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Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp ONTAP 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 (8th), Cloud Storage (8th), Public Cloud Storage Services (10th)
NetApp ONTAP
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Azure NetApp Files and NetApp ONTAP aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Azure NetApp Files is designed for Cloud Migration and holds a mindshare of 14.6%, down 17.9% compared to last year.
NetApp ONTAP, on the other hand, focuses on Storage Software, holds 42.1% mindshare, down 43.1% since last year.
Cloud Migration
Storage Software
 

Q&A Highlights

NC
Nov 01, 2021
 

Featured Reviews

AjayKumar13 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Naveen Radhwani - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good performance, stability, and complete data security
Our upcoming investments would be prioritized around a hybrid cloud solution because we ourselves promote the cloud in the market. We are the premium service provider for AWS, so we have that inclination toward cloud computing. From the experience that we had during the pandemic, we are looking for some kind of hybrid solution for our environment. NetApp should focus on a hybrid cloud solution because none of the media houses are opting for cloud storage. The files are quite heavy, and it becomes quite difficult to maintain them on the cloud. If NetApp can provide such technology and fill the gap of storing media files in the cloud, it would give them an advantage.

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 features of the solution is replication to another region and the performance. The solution is stable. The solution is scalable. The initial setup is straightforward."
"I like the SnapMirror feature in Azure NetApp Files. It helps me create backups with snapshots and makes data recovery and compression."
"The critical features of this solution are SnapMirror for replication, data protection, and SnapLock."
"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."
"We use Azure NetApp Files mainly for backup."
"It is faster. It is quicker. It is reliable."
"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."
"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."
"It's more intuitive to use as they are moving away from command line into more graphical interfaces, which are somewhat easier to use."
"It gives us a location to store data across multiple mount points."
"The performance of the hardware is good."
"Queries are being completed in less time. For example, we have seen a three times improvement when it comes to running a query. If query used to take an hour, now it takes 10 to 20 minutes."
"One of the things I find most valuable is the way they do the Snapshots, taking incrementals at points in time... Often someone will say, "Hey, I deleted this thing yesterday, can you get this back for me?" It's good that we have all those incremental Snapshots at different points in time that we can refer back to, to get them whatever they need."
"The solution has helped our organization reduce its overall cost of storage by allowing us to have multiple sites using the multi-tenant security model, segregated from each other, while at the same time using the same resources."
"It has the ability to bring up disaster recovery quickly."
"We've seen return on investment for ONTAP specifically on the performance recently. Where we had our file storage solution sitting on a hybrid storage solution and we were having continuous performance issues, as our workloads went up we were able to put in an 8300 all-flash array. Since we've put that in, we've been under one-millisecond latency, and that's allowed us to not have delays in some of our EDI transactions. Our end customer integrates and interfaces with that technology. Fewer outages equal more business, more profit, more revenue, and immediate ROI. We've been really happy with the new All Flash hardware solutions."
 

Cons

"Its pricing can be better."
"This solution would be improved with more innovation."
"Reserved Instances for Azure NetApp Files would improve more use cases, making them more valuable in Azure as the cost would be reduced."
"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."
"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 is expensive."
"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."
"The deployment process is somewhat complex compared to other storage solutions."
"They could focus on making it more user-friendly. Currently, many users need a certain level of NetApp knowledge to operate it effectively, often relying on command-line interfaces that demand IT or technology skills. While there is a GUI available through Systems Manager, a lot of management still occurs at the command line, so enhancing the GUI for better usability could be a key focus area."
"I could see the GUI being a little bit more refined, the presentation layer being a little stronger, a little less sluggish."
"NetApp ONTAP could be improved with additional features to help handle the backup of more than 10 to 15 devices simultaneously."
"If you do the initial setup manually, it is a bit difficult for someone who doesn't know."
"If they could come up with some more automation, this would be helpful."
"The technical support hasn't been that great. A couple of times we have had to call support and it took a long time to get somebody on the phone, it took a long time for someone to call us back. That's the only downside, the support."
"NetApp ONTAP has similar areas of improvement as NetApp Private Storage regarding decreasing the error rate, improving the GUI, technical support and stability, and reducing the price."
"I would like it to be more user-friendly. When you open the main dashboard, anyone should be able to know exactly what is going on, even without a tech background. Minimal training should be required."
 

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."
"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 performance has improved by about 30 percent."
"Our pricing has not been determined because we are still waiting on additional features."
"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."
"This solution is very expensive compared to the alternatives."
"We have a wholesale contract with NetApp. We also have NetApp ONTAP On-Demand activation for certain things. We also have some preferential pricing for licenses. The licensing that I see here doesn't apply to other clients in the field. NetApp is expensive, but so are the competitors, making it hard to ascertain precise retail value. However, based on my perspective, NetApp pricing appears competitive."
"They could reduce the price."
"We have seen ROI, especially with the deduplication. We have a high ratio of deduplication and are way past 70 percent of our VDI, as we have almost 400TBs on our VDI. We have been able to save at least a quarter of a petabyte of space."
"ONTAP has helped us reduce the cost of storage by a lot. We were using IBM XIVs and were paying high costs, except for the maintenance. Now, we are on all-flash and we pay less than what we used to pay."
"NetApp provided the features required within our cost limit."
"Our pricing with discounts is reasonable, but it may vary for others."
"ONTAP is expensive, but most storage systems are now-a-days and everything is included with the license - there are no additional fees."
"At first, it's expensive. Once you start using it, it's not that expensive. When you see all the benefits, it's acceptable. It could always be better, but you get what you pay for."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Media Company
5%
 

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 do you like most about NetApp ONTAP?
We do not face any glitches or downtime.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp ONTAP?
The pricing is high. That said, we received favorable pricing at Intel due to the company's large NetApp ONTAP deployment across different organizations. While we're not in the IT department (we're...
What needs improvement with NetApp ONTAP?
They could expand what is possible to do with automation as there are gaps in the Ansible module coverage they have. There is certain functionality that NetApp ONTAP offers that these modules are i...
 

Also Known As

NetApp ANF, ANF
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Restaurant Magic
1&1 IONOS, Acıbadem Healthcare Group, Adder Technologies, Aero Vodochody Aerospace
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