Likelihood to Recommend All in all this series great in addressing issues applications that need flash storage as a backend storage supply. It addresses the need for fast, responsive servers that need to boot quickly. It is easy to use and for the most part there are few issues and none that can't be addressed/fixed quickly.
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 Dell Compellent support (Co-Pilot) and the add-on service (Optimize) are critical services that Dell Compellent does very well. Alerts from the array are sent to Co-Pilot where tickets are automatically generated and customers are notified of events. Of greater importance at times is the proactive support Co-Pilot and Optimize provide by contacting us of inefficiencies in the array and consulting on resolutions. Enterprise Manager (Dell's "single pane of glass" management framework) is a useful tool for configuration/evaluation of the array and other Compellent products. Ease of management. From firmware upgrades to managing server volumes the process is much simpler than with other arrays. 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 The GUI could be a little more updated with a lot more information regarding usage. There could be some assistance with high I/O times where snapshots go to consolidate. There seems to be issues when that attempts to occur, and there will times where the virtual machine stuns due to the I/O intensity. Modification of multiple volumes or the creation of multiple volumes is a pain in the DSM management console. 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 Usability 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 This is not solely based on the support engineers themselves but more so that the logging and gotcha's that their array has. There have been multiple times where logs are pulled, but the folder is not large enough, and it crashes the array. Other times there are certain aspects that support either does not know of or isn't knowledgable about how to look at particular issues that could be causing problems.
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 Alternatives Considered We selected Compellent solely based on price. Honestly I would rate it only slightly better than a QNAP we used (which was even cheaper). If performance and reliability are factors in your decision (and they should be) I would recommend looking at something like a VNXe.
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 The SC9000 has been able to serve our current and futures needs well enough to not need to upgrade anytime soon. 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