, like dev. The FlexClone technology is easy to use.
• The flexibility to create scheduling backups on the VMware platform is very useful when you need it. We can save space using VSC.
• The migration of the volume on the cluster is very useful and easy to use.
• It is very useful to verify performance problems on the any environment and move volumes to another aggregate without downtime to the application.
• Compression of the backup Oracle by RMAN on NFS saves space 5:1, for example.

• Flexibility.
• Saves space with deduplication.
• All protocols on the same box. This means that you don't need to have a appliance to export. For example, an NFS volume on CIFs volume.
• Easy integration to some cloud environments, like Amazon AWS.
• Deduplication, now on cluster mode, runs on aggregate and no more on volume only. This means that you must put all their VMware environments on the same aggregate. If you have volume from prod, dev, and homolog that shares the same virtual machine, you will have a big gain on space saving.

NetApp for all these years has been improving their storage.

The only area that could be improved is to lower prices for their All Flash FAS.

You must have "flash cash" if you used the box to Oracle, any database environment, or any application that requires a lot of reads all time.

We have used some solutions like Hitachi, Dell, and EMC, but NetApp has more flexibility and we decided to stay with NetApp.

• My first case was migrate all solutions from Hitachi Storage to NetApp FAS on SAN with brocade.
• Migrated all VMware environment to NetApp storage.
• Migrated all backup solutions that were running on Veritas Backup to VSC on NetApp.
• Migrated our whole Oracle database running on HDS storage to NetApp storage.

Setup is very easy, but you need a partner to execute your first configuration, after that the administration is easy.

The first setup must be done by any partner or a NetApp field engineer.

The price it not low, but comparing features to other vendors, the price can be balanced.

The product is flexible. 

Everythink is ok. 

I have been working with the product for four to five years. 

The product is stable. 

The solution is scalable. It is recommended for medium companies. 

The product's setup is easy and takes one working day to complete. One person is enough to implement the solution. 

The product's pricing is reasonable. 

I would rate the product a nine out of ten. The tool is the best one in the market in terms of pricing and features. 

We use the solution for data storage. We are customers of NetApp and I'm the assistant director of our company. 

One of the valuable features of the solution is data consolidation and visualization - and snapshots of course. The solution is easy to manage. 

We'd like to move to a solution that does more beyond just data, like starting to get more to servers and network specialization and data visualization and things like that. Server network and management specialization or consolidation. And also, trying to see a bit more single plane of glass in terms of managing, so that it gives you more insight in terms of what's happening. 

Ideally the solution should have one console, the ability to use a single plane of glass across the enterprise. Because we have one VRR, one size duplication so just to have one console where you can manage everything else in harmony would be a good additional feature. 

I've been using this solution for 15 years. 

This is a stable solution. 

The solution is scalable at the data level because it uses aggregates so you can easily increase data. But of course it's dependent on your provision for growth reports. I don't know how many use the solution but our company has around 600-700 employees and we have two people dealing with maintenance on the product. It doesn't require more than that. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. If you're good, you can get it up and running within a week. 

I think the pricing of this solution could be lower because really it's just storage consolidation these days. I think this technology has matured so much. It's time to make it slightly more competitive, it's on the high side for now.

Obviously anyone looking at this solution must have primarily a data storage use case. If they have a strong case for data storage, it's a good solution. From there it's just a matter of managing work flows between SAN and NAS which requires planning. You can then manage your capacities very well if you know your data requirements. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

NAS for the enterprise including unstructured data, EPIC Systems + the other 3,520 applications. I love those innovative healthcare data solutions that let me securely manage vast amounts of patient data (32.9 PB), use and share it enterprise-wide, and gain efficiency of scale through cloud solutions and virtualization.

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Powerful
Easy to use
High availability

DFM

OCI

Data fabric

FPolicy

Cluster-mode

Hybrid cloud solution

I have found it to be expensive.
It is good as a NAS, but not a good option for SAN.We use it for storing medical images.

Some

Not yet

Customer Service:

Solid

Technical Support:

Good

Pure Storage for SAN

OK

Vendor team

18 months

Research fully

EMC

Think carefully before you jump into NetApp. There are so many competing products and you should do a proof of concept before you buy it. I'm a bit worried since NetApp is competing against the big boys like IBM and EMC. So what happens if NetApps get acquired by one of the big boys? Will they be around in another 3-5 years?

• Multi Protocol
• Scalability
• Homogeneous hardware

There are various modes and protocols you can use at the same time. For customers who use NetApp 7-Mode, I would rate Data ONTAP 8/10 and for Clustered Mode 7/10.

• Centralization of protocols within the same appliance
• Software defined storage
• Easy management
• Scalability
• Support

Migration from 7-Mode to Clustered Data ONTAP need improvement. It seems NetApp didn't know how to solve the main problem of migrating data from an old OS (7-Mode ) to Clustered.

I've been using it for nine years, both using and implementing NetApp FAS series.

Deploying NetApp appliances is hard work. A lot of experience is required, mainly when your project runs a MetroCluster solution.

There's an issue when you have a mix of a low-spinning disk (SATA 3TB ) and multi-protocol access (NFS, CIFS and FCP, and iSCSI). Data ONTAP performance with WAFL goes down on mid-range solutions with multi-protocol access.

We've never had an issue with Clustered Data ONTAP, but we did with 7-Mode solutions and large amounts of data in the PB range.

They have really good customer service.

They have a good level of technical support when you escalate cases.

I've used EMC solutions in different companies.

The initial setup was complex and you need experience.

My customers use the solution for production servers, databases, and Oracle applications. I did not deploy Oracle. I deal with only the storage and server side of the product.

Adaptive balancing is a valuable feature. Whenever an application needs more IOPS, it will automatically be reserved for higher-performance storage like SSDs or SaaS-based hard disks.

The product should improve its user experience. The console should enable easy mapping to the storage volume and the server.

I have been using the solution for four years. I am still supporting my customers with the solution.

The tool is stable. The only problem we normally face is hard disk failure. However, since the product alerts the spare and redundancy, it is easy to manage. We also get support.

The product is scalable. Five or six of our customers are using the solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. It takes one to one and a half hours to deploy the solution, depending on whether new firmware is available whenever it is connected to the Internet.

To deploy the solution, we need connectivity. The IP addresses should be available before we do the configuration. We need one engineer to deploy and maintain the tool.

The solution’s cost is reasonable. However, the support cost is very high. Our customers ask for more discounts.

I handle many storages. NetApp FAS Series is recommended because of its stability, scalability, and easy administration.

Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.

We use NetApp as our primary storage. Because we are a system integrator, we managed more than 100 data petabytes of data of our customers.

It is very flexible. It integrates well with the public cloud and other components, so everything can be API driven. Therefore, it is very easy to automate it.

It is very stable and integrates very well with other components.

We would like to have further integration with some backup products. They have some of them already, but there could be more.

We have already seen the new roadmap and a lot of our requested features are already on it.

It is very stable. We use it for more than 100 petabytes. We do not have any issues. We have never lost data.

It acts as it was documented.

I do not speak with the NetApp support.

We have always used NetApp, so we did not switch from another vendor.

The initial setup was so straightforward. It was well-documented.

We have almost all vendors in our portfolio: EMC, Pure Storage, etc. 

As our stand up, we use NetApp because we are pleased with it. Other vendors have good ideas, but they are not yet implemented in NetApp, hopefully that will come one day.

Use NetApp, it is good. There are more specialized products in the market, but NetApp is a very good general fit.

We have a lot of product knowledge, and it is not 100 percentage perfect. However, we know where it behaves well, and where does not.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We always check the vendor to make sure our clients are receiving the most value for their money. We want the best solution for customers based on their budgets, because it is stupid to offer a product if it if does not work within the customer's budget.