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NetApp Cloud Backup vs NetApp SnapCenter comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 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

NetApp Cloud Backup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (10th), Disk Based Backup Systems (4th), Cloud Backup (23rd), Cloud Storage Gateways (5th)
NetApp SnapCenter
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
51st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of NetApp Cloud Backup is 0.2%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp SnapCenter is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Abbasi Poonawala - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplifies our backups with an agentless backup manager, but needs better integration with in-house applications
One area that can be improved is around how we define the different KPIs. In particular, the business KPIs. I have my own in-house application for the business KPIs, so for example, with our policies around retention, which is a period of seven years, I have to read these parameters from other applications and I need them to integrate well. NetApp Cloud Backup Manager should help to get this integrated seamlessly with other applications, meaning that it will populate the data around the different parameters. These parameters could be things like the retention period, the backup schedule, or anything. It might be an ITSM ticket, where it's a workflow that is triggered somewhere, and the ITSM ticket has been created for a particular environment like my development environment, an INT environment, or a UAT environment. This kind of process needs to integrate well with my own application, and there are some challenges. For example, if it allows for consuming of RESTful APIs, that's how we will usually integrate, but there are certain challenges when it comes to integrating with our own application around KPIs, whether it's business KPIs or technical KPIs. What I want is to populate that data from my own applications. So we have have the headroom in the KPI, and we have the throughput, the volumes, the transactions per second, etc., which are all defined. And these are the global parameters. They affect all the lines of business. It's a central application that is consumed by most of the lines of business and it's all around the KPIs. Earlier, it used to be based on Quest Foglight, which is an application that was taken up and customized. It was made in-house as a core service, and used as a core building block. But our use of Quest Foglight has become a bit outdated. There is no more support available, and it's been there as a kind of legacy application for more than ten years now in the organization. And now it get down to the question: Is this an investment or will we need to divest ourselves of it? So there has to be an option to remediate it out. In that case, one possibility is to integrate the existing application and it gets completely decommissioned. Here it would help if there were some better ways of defining or handling the KPIs in the Cloud Manager, so that most of the parameters are not defined directly by me. Those will be the global parameters that are defined across all the lines of business. There are some integration challenges when it comes to this, and I've spoken to the support team who say they have the REST APIs, but the integration still isn't going as smooth as it could be. Most of the time, when things aren't working out, we need dedicated engineers to be put in for the entire integration. And then it becomes more of a challenge on top of everything. So if the Cloud Manager isn't being fed all the kinds of parameters from the backup strategy around the ITSM and incident tickets, or backup schedules, or anything related to the backup policies, then it takes a while. Ideally, I would want it to be read directly from our in-house applications. And this is more to do with our kind of product processes; that is, it's not our own choice to decide. The risk management team has mandated this as part of the compliance, that we have to strictly enforce the KPIs, the headroom, and the rest of the global parameters which are defined for the different lines of business. So if my retention period changes from seven years to, let's say, 10 years or 15 years, then those rules have to be strictly enforced. Ultimately, we would like better support for ITSM. The ITSM tools like ServiceNow or BMC Remedy are already adding multiple new features, so they have to be upgraded over a period of time, and that means NetApp has to provision for that and factor it in. Some of the AI-based capabilities are there now, and those things have to be incorporated somehow. One last thing is that NetApp could provide better flash storage. Since they're already on block storage and are doing well in that segment, it makes sense that they will have to step up when it comes to flash array storage and so on. I have been evaluating NetApp's flash array storage solutions versus some others like Toshiba's flash array and Fujitsu's storage array, which are quite cost-effective.
Mir Gulzar Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates well with various applications , provides a cloning feature for creating snapshots or clones of volume and a centralized command
It is basically centralized command control software. When the users visualize the workflow of the backup, the management and the customer storage administrator know the ins and outs of the backup and recovery. They can make the strategy for their backup and recovery and the certainty of their backups and restore. Strategic planning: Also, it is easy to make a strategy when you have visualized the inflow and outflow of the backup and recovery. With the CLI or native way, without any UI or management tool, you might not be able to create any strategy at all. This is especially important when you have multiple storage systems inside your data center or organization. You need a tool that connects and visualizes the workflow of the backup and recovery from all the storage systems and NetApp storage systems installed within the organization. It is very important when you have multiple storage systems, and you need to manage your backup and recovery workflow. Ease of Management: Unlike other storage vendors, NetApp has its own product called SnapCenter. Other vendors need to acquire third-party software or integrate with other software to manage storage systems. NetApp has its own solution, which is SnapCenter. NetApp's SnapCenter gels well with their storage systems and products. Ease of management is already there. It's a fine software with easy installation, management, and understanding. It's not a complicated software to understand.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"NetApp Cloud Backup performance is good and they have beneficial technology."
"I rate the scalability a ten out of ten...It has a great impact on our business because we have the infrastructure deployed globally on four continents around the world."
"Scalability is very good."
"One feature that works well for us is that the Cloud Manager is a completely agentless solution. There's a similar dashboard on both the versions for on-premises and the cloud, and with reference to the Cloud Manager, it's a little faster because there's nothing to be installed as such. Being agentless, it doesn't require any agent to be deployed on the targets where the backups are triggered."
"The support from NetApp is very good, and I would rate it as ten points."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"It's a centralized, easy-to-use solution empowering RBAC management, monitoring, notifications, extensive logging, and backup schedules for standalone as well as groups of the same types of environments. The cloning capabilities accelerate development."
"Restoring and cloning are easy to do."
"Being able to add everything in as resource groups is a valuable feature... Having all the SQL servers put into specific buckets, based on their year of release - 2008, 2012, 2014 - allows us to get almost immediate backups that are easily seen and reported on."
"The central pane view is the most valuable feature. You have one console where you can monitor all your jobs, as opposed to going to different vCenters."
"The product’s most valuable feature is cloning."
"The backup features are the most valuable because they allow the DBAs to replace SnapManager for Oracle (SMO), which is going away, and to do cloning as well. We can also clone to different servers and have the actual backup clone mounted on different servers. And we can split easily too."
 

Cons

"One area that can be improved is around how we define the different KPIs. In particular, the business KPIs. I have my own in-house application for the business KPIs, so for example, with our policies around retention, which is a period of seven years, I have to read these parameters from other applications and I need them to integrate well."
"NetApp has a nasty way of dealing with the license for the product's on-premises virtual NetApp appliance that you need in your whole architecture, and it is not directly linked to NetApp Cloud Backup."
"Integration and reporting could be improved."
"NetApp Cloud Backup could improve by being easier to use. Veeam solution is easier to use."
"The compatibility with other manufacturers, like Oracle and Hyper-V, could be improved. I would like to see it be more compatible with other software."
"The product lags in terms of availability."
"We have hundreds of servers and systems and hundreds of customers and they're separated in a multi-tenancy way in NetApp SVM. Right now, the problem is that it always scan all SVMs. If I backup Customer A, it scans all SVMs, or tries to scan all SVMs, if there is a backup relationship on the storage. But it doesn't have the permissions, so we run into timeouts or the backup just takes too long. They're fixing that in the upcoming release..."
"The interface usability needs improvement. It should be more user-friendly and easier for customers to use."
"The Microsoft environment is its biggest disadvantage due to the central management of all the actions. Because the SnapCenter server is where we deploy everything, it also affects the Microsoft environment, which can cause many difficulties when resolving issues like Windows update problems."
"I'm waiting for SnapCenter for hybrid solutions. Right now, we only have SnapManager for hybrid. I need agents for that. People are looking to install SnapCenter in a SQL environment, but where they're running SQL on Hyper-V and using virtual files. Currently, we don't have support for hybrid."
"I have an issue with SnapCenter because sometimes a VM cannot be backed up... The way SnapCenter works is that it makes a backup of all the VMs and then it removes all the old backups. If one VM cannot be backed up for some reason, it has already created a new backup for all the VMs but it cannot remove the old backups. It ends up creating so many backups in VMware and it will cause a performance problem if the condition is not fixed."
"Some of the minor functionalities from SnapManager did not transfer over to SnapCenter. These should be added in future releases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our usage depends on the number of licenses we have. On the cloud, it's a pay-to-use kind of model which suits our needs well. Once we have the Cloud Manager installed, the licensing process is okay, regardless of whether we're running backups in the cloud or on-premises. Sometimes, we have to restrict the number of users as per the contractual agreement and in this case we simply cut down on the licensing."
"Cost could be lower."
"If one is not cost-effective and ten is a highly cost-effective product, I rate the tool as a three. The tool is not so cheap."
"NetApp Cloud Backup has a subscription-based model and it is paid annually."
"The license for SnapCenter was included with the storage array."
"We see a financial value with SnapCenter because we don't have to license Commvault, which is pretty expensive."
"The licensing is well-designed because it's already included in some packages with NetApp storage. Therefore, for most customers, it's okay as the SnapCenter license is already included in some NetApp bundles."
"Pricing is very good because if you already have NepApp controllers, then it's included."
"The product is inexpensive."
"It comes free with the amount of equipment we purchase from NetApp. In terms of pricing, zero is my favorite number."
"It's free. The license is included with other NetApp products."
"We have a site license, so it comes with the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What's the 3-2-1 data protection that NetApp Cloud Backup offers?
Hi, the 3-2-1 data protection from this product is related to a backup strategy with the same name. I'm assuming you don't know about it so I'll tell you in a few words. In its essence, this backup...
Is NetApp Cloud Backup secure for backup?
I've just started using NetApp Cloud Backup but my initial reason behind choosing it in the first place is that they advertise their high-security approach. So basically, they give you ransomware p...
Is NetApp Cloud Backup expensive in your opinion?
It depends on how much exactly you count as expensive. For me, NetApp Cloud Backup isn't too expensive. I say that based on the services it provides and on the way it provides them. I think it's im...
What do you like most about NetApp SnapCenter?
Most banks and financial institutions use the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp SnapCenter?
The product should be free because it is just software to administrate systems purchased from NetApp, which are already expensive.
What needs improvement with NetApp SnapCenter?
The interface usability needs improvement. It should be more user-friendly and easier for customers to use.
 

Also Known As

No data available
SnapCenter
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
All for One Steeb AG, Accenture
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp Cloud Backup vs. NetApp SnapCenter and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,396 professionals have used our research since 2012.