Amazon FSx vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP 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 #1 with an average rating of 9.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 3.3% mindshare in CS, compared to NetApp’s 12.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Amazon FSx

Read 3 Amazon FSx reviews

266 Views
214 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Read 62 NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP reviews

2,645 Views
1,541 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Amazon FSx

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon FSx and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP 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. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon FSx vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

March 2025

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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 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)

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 (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

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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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.

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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

"The shared storage capability is highly valuable."

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

"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."

"If you have a fair amount of experience with NetApp, you can work on it very easily."

"The ability to see things going back and forth has been quite useful."

"The storage tiering is definitely the most valuable feature... With respect to tiering, the inactive data is pushed to a lower tier where the storage cost is cheap, but the access cost is high."

"The stability has been really good."

"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."

"NetApp's Cloud Manager automation capabilities are very good because it's REST-API-driven, so we can completely automate everything. It has a good overview if you want to just have a look into your environment as well."

"Multiprotocol is the most valuable because Amazon was not able to provide us with access to the same data from Linux and from Windows clients. That was our value proposition for CVO, Cloud Volumes ONTAP."

"It is much easier to control data since we can run queries across all our platforms with just one solution. Not only that, we can also monitor all the platforms with Active IQ, where we can see all the alerts, messages, and space consumption through a single application. This is regardless if the data is on-prem or AWS. It is much more efficient."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP 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."

"We've just been dealing with general pre-requisite infrastructure configuration challenges. Once those are out of the way, it is easy."

"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."

"When it comes to support provided by NetApp, they have room for improvement. Every time we go through their support, we end up answering the same routine questions."

"We have customers that are still using IBM mainframes and that very old SNA architecture from IBM. There are questions about how you interconnect the data on the mainframe side... But I don't know if it's worth it for NetApp to invest in developing products to include mainframes for a few customers."

"We are getting a warning alert about not being able to connect to Cloud Manager when we log into it. The support has provided links, but this particular issue is not fixed yet."

"The cost needs improvement."

"Multipathing for iSCSI LUNs is difficult to deal with from the client-side and I'd love to see a single entry point that can be moved around within the cluster to simplify the client configuration."

"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."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP 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."

"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."

"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."

"Once we deploy the pay as you go model, we cannot convert this product as a BYOL model. This is a concern that we have."

"Compared to other storage vendors, NetApp, is not always able to compete with their pricing. Yet, we acknowledge the ease of use ONTAP brings with the AWS integration."

"The standard pricing is online. Pricing depends. If you're using the PayGo model, then it's just the normal costs on the Microsoft page. If you're using Bring Your Own License, which is what we're doing, then you get with your sales contact at NetApp and start figuring out what price is the best, in the end, for your company."

"It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees."

"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 deal with the seller was acceptable; the pricing is reasonable."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Retailer

Educational Organization

55%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

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...

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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.

See all answers

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

The solution's pricing is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

NetApp's support could improve.

See all answers

Comparisons

Azure NetApp Files vs Amazon FSx

Compared 31% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Amazon FSx

Compared 15% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Amazon FSx

Compared 12% of the time

Nasuni vs Amazon FSx

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Amazon FSx

Compared 8% of the time

More Amazon FSx Competitors

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 16% of the time

Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 14% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 12% of the time

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

Compared 11% of the time

Oracle Cloud Object Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 2% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Storage

March 2025

Download Amazon FSx product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

March 2025

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

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)

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.

NetApp

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

Buyer's Guide

Amazon FSx vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

March 2025

Free Report: Amazon FSx vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon FSx vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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