NetApp ONTAP Reviews

We use it for the security business. We use it mostly for capacity-oriented purposes, rather than performance-oriented.

It's a major product for us. We are dealing with security stuff so the encryption features in NetApp really help, as well as the deduplication. We are able to minimize the storage hardware. The compression and deduplication have helped reduce our overall cost of storage.

The valuable features include replication, Snapmirror. That's really useful for us. Also, FlexGroup is useful as it is capacity-oriented, so we can keep extending the space.

I'm waiting for end-to-end NVMe.

It's been running for years and years and we haven't seen any issues.

Scalability is good. The NAS can expand to 24 nodes for the FAS series, and for SAN it can expand to 12 nodes.

We have had to use tech support and the response has been good.

We switched from our old solution because of the features. We went with NetApp because of the redundancy, availability, scalability, and cost.

The initial setup was easy. It took just a few commands.

We used a reseller. Our experience with them was good.

We did a PoC with a few other products.

ONTAP has been in use for over 25 years, that's one of the major advantages when compared to start-ups and other companies. It's also global, NetApp has support all over and, in case of an emergency, their response is good. When there is an issue, many people jump onto the call to try to resolve it.

NVMe over Fabrics is margin-technology at the moment, but the future will be NVMe. All storage, end-to-end, will be NVMe protocol. The speed of NVMe is good. The current existing technology is SCSI-based, one command per Cube, but with NVMe you can run 65,536 commands in each Cube, meaning 65,536 Cubes. That is really fast. In terms of NVMe over Fabrics with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure, if the hardware supports it, it should be good. As the protocol improves, there should be end-to-end support for the NVMe protocol.

We don't use this product for machine-learning, or AI, real-time analytics or other groundbreaking types of applications.

We use it to store email files, mainly JPEGs.

With ONTAP, we have peace of mind with double-parity protector RAID systems. Therefore, we can sleep well at the night, not thinking about crashing a RAID, because it's secure. We are confident with the technology. 

We use it for company websites using NetApp back-end. These are mission-critical applications.

• The capability to create no overhead Snapshots.
• The capability to restore from Snapshots: file and add volume. 
• FlexClone is a great feature. 
  
• All the features are great with ONTAP.

I would like to see more integration of the features with the CIFS and SMB Protocols. We also want integration with iSCSI. Right now, there are a lot of gap between some bleeding edge technology and the assembly protocols. Therefore, I want to see those areas improved in the future releases.

The data is always available. I haven't had a disaster using NetApp products, at least the NetApp FAS systems. It's very stable and highly protected.

You can add storage capacity on the fly with Clustered ONTAP. You can add nodes and increase the entire horsepower of ONTAP.

Technical support is hit or miss sometimes. Level 1 support is not very good. Level 2 and Level 3 (the escalation support) are very good. They are knowledgeable people, but sometimes you get some hiccup in the Level 1 support. After you pass Level 1, it is smooth sailing. There is a lot of room for improvement.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We used an in-house team for the installation, and it went well.

In the past, we have used a reseller. Our experience with them was also good.

It helps us save money using compression and deduplication. No overhead snapshots and FlexClone (with no additional space) help us save space. We have been able to save about 50 percent of our space using ONTAP.

We did not consider anyone else besides NetApp.

If you are looking for something simple to manage, but an advanced storage array, NetApp is the way to go.

Our primary use case is for serving the file server files. File storage is for the member offices and accessing that data.

From the capacity perspective, it has helped us because of the thin volumes, deduplication, and compression features.

ONTAP provides the ability to dole out Qtree shares as needed. Team volumes is a benefit.

The cloud features, the ability to go into the cloud would be a feature I'd like to see improvements on.

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

It's stable. It has good monitoring tools to help monitor activity and take action if necessary.

The scalability is good. 

We do look at tech guides and the Knowledge Base articles and then engage support. The account teams are always available.

We were using Dell EMC. We did an initial evaluation with the reseller consultants, based on that we went forward. We wanted to diversify everything so that we could get more benefits from the features.

The initial setup was good, flexible, forthcoming, and straightforward. 

We used CopperTech. They were good to work with and very responsive. They look at every scenario.

The deduplication and compression features have helped us save storage costs.

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

The approximate cost per IOP is around 50 cents. 

I would rate this product a nine because of its ability to upgrade easily and the scalability.

Definitely look at the compression, deduplication, and the ability to grow into the cloud, consider any product that has these features. 

It's our main storage platform for our business applications. We have SQL and we do a lot of video editing. We also have a lot of media and sound data. Radio stations and TV stations keep some of their data on it.

Primarily, I do the data replication, the disaster recovery. Often someone will say, "Hey, I deleted this thing yesterday, can you get this back for me?" It's good that we have all those incremental Snapshots at different points in time that we can refer back to, to get them whatever they need.

Or we'll have someone download a virus, something malicious that corrupts a whole folder-tree of files. We can easily go back to right before they did that and just grab everything back. There are also ransomware attacks where they hold your data hostage by encrypting it. We can easily just go back and grab the data from before the attack. We can look back at the footprint and see when the whole tree was changed and restore the whole folder or the whole subset of folders. We might be down for two hours from it. An attack like that hasn't happened in the last nine months, but it has happened in the last two years.

It has also helped us reduce our overall cost of storage. Through dedupe and compression, we save a lot of capacity. Without that, we'd obviously have to buy more capacity. The last time I checked we were saving about 40 percent over our previous storage.

One of the things I find most valuable is the way they do the Snapshots, taking incrementals at points in time.

We just upgraded to 9.3, which is not the latest version, and it has some adaptive QoS built in. We have been using WFA for that. I'm interested in checking that out. I'm really glad they added it.

They use a lot of PowerShell for managing things and there are still a few things that you can't do through PowerShell cmdlets that you can do in the native CLI. It would be nice if they got more of those added in.

It's very stable.

It's very scalable as well.

The tech support is really good. We go through a support provider, Datalink, and those guys are really good. Anything that they don't have immediate knowledge of will be quickly escalated to NetApp and they're really quick about getting an engineer on it and getting us a solution. If we need a part replaced - of course, it depends what level of support we have for that particular system - everything is usually pretty quick.

In terms of a previous solution, when I joined this team they were already using NetApp. We did upgrade our controllers from 6290s to the 9000 but that was because of the age of the system. It was out-of-support and the support cost to maintain them got higher and higher as the years rolled by. It was cost-effective to invest in a new controller.

I wasn't part of this team when they initially set up all the storage, but we've had some upgrades, and we've gotten new controllers and added them to the cluster, and taken some out. All of those steps have been really straightforward.

Our reseller is Datalink and our experience with them has been really good. We've used them for several years. They negotiate really good prices for us and they give us really good support. If we need someone at a remote site, they'll schedule someone to support us at that site.

I don't handle the numbers, but the biggest ROI, to me, would be the ease with which we have our data protected.

We did look at Pure Storage and they were comparable in performance but they didn't have as many features. The gain in performance, for us, didn't offset the loss of the features, coupled with losing the relationship, or hurting the relationship, that we have with NetApp and Datalink.

The Pure system didn't have a way to do the iSCSIs that we need to use, and the impact to the relationship, to have a one-off system that didn't match the rest of them, didn't seem worth it to us.

In terms of NVMe over Fabrics, we no longer have any Fibre Channel. That was all phased out before I got on the team. In general, NVMe over Fabrics is good, it's quick. We aren't yet using machine-learning, AI, or real-time analytics but that is something we're looking into.

We have been using it for our entire environment, so we use it in file shares and in our VDI environment, at least for user data. That has reduced our user login times by about 50 percent. This has helped, and probably been one of the biggest benefits that we've recently seen, getting people's logins down to 45 seconds from more than two minutes. It's helped with our backups times, and keeping our backup windows in compliance.

The main thing has been performance, but we're hoping that we also get there on the reliability section (with the MetroCluster), so we don't have any disasters. The performance has been so good on it. Even some of their tests that we're doing, switching workloads from one data center to the other, has been great.

While its performance has been great, the configuration with the MetroCluster has been a bit of a headache. We've been working through it. However, it's a bit of a tedious process. With the MetroCluster, in theory, we should have good reliability. We have been having some issues just the finishing the configuration. Some of our DR tests have been not successful, so it's been a little troubling.

We have had some issues with the architecture, because of the complex setup with the MetroCluster. While it is getting there, we've had problems. We've had some outages trying to get the system up, so it hasn't been very good, but I'm hoping we get there. This does not seem like it's necessarily a NetApp issue, but the architecting of it has been a little rough.

Going forward, I want to see a simplified deployment and more straightforward recommendations on what is required for it. They're a little vague, and we've had some issues where we would like to have a tool that can scan the environment and find issues before deployment, fixing issues. So, when we're deploying it, we're not running into problems. Simplification would definitely help.

The system stability has been good. 

We haven't had it too long, so we haven't needed to scale it up. It does look pretty easy. We have MetroCluster, then we have the All Flash FAS and the new 8200 hybrid. 

We've been able to scale out the 8200, which has been beneficial, as we offload some of the older, slower storage to it. We have quite a bit of room to grow by adding new nodes into it. Right now, we only have two-node clusters, which have been great to upgrade, and not an issue.

Technical support has been good, but since we're using MetroCluster IP, we've been a little bleeding edge. This has been a bit of a problem because there are not as many people who are knowledgeable in it. We have had some issues getting people who have good knowledge on the subject, which has been why we've had some of the issues that we've had. A lot of it is just foundation and architecting. We've had some issues with existing equipment compatibility issues that we didn't really discover in the initial planning. The technical support has been good, but it has been a bit of a slow process.

We ran out of space with our old storage. We didn't have any full DR redundancy because we didn't have enough space to do a DR scenario. The main reasons to upgrade: Not enough space, we needed to upgrade, and NetApp happened to be a cheaper solution than some of the competitors.

We migrated from Dell EMC storage, where did have some issues with capacity in the IOPS, and NetApp was the cheapest solution. We got more performance and bang for our buck, so we moved over to the NetApp All Flash system. 

The initial setup was pretty simple, just for the basics. However, when we tried to scale out and run it in production, that's when we ran into issues. Because we were sold Fibre Channel MetroCluster, then that ended up not working for our situation, we had to buy more equipment and switch it over to MetroCluster IP. This was smooth at first, but then the deployment on production was much longer process.

All the support and deployment has been primarily from NetApp. We do have a consultant who has been assisting with some of the networking pieces, but most of the actual storage is all done with NetApp. While they've been knowledgeable, it's a complex configuration, and sometimes we've had some issues with them giving us solid answers on which direction we should go. They'll help us do something, but they don't want to give too much architecting information. That's been a bit of a headache for us. They said it was going to take 60 days, and it's been six months and we're still not fully rolled out.

We went through a reseller to buy the solution.

We looked at just Dell EMC and NetApp. Those were the two main choices, as they are similar products with similar performance. We could see Dell EMC was definitely more expensive, but it also had a more complex configuration. On paper, NetApp seemed cheaper and a bit simpler, which was one of the main reasons that we moved over. The performance for cost ratio was really interesting.

I would recommend doing your homework and make sure the environment is prepped before getting it set up. Make sure you have any prerequisites and your equipment's compatible: The distance between data centers is the networking pieces being compatible with the all-flash MetroCluster. If you have any issues there, you're going to have constant headaches with the configuration. The main piece is make sure you have all your ducks in a row on your networking gear, make sure it's compatible, and fix the issues early before you start deploying.

We use it to manage storage for our customers. 

Our customers use it for mission-critical applications, such as backup circuits.

We use ONTAP as a managed storage for customers. It helps our customers with all its features.

There is a faster release cycle now. Also, they are doing all types of cool stuff in their cloud volumes, replication, and tiering.

The fabric pools in the newer version is cool, though we don't use it yet. It provides tiering to cloud and fabric pools.

• We would like full automation of deployment.
• The ability to scale out.
• The lack of an API is a big thing for us that needs to be improved. It needs proper API support.

It is very stable and never crashes. During maintenance, it's easy to do. If you lose connectivity, it has one-sided redundant connectivity on the back-end for shelves, which is good.

It doesn't scale horizontally since there are a limited number of shelves. Other NetApp solutions are way better at scaling. This needs improvement since the future is in scaling horizontally, similar to what SolidFire does.

NetApp's technical support is always perfect. They go above and beyond when trying to help.

We generally upgrade when a solution is end of life or moving out of support.

With older versions, it was a little complex at some point, but this was back in the day. It's still a bit challenging, but when you have the right versions, it's straightforward. 

We're trying to automate the deployment process, and as far as I know, you cannot do that with ONTAP systems today. This may not be true with the newest 9.4 or 9.5 systems. 

What makes it complicated, there is no API available to automate a task. Now, they have released a lot of Ansible playbooks to automate a deployment, which might have significantly improved it, but I have not had a chance to try them.

We did the deployment ourselves.

I would recommend ONTAP, because I like the platform. With the most recent stuff, like the fabric pools which blow my mind, it is a really good solution.

There is something interesting stuff coming out in the future, like NVMe over Fabric, which has a different rate over Fiber Channel.

It's our enterprise storage solution where we keep 95 percent of our data.

We use it for our mission-critical applications: All our SQL, Exchange, data warehousing, and anything with heaving I/O processing.

Our company has grown so fast, we spend more in the process. At the same time, we have been able to shrink due to technologies, such as deduplication and compression.

We've been able to keep up with the demands of our business in terms of both performance and storage. Whenever the business needs something, we add it right away. Whenever they say, "Hey, we're gonna throw some big load at you guys. Can you this handle it?" We say, "Yeah, the system can handle it."

It's more intuitive to use as they are moving away from command line into more graphical interfaces, which are somewhat easier to use.

There is room for improvement in the stability. They have been trying to become simpler, and as a result, there have been road bumps along the way. I have personally experienced this.

We have experience a number of bugs recently. The company has also gone through recent changes which has affected stability.

It scales pretty well. It has a cluster interface connection with multiple systems clustering across the board. 

They are pretty good when it comes to critical support. Technical support is something they're still working on, but the critical support is good. The critical support will get back to you quickly and stay with you, so you always know who you are dealing with.

The performance was really bad on our previous solution. When we did an analysis with our tools, we saw how bad the storage performance was. It was a ten-year-old system. It was meant to run for a small company. It was never meant for where we were at the time.

Compared to what we had in the past, ONTAP has given us both visibility into performance, as well as, adapted to different changes. Where as before, we had a system that we couldn't do much with.

The initial setup was complex compared to what we had, since it does more. When we bought it a couple of years ago, it was more complex. Now, they are trying to become simpler at the setup.

The initial setup took a lot of steps. You had to know a lot of what had happened throughout the process. There were a lot of steps involved, where as now, they're condensing the amount of steps involved. Plus, its more graphically-driven now rather than being mostly command line.

We used two different consultants: 

1. We had one vendor for the architecture of the high-level stuff.
2. The other consultant was more to come in and fix it up or do the hardware physical stuff. 

We picked the best out of both.

With the duplication and compression, we have been about a one and half to two times savings since we are not running all-flash.

It pays to get the Cadillac. That's what we call ours.

Don't undersize it. We undersized our first one and ended up having to get rid of it, then buying a new one. We lost money in the process. We should have paid for more than what we needed at the beginning.

NVMe over Fabric is considered the next generation of storage in terms of how fast things move.

Our company chose this solution because they've known it from the past.

We are still looking into machine learning, AI, and real-time analytics.

We are a storage provider for a government entity. We serve data to profilers and other government entities.

ONTAP allows us to scale and grow as needed and also be flexible in the way we operate.

The most valuable features are:

• It's scalable.
• It's easy to failover and failback.
• There's no downtime.

They should make the storage arrays more easily tied to your accounts.

It's very stable, and definitely become more stable over time. When Clustered Data ONTAP first came out, there were quite a few bugs. However, with the latest releases, we have been pretty happy.

Scalability is good. We're happy with it.

It should be easier to put in tech support cases. For example, sometimes you have to call in for a bad disk. You have to stay on the phone for 20 minutes to speak to a person just to get a new disk. They should streamline the online support and chat. 

Most people wouldn't have this problem, but we have multiple site numbers we have to deal with. A lot of times it's just easier to go through the 20-minute conversation than trying to find for them the specific storage problem.

Over time, systems age and the amount of FAS that you could fit into a rack three years ago was a lot different than what you can now. We needed to find something flexible which allows us to customize solutions as we go.

NetApp is typically more complex than normal storage systems. I like it though. There's a lot more granularity and you can configure it the way you want it. 

We used Professional Services, and we do it on our own as well. So far, our experience with Professional Services has been great. We're still in the process. They give us guidance. We have our own way that we like to deploy, but it's nice to have their input and information. Just having them there to be able to bounce an idea off of is helpful.

We have seen ROI as we can fit a lot more storage in one rack.

We use multiple different vendors for different scenarios.

I'm pretty happy with ONTAP.