NetApp ONTAP Reviews

We use it with the All Flash FAS solution.

There are a lot of the reasons that we chose this solution. We are going the direction of automation in the cloud. It has flexibility and supportability around NetApp solutions and products.

For the All Flash FAS, it has lessened our performance issues. Our support for that is a lot easier for our patients to access.

The most valuable feature is the NVMe AFF.

The config could be a little easier. It's not entirely difficult, but it could be a somewhat easier. I have seen other vendors make it easier. 

We have other flash arrays which seem solid, but we trust NetApp to deliver us the best product.

One of the big benefits was the scalability. We wanted to grow as is. 

We have a lot of problems with this right now, so this product seems to help.

We have always had great technical support from NetApp on all their solutions. That's why I trust them against all our other vendors.

The initial setup is straightforward. Most of the information can be found outside of the config guide, either way the information is available.

We used a reseller for deployment, PEAK Resources. We have been using them for 15 years. They're awesome.

We chose NetApp for a lot of support reasons.

Other vendors did not seem to not be on the forefront with their solutions. Their roadmaps for the future were unclear, where NetApp's roadmap is solid. It seemed very specific for our needs.

We also looked at IBM, Pure Storage, Nutanix, and Pivot3. None of them met the mark. They were all short for a lot of reasons, but mainly it was the roadmaps. They were unclear and general, so we decided to go with NetApp.

Don't buy IBM.

NetApp solutions get rid of a lot of time spent on the operational side. This solution makes things easier for us on the operations side. 

NetApp seems to be very cognizant of what we need and where the future of technology is going with health care, in general.

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 on-premise storage.

For our organization, in terms of resiliency, it has gotten better over the years. It has also become more reliable.

• Availability
• Resiliency
• Recoverablity

I would like to see more evolution towards the cloud.

The stability is excellent.

The scalability is very good. It enables us to use different product lines within the same operating system.

Technical support is good to very good.

We actually haven't switched. We've been using it for about 15 years. We've been with it for a long time.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We do all our deployments in-house.

We're always looking at different vendors, and we want to see fit-for-purpose. We want to make sure that we're using the right technology for the right job.

It has a good, safe implementation.

I gave this product an eight, because there is always room for improvement and to make things better.

The primary use case is to move from Fibre Channel to SolidFire.

We see it drastically improving our organization. We are trying to move away from Fibre Channel. SolidFire with iSCSI will change a lot going forward in the organization.

The vendor diagnostics, which allows for movement from one vendor to another vendor using the application technology that is available. It should be able to talk to any vendor, not just NetApp to NetApp. We should be able to replicate the data, so the next feature should not be vendor specific.

The solution is stable, and upcoming releases will make it more stable.

Right now, there are some limitations. However, what I am hearing is that future technologies will be more scalable than what we have now.

They have pretty good technical support. They have a different support model for the hypervisor customers, so I have been quite happy with the support until now.

The previous solutions that we have are both IP and Fibre Channel-based. We are moving away from Fibre Channel, so we wanted to look for a new solution which was IP-based.

The initial setup and deployment were straightforward.

We have seen ROI.

We looked at multiple vendors.

We basically use NetApp Storage as mass storage within our offering. We also use it for backup storage, storage for emails, and sometimes for archiving. Mostly it is actually general-purpose file storage. 

The solution has very good Snapshot features. Everybody goes to NetApp for Snapshot. Their Snapshots are very good. We use it for local backups. We also have a DR set up. We use Snapshot or SnapMirror for the DR applications. We also use Snapshot for backup purposes as well. Snapshot is the one thing I would say is actually the most useful feature for us.

NetApp is very stable.

They have all the latest features. 

Their support is good. 

The performance of the hardware is good. 

We're actually looking at a software-defined version of NetApp. They already have a software-defined product called ONTAP Select. NetApp's ONTAP version for the cloud is called the Cloud Volumes ONTAP. We are looking for the Cloud Volumes ONTAP, an on-premises option. Right now, the only option we have is the cloud and that's only available with AWS and Google. We already had some discussions with NetApp about it. It usually takes two or three months and a lot of money on a software-defined solution. If we gain access to it, we can run it on a virtual machine and it will still give all the features without having to buy their hardware.

The pricing could be lower.

The setup can be a bit complex, depending on the environment.

We have been using the product for a long time. I would say we've used it in total for 10 or so years, however, in different offerings. The names have changed and the company also changed quite a bit.

I've been working with the solution for ten years, and I've rarely had any issues. I consider the product to be extremely stable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's good.

The solution can scale very, very easily.

Technical support is good. I don't have any issues with them. Most of my interactions are very, very good except for maybe one or two cases over the course of ten or so years. Mostly I find it very useful. They are very responsive and knowledgeable. 

The setup up is a bit complex within our environment. We actually tweak it to our requirements. The integration for backup purposes, for example, we use NetBackup. However, then the solution that we have is a bit complex for backups, especially if we want to actually do a Snapshot version only. We actually take full backups every day. Our solution is actually a bit tweaked for our real requirement. I would say it is actually not very complex. That said, it is not very easy either. It is somewhere in between. There is some level of complexity in our solution.

To apply and maintain the product you need a team, definitely. To deploy it, it depends on how you set up your environment. In our environment, one person can deploy it because we have most of the tasks automated. For us, it is not very difficult to deploy. however, then you also need the dependency. For example, to build a network, you are required to connect the device to the network, and then to set up the backup. You need a team as it requires some integration with the network, with the backup, and whatnot. There are many, many things to do.

In our environment, we only need two people. That is due to the level of automation we have. To operate it, you also need a team. How big the team is depending on the service level. You may have to have people in shifts. In our team, we have many people. It's a global offering at this stage. So we have a presence everywhere. That requires a huge team. There are maybe 10 plus members supporting it around the clock.

The cost is quite high. They need to work on making it a bit more affordable. We buy the equipment as a one-time purchase and then also purchase five years of support. It's a CapEx model.

We are service providers. We are offering something called a virtual private cloud. Our offering mainly the virtual private cloud. It is a cloud offering by DXC.

The product is basically a multi-tenant cloud. The cloud is hosted on our premises. We have data centers across the globe. Around 24 data centers in different regions. It's a global offering. We automated it and we have it set up for provisioning or portal enabled. It is not as good as Amazon or AWS, however, it is still a lot of cloud.

You can request a portal, however, then you cannot scale to that scale that Amazon currently is. That said, there are some customization possibilities. It is slightly cheaper than the hyperscaler cloud and that is why most customers prefer it. They find it really useful and cheaper than a public cloud offering, and it still has the same performance level.

I would recommend the product. I don't see any reason why you would have to look for a different vendor. The one thing that they can improve is the cost. That's pretty high. That is the only concern. Otherwise, they are very, very good in all other areas. Their hardware, software, their support, etc., are all good.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. We've been very happy with the product overall.

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.

We use it to manage data in the cloud.

It has improved our mobility in managing our data anywhere and anytime.

Also, because it is deployed and managed from NetApp Cloud Manager as a software-only solution on Amazon EC2 compute instances, managing Amazon EBS storage enables customers to build a virtual storage solution directly on Amazon resources.

• Total control of data in the cloud
• Multiple consumption modes
• Rapid deployment

In addition, we have some databases hosted in this solution and are very impressed by the performance and speed of the solution.

The way you attach, move, migrate, and access LUNs is complicated, and if you do not know how to do it, it can be a great problem for your IT environment.

It can scale according to your IT needs.

There are two consumption methods: pay as you go and subscription. Pay as you go is purchased directly from your AWS account and is charged either on an hourly basis or annually. It is a little expensive but worth it.

Purchasing this solution through AWS Marketplace was secure. We purchased it there because we are AWS customers.

In terms of other products it works with in our environment, we have only tried it with database workloads in AWS.

I rate this solution at ten out of ten because NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP provides a level of flexibility that allows you to pay for what you need, when you need it.

Our primary use case is file storage. We use it for SMB CIFs and Fibre Channel LUN for Hyper-V.

Our administrative effort is lower. 

DR is much easier now. It is essentially just flipping a few switches, then we have replicated data up in our DR data center. We have done the tests, and it works perfectly. We also have file services which are DR, where we flip another switch and all our files are in another easy place to locate. 

SnapMirror is a good solution, because we can take our production data and replicate it over to our DR data center with minimal administrative effort, which is huge.

I would like to see FlexGroup volumes come to parity in terms of software features with Flex volumes. It seems like FlexGroup volumes have massive scalability, but their features set is not the same as Flex volumes, so we are currently unable to use it. 

The stability is perfect. Even when we are doing upgrades to the ONTAP cluster, such as rolling upgrades where one node will take over the other cluster's volumes, we have zero downtime. 

Scalability is great. We are in current discussions to obtain another two nodes to our ONTAP cluster. So, two more nodes to our already two node cluster, and we don't expect any downtime. We have seen how much it can scale in terms of numbers, so we are happy with it.

Technical support is good. NetApp's solution engineers are good at architecting designs which are standard, but also future thinking. I've only opened a few tickets, and they've answered my questions each time. NetApp takes less than four hours to respond.

We once opened a ticket to have a technical support person online at two in the morning for a cluster upgrade. The technical lead was online and supportive, and nothing went wrong with the upgrade.

They have awesome technical guides and documentation.

The initial setup is straightforward, because getting a storage system installed is not the hardest thing. It takes some know how, but it's not an impossible task. 

When we do a controller upgrade from a FAS8200 to a FAS9000, I want somebody there to watch over the upgrade because something can go wrong, and I do want technical help. However, the cool thing is while we're apprehensive and know what can happen, it never has. We're too cautious.

Meridian and ePlus implemented our solution. We had no issues and found them to be knowledgeable.

We look at the other companies, like Dell EMC and Nutanix. We decided to go with NetApp because they are an industry leader. We also liked their SnapMirror and SnapVault features.

ONTAP is easy and works. It most likely has all the features you need, and then some. 

Each ONTAP upgrade has brought us new features, like rest encryption.

The new solution is crazy small and compact.