NetApp ONTAP Reviews

We use ONTAP for systems management, running and managing storage appliances.

ONTAP, for us, is underpinning all the software that sits on top of our hardware. We manufacture the infrastructure side of NetApp appliances. We use the capabilities of ONTAP for our customers. It's a case of implementation of that software and using that software to manage the storage arrays we're putting into our clients' environments. We also use it for PoCs. We'll deploy the software and demonstrate it for customers.

When you look at traditional, simplified storage, you would have a lot of manual command-line toolsets, you would have a lot of simple features and capabilities. With ONTAP and features like SnapMirror - the ability to have these more advanced capabilities - NetApp is leading that space. There are a lot of stats out there about what NetApp is doing around storage features and it's making it easier for our customers to consume rich storage features more easily.

The customers we work with absolutely use this solution for their mission-critical apps. For example, we have a university customer where NetApp underpins all their corporate systems. For them, that's mission-critical because they have to pay and manage, from an AP perspective, all of their internal customers. Without that system in place, without it being robust and reliable, they have no business, effectively, as a university. For them, it is absolutely mission-critical.

We have customers who have had ONTAP deployed for each of machine-learning, AI, real-time analytics, and similar groundbreaking applications. Our university customer is a good example. From an SAP perspective, they have a lot of rich analytics being done on that platform. ONTAP provides the best value for them. How the system gets architected is key, ensuring they have the right solution in place to get the best performance. The fact that NetApp performance, in general, is better than a lot of the competitors anyway has helped the university immensely.

In terms of helping us reduce the overall cost of storage, efficiencies such as Flash Cache and Flash Pool allow us to make better use of slower, cheaper storage and have some faster storage sitting up front taking a lot of the caching and the reading. The way that has been optimized for the NetApp platform is better than the competitors. It has reduced our cost of storage because we're buying cheaper storage, for the bulk capacity, which is really effective.

Storage efficiencies in ONTAP have been fantastic. For things like Snapshot-ing, when you are rolling out multiple clones, having good storage efficiency is really key.

Valuable features are SnapVault, SnapMirror, all the capabilities around Snapshot-ing. 

Also, the ability to then spin up copies of data in other data centers, on other storage appliances, is the most valuable for us and the one that we see the most interest in from our customers.

I would like to see more in the public cloud space around things like object storage. A bit more granularity around how that gets deployed would be nice, but other than that I think they've got it nailed.

The trend is heading in that direction, where more and more customers want to deploy applications that leverage object storage. It would be nice to have a more seamless integration, although it's not bad at the moment.

ONTAP is now in its ninth version. It's the most robust software on a storage platform on the market at the moment. I don't think anyone else has the same capability with the same level of flexibility.

The fact that you can have large clusters, you can keep bolting on more and more nodes, more and more appliances, makes it a lot more flexible than a lot of other providers. Normally, with a traditional SAN, you put a big SAN in the corner, stick some stuff into it, and leave it alone. Compared to having to buy another SAN with a different workload, the fact that, with NetApp, you can cluster and spread workloads across, makes it more scalable.

From what limited exposure I've had personally, our local support is fantastic. In terms of the process of raising tickets, I've not heard of customers having issues with the support mechanisms that NetApp has in place.

What typically drives the solution is the outcome for the customer. The customer will naturally follow down the path of needing a particular feature set to achieve some sort of outcome. We work through that list and figure out what that looks like. ONTAP seems to tick more of the boxes than any other product.

For the average person, it might not be straightforward but, in my opinion, the setup is more straightforward when compared to other storage platforms. Active IQ and the tools you have access to are a lot better than the competitors'.

Typically we work directly with NetApp on all our installations. Our experience with them has been fantastic. Really good guys, really good to work with, extremely knowledgeable.

We haven't measured ROI, but I guarantee there would be some. The cost per IOP is different for every customer environment so I can't give a figure for that.

IBM, since we're a partner. The reason I would go with NetApp is their products are a higher enterprise-grade than the IBM products, which is saying something. IBM is more of a mid-market play. The NetApp stuff is a more holistic, feature-rich set. It has more capabilities. The price points are roughly similar compared to competing products. NetApp is just a richer experience.

Do your research. Undestand what NetApp can offer. Talk to local NetApp resources and you'll find out a lot. One of the challenges a lot of customers have is that they don't know what they don't know. The more you talk to people, the more you will understand. I would advise talking to the local resources first, see what they've got. They probably have a solution, as far as ONTAP is concerned, that would fit into your requirements, the outcomes you're looking for.

I sat in on a session about NVMe over Fabrics this morning here at NetApp Insight 2018. Reducing the latency, getting storage to the application as quickly as possible, is phenomenal. That becoming the new standard, instead of the old-school SCSI approach, is going to become the next big thing. The fact that they're reducing that controller piece in it, the latency drops so significantly - traditional Fiber Channel is missing out on an opportunity to improve performance.

In terms of using NVMe over Fabrics with existing Fiber Channel, the good thing is that if customers already have investment in Fiber Channel networks, they can still take advantage of new technology from a storage perspective, without having to worry about upgrading and forklifting in new, specific equipment for that particular purpose.

As a software set, from a storage perspective, I would rate NetApp at eight out of ten because the maturity of the product is so much greater than the competition. I don't think anybody else has the level of flexibility and feature sets that ONTAP has.

As an automotive company, we are able to run some applications on NetApp ONTAP.

The MFS report is the best feature for us.

I believe that the next release should be a bit cheaper.

I have been using this solution for about ten years.

NetApp is very stable, this is why we went with this product.

This is a scalable solution.

Support is very good. They are available 24/7 and respond within four hours.

We used EMC in the past. It was good at the time, but it was crashing a lot. This is why we switched to NetApp.

The initial setup is straightforward as it is done by NetApp themselves and it does not require any maintenance on our side.

ONTAP is expensive, but most storage systems are now-a-days and everything is included with the license - there are no additional fees.

This is a stable environment that is easy to manage and good to work with - eight out of ten.

We use it to manage storage for our customers. 

Our customers use it for mission-critical applications, such as backup circuits.

We use ONTAP as a managed storage for customers. It helps our customers with all its features.

There is a faster release cycle now. Also, they are doing all types of cool stuff in their cloud volumes, replication, and tiering.

The fabric pools in the newer version is cool, though we don't use it yet. It provides tiering to cloud and fabric pools.

• We would like full automation of deployment.
• The ability to scale out.
• The lack of an API is a big thing for us that needs to be improved. It needs proper API support.

It is very stable and never crashes. During maintenance, it's easy to do. If you lose connectivity, it has one-sided redundant connectivity on the back-end for shelves, which is good.

It doesn't scale horizontally since there are a limited number of shelves. Other NetApp solutions are way better at scaling. This needs improvement since the future is in scaling horizontally, similar to what SolidFire does.

NetApp's technical support is always perfect. They go above and beyond when trying to help.

We generally upgrade when a solution is end of life or moving out of support.

With older versions, it was a little complex at some point, but this was back in the day. It's still a bit challenging, but when you have the right versions, it's straightforward. 

We're trying to automate the deployment process, and as far as I know, you cannot do that with ONTAP systems today. This may not be true with the newest 9.4 or 9.5 systems. 

What makes it complicated, there is no API available to automate a task. Now, they have released a lot of Ansible playbooks to automate a deployment, which might have significantly improved it, but I have not had a chance to try them.

We did the deployment ourselves.

I would recommend ONTAP, because I like the platform. With the most recent stuff, like the fabric pools which blow my mind, it is a really good solution.

There is something interesting stuff coming out in the future, like NVMe over Fabric, which has a different rate over Fiber Channel.

We use it for cloud. We have a big VMware environment with CIFS, NFS, and other applications. Most of the data is on NetApp.

It has the ability to bring up disaster recovery quickly.

• High availability
• Deduplication
• Compression
• Encryption

The toughest thing that we have right now is a cabling issue. There are so many that you need to connect.

I would like to see more S3 integration with other vendors, objects, or instruments. We are a big Dell EMC shop and would like to have this integration.

It is very stable. Given you have so many nodes in a cluster, the volumes, connections, and lifts can be moved anywhere within the cluster.

It is better than some of the other solutions that we have used. It is easy to expand nodes.

We are a premiere customer. When we call, we get someone on right away.

We have grown with NetApp. As they grow, we grow.

The initial setup was straightforward, but there is some complexity. 

We used professional services from NetApp for the deployment. Our experience with them was good.

We save a lot because of the deduplication and compression.

We have a mixture of NetApp and Dell EMC.

NetApp does NAS well and better than other vendors.

• SnapVaulting
• SnapMirroring
• Backing up

We are saving more disk space which saves us more money.

Aggregate data, compaction, and deduplication for ONTAP are its most valuable features, so we can save space.

It is stable.

We haven't had any issues with the technical support. When we've used the technical support, they have been helpful.

Previously, we have 7-Mode technology. Now, we have cDOT. We changed because now we can move volumes without any interruptions.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We deployed the solution ourselves.

They could reduce the price.

We looked at NetApp and Dell EMC. We chose NetApp because it was cheaper, more scalable and ordered.

It is a robust product. If you buy it, you will have no issues.

We use it as a file-based storage. We store a lot of unstructured and application data. Mostly data which needs to be shared across multiple mount points.

It gives us a location to store data across multiple mount points. It gives us functionality to provide Snapshots and backup outside of traditional backup solutions.

• It is easy to use. 
• It has been stable. 
• We haven't had any problems with it. 
• Getting support from our VAR and the vendor has been good.

The stability is great.

Being able to scale out at cost-effective capabilities doesn't compare to some of our other storage solutions, but it is coming along. NetApp ONTAP could improve its scalability.

The technical support is good.

We did not have another solution previously. 

We had specific use cases for file-based storage, and that's what drove us to NetApp.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We used Datalink for the integration. They've been good.

Recently, we have seen ROI.

NetApp and Dell EMC were on our shortlist. We mostly chose NetApp because of its functionality. 

• Do a proof of concept (PoC).
• Understanding the high availability of the storage solutions, especially if you have rack resiliency requirements. 
• Understand how the solution is designed and configured.
• Understand what your performance requirements are.

One of the classic use cases is the high availability for both block and file. However, many different technologies within NetApp are of interest to our customers.

NetApp has a variety of different features and technologies on offer. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. 

It's a stable product.

The solution can scale well. 

The integration with other products, both security and third-party products such as Lenovo and others doing OEM solutions, that would be ideal. We'd like to have these with ONTAP on top. We'd like integrations with different types of backup solutions and so on. 

The price could be lower. 

We have a good sense of feature sets in the pipeline for the product and therefore are largely satisfied with both its capabilities and the roadmap. 

I've been using the solution for five years or so.

The stability is great. I'd rate it ten out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product scales very well. I'd rate it nine or ten out of ten. It expands easily. 

The solution works well for large or mid-size companies. 

Within our company, none of us is using NetApp storage as we are providing our customers with solutions.

From our portfolio, we're selling a lot of Dell EMC and NetApp. We're selling Huawei, and we're selling other storage space as well, such as some IBM. With that said, if you compare Dell EMC and NetApp, it's mostly based on the integration, technologies, and flexibility where we see NetApp being a better fit for many of our customers, yet not for all.

We have been working with NetApp a lot. Doing implementations is not a problem for us. 

95% of the time, clients can handle the initial setup. However, we primarily work with enterprise accounts, and those, even with a simple setup, can often lead to complex requirements.

The pricing is okay. I'd rate it three out of five in terms of affordability. It is not a cheap solution. However, it is quite stable and offers good value. 

We did evaluate this solution against other options. 

I'm actually a partner of Lenovo and NetApp. We're integrators. We set the solution up for our clients. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

Based on my 20 years within the IT industry, NetApp is the best system out there. It is just not the cheapest. That said, looking at what it can do with Lenovo and other vendors make it a good option. 

My primary use case is we have both Windows and Unix and they share file systems for compiling code. The big advantage with NetApp is the ability to file Linux symlinks in the Windows environment. 

When I came on board they had NetApp and ONTAP was old and the system was getting to its end-of-life and corporate wasn't sure which way they were going to go. They couldn't quite make a decision on whether to buy a very large unit or a small unit because we were gonna become a central hub. They decided to scrap, and what to choose landed in my lap. I decided to go with a smaller NetApp that would fit the main requirements that I needed NetApp for and I use other types of storages for VMware. My volumes, that are NFS and SIFS, there's a lot of stuff that's used both on Windows and Unix so I need the ability to maintain the permissions between the two. I get better security with ONTAP and I get better control of users space requirement because I have qtrees and quotas and then I have the masking of user accounts, NIS to AD. The other thing that's a really good bonus is that ONTAP has a deprecated NIS and a lot of other vendors are deprecated NIS.

Critical applications are not as critical as like you'd normally experience because I am R&D and it is a production environment for R&D, but I have time to build a recover. I can recover hourly from snaps, everything else I recover from tape backup because my backup uses MDMP and it'll be just as fast as Snap and storage are cheaper.

Cost of storage hasn't reduced but it's more cost effective because the very specific requirements drop the ball. Especially when it comes to user account translation from Unix to Windows. ONTAP and Dell EMC are the only two real vendors that know how to do that properly.

For me and my users, the most valuable feature is the ability to mask Unix accounts to Linux accounts.

Stability's perfect because I have two nodes, I'm not overloading the nodes because it's just R&D and it's very specific lines, so it's a lot of terabytes but we're not in petabytes. For what I do it's very stable.

Scalability is perfectly fine. Right now I only have the two nodes and one shelf. I'll be able to easily upgrade additional shelves. They gave me plenty of cabling when I got the unit so all I have to do is disconnect and reconnect the cabling and that's it.

Tech support has been pretty awesome. The only thing is that 9.4 has been presenting a couple of challenges and there was one case, for example, where I didn't want Snaps. There's a command to be able to disable the scheduler, but with 9.4 that command doesn't quite work. I ended up using a workaround which tells the scheduler that it has zero snap capability on all snap jobs.

The initial installation could've been quite easy, but there was a lot of miscommunications with professional services and there are a lot of details that they didn't quite provide which caused a very complicated installation.

A lot of Windows builds have been failing simply because when they go through the file system they can't file the symbolic links that are created on the Linux file system. Now they will resolve because ONTAP supports that.

I would rate this solution a ten. It's very easy to use. What I really like about it is it incorporates the same thing as CentOS and RHEL 7 which is the Tap commands. If you have an idea of what commands you want to use, you can tap through and figure out what you need without having to go and look for the full syntax.