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Azure NetApp Files vs Google Cloud Storage comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 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 NetApp Files
Ranking in Cloud Storage
8th
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (3rd)
Google Cloud Storage
Ranking in Cloud Storage
2nd
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 7.1%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Storage is 10.3%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Naresh Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers great reliability to users
Protection is an area in the product where improvements are required. If big companies want to use the tool for protection purposes, like security, which is a big thing people are looking for nowadays. Sometimes, the tool's user interface automatically puts all the files in a different place, making it a bit difficult to go deep and figure out in which folder a file is present. I need to search for a file and drill down to be able to find it. There are a few bugs in the tool, as with all content management tools, since the solution is usually used to deal with huge amounts of content. If the flow of the documents is huge, the tool might get slow for the end users, or when the data is being migrated or imported into the tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the SnapMirror feature in Azure NetApp Files. It helps me create backups with snapshots and makes data recovery and compression."
"One aspect of Azure NetApp Files that I truly appreciate is its remarkable performance capabilities."
"Azure NetApp Files has been stable."
"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."
"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."
"This solution definitely makes us more efficient in being able to provide storage quickly to our customers in the Azure Cloud."
"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."
"We use Azure NetApp Files mainly for backup."
"You do not need to install anything."
"Google Cloud Storage performs well and it's easy to use."
"I could store any type of file using the solution."
"The solution is flexible and very user-friendly."
"It's very practical and reliable."
"The performance is good."
"The most valuable feature of Google Cloud Storage is the filter option. You can search with some artificial intelligence kinds of features. For example, if I search for a beach, it'll show me all the beach-related pictures, which I took five or ten years before. So this is a cool feature that I've seen. They give as many features as they can to make it better, so I'm happy with this solution."
"The most valuable feature of Google Cloud Storage is the shared folder."
 

Cons

"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."
"I don’t like the solution’s configuration and support."
"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."
"We would like to have backup functionality built-in so that we don't run into the issue where the replication process makes a copy of the corrupted data."
"The deployment process is somewhat complex compared to other storage solutions."
"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."
"The main area for improvement is in the support ticket system. Since it's a SaaS platform, support tickets are managed by Microsoft or NetApp backend. This can sometimes lead to cross-functional challenges for organizations."
"The pricing definitely needs to be improved."
"Google Cloud Storage could improve by being more user-friendly."
"The product's user interface is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"I would like the ability to query and filter documents to download them according to specific criteria."
"I would like the storage to be less expensive."
"This solution could be improved by increasing integration with other tools, like Microsoft."
"Having more storage space would be an improvement."
"The solution could improve by adding an automatic removal of duplications feature."
"When compared to one of its competitors, Google Cloud Storage does not have or offer a lot of services to its users. So, this is one of the downsides of the solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Azure NetApp Files could be better."
"The pricing depends on your scaling and consumption."
"Our pricing has not been determined because we are still waiting on additional features."
"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."
"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 performance has improved by about 30 percent."
"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."
"NetApp is a premium offering, so it's not a cheap product, but it is well-priced. It combines a couple of properties which customers like us are willing to pay. Could it be cheaper? Yes, but if you combine fully supported, fully managed, easily provisioned, scalable, and quick all in one product, it's a good selling point. You can ask a lot of money for all these. If you have a use case like we do, it's a perfect match. It's like the Porsche of storage solutions in the cloud. It is totally worth the cost."
"Better pricing would be helpful."
"Approximately 800 to 1,000 USD is paid towards the licensing costs of the solution. The solution is neither expensive nor cheap, meaning it is moderately priced. There are no extra costs apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"The price of the license could be cheaper. We are on an annual subscription."
"The product pricing is reasonable."
"For licensing, I pay yearly. The pricing is fine."
"I use the free version and have never paid for any extra storage. I have been able to manage in whatever free spaces are given."
"I pay a yearly subscription fee."
"There is no license to use Google Cloud Storage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
34%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
74%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
2%
Comms Service Provider
2%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud Storage?
Depending on your setup, Google Cloud Storage is economical, especially if you do not need high stability and scalability. We use it for backup, so the storage that is not used often is affordable.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud Storage?
So far, when it comes to security, it meets our needs and requirements, so I have nothing to say about improvements to their services. I do not find any areas needing improvement currently.
 

Also Known As

NetApp ANF, ANF
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Restaurant Magic
1. Adobe 2. Airbnb 3. Amazon 4. Apple 5. AT&T 6. Baidu 7. Cisco 8. Coca-Cola 9. Dell 10. eBay 11. Facebook 12. Ford 13. Google 13. HP 14. IBM 15. Intel 16. JPMorgan Chase 17. LinkedIn 18. Lyft 19. Microsoft 20. Netflix 21. Nike 22. Oracle 23. PayPal 24. Pinterest 25. Qualcomm 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Tesla 29. Toyota 30. Twitter 31. Visa 32. Walmart 33. WeWork
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure NetApp Files vs. Google Cloud Storage and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.