NetApp SnapMirror Reviews

My main use case for NetApp SnapMirror is disaster recovery replication, primarily, as we have two data centers and NetApp SnapMirror keeps our critical data synchronized between them continuously. If something happens at the primary site, we can fail over to the secondary without losing data, and that is the core of it.

We also use it for dev-test environments, where we spin up FlexClone copies from NetApp SnapMirror destination so developers get realistic data to work with without touching production.

The best feature NetApp SnapMirror offers is block-level incremental replication, which is the foundation of everything. After the initial baseline transfer, only the changed blocks move across the wire, not entire files or volumes. In a busy storage environment, that is the difference between replication that fits in your backup window and replication that hammers your network all day.

NetApp SnapMirror has positively impacted our organization by taking us from a theoretical DR capability, meaning we had a secondary site but had never fully tested a failover, to a validated, tested, documented DR process that we run quarterly, which is a fundamental change in our risk posture. Management can now say with confidence that if the primary site goes down, we recover within two hours with zero data loss on critical systems.

NetApp SnapMirror can be improved as the initial configuration is not simple; if you are new to NetApp and ONTAP, NetApp SnapMirror concepts take time to get right. Peering clusters, peering SVMs, relationship types, and policy configurations present a learning curve, and if you get something wrong early, it causes problems later.

I have been using NetApp SnapMirror for six years.

NetApp SnapMirror is stable.

NetApp SnapMirror's scalability is impressive as it scales very well; I have grown our NetApp environment significantly over six years with more volumes, more data, more relationships, and NetApp SnapMirror handles it without any architectural changes. The fan-out topology, where one source replicates to multiple destinations, is useful too, and we use that for our most critical volumes that replicate to both the secondary data center and to AWS simultaneously.

The customer support from NetApp is generally strong.

Before NetApp SnapMirror, we had a basic backup to tape setup with no real-time replication, where the recovery point objective was essentially whatever the last tape backup was, potentially twenty-four hours of data loss, and the recovery time objective was days, not hours. NetApp SnapMirror fundamentally changed both of those, reducing our RTO from days and RPO from twenty-four hours to RTO of under two hours and RPO of zero on critical systems.

The specific metrics or outcomes I have seen since implementing NetApp SnapMirror justify the DR capability alone, as a single serious incident at the primary site without a working DR solution could cost the business far more than the entire NetApp infrastructure investment, establishing a straightforward risk equation. Beyond that, the dev-test efficiency gains are real and measurable since we effectively give developers self-service environment provisioning without any additional storage cost, delivering meaningful productivity gain.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that NetApp SnapMirror is licensed as part of the ONTAP Data Protection bundle, which covers both NetApp SnapMirror and SnapVault. For organizations already running NetApp, it is generally included in what they are already paying; it is not a separate line item purchase in most cases. The cost is really the NetApp infrastructure itself rather than NetApp SnapMirror specifically, and if you are considering NetApp storage partly for NetApp SnapMirror capability, that is a reasonable way to think about it.

Before choosing NetApp SnapMirror, I evaluated other options including Dell EMC RecoverPoint and Zerto. RecoverPoint is a strong product, but it meant introducing a separate replication infrastructure layer on top of our existing storage, which added complexity and cost.

My daily check involves looking at NetApp SnapMirror relationship status in ONTAP System Manager, ensuring all relationships show healthy, lag times are within acceptable thresholds, and the last successful transfer completed as expected; that takes approximately five minutes.

Regarding NetApp SnapMirror's governance and security, I think they are perfect.

Regarding NetApp SnapMirror's accuracy and reliability of output, it performs its job effectively.

My advice for others looking into using NetApp SnapMirror is to get the architecture right from the start, as everything else flows from that. Additionally, do not skip the DR testing; a NetApp SnapMirror relationship that looks healthy in the dashboard but has never been tested in a real failover scenario is not a DR solution, it is a hope. Test it, document it, test it again. I rate NetApp SnapMirror an eight out of ten because after six years, it has never let us down when it mattered; the replication is reliable, the efficiency is genuine, and the integration with the rest of the NetApp ecosystem is seamless. The reason it is not higher is the configuration complexity and the monitoring limitations. For experienced NetApp engineers, it is an excellent tool, but for organizations without that experience, the learning curve is real.

My usual use cases for NetApp SnapMirror are primarily for business continuity reasons, allowing me to offer customers the chance to fail back services to another data center, from Milan to Rome and vice versa, or from Milan to London, or from London to Dublin, for instance. It supports very long distances since it's asynchronous, not synchronous, so any latency is allowed.

The features of NetApp SnapMirror that I have found most valuable include the possibility to stop synchronization in case of high network latency and to limit the bandwidth throttle. This means limiting bandwidth when less connectivity occurs or opening wide the throttling to use the full speed of network connectivity, which we can adjust according to our needs or the needs of our customers. All of this is done without limiting business continuity, so business continuity is always guaranteed.

NetApp SnapMirror's data replication feature supports disaster recovery strategies, as it is incorporated into the business continuity feature. SnapMirror is strictly related to snapshot features, a core part of ONTAP, so it's very flexible. It allows us to start with just two snapshots as a simple backup and then use them as a replication point or base for both backup and business continuity. There is no right or wrong answer, it just depends on how it works for specific needs.

Some areas of NetApp SnapMirror that could be improved or enhanced include synchronous SnapMirror, which needs improvement as it suffers significantly from network latency. In particular, synchronous replication with read-write on both sides in both data centers is powerful but risky since it is greatly affected by high network latency. It has been improved in the latest versions of ONTAP, specifically in 9.16.1, but Dell Technologies has made some steps forward regarding synchronous replications.

I have been working with NetApp SnapMirror for 13 or 14 years, which is quite a long time, as I was working with another company and also as a NetApp partner for a limited time.

In terms of stability and reliability, NetApp SnapMirror is very stable regarding the common asynchronous replication. However, the synchronous replication requires a very stable network connection with very low network latency, so certain conditions must be followed.

NetApp SnapMirror is very scalable, as all we need is an ONTAP cluster, starting from two nodes up to 24 nodes with NAS or 12 nodes in a SAN in an iSCSI environment, meaning that there are no limits apart from the number of controllers.

My experience with technical support specifically for NetApp SnapMirror is that I would have expected more from them, considering that synchronous SnapMirror replication is quite a recent feature. I would rate them seven out of ten.

Positive

I have always worked with NetApp SnapMirror since I started working as a storage engineer. I came across some technologies from Dell Technologies storage, but I do not have deep knowledge of them as I do with NetApp.

My experience with the initial setup and deployment of NetApp SnapMirror is that it is very straightforward. It doesn't require engaging a field support engineer team, as it can be easily set up by our side, given we have some experience. Compared to MetroCluster, it doesn't require much time or expertise and can be set up in about one hour, which makes it very quick and much less time-consuming.

I started working with NetApp SnapMirror on ONTAP 8, both ONTAP 7-Mode and the clustered Data ONTAP, which is strictly related to the ONTAP. ONTAP was not clustered in the ancient times, and SnapMirror has been used and offered to customers since only ONTAP 7-Mode was available, which works on a HA couple of storage without the possibility of clustering. I then started working with a real cluster that involves several HA couples of storages up to 24 nodes, which was quite stimulating and very scalable horizontally.

Regarding the synchronous replication feature of NetApp SnapMirror, it limits the distance between the two data centers, the source one and the destination one. It's very challenging since the two data centers need to stay in the same area. We have primarily used synchronous replication for SAN, particularly iSCSI LUNs. NetApp has introduced the possibility to write anywhere on either data center, which is a very interesting feature; however, it requires very low latency and is much more critical than asynchronous SnapMirror.

I have utilized NetApp SnapMirror's network compression, which works very efficiently as it reduces the bandwidth necessary to synchronize a replica volume to the remote data center. I can evaluate the impact of NetApp SnapMirror's network compression on bandwidth usage by monitoring the replica process, where I can see how much data is replicated as well as the network compression ratio, which is indeed a part of the whole mechanism.

NetApp SnapMirror's compatibility with NetApp products has helped my storage management efforts immensely, as it is part of ONTAP and all architectures based on ONTAP, including ONTAP 8 and 9. I can use it with all families, FAS, AFF, ASA, and AFF families.

I would assess NetApp SnapMirror's integration with cloud environments for maintaining workload performance as the maximum, as it is fully integrated with ONTAP. It is very much based on the snapshots, making it very transparent and seamless in its operation.

I have seen tangible benefits with NetApp SnapMirror, for instance, compared to MetroCluster, as it is a much cheaper way of implementing business continuity. It doesn't require a very articulated configuration, unlike MetroCluster, as we just need two common HA couples to set up a SnapMirror synchronous relationship. This allows us to offer business continuity to our customers without a fully articulated configuration, making it much cheaper.

NetApp SnapMirror is deployed on the cloud in my organization for some customers who require business continuity, particularly for asynchronous replication, which is used for backup.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate NetApp SnapMirror an 8.

NetApp SnapMirror is one of the best solutions for replicating more than 200 machines because it's a hardware-driven product that doesn't consume any CPU cycles from the server farm. In our company, we replicate directly from the storage component. The solution works excellently in large environments. 

If you compare NetApp SnapMirror with other software solutions such as Veeam, NetApp SnapMirror is ten times easier to use. Using the solution, an exact copy of a disc can be created between two sides. With NetApp SnapMirror, you don't have to deal with any type of software components as the machine being replicated is unaware of the replication process, so any agents are not used. The replication process using the solution occurs on a very low level. 

The synchronous and real-time replication are the most vital features of NetApp SnapMirror. A new feature has been added to the product which is named SnapMirror DR, the 'DR' suggests that the target systems may consume the IP addresses in line, which facilitates the second site to keep running when the primary site has lost functionality.

The RPO and RTO with the solution becomes nearly zero. The process of migration from the primary to the secondary site is very easy to implement with NetApp SnapMirror. 

Multiple tasks in the solution are made by the command line and the GUI can be improved to perform complex tasks. The existing GUI in the solution is able to handle common cases but most of the time the CLI needs to be used along with it. 

In the future version of the tool, a window or interface can be integrated that shows progress in real-time, independent of the management. For example, if you have a dedicated place where you monitor all your systems, I would like to view the SnapMirror status to check how much data is replicating in real time and receive a bunch of graphs around it. I would expect the next release of NetApp SnapMirror to have better monitoring features. 

I have been using NetApp SnapMirror for more than 12 years. 

As our company manages the core of the mission-critical systems, the amount of end users will be around 300,000. The clients of NetApp SnapMirror in our company already have a growth curve for every year. If a customer of the solution has 10 or 100,000 users, the configuration remains the same, only the the ideal amount of disk space and IOPs are needed. 

The product offers impressive linear scalability and I believe the product functions better when more and more users are added because the algorithm depends upon the duplication and compression of the data. If you have more data in NetApp SnapMirror, you will receive better results of duplication and a greater proportion of bandwidth will be saved. 

No maintenance is required for the solution; once it's deployed, it works seamlessly for five years. The solution is so reliable that managers of a company don't even need to bother about knowing how NetApp SnapMirror functions in their organization. We have witnessed systems run with NetApp SnapMirror for five years without any interruptions or issues. 

In our company, we haven't faced any complaints or support cases with NetApp SnapMirror in eight years. The solution acts as a mainframe class and our organization is immensely confident about its functionality. I would rate the customer support a nine out of ten. 

Positive

The setup process of NetApp SnapMirror is mostly straightforward. You take a volume in the primary place and a matched volume in the secondary place, and you may configure anything in one line, which makes the initial setup effortless.

Our company has implemented the solution several times in hybrid clouds for enterprise-level customers, including airlines. Our organization has also deployed NetApp SnapMirror between AWS and on-premises; all the processes are carried out for replicating data, and then the data is compressed for duplication, and the bandwidth consumption is reduced significantly. Professionals can deploy NetApp SnapMirror within two hours. 

The most challenging part is that our organization's customers often don't have clear knowledge about their network or the permissions ready to configure their firewalls, define the VLANs, and perform similar tasks. 

As long as you have the IP connection, the solution deployment will be seamless. But as you have to reach the internal backend of the data center, most of the time, you need to pass through several security zones, and it makes the customer undergo a lengthy process to have the approvals to configure.

A VLAN is usually required in the cloud and on-premises, and the deployer has to pass through the customer's security layers, including IPS, primary firewall, perimeter firewall, and lots more. A customer will probably need a week to provide the solution deploying company with all the necessary information and network documentation. 

The customer needs to gather clear knowledge about every network segment to be used. The local IP should be connected to the backend of the cloud, and numerous rules need to be configured before deploying the tool. No additional hardware except the basis system is required to setup NetApp SnapMirror. The setup of the tool can be carried out by one single professional. 

It's a highly cost-effective solution. If the same operations of NetApp SnapMirror are implemented through complete software solutions, management and monitoring duration will increase by ten times. 

NetApp SnapMirror functions on top of the operating system, so no applications know it's running and replicating data. The solution replicates the data as soon as it arrives in the system. 

I would overall rate the product a nine out of ten. The solutions work seamlessly in Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud platforms; you don't have to depend on a particular public cloud. The data fabric of the product is not tied to any hyper scalar. 

We use the solution for backup and DR purposes. We use it on-prem and cloud, but mainly on-prem since we have the physical storage. We have the AFF and Flash series from NetApp. Our cloud is used for the destination of SnapMirror. In our current infrastructure, we are running SnapMirror worldwide from the source. SnapMirror replicates itself into the cloud.

NetApp SnapMirror's ease of use and reliability are valuable features. Within the scope we're using SnapMirror, it's doing everything it's promised to do.

The solution's dashboard and reporting could be improved.

I've worked with NetApp SnapMirror for one year, and I'm using the latest version.

I rate SnapMirror's stability an eight out of ten. We never had an issue with SnapMirror. We've never had to create or delete it automatically or manually.

More than 10,000 people use NetApp SnapMirror in my organization. I rate its scalability a nine out of ten because its main functionality is scaling a network from a local on-prem solution. The solution is not vendor-locked in, so it's scalable for us.

NetApp’s technical support is good and I’m really happy with them.

Positive

I've been fortunate enough to work with almost all the major vendors in the enterprise storage area. I worked with Pure Storage years ago, and it is an awesome product I highly recommend. We did not continue with Pure Storage for my latest assignment and chose NetApp instead. NetApp is very good and almost on the same level compared to Pure Storage. Pure Storage is slightly better at what it does compared to NetApp. However, NetApp is more comprehensive, which means it has more features than Pure Storage, though Pure Storage is a more solid all-round product. But when compared with other storage technologies from other vendors, like HP, Dell's PowerVault, or PowerMax series, NetApp is a bit ahead. It's also ahead of others like Infinidat or IBM's storage arrays.

The deployment is straightforward because SnapMirror is embedded in the software of the NetApp storage arrays. SnapMirror specifically takes a couple of minutes to install. It takes a little more time to deploy and configure the entire storage array, including the SnapMirror functionality.

Ten to 40 people are involved in maintaining the solution because we have a good storage support team. These ten to 40 people are engineers, and developers are not involved in tool maintenance support of NetApp's or SnapMirror's functionality. We have a global IT support team formed mostly by engineers, not developers.

The solution has monthly and yearly licensing options. NetApp's licensing team is flexible, and the solution can be tailor-made for customer needs. From a licensing point of view, I don't have a problem with it.

I highly recommend the solution and rate it a nine out of ten.

Everybody in our company relies on SnapMirror, as everyone uses it to transfer data. We use it 24/7 and 365 days a year, running continuously to synchronize data. It is mostly used for data replication, data recovery, and data transfer. It helps to transfer the data to other sites and from the storage system to different files. If there is downtime or some emergency at the data center, NetApp SnapMirror will recover all of the mirrored data to another site. 

Data protection is a valuable feature. It protects our data during any emergency or disaster.

If they can make the application free like other vendors or include it in all the packages, it would be great. Once we bought a license for NetApp AFF A250, but the company didn’t include SnapMirror, which lead to issues while transferring data. We had to reach out to the vendor again which lead to logistical issues. It was quite frustrating as we had already incorporated the product cost into the budget, and it is quite difficult to include it again. That was a bad experience.

We recently had a case of stability, where one of our systems with SnapMirror wasn't working. There are some issues, but most of them are due to setup, destination, and transfer issues including the storage system running out and SnapMirror settings. Apart from that, it is very stable, and I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.

The solution's scalability is good. There are no issues with scalability as it is provided by NetApp itself. It is just an application that transfers data and does not need to be scaled. 

The technical support team is good. 

Neutral

When I joined this company, SnapMirror was already set up.

The initial setup is easy and can be done by reading the manual. If it is not possible by in-house employees, NetApp's technical support is available and it is quite easy to follow.

It is deployed on-premises and takes almost a few hours. Once you deploy it, it depends on the network speed. Once the data is transferred, only then the process can be rated as a success. The maintenance requires only one administrator. I rate the initial setup an eight out of ten. 

The solution can be implemented in-house.  

The pricing is very inconvenient. Since we already bought other packages, SnapMirror should be free to use, instead of being an extra charge. 

SnapMirror is extremely expensive. We had a hard time adjusting to our budget. If rated on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the most expensive, I would definitely rate it ten out of ten.

NetApp SnapMirror has good technology and helps recover data. It is easy to set up and reliable. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We have two sites, a primary site and a disaster recovery site. The files used in the primary site need continuous replication to DR in case recovery is needed either for test DR drill or in the event we need to failover any applications or databases to our disaster recovery site. I'm a senior manager system analyst and we are customers of NetApp. Our company is based in Oman. 

Having real-time replication gives us the capability to recover from any data loss as quickly as possible. Without SnapMirror, we'd be relying completely on our data backup, and we'd be dealing with a 24-hour lag. With SnapMirror, data is updated every 15 minutes. 

The main valuable feature is the snapshot technology which enables us to keep a safe copy in the event that a user accidentally deletes something or there is data corruption. The second beneficial feature is the real-time replication to our DR site. This is used for our DR failover, where we need to bring up our application services and databases from a secondary site. It reduces our RPO and RTO.

The NetApp storage is entry-level storage. I'd like to see compression and deduplication and encryption improved, and I'd like to have real-time replication so I have a zero RPO. Snapshotting always creates a delay so if they could come out with a block-by-block replication, that would be great. 

I've been using this solution for four years. 

We've never faced any problems with the stability. Whenever we needed to mount the replicated disk it always comes up without giving us any trouble. We were able to mount the data and the integrity was good. The technology is tested and proven.

The beauty of NetApp is that it's a scalable solution. When you want to increase the capacity beyond the range of a particular model, you can bring in a new model and plug it into the network and scale out seamlessly. There is no downtime. We have already upgraded the capacity a couple of times.

We have two levels of support. The primary support is from the local certified partner and they provide strong support. We also have access to NetApp support but have only used it once. The support came from the US or Canada. Overall, we're very happy with the support. 

Positive

We have used multiple other storage solutions including RecoverPoint for our EMC VNX arrays. We've recently been using EMC high-end storage with SRDF, which can do a kind of real-time replication. It wasn't a matter of switching to NetApp, the product was purchased for a different purpose. We needed unified storage where SAN and NAS are provided from the same storage.

Deployment was very smooth and took around two weeks. Following that, we carried out our data migration which took time. We previously used a Windows file independent server with its own local disk and Windows OS. It's not compatible with NetApp so data had to be physically migrated. We also took extra time integrating with our antivirus software and configuring external tape libraries with NetApp. We had one staff member involved in the deployment and an engineer from our partners. We have close to 900 users. The solution requires routine tasks as opposed to maintenance. We have three or four people with access to this storage. 

The ROI is very good because this is unified storage where you can have SAN and NAS without anything separate. After acquiring NetApp storage, we had two use cases whereby we needed active-active NAS shares for creating active-active applications, because using the backend, you'll have highly redundant components. SnapMirror has improved our service availability.

We purchased SnapMirror as a bundle which makes it less expensive. Everything is included in the price. The price is reasonable compared to some of the other flashy solutions.

I recommend this solution. If you're planning to build a DR site or secondary location where you need to replicate another similar storage, you don't need to buy if your DR is in the cloud. It's the same operating system as in the physical hardware. NetApp gives you the ability to replicate to cloud using the same modes of access.

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

Our primary use cases for the solution include data replication and backup across our infrastructure.

The platform has significantly reduced our operational workload by simplifying and automating our backup processes effectively.

The platform's most valuable features are efficiency in management and space savings through deduplication. 

They could make continued enhancements in integration with diverse platforms for the product. 

We have been using NetApp SnapMirror/SnapVault for ten years. 

The product is stable.

The product has excellent scalability. 

The technical support from NetApp has been consistently responsive and helpful in addressing our queries and concerns.

Installation and configuration are straightforward with the assistance provided by NetApp support. Deployment typically takes about a week, depending on the scale and specifics of our requirements. Generally, a small team of two to three individuals is involved in deployment and ongoing maintenance.

The product price is reasonable. 

NetApp SnapMirror/SnapVault stands out for its ease of management, efficiency, and scalability, which align well with our operational needs. The technology has significantly enhanced our data integrity and compliance efforts, providing robust governance capabilities. It has also played a crucial role in facilitating efficient AI data management within our operations.

I rate it a nine. 

One customer used it to migrate their data. I checked SnapMirror after a few hours, and it was working properly. 

The performance and stability are valuable features. It seems to fulfill all the requirements.

The price could be cheaper. 

I have experience with this product. It has been a couple of months. 

It is working fine for my customer's use cases and servers. 

The customer service and support are very good. We get proper resolution on time. They even divert the calls based on the APAC region's time. We get timely support.

The initial setup was not complex. The configuration itself takes about one or two hours. But if there are ports that need to be opened on the customer's end, that can add some time.

I've deployed it on-premises. I've configured it for two customers, and it's been working properly for them.

First, you need to open the required ports. Then, you can do cluster mirroring, and you can replicate at the volume level. The required port should be open for both NetApp storage systems. You need to follow the NetApp recommendations for opening ports. Then, you go through cluster pairing and installation and select the volume you want. 

One person can deploy it, but ideally, a team of two people is best for deployment and maintenance.

The main benefit is data replication and transfer, which allows for backup, recording, and restoration. It's especially valuable for developers who need a secondary copy of data in case of emergencies.

The licensing cost is on a yearly basis. It is expensive.

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

The solution is used for storage. Customers use the product if they want to have virtual machines run on shared storage. It provides users with ease of access to their files and folders remotely.

It enables replication from a primary site to a DR site.

The customers want to know when a SnapMirror subscription is completed and whether it can be extended. We have to do manual verifications about the subscriptions often.

I have been using the solution for around ten years.

The tool is quite stable. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

We have about 20 active users of the solution. We have six engineers in our maintenance team. I rate the tool’s scalability a seven out of ten. We need to have experience to scale up the solution.

The technical support is quite good. The team provides a quick response.

Positive

Our customers also use other solutions along with NetApp.

The setup was straightforward. The deployment takes one day.

The customers complain about pricing. I rate the pricing a six out of ten. The pricing could be improved.

I recommend the product to other users. It is an easy-to-use solution. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

We use SnapMirror for monitoring backups. We use the product if we have a primary site and want to create a secondary site for a backup.

The product has good performance. You can copy a data load in a very minimum amount of time. If one side is down, you can create another using the available snapshot. It is application-centric, requiring you to specify your application before proceeding with the necessary steps.

We are working based on the environment. If the client wants to move to a higher version or a more capable on-premise product, we must be able to integrate Flash Pool with SnapMirror.

We have been using SnapMirror for the past eight years. We’ll be moving to an upgraded version soon based on the criticality.

The product is very stable for the entire product line. I rate its stability a ten out of ten.

SnapMirror has an auto-scale feature. It has flexible volumes. We have five to ten users for it. I rate its scalability a ten out of ten.

The initial setup process is fast and easy. Its deployment time depends on the volumes and data. 

NetApp’s products are affordable. The only way it is around the market is through its inexpensive pricing. The cost is low compared to different vendors.

The tool would take a lot of work for first-time users to understand. If you are looking for a solution with huge enrollment that can give you a fast recovery and DR setup, you can integrate SnapMirror. 

Overall, I rate it a nine out of ten.