Amazon FSx vs Azure NetApp Files comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and NetApp are both solutions in the Cloud Storage category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.3, while NetApp is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 3.3% mindshare in CS, compared to NetApp’s 9.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Amazon FSx

Read 3 Amazon FSx reviews

266 Views
214 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Azure NetApp Files

Read 17 Azure NetApp Files reviews

1,799 Views
1,136 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Amazon FSx

Azure NetApp Files

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon FSx and Azure NetApp Files based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon FSx vs. Azure NetApp Files Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon FSx vs. Azure NetApp Files

April 2025

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Helped 847,862 peers since 2012

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 FSx

Ranking in Cloud Storage

14th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

File System Software (5th), File and Object Storage (17th)

Azure NetApp Files

Ranking in Cloud Storage

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (2nd), Public Cloud Storage Services (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Amazon FSx is 3.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 9.0%, down from 10.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Storage

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Shared storage capabilities provide enterprise value with good reliability

Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS. The auto-scaling feature should be improved, as it currently includes downtime. I need to manually increase the storage, which is not ideal. Integrating FSx with Windows Server is challenging; it's a long process involving Active Directory (AD) setup and synchronization.

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AjayKumar13

Cloud/Data/Database Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees

Fast, reliable, and helps meet our SLAs

The most valuable feature is that the sixty-terabyte database snapshot can be done in less than two to three minutes. It is faster. It is quicker. It is reliable. You don't need to take the snapshot. Snapshots are compressed. It doesn't take storage from the back end. It takes three minutes to do sixty terabytes of the database. You don't have to go to the tape and store it outside, which takes hours and hours. It also uses a lot less of the storage. It's very easy to restore or copy the snapshots to other locations for disaster recovery. There are a lot of benefits. In terms of the snapshot's rapid restore capability, we were testing the load of performance testing, and we needed to rebuild the DR site. If I need to rebuild the DR for a standby database, it takes sixty terabytes to copy onto the another site, which will take at least a day. Now, the snapshot is easy. We just copy the snapshots, and then we do the cross-region application. The snapshots came along with that, and that's where we were able to build the DR site within a few hours rather than days. All together, instead of a four-day process, instead of a day.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"FSx operates as an independent service, not tied to any server, which eliminates dependencies between applications for storage."

"I rate the stability of Amazon FSx ten out of ten."

"We used it for disaster recovery perspective behind a number of resources, like batch services and RDS."

"The shared storage capability is highly valuable."

"Since we have NetApp's internally, we use the SnapMirror predominantly for this process in the cloud which is beneficial."

"It's elastic, so it scales with our demands. We can start small, then with the addition of customer loads, we can expand on-the-fly without the need to reprovision something."

"The most valuable features of the solution is replication to another region and the performance. The solution is stable. The solution is scalable. The initial setup is straightforward."

"I think the easiest part is, when you do a comparison, it is the throughput versus the cost. And it's much easier to set up."

"Using NetApp Files got us out of a really difficult situation quickly, effectively, and at a reasonable cost."

"Azure NetApp Files has been stable."

"The most valuable feature is that the sixty-terabyte database snapshot can be done in less than two to three minutes."

"Its security and ease of use are most valuable."

More Azure NetApp Files pros

Cons

"I've been facing a challenge when doing a failover from FSx side. AWS console does not refresh within a half hour."

"Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS."

"A direct FTP feature would be beneficial instead of relying on transmission services."

"Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS."

"The initial setup was not straightforward. We had help from the NetApp team."

"Azure NetApp Files is expensive."

"We would like to see more paired regions for the replication."

"I have a hunch that storage could be now the most expensive portion of our monthly bill. So I can imagine that, not this year, but next year we will be talking about looking deeper into ways how we can optimize the cost."

"The pricing definitely needs to be improved."

"The main hurdle in promoting this solution is the price. Its price definitely requires an improvement. It is more expensive than other options, so customers go for a cheaper option."

"The deployment process is somewhat complex compared to other storage solutions."

"We would like to have backup functionality built-in so that we don't run into the issue where the replication process makes a copy of the corrupted data."

More Azure NetApp Files cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The lowest price I have paid is $370 or $380 per month, while the highest can exceed $3,000 per month."

"The solution’s combination of the ease of use, simplicity, and reduction in IT management versus the cost has helped a lot. It is very fast to deploy. It's very easy to maintain. You don't have to do a lot in the cloud to maintain this thing, so it gives good performance. It's fast to deploy, easy to maintain, and it gives a better performance. These are the most basic three criteria for any application. This saves cost because the manpower you need to deploy is going down. You're getting better performance and not buying new resources. You have resources available in the cloud. It's just a couple of clicks, then you're good to go."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."

"The pricing depends on your scaling and consumption."

"It is expensive in small environments, which could be better. The reason is the four terabyte minimum. A one terabyte minimum would be better."

"In the cloud, pricing depends on how you manage it. It's not necessarily cheap, but it's all about optimizing charges and showing the cost back. So, it's more about managing the expenses rather than being inherently expensive or cheap."

"It is expensive, especially with NetApp Ultra Storage."

"This solution is very expensive compared to the alternatives."

"Its price is double the price of the premium disks, which is the main reason why customers don't go for this solution in the end."

More Azure NetApp Files pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

30%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon FSx?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon FSx?

I use Amazon FSx as a shared storage service for Windows, particularly when there are multiple Windows servers and a need for shared storage. I use it when shared resources with different servers, ...

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What advice do you have for others considering Amazon FSx?

I must be aware of my specific use case and choose the solution accordingly. I use FSx when shared storage is required without the need for internet connectivity. It is cheaper to use Amazon S3 whe...

See all answers

How does Azure NetApp Files compare to NetApp ONTAP?

Azure NetApp Files is a Microsoft Azure file storage service built on NetApp technology. The platform combines the file capabilities of Azure and NetApp to move critical file-based applications to ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Azure NetApp Files?

The availability is good, meaning downtime or network issues rarely occur. The system also offers flexibility, allowing for increases in data volume, IOPS, and other capabilities without requiring ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure NetApp Files?

The solution's competitors like Oracle or Amazon are not cheap either. I think we're paying two million dollars for Azure NetApp Files. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is exp...

See all answers

Comparisons

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon FSx

Compared 21% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Amazon FSx

Compared 13% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Amazon FSx

Compared 10% of the time

Nasuni vs Amazon FSx

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs Amazon FSx

Compared 7% of the time

More Amazon FSx Competitors

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 37% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 29% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 8% of the time

Nasuni vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 7% of the time

NetApp ONTAP vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 3% of the time

More Azure NetApp Files Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Storage

March 2025

Download Amazon FSx product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure NetApp Files

April 2025

Download Azure NetApp Files product report

Also Known As

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre

NetApp ANF, ANF

Overview

Amazon FSx makes it easy and cost effective to launch and run popular file systems. With Amazon FSx, you can leverage the rich feature sets and fast performance of widely-used open source and commercially-licensed file systems, while avoiding time-consuming administrative tasks like hardware provisioning, software configuration, patching, and backups. It provides cost-efficient capacity and high levels of reliability, and it integrates with other AWS services so that you can manage and use the file systems in cloud-native ways.

Amazon FSx provides you with two file systems to choose from: Amazon FSx for Windows File Server for enterprise workloads and Amazon FSx for Lustre for high-performance workloads.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Azure NetApp Files is designed for unstructured data, virtualized SAP systems, SQL backups, NFS and CIFS protocols, Azure Virtual Desktop storage, and optimizing file share services. It supports high performance and networking integration in Microsoft Azure.

Azure NetApp Files offers features such as SnapMirror for data protection, rapid provisioning, elastic scaling, and ultra-fast SQL backup and restore. It provides a seamless experience with fast snapshotting, high availability, security, and ease of setup. Users benefit from significant performance improvements and the ability to manage substantial workload migrations effortlessly. This service is ideal for environments like Azure Kubernetes Service and cloud EPM platforms, where speed, flexibility, and performance are crucial.

What are the key features?

Flexibility: Adaptable to diverse storage needs.
Rapid response time: Ensures quick data access and operations.
SnapMirror: Provides replication and data protection.
SEC compliance: SnapLock ensures regulatory adherence.
Ultra-fast SQL backup: Quicker backup and restore operations.
Elastic scaling: Easily adjusts resources based on demand.
Fast snapshotting: Enables quick data snapshots.
High availability: Ensures consistent data access.
Security: Robust measures for data protection.

What are the expected benefits and ROI?

Performance: Notable improvement in processing speeds.
Simplicity of setup: Easy deployment and configuration.
Scalable management: Handles significant workload migrations with ease.
Cost efficiency: Allows comparing throughput versus cost effectively.

Azure NetApp Files is implemented in various industries requiring robust file storage solutions, from educational environments where performance boosts are critical to businesses leveraging Azure Kubernetes Service for containerized applications. It supports high-demand environments, optimizing data management and improving efficiency.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Neiman Marcus, T Mobile, Docxellent, Matrix, Lyell

SAP, Restaurant Magic

Buyer's Guide

Amazon FSx vs. Azure NetApp Files

April 2025

Free Report: Amazon FSx vs. Azure NetApp Files

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