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Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 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

Amazon S3
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Storage (1st), Cloud Backup (9th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 is 11.5%, down from 14.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 6.9%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

Vagner Martins - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced data security with seamless integration and static website capabilities
S3 is a great service offering numerous possibilities. It allows for storing objects and files of various types. I appreciate its capability to create static websites and integrate with services like CloudFront, EC2, and DynamoDB. Despite being focused on security, I leverage features such as cryptography and integration with CloudTrail.
Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution
The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Amazon S3 is easy to use and it is beneficial to use the CLI to make the backups. Since I use the CLI I do not have to do it on a web portal which is a big advantage because everything can be automatized. Automation can be done very well in Amazon S3."
"S3 is a great service offering numerous possibilities."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon S3 is its flexibility as a solution to suit many different use cases."
"Amazon S3 is easily scalable and provides fantastic performance, especially in comparison to other cloud solutions like OCI and Azure."
"Amazon S3 is reliable."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon S3 is the data transfer acceleration because it can enable fast, easy, and secure data transfer."
"An important feature of the Amazon S3's system is that it offers encryption while the files are at rest. This is crucial in ensuring the security of the files being restored and addressing potential security risks. That's what I would emphasize."
"We find the archival capabilities of this solution quite valuable, because we can have set policies of exactly when, and what to archive."
"The ability for our users to restore data from the Snapshots is very valuable."
"In terms of administration, the portal which provides the dashboard view is an excellent tool for operations. It gives you volume divisions, usage rates, which division is using how much data, and more. The operations portal is fantastic for the support team."
"We use the mirroring to mirror our volumes to our DR location. We also create snapshots for backups. Snapshots will create a specified snapshot to be able to do a DR test without disrupting our standard mirrors. That means we can create a point-in-time snapshot, then use the ability of FlexClones to make a writeable volume to test with, and then blow it away after the DR test."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of file storage."
"CVO gives us the ability to access data as quickly as possible, which is critical because of the mission set we handle. Some things cannot wait. For example, we tried having the data in the cloud itself, but it took too long for us to retrieve it from cold or deep storage. If we have it ONTAP or on-prem, it's so much easier to pull it within minutes."
"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."
"It gives a solution for storage one place to go across everything. So, the customer is very familiar with NetApp on-prem. It allows them to gain access to the file piece. It helps them with the training aspect of it, so they don't have to relearn something new. They already know this product. They just have to learn some widgets or what it's like in the cloud to operate and deploy it in different ways."
"Its functionality and technical support are adequate to help prevent failure due to errors."
 

Cons

"I would like there to be more support without needing to use Transfer Family."
"I would also like S3 to have the ability to do dynamic websites without the need to do reconfigurations outside of S3. You should be able to switch on dynamic websites in S3, and then it works. I shouldn't need to go elsewhere within Amazon Web Services to get a dynamic website to work."
"The stability of the solution has room for improvement."
"One thing would be automatic replication between buckets, some feature like that."
"The query size in Amazon S3 has room for improvement because it's limited. Querying on Amazon S3 is also expensive with Amazon Athena, so that's another area for improvement in the solution."
"We would like some improvement in the cost of storage via this solution, as it currently has a very high price point."
"The support is better than other cloud providers but sometimes it takes a while to have a resolution to our issues."
"It could maybe use more integration."
"Multipathing for iSCSI LUNs is difficult to deal with from the client-side and I'd love to see a single entry point that can be moved around within the cluster to simplify the client configuration."
"I would like to see them improve the perspective of start and search in the panels. This would allow for better visualization of the contents that are captured in the tool."
"We want to be able to add more than six disks in aggregate, but there is a limit of the number of disks in aggregate. In GCP, they provide less by limiting the sixth disk in aggregate. In Azure, the same solution provides 12 disks in an aggregate versus GCP where it is just half that amount. They should bump up the disk in aggregate requirement so we don't have to migrate the aggregate from one to another when the capacities are full."
"One difficulty is that it has no SAP HANA certification. The asset performance restrictions create challenges with the infrastructure underneath: The disks and stuff like that often have lower latencies than SAP HANA itself has to have."
"I'm very happy with the solution, the only thing that needs improvement is the web services API. It could be a little bit more straightforward. That's my only issue with it. It can get pretty complex."
"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."
"I would like this solution to be brought to all the three major players. Right now it's supported only on AWS and Azure. They should bring it to Google as well, because we would like to have flexibility in choosing the underlying cloud storage provider."
"If they could include clustering together multiple physical Cloud Volumes ONTAP devices as an option, that could be helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is pay as you go, and I'm happy with the pricing."
"I know it is very inexpensive compared to other solutions."
"The price of Amazon S3 depends on various variables. However, the price overall is fair."
"With S3 Standard, there is not a charge for deletion of objects."
"The cost varies based on the type of subscription you chose."
"One can manage the price of the tool. The tool is worth the money if we want to store the data in Amazon S3."
"The pricing is good."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is reasonably priced."
"Once we deploy the pay as you go model, we cannot convert this product as a BYOL model. This is a concern that we have."
"We find the pricing to be favorable due to the educational sector we belong to."
"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."
"We purchased the product directly from NetApp."
"They give us a good price for CVO licenses. It is one of the reasons that we went with the product."
"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."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good, but it was a test system, not a real purchase."
"They allow a special price if you are working closely with them. Since we have a lot of NetApp systems, we got some kind of discount. That's something they do for other customers, not just for us. The price was fair. In addition to the licensing fees, you're paying Amazon for your usage..."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
77%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Manufacturing Company
2%
Educational Organization
55%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon S3?
We can easily connect to the AWS resources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon S3?
S3 is a pay-as-you-go service. I pay based on the data volume I am using.
What needs improvement with Amazon S3?
There is a limitation with the data upload size, such as the five terabytes restriction. I would like to see an increase in the data upload limit, similar to DynamoDB, where there is no data limit.
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

S3, Simple Storage Service
ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Airbnb, Thomson Reuters, Zillow, Alert Logic
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 Amazon S3 vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
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