Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp ONTAP comparison

The compared Azure NetApp Files and NetApp ONTAP solutions aren't in the same category. Azure NetApp Files is ranked #3 in CM , with an average rating of 7.2, and holds a 20.8% mindshare in the category. NetApp ONTAP is ranked #2 in SS , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 45.7% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Azure NetApp Files users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of NetApp ONTAP users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Azure NetApp Files and NetApp ONTAP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Migration

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Turbonomic

Mindshare comparison

Cloud Migration

Storage Software

Q&A Highlights

Netanya Carmi

Content Manager at PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)

Nov 01, 2021

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 the cloud. Azure NetApp Files provides high-performance computing at high-speed and is SAP and HIPAA certified. Azure NetApp Files helps for cloud-based workloads that need low latency and high performance. When you need to access a large volume of data, other features we like are its elasticity and the support for multiple protocols. One downside of Azure NetApp Files is that it is not available in the Azure Free tier. Also, it is relatively more expensive than other Azure options like file storage. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is an enterprise-level storage management solution. NetApp gives you not only storage management but data protection too. NetApp ONTAP supports multiple use cases, like block-level storage serving NAS and SAN, backup, archive, DevOps, databases, and disaster recovery. We like having the same consistent storage experience on Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. Other features we like from ONTAP are the dynamic mapping of storage devices and the central management of storage components. The solution provides compression and deduplication. NetApp Cloud Volumes enables our administrators to design, configure, and deploy storage in a hybrid cloud environment. You can also scale the issues easily. Integration with third-party tools is limited, though. Migrating storage workloads between cloud service providers can also be a hassle. From the three major providers, its integration with AWS is the best. The documentation is a bit poor. You can not manage storage across hybrid and multiple cloud environments. ONTAP is more suited for organizations with large storage volumes or that need high performance for their cloud environment. Conclusions It will depend on the use case. Cloud Volumes ONTAP is specifically designed to manage large storage volumes. If you can afford the extra cost, Azure NetApp Files can provide a more comprehensive solution for smaller organizations.

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Featured Reviews

SubashSubbiah

Assistant Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 10, 2022

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.

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Vladislav Malicevic

CTO at Jedox

Feb 22, 2022

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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Dan Pride

Senior IT Specialist at HIAa

Feb 3, 2023

Excellent support, highly stable, and easy to use

We manage all of our storage with it. In terms of the version, we're in the process of going to the newest version. It's probably 9.12 Resiliency is the big one for us. Its ease of use, for the most part, through the interfaces is valuable. It's very expensive. I have been using this solution…

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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

"My favorite part of the solution is the automation scheduling. Being able to choose when actions happen, and how they happen..."

"In our organization, optimizing application performance is a continuous process that is beyond human scale. We would not be able to do the number of actions that Turbonomic takes on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. It is humanly impossible with the little micro adjustments that it can make. That is a huge differentiator. If you just figure each action could take anywhere very conservatively from five to 10 minutes to act upon, then you multiply that out by thousands of actions every month, it is easily something where you could say, "I am saving a couple of FTEs.""

"The feature for optimizing VMs is the most valuable because a number of the agencies have workloads or VMs that are not really being used. Turbonomic enables us to say, 'If you combine these, or if you decide to go with a reserve instance, you will save this much.'"

"On-premises, one advantage I find particularly appealing is the ability to create policies for automatic CPU and memory scaling based on demand."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"Azure NetApp Files has been stable."

"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."

"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

"The stability of our ONTAP system has been awesome over the last four to five years, particularly with the software. The controls have been excellent as well. We recently went through a view of all of our systems and found a number of them had been up, over three years without any sort of reboots or downtime. We have been very happy with the stability of the systems."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is to be able to do multiple clusters on one pane of glass. We used to have to log on to each cluster per NetApp to view statistics on it or the logs if something was wrong. But now we can use ONTAP to view all the clusters and it shows us if something is full of space or not."

"The cluster version is flexible and easy to use."

"Clustered ONTAP makes it very easy to manage large amounts of data, measured in petabytes. One person can manage all that."

"It is very easy to manage in terms of system management and GUI management."

"We are going the direction of automation in the cloud. It has flexibility and supportability around NetApp solutions and products."

"Vauable features include the ability to manage our data anywhere, multiple consumption modes, and rapid deployment."

"Deduplication, data protection, and NetApp block are some of the valuable features of the product."

More NetApp ONTAP pros

Cons

"Recovering resources when they're not needed is not as optimized as it could be."

"The one point is the reporting. We do have reports out of it, but they're not the level of graphical detail I would like."

"Since the introduction of a HTML 5 based interface, our main - but minor - criticism of a less than intuitive operation managers' GUI would be the area of improvement."

"There is an opportunity for improvement with some of Turbonomic's permissions internally for role-based access control. We would like the ability to come up with some customized permissions or scope permissions a bit differently than the product provides."

"Turbonomic can modernize the look and feel, making it more user-friendly to access and obtain information."

"After running this solution in production for a year, we may want a more granular approach to how we utilize the product because we are planning to use some of its metrics to feed into our financial system."

"It would be good for Turbonomic, on their side, to integrate with other companies like AppDynamics or SolarWinds or other monitoring softwares. I feel that the actual monitoring of applications, mixed in with their abilities, would help. That would be the case wherever Turbonomic lacks the ability to monitor an application or in cases where applications are so customized that it's not going to be able to handle them. There is monitoring that you can do with scripting that you may not be able to do with Turbonomic."

"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."

More IBM Turbonomic cons

"The main hurdle in promoting this solution is the price. Its price definitely requires an improvement. It is more expensive than other options, so customers go for a cheaper option."

"This solution would be improved with more innovation."

"I don’t like the solution’s configuration and support."

"The deployment process is somewhat complex compared to other storage solutions."

"We would like to see more paired regions for the replication."

"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."

"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."

"The pricing definitely needs to be improved."

More Azure NetApp Files cons

"I would like to see volume efficiency come closer to what Dell EMC can do with, for instance, their XtremIO platform."

"Being able to scale out at cost-effective capabilities doesn't compare to some of our other storage solutions, but it is coming along. NetApp ONTAP could improve its scalability."

"They could lower prices so my management doesn't complain about cost"

"Technical support is good but they can take some time on critical problems."

"The initial setup is too complex. It should be one click. Anyone with basic knowledge of storage should be able to set it up. Instead, there are too many moving pieces."

"I wish tech support would be better. I wish I could talk to somebody more easily and qualified, because this is way it is supposed to be.."

"It doesn't scale horizontally since there are a limited number of shelves."

"We would like to be able to provide feedback immediately after receiving technical support."

More NetApp ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"We see ROI in extended support agreements (ESA) for old software. Migration activities seem to be where Turbonomic has really benefited us the most. It's one click and done. We have new machines ready to go with Turbonomic, which are properly sized instead of somebody sitting there with a spreadsheet and guessing. So, my return on investment would certainly be on currency, from a software and hardware perspective."

"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."

"What I can advise is to trial the product, taking advantage of the Turbonomic pre-sales implemention support and kickstart training."

"You should understand the cost of your physical servers and how much time and money you are spending year over year on expanding your virtual farm."

"I consider the pricing to be high."

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

More IBM Turbonomic pricing and cost advice

"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."

"Our pricing has not been determined because we are still waiting on additional features."

"We are currently on a pay-as-you-go model with the storage that we use."

"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 performance has improved by about 30 percent."

"The price of Azure NetApp Files could be better."

More Azure NetApp Files pricing and cost advice

"If you start narrowing down NetApp versus price point, then comparing it to the feature set and take away all the bloat that other companies will try to add on, there is no other option. It comes down to just NetApp."

"The data compression and deduplication have kept us from buying more disks these past three years."

"We have seen ROI, especially with the deduplication. We have a high ratio of deduplication and are way past 70 percent of our VDI, as we have almost 400TBs on our VDI. We have been able to save at least a quarter of a petabyte of space."

"Because of its manageability, we have fewer people managing it."

"I rate NetApp ONTAP's pricing a seven out of ten."

"We save a lot because of the deduplication and compression."

"The solution has helped us reduce the overall cost of storage by doing an OPEX agreement with NetApp, we are paying based on utilization. Instead of fronting 30 petabytes worth of storage, we are paying for what we're using."

"The product costs an arm and leg; it's expensive."

More NetApp ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

32%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

18%

Computer Software Company

18%

Government

Retailer

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...

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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...

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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...

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What do you like most about NetApp ONTAP?

We do not face any glitches or downtime.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp ONTAP?

The product is a bit expensive. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp ONTAP?

Sometimes, we face problems with support.

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware Aria Operations vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 20% of the time

Azure Cost Management vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 12% of the time

VMware vSphere vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco Intersight vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 9% of the time

Cloudability vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Turbonomic Competitors

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 43% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 24% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 10% of the time

Nasuni vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 2% of the time

More Azure NetApp Files Competitors

DataCore SANsymphony vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 48% of the time

Dell PowerPath vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 14% of the time

Cloudian HyperStore vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 11% of the time

StorONE Storage-as-a-Service vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 8% of the time

More NetApp ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Turbonomic

October 2024

Download IBM Turbonomic product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure NetApp Files

November 2024

Download Azure NetApp Files product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp ONTAP

October 2024

Download NetApp ONTAP product report

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager

NetApp ANF, ANF

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NetApp

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IBM

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NetApp

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NetApp

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.

NetApp is the data authority for hybrid cloud. We provide a full range of hybrid cloud data services that simplify management of applications and data across cloud and on-premises environments to accelerate digital transformation. Together with our partners, we empower global organizations to unleash the full potential of their data to expand customer touchpoints, foster greater innovation and optimize their operations.

Sample Customers

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

SAP, Restaurant Magic

1&1 IONOS, Acıbadem Healthcare Group, Adder Technologies, Aero Vodochody Aerospace

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

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