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Azure NetApp Files vs Panzura 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
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (3rd), Public Cloud Storage Services (8th)
Panzura
Ranking in Cloud Storage
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (4th), NAS (13th), Cloud Storage Gateways (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 13.5%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Panzura is 12.1%, up from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage
 

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.
Anil Rahulwar - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers features like Master Snapshot which are useful for recovering files and easy to use if you are familiar with familiar with NAS things and networking protocols
If you're considering Panzura, I'd actually recommend looking into DDN products. They're very stable. In fact, they're launching Infinea, which is totally cloud-based and uses Lambda and Kubernetes. It's a very good product. If you have basic IT concepts, it's very easy to understand. But if you're not familiar with NAS things and networking protocols like SMB or Linux, then it might be a bit difficult for new users. Linux understanding is very important to use Panzura. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. Master Snapshot feature is the only exceptional feature, but the rest of the features are similar to other storage solutions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Azure NetApp Files has been stable."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I like the SnapMirror feature in Azure NetApp Files. It helps me create backups with snapshots and makes data recovery and compression."
"We use Azure NetApp Files mainly for backup."
"The critical features of this solution are SnapMirror for replication, data protection, and SnapLock."
"The main thing in Panzura is that there are three key components: PanFS, NAS, and collaboration. These are strong features, and a big benefit is that you can access everything from anywhere."
"Its most valuable features are the collaboration, the file snapshots, and the data protection the solution provides."
 

Cons

"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."
"We would like to see more paired regions for the replication."
"Reserved Instances for Azure NetApp Files would improve more use cases, making them more valuable in Azure as the cost would be reduced."
"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 deployment process is somewhat complex compared to other storage solutions."
"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."
"It should be easy for people not on the network to connect and access their files."
"Master Snapshot feature is the only exceptional feature, but the rest of the features are similar to other storage solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fees for this solution vary, ranging from a single shelf to a full suite."
"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."
"Our pricing has not been determined because we are still waiting on additional features."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing depends on your scaling and consumption."
"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 solution's pricing is on the expensive side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
34%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 are the products that Panzura provides?
Panzura offers four main products: CloudFS, data services, smart apps, and global services. They call this "all-in-one solution" and it's for end-to-end cloud data management. Why is it called that...
What kind of industries does Panzura serve?
Hello, I think businesses from all industries that have their data on a cloud can benefit from Panzura. Especially if you have offices in various locations or your employees are working from home a...
Why was Panzura acquired? Is the acquisition going to cause a change?
I think Panzura may change in a positive direction now that it's been bought by Profile Capital. That's a very big investment company for technology businesses and I think it's an opportunity for ...
 

Also Known As

NetApp ANF, ANF
Panzura Freedom
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Restaurant Magic
Petrofac, Komatsu, HCA Healthcare, Vanguard, Disney, Pokemon, US Department of Justice, Gensler, Fluor, AFRY, Milwaukee Tool, Navy Federal Credit Union, TechTarget
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure NetApp Files vs. Panzura and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,071 professionals have used our research since 2012.