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Azure NetApp Files vs Microsoft Azure File Storage 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure NetApp Files
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), Cloud Storage (8th)
Microsoft Azure File Storage
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
47
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 Microsoft Azure File Storage is 12.5%, down from 13.0% 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.
PrashanthR - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamlessly streamlines document processing with advanced file storage and OCR integration
We need to store data over there. We process documents through Kofax Time is a major benefit, as well as ease of processing. With configuration, it happens quite easily, and we can finish tasks early. File storage is complemented by OCR with Azure Cognitive Service. This enhances the processing…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its security and ease of use are most valuable."
"We use Azure NetApp Files mainly for backup."
"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."
"Since we have NetApp's internally, we use the SnapMirror predominantly for this process in the cloud which is beneficial."
"I think the easiest part is, when you do a comparison, it is the throughput versus the cost. And it's much easier to set up."
"One aspect of Azure NetApp Files that I truly appreciate is its remarkable performance capabilities."
"The critical features of this solution are SnapMirror for replication, data protection, and SnapLock."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its flexibility."
"It was quick to synchronize back from Azure to the on-premise server."
"The most significant aspect of Microsoft Azure File Storage is its life cycle functionality, which enables us to transfer files to various storage options, such as hot storage, full storage, and archive. This feature is crucial since we can apply a life cycle method to files that have not been in use for an extended period, and then move them to a cheaper cold storage option to save costs. Since the newest files are stored in the hot storage, it met our specific requirements. Consequently, older files can be transferred to archive and cold storage."
"File storage is complemented by OCR with Azure Cognitive Service."
"The functionality is easy."
"The immutable storage features are valuable."
"Azure File Storage gives good value for money, so I don't find it expensive."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure File Storage is the cloud file storage capability."
"This solution supports all file formats."
 

Cons

"This solution would be improved with more innovation."
"Azure NetApp Files could improve by being more diverse to integrate better with other solutions, such as Splunk and the on-premise version. There are some use cases that are not covered natively by Azure. It is not the best solution because it is not external from the cloud which for me is the best type of solution."
"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."
"We would like to see more paired regions for the replication."
"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."
"The solution needs to improve it's ABS environment."
"The upload speed has room for improvement."
"One thing that Azure File Storage could help us with is some kind of impact assessment. When we talk to some of our larger customers who have between 500 and 1,000 applications, we normally do an assessment of all these applications and then tell them which ones are ready to be lifted and shifted, and which ones need to re-architected. It would really help if Azure File Storage could come up with a better way to give estimations of the total investment required, including all costs incurred during the migration."
"It's not very intuitive."
"The pricing and technical support could be better."
"It's a bit complex to set up. Other than that, there is nothing to improve."
"There is room for improvement in helping customers understand and integrate Azure File Storage into their operations."
"The integration of the site storage with SQL was not completely seamless."
"The product name keeps changing. It can be confusing when product names change frequently, especially with Microsoft. Sometimes, if you refer to a product by a certain name last year, it might have a different name six months later."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"The pricing depends on your scaling and consumption."
"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."
"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."
"Our pricing has not been determined because we are still waiting on additional features."
"The performance has improved by about 30 percent."
"For one terabyte of data, we are spending about 150 Euro every month."
"We have Microsoft Azure File Storage's enterprise license."
"Microsoft Azure File Storage is expensive."
"The solution is a bit pricey compared to AWS and Google."
"One of the major benefits for AWS is that they have a very large customer representative base where clients can be picked from, they offer large discounts and credit. We were not able to receive the same kind of offers from Microsoft Azure File Storage. We tried to approach Azure while hiring for our disaster recovery discussion, but we didn't receive anything from Azure."
"One needs to pay according to the storage they plan to use in the solution. The payments are to be made yearly. It is usually monthly, but we opted for yearly subscriptions in our company."
"Microsoft Azure File Storage has a reasonable price."
"The price of Microsoft Azure File Storage is expensive, we do not know exactly how the price is calculated."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
35%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

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...
Which file storage system is better - Amazon EFS (elastic file storage) or Azure File Storage?
Amazon EFS is easy to set up: you can use the AWS management console, API, or command-line. Amazon EFS can grow to petabytes and deliver consistent low latencies and high levels of throughput. This...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure File Storage?
The price is almost the same as the competition. I would rate it three or three and a half out of ten on the pricing scale.
 

Also Known As

NetApp ANF, ANF
MS Azure File Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Restaurant Magic
Talon, Camden
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure NetApp Files vs. Microsoft Azure File Storage and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.