NetApp FAS Series Reviews

Enables us to handle business critical data with HA.

• NAS stability
• Simple customer support

Needs more SAN support.

No stability issues yet.

No scalability issues yet.

Eight out of 10.

Works on administration, not implementation.

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

Good for NAS and unified solutions.

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.

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

Powerful
Easy to use
High availability

DFM

OCI

Data fabric

FPolicy

Cluster-mode

Hybrid cloud solution

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.

Some

Not yet

Customer Service:

Solid

Technical Support:

Good

Pure Storage for SAN

OK

Vendor team

18 months

Research fully

EMC

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?

• 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.

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.

Four years.

None whatsoever.

No issues, as expansion was a breeze.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

• Fast Snapshots
• Thin provisioning
• Simple management

With scalability, we feel the system is limited. 

From 2013 until now; four years.

No issues. The system is rather stable.

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

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

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

Initial setup was straightforward, not very complicated.

We used a third-party for setup.

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

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

Better performance and lower costs.

It is a great help.

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

Over 10 years.

Nothing special.

Not really.

No.

Customer Service:

Good.

Technical Support:

Cool.

EMC.

Straightforward.

Vendor.

Three years.

Be careful.

EMC.

Keep up the good work.

It changed the way we do Disaster Recovery (DR) around NetApp replication.

• Cluster mode needs to be more ubiquitous.
• The process for going to cluster mode is expensive.

Unexpected costs and some systems were not compatible with cluster mode.

Yes, we encountered stability issues with the LDAP integration and with user logins on the web front-end.

Nope.

The customer service is awesome.

The technical support is great. The partner company (Bytes) has a close relationship with us.

The initial setup was straightforward, though there were a lot of hidden costs going to cluster mode and the amount of usable data was way lower than expected.

We used a vendor team, and they were excellent.

EMC.

Double up on the amount of storage that you expect to buy.

• Redundancy
• Snap mirroring
• Home-drive capability, which looks at a user name and gives the correct rights to folder

• Rendundancy
• Security

We hold a lot of information for our customers, so the information has to be secure and reliable.

I'm not sure, because every time I’ve gone to them, they’ve said “yes, we can do that.”

I sleep well at night because of its redundancy. I hardly even know when it has a bad drive. The Call Home capability sends a message automatically if there's a bad drive to NetApp who then sends a new drive.

Amazing how scalable it is. As a comparison, we looked at EMC vBlock as well, and if you want to upgrade, you have to use a forklift. With FAS, you just put in new shelves or heads.

They’re extremely technical. Everyone I’ve talked to has been very knowledgeable, and I can’t say anything bad.

It was complex. There's a lot to do, but I had their assistance and went through everything step by step. So while complex, it was also simple.

One thing that burned me, is that it surprised me how much overhead it uses, like 30% right off the top. So don’t forget the overhead. It’s not usable space, but that percentage is coming down. It all has to do with deduplication.

NetApp, as a design group, builds solutions that are reliable. Other companies don’t have the fortitude of NetApp. They have a very strong commitment to the multimedia industry, for example.

Other products lose performance over time, but NetApp OS is speed-optimized.

NetApp is also a very stable company that offers various storage options at the highest level of build and reliability. Products will be supported for the duration of a customer’s needs.

With NetApp’s dedication to the market, customers aren’t dealing with a fly-by-night organization. The company will follow through with support which, with FAS, is for multiple petabytes of data. For example, in the government and medical sectors, they are well provided-for.

My ability as a VAR is solely connected to NetApp, my value is solely connected to the commitment of NetApp. In any particular vertical, NetApp is technically superior, price conscious, and superior at price-for-performance.

They provide a lot of expertise on marketing and technical teams, and helps make our customers look good.

There’s always areas for improvement. For example, it’s not an inexpensive solution and it may not be for the cost-sensitive customer.

My primary selling point is stability of the solution. It provides ongoing performance, which is proven to have no degradation.

Scalability depends on how it’s ordered, which is the job of an integrator and dependent on the customer's needs.

I work with their technical team, but not on a day-to-day basis. The teams I do work with are great, but there are so many of them it’s sometimes difficult to find correct teams.

It’s complex because there so many areas where you can make a mistake. For example, the site survey may not have enough power and something as simple as that can ruin an installation.

It loses points because of the price, but it can’t be everything to everybody.

Make sure you buy the product that’s right for you. If it's competitive to NetApp FAS, great, but just know both products before making a decision and do a point-by-point comparison.