What advice do you have for others considering NetApp FAS Series?

I rate NetApp solutions 10 out of 10. You have the right tools, knowledge, and phenomenal customer service, so it helps with everything we're doing and enables us to complete our mission quicker and easier. We can't just reach into the cloud to get support. NetApp allows us to call and start those tech cases. It's great.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's a really good product. It's a really powerful product, which makes it an eight. We've had this product prior to the whole AI surge that's going on right now. And at this point, we haven't really changed our environment to react to that yet. We may do it in the future. For future investments, our goals will focus on performance needs and increasing workloads. Cybersecurity will be prioritized. It's our biggest priority. Safeguarding the data is the first job that we all have as data administrators. Having good cybersecurity, and hopefully, with the help of this product, will allow us to more confidently go down new innovation journeys and try new things. A lot of times, when you want to innovate, you need to consider first how it will impact your security. If we have good visibility on our cybersecurity, it'll allow us to innovate more effectively.

I rate NetApp eight out of 10. If they could bring total costs down and make it easier to deploy the on-prem systems quicker, I would give it a 10.

Being a life insurance company, we are highly regulated. We have to be cautious about what we adopt in terms of AI to comply with many different state regulations and federal regulations. It is a technology we are watching. We are going to start using it probably around functions like marketing. We have a data team that is looking very heavily at that and coming up with maybe using it for the internal knowledge base that we use to help our customers. Life insurance products can be very complicated. There are a lot of rules and a lot of different ways the products work. Having a way even for our internal associates to ask AI how something works and get back some of those answers could also be a useful training tool. That is what we are looking at right now. We are not going to be using it for business-critical decisions and certainly nothing as highly regulated as underwriting or anything like that. It would probably be around making this a resource for internal employees to begin with, and then I would imagine marketing will follow from there as well. We are starting to move into a hybrid type of future with Azure. Some of the data that lives on our NetApp today does not need the performance of All Flash. One of the things that we are looking into is whether that can be put into Azure NetApp files. We can then use cold tiering or something like that. Some of it is just archive data kept around for legal reasons, but it does not need that super, top-end performance. We have also got imaging of some computers before we dispose of laptops and things like that. We are writing that to the E-Series today. It might make more sense to move some of that to the hybrid cloud solution. It will probably save us some money long term and reduce our on-prem footprint. We struggle a little bit with how long we want to be in the data center business on-prem. We think that the cloud is most likely our future, but it is not going to happen overnight. It will be a ten-year journey, and we will always have something on-prem. At the same time, we will be able to put away some of the systems that are not mission-critical and some of the archive types of things and know that they are taken care of from a technology we trust. In a keynote at NetApp INSIGHT, they talked about how so much of the data is going to be inside the purview of NetApp, and we will be able to use AI technologies to look at the data we have. One of the things I heard mentioned there which I thought would be useful is the ability to find all the duplicate copies of the data. Especially in the unstructured data world, everyone is just throwing everything under the file server shares and never deleting it. There is so much data out there that is redundant or has not been read in more than a decade. That data could probably go to a colder tier or be surfaced for review and potentially deletion. I see the potential in some of those technologies to help us understand the data we already have. In terms of our next technology investments, coming from a VMware background, we are still using NFS to attach all that. One of the things in the back of my mind is at what point do we start evaluating switching over to NVMe Connectivity and seeing the performance benefits around our larger database server by having much wider and deeper queues for IO. Our upcoming investments will be prioritized around cybersecurity. We made a big investment two years ago, and I am sure we will make more investments in the future, but we are pretty happy with where we are right now. AI is under the purview of a different department than me, so I do not have a ton of visibility into it, but I know there is a committee that is looking at that and deciding which use cases are safe for us to use given our regulations. They also make sure that we protect the privacy of all the people who entrust their data to us. We will definitely look at private solutions and not public solutions for a lot of this. We would like to move forward a little faster than we have in the past. Our company has been around for over 130 years. We are not new, and that has some of the benefits in terms of stability. It also means that we have a lot of legacy systems that we would like to move forward. We still have LUNS-connected AIX machines. They certainly continue to work great, but at the same time, we would like to start spinning down some of those platforms. AIX does not lend itself to running in the cloud very well. We want to move the company forward faster and use something that helps us navigate to what I call our new normal in terms of the hybrid nature of our data centers. As we start spanning Azure, anything that makes that easier would be helpful. I see the value of NetApp in making those migrations as easy as clicking a few buttons. For example, if an application from a share is moving to Azure next week, I should be able to take the share and move it to Azure as well so that I can easily keep the data locality next to the application. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution. I configured and updated it. Of course, I was also a user of applications that store data on that storage. We already have an SSD solution. So, rather than planning to go with an SSD solution, we are focusing on expanding it. If a company wants to deploy something new, it should choose a product with SSD, and NVMe disks. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

I would recommend using this product. Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I will recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

It's the best for the environment. No issues. Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. I can recommend it to others as well. But, it's important to check the pricing against competitors to ensure it's competitive.

Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten. It is one of the good products in the market. The customers also use a lot of EMC and HPE as well. In the current situation, we need to choose products with the best support, like EMC, with its rapid technical support response. The NetApp service center in Myanmar here isn't the fastest at deliveries. The service center engineers are good, but it's not 100% reliable for support. Sometimes, there are delays that don't allow us to make the delivery on time, unlike with other vendors. So, the customers need to wait.

I recommend the solution. Overall, I rate it a perfect ten because I haven’t encountered any issues since I’ve started using it.

The tool is very easy to maintain. Even for desk sales, they have some automatic workflow to send an RMA, place the desk and ship a new one. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

With the possibilities of making some DNS continuity into the cloud and stuff like that, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

If you are looking for a solution with good scalability options, go for NetApp FAS Series. I rate it an eight out of ten.

I handle many storages. NetApp FAS Series is recommended because of its stability, scalability, and easy administration. Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.

I would advise them that it's a stable, functional platform, especially if they are already using other NetApp products. I highly recommend it. Overall, I would rate it a nine. It's a great product. The NetApp FAS Series is super stable and doesn't give us any problems. It consistently performs backups as needed and handles all the tasks we require. It utilizes the same excellent operating system as the enterprise-grade NetApp products, which is fantastic. Most importantly, it just works. I don't have to spend a lot of time managing, fixing, or troubleshooting it. It's simply there and working flawlessly.

I would rate the product a nine out of ten. The tool is the best one in the market in terms of pricing and features.

My advice to others is for them to consistently adhere to the best practice guide. By following the guide thoroughly, including details, such as cabling, you can prevent any issues from arising. Practicing best practices ensures a smoother experience overall. We have a lot of customers moving to VMware from the NetApp FAS Series solution.

NetApp FAS is a fine product. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We don't use the cloud backup solution of the NetApp FAS Series. We just use it in a very basic way, and nothing more than a repository for the VM and CIFS. I do the tuning and the troubleshooting for this solution myself. I'm the only one managing it, e.g. the other members of the IT team are not involved in it, so it's hard to say if it does reduce IT support costs. We have not used the NetApp FAS Series in supporting data analytics, AI, machine learning, SAP, and Oracle workloads, nor did we use it to support any asynchronous replication for disaster recovery with MetroCluster. I never had an issue with this solution, so I never used their technical support. I'm rating the NetApp FAS Series a nine out of ten for availability and reliability.

I rate NetApp FAS Series eight out of 10. I recommend NetApp FAS because it's reliable and easy to manage. NetApp support is helpful. I encourage anyone to choose NetApp.

I've been a NetApp reseller for more than 10 years. I've supplied NetApp storage solutions to quite a number of customers in Nigeria, particularly in Lagos, so I have familiarity with the NetApp products, but that doesn't mean that I've sold all the various types. I've not sold all the various types, but I've sold quite a lot of backup storages, even when they were still producing virtual tape libraries. My customers have been using NetApp for more than 10 years. In Nigeria, the most popular NetApp product is the FAS series. My customers always start with FAS. I've just placed an order for a NetApp Storage Acceleration Appliance (SA300) for Unity Bank of Nigeria. The NetApp FAS products: these ones are the most popular products in Nigeria, but there also other variants here. Scalability and reliability are what my customers like about the NetApp FAS Series. How long the full deployment for this solution takes depends on the complexity of the environment. It also depends on data volume. In some cases, you can get it done within two days, and in some cases you can get it done within one week to two weeks maximum. It could take up to two weeks when migrating from a non NetApp storage to NetApp storage. Otherwise, deployment can go very, very fast. My customers love NetApp a lot. The number of users of this solution, particularly those in the commercial banks, depends on the size of the customer base of those banks. The customers of the commercial banks are the ones interfacing with the commercial banking application, and there are usually millions of customers, but all of them cannot be on the application at the same time. There are also internal users of NetApp within the bank itself: the bank staff who are making use of it for their normal day to day work, e.g. when closing at the end of the day, at the end of the month, or at the end of the year, etc. When you take into consideration the customers of the banks, the number of users of this solution would be millions. I'm giving the NetApp FAS Series a rating of nine out of ten.

I rate NetApp FAS Series a ten out of ten.

I rate NetApp FAS Series a seven out of ten.

I would advise others to make use of most of the features that the system is going to provide because then the price is definitely reasonable. If you're just looking for mass storage without any of the features that are possible with the system, then it is too expensive. I would give it an eight out of 10.

I would recommend I rate NetApp FAS Series a seven out of ten.

I would recommend this solution to others. I rate NetApp FAS Series a nine out of ten.

I rate the solution eight out of 10.

I rate the NetApp FAS series an eight out of ten.

NetApp FAS Series can use the cloud services in the storage and can be upgraded to the cloud. I could recommend this solution to other media companies to use. It's an easy product to use that is stable and has good performance. I would rate NetApp FAS Series a nine out of ten.

Its operating system is a little cumbersome, but it runs pretty smoothly most of the time. I would rate NetApp FAS Series a seven out of ten.

I would recommend this solution to new users because it's easy to implement. It's easy to install, it's easy to scale, and there is what we call investment protection. If there's a new controller that comes up, your existing controller can integrate with it. You don't have to trade in what you have. It always has forward compatibility and backward compatibility. I will always recommend NetApp FAS Series. On a scale from one to ten, I would give NetApp FAS Series a nine.

I would definitely recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it. I would rate NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) an eight out of ten.

I would recommend this solution. I would rate NetApp FAS Series a ten out of ten.

Obviously anyone looking at this solution must have primarily a data storage use case. If they have a strong case for data storage, it's a good solution. From there it's just a matter of managing work flows between SAN and NAS which requires planning. You can then manage your capacities very well if you know your data requirements. I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with NetApp. The FAS Series itself is not as complex as a MetroCluster configuration of the FAS. I would say if you're doing the MetroCluster configuration, it's worth it to get a consultant to assist. Almost every time that I have used a consultant, I have been very glad that I made the decision to hire them. I've done the incremental migrations on my own without difficulty, however, the big changes from platform to platform in particular, and from the non-clustered on tap software version to the clustered on tap software version are more difficult to perform. It's worthwhile to get consultants in those instances. The single FAS setup, I would say, the first time I did it, was probably the biggest learning curve. Regardless of the vendor, I would probably recommend having a consultant come in for the first time you're learning all the ins and outs of the solution. After that, the migration for the individual FAS and non MetroCluster FAS seems to be very manageable if you've got a certain level of experience. If storage is kind of an extra task for you versus your primary task, you're probably going to want to pull in a consultant regardless. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The suitability of this product depends on the use cases and the environment. For places where we sell it, it fits well. In places where it doesn't fit well, we would typically go with another solution like NetApp All-Flash storage, or something from another vendor. My advice for anybody who is implementing the NetApp FAS series is to make sure that it's the proper fit. Perform a detailed sizing analysis prior to making the purchase. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

My advice for anyone who is considering NetApp FAS is that it is a good product and our only real complaint is the lack of technical support. If they live in a country where technical support is available then I recommend it. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

If you need reliability, definitely go for NetApp. I rate it at seven out of 10 because it has been very reliable but not very good when it comes to IOPS and latency.

If I were to advise someone researching NetApp FAS Storage or a similar solution, I would want to understand what they really want. I would advise them to go with NetApp because it's unified storage. It supports both NAS and SAN environments, so whether you're doing block storage or you're doing file storage, it is a good solution. Also, the operating system that it runs is called Data ONTAP, and is cloud-ready, so in the future the file storage that you have can be deployed to the cloud. I rate this solution a 9.9 out of 10 because it's never failed me so I'm very comfortable with it.

I wouldn't recommend NetApp FAS. I don't understand why anyone would go for NetApp FAS when you can get the NetApp AFF, which is an SSD array, for almost a similar price or probably even cheaper. Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: * Cost effective solution * Performance * Reliability * A good roadmap.

Use NetApp, it is good. There are more specialized products in the market, but NetApp is a very good general fit. We have a lot of product knowledge, and it is not 100 percentage perfect. However, we know where it behaves well, and where does not. Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We always check the vendor to make sure our clients are receiving the most value for their money. We want the best solution for customers based on their budgets, because it is stupid to offer a product if it if does not work within the customer's budget.