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N-able Cove Data Protection vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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

N-able Cove Data Protection
Ranking in Cloud Backup
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (29th), SaaS Backup (8th), MSP Backup (2nd)
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Ranking in Cloud Backup
10th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Storage (1st), Public Cloud Storage Services (5th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Backup category, the mindshare of N-able Cove Data Protection is 2.6%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Backup
 

Featured Reviews

Jack Henson - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows us to back up workstations and servers, and saved us time when checking endpoints and the viability of backups
I have some issues with the agent failing on workstations. I've had to completely uninstall several of them, delete everything, and start over to get them to work. That's been the biggest source of my problems recently. The problem is that when we delete one, we lose the backup. Consequently, it means we're without a backup unless we have a local copy. When we delete the agent, there's the problem of how to go back and restore it. I haven't had to deal with it yet, because I haven't had a failure that occurred while I was doing that. I had a workstation that started failing, and we couldn't get the services to run. I don't know what caused it. I had to reinstall the agent, which didn't work. I had to go into the machine and delete everything and load another agent onto it. Once I did that, I was able to make it work, but 90% of the time I never have an issue. During the other 10% of the time when I have a problem, it's a mess. The ability to recover to a different workstation or a different data point is a little bit clumsy. It could use some work.
Madhusudan Srinivasmurthy - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves us a lot of time, and the administration is simpler
NetApp's Integration with AWS has helped us because we had a tough time transferring data when we used an ONTAP competitor as our storage partner. They don't have integration with AWS tools, so we had to figure it out on our own. ONTAP has built-in integration and allows us to replicate a copy to our second data center. Everything is in one channel. It's possible without the technology, but it's more time-consuming. NetApp saves us a lot of time, and the administration is simpler.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is simple to use and manage. The customers have access to verify the backups."
"The most valuables feature is the alerts and monitoring that catches the failed backups."
"The initial setup of N-able Cove Data Protection was very easy."
"The monitoring makes it very easy to check whether a backup has gone bad."
"The ability to back up, restore, and do different types of testing for the preventative maintenance has really increased our importance to these clients because they see the value in how fast we can get them back up and running. We're saving them money in that way."
"The most valuable feature of N-able Cove Data Protection is its ease of use."
"It's extremely important that Cove provides cloud-based data protection with backup, disaster recovery, and archiving. That is a necessity for my insurance. As an IT company, my insurance would cost more if my backups were not offsite and off-network."
"It's their cloud, it's their storage. I don't have to buy a space on Amazon or Google's cloud and then use their software to push it. That works well for me. This way, I don't have to worry about another option or the opportunity that there might be a credential leak."
"Snapshots are one valuable feature within ONTAP, but CVO's appeal is that it acts just like the on-prem solution. It's the same OS, but in the cloud. We can continue to use ONTAP as we did on-premise."
"The solution’s Snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are the best thing since sliced bread. Rollback is super easy. It's just simple, and it works. It's very efficient."
"The ability to see things going back and forth has been quite useful."
"The FlexClones make all the management easier for us."
"Lastly, the API and web services are fairly good. That is an important feature too. We write some code to do different things. We have code that runs to make sure that everything is being backed up as we say it is and we try to also detect places where we may have missed a backup."
"The feature which I like the most is that it has the capabilities that the traditional storage system offers. It provides all the functionality. The deduplication and compression work exactly like ONTAP's traditional storage. So people who have experience with that find it very easy to manage."
"Its features help us to have a backup of our volumes using the native technology of NetApp ONTAP. That way, we don't have to invest in other solutions for our backup requirement. Also, it helps us to replicate the data to another geographic location so that helps us to save on the costs of backup products."
"ONTAP's snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are pretty useful in recovering your data from a time in a snapshot. That's pretty useful for when you have an event where a disaster struck and then you need to recover all your data. It's pretty helpful and pretty fast in those terms."
 

Cons

"For the MSP side, they could have more of a "security user" that can go in and only see certain clients. If you give somebody access as a technician, they can see all the clients."
"There could be a possibility to create a local NAS backup for infrastructure."
"The recovery side, the restore side, could be a little more optimized."
"An area for improvement that would really work out well would be if there were a little bit more of an elegant handshake relationship between SolarWinds RMM and the PCs that are being backed up, to advise regarding "up" status... Since RMM is an agent that feeds back that a machine is alive and on, I don't see any reason why they can't either tap into that one feature or build the same exact polling within the backup agent, to update right away and say the system is online or offline."
"A feature I'd like to see would be a more customizable admin console."
"This solution is not very good for image restores, mainly just files. The solution also does not allow you to enable or disable backups. Sometimes, our users will connect via mobile device and it will use their data to perform the backup. If they were able to enable and disable the backup, they would not have this issue."
"There aren’t any challenges. Regarding the additional features, Cove is limited to disaster recovery with Azure. It would be great to make disaster recovery compatible with AWS."
"We would like to have better reporting."
"The support is good in general but the initial, front-line support could be improved. Because I have already been using the product for so long, when I call support I would rather talk to somebody who is a little bit more advanced or senior, rather than talking to the first-level support. Usually, it takes some time to reach out to their senior support."
"Cloud Volumes ONTAP's interface could use an overhaul. Sometimes you have to dig around in Cloud Manager a little bit to find certain things. The layout could be more intuitive."
"The automated deployment was a bit complex using the public APIs. When we had to deploy Cloud Volumes ONTAP on a regular basis using automation, It could be a bit of a challenge."
"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 only issue we had lately was that outside our VPC we could not reach the virtual IP, the floating IP. I heard that they have fixed that..."
"We have customers that are still using IBM mainframes and that very old SNA architecture from IBM. There are questions about how you interconnect the data on the mainframe side... But I don't know if it's worth it for NetApp to invest in developing products to include mainframes for a few customers."
"The integration wizard requires a bit of streamlining. There are small things that misconfigure or repeat the deployment that will create errors, specifically in Azure."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"N-able Cove Data Protection is an averagely-priced product."
"The pricing is very competitive and it's well worth the price."
"I believe that the price is very reasonable in comparison to other options. It is cheaper than both Redstor and Acronis and, since we are now using our own on-premise cloud, there is absolutely no comparison since we have unlimited storage rather than paying per gigabyte used for their onsite storage. We are currently able to backup fifty computers for the same price that we use to backup five computers."
"The price isn't extreme, but I'd love to pay less."
"The cost is around ten dollars per workstation a month and that includes a certain amount of data."
"The pricing is affordable. N-able Cove Data Protection has a direct-to-cloud architecture, but it also allows saving backups locally without extra storage costs."
"The pricing, for now, is good. The package that they gave us recently is pretty good. It depends on how many clients you have, and you pay for certain terabytes per license. These terabytes, if not used, are pooled together."
"There is no per node cost, at least not the way I am doing it. I am on bulk. New customers can be set up on a trial, where they can get things all squared away, then they can switch over to being a billed customer."
"If we wanted to use the AWS solution, we would have to manage two or three different platforms and pay more money than what we should have to pay, as some of the features don't even exist. If we wanted to, we could use AWS cloning, but it is useless because it uses more space, is more expensive, and takes more time."
"Overall, the pricing of NetApp is aggressive and the pricing becomes more aggressive as the amount of data increases. The cost for a given volume of data that you are storing becomes lower. The greater the volume of data, the cheaper the license."
"The AWS consumer-based pricing model makes it easy for developers to use their credit cards to spin up virtual servers immediately."
"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."
"It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees."
"I know the licensing is a bit on the high-end. That's when we had to downsize our MetroCluster disks and just migrate to disks that were half used. We migrated into those just to reduce maintenance costs."
"Cost is a big factor, because a lot of companies can't afford enterprise grade equipment all the time. They skimp where they can. I would recommend that they improve the cost."
"The pricing of this solution is definitely higher than what the typical Azure Files and AWS solutions charge, but given the features and the stability NetApp has provided, we are okay with it. We are not complaining about the pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
45%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about N-able Backup?
The initial setup of N-able Cove Data Protection was very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for N-able Backup?
In terms of pricing, N-able Cove Data Protection is neither cheap nor expensive compared to other competitors.
What needs improvement with N-able Backup?
N-able Cove Data Protection does not provide a lot of SaaS backup products, which is an area they can improve. Additionally, there are some limitations on the storage side, where I cannot have a lo...
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.
 

Also Known As

N-able Backup, SolarWinds Backup, SolarWinds MSP Backup & Recovery, SolarWinds MSP Backup
ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Computer Depot, Leading Edge Computers, IT Logic Australia
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
Find out what your peers are saying about N-able Cove Data Protection vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.