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Amazon S3 Glacier vs Azure NetApp Files comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.3
Amazon S3 Glacier offers cost savings, simplified data management, and security, with room for improvement in support and cost management.
Sentiment score
7.4
Azure NetApp Files boosts performance, eases deployment, reduces downtime, and optimizes costs, despite higher initial expenses than on-premises.
If AWS improves support and cost management, there would be fewer reasons for users to consider other cloud platforms.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.5
Feedback on Amazon S3 Glacier is mixed, noting helpful service but concerns over responsiveness, costs, and regional support.
Sentiment score
7.4
Azure NetApp Files receives mixed feedback on support, praised for integration and ease, but some users seek more specialized assistance.
There is room for improvement in providing more skilled and comprehensive solutions.
They provide documentation and resolve issues.
They have top-notch people.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
9.2
Amazon S3 Glacier offers highly scalable infrastructure trusted by many for managing large data volumes and expanding user adoption.
Sentiment score
7.6
Azure NetApp Files is scalable, flexible, and cost-effective for large setups, but pricing concerns exist for smaller setups.
Amazon S3 Glacier auto-scales according to the data.
Glacier has excellent scalability, with elasticity and security that meet industry standards.
Amazon S3 Glacier is infinitely scalable, with no issues on our end.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Amazon S3 Glacier is highly stable, reliable for cold storage, with robust monitoring and minimal issues, within AWS environment.
Sentiment score
8.4
Azure NetApp Files is rated highly for stability due to its reliability and consistency under increased workloads and migrations.
It is specifically designed for cold storage.
Amazon S3 Glacier is quite stable, nine out of ten.
I would rate the stability of Glacier for archival purposes at around eight out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon S3 Glacier requires faster retrieval, simplified pricing, better security, user-friendly interface, and enhanced integration, compliance, and support.
Azure NetApp Files needs improved features, cost efficiency, easier deployment, regional integration, and strengthened security to meet user demands.
Another improvement is making Glacier available in all regions.
Support could be more robust, with a focus on providing comprehensive solutions even for novel issues.
I would like to see improvements in the transfer rate as it takes quite a long time to retrieve data from Glacier compared to standard S3 storage.
I would like for them to have more compression so that it can avoid using more storage.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon S3 Glacier offers cost-effective archival, but complex pricing and hidden costs concern enterprises with large data volumes.
Azure NetApp Files pricing is premium yet justified by features like management, scalability, and flexible licensing options.
Compared to competitors like GCP, AWS can work on reducing hidden costs and overall pricing to retain startups and medium-sized businesses.
The storage cost is minimal, which is beneficial for archival purposes.
While it's generally cost-effective, the pricing model could be clearer.
It is expensive, especially with NetApp Ultra Storage.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon S3 Glacier is cost-effective for data archiving, offering ease of use, security, scalability, and intelligent data management.
Azure NetApp Files enhances performance, scalability, and management with integrated features for backup, recovery, and seamless Azure integration.
Glacier greatly helps in managing storage costs by moving historical data to a lower-cost storage option.
These features facilitate log management and data dumping since the service is versatile enough to handle large volumes of data and provide necessary security.
The most valuable features of Amazon S3 Glacier are its cost-effectiveness for data archiving and its durability.
The most valuable feature is that the sixty-terabyte database snapshot can be done in less than two to three minutes.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon S3 Glacier
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure NetApp Files
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (2nd), Cloud Storage (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 Glacier is 17.7%, up from 15.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 7.2%, up from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

ArunDhwaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Versatile data storage improves security and supports increasing data volumes
Amazon S3 Glacier offers robust security features and practically infinite storage, where we can store all kinds of media swiftly. It supports various data types, including semi-structured and raw formats. These features facilitate log management and data dumping since the service is versatile enough to handle large volumes of data and provide necessary security.
AjayKumar13 - PeerSpot reviewer
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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
32%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
32%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Amazon's S3 Glacier or EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon's S3 Glacier or Elastic Block Store data storage software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Amazon's S3 Glacier, whi...
What do you like most about Amazon S3 Glacier?
I like creating buckets where data can be segregated at a high level and then routing the appropriate data to each designated bucket. In terms of value, I would say that the tool gets the job done ...
What needs improvement with Amazon S3 Glacier?
The cost of retrieval in Glacier is quite high. It would be excellent if Amazon could work on reducing retrieval costs. Another improvement is making Glacier available in all regions.
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 Glacier
NetApp ANF, ANF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

King Cpunty, Illumina, Backupify, Nearmap.com, Scribd, Baylor College of Medicine, SoundCloud
SAP, Restaurant Magic
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon S3 Glacier vs. Azure NetApp Files and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,849 professionals have used our research since 2012.