Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

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Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...

Average Rating

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th)

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Average Rating

8.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Storage (1st), Cloud Backup (10th), Public Cloud Storage Services (5th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)

Featured Reviews

Grzegorz Kedziora

General Manager and CTO at SIIT

Apr 29, 2024

The initial setup is straightforward, but the solution has strict compatibility methods

I use this solution to make a few-to-one storage from the internal disk to the servers The integration is not difficult because there is no GUI, but we need to use a PowerShell command. This makes it difficult to monitor and to see the components' statuses. There are strict compatibility methods.…

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Pramod-Talekar

Sr Service Engineer at Evolent Health

Apr 10, 2024

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

The solution helps to keep production data 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…

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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

"Its technical support is excellent."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"The most valuable feature is that there is no single point of failure."

"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."

"The flash ability, in terms of tiering and caching, is amazing"

"The most valuable feature are the caching capabilities using the storage class memory."

"It's mainly about the storage expansion, like in hyper-converged solutions."

"Unified Manager, System Manager, and Cloud Manager are all GUI-based. It's easy for somebody who has not been exposed to this for years to pick it up and work with it."

"If anything happens, their technical support will come onsite and fix it."

"The ability to do a straight SnapMirror from our on-prem to the cloud with no other data transitions is excellent."

"NetApp's XCP Migration Tool... was pretty awesome. It replicated the data faster than any other tool that I've seen. That was a big help."

"I like how you can easily pair on-prem with the cloud and the cloud backup feature. I like the whole integration with on-prem and the cloud for SnapMirror relationships."

"It is much easier to control data since we can run queries across all our platforms with just one solution. Not only that, we can also monitor all the platforms with Active IQ, where we can see all the alerts, messages, and space consumption through a single application. This is regardless if the data is on-prem or AWS. It is much more efficient."

"There is unified storage, which provides flexibility. It is set up perfectly for performance and provisioning. We are able to monitor everything using a separate application. It provides error and critical warnings that allow us to take immediate action through ONTAP. We are able to manage everything, log a case, and follow up with the support team, who can fix it. That is how it is unified."

"It offers ease of use and a comprehensive suite of applications, including features like SnapMirror, SnapVault, and unified snapshot management, all bundled into a single product."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"It is scalable, but only beyond two nodes. If I go for two nodes it's not scalable. I need to build a complete cluster from the beginning if I'm going for two nodes."

"Documentation management could be improved"

"It is difficult to get a hardware compatibility certification for the solution."

"The integration is not difficult because there is no GUI, but we need to use a PowerShell command. This makes it difficult to monitor and to see the components' statuses."

"I think the online documentation needs a lot of work and so do the sizing tools."

"More optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."

"The management tool within this solution could be improved. We would also like to be able to access services like Azure when using this solution."

"NetApp CVO needs to have more exposure and mature further before it will have greater acceptance."

"How it handles erasure coding. I feel it the improvement should be there. Basically, it should be seamless. You don't want to have an underlying hardware issue or something, then suddenly there's no reads or writes. Luckily, it's at a replication site, so our main production site is still working and writing to it. But, the replication site has stopped right now while we try to bring that node back. Since we implemented in bare-metal, not in appliance, we had to go back to the original vendor. They didn't send it in time, and we had a hardware memory issue. Then, we had a hard disk issue, which brought the node down physically."

"There is room for improvement with the capacity. There's a very hard limit to how many disks you can have and how much space you can have. That is something they should work to fix, because it's limiting. Right now, the limit is about 360 terabytes or 36 disks."

"The cost needs improvement."

"It would be fantastic if NetApp could offer a solution that's as user-friendly as Google Drive for seamless cloud storage integration."

"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."

"The solution is not stable when using single nodes. This is a problem. NetApp should work on this solution to make it more stable with HA nodes and resolve this issue."

"When it comes to a critical or a read-write-intensive application, it doesn't provide the performance that some applications require, especially for SAP. The SAP HANA database has a write-latency of less than 2 milliseconds and the CVO solution does not fit there. It could be used for other databases, where the requirements are not so demanding, especially when it comes to write-latency."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost-wise the product is one of the more affordable within the category of products."

"The solution is expensive."

"With the data center licensing and everything that is connected to that, this solution is relatively costly."

"Make sure you investigate what your requirements are going to cost you using the native cloud solutions versus what NetApp is going to cost you, to make sure you have a business case to go with NetApp."

"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."

"In addition to the standard licensing fees, there are fees for Azure, the VMs themselves and for data transfer."

"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."

"We purchased the product directly from NetApp."

"Our licensing costs are folded into the hardware purchases and I have never differentiated between the two."

"It is not a cheap solution because we need to pay for the license and pay for Azure resources as well."

"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."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Educational Organization

52%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is best suited for small- to medium-sized organizations. It is easy to create load bal...

What do you like most about Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

Its technical support is excellent.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

The solution is expensive.

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 Cloud Volumes ONTAP should improve its support.

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Product Reports

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

MS Storage Spaces Direct

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

Learn More

Microsoft

NetApp

Overview

Storage Spaces Direct uses industry-standard servers with local-attached drives to create highly available, highly scalable software-defined storage at a fraction of the cost of traditional SAN or NAS arrays. Its converged or hyper-converged architecture radically simplifies procurement and deployment, while features like caching, storage tiers, and erasure coding, together with the latest hardware innovation like RDMA networking and NVMe drives, deliver unrivaled efficiency and performance.

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.

Sample Customers

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt

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 Storage Spaces Direct vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP