NetApp SnapCenter Reviews

Our ERP structure is on the SnapCenter. We also keep on it SQL Servers, VMware products, etc.

It has greatly improved our DR activity. 

Assisting backups.

We would like to see more granular repording and reporting in bigger sets available in SnapCenter. 

Our ROBOs has told me that stability is good. However, we have been hit by bugs.

I have not looked yet at scalability because we are using single instances right now.

We have experience some difficulties with our current support. We are engaging in engineering level support because some of our problems are more technical.

We were having some data corruption problems in our biggest environments, so we started looking into it NetApp solutions, that's why we went for SnapCenter (after doing a PoC).

The initial setup was straightforward.

We used NetApp Professional Services. Our experience with them was good. We have a long standing relationship with them.

We looked Dell EMC and NetApp. One of the features in our requirements was going from a SAN environment to a NAS. These types of features are why we went with NetApp.

It's for storage. We sell a call center and voicemail solution and we store the recordings there. We also store the configuration file there. We use it for redundancy. We are using an HA proxy for redundancy so if one fails we can use another node.

We have new software releases every month, or every week, and we can implement them directly on our system without worrying about the backup because we have SnapCenter. We can just roll back if there are any issues with the new software.

It helps with workflow because we used to need to create a Snapshot every time we wanted to upgrade things in vCenter but we don't need to do that because we have SnapCenter. It cuts down the time compared to what we previously needed to do.

It's very helpful because SnapCenter is already integrated with VMware Snapshot, so it's very easy to use.

I have an issue with SnapCenter because sometimes a VM cannot be backed up. All the other VMs have already been backed up, but this one particular VM is not being backed up because it has errors. It's causing a problem in the whole thing because after the next round of backups, not all the backups are removed. It's because we have an error on a particular VM where it could not create a Snapshot. That is really annoying because we need to check for that issue every week.

The way SnapCenter works is that it makes a backup of all the VMs and then it removes all the old backups. If one VM cannot be backed up for some reason, it has already created a new backup for all the VMs but it cannot remove the old backups. It ends up creating so many backups in VMware and it will cause a performance problem if the condition is not fixed.

It's really a huge issue. When one VM causes this problem it's too much. It could just skip that one VM and do the remove for the rest of the VMs. That's how it needs to work.

It is stable. We don't have any issues with SnapCenter.

SnapCenter has no issues with scalability. We have plans to increase usage in the future. When we add new customers, that will increase our usage of SnapCenter.

Technical support is good. They are responsive and really helpful. If I want, I can contact them directly.

The deployment took about a week. I had some issues and I needed to contact NetApp support.

The setup was complex. When you deploy SnapCenter it requires integration with vCenter which is a firmware thing and it doesn't always work the first time. I had an issue that I thought was coming from SnapCenter but it was coming from VMware. NetApp needs to create documentation on the firmware setup.

Our implementation strategy was just to follow the recommendations and, if there were any issues, to ask the NetApp support agents. They were very helpful in finding the issue.

The integration required just one person, me. We have five people supporting it, from our engineering team.

If we were to lose that data it would mean we would lose customers.

Just try it.

I would rate SnapCenter at eight out of ten because it needs some improvement, as I outlined above.

It is used for VMware and Microsoft SQL databases. We use it for ordinary backups. Nothing special.

I like the instant backups and recovery feature that SnapCenter provides within NetApp storage systems. That's mostly why I'm using it.

I would like to see replication support between systems. Right now, it's kind of limited.
We manage them separately from the storage system interface, not from SnapCenter. It would be nice if it was integrated into SnapCenter.

I would rate the stability at four out of five because it's a complicated product. In terms of integrating with systems and software, sometimes you need to watch your software versions and the changing environment. But that is its design, so there is nothing you can do about it.

It's stable. I haven't had any stability issues with it.

SnapCenter handles scaling very well. In my opinion, it's for small or medium businesses but not for enterprise. It has great value because it's cheap and everything is bundled with the NetApp system, so it's best for small customers. Big enterprises usually use complete backup systems. There's no way you can it can propose SnapCenter as the primary backup system in an enterprise, in my experience. There is nothing wrong with the software, it's just that big enterprises have serious backup systems.

We use different backup solutions for systems that SnapCenter doesn't support. We use Commvault. We started using SnapCenter this year. We had a few new NetApp systems and it was cheaper to use SnapCenter than Commvault because it's included and bundled with the system. It's better to use SnapCenter than to pay for Commvault. It's better value.

The initial setup is pretty easy. It's very good. The whole process of implementation is pretty easy and straightforward. There's nothing to improve here.

Usually, it takes less than one hour to deploy it and get it operational. Our implementation strategy is to check the whole compatibility matrix. That makes it go easily. Deployment generally requires one or two storage engineers, as well as a DB or VMware admin. Four people is enough.

It ordinarily works without any maintenance needed, but to monitor all the backup stuff might take half an FTE.

We see a financial value with SnapCenter because we don't have to license Commvault, which is pretty expensive.

NetApp has great licensing models. It has two bundles: You can buy Premium or SnapCenter, and that's a great thing. You have all the replications included but, as I mentioned before, there should be some improvements in the management the replication for SnapCenter.

We have not looked at other systems. We have a primary backup system and SnapCenter for particular systems, and that satisfies our requirements.

Check the compatibility of all components before, although it's pretty common. After you check the compatibility, then deploy SnapCenter and the plug-ins. Don't try to implement and then troubleshoot. It makes things more complex.

Backup and recovery software solutions are very important for every company. SnapCenter is pretty cheap, and that's important as well. Sometimes, customers don't want to pay a lot for backup solutions. That is why SnapCenter is good.

We do implementations from time to time, where customers have no backup solutions at all. It's better to have something that is actually free rather than nothing. Case by case, if we have no backup system, we use SnapCenter, but I don't think the number of our installations will grow significantly.

I would rate SnapCenter at seven out of ten because of the lack of replication management, which is very important.

We are a NetApp partner. For our systems, we are using SnapCenter only for testing purposes. For customers, we started to install when it was SnapManager, quite some years ago. We have many installations with SnapManager and some installations with SnapCenter. We're at the stage of migrating from SnapManager to SnapCenter.

Our customers primarily use SnapCenter for SQL Server and VMware.

When we're talking about databases, it gives us a fast way to make clones and test environments.

Restoring and cloning are easy to do.

I'm waiting for SnapCenter for hybrid solutions. Right now, we only have SnapManager for hybrid. I need agents for that. People are looking to install SnapCenter in a SQL environment, but where they're running SQL on Hyper-V and using virtual files. Currently, we don't have support for hybrid. We can't do that.

People are also asking about SnapCenter for SharePoint. There was a SnapManager, but SnapManager is being brought to an end and now there is nothing for SharePoint. We don't have the ability to do snapshots for SharePoint.

Now, the stability is good. The first release was not very stable, but now it's okay.

I haven't had any issue with scalability. In our country and for our customers, it's okay. We haven't used it in the cloud yet. I think it's quite good.

Technical support is good, but it just depends on how difficult the case is. 

I have problems with the documentation, for connecting new shelves to the old FAS models. The case is marked "resolved," but I haven't received the documentation.

We used SnapManager. We switched because SnapCenter provides centralized management. It's also a newer product and it supports new databases and operating systems.

I think the initial setup is straightforward, but it depends on your skills. For us, it's straightforward.

The installation time depends on how many agents I need for the number of databases there are or how many systems. But in general, the initial configuration takes something like two hours.

We also provide SnapVault and Veeam. I'm a NetApp specialist, I don't install these other products. We have another person who does.

Our customers generally have one or two users using SnapCenter. They aren't very big companies which have a dedicated SQL or& Oracle or VMware administrator. Most of the users are DB admins and system administrators. For deployment and maintenance, two is a good number, so that there is some redundancy. But one person is enough to install it and maintain it.

I would rate SnapCenter at eight out of ten, because it doesn't have functionality for Hyper-V, etc. I need more agents and support for more systems.

We primarily use the solution for snapshots and for backups.

We have found that the snapshotting mechanism is better than VMware.

The solution is stable.

The initial setup isn't extremely difficult.

Technical support has been very helpful when we have issues.

The solution is free to use for our company.

The usability of the solution could be much better. It's something the solution could improve upon.

The UI, the User Interface, needs to be improved. It's not as clean or modern as it could be.

Some of the granularity isn't there when you compare it to solutions like Rubrik, which are much slicker.

I've only been working with the solution for a couple of months. It hasn't been that long.

The solution is very stable. We haven't really experienced any bugs or glitches. I can't recall the product crashing or freezing. The reliability is pretty good in terms of performance.

We have not yet tested the scalability. I cannot speak to how easy it is to do so.

Currently, I am the only person in the company that is using the product.

We have dealt with technical support in the past. We've found them to be very, very good. They are helpful and responsive, They are knowledgeable. We are very satisfied with the level of service they provide to us when required.

We had previously used solutions VMware. However, we found that sometimes of the answers were too long when you use VMware snapshots. Therefore, we decided to switch to a different product altogether.

The initial setup is neither straightforward nor complex. It was somewhere in between. It has a moderate amount of complexity.

We use the solution for free. The price couldn't be any lower for us. We have no complaints in that regard.

I've looked at Rubrik in the past. I find it to be much slicker in its capabilities. It offers much more granularity.

We are using the latest version of the solution. I cannot speak to the actual version number.

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

If new users or companies are considering the solution, I would advise that they make sure they read the documentation in full. It's the best advice I can offer a new user.

It's used as a backup and recovery software. Some of our clients are using the solution for private cloud primary backup.

It has very fast backup and can handle a huge amount of data. It also enables fast recovery. 

1. It would be a good idea to add date support and improve on resource management, not the backup itself, but in the manageability. Groups might be helpful for each site or data center so that we know a given data center has these resources while another data center has those resources. It's not always easy to group hosts by type.
2. A host is trying to set up a connection with every SVM configured on SnapCenter Server. This is not good, especially if, like in our environment, each SVM is configured for particular department and is beyond a firewall. As far as I know developers are aware of this issue.
3. It would be nice to have native plugins not only for Oracle and MS SQL. Community plugins can cover your needs, but I'd like to have more functionality.
4. I would like to have more friendly logging. Sometimes this could save time for our team and allow us not to create new case in support.
   

If nothing changes it works fine. But we faced some issues twice after we upgraded to next SnapCenter release. One time Vmware was affected and one time it was Oracle on Linux. Before update procedure, you should test any new release properly in a test environment!

It can cover much more than we have now. Scalability is a strong point. We are able to monitor it through a dashboard and reports.

We have used tech support and it has helped us in every case. It's very good.

We did have a previous solution. We switched to this one because it allows us to have a better RTO/RPO and the solution is included in our bundle.

The install is very simple. I just need to know the requirements and then I can install it. The number of staff required for deployment and maintenance of the solution depends on the organization. 

We evaluated SnapCenter vs NetBackup and SnapCenter vs Veeam.

SnapCenter is really good for VMware, it's really nice. It's also very good for SQL and Oracle. But you need to test it properly each time because there are times you will need to reconfigure your infrastructure.

We have plans to increase usage of this product. It currently covers about half of our infrastructure.

I would rate SnapCenter at seven out of ten. It's very good, allowing us to do fast backup and recovery, but like every product, it has its flaws, limitations and it has a room for improvement. It may not be useful for certain companies. But anyway, when I look at other backup solutions, I have not yet seen a product that is a ten out of ten.

We use it for Oracle, on the client side.

In our company, we are mostly using SnapCenter software in our test environment. There are many customers using NetApp products, but most of them don't use SnapCenter software in their production environment. So we do not have a lot of experience with it in production systems. We are testing it in our data core environment and our test environment. We check the software's features and new features, and sometimes we do troubleshooting as well.

We test VMware Snapshot, Hyper-V Snapshot, database Snapshots, for example, MS SQL and Oracle.

It allows us to easily take a Snapshot and use it with any backup tools.

We can also take Snapshots on the application side. If we want to restore an SAP or an Oracle machine, a normal Snapshot won't do it, but we can do so with SnapCenter.

We can back up according to application types and not bind. All the features are good for NetApp storage. SnapCenter is the top application. It makes it very easy to work with backup tools.

The replication feature needs improvement in future releases.

SnapCenter is stable.

We haven't had to use technical support for SnapCenter yet.

We were using NetApp's previous software, SnapManager: SnapManager Exchange, SnapManager SQL, SnapManager for Hyper-V, and SnapManager for VMware, etc. SnapCenter is the software which collected all the different kinds of SnapManagers into one bundle. That's why we started using it.

The initial setup is not complex. It's easy, but we have to know which version is used on the customer's side. For example, we have to know which version of ESX they are using and whether the Oracle or SAP machine is a virtual or physical machine. If we make a mistake at setup time it will be a problem for an application or Snapshot.

Deployment takes one hour. We set up step-by-step.

There are two kinds of licenses: a controller license, which is the SnapCenter Standard Capacity license, as well as the SnapCenter Advanced Capacity license.

We are using Commvault Backup software in our environment. Commvault can also manage Snapshots of NetApp, but SnapCenter is very easy for us.

It's really useful if you are using NetApp storage. If you have NetApp storage in your environment and want to take a Snapshot, I recommend purchasing this software.

We have five users of it in our organization. In most environments, one person is enough to manage the software.

I would rate it at eight out of ten. It's useful. If you don't have a backup application, you can use SnapCenter.

Our clients use it for backup and restore.

It needs to support vSphere 6.7.

The stability seems good.

I have not had to use NetApp support. As far as our customers are concerned, we are the NetApp representative.

The initial setup is fairly straightforward. There is a little bit of work in getting it to work, but it's not too bad. It's not complex. The one time I installed it myself, it was for a somewhat complex customer, so it took some days.

My advice to someone who is looking into implementing this product depends on their environment, whether they're using several SnapManager products, whether they've been using SnapManager before, or if it's a new install. It would also depend on the versions of the products being protected.

The solution needs one primary administrator for 400 or 500 users.