NetApp ONTAP Reviews

We use it for both our all-flash FAS and traditional FAS systems. We have a relatively large FAS 9,000 cluster.

It's easy to manage and has a good CLI, API, and GUI. It also has good role-based access control, allowing me to grant specific commands to users without full administrator privileges. It's a mature product that works well.

ONTAP encompasses the entire operating system, including the file system layout on the backend is valuable for me. 

There is room for improvement in areas related to hardware constraints—for example, more storage efficiency, especially in terms of deduplication. You don't have a global database for deduplication like some competing systems do. So, you can benefit from storage efficiency when you have a large-scale data system.

Another area of improvement is pricing. Pricing can be complex to decipher. It's not just about ONTAP; it involves hardware costs and capacity licenses.

There are some somewhat obscure features like managing QTree's and other relatively obscure things. So, I would like to see more clarity on that front.

I have been using this solution for eight years. The previous cluster data was also on top of ONTAP, but just an older version, called ONTAP 9.

Currently, we use version 9.12. 

I have seen an ROI. It's extremely reliable, very easy to manage. I've been able to reduce the number of people I have managing the storage systems because of the software.

Our pricing with discounts is reasonable, but it may vary for others. If you're paying rack rate, it might be a different situation. But I think with our discount level, the pricing is reasonable.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We're a software development firm, so we use it internally. We have two NetApp ONTAP systems at the office, and we have a DR site where we replicate everything. For client purposes, we are using CVO in the cloud to host our clients on it, using our software.

We saw the benefits of NetApp ONTAP almost immediately. Snapshots are amazing. The auto-grow on the volumes and SnapMirror are also notable features. There are so many things that make it a good product.

There are more than one features that I appreciate, but what I appreciate the most about it is the ease of management of the volumes.

There's a feature called multi-tenant approval. Currently, it's one size fits all. I cannot specify that one person is allowed to work on certain volumes, a second person on different volumes, and a third one on everything. It's all or nothing, so I would prefer it to be more precise regarding who could do what on which volume.

I have been using NetApp ONTAP since approximately 2008.

We encountered a downtime once for about two or three minutes, but it didn't crash; it was my fault due to a misconfiguration.

Scalability is quite easy. You just add nodes and grow your cluster, and it's good.

The quality of the support is quite fast; I have never had an issue that was not resolved. Our issues were more about how to do specific tasks or what's the best way to accomplish something. I would rate their support a ten out of ten.

Positive

I have never used any alternatives to NetApp ONTAP. I have seen others, but why we selected NetApp ONTAP was that it was better.

It's quite easy. If it's physical, the time depends on the size of your environment, but when we used CVO in the cloud, it was up and running within the same day. The learning curve is not that long. It's quite easy, but it also depends on your experience.

It does not require any maintenance after the deployment. The first NetApp ONTAP that we had, after maybe six or seven years, had some drives that were spinning, not SSD. When one of them failed, we placed a service call and received the disk the next morning. We just swapped the disk, and everything got rebuilt by itself. The new system we got two years ago is all SSD, and so far, nothing has broken. Everything's running smoothly.

For its deployment, one person is enough. You do not need a team.

At first, it's expensive. Once you start using it, it's not that expensive. When you see all the benefits, it's acceptable. It could always be better, but you get what you pay for.

My advice for new users is to take the time to learn and have a good plan for what you need to do. It's so easy to use, and you can do many things with it, so there's no secret to success. You just plan whatever you need to do, and you go forward.

I would rate NetApp ONTAP a ten out of ten.

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.

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 our disaster recovery/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.

My usual use cases for NetApp ONTAP include configuring both SAN and NAS services for mail systems, web hosting systems, and also cloud services.

NetApp ONTAP has impacted the way I do business and serve my customers by being a very smart solution. By using the same appliances and thus the same disks, I can switch the volumes between different services. I can also migrate the volumes and clone volumes from one service to another in case we need to integrate more services.

NetApp ONTAP has addressed key challenges for my business, particularly responding to customer needs in terms of speed and capacity. The network traffic in NetApp appliances is very fast, and we can also count on the promptness of the support service in case of damaged or broken disks.

NetApp ONTAP has helped streamline our internal operations and adapt to changing market conditions by offering automated solutions with SnapMirror. It allows me to quickly replicate volumes and services from one site to another.

Aggregating more disk technologies into one has been beneficial. It enabled us to have a single cluster of several storage systems that were previously independent. It was able to integrate them into just one cluster with one pane of glass. We now have a single GUI or control center to provision storage content. We can do that with a click of a mouse or through the command line.

The specific feature of NetApp ONTAP that I have found most valuable is SnapMirror. The feature that allows me to replicate volumes from one site to another and the possibility to reuse all the storage appliances by aggregating them into one cluster are also valuable. For instance, I can do some storage tiering and move volumes from SAS to SATA or from SATA to SAS disks, effectively tiering storage content from one technology to a better solution by choosing the capacity and speed.

In terms of areas where NetApp ONTAP could be improved or enhanced, I believe they should improve the volume replication, specifically the synchronous replication in a block-based SAN environment. It should be more resilient to network outages since I noticed that it suffers a lot from network gaps at the moment.

I have been working with NetApp ONTAP since 2012.

Their technical support is excellent. However, the support from India is a little rigid. They tend to work with a checklist and are not very smart and flexible when it comes to specific issues. The generic level 1 engineers have a very basic knowledge of storage.

Positive

I believe NetApp ONTAP offers the best return on investment among all storage vendors, due to the possibility of doing a technological refresh, such as changing a motherboard instead of the whole storage while keeping the same disks and chassis.

Before choosing NetApp ONTAP, I considered competing companies like Dell Technologies, particularly their Dell Compellent appliances. However, we experienced many service outages when deploying highly accessed services. NetApp proved to be the best solution in terms of cost, service accessibility, and service continuity.

The NetApp ONTAP capabilities that differentiated it from other solutions I evaluated include the ability for a single NetApp storage to offer both NAS and SAN services with the same reliable infrastructure. In contrast, Dell Technologies only concentrates on SAN services and block-oriented services.

The evolving cybersecurity landscape and proliferation of artificial intelligence have influenced my technology decisions. NetApp ONTAP offers many cybersecurity solutions. There is a solution that we haven't released yet or haven't put into production, but it is present, and we can surely count on it when we need it.

The goals for my next technology investments regarding NetApp ONTAP don't depend on me since I'm not making any decisions for the future. However, I see that NetApp ONTAP is open to any technologies, and they do this very well.

We definitely have plans to expand how we use NetApp ONTAP in the future. We plan to expand the infrastructure for mail, cloud, and web hosting services. We can do a technological refresh very quickly.

I would rate NetApp ONTAP a ten out of ten.

We deployed it for storage consolidation, core banking solutions and to host core banking applications. We have also deployed it for disaster recovery replication solutions. We have a combination of on-premises and ONTAP Cloud for data protection, replication, and instances.

We also use this solution for databases on flash and DFF deployed for core database systems to manage call database systems.

It is a unified solution, and you have all the licenses for all the protocols available on the ONTAP. It also has easy management, so if somebody's running ONTAP 8, they can still manage ONTAP 9. It's the same commands, just a few syntax changes. It is very easy to manage in terms of system and GUI management. You can set up the system in under 15 minutes, and it will be up and running. Also, regarding system administration, it is fascinating that we can manage the smaller systems the same way we manage the bigger systems. There is no difference in terms of system administration and creating logs. The simplicity of the OS is a key selling point, and mixed customers appreciate it.

It's a perfect system, we have been using it for many years, and many changes have been made, but the rate of technology could be improved. It takes about 60% of the raw capacity to get a user to capacity. It is a lot, and competing solutions don't take up to that in terms of the rate.

I don't think anything needs to be added in the next release. The ONTAP 9 is perfect, and none of our systems have upgraded to the new updates. The updates usually address significant failures. We don't have any technical issues with NetApp ONTAP's system, and with no updates, it is still perfect. However, it needs to be monitored due to security threats, so most updates ensure that security is well managed and handled.

We have been using this solution for 11 years and are working with the latest updates. It is a hybrid environment and deployed both on cloud and on-premises.

It is stable and reliable.

It is one of the most scalable storage solutions.

The technical support is fantastic. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

We've worked with Dell and HP products. The scalability in NetApp ONTAP is the best. The technology is almost the same across solutions, and you can create volumes, logs and maps. In addition, the NetApp ONTAP is unified, and you can do all protocols on a single controller. For other solutions like HP, you have to buy system licenses. For NetApp ONTAP, if a customer starts with a very small system and grows, they can buy bigger ones and integrate them with smaller ones with no issue because they are running the same operating system.

The setup is straightforward, and our company provides all the implementation services. If all information is available and there is a power supply, the system is set up in less than 30 minutes. I rate the setup a ten out of ten.

Maintenance is the function of the customer and the kind of application that is deployed on the product. Usually, the system comes with a minimum of three-year support by the OEM, and NetApp ONTAP takes charge of doing that for patch replacements, patch upgrades and access to software updates. In addition, they have the next business day and four-hour support. However, four-hour support is unavailable in our region in West Africa due to resources, so we sell next business day support.

Weekends are challenging to provide support, but partners intervene during the weekend before NetApp ONTAP comes up on the next business day. So, we have various support, but West Africa has limited choices due to the cost and contract business. However, most of our customers enjoy it and don't have issues.

Everybody can work with NetApp ONTAP. I have customers with very low budgets running NetApp ONTAP, which is where the NetApp ONTAP Cloud comes in. It doesn't have to be hardware. NetApp ONTAP is software that is now a commodity like VMware so that you can buy it on Amazon, Azure, and as a commodity. If you're a big company, you have access to bigger platforms, and if you're a small company, there are smaller platforms.

The price is relative. Once the value is appreciated, price is a much simpler issue. In terms of licensing, I feel NetApp ONTAP is a bit pricey compared to other solutions, but it has value, and the total cost of ownership of the NetApp ONTAP system is cheaper than the others. The initial cost might be a bit high, but over a period of time, it's cheaper. I rate the price a six out of ten, with one being expensive and ten being cheap.

I rate this solution a ten out of ten. Regarding advice, if you are looking for a unified environment where you can use all your protocols anytime, you want NetApp ONTAP to be the answer. If you want scalable storage with good OEM support where you can deploy on a hybrid environment across multiple clouds and on-premises, NetApp ONTAP is also the answer.

We are capable of implementing, migrating, and the configuration information of NetApp. We have 7-Mode and C-mode ONTAP operating systems from NetApp. 7-Mode, which is out of date and has expired from NetApp's vendor. They have created their own kernel for ONTAP, a cluster Data ONTAP. For the time being, they are only doing and providing the ONTAP cluster data, ONTAP to the customer. Customers who are using the 7-Mode data, 7-Mode ONTAP are systems that have not yet been upgraded. Whatever previous series hardware they are using, is incompatible with the C mode cluster data ONTAP. As a result, they are constantly taking care of and having to refresh their customers and providing the solution to the migratory or existing data to the new Data ONTAP system.

I've implemented many customized enterprise levels, and I've also done many migrations. Basically, storage that is currently in use, as well as a SAN protocol and how we are using it for all of our heterogeneous environments, such as VMware, Windows, Linux, and Unix. 

NetApp ONTAP is an operating system, similar to Windows, which we use for accessing the Windows client.

NetApp is storage similar to EMC. EMC is one of the storage vendors; they provide EMC, such as Dell EMC, Synology, Dell, and IBM. NetApp is one of the market's leading providers of SAN and NAS protocols to end users, as well as critical business solutions.

Currently, with NetApp application scenarios you can see that if you have a high,  business-critical application, it will require high IOPs to access this application from one of the storage options listed. Assume you're using an SAP HANA, or any other high IOPs utilization application, such as SAP, HANA, or any other tool. In these cases, NetApp has a solution. They have hardware such as an all-flash disc, which means they can use all-flash storage in between this solution fulfillment. If you have a hundred users logging in at the same time, you are using a business-critical application, it should not include any database applications such as Oracle Database. In such cases, they provide the SAN-based solution from NetApp and meet your NetApp storage requirements.

NetApp storage is also a hybrid solution. The cloud is essentially in the market right now, but no one is moving all of this data to the cloud.

If the primary data center is unavailable, you can deploy your data from the cloud vendor. This type of solution can also be obtained from NetApp storage.

With NetApp ONTAP your storage requirement is met. If you provide a solution to any of our customers, we will first take the accessories. We will collect the necessary requirements from the customers, just as we will conduct the assessment from the customer's end.

NetApp has a variety of hardware and solutions available there. Based on that, they can provide a low-level and high-level diagram and inform customers. If you want to use such a solution, such as a hardware solution and a software solution like this, you can, you can implement it at the customer, and you can use it. Like VMware, we can use it in most NetApp players, most of whom are in hardware and network storage. From a storage standpoint, NetApp is the number one partner and the number one equipment manufacturer.

If you wanted to configure the QAs policies right now, I believe you should be technical as well. If you are not aware of such devices and technology, you will not understand.

We will assess the existing infrastructure. If they want to improve the existing storage, not just for NetApp, it will be based on what is currently available and being used.

Existing IOPs will not be compatible with your current user, regardless of who is concurrently connected to the storage.

We'll assess the existing infrastructure, and if they're ready to buy any new hardware, any new solution, we'll add any additional access they'll give solid-state drives. And we will improve the performance. We will increase the number of drives and the overall memory utilization. As a result, the end-user cannot determine the exact utilization of the speed and your IOPs. we'll put it to use. 

If there is a bottleneck in the network as well, we will find out exactly what assessment is now, and we will make decisions based on that assessment. Based on the assessment, we will make recommendations for improvement and provide guidelines for exactly what we need to do.

In terms of the storage, if you implemented the storage one time and if you provided the volumes, you also provided the opportunity to learn. If you provided dials and QS policies, the client and user are not required, and they are not asking for the extension and all of these things. If you configure a quota type of information, or if some of the users are requesting data for a hundred UPR changes before the particular data, particular folder, in this case, we can do the automation involved there.

Until we get the automatic resize working properly, if a threshold is reached out to a specific percentage, such as just 90 percent, or an aggregated breach is 90 percent. This is the kind of data that the automation process can provide.

That is the fundamental thing in our NetApp storage right now. One of the things that are happening now is that a new requirement has arisen from the end-user, such as the desire to create new volumes of new LAN and present them to a specific physical host, a virtual host, a Windows host, or a Linux host. We have to create this information, this script, and just fill it in their format.

NetApp is currently providing monitoring tools. Assume you have multiple clusters in your organization, a large number of containers, and a large number of countries if you are currently using your storage. There's no need to log in to each cluster and storage separately, there is a centralized monitoring and management tool where you can simply log it into one single signup control.

It's as simple as a single click. If you wanted to manage these jobs and run the one-sum script, you didn't have to log in to each and every cluster and storage; instead, you just needed to log in once. With a single click, you can access your own information via someone else's system and manage their command tools from the network, which they have developed.

They could make the access a bit easier.

Every cluster and storage must be done manually the first time,  during the implementation and deployment phases. If it is deployed completely, you won't have to do anything manually. You must perform online on all of these automation and all of these centralized, single controls.

They need centralized controls. 

Not every organization is small, and they are using multiple locations. They are utilizing a number of DRaaS solutions. If your primary data center is down, is it due to any of these hardware or natural environment, natural disasters, human beings, or mistakes now? You don't have to worry about this in these cases. Simply click the activate button on the DR site, and your data will be deployed from the DR storage. There's nothing to be concerned about. It's simple.

You can migrate your existing data right now. As a result, the feature is now being used everywhere, and what everyone is looking for, is on a cloud right now. For example, your ONTAP system manager, cloud-only the features that are combined with that cloud. If you open your NetApp ONTAP system manager control, it will combine the cloud volumes and you can simply map your three-bucket location, three-bucket credential, and jump in your data going to the cloud.

You can either give it a second copy on the cloud network or use cloud data ONTAP. If you've wired your data to the cloud, ONTAP, AWS, Azure, or Google. So it can simply create a duplicate copy on the cloud player as well.

My primary expertise is in NetApp ONTAP. I have been using NetApp ONTAP, implementing and providing solutions for the last seven years.

The most recent version is used at my client's location. 

We had an 18, 20 cluster on NetApp that was a near DR solution, primary solution, secondary solution, such as a DR solution, or a long retention archive backup solution with disc level backup.

They have also implemented and improved the solution with a cloud vendor, such as Azure Data ONAP, AWS Data ONAP, or Google Data ONAP, all of which are major players that are partnering with NetApp to provide a cloud-based solution.

In terms of performance and reliability, NetApp ONTAP is fantastic. If you look at it, and if you go with NetApp now, everything you will get as compared to other storage, NetApp is extremely stable and reliable storage.

In comparison to IBM and Dell EMC. As a result, NetApp is a fantastic tool in my opinion. If you have to do anything, it will be simple, and you will not have to worry about your NetApp data. If you think about it, there are disasters over there, and my data will be lost or something like that, but there is nothing to worry about.

We have a scale-out and scale its solution based on the type of information and solution you are currently deploying. NetApp is deployed in many locations. If you deploy the current solution, we can do it as a scale-out and scaling kind of device. Based on that, we can expand the other data size and use it for environmental purposes.

We never contact them, but if we need assistance, such as a hardware solution or a hardware replacement, we must contact them because we do not provide the hardware. They are now providing the hardware. But, if you look at the software part of the picture, I don't want to reach out to NetApp. I'm very capable of doing it every time, both for storage and for the NetApp ONTAP system.

We work with VMware, Storage, and Nutanix NCI solutions.

Actually, complex means that everyone is an expert in a specific device or a specific product. No. How can we say it is complex, or how can we say it is simple?

From my perspective, I'll say it's simple for me, but if you're looking for the first time, no, it will appear to be quite difficult. 

From my perspective, it's simple, because I've been working with NetApp for over seven years and am familiar with its operations, and migration. Based on that, I can tell you that it is easy for me.

If you want to set up primary and secondary storage now, you only have a few days. This is a production idea type of solution. It will only take three to four days. But everything should be in its proper place. We can simply order it. But if you say that, we don't have the space, we don't have the cooling power systems, and we don't have the power supply, it will take a long time to deploy. However, if you want to deploy the storage, and if everything is already in place, it will most likely take four to five days for both site location storage.

It is a perpetual license. You are not required to purchase on a monthly or yearly basis. Whenever you purchase any type of solution software license, it should be a perpetual license that is valid for a lifetime. 

When you purchase NetApp for the first time they will provide you with the standard license, or a premium license, and even a standard bundle solution license. If you choose the premium bundle, each license will come with only that bundle.

They are offering the protocol device license for sale. If you want to use a CIP protocol, you must purchase the CIP. If you want to use the NFS protocol, you must purchase the NPS license if you want to use DFC, VME, or FCoE. If you only buy the bundle license now, each license will come in that bundle's bundle package.

NetApp storage is my primary skill; I am an L3 or L4 on NetApp.

I'm building the NetApp from scratch based on what others need, and which one must be used, However, NetApp currently has a pre-deployed ONTAP version, that includes a pre-deployed ONTAP version in NetApp storage. They are assigning devices and hard discs to each of the controllers. They cannot have an operating system based on that request. They have been deployed. Aside from that, we will need to connect to your laptop using this console cable, serial console cable. We simply need to assign that to the serial console.

If you configure the management IP, we can put it in their networks and take the RDP or partition from your network. That is any location on your network. From there, we can simply configure the cluster. We can set these up with the data aggregate, volumes, learn and share, Q3 and quota. If they wanted to learn about the AFC solution, we simply need to configure the fiber channel cables and connect them to the SAN network and cable. If you wanted to create the zoning, analyze, and provide to a physical virtual.

I would rate NetApp ONTAP a ten out of ten.

We use NetApp ONTAP for everything. Because it is hybrid, we use it in a private cloud environment and in our shared environment with a very broad range of IOPS requirements, which means we use it as the basis for our VMware environments and as a storage for databases. In the backup area, we use it with HDDs—with the cheaper ones—and for backup target as well. So, we use it basically for everything. 

Unifyed the management, the automation, the monitoring and accounting in the storage landscape. Less administrators in the operation and internal development are able to take care of most issues.

The most valuable feature is the very high IOPS rating which you can achieve with it and the customization capabilities of the storage are very feature rich. 

I cannot think of any technical improvements or features we're missing right now. The encryption on transport was a feature we wanted, which is supported by ONTAP, starting with ONTAP 9.8. Being conservativ and carefull, until now we use mainly 9.7. Until version 9.7 only encryption on rest, meaning the storage volumes itself could be encrypted. Starting to upgrade to 9.8  we will be able to encrypt the traffic as well between the storage and the client OS. 

I have been working with NetApp ONTAP for a decade. 

I would say it's really stable. We have almost no downtime because of storage outage. Sometimes the network interface fails, but I have almost nothing negative to mention about the storage itself, with the controller. 

This solution is scalable. We are satisfied with this because, recently, NetApp introduced smaller devices: for example, the C190. One of the complaints we had earlier, within the company, was that small pieces were not available. There weren't really any entry options for private cloud environments, which are isolated from each other and don't require very big machines, but less storage amount (TBs). In the past year or two, there have been small machines as well. This means that in the lower side, the entry side, we have a lot of new possibilities within NetApp. And on the other side, when we have already implemented something, we can just add to our cluster to expand the capacity, which we are satisfied with. 

Our relationship with NetApp has been alive for more than a decade, and it's a very good relationship. We have great support and I can't complain about it at all. We also regularly take advantage of the NetApp learning offerings, workshops and trainings.

Positive

The initial setup is easy for us because we have already been doing it for many years. We have a lot of automated stuff around it—using Ansible, for example—and we use templates and skilled professionals when we implement something. These make this solution easy for us to implement. 

Also, the upgrades are very well planned and straightforward. 

We mostly purchase professional services with the products. They are well trained and professional. It minimizes the risk and the time we would need to invest when implementing new storages ourself.

We don't use the latest update. We are always at least one release back because we are very conservative and don't want to be the testers for new updates, but this means that we aren't using the latest features. Version 9.9 or 9.10 has already been introduced, but we are starting to use 9.8. 

To those considering working with ONTAP, I would advise starting with at least Version 9.8 (not an old operating system) because there are some really good features. For example, support for transport encryption: encrypting the traffic between the storage and the clients. Support for this starts with the 9.8 operating system and this feature is very important to have, not only to encrypt the storage itself—the so-called encryption at rest—but also to encrypt the traffic. 

I rate NetApp ONTAP a nine out of ten.