The escalating volume of data brings about heightened complexity and increased susceptibility to cyber threats. Efficient data management is critically imperative in navigating through the cloud environment. It helps preserve data integrity, ensure accessibility, and align with an organization's objectives.

Enterprises must use adept data management tools to extract optimal value from their data assets. This is where NetApp ONTAP steps in. Providing data management services addresses IT challenges such as data security breaches and operational inefficiencies.

However, user experiences with NetApp ONTAP have unveiled challenges, notably a steep learning curve and complexities in the setup process. This has led users to seek alternatives that provide a smoother and more user-friendly experience. 

In this blog, we delve into some notable NetApp ONTAP alternatives, offering insights into viable options that circumvent the challenges associated with NetApp ONTAP.

Data management tools in cloud computing are software or services that support the storage, organization, processing, and retrieval of data in cloud environments. These tools play a crucial role in enabling businesses and individuals to efficiently handle their data assets in the cloud. Such assets encompass structured data (e.g., databases), unstructured data (e.g., documents and multimedia files), and semi-structured data (e.g., XML or JSON files). Employing lightweight markdown language, like Markdown or CommonMark, contributes to presenting information in a professional manner.

What Is NetApp ONTAP?

NetApp ONTAP is an operating system that enables applications and users to manage and store data in an efficient manner. It is a global storage operating system, delivering unparalleled capabilities for organizations regardless of the data's location—entirely on-premises, in the cloud, or the spectrum.

With over 25 years of its existence, NetApp ONTAP has three major tasks:

• Data protection:  It allows replication of data from the same data centers, across data centers, across clouds, using a Snapshot technology-based protocol such as Snap mirror. Additionally, they enure prevention of manipulation using technological snaplock.
• Data availability:  ONTAP is built to store clusters of virtual storages and clusters of virtual storage on the cloud.Moreover, It allows non-disruptive operation actions to multiple types of storage connectivity.
• Data efficiency: NetApp ONTAP is deigned to cater to storing data to ensure data efficiency with features, depending on the type of data  like inline, inline duplication, zero block, duplication, adapted compression, post process compression. It allows extending the life and utility of data by reducing the physical space that the data takes. 

Whether your data infrastructure is rooted in traditional on-premises environments, fully immersed in the cloud, or navigating the complexities of a hybrid setup, NetApp ONTAP is well-equipped to be the cornerstone of your organization's data management strategy, ensuring availability, flexibility, efficiency, and reliability at every step.

Features Of NetApp ONTAP

NetApp ONTAP can offer comprehensive data management solutions due to the following features.

• Comprehensive security enhancement: ONTAP's security capabilities are fortified with numerous refinements, providing comprehensive protection. Continuous updates are implemented to anticipate and address evolving threats proactively.

• Efficiency enhancement: Cloud Volumes ONTAP and FAS (Fabric-Attached Storage) have undergone precision enhancements to maximize usable capacity. Cloud Volumes ONTAP and FAS resource utilization have been streamlined to ensure optimum efficiency.

• Performance enhancement: Specifically tailored for on-premises data tiering, improved performance ensures faster and more responsive data movement.
• Overall impact: NetApp ONTAP is a versatile and powerful solution combining enhanced security, efficiency, and optimized performance. With its cutting-edge capabilities, NetApp ONTAP is an ideal tool for modern data management needs.

• Protection from ransomware attacks: NetApp ONTAP plays a crucial role in safeguarding businesses against ransomware attacks by securing data at the storage level. It effectively mitigates the associated risks, guaranteeing the integrity and confidentiality of your critical business information.

• Meet today's performance and availability requirements: The architecture of NetApp ONTAP is specifically designed to meet the demanding performance and availability needs of today's dynamic business environment. It ensures consistent and reliable access to data, enabling organizations to fulfill real-time requirements. This reliability is vital for maintaining productivity and providing seamless services to customers.

• Scalability: Built with scalability in mind, NetApp ONTAP allows organizations to adapt to evolving storage requirements quickly. Its flexible nature ensures businesses can confidently address future growth without disruptions or the need for extensive overhauls to their storage infrastructure.

Drawbacks Of NetApp ONTAP

Despite being feature-rich, NetApp ONTAP has certain drawbacks.

• Its functionalities are limited to data storage and management, and there is no provision of  identification of idle/unused resources or overprovisioned storage resources. 
• It also does not offer any auto-scaling cpabiities, which have been the need for the hour for effective storage optimization.

10 NetApp ONTAP Alternatives

To fix the challenges mentioned above, we bring to you 10 solutions that unlike NetApp ONTAP do not just stop at datamangement and look beyond. 

1. Lucidity

Lucidity understands that ignoring storage optimization or overprovisioning the storage resource can be financially draining in the long run. Since block storage makes for a significant portion of the cloud bill, Lucidity enables cloud cost automation by focusing on block storage optimization, unlike any other data management tool.

It has designed two automated solutions:

• Lucidity Storage Audit
• Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler

Lucidity Storage Audit

The first step to effective data management concerning storage optimization is identifying overprovisioned and idle/unused resources. While organizations either go for manual discovery or use monitoring tools, we advise against it.

Manually discovering or depending on monitoring tools has drawbacks, as it demands substantial effort from the DevOps team and leads to higher deployment expenses. With the expanding complexity of storage environments, the possibility of losing control over the situation increases swiftly.

Enters cloud cost automation with Lucidity!

Lucidity automates identifying overprovisioned idle/unused resources. The Lucidity Storage Audit simplifies the process with its free, user-friendly, and immediately deployable tool. This tool comprehensively analyzes your disk's performance and offers valuable insights into disk usage, empowering you to optimize your expenditures and effortlessly prevent any potential downtime.

With Lucidity Storage Audit, you gain insights into the following:

• Overall disk spend: Acquire a clear understanding of your existing disk expenses, spot opportunities for streamlined billing, and explore practical measures to reduce costs by an impressive 70%. Unveil valuable insights into your current patterns of disk expenditure, empowering you to make well-informed choices regarding resource allocation and attain substantial savings.

• Disk wastage: Identify the underlying reasons behind resource wastage by highlighting problems like idle volumes and over-provisioning. Our solution detects these issues and equips you with the knowledge to comprehend the complexities associated with these inefficiencies.
• Disk downtime risk: Ensure the proactive anticipation of possible downtimes and protect your business against potential financial and reputational setbacks. Our cutting-edge solution utilizes predictive analytics to detect imminent downtimes in advance, empowering you to implement preemptive measures and keep your business operations uninterrupted.

Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler

After identifying idle/unused and over-provisioned resources, Lucidity automates scaling. The reason behind the automation scaling process is

• Traditional methods of scaling storage resources often result in overprovisioning, squandering valuable resources, or underprovisioning, leading to performance bottlenecks. This is where Lucidity comes to the rescue.
• There is no live shrinkage of EBS volume/managed disk/ persistent disk available in the cloud infrastructure. Moreover, if you are to follow the manual shrinkage process, it is prone to errors, and downtime.

Lucidity Block Storage Audit is a cutting-edge solution that introduces a paradigm shift by offering a dynamic, responsive, and automated cloud storage system. It automates the shrinkage and expansion of the storage resources without downtime or performance issues.

Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler offers the following benefits to transform DevOps into NoOps smart storage.

• Automatic shrinkage and expansion: Lucidity Auto-Scaler efficiently handles disk scaling by swiftly adapting within 90 seconds. It effectively manages large amounts of data, surpassing the limitations of conventional Block Storage volumes such as Standard Block Storage, which typically operate at a rate of approximately 8GB per minute or 125MB/sec. By implementing a strategic buffer, Lucidity Auto-Scaler adeptly manages unexpected surges in data, thereby preventing breaches of the Block Storage throughput limit.

• Storage cost saving up to 70%: With Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler automating the shrinkage and expansion process, you no longer have to pay for unused resources and save up to 70% on storage costs. 
• ROI Calculator: With Lucidity, you get the benefit of evaluating how much you will be able to save through the implementation of Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler. Just add the cloud vendor service provider, your monthly/yearly spending, disk utilization, and growth rate, and there you have it! Your estimated sayings with Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler.

• Zero downtime: The manual shrinkage process involves stopping the instance, creating a new volume, taking a snapshot, and mounting the new volume, among other tiresome steps. This would necessitate downtime. But downtime is impossible with Lucidty’s Block Storage Auto-Scaler, which automates the whole process as the demand fluctuates.
• Customized Policy: To further ensure that there is no possibility of downtime, Lucidity offers a “Create Policy” feature. Using this feature, you can set different parameters for scaling, such as buffer size, maximum disk utilization, and more. Lucidity will use this data to automate the scaling process. 

If you are still struggling with high cloud bills despite trying various data management strategies, you might need to look at your storage resources and optimize them with cloud cost optimization techniques such as auto-scaling for AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Book a demo with Lucidity and learn how automation can help you reduce the overall storage cost.

2. Dell PowerPath

Dell PowerPath is an all-encompassing solution that caters to organizations in need of automated, standardized, and streamlined management of data paths. With a primary emphasis on ensuring high availability and performance across diverse computing environments, PowerPath serves as a host-based software solution that seamlessly and efficiently automates data path management. Its wide-ranging capabilities encompass failover and recovery processes, as well as optimized load balancing. This dependable and resilient tool works equally in physical and virtual environments and even in cloud deployments, guaranteeing a consistently high level of availability and performance.

Features

• The software automates and standardizes data paths, which offers a more efficient and streamlined approach for physical and virtual environments. This automation greatly improves data path management, minimizing the need for manual interventions and ensuring consistency.
• It guarantees continuous availability for applications, even in the event of unexpected disruptions. This means that applications will still function, and downtime will be minimized thanks to swift and automated recovery mechanisms.
• The software intelligently distributes workloads across available resources, contributing to optimal utilization and responsiveness. As a result, it creates a smoother and more efficient operational environment.

Customer Rating

• Peer Spot: 4.5

3. Veeam Backup And Replication

The flagship product of Veeam, known as Veeam Backup & Replication, offers comprehensive availability solutions for various environments, such as cloud, virtual, Kubernetes, and physical workloads. The user-friendly management console is intuitively designed to provide a seamless experience, equipping users with powerful features for swift, adaptable, and trustworthy backup, archival, recovery, and replication processes.

Features

• The backup process incorporates an advanced Malware Detection Engine powered by AI, which actively scans for potential threats. This engine conducts a non-disruptive real-time analysis of file extensions and entropy, ensuring swift detection of malicious items.
• If anomalies are identified during the backup, the system promptly highlights these inconsistencies and notifies ServiceNow and preferred SIEM tools. 
• Veeam Incident API aims to enhance cybersecurity measures further and send reports directly from your cyber-threat tool. This integration allows immediate action, such as marking existing restore points or triggering a backup, as necessary.

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.6

4. VMWare vSan

VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product designed to function alongside the VMware ESXi hypervisor. It facilitates storage provisioning and management based on preset policies independent of the underlying hardware. This comprehensive solution empowers businesses to prepare themselves for growth effortlessly, as it seamlessly integrates with vSphere without necessitating any additional tools. Additionally, it offers inherent adaptability and multi-cloud capacities, further enhancing its value proposition.

Features

• ​​It empowers developers to effortlessly utilize storage to build scalable applications while ensuring administrators have the necessary governance tools to manage the virtual machines (VMs) and containers that comprise the infrastructure effectively.
• It facilitates the creation of a file share through a simple and streamlined process, utilizing vSAN as a centralized control mechanism for both block and file storage.
• Its approach harmonizes the storage capabilities with the specific demands of user’s VMs and container volumes, thereby delivering an optimal storage solution. Additionally, it enables users to define their storage requirements for a VM, volume, or VMDK, with the software seamlessly implementing and enforcing those specifications.

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.3

5. DataCore SANsymphony

DataCore SANsymphony is a software-defined storage (SDS) solution that empowers organizations to efficiently manage their data storage operations. With DataCore SANsymphony, users can customize and streamline their data storage infrastructure. Opting for this solution ensures that businesses effectively eliminate or minimize potential data risks, enhancing overall data security.

Features

• Achieves equitable distribution of capacity and workload across diverse hardware providers and models, ensuring optimal utilization.
• Mitigates the risk of system failure through synchronous mirroring, resulting in seamless failover with no downtime or intervention required.
• Optimizes performance using RAM caching, parallel I/O processing, and automated data classification to identify and prioritize the most frequently accessed data.
• Streamlines data recovery processes through automated backups, seamless integration with backup tools, efficient snapshot management, and continuous critical data protection.
• Ensures remote site reliability by employing asynchronous replication, automatic failover mechanisms, seamless resynchronization, and failback capabilities for comprehensive data redundancy.
• Automatically categorizes data into different storage classes (hot, warm, or cold) based on its access frequency, facilitating efficient data placement and retrieval while optimizing storage resources.

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.4

6. Box

Box is a cutting-edge Content Management Platform that meets the needs of companies of all sizes and across various industries. What differentiates Box is its exceptional fusion of advanced security features and administrative controls, seamlessly integrated with the collaborative and sharing capabilities that end-users seek. Box has effectively simplified the secure sharing of ideas, encouraged collaboration, and improved overall work efficiency.

Features

• Provides teams with a centralized and secure platform for collaborative content creation, regardless of their affiliation with your organization.
• Facilitates seamless teamwork and converts concepts into tangible outcomes through immersive, visually engaging collaboration and interactive whiteboarding.
• Streamlines content-related procedures like onboarding and contract evaluation and authorization by automating them.
• Enables users to effortlessly and securely capture, retrieve, and distribute content on their mobile devices from any location.

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.2

7. Commvault Cloud

Commvault offers a cyber resilience solution designed to cater to the needs of the hybrid enterprise. In addition to its primary function of providing efficient data backup and recovery across a wide range of workloads like applications, databases, virtual machines, and files, Commvault Cloud offers a strong defense against ransomware. Beyond mere backup capabilities, this platform integrates advanced data security features like encryption, access control, and threat detection.

Features

• Integrating Metallic AI on Commvault Cloud guarantees prompt notification, identification of threats, preparedness for incidents, swift response, and efficient recovery during a cyber attack. It delivers the necessary velocity, understanding, and assurance to tackle critical situations effectively.
• Commvault Cloud Autonomous Recovery ensures a comprehensive approach to bolster resilience, facilitate recovery, and promote cyber preparedness. It encompasses many features such as backup, archive, replication, disaster recovery, and built-in ransomware protection. Additionally, it caters to diverse workloads across on-premises, public cloud, and hybrid multi-cloud environments.

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.3

8. Rubrik

Rubrik is a multifaceted backup and recovery solution that is a comprehensive data management platform for physical, virtual, and hybrid environments. It offers protection against ransomware, operational failures, and internal risks while simplifying data management, expediting cloud movement, and guaranteeing smooth integration into hybrid cloud setups with limitless scalability.

Features

• It offers various services, including backup, replication, disaster recovery (DR), archival, and analytics for multiple hypervisors, such as VMware vSphere (ESXi), Microsoft Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV.
• It simplifies data management by providing a streamlined and policy-driven approach to backup, archival, and cloud migration, specifically tailored for enterprises utilizing VMware's Software-Defined Data Center solutions.
• Rubrik's secure software platform prevents data loss through fine-grained recovery options and effortless management across various cloud environments.

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.6

9. Zerto

Zerto, an entity under Hewlett Packard Enterprise, focuses on data protection and enables customers to operate their businesses effectively by streamlining and safeguarding disaster recovery and mobility of both on-premises and cloud applications. Leveraging advanced hybrid cloud IT technologies, Zerto ensures the retrieval and security of crucial business applications in both on-premises and cloud environments, allowing uninterrupted service delivery while upholding stringent security measures.

Features

• Continuous Data Protection offers unparalleled security by ensuring continuous recovery checkpoints. Users can safeguard files, VMs, applications, or even entire data centers with just a few clicks.
• Incorporating orchestration and automation allows users to pre-define all the necessary elements to move or recover workloads smoothly. This saves valuable time, resources, and costs.
• Zerto Analytics' readily available dashboards and reports provide comprehensive visibility across multi-site, multi-cloud environments. This ensures users can meet your service-level agreements (SLAs) and effortlessly comply with reporting requirements.

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.6

10. IBM Turbonomic

IBM Turbonomic is an advanced platform that optimizes performance and cost in public, private, and hybrid cloud environments. With its automated actions, it guarantees exceptional application performance by eliminating inefficiencies. This multi-purpose tool offers a range of use cases, including cloud cost optimization, migration planning, data center modernization, FinOps acceleration, Kubernetes optimization, sustainable IT, and application resource management.

Features

• Intelligent automation efficiently detects and resolves bottlenecks in application infrastructure, resulting in enhanced performance and availability.
• Application-aware analytics optimizes resources in real-time, ensuring accurate CPU, memory, network, and storage allocation for workloads.
• Automation simplifies application resource allocation procedures, eliminating the need for IT teams to rely on guesswork and enabling them to concentrate on strategic priorities.

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.5