Azure NetApp Files vs Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] comparison

NetApp and Cisco are both solutions in the Cloud Migration category. Additionally, 88% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Cisco users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Azure NetApp Files and Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp, Nasuni, Zerto and others in Cloud Migration.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud Migration Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Migration

December 2024

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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

IBM Turbonomic

Featured Reviews

Keldric Emery

Advisory System Engineer at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Saves time and costs while reducing performance degradation

It's been a very good solution. The reporting has been very, very valuable as, with a very large environment, it's very hard to get your hands on the environment. Turbonomic does that work for you and really shows you where some of the cost savings can be done. It also helps you with the reporting side. Me being able to see that this machine hasn't been used for a very long time, or seeing that a machine is overused and that it might need more RAM or CPU, et cetera, helps me understand my infrastructure. The cost savings are drastic in the cloud feature in Azure and in AWS. In some of those other areas, I'm able to see what we're using, what we're not using, and how we can change to better fit what we have. It gives us the ability for applications and teams to see the hardware and how it's being used versus how they've been told it's being used. The reporting really helps with that. It shows which application is really using how many resources or the least amount of resources. Some of the gaps between an infrastructure person like myself and an application are filled. It allows us to come to terms by seeing the raw data. This aspect is very important. In the past, it was me saying "I don't think that this application is using that many resources" or "I think this needs more resources." I now have concrete evidence as well as reporting and some different analytics that I can show. It gives me the evidence that I would need to show my application owners proof of what I'm talking about. In terms of the downtime, meantime, and resolution that Turbonomic has been able to show in reports, it has given me an idea of things before things happen. That is important as I would really like to see a machine that needs resources, and get resources to it before we have a problem where we have contention and aspects of that nature. It's been helpful in that regard. Turbonomic has helped us understand where performance risks exist. Turbonomic looks at my environment and at the servers and even at the different hosts and how they're handling traffic and the number of machines that are on them. I can analyze it and it can show me which server or which host needs resources, CPU, or RAM. Even in Azure, in the cloud, I'm able to see which resources are not being used to full capacity and understand where I could scale down some in order to save cost. It is very, very helpful in assessing performance risk by navigating underlying causes and actions. The reason why it's helpful is because if there's a machine that's overrunning the CPU, I can run reports every week to get an idea of machines that would need CPU, RAM, or additional resources. Those resources could be added by Turbonomic - not so much by me - on a scheduled basis. I personally don't have to do it. It actually gives me a little bit of my life back. It helps me to get resources added without me physically having to touch each and every resource myself. Turbonomic has helped to reduce performance degradation in the same way as it's able to see the resources and see what it needs and add them before a problem occurs. It follows the trends. It sees the trends of what's happening and it's able to add or take away those resources. For example, we discuss when we need to do certain disaster recovery tests. Over the years, Turbo will be able to see, for example, around this time of year that certain people ramp up certain resources in an environment, and then it will add the resources as required. Another time of year, it will realize these resources are not being used as much, and it takes those resources away. In this way, it saves money and time while letting us know where we are. We've saved a great deal of time using this product when I consider how I'd have to multiply myself and people like me who would have to add resources to devices or take resources away. We've saved hundreds of hours. Most of the time those hours would have to be after hours as well, which are more valuable to me as that's my personal time. Those saved hours are across months, not years. I would consider the number of resources that Turbonomic is adding and taking away and the placement (if I had to do it all myself) would end up being hundreds of hours monthly that would be added without the help of Turbonomic. It helps us to meet SLAs mainly due to the fact that we're able to keep the servers going and to keep the servers in an environment, to keep them to where (if we need to add resources) we can add them at any given time. It will keep our SLAs where they need to be. If we were to have downtime due to the fact that we had to add resources or take resources away and it was an emergency, then that would prevent us from meeting our SLAs. We also use it to monitor Azure and to monitor our machines in terms of the resources that are out there and the cost involved. In a lot of cases, it does a better job of giving us cost information than Azure itself does. We're able to see the cost per machine. We're able to see the unattached volume and storage that we are paying for. It gives us a great level of insight. Turbonomic gives us the time to be able to focus on innovation and ongoing modernization. Some of the tasks that it does are tasks that I would not necessarily have to do. It's very helpful in that I know that the resources are there where they need to be and it gives me an idea of what changes need to be made or what suggestions it's making. Even if I don't take them, I'm able to get a good idea of some best practices through Turbonomic. One of the ways that Turbonomic does to help bring new resources to market is that we are now able to see the resources (or at least monitor the resources) before they get out to the general public within our environment. We saw immediate value from the product in the test environment. We set it up in a small test environment and we started with just placement and we could tell that the placement was being handled more efficiently than what VMware was doing. There was value for us in placement alone. Then, after we left the placement, we began to look at the resources and there were resources. We immediately began to see a change in the environment. It has made the application and performance better, mainly due to the fact that we are able to give resources and take resources away based on what the need is. Our expenses, definitely, have been in a better place based on the savings that we've been able to make in the cloud and on-prem. Turbonomic has been very helpful in that regard. We've been able to see the savings easily based on the reports in Turbonomic. That, and just seeing the machines that are not being used to capacity allows us to set everything up so it runs a bit more efficiently.

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Vladislav Malicevic

CTO at Jedox

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.

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Boingotlo Molefhe

Azure IoT Developer & Solutions Architecture trainee (AZ-220) at Afrika Tikkun Services

Helps with data management and has a straightforward initial setup process

We use the product for demonstration, device provisioning, and data management They should provide an entire cloud offering, from architecture to network security features. We have been using Cisco CloudCenter for a couple of months. I rate the product’s stability a nine out of ten. I rate the…

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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

"It is a good holistic platform that is easy to use. It works pretty well."

"The automated memory balancing, where it looks at whether it's being used in the most efficient way and adds or takes away memory, is the best part. If it didn't do that, it would be something that I would have to do. We have too many machines for one person to do that. The automation helps me in that it is done in a really efficient way and a balanced way because of the policies. It really helps."

"It has automated a lot of things. We have saved 30 to 35 percent in human resource time and cost, which is pretty substantial. We don't have a big workforce here, so we have to use all the automation we can get."

"We like that Turbonomic shows application metrics and estimates the impact of taking a suggested action. It provides us a map of resource utilization as part of its recommendation. We evaluate and compare that to what we think would be appropriate from a human perspective to that what Turbonomic is doing, then take the best action going forward."

"It helps us get a consolidated view of all customer spending into a single dashboard, allowing us to identify opportunities to improve their current spending."

"It also brings up a list of machines and if something is under-provisioned and needs more compute power it will tell you, 'This server needs more compute power, and we suggest you raise it up to this level.' It will even automatically do it for you. In Azure, you don't have to actually go into the cloud provider to resize. You can just say, 'Apply these resizes,' and Turbonomic uses some back-end APIs to make the changes for you."

"We have seen a 30% performance improvement overall."

"Turbonomic can show us if we're not using some of our storage volumes efficiently in AWS. For example, if we've over-provisioned one of our virtual machines to have dedicated IOPs that it doesn't need, Turbonomic will detect that and tell us."

More IBM Turbonomic pros

"Using NetApp Files got us out of a really difficult situation quickly, effectively, and at a reasonable cost."

"We use Azure NetApp Files mainly for backup."

"Azure NetApp Files has been stable."

"I like the SnapMirror feature in Azure NetApp Files. It helps me create backups with snapshots and makes data recovery and compression."

"It has saved a lot of time. Because in the older, conventional hardware system, they need to raise a ticket to go to storage engineering, then storage engineering would increased the size. Now, it's dynamic. You don't have to do anything. This improved the time by more than 50 percent."

"This solution definitely makes us more efficient in being able to provide storage quickly to our customers in the Azure Cloud."

"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."

More Azure NetApp Files pros

"You can scale it easily."

"The initial setup is fairly straightforward if you have a basic setup."

"The initial setup process is straightforward."

"The solution is agile and it has APIs for integration."

"Upgrades are very simple as well because they've allowed us to get updates directly in the CloudCenter Suite manager. If you need to do an upgrade to your setup afterward, you just push a button and it rolls out the parts and retires the old ones. It's seamless and very simple compared to what we've done before."

"Cisco has a lot of published information and documentation that helps users understand the product and its offering very well."

"The solution includes a lot of features and is useful because you can configure all the way down to ports."

"Cisco CloudCenter's scalability is good."

More Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] pros

Cons

"It sometimes does get false positives. Sometimes, it'll move something when it really wasn't a performance metric. I've seen it do that, but it's pretty much an automated tool for performance. We've only got about 500 virtual machines, so lots of times, I'm able to manage it physically, but it's definitely a nice tool for a larger enterprise that might be managing 2,000 or 3,000 virtual machines."

"It can be more agnostic in terms of the solutions that it provides. It can include some other cost-saving methods for the public cloud and SaaS applications as well."

"I like the detail I get in the old user interface and will miss some of that in the new interface when we perform our planned upgrade soon."

"While the product is fairly intuitive and easy to use once you learn it, it can be quite daunting until you have undergone a bit of training."

"The implementation could be enhanced."

"The way it handles updates needs to be improved."

"They could add a few more reports. They could also be a bit more granular. While they have reports, sometimes it is hard to figure out what you are looking for just by looking at the date."

"The reporting needs to be improved. It's important for us to know and be able to look back on what happened and why certain decisions were made, and we want to use a custom report for this."

More IBM Turbonomic cons

"I have a hunch that storage could be now the most expensive portion of our monthly bill. So I can imagine that, not this year, but next year we will be talking about looking deeper into ways how we can optimize the cost."

"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."

"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."

"The solution needs to improve it's ABS environment."

"This solution would be improved with more innovation."

"Azure NetApp Files is expensive."

"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."

"Reserved Instances for Azure NetApp Files would improve more use cases, making them more valuable in Azure as the cost would be reduced."

More Azure NetApp Files cons

"For many clients, the main problem with the solution is the price. Cisco is very expensive. If they could somehow make the pricing more competitive, that would be a big draw."

"I'm not a big fan of CloudCenter. I don't have anything against it, however, the on-premise version has been so hard to upgrade and maintain."

"They can add some of those features to make the platform more usable for different backgrounds and developer skills."

"Improvements are needed in UI and multi-tenancy for this solution."

"They should provide an entire cloud offering, from architecture to network security features."

"The solution needs to be more simple."

"The tool should improve its security on the XDR part."

"You don't get all the solution's benefits if you have older switches."

More Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is fairly priced right now. Given its capabilities, it is excellently priced. We think that the product will become self-funding because we will be able to maximize our resources, which will help us from a capacity perspective. That should save us money in the long run."

"IBM Turbonomic is an investment that we believe will deliver positive returns."

"I consider the pricing to be high."

"Price is a big one. VMTurbo was very competitively priced."

"It was an annual buy-in. You basically purchase it based on your host type stuff. The buy-in was about 20K, and the annual maintenance is about $3,000 a year."

"Licensing is per socket, so load up on the cores rather than a lot of lower core CPUs."

"The pricing and licensing are fair. We purchase based on benchmark pricing, which we have been able to get. There are no surprise charges nor hidden fees."

"In the last year, Turbonomic has reduced our cloud costs by $94,000."

More IBM Turbonomic pricing and cost advice

"This solution is very expensive compared to the alternatives."

"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."

"The solution’s combination of the ease of use, simplicity, and reduction in IT management versus the cost has helped a lot. It is very fast to deploy. It's very easy to maintain. You don't have to do a lot in the cloud to maintain this thing, so it gives good performance. It's fast to deploy, easy to maintain, and it gives a better performance. These are the most basic three criteria for any application. This saves cost because the manpower you need to deploy is going down. You're getting better performance and not buying new resources. You have resources available in the cloud. It's just a couple of clicks, then you're good to go."

"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."

"The pricing depends on your scaling and consumption."

"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."

"It is expensive in small environments, which could be better. The reason is the four terabyte minimum. A one terabyte minimum would be better."

"The licensing fees for this solution vary, ranging from a single shelf to a full suite."

More Azure NetApp Files pricing and cost advice

"The tool's pricing is balanced with the market."

"The tool's pricing is expensive."

"The solution is extremely expensive and has additional fees for things like monitoring."

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831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Educational Organization

35%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

35%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Comms Service Provider

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Turbonomic?

It offers different scenarios. It provides more capabilities than many other tools available. Typically, its price is...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Turbonomic?

The implementation could be enhanced.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?

We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting...

See all answers

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 fi...

See all answers

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, allowi...

See all answers

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 A...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cisco CloudCenter?

The initial setup process is straightforward.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco CloudCenter?

They should provide an entire cloud offering, from architecture to network security features.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cisco CloudCenter?

We use the product for demonstration, device provisioning, and data management.

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware Aria Operations vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 19% of the time

Azure Cost Management vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 13% of the time

VMware vSphere vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco Intersight vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 9% of the time

More IBM Turbonomic Competitors

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 41% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 22% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 10% of the time

Nasuni vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Azure Block Storage vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 3% of the time

More Azure NetApp Files Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Turbonomic

January 2025

Download IBM Turbonomic product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure NetApp Files

January 2025

Download Azure NetApp Files product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco CloudCenter [EOL]

January 2025

Download Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] product report

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager

NetApp ANF, ANF

CliQr, CliQr CloudCenter

Learn More

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IBM

NetApp

Cisco

Interactive Demo

IBM

Demo not available

NetApp

Demo not available

Cisco

Overview

IBM Turbonomic is a performance and cost optimization platform for public, private, and hybrid clouds used by companies to assure application performance while eliminating inefficiencies by dynamically resourcing applications through automated actions.

IBM Turbonomic leverages AI to continuously analyze application resource consumption, deliver insights and dashboards, and make real-time adjustments. Common use cases include cloud cost optimization, cloud migration planning, data center modernization, FinOps acceleration, Kubernetes optimization, sustainable IT, and application resource management. By integrating with various cloud platforms, on-premise infrastructures, and containers, IBM Turbonomic provides a holistic view of the environment, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently.

The solution is designed to support complex IT environments, offering actionable insights and automated actions that help IT teams proactively manage application performance and infrastructure resources. Turbonomic customers report an average 33% reduction in cloud and infrastructure waste without impacting application performance, and return-on-investment of 471% over three years.

IBM Turbonomic manages resources across hybrid and on-premises data centers to ensure efficiency and financial impact awareness. It automates resource allocation, balances memory dynamically, and provides robust performance metrics. Users benefit from its ability to prevent resource starvation and offer cost-saving recommendations through continuous management. Executive Dashboards provide insights for cost justification and resource management, making IT operations simpler with AI-driven automation and actionable recommendations.

What are the most important features of IBM Turbonomic?

Automated Resource Allocation: Dynamically allocates resources for optimal performance.
Dynamic Memory Balancing: Adjusts memory allocation to prevent resource shortages.
Right-Sizing: Sizes VMs accurately for Azure and on-prem environments.
Single Platform Management: Manages resources across hybrid and on-premises data centers.
Proactive Performance Optimization: Continuously optimizes performance to prevent issues.
Kubernetes Support: Enhances container management with robust support.
Cost-Saving Recommendations: Provides actionable tips for reducing expenses.

What benefits should users look for in IBM Turbonomic reviews?

Cost Reduction: Helps minimize expenses through efficient resource management.
Performance Improvement: Enhances application performance by preventing resource starvation.
Detailed Insights: Offers comprehensive analytics to justify costs and resource utilization.
Simplified IT Processes: Uses AI automation to streamline operations.

IBM Turbonomic is implemented across multiple industries, including finance for optimizing peak payroll processing, IT for enhanced virtual server management, and healthcare for reliable performance monitoring. Organizations benefit from its robust automation, ensuring maximum efficiency and cost savings.

Azure NetApp Files is designed for unstructured data, virtualized SAP systems, SQL backups, NFS and CIFS protocols, Azure Virtual Desktop storage, and optimizing file share services. It supports high performance and networking integration in Microsoft Azure.

Azure NetApp Files offers features such as SnapMirror for data protection, rapid provisioning, elastic scaling, and ultra-fast SQL backup and restore. It provides a seamless experience with fast snapshotting, high availability, security, and ease of setup. Users benefit from significant performance improvements and the ability to manage substantial workload migrations effortlessly. This service is ideal for environments like Azure Kubernetes Service and cloud EPM platforms, where speed, flexibility, and performance are crucial.

What are the key features?

Flexibility: Adaptable to diverse storage needs.
Rapid response time: Ensures quick data access and operations.
SnapMirror: Provides replication and data protection.
SEC compliance: SnapLock ensures regulatory adherence.
Ultra-fast SQL backup: Quicker backup and restore operations.
Elastic scaling: Easily adjusts resources based on demand.
Fast snapshotting: Enables quick data snapshots.
High availability: Ensures consistent data access.
Security: Robust measures for data protection.

What are the expected benefits and ROI?

Performance: Notable improvement in processing speeds.
Simplicity of setup: Easy deployment and configuration.
Scalable management: Handles significant workload migrations with ease.
Cost efficiency: Allows comparing throughput versus cost effectively.

Azure NetApp Files is implemented in various industries requiring robust file storage solutions, from educational environments where performance boosts are critical to businesses leveraging Azure Kubernetes Service for containerized applications. It supports high-demand environments, optimizing data management and improving efficiency.

Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] is utilized for tenant creation, VM management, hybrid deployment, cloud management, and port configuration.

Primary users include DevOps teams, telecom companies, and service providers. It integrates well with ACI and ASX-T, offering stability, initial setup ease, and extensive documentation. Known for high trust in Latin America, it excels in workflow automation through Action Orchestrator and supports detailed configuration down to ports. However, improvements are required in DevOps alignment, upgrades, automation, and cost management.

What are the most important features of Cisco CloudCenter [EOL]?

Stability: Provides a robust platform with minimal downtime.
Ease of Setup: Simplifies the initial setup process to get users started quickly.
Documentation: Extensive guides and resources available for user support.
Workflow Automation: Action Orchestrator enables cross-infrastructure automation.
Blueprint Pattern: Defines middleware and dependencies effectively.
API Integration: Offers agility and flexibility with API support.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

High Trust Level: Recognized reliability, especially in Latin America.
Configuration Support: Capability to configure down to individual ports.
Integration: Seamless integration with ACI and ASX-T.
Agility: Enhanced flexibility and adaptability to changes.

Among its features, Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] serves industries like telecom and service providers needing hybrid deployment and cloud management. DevOps teams utilize it for tenant creation and VM management. Known for stability and initial setup ease, it supports Latin American regions highly. Action Orchestrator aids in workflow automation, benefitting user workflows. Improvements in DevOps alignment, UI, multi-tenancy, YAML abstraction, and cost management are desirable. It requires better security for XDR and comprehensive cloud offerings, including architecture and network security features.

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.

SAP, Restaurant Magic

NTT, Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), CollabNet, Pratt & Miller, PZFlex

Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp, Nasuni, Zerto and others in Cloud Migration. Updated: December 2024.

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