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Azure NetApp Files vs Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] 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

Azure NetApp Files
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (6th), Cloud Storage (11th), Public Cloud Storage Services (12th)
Cisco CloudCenter [EOL]
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

AjayKumar13 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud/Data/Database Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees
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.
ZT
Director Of Technology at a non-profit with 11-50 employees
Useful features for configuring down to ports but extremely expensive
Our company uses the solution's GUI interface to configure and monitor ports. We look at usage and determine if there are any issues.  Cisco is a very qualified company and has been in business for many, many years.  The solution is useful because you can configure all the way down to ports.  You…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its flexibility."
"Using Azure NetApp Files got us out of a really difficult situation quickly, effectively, and at a reasonable cost."
"Using NetApp Files got us out of a really difficult situation quickly, effectively, and at a reasonable cost."
"Azure NetApp Files gives our clients better options."
"It's elastic, so it scales with our demands. We can start small, then with the addition of customer loads, we can expand on-the-fly without the need to reprovision something."
"This solution is intuitive, easy to learn, and easy to use."
"This solution definitely makes us more efficient in being able to provide storage quickly to our customers in the Azure Cloud."
"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 initial setup process is straightforward."
"Cisco has a lot of published information and documentation that helps users understand the product and its offering very well."
"The solution is very, very stable, it doesn't crash or freeze, and it's very reliable."
"Upgrades are very simple as well because they've allowed us to get updates directly in the CloudCenter Suite manager. If you need to do an upgrade to your setup afterward, you just push a button and it rolls out the parts and retires the old ones. It's seamless and very simple compared to what we've done before."
"The initial setup is fairly straightforward if you have a basic setup."
"There are workflows, automated workflows, of different tasks between different infrastructure divisions, like your VMware, your firewall, and your network."
"Cisco CloudCenter's scalability is good."
"The solution is agile and it has APIs for integration."
 

Cons

"This solution would be improved with more innovation."
"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."
"Azure NetApp Files could improve by being more diverse to integrate better with other solutions, such as Splunk and the on-premise version. There are some use cases that are not covered natively by Azure. It is not the best solution because it is not external from the cloud which for me is the best type of solution."
"Reserved Instances for Azure NetApp Files would improve more use cases, making them more valuable in Azure as the cost would be reduced."
"I would like to see multi-zone redundancy so that I don't have to worry about it. I just back up my data to that one SMB share and I know that it's replicated to a different region."
"We would like for the files which are coming in that we can version them. So, if a file is accidentally deleted, there should have a recycle bin option where we can go back, and at least once, clean it up."
"Its pricing can be better."
"I don’t like the solution’s configuration and support."
"The improvement I would like to see is not one thing particular to CloudCenter. I'd say it's more of a message that the system is still using a lot of the different products and if they would all just fit better together, they all could be faster together."
"Cisco can improve their product by being agnostic, not just specific to Cisco components but also supportive of other vendors."
"For many clients, the main problem with the solution is the price. Cisco is very expensive. If they could somehow make the pricing more competitive, that would be a big draw."
"We're moving away from it due to the fact that they discontinued the product and introduced something new that does not fit our purpose."
"The improvement I would like to see is not one thing particular to CloudCenter. I'd say it's more of a message that the system is still using a lot of the different products and if they would all just fit better together, they all could be faster together."
"You don't get all the solution's benefits if you have older switches."
"The tool should improve its security on the XDR part."
"They should provide an entire cloud offering, from architecture to network security features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The pricing depends on your scaling and consumption."
"It is expensive in small environments, which could be better. The reason is the four terabyte minimum. A one terabyte minimum would be better."
"The licensing fees for this solution vary, ranging from a single shelf to a full suite."
"We are currently on a pay-as-you-go model with the storage that we use."
"The performance has improved by about 30 percent."
"Our pricing has not been determined because we are still waiting on additional features."
"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."
"The tool's pricing is expensive."
"The solution is extremely expensive and has additional fees for things like monitoring."
"The tool's pricing is balanced with the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Educational Organization
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
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Also Known As

NetApp ANF, ANF
CliQr, CliQr CloudCenter
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Restaurant Magic
NTT, Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), CollabNet, Pratt & Miller, PZFlex
Find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp, CTERA and others in Cloud Migration. Updated: February 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.