Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EFS (Elastic File Sy...

Ranking in Cloud Storage

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

File and Object Storage (9th)

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Ranking in Cloud Storage

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Backup (10th), Public Cloud Storage Services (5th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Auto-scaling capabilities enhance file management while reducing downtime

The most valuable feature of Amazon EFS is its auto-scaling capability. It's really easy to configure EFS by just creating it and running a command to directly configure it with my servers. It supports unlimited use, and charges are applied based on the file usage at the end of the month. The solution offers reduced downtime and increased durability through its auto-scaling features.

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Pramod-Talekar

Sr Service Engineer at Evolent Health

Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution

The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The solution is scalable."

"Amazon EFS is extremely stable, as it is managed by AWS."

"Elastic File Systems allow me to share data, provision, and manage capacity and performance in AWS."

"We are not that big of a cloud user. We just use it for the storage of our bytes. The most valuable aspect is the storage."

"The platform is highly scalable."

"Amazon EFS is extremely stable, as it is managed by AWS."

"I appreciate Amazon's extensive range of services, which makes it a favorable choice."

"The solution's technical support is good."

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) pros

"The feature which I like the most is that it has the capabilities that the traditional storage system offers. It provides all the functionality. The deduplication and compression work exactly like ONTAP's traditional storage. So people who have experience with that find it very easy to manage."

"Its features help us to have a backup of our volumes using the native technology of NetApp ONTAP. That way, we don't have to invest in other solutions for our backup requirement. Also, it helps us to replicate the data to another geographic location so that helps us to save on the costs of backup products."

"The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site."

"One of the features our customers like is that it can be used from one cloud provider to another. They can use it from Azure to AWS or vice versa. That way, they don't need to use the same provider for backups. If something goes wrong on the primary site, having the same data in another cloud service provider is important."

"It makes sure we have control of the data and that we know what it's being used for. The main thing for us is that we need to know what applications are consuming it and responsible for it. The solution helps us do that."

"I like how you can easily pair on-prem with the cloud and the cloud backup feature. I like the whole integration with on-prem and the cloud for SnapMirror relationships."

"SnapMirror helps mirror metadata and data volumes between endpoints in a data fabric."

"This solution has made everything easier to do."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"The deployment is definitely not an easy process."

"The lack of transparency in the costs attached to the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"It should be simplified. There are people who don't have cloud experience. It should be storage that we are able to just connect to."

"The main challenge with EFS is its cost, which is slightly higher compared to EBS or S3."

"Specifically, when it comes to the file system for the learning system, we encountered performance issues with both Azure and AWS."

"There are challenges related to AWS, such as ensuring proper security measures with IMS code and encryption."

"Around 80 percent of the features of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) are available on Linux and not in Windows, making it a major drawback of the product."

"Its deployment process could be faster while installing the Python package directly into the environment."

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) cons

"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP should improve its support."

"In terms of improvement, I would like to see the Azure NetApp Files have the capability of doing SnapMirrors. Azure NetApp Files is, as we know, is an AFF system and it's not used in any of the Microsoft resources. It's basically NetApp hardware, so the best performance you can achieve, but the only reason we can't use that right now is because of the region that it's available in. The second was the SnapMirror capability that we didn't have that we heavily rely on right now."

"The automated deployment was a bit complex using the public APIs. When we had to deploy Cloud Volumes ONTAP on a regular basis using automation, It could be a bit of a challenge."

"The key feature, that we'd like to see in that is the ability to sync between regions within the AWS and Azure regions. We could use the cloud sync service, but we'd really like that native functionality within the cloud volume service."

"I'm very happy with the solution, the only thing that needs improvement is the web services API. It could be a little bit more straightforward. That's my only issue with it. It can get pretty complex."

"The encryption and deduplication features still have a lot of room for improvement."

"The navigation on some of the configuration parameters is a bit cumbersome, making the learning curve on functions somewhat steep."

"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP needs to have customizable pricing options such as 10 TB increments. They seem to have only two options: 10 TB or 250 TB."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product charges are based on the amount of data stored."

"The solution's price is mid-ranged."

"I would rate the pricing 7 out of 10."

"It has flexible pricing. You are charged based on your storage."

"Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) offers a pay-as-you-go model, so whenever you use its services, you need to pay."

"The main challenge with EFS is its cost, which is slightly higher compared to EBS or S3. For one GB or ten GB of data, S3 is much cheaper. EFS could cost around $30 to $50 per month for similar usage."

"The product's price depends on the services and the size and capacity at which it is used in a business environment."

"We purchased the product directly from NetApp."

"Some flexibility around the licensing model would help. The product is licensed based on capacity. Basically, the largest capacity license that you can buy is 368 terabytes. At this point, NetApp is addressing some people's concerns around this."

"If we wanted to use the AWS solution, we would have to manage two or three different platforms and pay more money than what we should have to pay, as some of the features don't even exist. If we wanted to, we could use AWS cloning, but it is useless because it uses more space, is more expensive, and takes more time."

"The pricing of this solution is definitely higher than what the typical Azure Files and AWS solutions charge, but given the features and the stability NetApp has provided, we are okay with it. We are not complaining about the pricing."

"It is not a cheap solution because we need to pay for the license and pay for Azure resources as well."

"Cloud is cloud. It's still expensive. Any good solution comes with a price tag. That's where we are looking to see how well we can manage our data in the cloud by trying to optimize the costs."

"The cost is quite high."

"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good, but it was a test system, not a real purchase."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

19%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

55%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which file storage system is better - Amazon EFS (elastic file storage) or Azure File Storage?

Amazon EFS is easy to set up: you can use the AWS management console, API, or command-line. Amazon EFS can grow to petabytes and deliver consistent low latencies and high levels of throughput. This...

What do you like most about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?

The product's initial setup phase is easy, as per the configurations.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?

Elastic File Systems can be expensive due to the nature of data transfer costs, using services like SSTP, and potentially being costly in a rate-shift context.

What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

The solution's pricing is reasonable.

What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

NetApp's support could improve.

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Comparisons

Compared 58% of the time

Amazon S3 Glacier vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 9% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 7% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 5% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 3% of the time

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) Competitors

Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 13% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 12% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 7% of the time

VMware vSAN vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 5% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Download Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) product report

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

No data available

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

Learn More

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

NetApp

Overview

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides simple, scalable file storage for use with Amazon EC2 instances in the AWS Cloud. Amazon EFS is easy to use and offers a simple interface that allows you to create and configure file systems quickly and easily. With Amazon EFS, storage capacity is elastic, growing and shrinking automatically as you add and remove files, so your applications have the storage they need, when they need it.

When mounted to Amazon EC2 instances, an Amazon EFS file system provides a standard file system interface and file system access semantics, allowing you to seamlessly integrate Amazon EFS with your existing applications and tools. Multiple Amazon EC2 instances can access an Amazon EFS file system at the same time, allowing Amazon EFS to provide a common data source for workloads and applications running on more than one Amazon EC2 instance.

It’s designed for high availability and durability, and provides performance for a broad spectrum of workloads and applications, including Big Data and analytics, media processing workflows, content management, web serving, and home directories.

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is an efficient storage management solution for managing and storing data in the cloud. It offers seamless integration with cloud providers, advanced data replication capabilities, and high data protection. With reliable performance, it is ideal for industries like healthcare and finance.

Sample Customers

Arcesium, Atlassian, Seeking Alpha, Zend

1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP