NetApp ONTAP Reviews

I have about 500 volumes that I manage, and I love it.

It's a good thing to have a reliable storage. Our whole business relies on it. Our two main mission-critical systems, which are EBS system (Oracle Financials) and Banner, which is our database for student services, are stored on NetApp. We need it to be reliable, efficient, and quick, which it is. 

They run on AIX and are stored on ONTAP.

My experience with NetApp is its very easy to learn and intuitive. I can figure out just about everything. 

I love the System Manager. I don't even need to remember commands. I love its ease of use.

I wish tech support would be better. I wish I could talk to somebody more easily and qualified, because this is way it is supposed to be. At the moment, you talk to an entry level people, and sometimes they know less than you. You waste two to three hours with them. Finally, they send you to a higher level person who  knows something. This is something many companies need to improve.

It is very reliable. We have not lost one byte of data. There was even an occasion about three months ago where one of my nodes went down. It was recovered and nobody even noticed.

I don't worry about stability. Even when a disc goes bad, I know it will replace itself. NetApp will send me an email, “We'll send you this tomorrow.”

Scalability is very good. Now that we have an AFF A300, it will be even better. You can add more to storage on live. Before, when we had the 3220s, you only had two nodes, so you had to buy another two nodes to scale. 

Sometimes, tech support is slow to answer. However, I'm seeing this as a trend in all companies, even IBM.

I've been using ONTAP for about ten years. I started with the 3140s, then went to the 3240s, and now, I just upgraded to the AFF A300. 

I went from an 8.17 node to 9.3 cluster nodes. This was a big change. I still have a lot of things to learn. For example, the migration was done using the 7-Mode migration tool, which was tough.

We used a reseller for NetApp for the deployment. They were good.

I have been able to save space using ONTAP, particularly now on the new system. By default, you get compression, deduping, etc. We have saved at least 20 percent in terms of space.

We received a super deal for our new machine, so we were happy with the price.

I did not consider anyone else. I love NetApp.

There are some new companies out there, but you take a chance on them. With mission-critical systems, you need a stable company. You cannot play around. NetApp systems will work when things go wrong.

My experience with ONTAP has been very good. It is very reliable.

I might use ONTAP for machine learning. AI. and real-time analytics in the future. Next year will be very interesting as we upgraded to an AFF A300, so that's a new ballgame. I wouldn't mind getting into the cloud.

I am not using NVMe yet. Maybe next year, I will venture into that. I am only using Fibre Channel and iSCSI right now.

ONTAP is the OS for NetApp storage controllers. We use it to provision storage or line volumes for our internal customers requesting storage either for databases, the storing of flat files, etc.

ONTAP 7-mode is a bit archaic, but with the clustered mode, it is straightforward. Also, if you add OnCommand Unified Manager, it is awesome.

We have a lot of mission critical systems, so we normally use ONTAP for all of them along with our databases and applications, e.g., Oracle Databases, like the BI and the CRM. We also have a VMS, which takes care of our virtual management systems.

It's easy to use. So, we don't have much stress. 

• SnapMirror
• Snapshot
• FlexClone volume: Cloning of volumes, volume move, and volume create.

I would like it to be more user-friendly. When you open the main dashboard, anyone should be able to know exactly what is going on, even without a tech background. Minimal training should be required.

Stability and performance have been great.

Sometimes it takes a while for us to upgrade. We need to ensure the applications running are compatible with the upgrades that we will be running. So, it takes us a little time to upgrade. However, all the upgrades, including the latest one (ONTAP 9.4), have been awesome.

Its scalability is good.

I'm here at NetApp Insight because I needed to talk to a few of the NetApp customer representatives about cost. In Africa, especially in West Africa, NetApp doesn't chat with their customers. Therefore, we always have to go through the local partners or vendors. 

I just spoke to a woman on the technology team. She's promised to be in touch and have somebody come to Ghana to speak to the high-end customers, like Vodafone, MTN, etc.

ONTAP's technical support is awesome and always ready to help.

We did not have a solution before NetApp, and NetApp was the first, but now we have Huawei as well.

We first used the NetApp 7-Mode version. Now, we use the cluster version. The cluster version is more flexible and easier to use.

Because most of us were new to the product, the initial setup was a bit cumbersome. Once we were trained, it was fine. 

We used a local vendor for the deployment with professional support from Nigeria. Our experience with them was good.

We have seen ROI.

It doesn't help reduce the overall cost of storage.

We have been able to save about 3TB to 5TB of storage. We still need to do more on the compression bit, then provisioning, to save more going forward.

The product costs an arm and leg; it's expensive.

We looked at NetApp, Dell EMC, HPE, and Huawei.

We chose NetApp because of efficiency and performance. Its product is up-to-date.

Fabric is good. I have yet to experience NVMe.

Sometime in the future, we will look at AI and machine learning.

We manage all of our storage with it. In terms of the version, we're in the process of going to the newest version. It's probably 9.12.

Resiliency is the big one for us.

Its ease of use, for the most part, through the interfaces is valuable.

It's very expensive.

I have been using this solution for over 10 years.

I'd rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of stability.

I'd rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of scalability. It's being used by the entire organization of about 400 people and probably 300 or 400 systems.

We have plans to increase its usage. I just bought up a whole bunch of new equipment.

I'd rate them a 10 out of 10. If possible, I'd rate them even higher.

I didn't use any other solution previously.

It was largely handled by NetApp themselves with me watching. So, it was pretty simple for me. For the actual software or system deployment itself, there was one person.

We have seen an ROI.

It's very expensive.

I'd advise others to go for it if they can afford it. It's very expensive, but I like it because of the support and because of its ability to just work without me having to touch it very often.

I'd rate it an eight out of ten.

We manage our data systems with NetApp ONTAP through either the command-line interface or the graphical user interface.

We implemented ONTAP because it provides a unified management interface for all storage, simplifying administration by using the same language for both SAN and NAS environments.

NetApp ONTAP is user-friendly.

The auto-completion feature now simplifies ONTAP management by streamlining command-line operations. When entering commands via the CLI, auto-completion suggests relevant options, improving efficiency and reducing errors. This enhanced functionality has proven effective in managing various storage environments, consistently delivering the expected performance.

We have tested ONTAP in several environments, and its performance has met our expectations.

ONTAP reduces human error by providing helpful auto-completion features, eliminating the need to memorize all commands.

ONTAP helps improve our cost savings because NetApp products are competitively priced compared to IBM and Dell.

We realized the benefits of ONTAP immediately.

Our organization is short-staffed, and ONTAP's ease of storage management is well-suited to our small team.

ONTAP's GUI does not encompass all the features available in the CLI. Some functions can only be executed through the CLI.

I have been using NetApp ONTAP for about eight years.

I would rate the stability of ONTAP eight and a half out of ten. There are bugs from time to time, especially in new versions. If we upgrade, there might be issues with some features, but it is generally stable.

Our previous product faced scalability limitations requiring a complete replacement. However, recent systems, particularly the new NetApp systems, demonstrate significantly improved scalability compared to their predecessors.

The technical support is good.

Positive

Our company used various storage solutions from vendors like Dell, IBM, and Hitachi. However, NetApp ONTAP stands out due to its consistent core functionality, even with feature updates, maintaining simplicity compared to other complex solutions.

The complexity and duration of a NetApp ONTAP deployment depend significantly on the chosen approach. Building a new ONTAP environment from scratch typically takes around two weeks, while migrating an existing storage infrastructure from another vendor to ONTAP can increase the deployment time to two months due to the added complexities of data transfer, compatibility considerations, and potential application downtime.

In my experience of almost 25 years, ONTAP was less time-consuming than most other products I've worked with.

NetApp ONTAP is moderately priced. The tag price is more competitive for the value we get.

I would rate NetApp ONTAP nine out of ten.

We have NetApp ONTAP deployed in multiple locations with 2,500 users.

NetApp ONTAP requires maintenance for upgrades, adding features, and replacing failed disks.

I will recommend ONTAP. It is advisable to consider a proof of concept.

ONTAP is Netapp's data management solution for on-premise and cloud datastores.

ONTAP itself hasn't really "improved [our] organization", but the Netapp IP that we leverage THROUGH ONTAP is a cornerstone for our data management and disaster recovery and business continuity programs.

The solution is extremely stable and easily scalable.  The snapshot capabilities protect against data loss due to corruption and human error, the snapmirror replication methodology provides efficient disaster recovery, and the data compression/deduplication technologies provide amazing storage efficiency.  Add to that the seamless management of hierarchical and object storage on-premise and in the cloud and you have a compelling solution for broad data management under a single platform.

The ONTAP UI is constantly evolving, and it is always a work in progress.  Several management constructs (e.g. disk aggregates) have been removed from ONTAP and relegated to the command line only, seemingly to streamline the UI.  It would be nice if future releases would allow us to turn the features we actually use back on.

Since 2005.

Rock solid and bulletproof.

It's scalable. You can have many, many nodes in a cluster. You can have multiple clusters as well. It can scale up or out.

Overall, my experience with Netapp support has been excellent.  Like all large tech providers, they have had occasional lags in their support services, but I have had very few major problems, and I have never had an issue that they could not or would not resolve.

Positive

Many years ago, we were an EMC shop, but we moved to Netapp in 2005, and have never seen a reason to leave the Netapp platform since.

The initial complexity really depends on the architecture required to support each customer's data needs.  That said, once the systems have been set up, ongoing maintenance is very straightforward.

We absolutely used a vendor team, and I would recommend that most Netapp customers do so.

We've never really calculated the ROI, but the value of Netapp's compression and deduplication technology should not be underestimated and will become all the more important as we increasingly move workloads to and from public clouds.

Great enterprise-grade IP is never inexpensive, but Netapp successfully delivers a lot of value for the money.  Netapp offers its data management solutions in an ala carte fashion which makes licensing a bit nebulous, but there are valid arguments on both sides.

Find a good channel partner.  If you are in a very large shop with plenty of storage experts, then you might go it alone.  For the rest of us, having a capable partner to help with architectural and technical considerations is a total game changer.

We use it for SMB and CIFS for different departments. It is also used for HIPAA and FTC compliance.

Management, deployment, and compliance are much easier. We're doing NetApp Volume Encryption (NVE), so it has increased the security model as well.

We use ONTAP for our mission-critical applications. E.g., at our pharmacies, we started loading data onto our NetApp systems.

• Ease of use.
• Ease of expansion.
• It doesn't go down and is very reliable.
• It is quite fast. 
• Since we have a hybrid solution, we can accommodate for the performance that we need.

We would like more building performance monitoring. Right now, we have to buy separate products. 

It has been very stable. We haven't had a significant outage. We do take time and test as if we were going to go down, but we haven't gone down yet.

Because we are using ONTAP Cluster Mode, if we want to increase, we add nodes or pairs of nodes. It is that easy.

I would rate technical support as an eight of ten. Sometimes, we have had some delays, on holidays and weekends, getting the right resource for a specific problem.

When we need to escalate an issue, there can be a delay when they have to find somebody. Besides that, our experience has not been bad.

We used and still use Dell EMC.

We used NetApp for the deployment. Right now, we are using a VAR, World Wide Technology, for NetApp operations.

Our experience with World Wide Technology has been good. It's a fantastic company. Whenever we have had issues, if NetApp is not prompt, they almost immediately try to resolve them. They have their own resources. We have increased our support by having them as a middleman.

We have seen ROI, especially with the deduplication. We have a high ratio of deduplication and are way past 70 percent of our VDI, as we have almost 400TBs on our VDI. We have been able to save at least a quarter of a petabyte of space.

The solution has helped our organization reduce its overall cost of storage by allowing us to have multiple sites using the multi-tenant security model, segregated from each other, while at the same time using the same resources.

Our cost per IOP is three to four dollars, but we have a hybrid solution. Therefore, we have SSD and spinning disk running together.

In the past, you didn't have to buy separate products. They were mostly included with the purchase. In the end, it's more expensive to buy it separate than together. If you are going to need it, one package at the beginning is cheaper.

I don't like this nickel-and-diming. I like an all in one solution.

NetApp is a lot better at replication and easier to set up for replication than its competitors.

Dell EMC is expensive in comparison to NetApp, but its reliable as well. We like them too.

We looked at Pure Storage and some other vendors, but were not convinced it was the direction that we wanted to go.

Do a PoC and compared against your current solution. ONTAP is very intuitive.

We use the solution for analytics and monitoring. Our monitoring system uses both Splunk and Log Insight and the analytics are tie into NetApp. 

We haven't used NVMe, but are looking forward to it. To my understanding, it is not ready yet to be implemented on NetApp or any other product. However, we're ready to start testing it as soon as the product's available. 

I have been using this solution for the past year to store our data. We are utilizing a combination of multiple instances, around 20 to 30, and configuring the storage with NetApp ONTAP. 

It functions like shared storage, the data that we use in the instances is stored with NetApp ONTAP. We have configured it as shared storage.

It's very easy to configure, and once we did that, we could use basically everything. Any amount of data can be stored without any issues. 

I did not face significant issues with reliability. It is a multi-edge deployment, so it is always operational. 

I never encountered slowdown issues. We run many instances at all times. Our customers have never reported any slowdown issues with NetApp ONTAP.

For administration, there is no user interface present for NetApp ONTAP, so I have to rely on the ONTAP CLI. 

Also, the documentation for the ONTAP CLI is not comprehensive. It provides only a few examples, which are not helpful in solving issues. More examples would make it easier for me to understand.

I have been using this solution for the past year.

I have not faced many issues with stability. Sometimes, I encounter problems taking backups. Occasionally, a few megabytes of data are missed during backup. When backing up, data coming into the snapshot is not always captured. Such issues are rare, occurring once or twice out of 40 to 50 snapshots.

This solution is flexible and elastic. Whenever I am running out of data, I am able to immediately add some terabytes, and it scales up right away. I do not spend much time adding data or storage capacities, whether upsizing or downsizing.

I am a direct customer and I'm receiving premium support. They are direct customers to AWS. We have cloud-based support. AWS may contact NETAPP directly if there are issues. Whenever I send an email, an immediate response comes from their end. It is a good feature of their service.

Neutral

I used something else related to Windows, however, I eventually migrated to NetApp ONTAP. The number of customers were growing and it became hard to manage storage, and there were limits with Microsoft. ONTAP scales well. We never face issues with performance or availability either.

The initial setup was very difficult; it required ten to 12 people to configure, making it a very large process. Migrating to NetApp ONTAP was a tough process. However, after the migration, everything went well from that day onward. It takes one to two weeks to migrate the data over to ONTAP.

Originally, we configured it first in some nonproduction environments. After that only, we took the initiative to do the production. That was after around one month. There was a full POC and a lot of research. After that, only we configure these two productions. Overall, it takes about one month's time.

Once configured, maintenance can be managed by two or three people.

Maintenance revolves around managing disk space since it is a shared storage. We have to monitor that. 

I need a dedicated team, as there is much work to do in the configuration phase. 

Pricing is confidential and handled by management, not users. 

I would rate NetApp ONTAP between seven out of ten. The documentation is very hard to read, and they do not provide good examples for consideration. 

We're using it for all of our enterprise architecture. So, we use everything from CIFS, NFS, Fibre Channel LUNs, Fibre Channel over Ethernet, and iSCSI. Therefore, we're pretty much using the gamut. We have a little bit of SAS storage tier, SATA storage tier, and SSD as well.

It makes our organization more efficient with more scale. We have the ability to tier off the storage and ensure storage is efficiently utilized so we can get rid of idle data and data that is not required. Then, we can show and prove what needs and should be used.

We do use this solution for mission-critical applications.

Its flexibility is its most valuable feature. It has the ability to mix with the different requirements that we have to provide, such as some I/O intensive services and a lot of archive services. It has the ability to tailor tiers according to what we need and put the right services in the right place.

One of the things that we were looking at being able to do a FlexGroup NFSv4. Right now, 9.4 goes up to NFSv3, but if we could get the NFSv4 solution on a 9.4, or a future release, that would be awesome.

Stability is great. We have a six-node cluster. We've done head swaps. We've had failures and the cluster has always stayed up and the data has always been available. We haven't lost any data either.

It is very easy to scale, so we started with a four-node cluster and added it to a six-node cluster. We've also done some other modifications in between.

This solution helped our organization reduce our overall cost of storage. Because idle data which was residing on high cost tiers, once we sifted the ONTAP, we were able to scale and place it where it should be, then offload the data which was unnecessary to different locations.

Technical support is awesome. We call them up, and they're there. We receive answers and get what we need right away. We have four hour delivery, as it's based on our contracts, but we do receive outstanding support.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. There was a guide of how everything goes together. Therefore, use the guide, put it together, and you're up and running.

During the initial install, we had a reseller who came in, helped us build it out, etc. They were awesome getting us up and running. Now, that it's up and running, even though they don't have access to our systems, but we can still call them and get assistance, look into different changes, opportunities to scale in or our, and upgrade as we need to.

We have been able to save space by using the solution.

Look into the product's reliability. You will definitely see an increase in your business performance if you use it.

We don't current employ any NVMe. We have SSD. We're looking at NVMe potentially on some of our higher IOP operations, but we don't deploy it right now.

We use SaaS and also have a Hadoop cluster which are backed up by ONTAP storage. These are for doing a lot of data analytics and analyzing different data streams. AI is soon to come.