NetApp FAS series

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.

We are using Netapp for years and I've been very happy with NetApp's performance and the hardware has been extremely reliable. One of the things I like most is the support and it's very responsive and knowledgeable when we need them. The only downside is the price and it's something pulling us back when we thought of implementing it in more business areas.

This NetApp FAS series is suited for all types of environments starting from mid to large scale organizations. This can be used as [a] file as a service model as well as [an] offsite backup tool. SnapMirror feature could be used as [a] DR solution, which in our case is used from one site to another site, and as of today, we have [approximately] 35 PB of storage just in [the] FAS series.

The NetApp FAS series has the features to be an enterprise-class storage system, however, at this point they do not perform as well as other storage systems. Management of the system is very involved and requires a lot of oversight. Having to divide up the disks into groups and volumes and LUNs or shares is a nightmare to manage in a large environment. Deduplication is another feature that is great in theory, but the CPU overhead to run the deduplication job is ridiculous. Having to decide between saving space and just having enough CPU to serve IO requests is not a user-friendly choice to have to make.

NetApp FAS is great if you need to combine CIFS and iSCSI/LUN into one box. The local node clustering worked rather well and the transition from one node to another was within reasonable time limits.

NetApp FAS is well suited to environments running VMware with an IP-based fabric. Whilst I have used FC storage fabrics, other storage arrays manage FC better than NetApp. So if you have a requirement for a large number of RDM's in VMware or WSFC disks, another product might suit you better. NetApp FAS also excels in environments with Linux-based deployments that require the consumption of NFS-based volumes.

In my opinion, NAS workloads and data protection are two of the strongest points that Netapp has. It sounds a kind of obvious as they created the NAS concept. A NetApp FAS cluster suits very well for scenarios/companies where the unstructured data (users CIFS shares) are one of the most important workloads. This is our scenario in many of our sites and this is why it was selected to be our standard solution. It also handles SAN workloads very well, but maybe you`d rather go with an HCI solution for block workloads.

NetApp FAS systems are extremely scalable and therefore, in my opinion, they can have a place in any environment. The built-in software has some great use cases including recovery and mitigation of ransomware attacks. The speed of backups and restoration is incredible. The ability to restore a single file out of millions is also incredibly handy.

NetApp, as far as the storage itself goes, is quite fine. It was very competitively priced when we looked at it, so it's probably good for medium to large businesses. Smaller businesses could probably get by with a much cheaper solution, possibly even just a NAS device. It would also be good for any offsite backup as well.

Best suited as a good alternative to typical Windows virtual file servers. It is less appropriate as a virtual machine repository.

This platform is perfectly suited for any size virtual environment. As a backend to the production servers, these devices truly excel. If you are a busy IT person, running the department, doing the work too, doing project management, etc., then you simply can't beat the support provided by this company. They monitor remotely and have an excellent SLA. I would not recommend this product to small businesses, as the entry point is very high, and you do need technical know-how to have these devices in play.

It is ideal for large organizations that have a variety of different business scenarios and locations from small to large. It is flexible and can grow.

NetApp FAS is a great platform to solve a large variety of different problems. It is ideal for large organizations that have a variety of different business scenarios and locations. This ability allows global support organizations to have standard tools and methods even in a variety of use cases and site sizes. On the flip side, this flexibility is also sometimes the weakness of the platform. In very specialized use cases/areas such as low latency with flash this can be a detriment. We still seem to use specialty arrays to solve these point requirements.