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Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Azure Data Lake Storage comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
3.7
Amazon EFS offers scalable, cost-effective storage with minimal maintenance, enhancing productivity and benefiting businesses through pay-as-you-go pricing.
Sentiment score
1.0
Azure Data Lake Storage reduces costs, enhances processing speed, and improves data management, analytics, and integration for better decision-making.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.5
Customers find Amazon EFS support reliable, though resolution times may vary based on the complexity and support plan.
Sentiment score
7.7
Azure Data Lake Storage support is generally satisfactory, with varying response times and reliance on documentation and community resources.
While the time to respond was good, the time to resolve was not optimal, as it took more than a week.
Regional Manager at Aspire Lifestyles
Amazon's support model is consistent across services.
AWS Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Training and support depend on the plan you have, with centralized support being very helpful in case issues arise.
Head of Engineering - Data and Machine Learning at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
The support team is very supportive, and most issues are resolved quickly once we get in touch with them.
DevOps Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
A good support experience is marked by the speed of reply and the relevancy of resolution tips.
EPM Practice Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
You can't expect her to know everything about Azure, but she knows who does know, so things can get handled by who knows about the topic the best, and that's usually the best way to handle anything anyway.
Vice President, Technology at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
Amazon EFS offers scalable and cost-effective file storage, but users occasionally face challenges with scalability, latency, and connections.
Sentiment score
7.8
Azure Data Lake Storage is scalable and flexible for enterprises but faces challenges with complex processes and initial migrations.
Its auto-scaling feature is a crucial point, providing high scalability that I would rate at ten out of ten.
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
Elastic File Systems allow me to scale up or down easily.
Data Engineer at Softtech Cloud Technologies
It is very cost-effective, and there's no need for initial charges.
Head of Engineering - Data and Machine Learning at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
If you have a lot of cross-region needs, then you might have to do more work because it doesn't natively store data in various regions; you have to pick a region.
Vice President, Technology at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
For performance and scalability, we have never faced any issues even though we handle at least a TB of data every day without any performance problems.
Solution Architect at Mercedes-Benz AG
For scalability, I rate Data Lake Storage around eight to nine on a scale of one to ten.
DevOps Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Amazon EFS is generally stable, with users praising reliability, though some report minor issues mitigated by strong support.
Sentiment score
8.3
Azure Data Lake Storage is highly reliable, with excellent ratings and stable performance, suitable for data-driven tasks.
Amazon EFS is extremely stable, as it is managed by AWS.
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
While I experienced an EFS mount dropping, it was related to server issues rather than EFS itself.
AWS Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Stability is rated around eight to nine out of ten.
DevOps Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I find the stability of Azure Data Lake Storage to be excellent and would rate it as an eight out of ten.
EPM Practice Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EFS needs improved connectivity, Windows integration, cost transparency, and one-click setup for enhanced user experience and support.
Improving Azure Data Lake Storage includes better APIs, pricing, security, documentation, user-friendliness, AI features, and support services.
Database-type workloads do not run properly on Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) because at the end of the day, it is a network file system and requests must travel from one place to another and then return.
Sr. Technical Account Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Enabling AI-driven or automatic features would be beneficial for new or nontechnical users.
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
In my project, there are challenges related to AWS, such as ensuring proper security measures with IMS code and encryption.
Data Engineer at Softtech Cloud Technologies
Currently, migration is only one-way possible, and it would be beneficial if this aspect could be improved.
DevOps Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Compliance departments and IT departments love that type of feature, so people will blanket enable that, but then that racks up tons of bills because it's reading massive files constantly that should be excluded from that type of scan because it's not a type of file capable of having malware; it's the backend database.
Vice President, Technology at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
With the emergence of AI technology, it would be convenient for storing vector indexes, essential for AI solutions.
Data Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EFS charges based on usage with higher costs compared to S3, making it less budget-friendly.
Azure Data Lake Storage is cost-effective for enterprises, though pricing complexities may require adjustments to compete with AWS.
EFS could cost around $30 to $50 per month for similar usage.
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
Amazon EFS is more costly compared to other storage options available from AWS.
AWS Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Elastic File Systems can be expensive due to the nature of data transfer costs.
Data Engineer at Softtech Cloud Technologies
Both are the cheapest compared to Palantir and everything else.
Solution Architect at Mercedes-Benz AG
The pricing for Data Lake Storage depends on several factors, like the configuration for multiple or single locations and if it uses geo-redundancy storage, which is beneficial but consumes higher costs.
DevOps Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Azure Data Lake Storage is cheaper and provides three options for data storage tiers.
Data Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EFS provides scalable, secure, and flexible storage with fast data access, auto-scaling, and seamless AWS integration for dynamic workloads.
Azure Data Lake Storage offers scalable, secure, and cost-effective data management with integration for analytics and machine learning platforms.
Its ease of integration with other AWS services enhances our infrastructure, while the shared storage access improves reliability and processing continuity for our applications.
AWS Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
They help me process data while maintaining low latency, which is crucial for efficient data processing.
Data Engineer at Softtech Cloud Technologies
The most valuable feature of Amazon EFS is its auto-scaling capability.
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
Data Lake Storage can interact with any other Azure resources, providing seamless integration and connectivity.
DevOps Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Allows for automated configuration of data operations such as deletion and transfer between repositories.
Data Architecture and Engineering Specialist at coprocenva
It's essentially the blob storage but with more features that are analytics focused because usually that's what people are going to do with the Data Lake, which is ingest data for analytics.
Vice President, Technology at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EFS (Elastic File Sy...
Ranking in Cloud Storage
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (11th)
Azure Data Lake Storage
Ranking in Cloud Storage
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is 3.2%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Data Lake Storage is 1.6%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Azure Data Lake Storage1.6%
Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)3.2%
Other95.2%
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

VA
Regional Manager at Aspire Lifestyles
Security features impress while response times need improvement
We use cloud storage security, which is a virus scanner for their infrastructure, as a new addition. Other than that, it focuses on serverless features, such as Lambda and Aurora SQL server databases. CSS cloud storage security, which is offered by AWS, is integrated into our system. It functions as a virus scanner that monitors whenever any incoming file arrives. The AWS service is excellent security-wise, and I have seen some other features besides security, such as automatic scaling that helped us significantly. Regarding integration, it provides us with the benefit that our data is kept within our account only.
Rama Subba Reddy Thavva - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at Mercedes-Benz AG
Unified data lake has supported daily terabyte workloads and delivers secure automotive analytics
I would rate Azure Data Lake Storage around a nine out of ten. To give Azure Data Lake Storage a ten out of ten, they need to optimize the cost. The cost factor is the only thing I would identify for all my use cases, as they are very well equipped in other areas. Even though the cost is reasonable, if they reduce it, we would benefit significantly. Additionally, there is no data lineage and no ontology tools available on Azure Data Lake Storage. I understand it is blob-based, but if they maintain some ontology tools or data cataloging and data lineage, that would be great. However, those features are currently covered under Databricks, so we are not much concerned.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Construction Company
16%
University
14%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise12
 

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 Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?
The product's initial setup phase is easy, as per the configurations.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?
We don't need to purchase it; we are just using it and paying Amazon as per the utilization. We make direct payments to Amazon based on our usage.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Data Lake Storage?
Regarding pricing, I find it reasonable. We did not observe much price difference between AWS and Azure. Both are the cheapest compared to Palantir and everything else.
What needs improvement with Azure Data Lake Storage?
I would rate Azure Data Lake Storage around a nine out of ten. To give Azure Data Lake Storage a ten out of ten, they need to optimize the cost. The cost factor is the only thing I would identify f...
What is your primary use case for Azure Data Lake Storage?
Our primary use cases involve working with automobile use cases for after-sales, end-to-end.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Arcesium, Atlassian, Seeking Alpha, Zend
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Azure Data Lake Storage and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.