NetApp FAS Series Review

Being able to run any flavor of files and block storage. It's easier to manage, and we’re looking to phase out legacy systems and to go with FAS.

It's easy to manage regardless of how you’re utilizing platform. It’s a Swiss army knife of capabilities. Flexible platform and software features are added benefits (thin provisioning, compressioning, dedupe), which help with capacity utilization. Still get a lot of return even if going with best-practices application.

Make sure there’s current centralized virtual desktops. I get caught in the upgrade matrix quite a bit, which is an indication that it hasn’t been tested. Need more currency in IMT.

It's solid, with occasional issues that surface, but are quickly resolved. No one’s software is perfect.

It’s good, but you have to do a lot of homework to scale horizontally and vertically. You need to have sales and engineering to expend effort to do that homework.

We've frequently used it, and the quality will depend on which level of support you purchased. Premium support, I have no complaints as we get the right person who’s knoweldgable. Higher level guys take great deal of personal ownership over issues. I used their support as benchmark for our organization.

It's easy. The more planning you do, the easier it gets.

The monitoring is key, and you must keep track of what’s going on. Be sure to use auto-support and have strong monitoring scenario in place.