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Azure Backup vs NetApp SnapCenter comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

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

Azure Backup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp SnapCenter
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
36th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Azure Backup is 3.6%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp SnapCenter is 0.6%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Terry Tull - PeerSpot reviewer
Straightforward to set up and manage and allows us to monitor all backups in one place
I would rate the easiness of the initial setup as an eight out of ten. Setting up Azure Backup was pretty straightforward, especially if you follow the steps in the right order. It might seem a bit complex at first, but with experience, subsequent setups become easier. Planning is key to optimizing its effectiveness. Deploying Azure Backup typically takes around half an hour to an hour to set up one VM, involving creating a recovery services vault, defining a backup policy, and configuring storage options. For a more comprehensive setup including proper recovery planning, it might take a few hours. The key steps involve creating a resource group, and a recovery services vault, selecting a storage type, and defining backup policies. I deployed the solution myself.
MervynMorgan - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables us to save data for data projection but could improve its integration with other backup solutions
NetApp SnapCenter is highly efficient because it allows you to automate the creation of snapshots. Instead of manually creating snapshots using IMS or HMS, you can schedule and automate them, specifying the timing and frequency. This eliminates the need for daily manual intervention and streamlines the process. SnapCenter also enables you to assign specific user roles to manage these tasks, enhancing efficiency. SnapCenter ensures that your LPOs and RTOs are extremely quick. Although it may seem expensive initially, after using it for a while, you'll appreciate the efficiencies and gains it provides. I recommend the solution. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like that it's a stable solution and their support is good. I think Microsoft's commercial force is superior."
"The backup features are very useful."
"The most valuable feature is the ease in which it backs up our data."
"The product is very reliable and easy to use."
"It is a stable solution...The product is worth the money you pay for it."
"With Azure Backup, you can readily make your environment if your setup somehow fails on the cloud or on-premises."
"The daily backups have become easier since we no longer need to handle large backups. The use of Azure Backup as a service has proven reliable and simplified our daily operations. Previously, we relied on LTO backups for data retention, but after migrating to the cloud and adopting Azure Backup, the delivery process has become smoother."
"The solution helped us use R2 RBO to back up frequently."
"You can quickly deploy new virtual environments. It provides efficient and easy-to-use data protection. If a file goes missing or corruption occurs, you can restore it swiftly using the snap restore feature, allowing you to return to work almost immediately."
"It has greatly improved our DR activity."
"The centralized GUI is the best feature, that there is only one webpage where we can see the states of all the backup jobs. We can see all the tasks that are running and we can quickly see if one fails; if they are running or have any issues. We have all that in one place."
"The most valuable feature is the RBAC, the Role-Based Access Control. In our managed service, we can have different layers of security."
"Being able to add everything in as resource groups is a valuable feature... Having all the SQL servers put into specific buckets, based on their year of release - 2008, 2012, 2014 - allows us to get almost immediate backups that are easily seen and reported on."
"Most banks and financial institutions use the solution."
"The simplicity of backup and restore directly with VMware is an advantage and the time to backup and restore is reduced."
"A feature that stands out is cloning databases. If you have a SQL database and it's huge, like one terabyte, the classical SQL way would be to do a backup-restore to create a clone of your database for test purposes. With SnapCenter now, we can clone a database but through the Snapshot technology, which means if you right-click and you click Clone, the one terabyte database is there instantly."
 

Cons

"The extensibility onto hybrid environments needs a bit of tweaking for those on-prem."
"Azure Backup's licensing model is very challenging because it doesn't give a clear picture."
"The product must improve on a database level."
"I once tried restoring a Linux environment, and the size of the Linux VM or the data disk was really huge. It took a really long time to restore the environment and send the data from the storage to the disk. It took around 25 to 30 minutes, which was much longer than I anticipated. They can improve the duration of such restore operations. In the next release, it would also be good if they could reduce the duration for transferring the data from their storage to the actual storage while creating a virtual machine. They can reduce the duration or increase the data transfer rate."
"Azure Backup could improve the backup data copies because they are not immutable."
"It doesn't have the option to have a backup from the database. It has backup for the files, folders, and backup only the whole virtual machine. But if I need to do a backup from the Oracle database, from an Exchange server or from SharePoint, this ability isn't there. There is no application backup."
"Microsoft's technical support for Azure products could be improved."
"For companies frequently accessing data or not using Microsoft Azure, the solution may not be very helpful."
"The product lags in terms of availability."
"The tool could be faster."
"Reporting of the jobs could be better."
"I feel a little bit that during the whole process of putting this software into production we were like a beta program. It was full of bugs... For example, we had a problem with truncating our Exchange log files... It has improved over time."
"The Dashboard view needs to be more compressed with better ease of access and drill-down features. They should also reinstate Linux filesystem backups of storage volumes (which existed in the prior version)."
"It needs to support vSphere 6.7."
"Some of the minor functionalities from SnapManager did not transfer over to SnapCenter. These should be added in future releases."
"There is one area that needs improvement and that's in the alerting. When you set up your SMTP alerts, it only has - and I don't understand why - the ability to send an anonymous SMTP. It doesn't do basic authentication, which frustrated me for a while until I figured out that I'm not missing something. It's just not there."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's around $10 to $15 per month per virtual machine, along with something extra based on the size of the data."
"It is a bit costly initially, but it is well worth it in the long run, especially for fighting against a number of threats, such as ransomware, which the IT industry is facing."
"It is a very cheap cloud solution."
"This is an expensive solution in the Bangladesh marketplace."
"Customers prefer Azure Backup because it has a pay-as-you-go model, and they won't have to pay an upfront amount at the initial level."
"The price is pretty good, maybe $30 for a machine, I can't complain."
"The product is not expensive."
"We have enterprise-level pricing. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"The product is inexpensive."
"We see a financial value with SnapCenter because we don't have to license Commvault, which is pretty expensive."
"It's free. The license is included with other NetApp products."
"It comes free with the amount of equipment we purchase from NetApp. In terms of pricing, zero is my favorite number."
"We have a site license, so it comes with the product."
"The license for SnapCenter was included with the storage array."
"Pricing is very good because if you already have NepApp controllers, then it's included."
"The licensing is well-designed because it's already included in some packages with NetApp storage. Therefore, for most customers, it's okay as the SnapCenter license is already included in some NetApp bundles."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Azure Backup differ from Veeam Backup & Replication?
Veeam has a version for Azure but there are organizations, like ours, that are considering moving to an Azure environment and wonder if Azure Backup is better than Veeam Backup and Replication (Vee...
What do you like most about Azure Backup?
Azure Backup is easy to configure and restore.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Backup?
Pricing is middle plus, and it's a bit high. We always wait for prices to reduce, however, Azure sometimes offers special discounts or packages if you commit for more years.
What do you like most about NetApp SnapCenter?
Most banks and financial institutions use the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp SnapCenter?
If you have a license, you don't need to buy anything extra. If you have multiple storage systems and want to manage them with a central tool, you are covered.
What needs improvement with NetApp SnapCenter?
There is always a chance for improvement. One thing that might be improved is the ease of management. It might be made a little less complicated.
 

Also Known As

No data available
SnapCenter
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Russell Reynolds Associates, Somerset County Council, Kardem, PCL Construction
All for One Steeb AG, Accenture
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Backup vs. NetApp SnapCenter and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
829,634 professionals have used our research since 2012.