Likelihood to Recommend There are few scenarios that it's not well suited for as long as it's either VMware or Agent Based installations. I have not had success with directly backing up a non-Windows file share. I would definitely test the product first if you are not planning to directly backup through an agent.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Pros Quickness to deploy. You will not need an expert to get this up and running. Extremely intuitive interface: Brand new techs can pick this up without much training. Global Accessibility: The cloud interface allows administrators to access their backups from everywhere for quick restores after hours. Read full review 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. Read full review Cons In some of the older version of the software, drilling down to restore a single files was quite the process. It's still a little slow to this day, but improvements have been made. It would be nice to have the ability to spin up a virtual machine directly on the backup appliance in the event of a failed server. At current time you need a Hyper-v or VMWare environment to restore a failed machine to. Once you put the device in cloud control mode, some of your options are limited when you log directly into the local appliance. I personally would like to see all the options remain the same so I can administer the device the same remotely and I would sitting in front of it. Read full review 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" Read full review Likelihood to Renew Love the units
Read full review Usability The front-end webpages are basic without to much clutter which makes finding what you are trying to do fairly easy.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Support Rating They are always quick to get you routed to a tech support person and always get follow up after contacting them. Last experience was amazing, she adjusted my boxes and they perform even better. I cannot say enough about the support. We had some trouble with one of the windows servers leaving the volume shadow copy out there and would fail. They worked with us to adjust and get working. After that it has been months since I have had to do anything with the server to keep the backups running.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating Work on a backup agent for Mac OS X or any Apple OS.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I'm much happier with how Barracuda lays out their console and user interface. Acronis is a great product and you do get what you expect. But to have a the learning curve personally cut by at least 50% is a great thing to have when it comes to training new members to the IT team and getting them up to speed of our procedures.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Return on Investment We've had a couple situations where we've had to pull data back down from the BBS cloud and while it can take a while sometimes, we haven't had an issue where we haven't been able to restore something that we needed. Overall it has been very reliable. We've had to implement two other backup systems in addition to Barracuda Backup and dedicate our BBSs to just mission-critical data because we're size-locked in our appliances. Upgrading to larger models is not financially viable at the moment and we can't expand their internal storage or point them to an iSCSI share or likewise. We brought in other systems to handle non-critical and virtual data because of those storage limitations. Read full review 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. Read full review ScreenShots