NetApp FAS Storage Arrays vs. Scale Computing Platform

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

I would recommend it to anyone who has three or more servers. We just received another quote as I am about to deploy Scale at City Hall as well. This will replace my 8-year-old VMware cluster that hosts 20 servers.

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

• Snapshots are lean and fast, so restore time is simply amazing. When you don't have time to wait after a crypto attack to restore, I have found nothing faster!
• Clients can never fully know their growth for years to come, and sometimes it is only a year after the original install. This is no problem we can build on to the system like Lego blocks. Just simply adding a node or two and there is no downtime!
• There are many functions that can be done while servers are running that help to maintain the most uptime, as an example disk size on the primary disk can be expanded without shutting down the server.

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

• It exposes no backup API. You have to treat VMs as physical machines, with all the drawbacks. This is a huge problem, since the official partner Acronis can't deliver. If you ever worked with Veeam you want it back very very badly.
• Assigned RAM is used RAM. The hypervisor can't share memory or only allocate what is used etc. It's wasted RAM most of the time.
• No logging and auditing. (There is, but not visible to the customer).
• The GUI is quite bad. It looks like done by a designer instead of an IT expert. But it's improving constantly.
• The company relies heavily on KVM, but seems to have no developer in the open source community. This leads to answers like "we can't do anything about QEMU drivers". Yes, you can. Have delevopers working on it.
• You can't do basic things like list all of your VMs and see how much RAM/disk, etc. they are using (e.g. in a list view).
• No rules on which VMs start on which nodes, which VMs to prioritize, etc.

Incentivized

Since I have had no issues with downtime; easier management of my cluster and the ability to lower the number of devices in my Infrastructure, I will gladly renew my support contract with Scale Computing HC3 and upgrade my equipment with them when it comes time for it.

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

Everything you need to do is point-and-click easy. If you are the kind of admin who wants to edit every config file and endlessly customize your environment, then Scale may not be for you. On the other hand, if you just want it to work really well, and do what they told you it will do, then Scale is the ideal system.

Incentivized

Never had an outage or an error. Once a hard drive failed, but Scale kept on working flawlessly without interruption.

Incentivized

Performance has been just as outstanding as reliability. I have never experienced delays in any aspect of usage.

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

The support team deserves major props for how cordial and professional they were with our implementation. We were assigned a project manager and engineer. Everything was scheduled with our kick-off call, and our engineer got us up and running in no time.

Incentivized

I did not do in-person training.

Incentivized

Because Scale is so simple, the training is just as quick and easy.

Incentivized

The implementation was very easy. We had Scale support on standby and they were ready and eager to help if needed. The process went so fast the employees in the organization did not even know it was done.

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

At the end of the day, and in the environment we are in, Scale just fits the bill, both price-wise and functionality-wise. Upgrading our VM environment was always a week-long process, now, it is a twenty-minute process, implementing, converting VMs, and rolling everything over to Scale was completed in less than a week's time, and that included training.

Incentivized

HC3 is one of the best products I have purchased for our district. It is unbelievably reliable to the point that they shoot themselves in the foot on support contracts.

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

• 0% downtime or loss of revenue due to downtime.
• The simplicity of testing backups in a live environment in the event of a technical catastrophe.
• Ease of mind and a lot less stress worrying about a raid system within a standalone server dying in the middle of the night.

Incentivized