Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Insights comparison

Azure NetApp Files and NetApp Cloud Insights are both solutions in the Cloud Migration category. Azure NetApp Files is ranked #3 with an average rating of 7.3, while NetApp Cloud Insights is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.8. Azure NetApp Files holds a 15.8% mindshare in CM, compared to NetApp Cloud Insights’s 2.9% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Azure NetApp Files users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp Cloud Insights users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Azure NetApp Files and NetApp Cloud Insights both compete in cloud storage and analytics, offering unique features tailored to enterprise needs. Azure NetApp Files often stands out for its speed and ease of integration with the Azure ecosystem, while NetApp Cloud Insights gains an edge with advanced analytics and visibility capabilities in multi-vendor environments.

Features: Azure NetApp Files provides ultra-fast SQL backups and restores, seamless integration with the Azure ecosystem, and SnapMirror for enhanced data replication and protection. Its ease of provisioning further simplifies its deployment for enterprises. NetApp Cloud Insights excels in resource utilization visibility, advanced analytics for identifying multi-tiered issues, and efficient inventory of resources, offering valuable insights into infrastructure performance.

Room for Improvement: Azure NetApp Files could improve its backup functionalities and customer support, enhance cost-effectiveness, and simplify deployment processes. Users seek more paired regions for data replication and reduced configuration complexities. NetApp Cloud Insights can advance its reporting features and user guidance, especially for complex datasets, and provide more intuitive solutions directly out-of-the-box.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure NetApp Files benefits from robust deployment within the Azure ecosystem, offering high-quality technical support through Microsoft and NetApp. NetApp Cloud Insights, supporting diverse hybrid and on-premises solutions, also provides excellent customer service despite its complexity requiring strategic navigation through support channels.

Pricing and ROI: Azure NetApp Files is considered a premium offering, with higher costs justified by performance scalability and potential cost savings through operational efficiency. It appeals to dynamic businesses with flexible storage requirements. NetApp Cloud Insights is seen as affordable compared to other cloud solutions, despite a complex licensing model. It enables cost savings through optimal infrastructure use and provides significant ROI by easing deployment and minimizing downtime.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Insights Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Insights

April 2025

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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

IBM Turbonomic

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Migration category, the mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 4.0%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 15.8%, down from 18.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Insights is 2.9%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Migration

Featured Reviews

Alex Darby

Director, Infrastructure, Wintel Engineering at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Saves time during workload migration, facilitates sizing of virtual servers, and the support team is helpful

The right-sizing feature is the most captivating one for us. It helped in taking the emotions out of what people think they need, basing it off of real data, and providing them what they actually need. It's not really a special feature, but the support that we received from that team really helped us in our success. There were definitely some customizations that needed to take place to make it successful. This is the most aware of our products, in terms of understanding all of the components from the top down. It is integrated with all of the different modules, all the way down to the core infrastructure. All of it is tied together and there are not many tools that can do that.

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AjayKumar13

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.

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Scott Lauters

Associate IT Director at Wolters Kluwer

It provides a single pane of glass, giving us visibility into the environment

All our production clusters are in Cloud Insight. It provides a single pane of glass, giving us visibility into the environment, which allows us to understand if any issues are going on across any of our clusters. The main issue we were looking to address was the lack of visibility across all the clusters in one single view. We're using Cloud Insight's Unified Manager. It has improved our ability to support and see the immediate status of the entire environment. If we have a critical incident, we can quickly see these issues and loop in monitoring teams and other teams. For example, if our app team thinks there are issues in the environment, we can quickly see if anything related to storage is part of the problem. It improved our organization by unifying all the various support teams. We all have the same view of what's happening in the environment. The dev team knows what storage is used or not, and we can quickly move on to other activities. Cloud Insights provides a single tool for containers and other cloud-based architectures, but we're not using some of those things, such as Kubernetes. We're primarily leveraging the monitoring and reporting. The solution does a great job of inventorying our resources. It allows us to put the tags on the devices. The process is fast. It also gives you the dependencies. I can dig down into all the related components. Cloud Insight's advanced analytics feature does a good job of highlighting the areas where there might be issues in the future.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Before implementing Turbonomic, we had difficulty reaching a consensus about VM placement and sizing. Everybody's opinion was wrong, including mine. The application developers, implementers, and infrastructure team could never decide the appropriate size of a virtual machine. I always made the machines small, and they always made them too big. We were both probably wrong."

"The biggest value I'm getting out of VMTurbo right now is the complete hands-off management of equalizing the usage in my data center."

"It also brings up a list of machines and if something is under-provisioned and needs more compute power it will tell you, 'This server needs more compute power, and we suggest you raise it up to this level.' It will even automatically do it for you. In Azure, you don't have to actually go into the cloud provider to resize. You can just say, 'Apply these resizes,' and Turbonomic uses some back-end APIs to make the changes for you."

"We have VM placement in Automated mode and currently have all other metrics in Recommend mode."

"It is a good holistic platform that is easy to use. It works pretty well."

"I have the ability to automate things similar to the Orchestrator stuff. I do have the ability to have it do some balancing, and if it sees some different performance metrics that I've set not being met, it'll actually move some of my virtual machines from, let's say, one host to another. It is sort of an automation tool that helps me. Basically, I specify the metric, and if I get a certain host or something being over-utilized, it'll automatically move the virtual machines around for me. It basically has to snap into my vCenter and then it can make adjustments and move my virtual machines around. It also has some very nice reporting tools built around virtual machines. It tells you how much storage, memory, or CPU is being used monthly, and then it gives you a very nice way to be able to send out billing structure to your end users who use servers within your environment."

"The most important feature to us is an objective measurement of VM headroom per cluster. In addition, the ability to check for the right-sizing of VMs."

"The system automatically sizes and moves resources based on the needs of the applications."

More IBM Turbonomic pros

"It is faster. It is quicker. It is reliable."

"The most valuable feature is that the sixty-terabyte database snapshot can be done in less than two to three minutes."

"I like the SnapMirror feature in Azure NetApp Files. It helps me create backups with snapshots and makes data recovery and compression."

"You can change it non-disruptively. You can increase the size and decrease the size online, which is a huge benefit compared to Azure disks. It just works seamlessly. You don't need to stop the instances."

"This solution definitely makes us more efficient in being able to provide storage quickly to our customers in the Azure Cloud."

"The critical features of this solution are SnapMirror for replication, data protection, and SnapLock."

"Azure NetApp Files has been stable."

"We use Azure NetApp Files mainly for backup."

More Azure NetApp Files pros

"All our production clusters are in Cloud Insight. It provides a single pane of glass, giving us visibility into the environment, which allows us to understand if any issues are going on across any of our clusters."

"Cloud Insights' best features are visibility and the connector to move the workloads."

"The visibility and assistance with security vulnerabilities are valuable."

"Among the most valuable features are the queries and reporting that allow us to look at the utilization of resources, at how well the storage is performing, and to report on which resources are being used by which business units. We can track usage across the entire environment, across applications, business units, cost centers, etc."

"One feature we appreciate the most is its ability to take snapshots, which adds an extra layer of security and allows us to protect our data effectively."

"Cloud Secure is definitely the most valuable feature and being able to see file level activity. It gives real-time alerting on possible ransomware attacks and provides file security review. It helps us to see if something abnormal is happening on the system before it's too late."

"The solution is easy to deploy."

"NetApp Cloud Insights helps with login monitoring and troubleshooting. Previously, if we had performance concerns or needed to interface with other groups and their products, a task that should require only one or two people turned into a six-person job."

More NetApp Cloud Insights pros

Cons

"The implementation could be enhanced."

"Recovering resources when they're not needed is not as optimized as it could be."

"I do not like Turbonomic's new licensing model. The previous model was pretty straightforward, whereas the new model incorporates what most of the vendors are doing now with cores and utilization. Our pricing under the new model will go up quite a bit. Before, it was pretty straightforward, easy to understand, and reasonable."

"I would like Turbonomic to add more services, especially in the cloud area. I have already told them this. They can add Azure NetApp Files. They can add Azure Blob storage. They have already added Azure App service, but they can do more."

"I would love to see Turbonomic analyze backup data. We have had people in the past put servers into daily full backups with seven-year retention and where the disk size is two terabytes. So, every single day, there is a two terabyte snapshot put into a Blob somewhere. I would love to see Turbonomic say, "Here are all your backups along with the age of them," to help us manage the savings by not having us spend so much on the storage in Azure. That would be huge."

"It sometimes does get false positives. Sometimes, it'll move something when it really wasn't a performance metric. I've seen it do that, but it's pretty much an automated tool for performance. We've only got about 500 virtual machines, so lots of times, I'm able to manage it physically, but it's definitely a nice tool for a larger enterprise that might be managing 2,000 or 3,000 virtual machines."

"The deployment process is a little tricky. It wasn't hard for me because I have pretty in-depth knowledge of Kubernetes, and their software runs on Kubernetes. To deploy it or upgrade it, you have to be able to follow steps and use the Kubernetes command line, or you'll need someone to come in and do it for you."

"I like the detail I get in the old user interface and will miss some of that in the new interface when we perform our planned upgrade soon."

More IBM Turbonomic cons

"The deployment process is somewhat complex compared to other storage solutions."

"The initial setup was not straightforward. We had help from the NetApp team."

"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."

"The solution needs to improve it's ABS environment."

"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 to see more paired regions for the replication."

"I don’t like the solution’s configuration and support."

"The main hurdle in promoting this solution is the price. Its price definitely requires an improvement. It is more expensive than other options, so customers go for a cheaper option."

More Azure NetApp Files cons

"In a perfect world we would have something built, right out-of-the-box, that can identify what we call "noise," and reduce the amount of data. You're presented with so much data when you first start the data collectors. For example, it brings back a lot of change rates that happen just because of standard computing, like profile changes and that sort of thing. Being able to identify things like that and categorize them and strip it down—and it probably can do that, I just haven't gotten there yet—would be very beneficial."

"The first level of NetApp's technical support could be improved."

"When I did need support because I was having problems with the solution, the first or the second line just didn't understand it. They were providing this only on a software as a service basis. So, they were asking all the wrong questions."

"Most of the time, I initially connect with entry-level support, and then I need to request a higher-tier support level, which can result in delays."

"Their pricing model needs improvement."

"Cloud Insights could offer more detail when we drill down into the Azure environment."

"There is room for improving the creating and managing or modifying of reports. That is still a difficult task to do and requires knowledge beyond the storage itself. I would love to see reporting improved so that we can create reports by dragging and dropping pieces into a report form and publish a report that way."

"The IP-based monitoring could be added in a future release."

More NetApp Cloud Insights cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Turbonomic is an investment that we believe will deliver positive returns."

"You should understand the cost of your physical servers and how much time and money you are spending year over year on expanding your virtual farm."

"I know there have been some issues with the billing, when the numbers were first proposed, as to how much we would save. There was a huge miscommunication on our part. Turbonomic was led to believe that we could optimize our AWS footprint, because we didn't know we couldn't. So, we were promised savings of $750,000. Then, when we came to implement Turbonomic, the developers in AWS said, "Absolutely not. You're not putting that in our environment. We can't scale down anything because they coded it." Our AWS environment is a legacy environment. It has all these old applications, where all the developers who have made it are no longer with the company. Those applications generate a ton of money for us. So, if one breaks, we are really in trouble and they didn't want to have to deal with an environment that was changing and couldn't be supported. That number went from $750,000 to about $450,000. However, that wasn't Turbonomic's fault."

"The pricing is in line with the other solutions that we have. It's not a bargain software, nor is it overly expensive."

"The product is fairly priced right now. Given its capabilities, it is excellently priced. We think that the product will become self-funding because we will be able to maximize our resources, which will help us from a capacity perspective. That should save us money in the long run."

"Contact the Turbonomic sales team, explain your needs and what you're looking to monitor. They will get a pre-sales SE on the phone and together work up a very accurate quote."

"I have not seen Turbonomic's new pricing since IBM purchased it. When we were looking at it in my previous company before IBM's purchase, it was compatible with other tools."

"If you're a super-small business, it may be a little bit pricey for you... But in large, enterprise companies where money is, maybe, less of an issue, Turbonomic is not that expensive. I can't imagine why any big company would not buy it, for what it does."

More IBM Turbonomic pricing and cost advice

"We are currently on a pay-as-you-go model with the storage that we use."

"The price of Azure NetApp Files could be better."

"The performance has improved by about 30 percent."

"It is expensive in small environments, which could be better. The reason is the four terabyte minimum. A one terabyte minimum would be better."

"It is expensive, especially with NetApp Ultra Storage."

"This solution is very expensive compared to the alternatives."

"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."

"The licensing fees for this solution vary, ranging from a single shelf to a full suite."

More Azure NetApp Files pricing and cost advice

"The licensing is complex. The calculation depends on what you're ingesting. A terabyte of one product is not a terabyte of another product. Virtual machines don't equate so easily. It's all about the end-use managed units and having an easy place to reference how far those units go."

"We are billed based on management units, so we can purchase units based on six months, twelve months, twenty-four months, or thirty-six months upfront or pay as you go depending on our requirements."

"Be aware of the capacity licensing and understand how that works, because it is based on capacity. Getting an understanding of that is the biggest thing."

"The licensing model could be improved. We love that you can use it for free for looking at NetApp products. You only need licenses to look at non-NetApp products, but as soon as you do that, you start utilizing licenses that actually would have been free in the public. So, there is a bit of an anomaly in the licensing model."

"The solution is expensive."

"The solution's pricing is based on the device you purchase and includes support services."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Educational Organization

26%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

34%

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Turbonomic?

It offers different scenarios. It provides more capabilities than many other tools available. Typically, its price is...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Turbonomic?

The implementation could be enhanced.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?

We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting...

See all answers

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 fi...

See all answers

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, allowi...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure NetApp Files?

It is expensive, especially with NetApp Ultra Storage.

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Insights?

NetApp Cloud Insights helps with login monitoring and troubleshooting. Previously, if we had performance concerns or ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Insights?

The licensing is complex. The calculation depends on what you're ingesting. A terabyte of one product is not a teraby...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Insights?

Ease of reporting is one thing that they're trying to tackle. If you have a specific set of data you want from Cloud ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 17% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Cloudability vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Intersight vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Turbonomic Competitors

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 37% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 29% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon FSx vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 7% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 2% of the time

More Azure NetApp Files Competitors

Dell CloudIQ vs NetApp Cloud Insights

Compared 61% of the time

Datadog vs NetApp Cloud Insights

Compared 39% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Insights Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Turbonomic

May 2025

Download IBM Turbonomic product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure NetApp Files

May 2025

Download Azure NetApp Files product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Insights

May 2025

Download NetApp Cloud Insights product report

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager

NetApp ANF, ANF

No data available

Interactive Demo

IBM

Demo not available

NetApp

Demo not available

NetApp

Overview

IBM Turbonomic offers automation, planning, and right-sizing recommendations to streamline resource management, improve efficiencies, and optimize costs across virtualized environments and cloud platforms.

IBM Turbonomic is valued for its capability to optimize resource allocation and monitor virtual environments efficiently. It facilitates automated decision-making in VM sizing, load balancing, and cost optimization for both on-premises and cloud deployments. Users can leverage insights for workload placement, ensure peak performance assurance, and effectively right-size across VMware and Azure. The ongoing transition to HTML5 aims to improve visual and navigational ease, while expanded reporting features are anticipated. Opportunities for improved training, documentation, and integrations enhance platform usability and functionality.

What Are the Key Features?

Automation: Streamlines resource allocation and VM management.
Planning Tools: Supports capacity management and growth projections.
Right-Sizing: Optimizes VM configurations for efficient resource use.
Customizable Dashboards: Provides quick insights into environment health.
Reporting Capabilities: Offers valuable data for informed decision-making.
Cloud Integration: Ensures cost-effective resource utilization.

What Benefits Should Be Looked For?

Performance Enhancement: Improves application performance efficiency.
Cost Reduction: Minimizes operational expenses through optimizations.
Infrastructure Efficiency: Maximizes use of IT infrastructure resources.

In finance, IBM Turbonomic aids in maintaining platform efficiency during market fluctuations. Healthcare organizations leverage its capability for resource optimization during high-demand periods to enhance patient care support. Retailers use it for planning in peak seasons, ensuring resources align with fluctuating demand to maintain performance continuity.

IBM

Azure NetApp Files is designed for unstructured data, virtualized SAP systems, SQL backups, NFS and CIFS protocols, Azure Virtual Desktop storage, and optimizing file share services. It supports high performance and networking integration in Microsoft Azure.

Azure NetApp Files offers features such as SnapMirror for data protection, rapid provisioning, elastic scaling, and ultra-fast SQL backup and restore. It provides a seamless experience with fast snapshotting, high availability, security, and ease of setup. Users benefit from significant performance improvements and the ability to manage substantial workload migrations effortlessly. This service is ideal for environments like Azure Kubernetes Service and cloud EPM platforms, where speed, flexibility, and performance are crucial.

What are the key features?

Flexibility: Adaptable to diverse storage needs.
Rapid response time: Ensures quick data access and operations.
SnapMirror: Provides replication and data protection.
SEC compliance: SnapLock ensures regulatory adherence.
Ultra-fast SQL backup: Quicker backup and restore operations.
Elastic scaling: Easily adjusts resources based on demand.
Fast snapshotting: Enables quick data snapshots.
High availability: Ensures consistent data access.
Security: Robust measures for data protection.

What are the expected benefits and ROI?

Performance: Notable improvement in processing speeds.
Simplicity of setup: Easy deployment and configuration.
Scalable management: Handles significant workload migrations with ease.
Cost efficiency: Allows comparing throughput versus cost effectively.

Azure NetApp Files is implemented in various industries requiring robust file storage solutions, from educational environments where performance boosts are critical to businesses leveraging Azure Kubernetes Service for containerized applications. It supports high-demand environments, optimizing data management and improving efficiency.

NetApp

NetApp Cloud Insights is an infrastructure monitoring tool that gives you visibility into your complete infrastructure. With Cloud Insights, you can monitor, troubleshoot and optimize all your resources including your public clouds and your private data centers.

NetApp

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.

SAP, Restaurant Magic

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Insights

April 2025

Free Report: Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Insights

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Insights and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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