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Azure NetApp Files vs Panzura CloudFS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 12, 2025

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
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (2nd), Public Cloud Storage Services (8th)
Panzura CloudFS
Ranking in Cloud Storage
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (4th), NAS (11th), Cloud Storage Gateways (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 9.0%, down from 10.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Panzura CloudFS is 5.9%, up from 5.0% 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.
Andy Knauf - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable file management and disaster recovery with minimal overwrites
For me, it is the stability aspect. It is a lot more stable now than it ever has been, but just keeping that stability is important. Previously, a new update would come out, and there might be something wrong with it, or it may not sync up as well as it should, or it may cause something to lose access to the server. We have had some problems in the past, but in the last couple of years, we have not had any issues like we had early on. There could be a slightly better dashboard or a better pane of glass. When something goes wrong somewhere, there should be a little bit better alerting with issues before they become a big problem.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Since we have NetApp's internally, we use the SnapMirror predominantly for this process in the cloud which is beneficial."
"One aspect of Azure NetApp Files that I truly appreciate is its remarkable performance capabilities."
"The most valuable feature is that the sixty-terabyte database snapshot can be done in less than two to three minutes."
"Its security and ease of use are most valuable."
"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."
"It is faster. It is quicker. It is reliable."
"I like the SnapMirror feature in Azure NetApp Files. It helps me create backups with snapshots and makes data recovery and compression."
"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 is a very solid product. We keep all of our older files on their system. It is easy to restore if a file gets deleted. We have good disaster recovery. It is very reliable and very quick, and we do not have files that get overwritten because it locks the file."
"Its most valuable features are the collaboration, the file snapshots, and the data protection the solution provides."
"The core function of Panzura CloudFS, with its synchronizing of files across multiple servers, provides us with a much more efficient workflow for our production staff."
"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."
"Panzura is a hundred percent better than what we had before."
"Panzura has not increased its data storage costs."
 

Cons

"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."
"We would like to see more paired regions for the replication."
"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."
"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 initial setup was not straightforward. We had help from the NetApp team."
"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."
"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."
"There are a few file types that do not work well with Panzura CloudFS."
"There could be a slightly better dashboard or a better pane of glass. When something goes wrong somewhere, there should be a little bit better alerting with issues before they become a big problem."
"Master Snapshot feature is the only exceptional feature, but the rest of the features are similar to other storage solutions."
"It should be easy for people not on the network to connect and access their files."
"Previously, a new update would come out, and there might be something wrong with it, or it may not sync up as well as it should, or it may cause something to lose access to the server."
"There are a few file types that do not work well with Panzura CloudFS. Specifically, the GIS data formats, such as a geo database, have been found better kept outside of Panzura CloudFS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The licensing fees for this solution vary, ranging from a single shelf to a full suite."
"It is expensive in small environments, which could be better. The reason is the four terabyte minimum. A one terabyte minimum would be better."
"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."
"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."
"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, especially with NetApp Ultra Storage."
"The solution's pricing is on the expensive side."
"It is not bad. It is like everything else. Pricing has gone up quite over the last couple of years, but everybody's pricing has gone up. For what they deliver, it is right in line with what everybody else has."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
33%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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
 

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 CloudFS and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.