HPE MSA vs. NetApp ONTAP Data Management Software

SME environments, those after quality and reliability. Price point is medium. Reliability better than the competition in our opinion. Ideally suited for smaller IT teams, needs little technical skill once setup and running. Start small and expand later, lands of options for increased storage space and configurations.

Incentivized

NetApp ONTAP Data Management is a must platform to most businesses around the globe since the tool generates various capabilities for the user to easily and very securely manage all the project data through the cloud services using the platform capabilities. The data analytics are generated in real-time and easy visualization of different data which the tool helps the user import across other platforms.

Incentivized

• Reliability - Very reliable. Great uptime and few issues.
• Affordability - Great price/quality balance.
• Scaleability, aimed at SMEs this serves our 400 server, 4000 user base, 50 TB storage well.
• Support - HP quick and effective to sort out issues.

Incentivized

• Offsite replication is seamless.
• Snapshots are easy to implement.
• System Manager is easy to learn and manage the entire system.
• System Manager is feature rich.

Incentivized

• Collecting support logs from the HPE MSA could be better. It takes a long time to collect logs, sometimes so long your login times out.
• The HPE MSA could have a better management GUI. The layout of the menu, having the navigation buttons all around the edges is odd. It would have been better if it was in just one location.
• The drive type and capacity options available can be better between the small form factor and the large form factor. We would have liked better options in the future.

Incentivized

• Not necessarily a dislike of OnCommand per se but I do dislike that you have to still use different flavors of this tool to get a holistic view of every aspect of your NetApp - System Manager, Performance Manager, Unified Manager etc
• The initial process to connect to a filer probably could do with a little more friendly documentation as the format for filer name (or IP) and whether and SNMP string is required etc is not clear.
• The ability for more complete search capability within the logs (so therefore not having to extract them to work with them) would be an advantage for the timely resolution of faults.

Incentivized

It is a functioning Replication system for us and checks all the boxes that the auditors are looking for. Further, it is inexpensive and the storage we purchased was cheap. HP has a good reputation in the industry that plays into the decision also.

Incentivized

Functionality is very impressive, practical, and useful. GUI could use several improvements.

Incentivized

Support is great. Our account managers and system engineers regularly contact us and check in on us. Provide free training on various topics. Our team is readily available to answer any questions. Support tickets are generated automatically if anything goes wrong such as a disk going bad and a new one is sent out immediately. Very happy with support.

Incentivized

The dual controller configuration of the HPE MSA trumps the Synology DiskStation's single controller configuration. For that alone, I would select the HPE MSA. Without that setup, any controller issue or firmware upgrade is disruptive to the systems the SAN is providing storage to. Furthermore, HPE's support is better than what Synology currently provides. The lack of phone support on Synology's part slows down the troubleshooting of issues compared to HPE. Furthermore, HPE's engineers are able to do a remote session and can work on the problems directly compared to Synology's support.

Incentivized

I have not been able to use similar platform though in service delivery and functionality capacity this is the most effective tool in our company. The entire organization data and workloads are always under secure environment when managed by this great platform. It has enabled us to meet our objectives and speed up operations across in all departments. Data in both cloud and on premise is automatically connected to provide multiple services and bring efficiency.

Incentivized

• A positive ROI of the HPE MSA is the ability to configure the RAID set of the array to our requirements. We can maximize the storage capacity of the array improving our ROI.
• The flexibility of configuring the HPE MSA is another positive ROI. In our production environment, we can use a fiber channel switch while in our DR office none of that redundancy is required so we directly connected that MSA to our VMWare servers.
• HPE's support is another positive ROI. We have been able to connect with support right away to troubleshoot an issue. Part replacement is also excellent, ensuring our HPE MSA is not in a degraded state for long.
• The HPE MSA's architecture is rock solid, there have been minimal issues with the hardware, besides the rare time that an SFP has gone bad and needed to be replaced. We've had no issues that brought down the MSA.

Incentivized

• It has saved a lot of resources contributing to positive returns on investments
• Our data is always secure under this platform

Incentivized