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Amazon FSx vs Azure NetApp Files comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Amazon FSx
Ranking in Cloud Storage
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (5th), File and Object Storage (15th)
Azure NetApp Files
Ranking in Cloud Storage
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (8th), Public Cloud Storage Services (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Amazon FSx is 4.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 7.0%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Azure NetApp Files7.0%
Amazon FSx4.7%
Other88.3%
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Shared storage capabilities provide enterprise value with good reliability
Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS. The auto-scaling feature should be improved, as it currently includes downtime. I need to manually increase the storage, which is not ideal. Integrating FSx with Windows Server is challenging; it's a long process involving Active Directory (AD) setup and synchronization.
AjayKumar13 - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast, reliable, and helps meet our SLAs
The most valuable feature is that the sixty-terabyte database snapshot can be done in less than two to three minutes. It is faster. It is quicker. It is reliable. You don't need to take the snapshot. Snapshots are compressed. It doesn't take storage from the back end. It takes three minutes to do sixty terabytes of the database. You don't have to go to the tape and store it outside, which takes hours and hours. It also uses a lot less of the storage. It's very easy to restore or copy the snapshots to other locations for disaster recovery. There are a lot of benefits. In terms of the snapshot's rapid restore capability, we were testing the load of performance testing, and we needed to rebuild the DR site. If I need to rebuild the DR for a standby database, it takes sixty terabytes to copy onto the another site, which will take at least a day. Now, the snapshot is easy. We just copy the snapshots, and then we do the cross-region application. The snapshots came along with that, and that's where we were able to build the DR site within a few hours rather than days. All together, instead of a four-day process, instead of a day.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I rate the stability of Amazon FSx ten out of ten."
"We used it for disaster recovery perspective behind a number of resources, like batch services and RDS."
"The shared storage capability is highly valuable."
"FSx operates as an independent service, not tied to any server, which eliminates dependencies between applications for storage."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Amazon FSx a ten."
"Its security and ease of use are most valuable."
"Azure NetApp Files has been stable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its flexibility."
"The most valuable feature is that the sixty-terabyte database snapshot can be done in less than two to three minutes."
"The availability is good, meaning downtime or network issues rarely occur. The system also offers flexibility, allowing for increases in data volume, IOPS, and other capabilities without requiring downtime, which is a strong point. Based on the money spent, we can get performance improvements and high availability."
"The critical features of this solution are SnapMirror for replication, data protection, and SnapLock."
"It is faster. It is quicker. It is reliable."
"I like the SnapMirror feature in Azure NetApp Files. It helps me create backups with snapshots and makes data recovery and compression."
 

Cons

"Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS."
"I've been facing a challenge when doing a failover from FSx side. AWS console does not refresh within a half hour."
"A direct FTP feature would be beneficial instead of relying on transmission services."
"Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS."
"From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for higher IOPS."
"The pricing definitely needs to be improved."
"Reserved Instances for Azure NetApp Files would improve more use cases, making them more valuable in Azure as the cost would be reduced."
"The initial setup was not straightforward. We had help from the NetApp team."
"The deployment process is somewhat complex compared to other storage solutions."
"I have a hunch that storage could be now the most expensive portion of our monthly bill. So I can imagine that, not this year, but next year we will be talking about looking deeper into ways how we can optimize the cost."
"I don’t like the solution’s configuration and support."
"Its pricing can be better."
"We would like to have backup functionality built-in so that we don't run into the issue where the replication process makes a copy of the corrupted data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The lowest price I have paid is $370 or $380 per month, while the highest can exceed $3,000 per month."
"Our pricing has not been determined because we are still waiting on additional features."
"The licensing fees for this solution vary, ranging from a single shelf to a full suite."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"Its price is double the price of the premium disks, which is the main reason why customers don't go for this solution in the end."
"It is expensive in small environments, which could be better. The reason is the four terabyte minimum. A one terabyte minimum would be better."
"NetApp is a premium offering, so it's not a cheap product, but it is well-priced. It combines a couple of properties which customers like us are willing to pay. Could it be cheaper? Yes, but if you combine fully supported, fully managed, easily provisioned, scalable, and quick all in one product, it's a good selling point. You can ask a lot of money for all these. If you have a use case like we do, it's a perfect match. It's like the Porsche of storage solutions in the cloud. It is totally worth the cost."
"The pricing depends on your scaling and consumption."
"The performance has improved by about 30 percent."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Retailer
9%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon FSx?
From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for higher IOPS. Sometimes we go with Weka or other solutions due to this need, so it sho...
What is your primary use case for Amazon FSx?
Our customers mainly use Amazon FSx for high-performance computing. Our customers are mainly in the Life Science and Pharma industries. The majority of people are looking at S3 as their destination...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon FSx?
There is an ongoing project where my customers are exploring the FSx solution, but not yet for AI-driven projects; they plan to in the future. For those who want to use Amazon FSx, I recommend it a...
How does Azure NetApp Files compare to NetApp ONTAP?
Azure NetApp Files is a Microsoft Azure file storage service built on NetApp technology. The platform combines the file capabilities of Azure and NetApp to move critical file-based applications to ...
What do you like most about Azure NetApp Files?
The availability is good, meaning downtime or network issues rarely occur. The system also offers flexibility, allowing for increases in data volume, IOPS, and other capabilities without requiring ...
 

Also Known As

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre
NetApp ANF, ANF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Neiman Marcus, T Mobile, Docxellent, Matrix, Lyell
SAP, Restaurant Magic
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon FSx vs. Azure NetApp Files and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.