NetApp FAS9500 - documentation kit

What is our primary use case? We sold a very big solution this month. We sold two AFF 1K, A1K, and R2 with high availability with ONTAP on-premises to a large financial company. We are now working on an upgrade for another company. We are working on an upgrade to NetApp FAS Series 9150. They have a fiber channel MetroCluster, so they cannot move to an IP MetroCluster. How has it helped my organization? It helps us meet all customer requirements. Customers have been using NetApp for many years. They are very satisfied with NetApp and continue to use NetApp and upgrade to new solutions. They are very comfortable with the technology. What is most valuable? At this moment, autonomous ransomware protection is the key feature. Artificial intelligence, deduplication, and optimization are valuable. The AFF C-Series solutions that NetApp offers are great. I have sold a lot of AFF C-Series solutions because the cost of the disks is cheaper. What needs improvement? The adoption of the cloud in Argentina is very slow. Customers do not move most of their applications to the cloud. Moving applications is a simple task, but the cost is a concern in Argentina. There is an opportunity there for NetApp with Cloud Volumes ONTAP. For how long have I used the solution? I have known NetApp for twenty years. I started working with NetApp in 2007 and continue to this day. How are customer service and support? I would rate them a nine out of ten. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive How was the initial setup? It is a little complex. It is not the complexity of the product; it is the complexity because of the money. What about the implementation team? We sold our own professional services. We have a professional engineer who installs and trains the customer, and we install the product. The satisfaction with our solution engineering is the best. We provide our own services, so the customer is happy with the service we provide them. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Customers always consider all companies and most of the business decisions are based on the global price at the end of the day. The competition offers similar solutions, but they are not the same solution. At the end of the day, the customer chooses the cheaper solution in most cases. When the customer needs a NAS solution, NetApp is the first vendor they think of. In Argentina, most customers use SAN solutions, and for SAN solutions, they think of EMC, HPE, and IBM. Now, with the ASA solutions, NetApp is considered but not like with NAS solutions. What other advice do I have? For me, it is a ten out of ten. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner

What is our primary use case? There are many different use cases, but the main use case for NetApp, as I know it, is NAS. It is among the top contenders when it comes to providing a robust solution for establishing a connection between applications and storage. NetApp is probably first or second in this field. How has it helped my organization? It provides easy integration between applications and storage. It helps implement storage provisioning services and protection services and automate everything from the application to the storage. That is the best outcome for the customers. NetApp has everything when it comes to regulations, compliance, and security. When it comes to AI, things are not that simple, but AI can help a lot with preventive maintenance and anticipation of any threats. What is most valuable? One important feature for customers is its ease of use and continuity, enabling seamless usage across on-premise and cloud environments. If the customer wants to engage with the technology, whether it is a block or a file, he has the same UI to manage, automate, protect, and implement something. Netapp offers unified protocols in the same machine, which I find very easy to use. The same GUI manages and automates tasks, protecting and implementing applications seamlessly. This represents a software approach with hardware support. What needs improvement? One area that needs improvement is the hyper-converged solution. Although NetApp has a solution, compared to Nutanix, it falls short. Nutanix leads the business in this approach, and I feel that NetApp is missing some aspects, such as CPU, GPU, and RAM, in its AI portfolio. Today, NetApp does not provide a server because it is not in their business model. For AI, they can provide storage support, but they lack computation solutions. It may be more effective for them to work with partners, such as Cisco, to provide the CPU, etc. Only companies like Dell and HPE can currently provide these solutions, but not NetApp. For how long have I used the solution? I have used the solution for five years. I used it in my previous organization. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Good globaly What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Depending on the product your are using in NetApp portfolio but they can scale easily. How are customer service and support? It is dependent on the country because sometimes the support is delivered by the local partner providing level one and two support. From our customers' perspective, support experience can vary. It greatly depends on the country and the size of the business. Sometimes, the support was inadequate because the initial architecture was poorly defined. If the implementation was wrong from the start, the support could not fix fundamental issues. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive What was our ROI? NA Which other solutions did I evaluate? The choice depends on the company's strategy, but I believe Dell is predominantly the leading vendor globally in storage. I cannot engage without considering Dell. While Huawei offers good products, being a Chinese company, it may not be viable for public sectors. Dell is NetApp's primary competitor, followed by HPE and IBM. Covering all of NetApp's portfolio, Dell seems to be the foremost competitor, followed by HPE or IBM. What other advice do I have? Overall, I would rate the product an eight out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use? Other Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner

What is our primary use case? We use the solution to store all kinds of data. It's an efficient way to store data in a centralized place instead of trying to store it in individual locations. What is most valuable? The solution's most valuable feature is its absolute reliability. We have used a MetroCluster setup that duplicates all data and system pieces, ensuring absolute redundancy. What needs improvement? The solution’s pricing is expensive. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using NetApp FAS Series for 15 years. How was the initial setup? The initial setup of NetApp FAS Series is not very easy. The last time we did an upgrade, it took around three days. On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup a seven out of ten. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? NetApp FAS Series is a reasonably high-priced solution, partially because we select the configuration that duplicates the entire system. However, our management decided that it was worth the cost. What other advice do I have? The two biggest things we look at are the solution's reliability and the support of the vendor. Excellent technical support and very good reliability are the solution's primary focuses. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.Customer

What is our primary use case? We use the solution for multipurpose VMs. What is most valuable? The replication feature protects us from data loss. What needs improvement? The plan is to go with all SSDs and use MDM, rather than sticking with traditional disk drives. The goal is to have all SSDs for better maintenance speed, which is essential for applications that need to work. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using NetApp FAS Series for seven years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The product is highly stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? 1,000 users are using this solution. How are customer service and support? We do not need support from NetApp directly because we have a group person who maintain the solution. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? With NetApp, we can set up replication between NetApp to protect storage in case of failure. It was an opportunity to configure between setups. How was the initial setup? The solution is not so difficult to implement. We have experienced people working with such equipment. It takes few days to complete. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The pricing depends on the disks we choose. We got quite a good price compared to Huawei Dorado because we compared the prices between NetApp SSD and Dorado, and the price was quite similar. What other advice do I have? We use this solution. I configured and updated it. Of course, I was also a user of applications that store data on that storage. We already have an SSD solution. So, rather than planning to go with an SSD solution, we are focusing on expanding it. If a company wants to deploy something new, it should choose a product with SSD, and NVMe disks. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

What is our primary use case? We use it for the production system with high workload. What is most valuable? NetApp is the best solution because of price and production. It offers data compression and people management. What needs improvement? Installation of the additional switches and ETP could be improved. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using the NetApp FAS Series for three or four years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I rate the solution’s stability a ten out of ten. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? 4,000-5,000 endpoints are using this solution. I rate the solution’s scalability a nine out of ten. How was the initial setup? The initial setup takes an hour to complete. If we install simple storage, we can install it by ourselves. What was our ROI? NetApp is the economy or the physical port. What other advice do I have? We have two engineers that manage storage and backup. We search devices with easy management. It has a very simple integration. If you want high performance on the Domino's system, please read the conclusion. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? Hybrid Cloud Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

What is our primary use case? We use it for VMware ESXi, CEFS for shared user storage, and we use it for backup of all of these. How has it helped my organization? NetApp significantly improved our data management. The deduplication and compression give us more possibilities. We have some disk databases, and this model gives us the ability to improve disk space utilization. What is most valuable? At the moment, we use NetApp SnapMirror to replicate data to another filer at an offsite location for backup. So, I like this feature. The unified storage is a good thing for us because it simplifies administration. It offers the ability to manage different protocols on the same device. We can manage everything through the same interface, and we have a good experience with this at the moment. What needs improvement? We have some experience with older equipment end-of-life. For example, when warranty support stops or updates stop – it can be frustrating. Not all clients can buy a new filer every year or two, and NetApp ending support a bit quickly can be a concern. Moreover, we've looked at new models and performed some price comparisons. There doesn't seem to be a large difference in price between different models within the FAS series. It would be good if there was a larger price variance between models. For how long have I used the solution? I have three to four years of experience with this product. We have one FAS now, and we want to buy another. We're looking at the models AFF A400 and A150. We have a FAS and an AFF. We want to change this configuration. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The product does improve our performance. It is scalable enough. For scalability, we've found that even if you have a three-year-old service... the way NetApp works, we must buy new equipment every five or six years. It's as if there's planned obsolescence... we don't have the option to upgrade the solution over a long period. So, for scalability, I'd give it an eight out of ten. There was one instance where we needed to add disks, but the filer was full. We ran out of space to physically add them. We had to buy extra equipment to support adding more disks to the filer when it reached maximum capacity. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We have used Synology storage. And we have some Dell equipment, but we don't use those the same way as a FAS – they are just for optional features. We did research a while ago, and found that the best solutions at the time were EMC and NetApp. We saw some Dell options, but EMC and NetApp were superior based on our research. That's how we decided to try NetApp. What about the implementation team? For installation, we are usually accompanied by a specialist, so we don't experience difficulties in that area. We actually have partners who assist us with the installation process. Generally, maintenance is easy. We have some challenges with backup right now. Currently, we talk a lot about ransomware protection. We want to secure ourselves against this. With our current model, the FAS2200, we cannot upgrade to get the latest security features because we have an older filer replicating it. This blocks us from obtaining those new protections against ransomware. So, our only choice is to replace the hardware and buy a new filer. This is a difficulty for us at the moment. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive. We have a contract and pay a one-time purchase price. We're currently evaluating the AFF A150... that's approximately (FRF)106,164. What other advice do I have? I would recommend using this product. Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

What is most valuable? The product is user-friendly and helps to evaluate the performance of each node. It ensures that if one node encounters an issue, the system can immediately redistribute the workload without interruptions. This setup provides uninterrupted operation for our systems. The high throughput, averaging 1.5 gigabits per second, also ensures that users can connect and work without encountering issues. NetApp FAS Series follows a portfolio-based security system that allows us to manage folders and specify which files can be uploaded. For example, we can configure folders to only accept file types like MP3, MP4, or MKV. This ensures that only permitted file types are uploaded to the designated folders, enhancing our security measures. What needs improvement? The product should include an audit log feature. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using the product for 15 years. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Upgrading the data size is easy with the product. My company has 300 users. How are customer service and support? We open a case whenever we encounter issues. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? NetApp FAS Series' pricing is competitive. What other advice do I have? The product can be integrated with the cloud. It's compatible with various cloud storage layers like Amazon S3. Whether you're working with Amazon or Azure, it supports cloud connectivity. You can configure parameters so that data not accessed for over one month can be automatically moved to the cloud. We manage our systems separately. I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

What is our primary use case? 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. What is most valuable? The tool's most valuable features are ease of use, ease of access, expandability, availability, and performance. NVMe drives have improved their performance. What needs improvement? NetApp FAS Series should improve its price, which is expensive. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using the product for two to three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? NetApp FAS Series is stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is scalable. How are customer service and support? Initially, we encountered some challenges with the tool's technical support. However, it is stable now. How was the initial setup? 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. What other advice do I have? I rate NetApp FAS Series a seven out of ten. Whenever we need unified storage, we recommend Data as a Solution. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Reseller