NetApp FAS Series Reviews

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.

• Dedupe
• Also, our customers look for fast connectivity and cost efficiency.
• It's TCP/IP vs. fiber channel, which tends to be more costly.

• Single unified-type architecture for block-and-file-type data storage
• Ease of use
• Being able to hand off things like snap shots directly to customers

They need to improve the go-to-market for all-flash and converged infrastructure. What is your goal-to-market vision, and when to get there? They’re too slow compared to others and what they’ve done in the past. They were the leader in dedupe, but now, it’s not such an innovative edge.

It lacks flexibility in failover and failback, so we cannot granularly failover pieces. It's not easy to move one piece over to the other side.

Also, from the overall workload standpoint, all protocols are handled in just one physical architecture. So if I'm running dedupe, fiber channel, and other protocols on the same CPU core, I can’t load-balance. I’ve seen issues specifically with EMP, one core is maxed out, and I can’t use the other cores to handle it.

Fairly solid 5-9 array. FAS is a solid architecture in 90% of the environments.

Scalability especially in SMB range has been well-received. So long as the environment is sized correctly, it’s been good.

I have had both good and bad experiences, depending on what tier I get to initially. Now it’s tiered, whereas it used to be one senior guy.

If historically you’re a NetApp customer, it’s not as complex as cluster mode. It requires a lot more complexity – command line is not so friendly for storage admins. I’d recommend also sticking with what you know.

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.

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. 

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.

It gives us the flexibility to work with all protocols on the same Storage Box. The WAFL (Write Anywhere File Layout) is the best feature implemented on this storage solution. Also, the DataONTAP is very reliable and stable, and I haven't had any problems yet. If you configure NetApp using the best practices, you should not have any issues with the performance. Lastly, the de-duplication works very well with all applications in a VMware environment, and you will save a lot of space. In my experience we save more than 80% of the space using deduplication on the volume, and if you have allflash fas you will have gain of the 3:1 and 4:1 on the your storage on the all environment without lost performance.

All the protocols on the same box can solve all the configurations problems. They also help centralize and simplify all connections into one box.

The feature snapmirror is too simple to configure and it is the best way to configure one storage environment with High Availability site to site.

Unify all backup software on the single tool to simplify the administration.

I've been using NetApp products for Ten years, and currently i am working with models FAS6220, FAS8020 using all softwares available...

I don´t find issues yet

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

10/10.

10/10.

In the past, I used, and still work with, solutions like Fujitsu and Hitachi, but when I have an opportunity to work with a NetApp solution, I don't want to go back. That's because the NetApp solutions give me more flexibility to work.

I think it is easy, because I have implemented NetApp in the past. I don't know if someone without work experience would be able to execute the initial setup. However, if you apply best practices, you should not have an issue.

I have experienced both in-house and vendor team implementations. Whenever it is done by the vendor, they are 10/10.

The ROI for NetApp is good, and if you use it on a VMware environment, the ROI will be even greater, and if you get the new solution Allflash FAS you will have a big gain of the storage like 3:1, 4:1 and many more dependending on the your application.

The price, sometimes, is very high, but the ROI is guaranteed.

Ye I did, but I didn't find another solution that could centralize all the protocols into one box without an appliance.

Study the NetApp solutions, and before you implement be sure to do PoCs.

Today we use it for replication of our transaction data, and for storing data, for which we use the snap mirror feature. Primary and disaster recovery storage centers are connected. Snap mirror backup software does block level copy from primary site to the disaster recovery.

We’re going onto the cDot platform, which is already an improvement. The controllers are faster so we have more processing efficiency.

We’ve been using it for the last six years.

Stability has been very good. As far as we’re concerned, we update our systems (firmware, OS) consistently, so we don’t face any problems in that regard.

We've had no problems scaling. Our business has grown two and half times in size over six years, and we’ve added more disks and shelves, as well as upgrading controllers. We’ve done it without any down time.

Quite good. Recently we deployed micro-clusters with cDot, the first bank in India to do it.

It was complex because we experimented by keeping data and system volumes separate. We don’t replicate the system volumes frequently. We were able to do it, although we used only 1/10 of the bandwidth with a combination of FAS and vSphere.

Configure it properly. Today we have HA with any data loss because we did it nicely, and took our time for the beginning. We got terrific support.

• Snapshot
• Snapmirror
• FlexClone

• Huge time savings
• Large storage space savings
• In the end—time and money

They should make it faster and cheaper, but it does what we need it to do.

Good overall. We’ve hit some bugs in the ONTAP code that’s caused it to crash. We’re just coming off of seven-mode, and I'm looking forward to the capabilities of CDOT.

It's highly scalable, especially with CDOT. We can scale out quickly.

It's very good, generally first tier are wiling to help us or get us to right person pretty quickly.

It was complicated. We were coming off an IBM system five years ago. We got help for everything from cabling, terminology, and we had to relearn how we reconfigured storage. We got help from both NetApp and our VAR.

Just do it. Chances are the functionality that comes with the ONTAP software will be better than other products at a similar price.