NetApp FAS Series Reviews

• 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.

• Software features, such as being able to do snapshots and file system optimization
• High Availability -- components fail so this is a nice feature to have when failing over. There's no downtime, so we don’t lose data.

Good bang for the buck. Also, we use NFS generally, but FAS has the capability to use SAN, so it has a broad spectrum of use.

Tough for me to answer because I’m limited in my role, but the one thing I’d like to see most is more cohesiveness with a unified manager. I like the end product, but it’s not really all integrated and is convoluted with different managers. I would ike a single pane of glass, a single dashboard.

We see a lot of bugs in roll outs, and sometimes I think the first GA are late-beta deployments. My impression is they could have let it bake a little longer. But it could also be because of some of the environments it deploys in.

Snap Manager v3.3.1 is a little buggy and NetApp doesn’t offer training course on it. So it could be what I’ve been taught by other people, or it’s in fact buggy, but likely a little of both. Hopefully they made improvements on 3.4.

7-mode scales very well. I’m even more impressed with where they intend to go with cDOT, but it may be rolled out prematurely.

Tech support is usually pretty good, but occasionally there are some things that occur only on our site that tech support has issues.

Plan ahead and make sure you right-size it. How much head room do you really need? How many spindles are you going to attach? Are you really going to share workloads or do you want to separate some of those? We don’t segregate our infrastructure, which I don’t like, but all that costs money. But you should make sure that you have failover.

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.

We use the solution as a home directory for our HPC cluster. The users store important and reliable data on it. We are not using it for IO-intensive operations but as a reliable storage.

The solution is very stable and reliable. We guarantee our users' snapshots and the long life of data. Also, the support is professional and nice. It is simple and powerful.

As a company, NetApp may consider working with ARL systems.

I have been using NetApp FAS Series for around five years.

The product is stable.

The solution is scalable to some extent.

We have 400 nodes in one cluster and 1400 nodes in another cluster. Around 800-900 users are using the solution.

The support is professional. They provide answers in a very short period.

Positive

We've used Dell solutions. NetApp is easier and simpler to manage. It's more reliable and stable. The basic features work more consistently on the NetApp website.

The initial setup is easy.

The tool is very easy to maintain. Even for desk sales, they have some automatic workflow to send an RMA, place the desk and ship a new one.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The product has been pretty stable. Though we have had a few issues, not on the ones that we are going to replace, but on a couple of other ones. On the ones that we are going to replace, we usually use them for file storage and Exchange. The others are mainly used for interface and iSCSI.

It has been a pretty stable environment, but over time our requirements have changed. Therefore, I don't think it's an issue with the system. We have put a lot of load on a lot more than what it can handle. So, it has taken a performance hit. I wouldn't put it down to there being an issue with NetApp. It's simply because it has more load on it than it can handle, so it has taken a performance hit. 

The only downside is in ease in management; it is not easy to use.

It is good to have a unified storage where you can have block and file level protocols. It has been pretty stable, but the capacity requirements have changed overtime. Our utilization has been very high, so the performance has taken a hit, which is why we are replacing it.

• Ease of management needs to be improved.
• The power consumption for the FAS is a lot more compared to the new SSD arrays.

Going forward, I don't want to be using the FAS again. I want to be using AFFs more.

It has been pretty stable. It has been pretty good, and when we have issues, the support has been great as well. 

I am pretty happy with the system, and the performance issues that we are experiencing have nothing to do with the NetApp system. It's simply because it has more load than it can handle.

The scalability is pretty good, but it's too expensive.

Technical support is cooperative and good.

We were previously using an old IBM SAN. We switched because we wanted to moved to a unified system.

We had a reseller set it up for us, simply because it was a little too complicated.

It's not a cheap system. It is very expensive. The pricing has been ridiculous every time that we had to renew the support. Initially, we have a three-year support contract when we bought the system, but the subsequent renewal of maintenance was ridiculous. This is why we have not been too keen on NetApp.

I wouldn't recommend NetApp FAS. I don't understand why anyone would go for NetApp FAS when you can get the NetApp AFF, which is an SSD array, for almost a similar price or probably even cheaper.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Cost effective solution
• Performance
• Reliability
• A good roadmap.

• 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.