NetApp FAS Series Reviews and Pricing

it_user829644

Berater with 11-50 employees

Mar 4, 2018

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Ability to use mirroring and SnapVault have made backup no longer necessary

Pros and Cons

"Ability to use mirroring and SnapVault have made backup no longer necessary."

"The WAFL is slow."
"The adoption of flash by NetApp has also been lagging behind the trendsetters, like TMS, Nimble, and others."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is for standard CIFS/SMB file storage for Windows Clients in an ADS environment.

How has it helped my organization?

Samba on Solaris was a nightmare. Our situation improved with no Windows file servers, but at about 30 million files/folders, snapshot and backup functionality started to make trouble.

What is most valuable?

Snapshots for user self-service restore
Ability to use mirroring and SnapVault have made backup no longer necessary.

What needs improvement?

The WAFL is slow.
The adoption of flash by NetApp has also been lagging behind the trendsetters, like TMS, Nimble, and others.

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NetApp FAS Series

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For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user821337

‎Cloud Plattform Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Feb 28, 2018

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Integrated snapshot and backup capability

Pros and Cons

"It has integrated snapshot and backup capability."

"Needs to improve the adaptive storage quality of service."

What is our primary use case?

NAS part of standardized virtualization platform, ranging from size from 15TB on-site solution to more than 500TB twin core datacenter.

How has it helped my organization?

Cost effective storage for all performance levels (including all-flash)
Integrated snapshot and backup capability
Many protocols
Good service

What is most valuable?

Integrated backup functionality (SnapVault and SnapMirror)
Option to mirror synchronously

What needs improvement?

Automation readiness
API exposure
Adaptive storage quality of service

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Buyer's Guide

NetApp FAS Series

May 2025

Free Report: NetApp FAS Series Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about NetApp FAS Series. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.

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857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

it_user281973

Storage and VMware Expert at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 28, 2018

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Saves space with deduplication

Pros and Cons

"Compression of the backup Oracle by RMAN on NFS saves space 5:1."
"The migration of the volume on the cluster is very useful and easy to use."
"Saves space with deduplication"

What is our primary use case?

Creating a DR site using SnapMirror technology from NetApp.

How has it helped my organization?

NetApp improved our organization because their features are more friendly and create environment to tests, like dev. The FlexClone technology is easy to use.
The flexibility to create scheduling backups on the VMware platform is very useful when you need it. We can save space using VSC.
The migration of the volume on the cluster is very useful and easy to use.
It is very useful to verify performance problems on the any environment and move volumes to another aggregate without downtime to the application.
Compression of the backup Oracle by RMAN on NFS saves space 5:1, for example.

What is most valuable?

Flexibility.
Saves space with deduplication.
All protocols on the same box. This means that you don't need to have a appliance to export. For example, an NFS volume on CIFs volume.
Easy integration to some cloud environments, like Amazon AWS.
Deduplication, now on cluster mode, runs on aggregate and no more on volume only. This means that you must put all their VMware environments on the same aggregate. If you have volume from prod, dev, and homolog that shares the same virtual machine, you will have a big gain on space saving.

What needs improvement?

NetApp for all these years has been improving their storage.

The only area that could be improved is to lower prices for their All Flash FAS.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

You must have "flash cash" if you used the box to Oracle, any database environment, or any application that requires a lot of reads all time.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have used some solutions like Hitachi, Dell, and EMC, but NetApp has more flexibility and we decided to stay with NetApp.

My first case was migrate all solutions from Hitachi Storage to NetApp FAS on SAN with brocade.
Migrated all VMware environment to NetApp storage.
Migrated all backup solutions that were running on Veritas Backup to VSC on NetApp.
Migrated our whole Oracle database running on HDS storage to NetApp storage.

How was the initial setup?

Setup is very easy, but you need a partner to execute your first configuration, after that the administration is easy.

What about the implementation team?

The first setup must be done by any partner or a NetApp field engineer.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price it not low, but comparing features to other vendors, the price can be balanced.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user793935

Storage Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Jan 24, 2018

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Enables us to handle business critical data with HA

Pros and Cons

"NAS stability"
"Good for NAS and unified solutions."

"Needs more SAN support."

How has it helped my organization?

Enables us to handle business critical data with HA.

What is most valuable?

NAS stability
Simple customer support

What needs improvement?

Needs more SAN support.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No stability issues yet.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No scalability issues yet.

How is customer service and technical support?

Eight out of 10.

How was the initial setup?

Works on administration, not implementation.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Not overrated, though there are products available in market with comparatively lower costs.

What other advice do I have?

Good for NAS and unified solutions.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user3396

Team Lead at Tata Consultancy Services

Dec 15, 2017

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FAS8040: Powerful, high availability, easy to use. But I have concerns about the company's future.

What is our primary use case?

NAS for the enterprise including unstructured data, EPIC Systems + the other 3,520 applications. I love those innovative healthcare data solutions that let me securely manage vast amounts of patient data (32.9 PB), use and share it enterprise-wide, and gain efficiency of scale through cloud solutions and virtualization.

How has it helped my organization?

Home directory access & Innovative clinical data and IT storage solutions from NetApp to share patient data across the continuum of care. Through improved flexibility and efficiency, NetApp solutions helps improve my healthcare workflows so you can deliver better patient care

What is most valuable?

Powerful
Easy to use
High availability

DFM

OCI

Data fabric

FPolicy

Cluster-mode

Hybrid cloud solution

What needs improvement?

I have found it to be expensive.
It is good as a NAS, but not a good option for SAN.We use it for storing medical images.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Some

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Not yet

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Solid

Technical Support:

Good

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Pure Storage for SAN

How was the initial setup?

What about the implementation team?

Vendor team

What was our ROI?

18 months

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Research fully

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

EMC

What other advice do I have?

Think carefully before you jump into NetApp. There are so many competing products and you should do a proof of concept before you buy it. I'm a bit worried since NetApp is competing against the big boys like IBM and EMC. So what happens if NetApps get acquired by one of the big boys? Will they be around in another 3-5 years?

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user281973Storage and VMware Expert at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Sep 4, 2015

Hi all,

When i started with Netapp, i had doubts about performance on the SAN environments, but when you know best the technology and implement using best practices recommended by Netapp you don´t have any issue about the performance.
You can´t configure Netapp like other storage like EMC,Fujitsu or Hitachi, because the concept is too different,
Here we have FAS6200 series running 8 Oracle Rac with 3 node each ,VMware with 25 servers ESXi and 600 virtual machines, Hyper-V and some NFS exported to application on the same box and i did not had any problems so far.
The secret to Netapp is that you must have Flash Cache on the controller, how much more you have better will be your performance, because the write is done on the anywhere file system and to read you will have flash cache to help your application.

Good Luck

Regards

Ivan

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it_user614595

ICT Network Administrator at a maritime company with 501-1,000 employees

Nov 26, 2017

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The initial setup was quite easy and pleasing. Just enter some key values and there you go.

Pros and Cons

"A reliable and easily managed storage system is a key performance factor. The system also has more features than we require."

"As I see it, there could be more interfaces, more cache, etc."

What is most valuable?

Reliability
Rich features
Ease of management
Excellent support

A reliable and easily managed storage system is a key performance factor. The system also has more features than we require.

What needs improvement?

Naturally, there would be room for improvement. As I see it, there could be more interfaces, more cache, etc., but those challenges are solved by just getting some other model.

For how long have I used the solution?

Four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

None whatsoever.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues, as expansion was a breeze.

How are customer service and technical support?

We do use third party support. On a scale of one to 10, I would rate the support to be an eight.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

During the years, we have had quite a few storage solutions, none of which did give us the same level performance, reliability, and manageability as the FAS-series has.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was quite easy and pleasing. Just enter some key values and there you go.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

For a number of years now, purchasing a storage system has been actually purchasing software. There is no plain storage anymore, more or less intelligent software solutions. Thus, licenses are required to fulfill the business demands. One considering between different storage system should carefully investigate what software options they get bundled in and what optional software they actually would need. Most storage vendors also have software, or licensing bundles, which may offer the required licenses considerably cheaper, but do also maybe offer licenses, which are not needed.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No other solutions were evaluated at the time. Actually, this system was familiar to use and fulfilled the business demands.

What other advice do I have?

You really can't go wrong with NetApp products, They perform well, are rock solid, offer good space saving technologies, and the support is above par.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user520506

Storage Administrator with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 23, 2017

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Valuable features include thin provisioning, simple management, and fast snapshots

Pros and Cons

"Fast Snapshots"

"With scalability, we feel the system is limited."

What is most valuable?

Fast Snapshots
Thin provisioning
Simple management

What needs improvement?

With scalability, we feel the system is limited.

For how long have I used the solution?

From 2013 until now; four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues. The system is rather stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Yes, we have encountered issues. The system is limited by the number of enclosures.

How are customer service and technical support?

The tech support is very good. We use a third party support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, we used VNX5300 NAS. We found this one better suited to our needs.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup was straightforward, not very complicated.

What about the implementation team?

We used a third-party for setup.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No, we did not. We were given direction from the University.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend it to anyone. It is good for some of the NAS and VMware implementations.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user3396

Team Lead at Tata Consultancy Services

Nov 15, 2017

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FAS8k Series: Better performance & lower cost...+ A300

Pros and Cons

"Better performance and lower costs."

"It may need more flexibility to fight with other competing arrays."

What is most valuable?

Better performance and lower costs.

How has it helped my organization?

It is a great help.

What needs improvement?

It may need more flexibility to fight with other competing arrays.

For how long have I used the solution?

Over 10 years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Nothing special.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Not really.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Good.

Technical Support:

Cool.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

EMC.

How was the initial setup?

Straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

Vendor.

What was our ROI?

Three years.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Be careful.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

EMC.

What other advice do I have?

Keep up the good work.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user487374VP Product Management at PeerSpot

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Jun 18, 2017

Looks like you have experience with this product. It would be valuable to other professionals if you could share more input about how you use it in your company, and why should people be careful about the cost/licensing.