NetApp OnCommand Insight Reviews

I like the performance side the most. When we have an issue going on currently in the environment, the graphing of all the data helps pinpoint where the issue might be.

For the reporting side, the data warehouse side, if you're good with that, it can get really detailed reports that are good for showing people, at any level of the company. For the performance side, obviously it's good for troubleshooting.

I'd say for the cDOT side of it, yes. We had a solution for 7-mode, but for cDOT we didn't really have anything yet, so it helped by making sure that our NetApp source is staying healthy and our implementations are working.

They've already got better stuff coming out. I don't know what else I could need, honestly. Before, they had the fiber channel for switches on there; I think they are already coming out with ethernet, the other boards. That was what I wanted and they're already working on it.

One thing they could improve is making the data warehouse side easier to use.

A little over a year.

It's very stable once you get it into place. There were originally some issues; NetApp was very helpful in working through them, getting patches, and it's pretty stable now.

In terms of those issues, It wouldn't connect to some of the NetApps sometimes, so we would have incomplete data on certain NetApps because there were bugs with certain ONTAP versions. But, they will come out with patches if you need them.

You can add as many NetApps in there that you need to, I think. As many NetApps that you can put in there, even EMCs. We have our EMCs in there, SAN switches, and even VMware. So it's definitely scalable.

They were really helpful, they helped to troubleshoot the issue and to get as quick a fix as we could.

We initially invested in OCI to improve our reporting in our environment because we wanted to be able to predict purchases in the future. So that was what the tool seemed to be good for.

We chose NetApp because we have something like 50 NetApps, so it seemed like the right way to go.

I felt like it was complex. They said it was simple but, they have a guy who will come out and help you through the process. He gave me a slight tutorial. Like I said, the data warehouse side is a lot more complex. So it had more of a learning curve, versus the performance side, which is pretty straightforward once you learn everything.

Regarding upgrades, the first one was complex, I think because we didn't have a lot of space on the server. But the backup wasn't working, so they wanted to back it up and then you restore from the backup to the new version. But the last one we did was very easy. So it's getting better.

We do web.com, basically web hosting. I don't think this product is uniquely valuable in our industry. I think its pretty much good for anyone that has a NetApp, if you want the performance, or however you're doing it. It helps us maintain up-time for our customers, such as websites; that's why it helps there.

What I get out of it: the day-to-day monitoring. In my role as an administrator, I'm primarily responsible for operational functionality, so I mostly use it to keep an eye on the system and make sure that we're meeting our SLAs and we're up and running.

Since we have to monitor multiple systems, it gives us a single pane of glass to look at all of our environments. Also, to compare and contrast, if one environment is having some issues, we can judge it against the other environments to make sure everything is on par with one another.

In the financial services industry, customer responsiveness is very important. Financial advisors cannot sit in front of a customer and say, "I can't get your data." Thus, being up and running and constantly available is a very important area for our client.

Alerting: It's not complicated, but with so many groups involved in setting up something like an SNMP trap, or even an email alerting system, so many different groups have to get involved. If there was a simpler way to do that, to bypass a lot of that bureaucracy, that would be helpful. Then, just to make it even easier for management to have their own dashboards, possibly customize it.

I've been using this solution in my current position in the financial services industry for about seven months.

It's been very stable. The entire NetApp environment has been extremely stable. We really don't have issues across the board with uptime.

We actually have a relatively low footprint, so we haven't scaled it up very much. Though I know we're not even close to pushing the boundaries of what we could do with it.

I have not specifically used tech support.

We chose NetApp because we look for a vendor who can provide value-added support, not just break and fix, but best practices, advice, roadmap information, information about other case studies from other customers in similar situations, and the ability to really help us (not just install the product), but to use the product and extract the maximum value out of it. Also, they really know our environment.

I was not involved in the initial setup. We also have not upgraded yet.

I would not have been privy to that. When those decisions were made, it was before I started.

If you're going to do any reasonable-sized NetApp installation, you need to have it. You just can't manage it effectively without that level of support. You can try to roll it out your own, or you can bring in a third party, and there are some good third parties out there, but if you really just want to get something up and running and you want to be able to manage it, it's the fastest way to get it going.

Performance monitoring of hundreds of switches and being able to see results in one dashboard.

With the alerts of saturation of FC ports in their early states, we can proactively anticipate performance issues on the server or databases.

Enhance SNMP monitoring in order to broaden the number of storages that can be discovered. Review the setup of the software and divide the DB from the application and web server. Also, modularize the software more.

Four years.

No issues.

Yes, because it has a unique server module.

It is very good with a quick escalation process and delivery of new patches in a couple of weeks.

We have used and currently use other SRM softwares, but this one is more intuitive and easy to manage.

Very straightforward. You need only to define how many collectors and enable the needed firewall rules.

I do not advise about pricing: For me, it is always too much. Licensing is on TBs, and I think, nowadays that is outmoded.

A storage with 100TB or more could be the minimum in some cases. The licensing should be reviewed in number and types of storages discovered.

I was not involved in the evaluation process. However, one is the compatibility matrix: the larger, the best.

Spend a little more time in design in order to save next time when the infrastructure is active.

Scalability: If you're from a large enterprise, it's easy for us to go into customer environments and pull the data out. It's very security-friendly. There's also the reporting suite, and the extensibility of that is fantastic. As well as we can replicate charge reports, so when you go from account to account it's always the same data. You're not looking at form A here, and form B there. We can actually have a standard set of reports globally.

The one thing that NetApp has done a very good job of is keeping up with the current technology out there, not just with what they're doing, but with what the industry is doing. When we have had to deploy something very quickly, this was several years ago, EMC released a new product, and we were the first people to have a functioning chargeback report in the industry, because they actually brought developers in, wrote the code, and allowed us to produce it. This ended being in the product.

Definitely, the single pane of glass for capacity management. Every customer has multiple vendors of storage, which allows us to bring those into a single report, deliver those, not just to engineers, but also to the operations level and business owners of those organizations as well, so they can make sound business and financial decisions.

It's uniquely valuable, because it's really at the top of its class. Everybody else who's doing storage, monitoring, and reporting, they don't have a standard base for doing this. They customize it for every vendor who's out there, whereas the NetApp approach was to build a base and a solid foundation, so regardless of what vendor you actually bring in, or new data source you add, it's always the same information. Therefore, you really can have a homogenous view.

The UI: They have been growing and changing. There's been some growing pains with that, but they are moving into the new HTML5 interface, which is fantastic. They are hitting on all the right points, but it's never going to be a perfect because there's always going to be something new, which means there's always going to be something that has to be improved.

About seven years.

It's very stable, but it's software and software breaks. That's just how it is. Overall though, we generally do not have issues with the software itself. It's usually some underlying infrastructure issue that causes an outage.

The architecture allows us to put the LAUs and roll them into a single reporting engine, either regionally and/or globally. Even though we have to add compute to monitor more storage, we don't have to go to different places to get that data, it all comes from a single point.

They're great. Fantastic. We generally deal with the same people, so that tells me that the way they manage the teams that people enjoy being there, and they stay. Also, they train their individuals, because when they look at the different data sources, the technology, they understand it. When they get into the product, they are very knowledgeable.

The instrumentation wasn't there, and that's what we deployed it for: storage, instrumentation, reporting, then accurate chargeback.

I was involved in the initial setup and it was straightforward.

The analytics over it. The ability to connect to any type of storage device that I've got, then extract and report in a centralized manner on all my SAN infrastructure.

It's a centralized structure that has the ability to connect to any storage platform, it doesn't matter if it's NetApp or not, and be able to report consistently on all my fabric. It's the greatest advantage that I've have.

I would like them to change the licensing model. It costs too much.

It goes on raw instead of going on usable storage. It doesn't necessarily have a value when you deploy, for example, a 400TB storage and I'm only using 60GB out of it at the beginning. Then, I have to pay for the entire 400TB, which is very costly, instead of having a growing up session.

It's very stable.

Scalability is fairly reasonable.

We just increased the number of agents that we have, so we didn't have any issues in deploying it. NetApp has been there with us since Day One to do the analysis and to iron out a plan for deployment. No issues there. That's very standard.

We go directly to our account manager, who we feel is knowledgeable and responsive, and put in the requirements there.

The fact that it gives us a way to report usage for the arrays that we have, issues that we have.

It's a reporting tool so we can see where we get issues with latency, and we can see issues with port saturation, and it shows us each of our clients.

Personally, some of the older things that HPE created originally, you could dig a little bit deeper into each client in certain ways that OCI doesn't quite do.

With HPE we could look at very specific port-to-port on there, per array that we have. Whereas the OCI, you can still do that but the way it's done is a little bit... When I look at a host, I can't look at the entire host. I can only look at different LUNS on that host and that can be a problem sometimes.

A year and a half now.

Stability is good. No issues with OCI.

It's got some things that are good and we still use some other reporting tools to mix in with it, but it is good overall.

I have not used it.

I was not involved.

When selecting a vendor to work with the most important criteria are what's easiest, what's quickest to train on and that way we can get into all of the different engineers' hands and get them up to speed fastest on it.

Functionally we're able to use it to troubleshoot pretty quickly. So it's come on and it's replaced a lot of the HPE tools that we were using before. What would make it a 10 out of 10 for me are some of the niche things that we would want to see, so that it could do some of the troubleshooting even a little bit better and a little bit faster.

For troubleshooting, for the way we use it, it's good. And for a large environment, it seems to have been integrated in pretty well.

This is a very good tool to see everything on an overview: Where and what are the devices, how much storage you are using, how much Apple storage, and with what connectivity is being used.

You will get a total view of your storage.

Because we can use it financially, we use it for inventory purpose. You can use it, not only for reporting, but you can identify connectivity and storage issues. You can pull performance reports.

We are a consulting company and we use it for various purposes.

• Email notifications
• Data store recoveries
• Moving into the cloud.

They should include more of these type of things.

We have used this solution for the last six years.

Stability is very good.

Scalability is nice, for all scales.

We use the tech support. They are good.

We are able to get through, and they will follow up for anything they are not able to give us the solution to immediately. They will work with internally among themselves, then they will get back to us.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was straightforward, except for a firewall issue.

• Performance monitoring
• Monitoring events happening within the cluster
• Notifications we're receiving, mainly for monitoring

We can see the real-time status of the systems and, of course, monitoring. We have visibility in general.

There was a minor issue where we were receiving a notification that a cluster was not available, or communication to the cluster. OnCommand Manager could not reach a cluster, which is really much like a false positive. The minor issues were communications within the systems.

We have used the product less than a year; we installed probably six months ago.

It's a stable solution. Sometimes we receive a small number of false-positive alerts, but in general we can monitor the system efficiently.

Very scalable.

I have opened a few cases with NetApp support and, of course, I received valuable information. I was able to get through to the right person.

This is part of a migration, of migrating storage from EMC to NetApp. Once we migrated some data to NetApp storage we deployed OnCommand, the application as well, at the same time.

I was not involved in the initial setup of this product specifically, but now I'm involved in migrating from our current version to the new release that is available, which will help us to resolve the issues we've experienced.

We are in the real estate industry. We are using NetApp storage to store various types of data: flat files, file servers, we have host of Microsoft Sequel Server databases, Oracle databases, so we're using a wide range of data to store.