No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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
18
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (9th), Cloud Storage (12th), Public Cloud Storage Services (14th)
Cisco CloudCenter [EOL]
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Rajat Wadhwa - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at IBM
Cross-region replication has delivered seamless disaster recovery for enterprise storage needs
In terms of improvement, I would say cost reservation; the cost is a bit high. If we compare Azure Files and Azure NetApp Files, I know that customers are using less of Azure NetApp due to the cost. If they bring the cost a little bit closer to what Azure Files offers, it can be a great product in the market and bring a lot of business to NetApp. Backup is quite critical. As of now, Azure NetApp Files requires you to use Azure NetApp Backup solution, which is in public preview at the moment. I would definitely expect NetApp to come up with that solution so that customers can start using it because they do not have confidence in backup as it is still in preview. They are still doing some testing and research on that product, which is not officially released for use by multiple customers.
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

"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."
"It all depends on the requirement; if the customer is an enterprise customer wanting a disaster recovery solution without manual efforts to migrate or replicate data from one Azure region to another, then Azure NetApp Files is a seamless solution."
"It is faster. It is quicker. It is reliable."
"The critical features of this solution are SnapMirror for replication, data protection, and SnapLock."
"Its security and ease of use are most valuable."
"Using Azure NetApp Files got us out of a really difficult situation quickly, effectively, and at a reasonable cost."
"One aspect of Azure NetApp Files that I truly appreciate is its remarkable performance capabilities."
"The performance has improved by about 30 percent, and the solution’s combination of ease of use, simplicity, and reduction in IT management versus the cost has helped a lot."
"The tool is really at the center of our whole digital transformation."
"The solution is agile and it has APIs for integration."
"The initial setup process is straightforward."
"I can define all components and create a blueprint for consumption across all services."
"There are workflows, automated workflows, of different tasks between different infrastructure divisions, like your VMware, your firewall, and your network."
"The solution includes a lot of features and is useful because you can configure all the way down to ports."
"The solution has a blueprint pattern where you can club multiple machines, define middleware components, define dependencies of components, and create an application pattern for a Java stack that can be consumed across all services using the same TOSCA patterns for CloudCenter, vRealize Automation, and ServiceNow."
"The initial setup is fairly straightforward if you have a basic setup."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"Azure NetApp Files is expensive."
"It is about four times the cost of premium storage on Azure, so in order for us to use it, we'd have to be willing to increase our storage costs by four times."
"The solution needs to improve it's ABS environment."
"We were looking for a clustered solution that has over-complicated things because we had it in AWS, which is Amazon. There was a solution for clustered NetApp. That meant there would be two NetApps that were not clustered because there was no solution for a cluster. We would like there to be an HA cluster solution."
"It is expensive in small environments, which could be better. The reason is the four terabyte minimum."
"The deployment process is somewhat complex compared to other storage solutions."
"I'm not a big fan of CloudCenter. I don't have anything against it, however, the on-premise version has been so hard to upgrade and maintain."
"The product is very expensive."
"Improvements are needed in UI and multi-tenancy for this solution."
"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."
"They should provide an entire cloud offering, from architecture to network security features."
"Cisco can improve their product by being agnostic, not just specific to Cisco components but also supportive of other vendors."
"The tool should improve its security on the XDR part."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution’s combination of the ease of use, simplicity, and reduction in IT management versus the cost has helped a lot. It is very fast to deploy. It's very easy to maintain. You don't have to do a lot in the cloud to maintain this thing, so it gives good performance. It's fast to deploy, easy to maintain, and it gives a better performance. These are the most basic three criteria for any application. This saves cost because the manpower you need to deploy is going down. You're getting better performance and not buying new resources. You have resources available in the cloud. It's just a couple of clicks, then you're good to go."
"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 pricing depends on your scaling and consumption."
"The licensing fees for this solution vary, ranging from a single shelf to a full suite."
"The price of Azure NetApp Files could 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."
"In the cloud, pricing depends on how you manage it. It's not necessarily cheap, but it's all about optimizing charges and showing the cost back. So, it's more about managing the expenses rather than being inherently expensive or cheap."
"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 balanced with the market."
"The tool's pricing is expensive."
"The solution is extremely expensive and has additional fees for things like monitoring."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Migration solutions are best for your needs.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise14
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure NetApp Files?
On pricing, I would rate it around eight. It's highly priced, and there's no cost reservation option available compared to Azure Files. If NetApp could bring that kind of model for customers to sav...
What needs improvement with Azure NetApp Files?
In terms of improvement, I would say cost reservation; the cost is a bit high. If we compare Azure Files and Azure NetApp Files, I know that customers are using less of Azure NetApp due to the cost...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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, IBM, NetApp and others in Cloud Migration. Updated: July 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.