NetApp FAS Series Reviews

The product is used for multitenancy and backups. We use it for different solutions.

Having multiple applications with different protocols running on the same system benefits our organization. The direction is unified. We can manage our applications from a single dashboard.

The product has a unified technology. We can use different protocols from the same controller. It is a unified solution that allows users to run multiple applications on a single storage.

The product must support more drives.

I have been working with the product for more than nine years.

The product is very stable.

The tool is scalable. It depends on the models, though. The entry-level models have limited scalability.

The technical support is very good. It can be better, though.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. We have to make the connection if we have some external drives to connect to the shells. Then, we power the shells and connect them to the controller. Once the system is up, we must create the aggregate and the volumes and mark them to the server. The deployment doesn’t take time, but the connectivity and the layout of the network take time. The whole process can be completed within an hour.

The resources needed depend on the scale of deployment. If I have many shells to configure, I will need people’s help. Otherwise, I can do everything myself. It is not difficult to maintain the tool.

The product provides a good value for money.

Pricing is very relative. It depends on the customers' budgets. NetApp has a good discount structure that finds a way to accommodate the customer's budget.

I worked with the solution about three weeks ago. We are partners. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

We offer the solution to customers with unified storage without any gateway.

Snapshot, deduplication, and compression features are valuable. I also like the product’s OS. The product is the most reliable because it is based on Linux.

NetApp needs to put its OS on a microchip rather than on disks. The product uses flash storage for caches. The solution could improve the cache memory in storage. Though the storage is being used for backups and archival, there is still room for improvement in the increment of cache memory and storage.

I have been using the solution for almost ten years. We are proposing the FAS2700 series to our customers.

I rate the tool’s stability an eight or nine out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a ten out of ten. We have almost 100 users in Pakistan. Our customers are medium and enterprise-level businesses.

We have a team of certified NetApp engineers. We are also very comfortable with the technical team.

Positive

The initial setup was fine. I rate the ease of setup an eight or nine out of ten. It took us one or two days to deploy the solution.

We usually get a scope of work from the customer before deploying the solution. We then plan everything and design the storage according to the scope of work.

I rate the solution’s pricing seven or eight out of ten. If we want a ransomware solution with the product or other extended features, we need to pay an extra cost. That’s why there are different licensing costs for the product.

Customers who want large-scale files can afford the solution. The product is very good for archival purposes and to protect large files. Overall, I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

My use case for the NetApp FAS Series is that it's a repository for the VM (virtual machine) and CIFS (common internet file system) share, or network share.

The NetApp FAS Series has helped simplify our infrastructure. There were times it also helped simplify our operations. 

The NetApp FAS Series is useful, because it makes restoring a single file easy, but after that, nothing more. It's just a repository of the virtual machine, so I could use it or another solution, but it's reliable, e.g. it has two nodes with high availability, so this is the reason we choose to use this solution.

This solution also accelerates virtualization, but not so much, because it's not an all-flash solution. The FAS2620 is a traditional solution with some cache, so it's not so fast, but it's enough for my company. AFF is all-flash, but this solution: FAS, is not all-flash, but people like it.

The NetApp FAS Series is not as high-performing for our business critical applications, because it's not an all-flash solution. It's also not as fast, so its speed needs improvement, but this could only be done if it's an all-flash solution.

I've been using the NetApp FAS Series for eight years: four years for the first installation, then another four years for the second installation.

The NetApp FAS Series has good stability. I never had any issues with it, so I chose it for the second time.

My impression on the scalability of the NetApp FAS Series is that it's good, but my usage is just below 50%, so scalability is not an issue for me.

I've used a different NetApp solution, but I cannot remember the exact type of storage. The reasons I switched to the NetApp FAS Series is because I already knew the product. Another reason for choosing this solution is its reliability. I never had an issue with it in the eight years I've been using it.

The initial setup for this solution was easy. Planning took one day and the setup took two hours.

We don't use the cloud backup solution of the NetApp FAS Series. We just use it in a very basic way, and nothing more than a repository for the VM and CIFS.

I do the tuning and the troubleshooting for this solution myself.  I'm the only one managing it, e.g. the other members of the IT team are not involved in it, so it's hard to say if it does reduce IT support costs.

We have not used the NetApp FAS Series in supporting data analytics, AI, machine learning, SAP, and Oracle workloads, nor did we use it to support any asynchronous replication for disaster recovery with MetroCluster.

I never had an issue with this solution, so I never used their technical support.

I'm rating the NetApp FAS Series a nine out of ten for availability and reliability.

Clients like the fact that FAS systems can boot from SAN and Boot volumes.

The strong point is that our clients like this are RAID DP (Dual Priority). SnapMirror and MetroCluster features are also very useful for DC, DR solutions.

The biggest issue we face is parts delivery. There's no local warehouse in Myanmar, so if a customer encounters a technical problem like hardware failure issue, they have to wait a long time for replacement parts.

I have been working with it for more than five to seven years. 

I would rate the stability of the product an eight out of ten.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. It is pretty easy to scale. It's good for medium-sized enterprises and also for larger enterprises.

The setup is quite simple. It doesn't take a lot of time. It is quite easy and fast.  The exception might be creating key volumes, which can vary depending on the specific infrastructure involved. Some configurations might necessitate longer key volume creation times.

It's not the cheapest, but it's not the most expensive either. It's a fair price. However, the price could be more flexible for the clients.

Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten. It is one of the good products in the market. 

The customers also use a lot of EMC and HPE as well. In the current situation, we need to choose products with the best support, like EMC, with its rapid technical support response.

The NetApp service center in Myanmar here isn't the fastest at deliveries. The service center engineers are good, but it's not 100% reliable for support. Sometimes, there are delays that don't allow us to make the delivery on time, unlike with other vendors. So, the customers need to wait. 

We use it for storing our database data and for our virtual machines.

The best feature is its ONTAP product line for Ransomware protection. Another benefit is the hybrid and unified model. It also has features for file storage and block storage.

I was a little skeptical about the model. I wonder why the replication is included in the ONTAP One bundle when some customers may not require additional features. It should ideally be part of the ONTAP base bundle, even if there's a slight price increase.

I have been working with this solution for approximately two years now.

The solution is stable. We've had no issues with it.

The tool is scalable and meets our requirements for TVs. It handles beta bytes well. We are happy with its scalability.

The technical support and the supporting partner are great.

Positive

I work with HPE and Huawei OceanStor, too. HPE is great, but I'm not satisfied with Huawei OceanStor. I'm comfortable with HPE and NetApp FAS Series.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is a SaaS solution. and very easy to maintain. It’s not a high-maintenance device. It runs smoothly. We use it within our university and have up to a hundred concurrent user sessions. 

The deployment was handled by the partner from whom we made the purchase.

The product is on the expensive side, but the feature set is excellent.

I recommend the solution. Overall, I rate it a perfect ten because I haven’t encountered any issues since I’ve started using it.

My customers use the solution for production servers, databases, and Oracle applications. I did not deploy Oracle. I deal with only the storage and server side of the product.

Adaptive balancing is a valuable feature. Whenever an application needs more IOPS, it will automatically be reserved for higher-performance storage like SSDs or SaaS-based hard disks.

The product should improve its user experience. The console should enable easy mapping to the storage volume and the server.

I have been using the solution for four years. I am still supporting my customers with the solution.

The tool is stable. The only problem we normally face is hard disk failure. However, since the product alerts the spare and redundancy, it is easy to manage. We also get support.

The product is scalable. Five or six of our customers are using the solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. It takes one to one and a half hours to deploy the solution, depending on whether new firmware is available whenever it is connected to the Internet.

To deploy the solution, we need connectivity. The IP addresses should be available before we do the configuration. We need one engineer to deploy and maintain the tool.

The solution’s cost is reasonable. However, the support cost is very high. Our customers ask for more discounts.

I handle many storages. NetApp FAS Series is recommended because of its stability, scalability, and easy administration.

Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.

We use the product for SAN, block, and file storage. We use it for consolidation or sandbox storage in our VMware environment. We treat it as a sandbox-only box and leverage features from VMware for DC and DR.

The tool's most valuable features are ease of use, ease of access, expandability, availability, and performance. NVMe drives have improved their performance. 

NetApp FAS Series should improve its price, which is expensive. 

I have been using the product for two to three years. 

NetApp FAS Series is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

Initially, we encountered some challenges with the tool's technical support. However, it is stable now. 

We encounter some challenges during the tool's deployment. We try to train our engineers on it. The process which can be completed easily is sometimes time-consuming. 

I rate NetApp FAS Series a seven out of ten. Whenever we need unified storage, we recommend Data as a Solution.

The input and output per second performance are satisfactory.

The solution can improve on the replication features.

I have used NetApp FAS Series within the past 12 months.

The technical support is satisfactory. They need to invest more into the service.

We work with Dell EMC and Huawei.

I recommend NetApp on top of the Dell EMC since it's less complex.

The initial setup is not that complex compared to the other vendor. It's in the same level of complexity.

When we need to implement a less expensive solution we use Huawei. NetApp FAS Series is a little bit expensive compared to the average of the market.

I rate NetApp FAS Series a seven out of ten.