CIFS auditing can be useful for large environments, but there is an overhead that must be accounted for. To say it is a bad solution for enterprise customers is not a fair assumption to make without all the details.
We definitely recommend any major config changes and NetApp guidance needed to consult your account team. They don't sell stuff and that's it, but they are also responsible to help consult, set up, and identify ways to help you use your NetApp resources or possibly more NetApp resources to better optimize your storage footprint.
I will note, the missing link here is that the results show up in a special file, not the event log. Then you have to download the file and open in Windows Event Viewer. It takes a bit of understanding the format to know how it works.
That blog honestly is really good. I'd like to see if that could be incorporated into official documentation possibly. Is that ok @scottgelb? Tagging a few NetApp folks: @DrewC @jtownsen @ODinulos