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Amazon FSx vs Azure NetApp Files comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon FSx
Ranking in Cloud Storage
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (6th), File and Object Storage (17th)
Azure NetApp Files
Ranking in Cloud Storage
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (3rd), Public Cloud Storage Services (8th)
 

Featured Reviews

KhaderNawaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Effortless data recovery through cloud-based storage management and good support on offer
Currently, our use case involves moving shared folders on-premises to FSx for cloud-based storage The use of cloud technology saves time by reducing the need for infrastructure maintenance. It allows for dynamic scaling and efficient resource utilization. FSx operates as an independent service,…
We can expand our storage on-the-fly without the need to reprovision
Ease of provisioning: It's very easy to consume the product. We are not doing this manually. We are doing this programmatically, but it's very easy and seamless for us to consume it. It's like any other Azure component. It's very good and well-integrated into the ecosystem of Azure. There is tight integration. We didn't need to learn anything new. It feels like we know everything already, although under the hood, the product is something totally different. However, it seemed very easy for us. 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 performance is quite good, so it's almost on par with the make of SSD storage. It provides a quick, scalable storage solution. We were looking for a supported solution. We didn't want to experiment. We didn't want to look for open source, though we did look into open source initially before we bumped into NetApp. We figured out that adding yet another unknown into our system was not going to bring us benefit. It would be another problem that we would need to tackle. So, we said, "Okay, let's look for a supported solution," and NetApp was one of them. Then, we turned to NetApp.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We used it for disaster recovery perspective behind a number of resources, like batch services and RDS."
"FSx operates as an independent service, not tied to any server, which eliminates dependencies between applications for storage."
"One aspect of Azure NetApp Files that I truly appreciate is its remarkable performance capabilities."
"You can change it non-disruptively. You can increase the size and decrease the size online, which is a huge benefit compared to Azure disks. It just works seamlessly. You don't need to stop the instances."
"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."
"Since we have NetApp's internally, we use the SnapMirror predominantly for this process in the cloud which is beneficial."
"We use Azure NetApp Files mainly for backup."
"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 downtime, which is a strong point. Based on the money spent, we can get performance improvements and high availability."
"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."
"I like the SnapMirror feature in Azure NetApp Files. It helps me create backups with snapshots and makes data recovery and compression."
 

Cons

"I've been facing a challenge when doing a failover from FSx side. AWS console does not refresh within a half hour."
"A direct FTP feature would be beneficial instead of relying on transmission services."
"The solution needs to improve it's ABS environment."
"The main area for improvement is in the support ticket system. Since it's a SaaS platform, support tickets are managed by Microsoft or NetApp backend. This can sometimes lead to cross-functional challenges for organizations."
"I would like to see multi-zone redundancy so that I don't have to worry about it. I just back up my data to that one SMB share and I know that it's replicated to a different region."
"Azure NetApp Files is expensive."
"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."
"We would like for the files which are coming in that we can version them. So, if a file is accidentally deleted, there should have a recycle bin option where we can go back, and at least once, clean it up."
"We were looking for a clustered solution that has over-complicated things because we had it in AWS, which is Amazon. There was a solution for clustered NetApp. That meant there would be two NetApps that were not clustered because there was no solution for a cluster. We would like there to be an HA cluster solution."
"The pricing definitely needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The licensing fees for this solution vary, ranging from a single shelf to a full suite."
"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."
"This solution is very expensive compared to the alternatives."
"The performance has improved by about 30 percent."
"The price of Azure NetApp Files could 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."
"NetApp is a premium offering, so it's not a cheap product, but it is well-priced. It combines a couple of properties which customers like us are willing to pay. Could it be cheaper? Yes, but if you combine fully supported, fully managed, easily provisioned, scalable, and quick all in one product, it's a good selling point. You can ask a lot of money for all these. If you have a use case like we do, it's a perfect match. It's like the Porsche of storage solutions in the cloud. It is totally worth the cost."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
19%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
6%
Educational Organization
33%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon FSx?
A direct FTP feature would be beneficial instead of relying on transmission services. Although I haven't worked extensively with FSx, there seems to be room for more improvement.
What is your primary use case for Amazon FSx?
Currently, our use case involves moving shared folders on-premises to FSx for cloud-based storage.
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 ...
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 ...
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...
 

Also Known As

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre
NetApp ANF, ANF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Neiman Marcus, T Mobile, Docxellent, Matrix, Lyell
SAP, Restaurant Magic
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon FSx vs. Azure NetApp Files and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.