NetApp ONTAP Reviews

My primary purpose for NetApp ONTAP is for the MetroCluster. We have two data centers and we have it housed there for high availability and fault tolerance.

Over the last five years of implementing a MetroCluster ONTAP, we've been able to improve and keep a high availability for our organization. In many cases, we reduced and minimized any downtime that happens given us a power or hardware failure we've been able to still keep our environment up and resilient.

For our ONTAP mission critical we use about 85%. We also have Epic. Epic runs all on NetApp, and so we also have some critical clinical applications that run on NetApp. Those are highly available which allows the doctors to gain access to some very critical clinical applications that reside on our NetApp storage.

If our data centers suddenly go down, we have two data centers, and we can fail over between either data center that is interrupted because of any scenario.

For real-time analytics, we use our NetApp E-series. That houses and manages all of the analytics within our environment.

From a space consumption perspective, because of all of the deduplication and the Snapshots that we're allowed to manage our infrastructure from a storage perspective, it's been really solid. I know we're about 50 to 60 percent deduplication on most of our storage, and it has allowed for storage continues to grow. As many times as I've looked at trying to reduce storage, we continue to consume our storage growth. The deduplication that NetApp provides has allowed that growth to be maintained and managed.

One of the biggest values that ONTAP provides is the ability to fail over between two data centers. Since we are a hospital, it gives us high availability and allows for us not only to failover in situations of a power outage, but also allows for us to do testing to ensure that the product is functioning properly.

My impression of NVME is that it works flawlessly and it allows for us to be able to manage our environment in a more rapid fashion. For NVMe we've only partially just began to really start playing with it and test it. We're working on implementing on MetroCluster over IP. We haven't involved ourselves very heavily on it at this point in time.

Because of the deduplication ONTAP reduces the footprint and makes the footprint much smaller.

There is a lot a lot of functional integration that we look forward to for improvements. I'm learning where they're going and I'm very interested to see those improvements and how they can help us.

Stability is very strong. We had an issue and after FlexPod looked at the solution, FlexPod was running well. What is important is the partnership that we have with NetApp. While we were trying to identify a problem, even though the problem had nothing to do with NetApp storage, NetApp came in and helped us resolve that solution. They had a team come in, evaluate, identify where the problem actually was and gave us a fix for it. That was very critical given the situation of the outage that were occurring at the time.

Scalability has been very, very good. We've had this product not only for Epic but also for our infrastructure for the last five years. The scaleup has been fantastic. One of the solutions that we're looking at to go to the MetroCluster IP is because over the last five years we have finally grown to the point where we're at our max. Either we have to build another cluster solution or revamp, modify, move forward, and so we're looking at the Metro IP Cluster to allow us to do that.

We had a storage solution and during an investigation and a review of the solution, we analyzed the standards for what we were looking for. The fact was that we had virtualization VMWare, and the integration of NetApp gave us a FlexPod clone and the integration in the communication and having a one shop place for all of our troubleshooting and management, and coordination of those three different solutions made the best sense to go with NetApp.

Initially, we had a reseller that we partnered with. They were instrumental in helping us build up the infrastructure. We also had a partner that also came in and helped us implement and build out the Epic environment as well.

There is a lot of reporting which we work with NetApp on OCI and SnapManager. At this point, I'm just trying to really get a feel for what's our next event. I see where NetApp is headed when it comes to the reporting and integration  I'm looking forward to seeing what solutions they will present to us.

ROI is in line with many of the storage industries. We get a great reduction from our cost perspective in partnership. I would say that ROI is suffice.

We also looked at 3PAR, Dell EMC, and IBM to see which would be the best fit for us. 

I would rate this solution a ten because of what NetApp provides us from a quality layout. The partnership that they provide us and their assistance is very important and the work that they communicate with us on a regular basis is outstanding.

I would tell someone considering this solution that there are many similar technologies. What I would recommend is to make sure that you have a great partnership with whomever you select. In my case, I recommend that you understand your business and make sure whoever you're going to select understands your needs and is willing to digest, make a sale but invest their organization and commitment to your organization. I selected NetApp because they have a true partnership with us.

Our primary use case is for serving the file server files. File storage is for the member offices and accessing that data.

From the capacity perspective, it has helped us because of the thin volumes, deduplication, and compression features.

ONTAP provides the ability to dole out Qtree shares as needed. Team volumes is a benefit.

The cloud features, the ability to go into the cloud would be a feature I'd like to see improvements on.

They could also improve on their ability to back up storage.

It's stable. It has good monitoring tools to help monitor activity and take action if necessary.

The scalability is good. 

We do look at tech guides and the Knowledge Base articles and then engage support. The account teams are always available.

We were using Dell EMC. We did an initial evaluation with the reseller consultants, based on that we went forward. We wanted to diversify everything so that we could get more benefits from the features.

The initial setup was good, flexible, forthcoming, and straightforward. 

We used CopperTech. They were good to work with and very responsive. They look at every scenario.

The deduplication and compression features have helped us save storage costs.

We have been able to save about 10 to 15% on space using the space consumption features. 

The approximate cost per IOP is around 50 cents. 

I would rate this product a nine because of its ability to upgrade easily and the scalability.

Definitely look at the compression, deduplication, and the ability to grow into the cloud, consider any product that has these features. 

ONTAP runs our Tier 1 data center. We use it for running all our virtualization, backups, etc.

Where the DBA is doing all the migrations and testing within our database, we have Tier 1 and Tier 2 data centers and do a lot of testing across them. The ability to create a FlexClone and immediately test everything which needs to be done then revert back within minutes, if needed, is phenomenal for testing.

FlexClone has been great for R&D. We've been doing a lot of testing, implementing Oracle DBAs and getting them into the thick of things.

I would like more diagnostic generation. Right now, it's a pain to go into the controller and do a full diagnostic and export. If that could be streamlined in any way and not be so tedious, because it's a pain to go through all the different steps and have the command memorized or have to look it up. If there was some way NetApp could incorporate it into the native ONTAP command center, that would be great.

I've never had an issue with it. Same with the upgrades, we have had no issues from 8.2 to 8.3 to 8.4. The stability has been great for four years.

We are in the process of doing a huge data center refresh. We will find that out very shortly about its scalability.

The technical support is great. It's the best I've ever encountered. I can email and have everything resolved at three in the morning within half an hour. I have had some late night calls to their guys techs, and it's been phenomenal.

I probably leverage NetApp's engineers too much, but we have a good working relationship with their contacts. They usually handle everything within a few messages, so it has been great.

The initial setup was straightforward for me. I am a storage engineer, so I'm familiar with it. Even our network engineers that have to set it up using NetApp diagrams had no issues with it.

We have used CDW in the past. However, we are now going with NetApp directly.

CDW was great. We didn't have too many issues. However, for our work particularly, there wasn't a enough value-add to stick with a third-party. Therefore, we are now doing everything directly with NetApp.

I have seen ROI. NetApp is streamlined, reducing costs. ONTAP is the best.

If you start narrowing down NetApp versus price point, then comparing it to the feature set and take away all the bloat that other companies will try to add on, there is no other option. It comes down to just NetApp.

We have some strict requirements because we are a defense contractor. It came down to NetApp and one other big company (Dell EMC). ONTAP's ease of use and our familiarity with it along with the reps, who are great about keeping us informed about training, etc. It made it a no-brainer for us to go with the solution.

We chose NetApp because of price and it's a no hassle solution. We're doing a trade study, so we asked all vendors for quotes, etc. We asked our NetApp reps, and they gave us what we needed within a timely fashion. 

Dell EMC sent us eight people, who insisted on a two hour meeting. They keep trying to oversell us crap that we don't need. It felt very forced. Whereas our NetApp guys, they would rather undersell us than have us buy stuff that we don't need. I appreciate their upfront and honest attitude.

You can't switch out a hard drive without an EMC rep coming out, where NetApp is streamlined.

There is nothing it can't do. It satisfies all my needs. It is straight to the point and has great updates.

We are doing a trade study right on all the things that we would like to have and everything we have hard requirements for, and NetApp meets both.

We use it for both our all-flash FAS and traditional FAS systems. We have a relatively large FAS 9,000 cluster.

It's easy to manage and has a good CLI, API, and GUI. It also has good role-based access control, allowing me to grant specific commands to users without full administrator privileges. It's a mature product that works well.

ONTAP encompasses the entire operating system, including the file system layout on the backend is valuable for me. 

There is room for improvement in areas related to hardware constraints—for example, more storage efficiency, especially in terms of deduplication. You don't have a global database for deduplication like some competing systems do. So, you can benefit from storage efficiency when you have a large-scale data system.

Another area of improvement is pricing. Pricing can be complex to decipher. It's not just about ONTAP; it involves hardware costs and capacity licenses.

There are some somewhat obscure features like managing QTree's and other relatively obscure things. So, I would like to see more clarity on that front.

I have been using this solution for eight years. The previous cluster data was also on top of ONTAP, but just an older version, called ONTAP 9.

Currently, we use version 9.12. 

I have seen an ROI. It's extremely reliable, very easy to manage. I've been able to reduce the number of people I have managing the storage systems because of the software.

Our pricing with discounts is reasonable, but it may vary for others. If you're paying rack rate, it might be a different situation. But I think with our discount level, the pricing is reasonable.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We are capable of implementing, migrating, and the configuration information of NetApp. We have 7-Mode and C-mode ONTAP operating systems from NetApp. 7-Mode, which is out of date and has expired from NetApp's vendor. They have created their own kernel for ONTAP, a cluster Data ONTAP. For the time being, they are only doing and providing the ONTAP cluster data, ONTAP to the customer. Customers who are using the 7-Mode data, 7-Mode ONTAP are systems that have not yet been upgraded. Whatever previous series hardware they are using, is incompatible with the C mode cluster data ONTAP. As a result, they are constantly taking care of and having to refresh their customers and providing the solution to the migratory or existing data to the new Data ONTAP system.

I've implemented many customized enterprise levels, and I've also done many migrations. Basically, storage that is currently in use, as well as a SAN protocol and how we are using it for all of our heterogeneous environments, such as VMware, Windows, Linux, and Unix. 

NetApp ONTAP is an operating system, similar to Windows, which we use for accessing the Windows client.

NetApp is storage similar to EMC. EMC is one of the storage vendors; they provide EMC, such as Dell EMC, Synology, Dell, and IBM. NetApp is one of the market's leading providers of SAN and NAS protocols to end users, as well as critical business solutions.

Currently, with NetApp application scenarios you can see that if you have a high,  business-critical application, it will require high IOPs to access this application from one of the storage options listed. Assume you're using an SAP HANA, or any other high IOPs utilization application, such as SAP, HANA, or any other tool. In these cases, NetApp has a solution. They have hardware such as an all-flash disc, which means they can use all-flash storage in between this solution fulfillment. If you have a hundred users logging in at the same time, you are using a business-critical application, it should not include any database applications such as Oracle Database. In such cases, they provide the SAN-based solution from NetApp and meet your NetApp storage requirements.

NetApp storage is also a hybrid solution. The cloud is essentially in the market right now, but no one is moving all of this data to the cloud.

If the primary data center is unavailable, you can deploy your data from the cloud vendor. This type of solution can also be obtained from NetApp storage.

With NetApp ONTAP your storage requirement is met. If you provide a solution to any of our customers, we will first take the accessories. We will collect the necessary requirements from the customers, just as we will conduct the assessment from the customer's end.

NetApp has a variety of hardware and solutions available there. Based on that, they can provide a low-level and high-level diagram and inform customers. If you want to use such a solution, such as a hardware solution and a software solution like this, you can, you can implement it at the customer, and you can use it. Like VMware, we can use it in most NetApp players, most of whom are in hardware and network storage. From a storage standpoint, NetApp is the number one partner and the number one equipment manufacturer.

If you wanted to configure the QAs policies right now, I believe you should be technical as well. If you are not aware of such devices and technology, you will not understand.

We will assess the existing infrastructure. If they want to improve the existing storage, not just for NetApp, it will be based on what is currently available and being used.

Existing IOPs will not be compatible with your current user, regardless of who is concurrently connected to the storage.

We'll assess the existing infrastructure, and if they're ready to buy any new hardware, any new solution, we'll add any additional access they'll give solid-state drives. And we will improve the performance. We will increase the number of drives and the overall memory utilization. As a result, the end-user cannot determine the exact utilization of the speed and your IOPs. we'll put it to use. 

If there is a bottleneck in the network as well, we will find out exactly what assessment is now, and we will make decisions based on that assessment. Based on the assessment, we will make recommendations for improvement and provide guidelines for exactly what we need to do.

In terms of the storage, if you implemented the storage one time and if you provided the volumes, you also provided the opportunity to learn. If you provided dials and QS policies, the client and user are not required, and they are not asking for the extension and all of these things. If you configure a quota type of information, or if some of the users are requesting data for a hundred UPR changes before the particular data, particular folder, in this case, we can do the automation involved there.

Until we get the automatic resize working properly, if a threshold is reached out to a specific percentage, such as just 90 percent, or an aggregated breach is 90 percent. This is the kind of data that the automation process can provide.

That is the fundamental thing in our NetApp storage right now. One of the things that are happening now is that a new requirement has arisen from the end-user, such as the desire to create new volumes of new LAN and present them to a specific physical host, a virtual host, a Windows host, or a Linux host. We have to create this information, this script, and just fill it in their format.

NetApp is currently providing monitoring tools. Assume you have multiple clusters in your organization, a large number of containers, and a large number of countries if you are currently using your storage. There's no need to log in to each cluster and storage separately, there is a centralized monitoring and management tool where you can simply log it into one single signup control.

It's as simple as a single click. If you wanted to manage these jobs and run the one-sum script, you didn't have to log in to each and every cluster and storage; instead, you just needed to log in once. With a single click, you can access your own information via someone else's system and manage their command tools from the network, which they have developed.

They could make the access a bit easier.

Every cluster and storage must be done manually the first time,  during the implementation and deployment phases. If it is deployed completely, you won't have to do anything manually. You must perform online on all of these automation and all of these centralized, single controls.

They need centralized controls. 

Not every organization is small, and they are using multiple locations. They are utilizing a number of DRaaS solutions. If your primary data center is down, is it due to any of these hardware or natural environment, natural disasters, human beings, or mistakes now? You don't have to worry about this in these cases. Simply click the activate button on the DR site, and your data will be deployed from the DR storage. There's nothing to be concerned about. It's simple.

You can migrate your existing data right now. As a result, the feature is now being used everywhere, and what everyone is looking for, is on a cloud right now. For example, your ONTAP system manager, cloud-only the features that are combined with that cloud. If you open your NetApp ONTAP system manager control, it will combine the cloud volumes and you can simply map your three-bucket location, three-bucket credential, and jump in your data going to the cloud.

You can either give it a second copy on the cloud network or use cloud data ONTAP. If you've wired your data to the cloud, ONTAP, AWS, Azure, or Google. So it can simply create a duplicate copy on the cloud player as well.

My primary expertise is in NetApp ONTAP. I have been using NetApp ONTAP, implementing and providing solutions for the last seven years.

The most recent version is used at my client's location. 

We had an 18, 20 cluster on NetApp that was a near DR solution, primary solution, secondary solution, such as a DR solution, or a long retention archive backup solution with disc level backup.

They have also implemented and improved the solution with a cloud vendor, such as Azure Data ONAP, AWS Data ONAP, or Google Data ONAP, all of which are major players that are partnering with NetApp to provide a cloud-based solution.

In terms of performance and reliability, NetApp ONTAP is fantastic. If you look at it, and if you go with NetApp now, everything you will get as compared to other storage, NetApp is extremely stable and reliable storage.

In comparison to IBM and Dell EMC. As a result, NetApp is a fantastic tool in my opinion. If you have to do anything, it will be simple, and you will not have to worry about your NetApp data. If you think about it, there are disasters over there, and my data will be lost or something like that, but there is nothing to worry about.

We have a scale-out and scale its solution based on the type of information and solution you are currently deploying. NetApp is deployed in many locations. If you deploy the current solution, we can do it as a scale-out and scaling kind of device. Based on that, we can expand the other data size and use it for environmental purposes.

We never contact them, but if we need assistance, such as a hardware solution or a hardware replacement, we must contact them because we do not provide the hardware. They are now providing the hardware. But, if you look at the software part of the picture, I don't want to reach out to NetApp. I'm very capable of doing it every time, both for storage and for the NetApp ONTAP system.

We work with VMware, Storage, and Nutanix NCI solutions.

Actually, complex means that everyone is an expert in a specific device or a specific product. No. How can we say it is complex, or how can we say it is simple?

From my perspective, I'll say it's simple for me, but if you're looking for the first time, no, it will appear to be quite difficult. 

From my perspective, it's simple, because I've been working with NetApp for over seven years and am familiar with its operations, and migration. Based on that, I can tell you that it is easy for me.

If you want to set up primary and secondary storage now, you only have a few days. This is a production idea type of solution. It will only take three to four days. But everything should be in its proper place. We can simply order it. But if you say that, we don't have the space, we don't have the cooling power systems, and we don't have the power supply, it will take a long time to deploy. However, if you want to deploy the storage, and if everything is already in place, it will most likely take four to five days for both site location storage.

It is a perpetual license. You are not required to purchase on a monthly or yearly basis. Whenever you purchase any type of solution software license, it should be a perpetual license that is valid for a lifetime. 

When you purchase NetApp for the first time they will provide you with the standard license, or a premium license, and even a standard bundle solution license. If you choose the premium bundle, each license will come with only that bundle.

They are offering the protocol device license for sale. If you want to use a CIP protocol, you must purchase the CIP. If you want to use the NFS protocol, you must purchase the NPS license if you want to use DFC, VME, or FCoE. If you only buy the bundle license now, each license will come in that bundle's bundle package.

NetApp storage is my primary skill; I am an L3 or L4 on NetApp.

I'm building the NetApp from scratch based on what others need, and which one must be used, However, NetApp currently has a pre-deployed ONTAP version, that includes a pre-deployed ONTAP version in NetApp storage. They are assigning devices and hard discs to each of the controllers. They cannot have an operating system based on that request. They have been deployed. Aside from that, we will need to connect to your laptop using this console cable, serial console cable. We simply need to assign that to the serial console.

If you configure the management IP, we can put it in their networks and take the RDP or partition from your network. That is any location on your network. From there, we can simply configure the cluster. We can set these up with the data aggregate, volumes, learn and share, Q3 and quota. If they wanted to learn about the AFC solution, we simply need to configure the fiber channel cables and connect them to the SAN network and cable. If you wanted to create the zoning, analyze, and provide to a physical virtual.

I would rate NetApp ONTAP a ten out of ten.

We use ONTAP to take care of the filers. We have quite a few filers and we use it to increase and decrease storage and make new volumes. All the stuff we use Data ONTAP for makes managing all the filers very easy to take care of.

The reason that we use Data ONTAP for everything is that we have it on all of our systems, we have a lot of customers. We use it for our virtual environments in which we make a big data store. Our way to tell people is to just pop in VMs and they use it. We have a cloud environment and a lab environment. We either do NFS VM stores, people just pop in VMs or we put them on iSCSI, they connect to the VMs and poof they're there. We have NetApp and then the networking, so we're right on top as an oxygen service. It's used everywhere, production, development, whatever you got, we're there.

The way it has improved our organization is that we get a lot of requests for new volumes and new data structures. We go and talk to the user and tell them what we can do with it. We also find that we're a very diverse organization and they want to move data around. We provided SnapMirrors for them and they put data in one location and then we SnapMirror it to the other, and they can do their data. They get it, no need to worry about it. Just poof it's there. I call it the conveyor belt of data. You put it here, we snap it, it's here, it's available, and they love it. They love that feature and that they don't have to worry about shipping it, they don't have to worry about commissions, it's just there. They love the speed of use. 

We look at the numbers because we make sure everything has been provisioned and deduped. There are other products that we've put into Data ONTAP. We have the OCUM, the On Command Unified Manager, which helps us figure out when we do things for Data ONTAP. We put all of our tools that go into Data ONTAP and we have the unified manager where we can see any of our alerts or anything. Then we can do our performance manager. All the tools that we hook into Data ONTAP make it very easy to run because it's a tool that can feed other products and it's the tools that we get from NetApp that makes it very easy to figure things out. It makes it more efficient, we can see things. People complain that their NAS is slow and we're able to bring up the performance manager. It makes life a lot easier because these are tools that we don't have to pay for. Management loves that, they're free tools, we just install them and away we go. 

Ease of use is the most valuable feature for us. We brought a new storage person online, he knew another product, we easily taught him what he needed to know using Data ONTAP. He came up quickly, became very valuable to our team because he could use Data ONTAP. It was poof, he was done and became a valued member of our team. It didn't take him months and months to spin up on the product, so it's very nice. It took longer to spend on all the names we had and where all of our locations were. Data ONTAP was no big deal for him.

We know how much space we'll save. We have compression. Within provision and dedupe, one volume that we have problems with is we do 30% and it's around 12 terabytes. It's a very large volume and we dedupe everything and we get huge savings. We over-allocate our aggregates and it still works, it's great, it's fun. We dedupe everywhere, we get huge savings. We went back and deduped the whole thing again, we could get more, so that's what we do. We go back and look to see if there's an option we can set and do it from the beginning, but still 13 terabytes, that's a lot of dedupe savings. Sometimes we get 50% or more in our savings, so we love dedupe.

We're at 9.3 so when we go to 9.5 we would like the synchronous SnapMirror because our users would like that, especially the ones that do the conveyor belt of data. We'd like that. A lot of the other ones, I'd like just to see go to HCI, but that's just another investment to go to. I'd have to go back and look at everything else. For ONTAP 9, 9.5, we like to keep up with everything that's going on because we don't let anything lag too much.

Stability is great. It's very stable. A couple of times we've had to reset some of the settings. We just go look on the web and it tells us that we just have to turn certain settings on or off and everything's back up for the web. That's the only time we've only not had the web interface come up, but all the other times it's there. If it's not there, the NAS is having problems, we have bigger problems than just ONTAP. Otherwise, ONTAP is very stable, it's always there. It's great.

ONTAP scales because it's always on the NAS, and our NAS scales. Right now our business is growing so we keep hearing that they need more storage. We tell them that they need to buy some shelves and we just keep connecting shelves onto our NAS. With ONTAP we have more shelves, more disks, and aggregates. We just go click, click, click and it does, and we're good. It makes it very easy to use the product overall. It's not a big deal to scale out on Net App ONTAP. Then it tells you on the shelf, if the disk goes bad, ONTAP knows about it, it'll send auto support off to NetApp because we have the maintenance contract. Then NetApp points out that they need new shelving. 

I'd rate it about a nine because I just don't want to give anything a ten. We love it. We also have production on the backup filers that we use. It's great, it's easy.

I would advise someone considering this solution to take the classes and get some education. Especially if it's cluster because cluster's a little bit different, you need to know how to take care of that. Make sure you know all the networking parts of cluster ONTAP and go take the class and then implement it. Then if you have problems, call up and find out what the problem is and go forth and do it because it's great.

Our primary use case is network-attached storage.

It's much easier and faster to deploy our storage with ONTAP than some of the other solutions that we have.

We use it for everything from payroll to home directories.

• Availability
• Resiliency
• Ease of use

It stays up. My people can easily manage it. It just works for us. It has been very stable. Upgrades have worked. We've had very minor to no real problems with it.

We would like to have additional cloud integration and the ability to Snapshot directly to Amazon. This would help us reduce costs, provide us additional disaster recovery, and give us a site that's not owned by us.

It has been very stable. Otherwise, we wouldn't have put our mission-critical applications on it.

We can do upgrades without taking it down. We have had nodes fail and people just kept working.

It has scaled really well for us. We started off with several nodes and are up to about 16 node clusters now.

Support has been great. We also have professional services in our offices, and our professional service guys have been awesome. They are super-fast in finding problems and fixing them.

We switched solutions because were at capacity as far as size. NetApp was also cheaper and easier for us to deploy.

The initial setup was very straightforward and simple. Put an IP on it, give it some passwords, and we configured from there with strips and other stuff.

We deployed with an in-house. The experience was great. We had enough experience in-house that it worked.

This solution has helped our organization reduce our overall cost of storage. We're part of the NetApp OnDemand, where we lease it. Also, it doesn't take as many people to administer the solution as some other products.

Because of its manageability, we have fewer people managing it.

Our short list was Dell EMC and NetApp. NetApp was more familiar to our people, and they came in cheaper per gigabyte.

It has been amazingly easy for us to use.

We hope will be using this solution for machine learning, AI, and real-time analytics in the future.

We are not using NVMe yet.

We use it for enterprise storage. We use data ONTAP to solution and enterprise storage for our core data centers. We use a lot of SnapVault and SnapMirror features for disaster recovery and daily backups to meet SLAs.

From a service level of perspective, we can restore it from a snapshot in a very short period of time. Whereas, traditional backups from some of our larger databases could take many hours to recover.

We use this solution for our mission critical applications, like SAP.

• Snapshots
• SnapCenter
• The ability to take an instant point and time capture of an application's consistent backup.

The PowerShell scripting capabilities right now are all over the place as far as which rich operating systems are supported. They all support Windows, but the HCI product with the SolidFire integration also supports PowerShell on Mac and Linux. It would be nice if the rest of the NetApp APIs caught up with PowerShell on other operating systems besides Windows. Because we're deploying more non-Windows operating systems, it would be helpful if we would be able to use that utility.

We have not been able to save space by using this product.

Stability is very good.

Scalability is a bit of a question. If we're only doing file-based storage, scalability is fantastic. If we are doing block-based storage through iSCSI or Fibre Channel, there are some significant limitations in the number of volumes and clients that you can put on a single data ONTAP cluster.

Technical support is very good.

We knew that we need to invest in a new solution after we did a total data center architecture. This is the product that we sought afterwards. We chose NetApp because it was the best fit for its price performance.

We started out in 7-Mode and evolved into cDOT. The initial 7-Mode deployment was very straightforward. Migrating 7-Mode to cDOT was much less straightforward.

We worked directly with NetApp for deployment, and our experience was good.

The solution has helped us reduce the overall cost of storage by doing an OPEX agreement with NetApp, we are paying based on utilization. Instead of fronting 30 petabytes worth of storage, we are paying for what we're using.

NVMe over Fabrics is a very interesting proposition. However, it's probably always going to be in a leap frog position with NVMe over traditional Fibre Channel infrastructure. Because if you look at a lot of the research data running NVMe over an Ethernet-based fabric, as the fabric gets congested, the total amount of footprint goes down significantly. Whereas the footprint is very consistent for the Fibre Channel fabric from start to finish, no matter how congested it becomes, and you're still capable of pushing it at reasonable speeds very close to the theoretical maximum.

With the Ethernet fabric, you also have to take into account that you only get the best speeds for NVMe over Fabrics if it's a dedicated storage Ethernet environment, and more than 90 percent of the people implementing it are going to share it with other things because they don't want to have a separate Ethernet infrastructure just for storage. If they were going to do that, they would have stuck with Fibre Channel. Theoretically, it has an off a lot of promise, but practically, not so much.

We do not use this solution for machine learning, AI, or real-time analytics at this time, but we are investigating them.

Make sure that you test it with your own data set. No one else's test will look remotely like what you will use it for.