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Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Insights comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Turbonomic
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Migration
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (4th), Virtualization Management Tools (3rd), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (5th), Cloud Analytics (1st), Cloud Cost Management (1st), AIOps (5th)
Azure NetApp Files
Ranking in Cloud Migration
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (8th), Public Cloud Storage Services (8th)
NetApp Cloud Insights
Ranking in Cloud Migration
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (24th), Cloud Monitoring Software (19th)
 

Featured Reviews

SubashSubbiah - PeerSpot reviewer
It can tell us where performance is lagging on the hardware layer, but the reporting on the application layer is lacking
The automation area could be improved, and the generic reports are poor. We want more details in the analysis report from the application layer. The reports from the infrastructure layer are satisfactory, but Turbonomic won't provide much information if we dig down further than the application layer. I would like them to add some apps for physical device load resourcing and physical-to-virtual calculation. It gives excellent recommendations for the virtual layer but doesn't have the capabilities for physical-to-virtual analysis. Automated deployment is something else they could add. Some built-in automation features are helpful, but we aren't effectively using a few. We want a few more automated features, like autoscaling and automatic performance optimization testing would be useful.
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.
Scott Lauters - PeerSpot reviewer
It provides a single pane of glass, giving us visibility into the environment
All our production clusters are in Cloud Insight. It provides a single pane of glass, giving us visibility into the environment, which allows us to understand if any issues are going on across any of our clusters. The main issue we were looking to address was the lack of visibility across all the clusters in one single view. We're using Cloud Insight's Unified Manager. It has improved our ability to support and see the immediate status of the entire environment. If we have a critical incident, we can quickly see these issues and loop in monitoring teams and other teams. For example, if our app team thinks there are issues in the environment, we can quickly see if anything related to storage is part of the problem. It improved our organization by unifying all the various support teams. We all have the same view of what's happening in the environment. The dev team knows what storage is used or not, and we can quickly move on to other activities. Cloud Insights provides a single tool for containers and other cloud-based architectures, but we're not using some of those things, such as Kubernetes. We're primarily leveraging the monitoring and reporting. The solution does a great job of inventorying our resources. It allows us to put the tags on the devices. The process is fast. It also gives you the dependencies. I can dig down into all the related components. Cloud Insight's advanced analytics feature does a good job of highlighting the areas where there might be issues in the future.

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 analytics that help us optimize compatibility. Whereas Azure Advisor tells us what we have to do, Turbonomic has automation which actually does those things. That means we don't have to be present to get them done and simplifies our IT engineers' jobs."
"With Turbonomic, we were able to reduce our ESX cluster size and save money on our maintenance and license renewals. It saved us around $75,000 per year but it's a one-time reduction in VMware licensing. We don't renew the support. The ongoing savings is probably $50,000 to $75,000 a year, but there was a one-time of $200,000 plus."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the cluster utilization reports and the resource capacity planning. We can simulate how much capacity we can add to the current resources. The individual DM reports and VM-facing recommendations report are also helpful."
"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 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."
"I only deal with the infrastructure side, so I really couldn't speak to more than load balancing as the most valuable feature for me. It provides specific actions that prevent resource starvation. It always keeps things in perfect balance."
"We have a system where our developers automate machine builds, and that is constantly running out of resources. Turbonomic helps us with that, so I don't have to keep buying hardware. The developers always say, "They don't have enough. They don't have enough. They don't have enough," when they just configured it improperly. Therefore, Turbonomic helps us identify configuration issues on their side so it doesn't cost me money on the other end to buy resources that I don't really need."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its flexibility."
"The most valuable features of the solution is replication to another region and the performance. The solution is stable. The solution is scalable. The initial setup is straightforward."
"Using NetApp Files got us out of a really difficult situation quickly, effectively, and at a reasonable cost."
"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 downtime, which is a strong point. Based on the money spent, we can get performance improvements and high availability."
"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."
"I like the SnapMirror feature in Azure NetApp Files. It helps me create backups with snapshots and makes data recovery and compression."
"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."
"Its ability to quickly inventory our resources, figure out interdependencies across them, and assemble a topology of your environment is brilliant. There is a price associated with it. Whenever you target a NetApp environment, it is included in the price but whenever you want to add different vendors, like VMware and Cisco, the price greatly spikes. Inventorization helps us a lot to visualize the environment."
"Cloud Secure is definitely the most valuable feature and being able to see file level activity. It gives real-time alerting on possible ransomware attacks and provides file security review. It helps us to see if something abnormal is happening on the system before it's too late."
"The visibility and assistance with security vulnerabilities are valuable."
"Cloud Insights' best features are visibility and the connector to move the workloads."
"Among the most valuable features are the queries and reporting that allow us to look at the utilization of resources, at how well the storage is performing, and to report on which resources are being used by which business units. We can track usage across the entire environment, across applications, business units, cost centers, etc."
"It is good for giving an overview of the systems and for tracking long-term trends. It is handy for root cause analysis, e.g. it can eliminate whether storage is the cause of an issue."
"NetApp Cloud Insights helps with login monitoring and troubleshooting. Previously, if we had performance concerns or needed to interface with other groups and their products, a task that should require only one or two people turned into a six-person job."
"The solution is 98 percent stable."
 

Cons

"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."
"Some features are only available via changes to the deployment YAML, and it would be better to have them in the UI."
"They have a long road map when we ask for certain things that will make the product better. It takes time, but that's understandable because there are other things that are higher on the priority list."
"The implementation could be enhanced."
"The planning and costing areas could be a little bit more detailed. When you have more than 2,000 machines, the reports don't work properly. They need to fix it so that the reports work when you use that many virtual machines."
"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 management interface seems to be designed for high-resolution screens. Somebody with a smaller-resolution screen might not like the web interface. I run a 4K monitor on it, so everything fits on the screen. With a lower resolution like 1080, you need to scroll a lot. Everything is in smaller windows. It doesn't seem to be designed for smaller screens."
"The deployment process is a little tricky. It wasn't hard for me because I have pretty in-depth knowledge of Kubernetes, and their software runs on Kubernetes. To deploy it or upgrade it, you have to be able to follow steps and use the Kubernetes command line, or you'll need someone to come in and do it for you."
"The solution needs to improve it's ABS environment."
"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 see more paired regions for the replication."
"This solution would be improved with more innovation."
"The pricing definitely needs to be improved."
"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 deployment process is somewhat complex compared to other storage solutions."
"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."
"In a perfect world we would have something built, right out-of-the-box, that can identify what we call "noise," and reduce the amount of data. You're presented with so much data when you first start the data collectors. For example, it brings back a lot of change rates that happen just because of standard computing, like profile changes and that sort of thing. Being able to identify things like that and categorize them and strip it down—and it probably can do that, I just haven't gotten there yet—would be very beneficial."
"Cloud Insights could offer more detail when we drill down into the Azure environment."
"The visualization needs some improvement because there are occasional delays while the system queries information."
"The IP-based monitoring could be added in a future release."
"Their pricing model needs improvement."
"There is room for improving the creating and managing or modifying of reports. That is still a difficult task to do and requires knowledge beyond the storage itself. I would love to see reporting improved so that we can create reports by dragging and dropping pieces into a report form and publish a report that way."
"The first level of NetApp's technical support could be improved."
"The support is not very quick."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an endpoint type license, which is fine. It is not overly expensive."
"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."
"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."
"I don't know the current prices, but I like how the licensing is based on the number of instances instead of sockets, clusters, or cores. We have some VMs that are so heavy I can only fit four on one server. It's not cost-effective if we have to pay more for those. When I move around a VM SQL box with 30 cores and a half-terabyte of RAM, I'm not paying for an entire socket and cores where people assume you have at least 10 or 20 VMs on that socket for that pricing."
"Licensing is per socket, so load up on the cores rather than a lot of lower core CPUs."
"When we have expanded our licensing, it has always been easy to make an ROI-based decision. So, it's reasonably priced. We would like to have it cheaper, but we get more benefit from it than we pay for it. At the end of the day, that's all you can hope for."
"If you're a super-small business, it may be a little bit pricey for you... But in large, enterprise companies where money is, maybe, less of an issue, Turbonomic is not that expensive. I can't imagine why any big company would not buy it, for what it does."
"I have not seen Turbonomic's new pricing since IBM purchased it. When we were looking at it in my previous company before IBM's purchase, it was compatible with other tools."
"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."
"This solution is very expensive compared to the alternatives."
"The price of Azure NetApp Files could be better."
"Our pricing has not been determined because we are still waiting on additional features."
"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."
"The licensing fees for this solution vary, ranging from a single shelf to a full suite."
"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 licensing model could be improved. We love that you can use it for free for looking at NetApp products. You only need licenses to look at non-NetApp products, but as soon as you do that, you start utilizing licenses that actually would have been free in the public. So, there is a bit of an anomaly in the licensing model."
"The solution is expensive."
"We are billed based on management units, so we can purchase units based on six months, twelve months, twenty-four months, or thirty-six months upfront or pay as you go depending on our requirements."
"The solution's pricing is based on the device you purchase and includes support services."
"Be aware of the capacity licensing and understand how that works, because it is based on capacity. Getting an understanding of that is the biggest thing."
"The licensing is complex. The calculation depends on what you're ingesting. A terabyte of one product is not a terabyte of another product. Virtual machines don't equate so easily. It's all about the end-use managed units and having an easy place to reference how far those units go."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Educational Organization
33%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
39%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

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...
What needs improvement with Turbonomic?
The implementation could be enhanced.
What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?
We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting...
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...
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...
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...
What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Insights?
NetApp Cloud Insights helps with login monitoring and troubleshooting. Previously, if we had performance concerns or ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Insights?
The licensing is complex. The calculation depends on what you're ingesting. A terabyte of one product is not a teraby...
What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Insights?
Ease of reporting is one thing that they're trying to tackle. If you have a specific set of data you want from Cloud ...
 

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
NetApp ANF, ANF
No data available
 

Learn More

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Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
SAP, Restaurant Magic
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Find out what your peers are saying about Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Insights and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.