NetApp FAS Series Reviews

We have deployed a four-node cluster to host multiple services like NFS, CIFS, FCP, and iSCSI with SnapMirror enabled across the cluster.

NetApp FAS has provided an HA environment that has improved the up time of our entire infrastructure.

The most valuable feature for us is the combining of HA and SnapMirror.

I would like to see an improvement in the licensing on Data Mirroring (SnapMirror) features.

Currently, the newest release is not HCI friendly.

More than five years.

In my nineteen years of being a storage administrator, I have never seen NetApp storage cause significant downtime that was connected to hardware failure.

One of the big features of NetApp FAS is the clustering of storage, which allows you to scale up the whole cluster using different models. This is broad and each HA is expandable.

Their team is one of the best support services that I have encountered.

Previously we used the IBM N Series storage system. We switched because of its limited features.

The initial hardware setup is pretty straightforward because once you set up one node in the cluster, the whole system can be joined seamlessly. The setup for the NetApp hardware is a very short command menu that is user-friendly.

Our policy for the initial setup is to get service with the vendor. This provides a warranty just in case we encounter issues. NetApp support is highly knowledgeable about their product and they are trained to do the initial setup perfectly as planned.

Licensing is still proprietary which is one of the advantage of some Netapp devices to some of the storage systems.

We evaluated the HP and Dell storage solutions before choosing this product.

We use this solution as general unified SAN storage for different workloads.

This solution provides us with easy management and great vendor support.

The most valuable feature is that this acts as unified storage, both SAN and NAS, for all types of workloads.

Dedicated storage efficiency accelerators could improve the overall performance of the system.

Used SnapMirror for replication and DR. It's a good case for a storage-based DR. Good results on RPO and RTO.

• Efficient usage
• Good pricing
• Good solution architects and deployment guys are available
• Licensing is easy.

• Lesser resources needed for snapshot and recovery
• Easy to manage
• Recovery process is easy
• Integration with other tools is available.

• Integration with most of the third-party BR tools
• A clear roadmap for next releases should be available.

We use it for storage and it has performed fine, but now we need to upgrade.

We like its resilience. It's reliable storage.

I would like to see less latency and higher IOPS.

Stability is very good.

I'm satisfied with the scalability.

We did our research and, at the time, NetApp was what we chose. Our most important criterion when selecting a vendor is reliability. The price is, obviously, always an issue but reliability and the quality of the product are most important.

The initial setup was very, very straightforward.

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.

The primary use case is for regular databases and file systems. So far it has been good. The performance is solid, it's robust, availability is solid.

We're able to keep data for a longer time because we are able to manage it well using the features that NetApp provides. It has also helped us to quickly deploy our test environment and finish all of our testing before we deploy on the customer side or the customer systems. It has really helped in our operations and our productivity.

One of the most valuable features offered is double-parity RAID, which guarantees that your data will stay intact. You can experience two disk failures and still be up. Another feature is the deduplication. It saves a lot of space. We're also able to provision storage and monitor which ones are really consuming storage.

I want to see the system automatically tier; we call it auto-tiering. When you use data, some of it goes cold. It is not hot data, so the system should automatically move that data to the SATA, while the hot data is kept on tier-one, the SaaS or SSD drives.

The stability is solid. You can go over 3,000 days without a reboot or any downtime. It's so stable.

The scalability is also good. You can scale on the fly, just connect the cables. If you're adding a controller or you're adding big shelves, it's easy to move. It's excellent.

I'll give technical support a "good" rating because sometimes it's slow in getting people to respond, other times it's okay.

When I arrived at the company they were using NetApp, and we are still using NetApp.

When selecting a vendor, I first look at how robust the solution is that they're proposing, and how available they are to answer calls if there are any issues. This is very critical. The robustness of the solution and the availability of the vendor to attend to queries are important components of my selection criteria. After-sales support is also very key.

The initial configuration is very straightforward. You just cable up your system, power up, connect your power cables, connect to the console, boot up the system, do your system configuration, IP configuration, and all the other configurations, and the system is up and good to run.

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.

The product has been pretty stable. Though we have had a few issues, not on the ones that we are going to replace, but on a couple of other ones. On the ones that we are going to replace, we usually use them for file storage and Exchange. The others are mainly used for interface and iSCSI.

It has been a pretty stable environment, but over time our requirements have changed. Therefore, I don't think it's an issue with the system. We have put a lot of load on a lot more than what it can handle. So, it has taken a performance hit. I wouldn't put it down to there being an issue with NetApp. It's simply because it has more load on it than it can handle, so it has taken a performance hit. 

The only downside is in ease in management; it is not easy to use.

It is good to have a unified storage where you can have block and file level protocols. It has been pretty stable, but the capacity requirements have changed overtime. Our utilization has been very high, so the performance has taken a hit, which is why we are replacing it.

• Ease of management needs to be improved.
• The power consumption for the FAS is a lot more compared to the new SSD arrays.

Going forward, I don't want to be using the FAS again. I want to be using AFFs more.

It has been pretty stable. It has been pretty good, and when we have issues, the support has been great as well. 

I am pretty happy with the system, and the performance issues that we are experiencing have nothing to do with the NetApp system. It's simply because it has more load than it can handle.

The scalability is pretty good, but it's too expensive.

Technical support is cooperative and good.

We were previously using an old IBM SAN. We switched because we wanted to moved to a unified system.

We had a reseller set it up for us, simply because it was a little too complicated.

It's not a cheap system. It is very expensive. The pricing has been ridiculous every time that we had to renew the support. Initially, we have a three-year support contract when we bought the system, but the subsequent renewal of maintenance was ridiculous. This is why we have not been too keen on NetApp.

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.

We use NetApp as our primary storage. Because we are a system integrator, we managed more than 100 data petabytes of data of our customers.

It is very flexible. It integrates well with the public cloud and other components, so everything can be API driven. Therefore, it is very easy to automate it.

It is very stable and integrates very well with other components.

We would like to have further integration with some backup products. They have some of them already, but there could be more.

We have already seen the new roadmap and a lot of our requested features are already on it.

It is very stable. We use it for more than 100 petabytes. We do not have any issues. We have never lost data.

It acts as it was documented.

I do not speak with the NetApp support.

We have always used NetApp, so we did not switch from another vendor.

The initial setup was so straightforward. It was well-documented.

We have almost all vendors in our portfolio: EMC, Pure Storage, etc. 

As our stand up, we use NetApp because we are pleased with it. Other vendors have good ideas, but they are not yet implemented in NetApp, hopefully that will come one day.

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.

We recently upgraded our NetApp environment from 7-Mode to Clustered ONTAP v9.3. Primary use cases are NFS and CIFS. NFSs are used for VMware data store while the CIFSs are for corporate file sharing.

Using the built-in Snapshots and SnapMirror technology, we were able to have better working data protection locally and off-site. The storage efficiency also provided maximum savings in our storage utilization.

• Snapshots
• SnapMirror
• Storage efficiency

Other tools, like OnCommand Unified Manager and Config Advisor, help us a lot in managing our environment.

None at the moment for the box itself. We are very happy with the current capabilities of this hardware. 

Hopefully, the AutoSupport can be improved to be more proactive in certain cases.

When getting new hardware, always tell the account manager that you are also considering other brands. They will be forced to adjust the price lower.