We have some experience with older equipment end-of-life. For example, when warranty support stops or updates stop – it can be frustrating. 

Not all clients can buy a new filer every year or two, and NetApp ending support a bit quickly can be a concern.

Moreover, we've looked at new models and performed some price comparisons. There doesn't seem to be a large difference in price between different models within the FAS series. It would be good if there was a larger price variance between models.

Once, I've been in a program, but they stopped supporting protocols like HTTP, STP, and that kind of stuff. All of the DIP supports at the beginning were kind of support when it was just Python and just five storage. And it happened a few times that the customer required the STP and HTTP protocol for storage. And I was surprised I couldn't do it anymore with NetApp. So, it would be beneficial for them to support both kinds of protocols.

The only little black points that I would put on top of NetApp FAS Series.

There is room for improvement in deployment and configuration processes. The thing with ONTAP is that we have a lot of layers, from the raw disks to the volumes we present to servers and configure. There are quite a lot of things to configure. Probably NetApp should ease the way to install that.

In NetApp products, such as ONTAP and FAS, a solid understanding of storage is still necessary to handle configurations in larger systems. It's not the same with Pure Storage or  Huawei. Even someone less familiar with storage could manage it, making it more accessible.

There is an area of improvement in support. So when we do have a problem, we always want it resolved right away, and sometimes it takes a few days to resolve things.

So, the response time could be a bit faster.

If our customer needs a high-performance storage solution then we don't recommend this product.

Some of our customers complain about not liking the UI, whereas others say that they love it. Also, some say that the FAS is too slow and some say that it performs fine. It's all relative and depends on the customer as well as the use case.

NetApp FAS Series should introduce an FTP application for the broadcast and post-production market. NetApp's older version had FTP, but they removed it. Some customers need to use external FTP servers, and some low-cost storage solutions have a built-in FTP. A lot of automation systems still use FTP for middle-class customers.

The high cost of the product is an area of concern, so from an improvement perspective, the tool needs to be made cheaper.

NetApp is costly when compared to Dell.

There are some technical limitations, but it would be great to have in-line deduplication and in-line compression for the FAS series as well. These would be improvements on current features.

We no longer have OEM support in South Africa which is not helpful, it can be difficult. They should add an office back to the country because it was better. 

I think this kind of infrastructure is mostly obsolete. To keep up with developments in this space, you need to move all these features to an All-Flash solution. Nowadays, we are working with a massive database involving big data and lots of information (even intelligence), and for these environments, it's not appropriate to run this kind of business. We feel that we need to move to an All-Flash environment in order to offer better performance for the client.

More integration would be beneficial. Moreover, cost is always a factor. Some people choose EMC or Dell because they perceive NetApp as being more expensive. But we do have other products, like support for other models, that are more cost-effective.

So, the pricing could be improved. 

I would like to see antivirus that works, and generally a working solution. They just provided Vserver DR, which is good.

Now we need to have a way to do some tests only because to do testing we really need to failover to the second site, destroy everything, rebuild it, and failback. I really need a test mode that is not as destructive, at least. There is no test mode. Maybe there is with ONTAP 9. I’m not sure. That’s probably a feature that doesn’t figure into the short-term roadmap.

For more detail:

With Data Ontap 7 if something was wrong there was a real passthru that was protecting us against a loss of service if something was wrong with McAfee.

Now with Cluster Data Ontap they introduce the AV connector and the passthru is not working correctly. We have delayed our migration to the c-dot environment for over 2 years now with open call at netapp. It tooks them over 8 months to admit there was a problem until a second customer get hit with the same problem we had. This has cause us service impact with our external customer, so we are running with the antivirus disable in our c-dot cifs shares since (at least they are used mostly by applications, not direct users).

We have 2 specific cases that happen:

* A McAfee agent upgrade that cause the Virus Scan Enterprise for Storage (VSES) to stop working
* A bad config in EPO pushing an invalid user to start the VSES preventing it to be able to read the file on the netapp

In September, a new version (1.0.3) of the AV connector that was supposed to fix these issues was available but it didn’t help the file access are still being denied. The test we did was for the second problem which is easy to reproduce. Just after that I was being interviewed during the Netapp Insight which has given that review.

Since we have worked with Netapp and McAfee, I have seen no real intent to have a functioning passthru. They instead finger point McAfee for not replying. We have tried an hotfix from McAfee but it is still not working.

For vserver DR this is a new functionality which is really good and very helpful for our DR solutions. The improvement that should be done to it is a better way to fallback, there is none currently so we need to delete all the setup, on the secondary : reconfigure it, copy everything to primary and then fail it back to primary. Then to reconfigure it properly, we need to delete, reconfigure and copy to the secondary.

The solution could be more flexible in terms of configuration. Also, they should increase the product range or configuration models for more storage options.

Everythink is ok. 

The product must support more drives.

NetApp needs to put its OS on a microchip rather than on disks. The product uses flash storage for caches. The solution could improve the cache memory in storage. Though the storage is being used for backups and archival, there is still room for improvement in the increment of cache memory and storage.

The NetApp FAS Series is not as high-performing for our business critical applications, because it's not an all-flash solution. It's also not as fast, so its speed needs improvement, but this could only be done if it's an all-flash solution.

The biggest issue we face is parts delivery. There's no local warehouse in Myanmar, so if a customer encounters a technical problem like hardware failure issue, they have to wait a long time for replacement parts.

I was a little skeptical about the model. I wonder why the replication is included in the ONTAP One bundle when some customers may not require additional features. It should ideally be part of the ONTAP base bundle, even if there's a slight price increase.

The product should improve its user experience. The console should enable easy mapping to the storage volume and the server.

The solution can improve on the replication features.

The one aspect of the solution that's negative for us is also more unique to us due to the fact that we did a MetroCluster. The tiebreaker piece that does the monitoring of the two different locations, and determines if one is not talking to the network normally (or if it's truly down) is a little difficult. It feels like it was not designed from the beginning to fit well into the other pieces. It feels like it was thrown in at the last minute and it is not smooth. I've actually spoken to NetApp about that. I understand from a little bit of my research that they do have another product out. They've renamed it. I don't know how much they've changed it. I don't know if they have made that a better fitting piece or if it's just got a different name.

I still have not moved to their most recent version. I believe they have incorporated several updates that I haven't had experience with yet. I'd hate to say, "Oh, we should put it that in there," and it's already there.

They should add all features from Flash Pool, Flash Cache, and other new features into the product.

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

Currently, the newest release is not HCI friendly.

I’ve found that I use command line more often than I thought needed. Some things should be done in the GUI, and command-line switches can be overwhelming and take up a lot of time. In a GUI, I can just hit options or boxes. However, cluster mode will address a lot of that, but 7-mode definitely doesn’t.

Its operating system is very cumbersome. However, after you set it up, it runs pretty smoothly.

Its file system is not very dynamic. It is very static.

The product should include an audit log feature. 

The user interface could be improved.

Interfacing with the cloud environment could be better. I want to be able to move some cloud volume and integrate it seamlessly with my home on-premise storage. Sometimes I have issues with port permissions. NetApp probably needs to improve more on the integration side from on-premise to the cloud.

Capacity management could also be better. The difference between AFF and FAS has always been an issue, but now we have the advanced disk partitioning technology on the whole FAS systems that can give us more usable capacity. That has been the bigger issue that I had with NetApp in terms of improvement, and they seem to be working on it now.

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.

Netapp closed their local offices in our country leading to no technical and sales support representation.

There should be a separate admin web management for each SVM. We are currently managing all SVMs from a single admin interface. it is a problem.

Real-time performance monitoring requires good software. It would be great to be able to see the audit logs.

They should provide more specific how-to guides. For example, I want to implement Sharepoint, but how do I do that?

The only improvement to this solution that I can propose is for NetApp to make the price more attractive. If the price is more attractive, then it will have a bigger market share. I can't think of any other area for improvement because the price is the only one that really comes to mind.

Tegile offers live deduplication. And NetApp can only be scheduled to dedupe in the background or for later.

Also, the web page for downloading software could be more efficient (for example, getting instructions takes a few clicks). Make it easier for customers to download software.

NetApp FAS Series should improve its price, which is expensive. 

As a company, NetApp may consider working with ARL systems.

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.

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.

They need to improve the go-to-market for all-flash and converged infrastructure. What is your goal-to-market vision, and when to get there? They’re too slow compared to others and what they’ve done in the past. They were the leader in dedupe, but now, it’s not such an innovative edge.

It lacks flexibility in failover and failback, so we cannot granularly failover pieces. It's not easy to move one piece over to the other side.

Also, from the overall workload standpoint, all protocols are handled in just one physical architecture. So if I'm running dedupe, fiber channel, and other protocols on the same CPU core, I can’t load-balance. I’ve seen issues specifically with EMP, one core is maxed out, and I can’t use the other cores to handle it.

We'd like to move to a solution that does more beyond just data, like starting to get more to servers and network specialization and data visualization and things like that. Server network and management specialization or consolidation. And also, trying to see a bit more single plane of glass in terms of managing, so that it gives you more insight in terms of what's happening. 

Ideally the solution should have one console, the ability to use a single plane of glass across the enterprise. Because we have one VRR, one size duplication so just to have one console where you can manage everything else in harmony would be a good additional feature. 

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.

Unify all backup software on the single tool to simplify the administration.

We’re going onto the cDot platform, which is already an improvement. The controllers are faster so we have more processing efficiency.

They should make it faster and cheaper, but it does what we need it to do.

When speaking with the NetApp CEO, we told him that we need better documentation for customers to understand automation of APIs. We want it all there and robust. Boot-from-disk allows me to use disk from Netapp, and understand how to set that up should be documented so I can teach my staff how to do that.

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

The thing we'd like to see the most is the possibility of pairing LAN/SAN ports from different nodes. Currently, the systems only provide pairing (and thus redundancy) only at same-node level. Also, it wouldn't hurt having this sort of cross-functionality when it comes to choosing disks for aggregate structures. Right now, you can't integrate in the same storage aggregate disks from different shelves.

Tough for me to answer because I’m limited in my role, but the one thing I’d like to see most is more cohesiveness with a unified manager. I like the end product, but it’s not really all integrated and is convoluted with different managers. I would ike a single pane of glass, a single dashboard.

I think that they are upgrading the performance monitoring tool, which is the main thing I think needs improvement. From version to version they are changing, and you want to see things improve – I think we will continue to see more and more benefits.

One of the issues that we have had with NetApp in upgrading over the years is that migrating data from one system to another is one-way only. If you have a new storage system that is going to replace an old storage system, where you're transitioning slowly from one to another, you can copy the data in one direction, but that same tool, which is typically used as a disaster recovery tool, can't be used to reset it back the other direction, as well. That level of backward compatibility would be very nice to have.

The performance needs to be improved. Due to the performance issues, we're moving to NetApp Flash FAS as it provides almost infinite performance.

For the most part, we don't have any problems. There is no NetApp infrastructure set up here in Greece. We don't have a representative with a technical department and someone who will help you in order to understand the product better.

• Add wizards for newer, inexperienced users. 
• More modern GUI, not that it's bad. 
• ONTAP upgrades need to be much easier.

• Automation readiness
• API exposure
• Adaptive storage quality of service

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.

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

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

Migration from 7-Mode to Clustered Data ONTAP need improvement. It seems NetApp didn't know how to solve the main problem of migrating data from an old OS (7-Mode ) to Clustered.

I miss their old support structure. We used to be able to call up and get an answer pretty quickly, but now it’s more arduous.

It could be cleaner for dedupe, and I wish we could do dedupe for the entire system and not just a specific volume.

Make sure there’s current centralized virtual desktops. I get caught in the upgrade matrix quite a bit, which is an indication that it hasn’t been tested. Need more currency in IMT.

We're supposed to have used NetApp FAS Series for replication, but then one of the nodes failed, and then it's taken us some time to bring it up.

The management console and disc partitioning could improve.

I have not given the FAS a perfect rating because the All Flash Array is probably going to beat it down, in terms of performance.

I would give it a perfect rating if there wasn’t any ceiling. When you have some systems and you increase your disk IOPS by adding either All Flash Array or you add a flash pool, sometimes you move the bottleneck; you move the bottleneck up to the CPU. We did have that problem briefly. That was solved by basically moving some of the workload. That happened one time and we fixed it.

By moving to cluster mode, it's going to be a lot easier to move the workload. We are moving in that direction. We're doing the first assessment and planning right now.

The virtualization technology.

For long term partnership in Myanmar, The local warehouse should be built in Myanmar that's something I'd like to see. We have some issues with supply so there is sometimes a delay in getting the hardware.

Needs more SAN support.

We use mirroring a lot, and if it had snap manager for SQL included, we could do that from one location.

Knowing what’s coming down the pipe, NetApp is headed in the right direction. In their five year roadmap, it provides what I need it to do.

It could improve by better integrating with other technologies like VMware, as there are some version conflicts. When you are using the newest storage virtual console, you cannot use VM Wall, the VM-specific firewall.

Some of the tools could be improved like NetApp OnCommand. This has been a lot better recently, but they could make it faster.

Nothing that I can think of right now.

For cDOT in general, improvements could be made to the little things, such as the translation between 7-mode and cDOT. If there’s some kind of backward compatibility or translation of certain functions from one to the other, that would be an improvement.

I would like to see NetApp add incident support.

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

I have a very small feature request: more automation of the expanding aggregates and discs.

Unified Monitoring v6.2 loses a bunch of functionality that previous versions had. For example, I took a cluster out of Unified Monitor, but Storage Monitor was still alerting me about it. 6.2 is not as comprehensive, but Unified Monitoring 6.2 will only be useful when it does everything. Insight’s price is just too expensive and unreasonable.

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.

One thing that was missing for quite some time was the support for flash, of solid state disks, that has now improved. Another issue is the price which, compared to competitors, is quite high. The reason for switching to a different manufacturer is mostly because of the high price that NetApp has for the product.

It needs better built-in monitoring. We can’t afford Insight, and v6.2 seems like it's a purposefully inferior product to make people buy Insight, which is way too expensive.

Our major issue with FAS was not having one pane of glass with all products attached to it. Other major issue is the free performance monitor doesn’t provide enough information. They want you to buy Insight, which is very expensive.

NetApp FAS Series could improve by being more secure.

Its licensing cost can be improved.

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

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

• 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 would be nice to be able to mix flash cache with other technologies.

Sometimes there are bugs with firmware upgrades.

Depending on the use case, it needs a service catalogue you can walk through without having to use SE.

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

I would like to see less latency and higher IOPS.

With scalability, we feel the system is limited.