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Azure NetApp Files vs Microsoft Azure File Storage 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

Azure NetApp Files
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (2nd), Cloud Storage (7th)
Microsoft Azure File Storage
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 7.2%, up from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure File Storage is 10.8%, down from 13.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

We can expand our storage on-the-fly without the need to reprovision
Ease of provisioning: It's very easy to consume the product. We are not doing this manually. We are doing this programmatically, but it's very easy and seamless for us to consume it. It's like any other Azure component. It's very good and well-integrated into the ecosystem of Azure. There is tight integration. We didn't need to learn anything new. It feels like we know everything already, although under the hood, the product is something totally different. However, it seemed very easy for us. 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. The performance is quite good, so it's almost on par with the make of SSD storage. It provides a quick, scalable storage solution. We were looking for a supported solution. We didn't want to experiment. We didn't want to look for open source, though we did look into open source initially before we bumped into NetApp. We figured out that adding yet another unknown into our system was not going to bring us benefit. It would be another problem that we would need to tackle. So, we said, "Okay, let's look for a supported solution," and NetApp was one of them. Then, we turned to NetApp.
PrashanthR - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamlessly streamlines document processing with advanced file storage and OCR integration
We need to store data over there. We process documents through Kofax Time is a major benefit, as well as ease of processing. With configuration, it happens quite easily, and we can finish tasks early. File storage is complemented by OCR with Azure Cognitive Service. This enhances the processing…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"One aspect of Azure NetApp Files that I truly appreciate is its remarkable performance capabilities."
"The critical features of this solution are SnapMirror for replication, data protection, and SnapLock."
"It has saved a lot of time. Because in the older, conventional hardware system, they need to raise a ticket to go to storage engineering, then storage engineering would increased the size. Now, it's dynamic. You don't have to do anything. This improved the time by more than 50 percent."
"This solution definitely makes us more efficient in being able to provide storage quickly to our customers in the Azure Cloud."
"I think the easiest part is, when you do a comparison, it is the throughput versus the cost. And it's much easier to set up."
"Azure NetApp Files has been stable."
"I think the easiest part is, when you do a comparison, it is the throughput versus the cost. And it's much easier to set up."
"The functionality is easy."
"It is very easy to use SSTP and some traditional code to move the data into a database because we can easily use the permissions and we don't have any integration or conversion issues."
"File storage is complemented by OCR with Azure Cognitive Service."
"Azure File Storage gives us easy access to cloud solutions at the storage level."
"The product is a reliable cloud solution."
"The interface is very good."
"The security features and the ease of integration are good."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure File Storage is the cloud file storage capability."
 

Cons

"The pricing definitely needs to be improved."
"This solution would be improved with more innovation."
"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."
"The deployment process is somewhat complex compared to other storage solutions."
"We would like to see more paired regions for the replication."
"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."
"Reserved Instances for Azure NetApp Files would improve more use cases, making them more valuable in Azure as the cost would be reduced."
"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."
"The solution should support all the legacy storage systems."
"I have had issues migrating my data to another subscription."
"Importing and exporting data needs to have a bit more documentation."
"The integration of the site storage with SQL was not completely seamless."
"There is a limitation on the storage capacity, like four terabytes. It could be improved to accommodate more data."
"The product must provide better security functions."
"The security could always be modernized."
"The way retention policies are applied could be more optimized."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The performance has improved by about 30 percent."
"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."
"The pricing depends on your scaling and consumption."
"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."
"It is expensive, especially with NetApp Ultra Storage."
"This solution is very expensive compared to the alternatives."
"The price of Azure NetApp Files could be better."
"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."
"For one terabyte of data, we are spending about 150 Euro every month."
"The pricing is usually dependent on your storage requirements. Overall, I believe Microsoft Azure File Storage's price is reasonable."
"The product's pricing need improvement."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being the most expensive. It's not cheap."
"I give the pricing of the solution a seven out of ten."
"Microsoft Azure File Storage has a reasonable price."
"We have Microsoft Azure File Storage's enterprise license."
"The price of the solution is reasonable. The pricing model is based on usage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
33%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure NetApp Files?
The solution's competitors like Oracle or Amazon are not cheap either. I think we're paying two million dollars for Azure NetApp Files. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is exp...
Which file storage system is better - Amazon EFS (elastic file storage) or Azure File Storage?
Amazon EFS is easy to set up: you can use the AWS management console, API, or command-line. Amazon EFS can grow to petabytes and deliver consistent low latencies and high levels of throughput. This...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure File Storage?
The price is almost the same as the competition. I would rate it three or three and a half out of ten on the pricing scale.
 

Also Known As

NetApp ANF, ANF
MS Azure File Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Restaurant Magic
Talon, Camden
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure NetApp Files vs. Microsoft Azure File Storage and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.