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Azure Data Lake Storage vs Panzura CloudFS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 30, 2025

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
1.0
Azure Data Lake Storage reduces costs, enhances processing speed, and improves data management, analytics, and integration for better decision-making.
Sentiment score
5.1
Organizations experienced enhanced resilience, doubled performance, and productivity gains by adopting Panzura CloudFS, solving past file storage issues.
Previously, we had latency issues with syncing up files between offices. Files were not locked, leading to overwrites which cost us literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost time and revenue.
CIO at Mead and Hunt, Inc.
We saw the benefits of Panzura CloudFS immediately because our remote offices were able to share files immediately after the product went live.
Information Technology Manager at The Gateway Engineers, Inc.
Panzura CloudFS saves us a significant amount of time frequently.
Technical Expert at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.8
Customers find Azure Data Lake Storage support variable, but good documentation and expert architects enhance overall satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.8
Panzura CloudFS support is praised for quick, expert assistance despite occasional delays, receiving high ratings from users.
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
The support staff and the number of people they have on staff right now are truly good.
CIO at Mead and Hunt, Inc.
When we have a priority-one issue, we typically receive a call within 20 to 30 minutes.
I.T. Infrastructure Manager at Thompson Engineering
I would give the support for Panzura CloudFS a ten out of ten because they are responsive and helpful.
Senior Systems Administrator at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Azure Data Lake Storage is highly scalable, though some challenges exist with complex processes and initial migrations for businesses.
Sentiment score
6.8
Panzura CloudFS is highly scalable, effortlessly supports many users across locations, with seamless deployment and dedicated support.
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 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
Scalability is good, and the system is versatile in accommodating whatever is needed to be stored.
Data Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Unlimited users can access the system without issues.
Technical Expert at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
From our original entry with Panzura CloudFS, we have added an additional seven sites, and deploying those additional nodes was very seamless and did not take any effort.
Senior Vice President, Technology at Halff Associates, Inc.
The latest version, 8.0.2, has better ease of decommissioning filers and bringing new ones online.
I.T. Infrastructure Manager at Thompson Engineering
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Azure Data Lake Storage is highly reliable and stable, with a 99.99% SLA and rare interruptions, ideal for data applications.
Sentiment score
6.1
Panzura CloudFS is highly stable with rare outages and improved reliability, earning high user ratings overall.
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
I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.
CIO at Mead and Hunt, Inc.
We have never had their system crash on us.
Senior Vice President, Technology at Halff Associates, Inc.
There were times with file lock issues between filers, causing various anomalies, but with their ongoing development, these issues have improved.
I.T. Infrastructure Manager at Thompson Engineering
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Data Lake Storage enhances affordability and integration, needing better security, support, and documentation for improved user experience.
Panzura CloudFS needs improvements in performance, compatibility, pricing, dashboard, alerting, licensing, Active Directory reliance, NFS service, and support.
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
When something goes wrong somewhere, there should be a little bit better alerting with issues before they become a big problem.
CIO at Mead and Hunt, Inc.
The GIS data formats, such as a geo database, have been found better kept outside of Panzura CloudFS.
Senior Vice President, Technology at Halff Associates, Inc.
It would have been nice if they had offered them in increments, of 5, 10, 15, or 20 terabytes than having to get a whole chunk of 25 terabytes again for licensing purposes, which is a little costly.
I.T. Infrastructure Manager at Thompson Engineering
 

Setup Cost

Azure Data Lake Storage offers competitive, pay-as-you-go pricing, balancing affordability with comprehensive storage, despite licensing complexities.
Panzura CloudFS pricing is higher than competitors, lacks granular licenses, but offers negotiation flexibility and transparency.
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
It did require us to purchase new hardware, however, that was not overly expensive.
Senior Vice President, Technology at Halff Associates, Inc.
They should consider more attractive pricing for companies of our size.
I.T. Infrastructure Manager at Thompson Engineering
Overall, it is quite costly compared to NetApp and similar solutions.
Technical Expert at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Azure Data Lake Storage provides secure, scalable, cost-effective big data analytics with seamless Microsoft integration and efficient data management.
Panzura CloudFS enhances workflows with high availability, security, and seamless collaboration, reducing storage costs and boosting productivity.
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
It is very reliable and very quick.
CIO at Mead and Hunt, Inc.
It helps us increase network resilience. We have a primary object library stored in the cloud and have Panzura Mirroring which allows us to place data in a secondary cloud for added resiliency.
Senior Vice President, Technology at Halff Associates, Inc.
There is no degradation of speed because these filers have cached the data, and they are constantly swapping metadata and updating with each other, which is a very attractive method of getting us to use these applications.
I.T. Infrastructure Manager at Thompson Engineering
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Data Lake Storage
Ranking in Cloud Storage
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Panzura CloudFS
Ranking in Cloud Storage
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (3rd), NAS (9th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Azure Data Lake Storage is 1.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Panzura CloudFS is 4.0%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Azure Data Lake Storage1.4%
Panzura CloudFS4.0%
Other94.6%
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2767269 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President, Technology at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Has improved analytics workflows through seamless integration and strong data management capabilities
It depends on the tool when it's outside of the Microsoft portfolio as to whether it integrates; it really depends on what you're doing with the other tool. The cost is something that everyone is cost-sensitive about. There was a curious feature that I was interested in; I think it was something in preview, a blob scanning ability, the ability to have a hardware-level querying of the data there. I don't think it worked with Parquet data; I think it mainly worked with plain text data. That's something that I would want to have added, is the ability to scan and query data with Parquet, because currently, that's what you have to use Databricks to do. They make it easy to set up, and their licensing for Azure Data Lake Storage is just pay-as-you-go, so you can get into it quite easily. The devil's in the details, because the cost as you use it can be difficult to forecast because it really depends upon all the other services and how heavily it's being used. There are other features that can catch you, such as a storage security scanner that automatically scans your storage for malware. 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. There are some gotchas with the pricing; you have to be careful. There's not really a way to throttle it either. The premium tier, which they recommend for analytics, can't be switched off once enabled. Similarly, if you start on standard tier, you can never upgrade it; you have to delete it and make a new one. These limitations are quite annoying.
Roger Clark - PeerSpot reviewer
I.T. Infrastructure Manager at Thompson Engineering
Handles file locks effectively enabling seamless remote collaboration in global teams
It has not reduced the data storage cost. We have been trying to come up with a plan internally to archive project data at a certain time frame. However, our data continues to grow, so at the point of 25 terabytes, we had to buy another 25 terabytes license to exceed that threshold. It would have been nice if they had offered them in increments, of 5, 10, 15, or 20 terabytes than having to get a whole chunk of 25 terabytes again for licensing purposes, which is a little costly. It would be nice if Panzura offered data in increments instead of 25 terabytes per license. They have done a pretty good job of development from the point of offering new products. Pricing seems to be high for certain things, such as the audit feature of Panzura Data Services. It would be nice to see who deleted that 100 gig of data out there. They should make the pricing plan more attractive for a company of our size. We have almost 700 employees over the southeast from Texas to Florida and up to Tennessee, so we are a pretty big region.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Data Lake Storage?
The tool's most valuable feature is security access policies.
What needs improvement with Azure Data Lake Storage?
It depends on the tool when it's outside of the Microsoft portfolio as to whether it integrates; it really depends on what you're doing with the other tool. The cost is something that everyone is c...
What are the products that Panzura provides?
Panzura offers four main products: CloudFS, data services, smart apps, and global services. They call this "all-in-one solution" and it's for end-to-end cloud data management. Why is it called that...
What kind of industries does Panzura serve?
Hello, I think businesses from all industries that have their data on a cloud can benefit from Panzura. Especially if you have offices in various locations or your employees are working from home a...
Why was Panzura acquired? Is the acquisition going to cause a change?
I think Panzura may change in a positive direction now that it's been bought by Profile Capital. That's a very big investment company for technology businesses and I think it's an opportunity for ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Panzura Freedom
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Petrofac, Komatsu, HCA Healthcare, Vanguard, Disney, Pokemon, US Department of Justice, Gensler, Fluor, AFRY, Milwaukee Tool, Navy Federal Credit Union, TechTarget
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Data Lake Storage vs. Panzura CloudFS and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.