Arcserve OneXafe vs. NetApp FAS Storage Arrays

For SMB file storage Exablox is great, but as an ESXi datastore it still needs work.

Incentivized

It is very easy to use with NFS. Creating new volumes and mounting to servers such as ESXi or Linux is a breeze. It does also support CIFS but it is far less intuitive and requires much more effort. Replicated data is also very simple and robust in the form of SnapVaults or SnapMirrors. This data is either immediately or periodically replicated to a peer FAS in the cluster for retention.

Incentivized

• Exablox is simple to setup and relatively easy to use.
• Exablox is priced very competitively and is a good value for the cost.
• Exablox has good customer service.

Incentivized

• The selling point for NetApp FAS is the application and data protection integration capabilities they provide.
• We have been able to use NetApp FAS in a variety of use cases with a standard set of management tools.
• NetApp FAS has evolved over the years from just NAS to also include block protocols. At this time they support almost all industry standard protocols.

Incentivized

• Exablox is still in its infancy as a company and in some respects the product feels like a version 1.0.
• Integration with VMware ESXi has some bugs that need to be figured out.

Incentivized

• Deduplication job runs at certain times and creates a large CPU overhead for the system
• Management of a volumes, disk groups, LUNs, etc. is a burden to manage and is not efficient with storage capacity
• Upgrades are complicated and not "non-disruptive"

Incentivized

The price for Exablox was very appealing. If we can resolve the NFS datastore issues we are seeing in VMware, this is a perfect solution for a ESXi datastore. Once that issue is resolved, I will give Exablox a higher rating.

Incentivized

Again, the initial install, setup and config was simple through a web browser.

Incentivized

It does have a really nice and easy to use web interface to do pretty much anything you need with it. It was very simple to configure our volumes and luns and connect them to our VMWare environment using the interface. It has options to rename, shrink, grow, and other things with our luns and volumes. It was nice and easy to read graphs to see where you stand on your storage usage at a glance.

Incentivized

Since the day we installed Exablox we have not had any down-time. The storage resources have been available 100% of the time.

Incentivized

SMB file access has been very responsive. We have not seen any slowness. Also, in using Exablox as tier 1 storage in our VMware environment, the VMs performed great. No slowness issues.

Incentivized

Exablox has been very responsive to our requests. They communicate very well and are extremely knowledgable

Incentivized

NetApp support in Brazil is managed by its partners. We know in other countries, such as the US and NO, they have support directly from Netapp. We have a very good NetApp partner working with us since the beginning, on both the implementation and daily support. Very few cases needed to be escalated to NetApp support, most of the cases are handled and satisfyingly closed by the partner.

Incentivized

Straightforward and simple implementation. We completed the implementation in less than 2 hours.

Incentivized

Exablox was much less expensive than other storage arrays and I think there are a lot of reasons to purchase them. I believe that as the product matures, it will be a great option for storage.

Incentivized

NetApp stacked nicely and gave enterprise-level usability for snapshot-based backups. Our previous RPO was several hours. It was selected prior to me arriving at the company, but It was selected for the hardware refreshes due to its compatibility with several other vendors, like CommVault and VMware.

Incentivized

We have not tried to scale Exablox so we are not familiar with this.

Incentivized

• We purchased Exablox specifically for our ESXi environment, so we are hoping to get the wrinkles worked out to see a greater return on our investment.

Incentivized

• The speed of file recovery is the biggest positive impact. Recovering from a ransomware attack in minutes is something you can certainly brag about.
• Integration with products like Exchange and SQL can certainly speed up normal day to day processes. Not just in backup recovery situations either.
• Redundant paths make migrations and updates very easy with no downtime.

Incentivized