EMC to NetApp SAN Migration

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Burnout01

Limp Gawd
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Dec 11, 2006
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We are currently a EMC shop and looking at the possibility of moving to NetAPP. Anyone here have any experience moving from a EMC SAN to NetApp solution? Or does anyone have any experience with NetApp in general? Could you tell me any pluses and minuses about NetApp?

Thanks.
 
I have some NetApp experience. A few pluses:

-Same software on every filer head, so you can start small and scale big and you don't have to re-learn anything. This is a huge advantage.
-Deduplication is a featured included with every filer
-Extremely end-user friendly, designed so that an end user can do 100% of everything on their own without any requirements for trained conulstants
-You can have a SAN up and running in "minutes" not "hours"
-Excellent support
-Excellent user community
-Good pricing
-Excellent VMware integration, with NetApp having a huge portion of SAN sales where VMware is used, especially in 100% virtualized environments.

NetApp has re-bundled a lot of their software to be MUCH more affordable. This has been done over the past few years. I purchased a unit back in 05 and just purchased a smaller one for a company a few months ago. The difference in software was in the 10's of thousands in savings. Crazy.

Their software is excellent in the functionality it provides. They have also introduced a GUI for manager SANs and clusters sometime in the past few years. It offers similar feature parity to the very basic WebGUI, but it doesn't let you do everything. You still need to drop to CLI to do more advanced stuff, but the CLI is very easy to use IMO.

Don't know if this is true or not, but I had a NetApp engeineer tell me that HP uses more NetApp internally than HP storage
 
Thank you for that input. I was hoping to hear from someone on a neutral site talk positive about NetApp. The Sales guys always do a good job about making the product sound good.

For us, NetApp is kind of an unknown. It seems like a really good product and one that appears to have some better options than the EMC CX4-80. It's a big project for us and I'm on the fence on which direction to go.

Anyone here work with EMC and NetApp? Do you have a preference?

Thanks again,
 
I'd go EMC and wouldn't think twice. They aren't the market leader by accident, and while the initial costs may appear higher with EMC, the ROI is unmatched, along with the industry's best support. What exactly are you looking for from Netapp that you find lacking in the Clariion? there are some very isolated instances where I might consider Netapp, but generally I find they've got alot more top notch sales reps than they do satisfied customers. Also am a bit leery as with their recent return to success, NetApp seems to really be farming themselves out there as a prime acquisition, and I wouldn't be surprised if it happens sooner than later...and frankly I wouldn't want to be caught in the middle of that as a customer.
 
Well one of the two is my main client, and I can tell you that NetApp is not trying to get bought out. Will it if someone like HP decides to take it out (despite the fact that NetApp OEMs some stuff for IBM)? Possibly, but there isn't much you can do about something like that.
 
We are running about 80% VM's now. NetApp seems to have a better implementation and tools that sit well with the VM's. We also like that the DeDupe is built in. We also like the idea of how easy it is to add storage with the aggregate setup.

I know EMC is the number 1 company in the storage market, but NetApp really seems to have some good things going for them. Number 1 companies have been known to get lazy at times. Just look at MS with Vista. Now I'm not comparing EMC to Microsoft, I'm just saying that some times a company can get a little to cozy thinking they are the leader.

Thanks again for the info guys.
 
I'm not trying to take away from EMC and them being market leader, but that's alone is a poor reason to choose a vendor. EMC got where they are not entirely by themselves, but through a massive amount of acquisitons that date back to the early 90s. NetApp has made a few acquisitons for themselves, but they are primarily all software based companies and it only started in 2004, and it's been about 1 year since. Prior to 2004, NetApp only had one acquisition in 1997. Market share doesn't mean a whole lot when you buy out all your competition, and it certainly doesn't mean you are the best or offer the best. IMO EMC has come a long way in what they can offer over within the past years. Much of their product offering prior to that allowed for minimal upgrade paths (without huge overhauls or downtimes), and a lot of stuff required you invoking EMC themselves or EMC trained consultants, or have highly trained EMC personell on staff to manage your SAN. Much of that has since changed, which is a good thing, and it's only helped to increase their customer base.

I know that when I shopped SANs for implementation back in 2004, we looked heavily at EMC but ultimately determined there would be WAY too much in maintenance/ongoing consulting costs. We also looked at LeftHand and Hitachi and we ultimately ended up with a choice between NetApp and Xiotech, and chose NetApp.

I could see HP being interested in buying NetApp. HP's storage offers are all over the place, 6+ lines, all completely different. If you outgrown one line, scrap it all and start over, and learn everything over again on top of it. HP really needs to unify storage offers and NetApp is the king of this, and it's what makes NetApp so attractive in the storage market in the first place.
 
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oh I wasn't saying go EMC because they've got the biggest footprint...but on the other hand, I disagree that it isn't a consideration. Larger footprint = the more unique environments they've dealt with = increase the liklihood they're prepared for yours. As far as EMC's aquisitions increasing share...EMC has pretty much only purchase software companies over the years, not withstanding the lastest in Data Domain. They've been the market leader for over a decade, without factoring in their last decade of acquisitions.

Though it sounds like we've got a little bit of the underdog rooting going on in the forums...which is fine...for some reason I keep bringing myself to building AMD systems myself, even though I know the cost is neglible and Intel has a better offering for the most part :)...though when it's your job on the line, my tendencies change :p
 
I used to be one of those consultants who would set up the EMC equipment onsite. Being Clariion, Celerrra, Centera, and Symm certified, I'm a bit biased, having not worked with NetApp systems before. I've been laid off, so I'm not as biased I might appear. The first thing I would ask in this potential migration is what size/model are you using currently, and what are you thinking of moving to?

I know that DeDup is offered on both the CX4 on Flare 29 (FC backend storage) and NS4 (NAS head attached to CX4) using dart 5.6.46. I don't know if its an extra charge, as I just enabled what I was told to do (no sales here). I also worked with the customer to show them how to set it up.

I would say that if you know what you're doing, the systems are fast to set up, stay up for a good long time. I've also run a lab for my team which leveraged the CX4 and EFD (EMC term for flash drive), 15k and 10k FC drives, and SATA 7.2k, all on 4gbps FC loops.

If you've got any questions that I might be able to answer, I'd be happy to help out. Just remember to take what I say w/ a grain of salt, as sometimes I'm not sure anymore how biased I sound sometimes.
:)
 
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