NetApp StorageGRID vs SwiftStack [EOL] comparison

NetApp and NVIDIA are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. Additionally, 85% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NVIDIA users who would recommend it.

NetApp StorageGRID

Read 13 NetApp StorageGRID reviews

3,268 Views
2,650 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

SwiftStack [EOL]

Read 8 SwiftStack [EOL] reviews

100% willing to recommend

NetApp StorageGRID

SwiftStack [EOL]

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between NetApp StorageGRID and SwiftStack [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about MinIO, Red Hat, Dell Technologies and others in File and Object Storage.

To learn more, read our detailed File and Object Storage Report (Updated: January 2025).

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File and Object Storage

January 2025

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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 StorageGRID

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

File and Object Storage (7th)

SwiftStack [EOL]

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

Mir Gulzar Ahmed

IT Manager at Synergy Computers

Object-based storage and offers intuitive management tools, making it easy to configure and maintain

The only thing missing is flexibility in configuration to cater to specific customer requirements. Another area of improvement is marketing. NetApp's marketing of StorageGRID isn't optimal. They should present it more effectively, especially in regions like Pakistan. Here, I haven't seen any marketing campaigns from NetApp for StorageGRID or the Solid State Platform (SSP). While StorageGRID is a globally recognized product, I haven't seen any marketing efforts from NetApp in Pakistan. Even competitors are promoting object storage solutions here, but NetApp seems less efficient in selling StorageGRID. There might be one or two customers, but even as a NetApp partner, I'm not aware of any major sales. I've been trained on StorageGRID, and it is a good product. I'm unsure why it hasn't gained traction in Pakistan compared to other countries. So, I just recommend improving the marketing campaigns in Pakistan. I'm pretty confident that if we have one example of successful StorageGRID implementation in Pakistan, other customers will follow suit.

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Scientif48eb

Scientific Information Officer at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

It has helped us with the ability to distribute data to different data centers

* You can bring your own drives, which don't have to be certified. This usually means that they cost significantly more to insert a certified drive with the manufacturer who is selling you your solution. * It is platform independent, so you bring your own hardware. It doesn't matter if you get a Dell EMC, HPE, IBM, etc. Its hardware agnostic capabilities are great. Dell EMC, HPE, and Lenovo are obviously big players, but sometimes they don't have the best prices. You are not tied to any one particular vendor, and it gives you great flexibility as far as pricing is concerned. You can go out, and say, "Give me the most capacity in the smallest number of use spaces." Sometimes that's not the big vendors, it's the small vendors who provide this. * The forward thinking in their cloud solution creates a global namespace across the major public clouds. It allows you to go from on-premise to the cloud seamlessly. They have made it easier to move data between the different cloud vendors and move those flows from on-premise to the cloud, then from the cloud back to on-premise. That freedom that they facilitate is hard to put a price on, because it gives you flexibility. * The metadata search capabilities are something that we look forward to being able to use, though we haven't fully had a chance to get into them. However, in the life sciences area, it could be tremendously beneficial. * Ease of operation: We got it up and running, and it's been solid. We can upgrade the capacity of our drives at any point in time. * The flexibility that the solution provides, both for hardware and on-premise, then to the cloud. That flexibility is great.

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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

"Cost-effective and easy to deploy."

"The ability to get to the StorageGRID from anywhere on my network. The solution is remote. You don't have to be at a physical location."

"It has awesome scalability. We consume it with storage appliance nodes, then we just plug and play as we need more."

"It has improved our operational efficiency through time consumption and logistics by 40 to 50 percent. Everything that had to do with our legacy tape solution has been improved and is now more efficient."

"It has enabled us to save money on storage costs. We removed our tape library."

"It improves our operational efficiency."

"The feature of StorageGRID that I find most valuable for ensuring data durability and protection is its Information Lifecycle Management functionality."

"The most valuable feature is tiering."

More NetApp StorageGRID pros

"The SwiftStack Controller, which is the web UI, provides out of band management. This has been one of the best features of it. It allows us to be able to do upgrades and look at performance metrics. It is a top feature and reason to choose the product."

"It has helped us with the ability to distribute data to different data centers. As part of our DR strategy, we have nodes automatically replicating data from one data center to the other. This makes it easier for us to not have to shift tapes around."

"The scalability is phenomenal. It seems infinite, as long as you put enough storage in place, add enough nodes."

"The performance is good. It is a secondary storage platform designed for archive and backup, so performance for the right use cases is very good. We have been pretty happy in that regard."

"In terms of the hardware flexibility, with SwiftStack not being a hardware company, I literally buy any hardware that's the least expensive, from any vendor... from a flexibility standpoint, I think it's fantastic. I can go to anybody, anywhere - any vendor - and get my hardware."

"The most valuable feature is its versatility. We use 1space and we can use it for almost anything: for our cloud service, for backups of VMs."

"SwiftStack is also quite flexible when it comes to hardware. It depends, of course, on the use case and the kind of hardware you want to buy. But you have quite a bit of choice in hardware. The SwiftStack software itself does not impose anything on you."

"The general consensus on what we've done is that the restores coming back from it have been faster than they were from our prior vendor. Ingest speeds are fine. The restore speeds have improved."

More SwiftStack [EOL] pros

Cons

"The product's continual innovation and enhancement in integration capabilities with other NetApp solutions could be better."

"I would like to see them integrate more with the monitoring platforms. It is a bit difficult to get automated monitoring of the system."

"One key improvement I'd like to see in StorageGRID is enhanced visibility for management purposes."

"Improvements need to be made in the support area."

"We want to move towards Azure in the cloud. Right now, the system is all physical."

"There was a small amount of confusion when working with StorageGRID and Active Directory for access. We had to do things three to four times resulting in our engineer troubleshooting a couple of things. The location of the menu, along with what is inside the menu: configurations, settings, etc., is not straightforward to users. Most users are Windows-based. So, when make logical changes to the menu which are not similar to Windows, users and administrators get confused."

"The price is something that NetApp could improve, as with most companies. NetApp is known for not being the cheapest storage option, which is also valid for StorageGRID. There are other storage options on the market which we are aware of and have done proofs of concept for, but you cannot really compare the list prices because, as a big user of NetApp storages, we have totally different prices than some list prices. Still, the price information we got for other options are almost always less expensive than StorageGRID."

"The only real issue that we have run into is, when we are cloning, we cannot do a thin provision clone, it has to be a full clone."

More NetApp StorageGRID cons

"[One] thing that I've been looking for, for years as an end user and customer, for any object store, including SwiftStack, is some type of automated method for data archiving. Something where you would have a metadata tagging policy engine and a data mover all built into a single system that would automatically be able to take your data off your primary and put it into an object store in a non-proprietary way - which is key."

"At the moment we are using Erasure coding in an 8+4 setting. What would be nice is if, for some standard configurations like 15+4 and 8+4, there were more versatility so we could, for example, select 8+6, or the like."

"The file access needs improvement. The NFS was rolled out as a single service. It needs to be fully integrated into the proxy in a highly available fashion, like the regular proxy access is. I know it's on the roadmap."

"On the controller features, there needs to be a bit more clean up of the user interface. There are a lot of options available on the GUI which might be better organized or compartmentalized. There are times when you are going through the user interface and you have to look around for where the setting may be. A little bit more attention to the organization of the user interface would be helpful."

"It's very well done for what it's supposed to do, and I don't have anything to add, but I would like them to keep it available to the public. SwiftStack is going out of the market. NVIDIA purchased SwiftStack a couple of years ago, and they won't be making it available to the public anymore. Our license is up to March 31st."

"The biggest room for improvement is the maturity of the proxyFS solution. That piece of code is relatively new, so most of our issues have been around the proxyFS."

"They should provide a more concise hardware calculator when you're putting your capacity together."

"I would like to see better client integrations, support for a broader client library. SwiftStack could be a little bit more involved in the client side: Python, Java, C, etc."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We save money on storage costs from this solution since it allows us to have a source of revenue from customers consuming the service."

"The licensing that the S3 service provides them from a FabricPool standpoint is more attractive than the licensing from AWS or Azure."

"The pricing is quite flexible and depends on the specific customer requirements. The initial cost is primarily based on the desired capacity, so it's not a fixed price."

"Creating your own data stores, backups, or storage grids, helps eliminate all these costs of downloading all the data back after you downloaded to the cloud."

"We pay for a license annually."

"Our licensing is in INR it was around 25 lakhs, which is roughly two million."

"While we have been able to save money on storage costs, it could be better."

"The price is attractive."

More NetApp StorageGRID pricing and cost advice

"COST_SAVING; We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."

"The pricing and licensing are capacity-based, so it's hard to put my finger on them, because so many different vendors charge in different ways. We are still saving significantly over any of the other options that we evaluated because we can choose the best hardware at the best price, then put SwiftStack software on it. So, it's hard to complain, even though a part of me goes, "It would be nicer if it were less expensive.""

"The annual support and maintenance costs compared to our old solution for backups had about a two-thirds savings, so about a 60% annual savings on our support and maintenance contract. That savings funded additional expansion for what it was costing us for the support and maintenance contracts on old solution."

"It's pricey for us because we're a nonprofit. I'm not privy to any amount or cost, but I have been told that it is pricey. There are no costs in addition to the licensing fees, and it seems to come with the support."

"All in, with hardware and everything else - and I hate to say a dollar amount because it's been awhile since I computed it - I know I'm under the $300 to $500 per terabyte mark. I call that my "all in" price, which has replications built in and protections built in."

"We find the pricing rather steep. Of course, you get quality for your money, that's absolutely true... [But] when you look at the prices of the licensing and the prices of your hardware, it's quite substantial."

"We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."

"One of their advantages of being a commercial open source platform is, for the scale that they offer, the pricing is pretty competitive."

More SwiftStack [EOL] pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

19%

Computer Software Company

17%

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

Manufacturing Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NetApp StorageGRID?

The management portals have most significantly improved our data retrieval times. They've made it much easier to restore data compared to our previous methods.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp StorageGRID?

I rate the product pricing around five out of ten—it's negotiable, depending on the circumstances.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp StorageGRID?

The product's continual innovation and enhancement in integration capabilities with other NetApp solutions could be better.

See all answers

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Comparisons

Dell ECS vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 25% of the time

MinIO vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 24% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 24% of the time

Scality RING vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 7% of the time

Cloudian HyperStore vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 5% of the time

More NetApp StorageGRID Competitors

MinIO vs SwiftStack [EOL]

Compared 59% of the time

Dell ECS vs SwiftStack [EOL]

Compared 22% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs SwiftStack [EOL]

Compared 19% of the time

More SwiftStack [EOL] Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NetApp StorageGRID

December 2024

Download NetApp StorageGRID product report

Buyer's Guide

SwiftStack [EOL]

December 2024

Download SwiftStack [EOL] product report

Also Known As

Storage GRID

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NetApp

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NVIDIA

Overview

Store and manage unstructured data at scale using NetApp StorageGRID for secure, durable object storage. Place content in the right location, at the right time, and on the right storage tier, optimizing workflows and reducing overall costs for globally distributed rich media.

SwiftStack focuses on handling large-scale unstructured data, providing software-defined storage, and boosting data scalability and durability.

SwiftStack is known for its proficiency in object storage, seamless workflow integration, and robust support for multi-cloud environments. Its architecture ensures high-performance data access, making it ideal for big data analytics, media asset management, and backup tasks. Users value its flexibility, ease of integration, and strong performance. The solution's high availability and efficient storage capabilities contribute to its strengths. However, areas needing improvement include customer support response time, initial setup guidance, and enhanced scalability during high-demand periods.

What are SwiftStack's Most Important Features?

Robust Scalability: Easily manages growing data volumes
Multi-cloud Support: Seamless integration across cloud environments
Seamless Data Management: Efficiently handles large datasets
High Availability: Ensures data is accessible whenever needed
Open-Source: Customizable and flexible with extensive API support

What Benefits Should Users Look For?

Enhanced Performance: Handles demanding workloads efficiently
Easy Integration: Adapts well with existing systems and workflows
High Durability: Ensures long-term data storage and protection
Cost-Effectiveness: Reduces overall storage costs
Scalability: Grows with organizational needs

In industries like media management and big data analytics, SwiftStack’s capabilities in high-performance data access and multi-cloud support facilitate efficient data handling. Backup and archival solutions also benefit from its robust storage and high availability features.

Sample Customers

ASE, DARZ GmbH

Pac-12 Networks, Georgia Institute of Technology, Budd Van Lines

Buyer's Guide

File and Object Storage

January 2025

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