NetApp SnapMirror Reviews

We are a solution provider, and this is one of the products that we resell to our clients.

I am a presales engineer and have experience with this solution. I teach my customers how to use it.

This solution provides safety and data protection for my customers. 

The deployment model depends on the customer. However, in Poland, the private cloud model is the most popular. Many are moving to a hybrid-cloud, but the public cloud is still not very popular.

This solution is easy to implement and easy to use.

We have different families of storage, such as the E-Series and Flash systems, but NetApp cannot be set up between them.

Currently, there is only a command-line interface, but some users would benefit from the inclusion of a graphical user interface.

This solution is very stable. Before I propose any kind of solution to a customer, I have to trust it. I don't think that there are any problems with this kind of server.

NetApp has very good scalability because we can grow and store up to twenty-four nodes. We sell only two or four-node systems. Scalability to twenty-four or even twelve nodes is too high for this country.

The technical support for this solution is good. I am glad because I always receive answers to my technical questions.

For me, the initial setup and configuration are easy because I am a NetApp specialist and engineer. I demonstrate the product to customers and show them how to use it.

No solution is ideal. Every solution should continue to develop because customer requirements change over time.

This is a solution that I recommend because it is easy to use. Our customers choose the functionality that is useful for them.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I find the most valuable features to be the management suites, integration into VMware with the Virtual Storage Console, and the capabilities it offers toward disaster recovery such as Snapshots, Snapmirror, and Snapvault.

A NetApp storage solution allows a company to architect a disaster recovery plan that protects all company data. For instance, you have a production NetApp. All company CIFS data is located there. All VMware NFS volumes are located there. All server LUNs are located there. In essence, the livelihood of the company is served up from a central NetApp storage system because all company data is there. This production storage system offers local snapshots for easy restore capabilities. You can then Snapmirror all of this data to a separate NetApp storage unit in a different hosting facility. You can also implement Snapvault. If disk-based recovery is enough you can stop there. Or if you prefer, one can implement tape-based backup via NDMP against the DR NetApp SAN then ship tapes offsite to Iron Mountain or somewhere else. This essentially gives you local Snapshot to production, Snapmirror to DR SAN and offsite tapes. This is a simple and brief description but should provide an outline to its benefit to an organization as it relates to disaster recovery or a backup solution. There are a number of different capabilities a NetApp filer provides that is a clear benefit to any organization.

This has to do with Snapmirror to an unlike NetApp unit and disks but the process is called Deswizzling. This process can get out of control sometimes and cause excessive disk utilization. You really have to be careful with Snapmirror planning as it relates to how often synchronizations are completed especially on large volumes. The other improvement area could be support for replication from Windows file servers. There is the NetApp OSSV solution but you are version locked with ONTAP. You cannot run cluster mode on 8.2.x and still support OSSV. There is an appliance but that can get a bit pricey. There are open source solutions if you look hard enough and put some effort into implementation.

I have used NetApp storage products for the past ten years.

With large implementations there are always hiccups but nothing serious that can't be fixed with minimal effort.

Initially one can experience issues with stability if the NetApp unit is over utilized. This can happen. I have seen a NetApp unit with sustained 100% disk utilization over a period of a few days. This causes real issues. This is why I say it is imperative to really plan the deployment of disk storage systems. You cannot overload the system with production access, Snapmirroring, Snapshots, NDMP, and such. Definitely give your plan due diligence and design your implementation accordingly.

NetApp systems are very scalable especially with cluster mode ONTAP.

I do not interact much with NetApp customer service. That is the job of my primary purchasing vendor. However, the few times that I have it was great service.

NetApp's automated support is great. If the system encounters an issue it will fire off an auto support to NetApp. On the rare occasion that I have actually had to call NetApp support they were very responsive and actively worked to a resolution of my issue. Overall, excellent technical support.

It is not to say I ONLY use NetApp. That is simply not true. I just prefer NetApp. I have implemented storage solutions from pretty much all vendors. It mostly comes down to a business decision of cost vs. benefit. NetApp is not cheap by any stretch but you do get what you pay for.

The initial setup of racking, wiring, assigning shelves, IP addressing, and even array and aggregate creation is fairly simple. As you integrate systems and data onto the storage solution it can get a bit complex I think. I am so used to it now it is like second nature but I can see it being complicated for some who are not used to a particular solution or vendor. Examples of complexity could be implementing high availability, fiber channel, iSCSI, NFS, LUNs, flash cache, snap schedules, permissions, Qtrees, Quotas, NDMP, CIFS, etc. all on the same production filers.

This really depends on the size and complexity of the implementation but typically it is either in-house completely or a combination of in-house and vendor support. I have never relied on just a vendor implementation. The primary vendor I use is very knowledgeable and responsive to my needs.

It is sometimes difficult to quantify a return on investment when it comes to certain technology especially when it does not technically make the company money. However, with a NetApp storage solution, if designed and implemented for a specific purpose, it can provide some real numbers for a return on investment. If a particular solution was built to provide high availability, backup capabilities, disaster recovery capabilities and faster access to data then one can clearly calculate an ROI.

I cannot provide specific numbers but depending on the size of the implementation it can run well into the $100K+ range with recurring support contract costs. With power and cooling costs it can also accrue costs quickly. Again, certain solutions are cheap while others are not. It is really a business decision as to which is selected.

I evaluate different vendors regularly to keep up with new technology from various vendors. I have recently evaluated solutions from EMC and Dell.

NetApp is a solid solution for SAN needs. It is best to really do your homework and find the solution that is appropriate for the organization and allow for growth based on company historical data. You don't want to just purchase the top model solution just to say you did but at the same time you don't want to under engineer a solution either. Take your time and design what's best for the company.

The main reason we use NetApp SnapMirror is to try to have a disaster recovery site. We want to have the possibility to do disaster recovery to failover to another site when there is a problem, but also to failover to another site during maintenance, for instance. So if the customers are going to do some maintenance, they can failover to the other site and keep on running. 

The product itself doesn't have any big issues. What is lacking and what we need to use other products for, is to have active data centers. You need to implement another solution for it, but that is also available from NetApp. So I don't think there is an option to put that into SnapMirror either. It's lacking that functionality but it's available with other solutions from the same vendor.

The solution is very stable.

There are some limitations when it comes to the scalability of the solution, but I don't know where the limitation is. There is often a limitation in the communication line between the sites. Also, a large part of the data is changed because all changes are replicated from one site to the other. So I'll say it's a mathematical issue. The developers should have a communication line that is packed enough to transport all the changes.

My understanding is that the technical support is good, but we don't need much support because it's working fine. Since we have been working with the solution for 20 years, we have very good internal competence. So it's very seldom that we have to call support. 

We've used other vendors from time to time, but it is more because of political issues - nothing technical.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. One has to implement one hardware system on two sites and then implement the functionality to mirror between the two sites. It doesn't take very long. So one has to implement and get the one site up and running first, and then implement the second site and get that up and running too. Then one can do the metering between them.

My advice to others would be to do a test run first, to see is the solution does what you want it to do. On a scale from one to ten, I will rate the solution an eight, because it doesn't solve all our issues. But it is easy to implement, easy to set up, and it works.

NAS Filer with quick recovery features within same site or across DR site. Being a unified storage, it is used as a Block (SAN) storage as well with pretty decent performance.

The most valuable feature is the snap shot.

It is not as efficient as it needs to be. It doesn't compress the data really well when it is forwarded to a secondary site. The download performance could be better.

Our company is Oman, and there is a ticketing problem here. If there are issues, we have to go to the partner who did the implementation. We need to contact the partner, then the partner has to get the log, and then they will raise the ticket on our behalf. After that, the tech support team contacts the partner and then it gets to us. We would like to get support ourselves or the ability to directly log the ticket or even call without having to go through the partner. We want to report the problem to tech support directly and then take it from there.

In terms of improvements for the solution, I think they already have a different product, AFF, where you can get much better performance and more combination as well as data security and data savings, if they have a different protocol already, which they are lacking now.

We didn't have any problems with stability during the installation.

The solution is scalable. The upgrade is really smooth. It doesn't require any content. Once it's done, it's ready to go. We can scale out as little as we want. We have five servers right now and 900 users.

With technical support, there are multiple levels. We are not very happy with Level One and Two support from our region. When it comes to escalation support, when there is a huge problem, it goes through the US or Canada. Those support techs are really good.

We did not previously use a different solution. It was entirely a different use case. Previously, we were using a Windows-based file server. We didn't have the high availability and replication to secondary site, also snap shot's capability, which is what we were looking for. 

The initial setup was straightforward. It was pretty easy. Most of the items were available from the GUI end.

We are using the private cloud deployment model.

I would say that if people are using this product they should make use of the snap shortcut. It would be very useful to them. If they can afford it, they should get the second box to put at a different site and replicate it for maximum protection of their data.

I would rate the solution seven out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is as a system integrator, we don't use it for ourselves because we don't have such a big infrastructure. We don't have, for example, the disaster recovery requirements but our customers generally use the replication for disaster recovery. Another way to use SnapMirror is to replicate, to use it to copy the backups. For example, you make a copy of the data on your main storage and you just move it to backup storage, which is not really disaster recovery, you can say that it's a technical backup solution.

Some customers will use it as an asynchronous replication which is a good idea. Synchronous replication is not always ideal because you are not sure about the pertinency of data. In the case of snapshots, asynchronous SnapMirror, when we are making snapshots and then replicating the snapshots, you can be sure that at least the second snapshot is good and concurrent. That's the difference between synchronous and asynchronous.

With SnapMirror, the solution is the feature itself that is most valuable. It just replicates the data. It's very difficult to speak about, in the sense that it's similar to the features of a wheel. It is round and it's a part of an automobile.

The virtual NetApp storage simulator is the main feature of Data ONTAP for me. Before doing anything you can always check how it is going to work or the behavior of the system if there is a complication.

It's a stable solution. It just works. It’s like a lightbulb, you switch it on or off. There is nothing to change there. I like to compare it with the wind, it just exists and you can use it or not use it, but there is nothing to add there. It works. If it is not working, it means there is something wrong with the configuration of your system or something, but the features itself just work.

Technical support is only available if there is a problem. It may be different in Europe and America but in the Ukraine and in former CIS countries, NetApp doesn't carry out the installation, they sell the product and the rest is up to the partners. You can contact technical support if something is broken, for example, a dead disk or dead controller, something like that.  

The initial setup is a little difficult. The installation was straightforward using a system integrator. If a customer is not buying the installation on top of the services, it means that they already know what they're going to do, what needs to be done and have read the documentation. In this case, if the person installing it has read at least one document about configuring SnapMirror, it's just straightforward.  The best preparation is to download the virtual NetApp, install it on Notebook or somewhere else and follow the steps.

When a customer thinks about disaster recovery they will usually already be using NetApp storage. Setup costs and pricing are not a big consideration for the customer. 

I would rate this product 10 out of 10. 

This solution is a storage replication software, embedded in storage filing that takes a snapshot copy and transfers it to a different location and a different Net Application.

The deployment model we are using is on-premises.

What I like most about this solution is its simplicity.

They have a very effective dashboard and good reports.

This solution is stable but needs improvements with the network.

In the next release, I would like to see data reduction included and WAN optimization.

Stability needs improvement.

This solution is scalable, it's good.

We have between one thousand and fifteen hundred users.

Previously I did not use another solution. This is the only solution that I have used.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The deployment took a few hours.

It's part of the NetApp Firewall, so it's free.

I would recommend using only on NAS, a file-based storage, not as a storage-based Network.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

It's a simple and efficient tool to build a disaster recovery solution that involves many applications such as Oracle, SQL, VMware, and Hyper-V.

We have a VMware environment and many NFS exports to Linux servers which are easy to replicate. If we lose the main environment, we can restore all the applications to the recovery site to the appointed LUNs, and then the NFS servers to another server using storage from the DR site.

With VMware, this is very simple because you replicate the identical volume where it is stored in your datastore. I think that recovery for VMware is too simple and you don't need any tool to support this procedure, only directing the LUNs to another ESXi and executing the procedure inside VMware to mount datastore.

In the Oracle environment, the procedure to restore the database on the recovery site is simple as well.

I think that NetApp needs to improve the performance of SnapMirror with controller volume access. This is because when you have many SnapMirror jobs running, the controllers give priority to accessing volumes and transfers remain slow. It is very difficult to understand how to change this in 7-Mode.

I have used this solution by more than 8 years.

If you have to replicate a database environment, you have to put your database into backup mode before starting the replication. If you don't do this step the data will stay corrupted when you need to use replica on site the DR.

No issue if you follow best practices and understant your replicated application/solution...

10

10

Yes i have used solution from HDS and Fujitsu and the company accquire Netapp and so their dont back more .

The initial setup is too simple because Netapp integrated the configuration snapmirror on the oncommand system manager.

I have implemented this solution since i started my working with Netapp solutions

You must understand your environment to implement any replicated solution, talk to business area before implemented and design your Disastery Recovery .

We primarily use the solution for replicating data in the storage system.

Overall, the product is very good. It's an easy to use tool.

The user interface could be simplified. They might want to have fewer options on it, to make it less complicated. There are a lot of options we never use ourselves. They're often very specialized and don't apply to us.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is scalable. We have about 700 users on it currently.

Technical support is very good.

The initial setup is complex.

We had a local partner that helped us with the initial implementation.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

Overall, we've been very happy with this solution. We'd recommend it to others to use.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.