Microsoft Azure File Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Download the complete report

Helped 846,617 peers since 2012

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

Microsoft Azure File Storage

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

5th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Storage (1st), Cloud Backup (9th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure File Storage is 10.8%, down from 13.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 6.9%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Public Cloud Storage Services

Featured Reviews

PrashanthR

Lead Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

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…

Read full review

Pramod-Talekar

Sr Service Engineer at Evolent Health

Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution

The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Azure File Storage gives us easy access to cloud solutions at the storage level."

"It is a good service for file storage."

"The biggest advantage of Azure File Storage vis-à-vis other public cloud storage providers, and why we recommend Azure first and foremost, is that many of our customers have partnerships with Microsoft and so they have access to better cloud economics. Compared to AWS, we have found that (from a customer perspective) Azure is much more competitive."

"It is very easy to use SSTP and some traditional code to move the data into a database because we can easily use the permissions and we don't have any integration or conversion issues."

"It's a scalable solution."

"I recommend Microsoft Azure File Storage for medium and above-sized companies."

"The most valuable aspect of Azure File Storage is that all the features are available in one place."

"The profile management option is another valuable feature that allows us to manage the profiles and secure them."

More Microsoft Azure File Storage pros

"The ease of use in terms of how the product works is valuable. We are able to work with it and deploy the storage that we need."

"If you have a larger amount of data than normal in cloud, it is easy to provision and maintain. Waiting for the delivery of the controller, the configuration of enclosures, etc., all this stuff is eliminated compared to using on-premise."

"The most valuable feature is its exceptional performance and storage efficiency."

"CVO gives us the ability to access data as quickly as possible, which is critical because of the mission set we handle. Some things cannot wait. For example, we tried having the data in the cloud itself, but it took too long for us to retrieve it from cold or deep storage. If we have it ONTAP or on-prem, it's so much easier to pull it within minutes."

"One thing I have noticed is that it is very simple to move the data where we need to move it, delete it, or archive it if we need to archive it to StorageGRID."

"Multiprotocol is the most valuable because Amazon was not able to provide us with access to the same data from Linux and from Windows clients. That was our value proposition for CVO, Cloud Volumes ONTAP."

"The main benefit we get from this product is the ability to deploy it anywhere we want, whether that's on-prem, a remote physical location, or in the cloud. It doesn't matter from an operational perspective where it is. The command line and operating system are the same."

"The fast recovery time objective with the ability to bring the environment back to production in case something happens."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"Microsoft Azure File Storage needs more integrations. In the future, I also want to see GRC added to the portal. If you enroll or sign up for Azure services, your country may not have GRC available in the portal, so you may have to choose a strange country, for example, Kenya, to activate credit."

"The pricing and technical support could be better."

"The upload speed has room for improvement."

"The initial setup is complex. Unless you have done it a few times it, it is going to be hard."

"The tool needs to add more controls and enhance Power BI. For instance, I'm just suggesting the visualization layer. Power BI can increase visualization as much as possible, and the product can add more controls to the data flows."

"Lacks integration with other platforms."

"They should make the solution more user-friendly."

"In our use cases, we see the weakness in mobile internet connectivity."

More Microsoft Azure File Storage cons

"The DR has room for improvement. For example, we now have NetApp in Western Europe and we would like to back up the information to another region. It's impossible. We need to bring up an additional NetApp in that other region and create a Cloud Manager automation to copy the data... I would prefer it to be a more integrated solution like it was in the NetApp solution about a year ago. I would like to see something like AltaVault but in the cloud."

"They definitely need to stay more on top of security vulnerabilities. Our security team is constantly finding Java vulnerabilities and SQL vulnerabilities. Our security team always wants the latest security update, and it takes a while for NetApp to stay up to speed with that. That would be my biggest complaint."

"The product is more restricted with underlying cloud."

"One difficulty is that it has no SAP HANA certification. The asset performance restrictions create challenges with the infrastructure underneath: The disks and stuff like that often have lower latencies than SAP HANA itself has to have."

"If they could include clustering together multiple physical Cloud Volumes ONTAP devices as an option, that could be helpful."

"In the next release, I would like to see more options on the dashboard."

"When it comes to support provided by NetApp, they have room for improvement. Every time we go through their support, we end up answering the same routine questions."

"Not a perfect ten because it's not very efficient with upgrades and management."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is usually dependent on your storage requirements. Overall, I believe Microsoft Azure File Storage's price is reasonable."

"I think the pricing of the product can be reduced."

"Microsoft Azure File Storage has a reasonable price."

"For one terabyte of data, we are spending about 150 Euro every month."

"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being the most expensive. It's not cheap."

"The pricing could be more flexible."

"The solution is a bit pricey compared to AWS and Google."

"Microsoft Azure File Storage is expensive."

More Microsoft Azure File Storage pricing and cost advice

"Compared to other storage vendors, NetApp, is not always able to compete with their pricing. Yet, we acknowledge the ease of use ONTAP brings with the AWS integration."

"The pricing could be improved. It is a good product, but it is very expensive for me."

"It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees."

"Once we deploy the pay as you go model, we cannot convert this product as a BYOL model. This is a concern that we have."

"If a customer is only using, say, less than 10 terabytes, I don't think CVO would be a good option. A customer using at least 100 or 200 terabytes should get a reasonable price from NetApp."

"Our licensing is based on a yearly subscription. That is an additional cost, but because of the storage efficiencies that the NetApp gives, even with the additional cost of the NetApp license, you still end up saving money versus straight Azure native for storage. It's definitely worth it."

"Some flexibility around the licensing model would help. The product is licensed based on capacity. Basically, the largest capacity license that you can buy is 368 terabytes. At this point, NetApp is addressing some people's concerns around this."

"They give us a good price for CVO licenses. It is one of the reasons that we went with the product."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Public Cloud Storage Services solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

52%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about Microsoft Azure File Storage?

The product is a reliable cloud solution.

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.

What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.

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

The solution's pricing is reasonable.

What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

NetApp's support could improve.

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Comparisons

Compared 48% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 20% of the time

Wasabi vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon S3 Glacier vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 6% of the time

More Microsoft Azure File Storage Competitors

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 16% of the time

Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 14% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 10% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 7% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Azure File Storage

Download Microsoft Azure File Storage product report

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

MS Azure File Storage

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

Overview

Fully managed file shares that use the standard SMB 3.0 protocol

Key scenarios:

Share data across on-premises and cloud servers
Migrate file share-based applications to the cloud with no code changes
Integrate modern applications with File storage
Simplify hosting for high availability workload data

Microsoft

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is an efficient storage management solution for managing and storing data in the cloud. It offers seamless integration with cloud providers, advanced data replication capabilities, and high data protection. With reliable performance, it is ideal for industries like healthcare and finance.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Talon, Camden

1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP