NetApp SANs

I'm evaluating bringing in a starter SAN for my company and while I was looking at EMC first, it looks like I can get the features I need (thin provisioning, iSCSI, FC & NFS) for cheaper with NetApp. Can anyone give me their experience with tech support & the quality of the equipment/applications?

I'm a little turned off by their pre-sales. 2 phone calls, the first one I was on hold for 30 minutes and ended up hanging up and right now I'm on hold 15 minutes just looking for a representative. So while the term "cost conscious" is an understatement, I don't want to save a few thousand dollars only to be disappointed if this is how they treat paying customers.

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ioTerrence

Just out of curiosity, what's the use-case scenario that you have in mind? I might be able to refer you to an IBM, HP, or Dell system with same/equivalent features- and with a little luck it might be a little less cash.

undomiel

I can only speak for the tech support side but they were involved at a client that was trying to get vsphere up and going. I was just there for the powerconnects. The client had netapp's techs on the line and they were pretty knowledgeable and stuck with helping the client even once it was proven that the netapp wasn't the issue. They're not afraid of dropping to the cli either. Hardware-wise I prefer to work with equallogic as their management tools are pretty friendly and their cli is pretty intuitive as well. I didn't have any issues jumping in and working with them.

UnixGuy

if I were you I'd contact more than one vendor. Try IBM, HP, StorageTek(Sun/Oracle), EMC, Hitachi, and NetApp.

If support is an issue, then keep in mind that it depends on the support staff in your area.

Just call the vendors, and get proposals. Don't be intimidated by the prices, there's always a room for negotiations/discounts, especially when there's more than one vendor involved.

Functionality wise, they're all well-known names and they will do the job.

SRTMCSE

Thanks for the replies. The initial use is to support a new vSphere environment I'm bringing in. We're currently running a hodge podge of ESXi, ESX server across a variety of servers. I imagine it'll be leveraged much more. We ended up going with an EMC Celerra NX4. While NetApp seems to market itself as the affordable option to EMC, comparable solutions are (in this case at least) triple in price!

For example, our VAR gave me a quote for an NX4 with approximately 10TB raw SAS & SATA, dual controllers, iSCSI, FC, NFS, CIFS licensing for $25k, the quote from NetApp for the same basic configuration was for $60k on their lowest appliance, the 2020 (the 2050 was nearly $100k!). Seems their software licensing was where they get you, since we wanted dual controllers, each piece of software & licenses for iSCSI, FC & NFS was doubled, that plus the dual controller ate disk real estate so another enclosure was needed.

I admittedly wanted to go with EMC from the beginning and NetApp was an appealing option for cost savings, or so I thought.

e24ohm

SRTMCSE wrote: »

I'm evaluating bringing in a starter SAN for my company and while I was looking at EMC first, it looks like I can get the features I need (thin provisioning, iSCSI, FC & NFS) for cheaper with NetApp. Can anyone give me their experience with tech support & the quality of the equipment/applications?

I'm a little turned off by their pre-sales. 2 phone calls, the first one I was on hold for 30 minutes and ended up hanging up and right now I'm on hold 15 minutes just looking for a representative. So while the term "cost conscious" is an understatement, I don't want to save a few thousand dollars only to be disappointed if this is how they treat paying customers.

I have started in a similar ecosystem, which is using NetAPP SANs. The only item I have been having hard time getting use too is the NetApp LUN SnapManager, which is used to create the LUN on the local machine. The Volumes are created via the NetApp Manager; however, assigning the LUN to the Volume is done at the server in question.

e24ohm

UnixGuy wrote: »

if I were you I'd contact more than one vendor. Try IBM, HP, StorageTek(Sun/Oracle), EMC, Hitachi, and NetApp.

If support is an issue, then keep in mind that it depends on the support staff in your area.

Just call the vendors, and get proposals. Don't be intimidated by the prices, there's always a room for negotiations/discounts, especially when there's more than one vendor involved.

Functionality wise, they're all well-known names and they will do the job.

What is HP's SANs software like? Is it similar to NetApp?

MentholMoose

HP has multiple SAN product lines. They have their own products plus some they acquired from LeftHand Networks. I've used a LHN SAN before and the software is easy to use. I'm not familiar with other HP SANs so I can't comment.

e24ohm

Hey thanks MentholMoose. I have to review HP's products - because I find NetApp very clunky. In addition, the Snap Managers for each product: SharePoint, Exchange and SQL all have different interfaces, which I a little odd; however, it could be how the client originally configured the software and SANs.