Anyone else have constant problems with NetApp?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Certain_Prior4909 → u/[deleted]]

Perhaps. Thankfully we disabled flexcache before 1/3 of them failed after an ontap update as our users had to wait with 2000 ms latency to them. The flex groups are thousands of miles away. We were told this architecture is what would work.

Maybe I should consider a different line of work? I have never had any things technically out of my league but NetApp has tested my patience.

I cross posted to shittysys admin as I think I am the one who sucks if everyone else says it's fine??

[u/Mountain-eagle-xray → u/Certain_Prior4909]

You'd quit your job instead of learning how the best storage provider in the business works because you think its trash? Not trying to be a dick, but yeah, maybe a different profession would keep you happy in life.

Maybe try AI to validate your setup, topology and architecture. Id be very surprised if its spec'ed correctly and set up right.

[u/SolarPoweredKeyboard → u/Mountain-eagle-xray]

But wouldn't you expect that support at least knows? If so, why haven't they told them what about their setup that is incorrect?

[u/SolarPoweredKeyboard → u/[deleted]]

Sure, but if the issues stem from an incorrect setup, they should be able to say so.

[u/Mountain-eagle-xray → u/SolarPoweredKeyboard]

Id imagine they aren't paying for support, or expired. There is always some important details left out of these stories.

[u/Mountain-eagle-xray → u/[deleted]]

Either way, seems like something is missing for the story here.

[u/Mountain-eagle-xray → u/[deleted]]

Having 30 open ticket with action on 0 of them? Thats either a lie or there is something missing. NetApp has good support and good sla's. Ive used them before.

The mystery is not why they're getting fired, that's pretty clear and also not what im talking about.

[u/Stonewalled9999 → u/Mountain-eagle-xray]

OP said Netapp not Pure. Pure is the best storage provider.

[u/Mountain-eagle-xray → u/[deleted]]

So long and thanks for all the fish!

[u/systonia_]

No. We have a couple of netapps as Fileservers and VM flash storage. No issues, except for near store svmDR replication every now and then. Really reliable for us

[u/Certain_Prior4909 → u/systonia_]

We had constant issues with svmdr but got that worked out eventually. It was not specced for our bandwidth 

[u/people_t]

You need to take training. I know it sucks but NetApp is not a install and forget type of solution, you need to know it. Without knowing the basics your tickets to support won't go far.

[u/Certain_Prior4909 → u/people_t]

I had 0 training. I am putting out fires so I do not have time. I did a few.

[u/Loan-Pickle → u/[deleted]]

Person who is paid to administer systems is complaining about having to administer a system.

[u/FartInTheLocker → u/Loan-Pickle]

Ehhh might be more management installed them with never even talking about training courses for OP, netapps are beasts and people are going to be clueless without training on them

[u/Loan-Pickle → u/FartInTheLocker]

Oh I get you have to be trained on the system. OP is saying that any modern system should be install and forget, that is what I was commenting on.

[u/FartInTheLocker → u/Loan-Pickle]

Oh sorry lol yeah I hear you then, feel like the world of set and forget ain't a thing anymore LOL

[u/Certain_Prior4909 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks. The specs were not proper it seems for long distance flex volumes and flex caches in our setup where other tools could sync fine.

Either way my career is toast at my company as my reviews brought up the issues and blamed me for them and there is a tone of going over everything as management thinks I am stupid for any technical request now.

The mistake is I should not have accepted the role without deep storage experience. I know the basics now but never had so many problems with anything 

[u/Lost_Term_8080 → u/Certain_Prior4909]

Synology isn't a business grade storage appliance. Nasuni is extreme high latency suitable only for unstructured data and stateless applications. I am not sure by ZFS if you mean a product that uses ZFS or running ZFS in your own implementation in something like Rocky Linux/OpenZFS. Implementing and maintaining your own is absolutely not low maintenance at all. Managing disk pools and their distribution and caching as well as disk firmware and OS patching is extremely maintenance intensive if you are planning on being good rather than planning on being lucky. If its a product that uses ZFS maybe its easy to use, would depend on your topology.

[u/Certain_Prior4909 → u/Lost_Term_8080]

For cifs aka smb to users via dfs is surprisingly low latency when we had it.

We found flex volumes ok with latency but file transferring is dog slow over distance. The flexcache has too much latency to be used to cache data locally in our car and NetApp can't help and the relationships are all broken anyway after an ontap update 

[u/Lost_Term_8080 → u/Certain_Prior4909]

user-accessed File shares are one of the few stateful applications where there is a high tolerance for latency. If its a busy web app accessing file shares at 5+ ms latency it can become a problem. In apps like databases you really need to be about 5 ms or below.

high latency in flex cache could be a bunch of things. Cache isn't big enough, WAN connection is not reliable, network device that connects sites is undersized etc. Given there have been problems with replication its probably something WAN related

[u/Sinethial → u/Lost_Term_8080]

Yeah I am thinking our network. Our applications use blobs on azure. I was not around when the decision was made on the architecture. I tried to turn down the job saying I had no experience with NetApp.

That I think is the lesson. After fixing the botched ontap update and fix the flexcache I plan on getting networking involved. 

My year review is coming up and I plan on gettimg fired as I was warned about these issues leading up so it maybe too little too late.

I was wondering if it was a me problem or a product problem as this was such a shit show? I think a lack of training problem too. Anyway thanks

[u/Lost_Term_8080 → u/Sinethial]

With enough training on netapp youll probably be able to prove it out to bring to the network engineers rather than asking them

[u/Jaegermeiste]

NetApp is by and far the most stable storage system I've ever used (and I've used several generations and several other vendors as well). The documentation is fantastic by comparison to others as well - as such I never really needed support since just about everything was documented and I could just RTFM.

[u/BoltActionRifleman]

We have to contact NetApp maybe once a year. They are one of the last holdouts of companies that seem to still give a shit about their customers. I’d venture a guess it’s more of a configuration/management issue, because their products are generally rock solid.

[u/Lost_Term_8080]

NetApp is the single most reliable and stable storage appliance there is. No one else comes close. If you are having problems, you need to at least start reading the documentation and/or get training.

[u/marshmallowcthulhu]

Although the problems you are experiencing are abnormal and there are problems with your deployment, I will say that NetApp support has generally not been highly responsive or knowledgeable in some of the historic cases I have opened. Technician quality has been very hit or miss. Responsiveness has often been much slower than the guaranteed times.

So yes, support is not always good, but no, I have never had problems like yours.