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Amazon FSx vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
3
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (5th), File and Object Storage (17th)
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Ranking in Cloud Storage
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Backup (9th), Public Cloud Storage Services (5th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
 

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 NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 12.9%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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."
"I rate the stability of Amazon FSx ten out of ten."
"FSx operates as an independent service, not tied to any server, which eliminates dependencies between applications for storage."
"The shared storage capability is highly valuable."
"The most valuable feature is its exceptional performance and storage efficiency."
"It's very easy to set up, and within 40 minutes, you can apply storage notes in Azure."
"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."
"ONTAP is great for helping you migrate on-premise workflows to cloud environments."
"Unified Manager, System Manager, and Cloud Manager are all GUI-based. It's easy for somebody who has not been exposed to this for years to pick it up and work with it."
"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."
"In terms of administration, the portal which provides the dashboard view is an excellent tool for operations. It gives you volume divisions, usage rates, which division is using how much data, and more. The operations portal is fantastic for the support team."
"The good thing about NetApp is the features that are available on the cloud are also available on-premises."
 

Cons

"Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS."
"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."
"I've been facing a challenge when doing a failover from FSx side. AWS console does not refresh within a half hour."
"Something we would like to see is the ability to better manage the setup and tie it to our configuration management database. We manage our whole IT infrastructure out of that database."
"The dashboard is a little bit clunky. I like to see it a little bit more on the simplistic side. I would like to be able to create my own widgets and customize what I want to see a little bit more versus what is currently there. That would be helpful so that when I log in, I go straight to my widget or my board without going to multiple places to get to what I need to find or build."
"The integration wizard requires a bit of streamlining. There are small things that misconfigure or repeat the deployment that will create errors, specifically in Azure."
"The navigation on some of the configuration parameters is a bit cumbersome, making the learning curve on functions somewhat steep."
"We want to be able to add more than six disks in aggregate, but there is a limit of the number of disks in aggregate. In GCP, they provide less by limiting the sixth disk in aggregate. In Azure, the same solution provides 12 disks in an aggregate versus GCP where it is just half that amount. They should bump up the disk in aggregate requirement so we don't have to migrate the aggregate from one to another when the capacities are full."
"How it handles erasure coding. I feel it the improvement should be there. Basically, it should be seamless. You don't want to have an underlying hardware issue or something, then suddenly there's no reads or writes. Luckily, it's at a replication site, so our main production site is still working and writing to it. But, the replication site has stopped right now while we try to bring that node back. Since we implemented in bare-metal, not in appliance, we had to go back to the original vendor. They didn't send it in time, and we had a hardware memory issue. Then, we had a hard disk issue, which brought the node down physically."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to see more options on the dashboard."
 

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."
"They have a very good price which keeps our customers happy."
"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."
"I know the licensing is a bit on the high-end. That's when we had to downsize our MetroCluster disks and just migrate to disks that were half used. We migrated into those just to reduce maintenance costs."
"Our licensing costs are folded into the hardware purchases and I have never differentiated between the two."
"The AWS consumer-based pricing model makes it easy for developers to use their credit cards to spin up virtual servers immediately."
"The deal with the seller was acceptable; the pricing is reasonable."
"In addition to the standard licensing fees, there are fees for Azure, the VMs themselves and for data transfer."
"Overall, the pricing of NetApp is aggressive and the pricing becomes more aggressive as the amount of data increases. The cost for a given volume of data that you are storing becomes lower. The greater the volume of data, the cheaper the license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
7%
Educational Organization
55%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon FSx?
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 storag...
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, ...
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...
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.
 

Also Known As

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre
ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Neiman Marcus, T Mobile, Docxellent, Matrix, Lyell
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon FSx vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.