Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

NetApp ONTAP pros and cons

Vendor: NetApp

4.3 out of 5

92 reviews
98% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

NetApp ONTAP is recognized for its stability, providing reliable operations with scalable storage expansion. Efficient data replication is enabled through SnapMirror and SnapVault, while deduplication reduces costs. Collaborations with Microsoft, VMware, and Oracle add flexibility. However, improvements are needed in cloud integration, technical support, and API support. Limitations exist in block-based storage scalability, and backup capabilities require enhancement to lessen dependence on external solutions.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

NetApp ONTAP is known for its exceptional data protection features, like SnapMirror and SnapVault, which enable seamless data replication and disaster recovery.

The scalability of NetApp ONTAP is impressive, allowing users to add nodes effortlessly and enhance storage capabilities without replacing the entire system.

Users praise the ability of NetApp ONTAP to significantly reduce storage costs through effective deduplication and compression, enhancing storage efficiency and saving space.

The high performance and stability of NetApp ONTAP are notable, offering dependable data access and operations with minimal outages and delays.

NetApp ONTAP provides robust support for data management and transfer across multiple data centers or cloud, reinforcing business continuity and operational flexibility.

CONS

NetApp ONTAP's cloud integration needs improvement, particularly in terms of public cloud storage options and seamless integration with other platforms.

The current support structure for NetApp ONTAP has faced criticism for slow responses and insufficient problem resolution, particularly with Level 1 support.

Scalability limitations exist, especially when dealing with block-based storage and the constraints related to maximum volumes and clients per cluster.

Security and encryption enhancements are needed, including protection against malware and advanced encryption options.

Initial setup complexity and the need for simplified deployment processes are frequent concerns among users.

NetApp ONTAP Pros review quotes

MR

Storage Engineer at Bank of NY

Oct 23, 2018

It has the ability to bring up disaster recovery quickly.

Read full review

AS

Enterprise Solutions Specialist at Lenovo (United States)

Oct 23, 2018

Efficiencies such as Flash Cache and Flash Pool allow us to make better use of slower, cheaper storage and have some faster storage sitting up front taking a lot of the caching and the reading. The way that has been optimized for the NetApp platform is better than the competitors. It has reduced our cost of storage because we're buying cheaper storage for the bulk capacity, which is really effective.

Read full review

PG

Chief Administrative Officer at a government with 10,001+ employees

Oct 23, 2018

We have been able to save about 10 to 15% on space using the space consumption features.

Read full review

Free Report: NetApp ONTAP Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about NetApp ONTAP. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

880,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.

AK

Storage Analyst at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 24, 2018

The scalability is very good. It enables us to use different product lines within the same operating system.

Read full review

Systems Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 24, 2018

Scalability is good. Now that we have the ability to add more nodes to the cluster, it's better. It allows us to grill our clusters allowing them to be larger and faster, without having to buy a whole new system.

Read full review

Storage Engineer at Evolent Health

Oct 24, 2018

Clustered ONTAP makes it very easy to manage large amounts of data, measured in petabytes. One person can manage all that.

Read full review

Executive Director at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Oct 24, 2018

The initial setup and deployment were straightforward

Read full review

SS

Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Oct 24, 2018

I love the replication technologies which keep a customer out of risk. At any time, we can do a seamless failover/failback, and have the latest data on it. The SnapVault is another excellent feature. It's used for remote disk-based backups so we don't need to depend on tape backups with their long restore times.

Read full review

Storage Engineer at a government with 10,001+ employees

Oct 24, 2018

The most valuable features are the data deduplication, the inline compression/compaction, and the encryption as well, the security aspect of it.

Read full review

Systems Architect at a aerospace/defense firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 24, 2018

We use a lot of SnapVault and SnapMirror features for disaster recovery and daily backups to meet SLAs.

Read full review

Show 10 more reviews (out of 84)

NetApp ONTAP Cons review quotes

MR

Storage Engineer at Bank of NY

Oct 23, 2018

The toughest thing that we have right now is a cabling issue. There are so many that you need to connect.

Read full review

AS

Enterprise Solutions Specialist at Lenovo (United States)

Oct 23, 2018

I would like to see more in the public cloud space around things like object storage. A bit more granularity around how that gets deployed would be nice, but other than that I think they've got it nailed.

Read full review

PG

Chief Administrative Officer at a government with 10,001+ employees

Oct 23, 2018

They could also improve on their ability to back up storage.

Read full review

Free Report: NetApp ONTAP Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about NetApp ONTAP. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

880,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.

AK

Storage Analyst at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 24, 2018

I would like to see more evolution towards the cloud.

Read full review

Systems Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 24, 2018

I would like to see more integration into the cloud, as we are pushing to do more cloud-based compute. It is just easier to get the storage and everything synced up there and move to the cloud. We want NetApp to keep down the cloud integration path. It still needs some improvement. Overall, there needs to be more cloud integration in all NetApp products.

Read full review

Storage Engineer at Evolent Health

Oct 24, 2018

I would like to see volume efficiency come closer to what Dell EMC can do with, for instance, their XtremIO platform.

Read full review

Executive Director at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Oct 24, 2018

The vendor diagnostics, which allows for movement from one vendor to another vendor using the application technology that is available. It should be able to talk to any vendor, not just NetApp to NetApp. We should be able to replicate the data, so the next feature should not be vendor specific.

Read full review

SS

Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Oct 24, 2018

The only thing that they have to improve in NetApp is that they're still relying on padding each node in active/active in CDOT. That has to go away. They should look at the scalability on a platform level. The computer will have that one file system with multiple nodes on it. If even one node fails, any node in that cluster could take over the functionalities. But today, it absolutely relies on that active-active uncoupling it. That needs to be improved in such a way that it would be one namespace. If this node goes down, any node in the cluster should take over and run that environment.

Read full review

Storage Engineer at a government with 10,001+ employees

Oct 24, 2018

I could see the GUI being a little bit more refined, the presentation layer being a little stronger, a little less sluggish.

Read full review

Systems Architect at a aerospace/defense firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 24, 2018

Scalability is a bit of a question. If we're only doing file-based storage, scalability is fantastic. If we are doing block-based storage through iSCSI or Fibre Channel, there are some significant limitations in the number of volumes and clients that you can put on a single data ONTAP cluster.

Read full review

Show 10 more reviews (out of 84)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Storage Software

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

DataCore SANsymphony vs NetApp ONTAP

Dell PowerPath vs NetApp ONTAP

StorONE Storage-as-a-Service vs NetApp ONTAP

Kodjin FHIR Server vs NetApp ONTAP

See all alternatives

Product Categories

Product Categories

Storage Software

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

DataCore SANsymphony vs NetApp ONTAP

Dell PowerPath vs NetApp ONTAP

StorONE Storage-as-a-Service vs NetApp ONTAP

Kodjin FHIR Server vs NetApp ONTAP

See all alternatives

Related questions

111

How does Azure NetApp Files compare to NetApp ONTAP?

10

When evaluating Storage Software, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?

14

DataCore vs. Nexenta vs. Tintri - which should we choose for our exclusively Citrix shop?

75

What are the main storage requirements to support Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning applications?

12

Why is Storage Software important for companies?