NetApp ONTAP Reviews

We use the solution to manage storage. It comes with the hardware.

It is a basic storage management software. The integration is good.

Sometimes, we face problems with support.

I have been using the solution for four to five years.

I rate the tool’s stability a nine out of ten. We do not face any glitches or downtime.

I rate the tool’s scalability a nine out of ten. It is pretty easy to expand.

The support team is in a different country. The response time of support for our region must be improved.

Positive

The solution is not complex to work with.

The vendor does the setup.

The product is a bit expensive. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.

I recommend the product to others. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Our client's primary use case is for the storage aspect of the solution, mainly for the block size.

The reliability of the storage is the solution's most valuable aspect.

The hardware of the solution is very reliable and there are hardly any issues at all. There rarely are failures, especially when you compare it to other vendors, which have a higher failure rate.

For example, HPE tends to be more prone to disc failures. In the case of ONTAP, this is extremely rare.

The OS is very user-friendly. Due to the fact that the architecture of the system is the same, once we learn ONTAP, we don't have to worry about drastic changes. Other vendors tend to change their products, and then we have to re-learn everything again, including the complete UI and configuration. With NetApp ONTAP, once you learn it, only a little bit of updating is required.

The solution is very easy to configure.

The solution is more for mid-range companies. 

The integration could be improved. There used to be an integration product called Snapper Tech, however, it's not available anymore. The vendor-partner relationships need to be improved across the board.

The back-up side of the solution could be improved, as could the archive. We still have to rely on third-party backup programs and other archiving solutions. If it was offered by NetApp itself, it would be much better.

The solution seems to be changing and moving towards the cloud and it will require many changes in order to be able to adapt to this shift.

I've been dealing with the solution for almost ten years at this point. It's been a long while.

The solution is easily scalable. It can, due to the features itself and the Cluster ONTAP features it supports. There are additions that need to be purchased so that the customer can scale, however. Other than that, yes, you can scale it well.

The solution best suits medium and enterprise customers. The price is small compared to other companies. 

So far, we've been very satisfied with technical support. They are quite knowledgeable and responsive.

The initial setup is not complex at all. In fact, if you compare any other storage, ONTAP is easier to install, implement, and manage than other options. 

We deploy it for our customers.

In order to scale, you do need to purchase add-ons.

I'm on the partner side, and therefore not an end-user.

I would recommend the solution. Its cluster and storage are quite good.

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten. We enjoy working with it.

The primary use case for this solution is the storage and backup.

Previously we didn't have DR, but ever since we purchased the NetApp server, we are able to use SnapMirror and then create DR scenarios, so that's been a huge benefit.

This solution has helped reduce the overall cost of storage space in our organization by allowing us to use one data center, instead of two, and then allowing us to replicate the data; so that saves us money to buy more storage.

We have been able to save space by using this solution.

SnapMirror. DR replication, it's very useful that we have backups.

I would like the ability to perform backups in the cloud. That way you don't have to worry about building the data center. Everything's already in the cloud.

It's very stable. We never had any data corruption or data loss, so, it's been very stable.

I would say we have platinum support, so they're really good for our work, so they're really good. You get what you paid for.

Previously, we didn't use any other solution. NetApp came out and gave us a demo and it just works. 

Yes. It was very straightforward. Very easy. The PSE came in and showed us how to do it. We followed the instructions and it just works.

EMC, Hitachi, and IBM. We chose NetApp because of its ease of use. 

Our approximate cost per IOP is at least a couple of million.

I would give this product a rating of 8 out of 10. There could be improvements, its proprietary software so it can be pricey.

I say give NetApp a try. Its very simple to install and easy to use.

We have been using it for our entire environment, so we use it in file shares and in our VDI environment, at least for user data. That has reduced our user login times by about 50 percent. This has helped, and probably been one of the biggest benefits that we've recently seen, getting people's logins down to 45 seconds from more than two minutes. It's helped with our backups times, and keeping our backup windows in compliance.

The main thing has been performance, but we're hoping that we also get there on the reliability section (with the MetroCluster), so we don't have any disasters. The performance has been so good on it. Even some of their tests that we're doing, switching workloads from one data center to the other, has been great.

While its performance has been great, the configuration with the MetroCluster has been a bit of a headache. We've been working through it. However, it's a bit of a tedious process. With the MetroCluster, in theory, we should have good reliability. We have been having some issues just the finishing the configuration. Some of our DR tests have been not successful, so it's been a little troubling.

We have had some issues with the architecture, because of the complex setup with the MetroCluster. While it is getting there, we've had problems. We've had some outages trying to get the system up, so it hasn't been very good, but I'm hoping we get there. This does not seem like it's necessarily a NetApp issue, but the architecting of it has been a little rough.

Going forward, I want to see a simplified deployment and more straightforward recommendations on what is required for it. They're a little vague, and we've had some issues where we would like to have a tool that can scan the environment and find issues before deployment, fixing issues. So, when we're deploying it, we're not running into problems. Simplification would definitely help.

The system stability has been good. 

We haven't had it too long, so we haven't needed to scale it up. It does look pretty easy. We have MetroCluster, then we have the All Flash FAS and the new 8200 hybrid. 

We've been able to scale out the 8200, which has been beneficial, as we offload some of the older, slower storage to it. We have quite a bit of room to grow by adding new nodes into it. Right now, we only have two-node clusters, which have been great to upgrade, and not an issue.

Technical support has been good, but since we're using MetroCluster IP, we've been a little bleeding edge. This has been a bit of a problem because there are not as many people who are knowledgeable in it. We have had some issues getting people who have good knowledge on the subject, which has been why we've had some of the issues that we've had. A lot of it is just foundation and architecting. We've had some issues with existing equipment compatibility issues that we didn't really discover in the initial planning. The technical support has been good, but it has been a bit of a slow process.

We ran out of space with our old storage. We didn't have any full DR redundancy because we didn't have enough space to do a DR scenario. The main reasons to upgrade: Not enough space, we needed to upgrade, and NetApp happened to be a cheaper solution than some of the competitors.

We migrated from Dell EMC storage, where did have some issues with capacity in the IOPS, and NetApp was the cheapest solution. We got more performance and bang for our buck, so we moved over to the NetApp All Flash system. 

The initial setup was pretty simple, just for the basics. However, when we tried to scale out and run it in production, that's when we ran into issues. Because we were sold Fibre Channel MetroCluster, then that ended up not working for our situation, we had to buy more equipment and switch it over to MetroCluster IP. This was smooth at first, but then the deployment on production was much longer process.

All the support and deployment has been primarily from NetApp. We do have a consultant who has been assisting with some of the networking pieces, but most of the actual storage is all done with NetApp. While they've been knowledgeable, it's a complex configuration, and sometimes we've had some issues with them giving us solid answers on which direction we should go. They'll help us do something, but they don't want to give too much architecting information. That's been a bit of a headache for us. They said it was going to take 60 days, and it's been six months and we're still not fully rolled out.

We went through a reseller to buy the solution.

We looked at just Dell EMC and NetApp. Those were the two main choices, as they are similar products with similar performance. We could see Dell EMC was definitely more expensive, but it also had a more complex configuration. On paper, NetApp seemed cheaper and a bit simpler, which was one of the main reasons that we moved over. The performance for cost ratio was really interesting.

I would recommend doing your homework and make sure the environment is prepped before getting it set up. Make sure you have any prerequisites and your equipment's compatible: The distance between data centers is the networking pieces being compatible with the all-flash MetroCluster. If you have any issues there, you're going to have constant headaches with the configuration. The main piece is make sure you have all your ducks in a row on your networking gear, make sure it's compatible, and fix the issues early before you start deploying.

I work for an oil and gas company. We go out to the field and get oil from the ground. The primary use case is for development and preparation for production. 

We're able to gather information, and put it all together to find out where the best place to drill would be. Also, speed. Our databases work a lot faster, probably 18 or 20 percent faster than previously. The speed has increased the performance. 

My colleagues get their information files without bringing down SQL.

It's very fast, NetApp is always dependable, so if we have an issue, they're very responsive.

The new release has a lot of features that will save us space and therefore, money. The inline deduplication and compression are really nice. 

They could lower prices so my management doesn't complain about cost. Other than that, I'm always happy with the releases. 

It's 100 percent. We've never had any issues with it. 

It's 100 percent. It's easy to add additional storage disks. 

I would rate tech support at nine-plus out of ten. It's not a ten because I have to wait when I call. I can wait for 20, 30 minutes before I get to somebody who can actually help me. Normally NetApp identifies the issue before I get out of bed and has a solution already planned. 

We were coming to end-of-life with our old solution, and this was the next generation that was available, so we would have upgraded regardless. This was the best option.

It was straightforward. It's built on previous NetApp operating systems. I understood it without knowing the new generation. 

We used NetApp Professional Services, and it was very good. I worked with them beforehand and gave them my plan. Any corrections were made beforehand. We've done it twice and it's been very good.

I know they have saved time, and time equals money. We also have more space in the data center. It's a smaller footprint by half a rack. That's a lot less money and a lot less cooling.

We looked at Dell EMC, but we would never go with them. They don't have good support and it's gotten worse over the years since Dell and EMC merged. Instead of two bad support systems, they have now combined it into one huge, bad support system. NetApp's technical support and proven stability are a lot better than them. We've been using NetApp for around 15 years and we've always had good results with it.

It's an advance from what we used before, and a lot faster. It doesn't take a lot of learning to start using it.

Take a look at NetApp and get the Professional Services involved. If you're coming from a different vendor, they'll be able to assist with getting the data moved over. That would be my main point.

It is the easiest way to backup, restore data, and access data along with keep it secure. It has an easy interface to manage all the data.

It has made it easy to deal with the scalability in our organization along with the mass increase of data. We avoid loss of important data and can recover it completely. NetApp has made this challenge for us easy.

• Saving data and backing up it, up to the minute.
• 100% guarantee restoring data. 
• Saving money because of the dedupe technologies.
  

I would like more security against the malwares, spyware, and ransomware. I feel like ONTAP is a bit lacking in this area.

It is very stable. You can trust NetApp almost 100% that it will work fine. The disks are stable and our data is safe with NetApp.

If we want to change things in models, such as add, replace, and adjust to another client, it is very easy. This is a good thing.

They have very good tech support who always answers our questions and troubleshoots our issues. They're great. It is easy to escalate, and they have friendly people. They will help you all the time, every hour in a day.

NetApp was our first storage solution.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We used Encore Technology Group. Our experience was not very good as they lost data, which was a critical mistake for us. They also did not respond in time.

Because of the dedupe technologies and Data ONTAP servers, we have saved 20% on hardware. This is a lot of money for us.

While it is going to cost a lot of money, their technologies is worth it.

We also considered HPE and IBM, but NetApp was the cheapest, friendliest, and most accessible.

It is friendly to use and manage. They are very good in backup and restoring 100% of things up to the minute. It's very easy for regular users. 

We use it for network shares and being aware of backups.

It can restore from Snapshots. Our developers ruin VMs very quickly. It restores Snapshot and gets them back in a few minutes.

Deduplication.

Feature-wise, it does most of what we want. The only thing I don't like is that firmware upgrades require downtime. It would be beneficial if we could do upgrades without as much downtime.

It's very stable. We've had no issues with it in six years of using it now. We have eight different devices and the stability has been awesome. The only failures we've had are drive failures and they normally have those shipped out before we even know there was a problem.

Unfortunately, we haven't scaled up much.

Technical support is very good. We haven't had a ton of issues but when we do - the drive failures - they're very easy to deal with.

It was pretty easy. They came out and helped with it and gave us a few days' training. It was pretty simple.

We used a reseller, Storage Assessments. Our experience with them was very good. We still maintain the relationship with them for upgrades and purchasing other software.

We had a developer get a virus in the Dev environment and, due to the Snapshots and backups, we were able to just blow that environment away and bring it back up pretty quickly. I would consider that ROI because it saved us a ton of money in machines and resources. We were able to do that in an hour, versus rebuilding the entire environment.

We also looked at 3PAR and HPE. We brought all three vendors in, met up. After doing testing and using them all, NetApp was by far the easiest and the deduplication was much better than the competitors.

Go with the NetApp. The ease of use and the deployment of it, by far, outdo every other vendor that we've dealt with.

I would rate it a solid eight out of ten. The ease of use is awesome, the support is awesome. The only thing keeping me from giving it a ten is that keeping it upgraded is a pain.

One use case is user files, when customers are trying to place their unstructured data and then access it remotely. A second case is is VDI. All the VDI uses have their home drives hosted in NetApp. In addition, we use NetApp for general-purpose, such as Unix applications, database archives, big data, when they need a lot of reads and fewer writes. That data comes into NAS. In our firm, we use it for tier-three and tier-four, which needs less than 20 millisecond response times. Those types of applications are deployed in NetApp.

In terms of VDI, pretty much every employee of our firm is a customer of our NAS infrastructure. Everybody's home drive is on NAS, so it's highly critical. Even a minimum outage would cause a lot of potential business risks to the firm. NetApp has come up with performance management devices to improve the performance. And it has all-flash and hybrid aggregates to improve performance in caching. It's really excellent.

As we scale more data, as we add more data into our data pool, we really need it for faster disk drives and quicker response times for our customers, to make sure they will get their data whenever they need it.

I love the replication technologies which keep a customer out of risk. At any time, we can do a seamless failover/failback, and have the latest data on it. 

The SnapVault is another excellent feature. It's used for remote disk-based backups so we don't need to depend on tape backups with their long restore times.

SnapLock is the feature we would like to see enhanced. As a bank, we store data for compliance for a long time: ten years, 15 years. The data would be locked. So they should enhance the SnapLock features. 

At the same time, the customers want a seamless failover and failback for SnapLock. As a bank, we want to look at the data availability, so every quarter we failover and failback. Today, we can failover but we can't failback. We'd like to be able to do both.

On average, the data that lives in the ONTAP hardware is there for four to six years and then it moves on to its end-of-support-life years. When it gets there, it tends to have a greater number of hardware breaks and failures. From a data perspective that's a big risk for us.

As part of tech refresh, we plan the data movement. One year before it gets to the end-of-support-life, we predominantly migrate it into a CDOT, or some other latest all-flash technology that NetApp provides us.

In CDOT, theoretically, you can have 24 nodes in a cluster, but we are careful about that. Right now, we have ten-node clusters. We feel CDOT provides scalability in terms of the virtual world. You can keep adding nodes, you can keep adding disk shelves, you can scale your volumes. And then you can virtually move your failover capabilities from node A to node B, whichever node you want. When you want to do maintenance, you can just virtually move your LIFs' interfaces to other nodes and then you can safely failover. That's great, amazing.

The only thing that they have to improve in NetApp is that they're still relying on padding each node in active-active in CDOT. That has to go away. They should look at the scalability on a platform level. The computer would have that one file system with multiple nodes on it. If even one node fails, any node in that cluster could take over the functionalities. But today, it absolutely relies on that active-active uncoupling it. That needs to be improved in such a way that it would be one namespace. If this node goes down, any node in the cluster should take over and run that environment. It should also have stability, high-availability, and data protection. It all happens today in the virtual world, but it has to happen in the physical layout as well.

Tech support is okay. We have given our feedback. What we have seen it evolve over a period of time. So far it's okay. It still has not reached a level I would call "great," but it's okay. It's going in the right direction.

We have performance issues and capacity issues, among other things. We don't get the right engineer, the right attention the first time, so it needs escalation. We need to raise the priority of the cases to make sure to grab NetApp's attention. Those situations have to be avoided. There needs to be a proactive solution instead of reactive.

We do see ROI from the capacity perspective, although I don't have data points at the moment.

I would rate ONTAP at eight out of ten. It's an industry standard. It pretty much supports all the protocols and it delivers what the customer needs. It's operating on the use case perspective. Instead of having thousands of features - what is the use of that if a customer only wants ten percent of it - NetApp is really focusing on the ten percent, and delivering what the customer really needs.

It would be a ten out of ten with cluster enhancement and support improvements. Those are things that they should improve. I hope in a couple of years, when I come to the next NetApp Insight conference, I'll be able to tell you it's a ten.