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Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
3.3
Microsoft Azure File Storage offers easy global file sharing and cost savings, though ROI impact varies for medium businesses.
Sentiment score
6.8
Nutanix Unified Storage boosts ROI by cutting costs, enhancing efficiency, improving management, and strengthening data security for users.
For me, the biggest return on investment when using this solution is that we do not have to have much support staff to run it.
The scalability challenge with previous systems is lessened with Nutanix since we can expand by adding new hardware without needing migrations.
We are saving approximately 20% to 25% compared with the competition.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.8
Microsoft Azure File Storage customer service varies in response time, with premium contracts offering better efficiency and support.
Sentiment score
7.5
Nutanix Unified Storage support is responsive and knowledgeable, though complex issue resolution can occasionally face delays.
The perspective documentation is good.
Microsoft technical support is very prompt.
As and when we require, they are able to provide solutions or guide us toward solutions.
They come on the call, start troubleshooting immediately, and resolve issues effectively.
They are very knowledgeable, and if they can't solve the problem, they find the answer within a day or so.
I would give the customer service and technical support a ten out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.1
Microsoft Azure File Storage offers exceptional scalability, accommodating diverse business needs with automatic scaling for substantial user bases.
Sentiment score
7.8
Nutanix Unified Storage is highly scalable and flexible, allowing seamless expansion and integration without downtime, despite initial complexity.
This means you don't have to buy everything upfront; you can buy what you need and add more as you grow, which is advantageous.
These three components utilize scalability tools, enabling storage addition to nodes and supporting independent, linear performance growth.
I find the scalability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) to be excellent, and I would rate it a ten based on my clients' requirements.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.0
Microsoft Azure File Storage is highly rated for stability and reliability, with minor connectivity issues and minimal disruptions.
Sentiment score
8.0
Nutanix Unified Storage is praised for stability, high availability, and minimal disruptions, ensuring dependable performance and quick support resolution.
I rate the stability of Microsoft Azure File Storage as a seven out of ten.
We sometimes encounter glitches with bigger files, but everything else works as expected.
We have not experienced these issues with Nutanix, which I attribute to the all-flash technology, the quality of their platform, and the responsiveness of the hyper-converged infrastructure.
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very stable.
It automatically triggers tasks, causing performance issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Azure File Storage needs cost transparency, better support, performance, security, usability, and improved integration and management features.
Nutanix Unified Storage requires enhancements in implementation, analysis, technical support, FTP compatibility, management, integration, security, and usability.
Some chunking logics need to be better to address issues with processing bigger files.
There is a limitation on the storage capacity, like four terabytes.
The main concern is pricing, which could deter some customers; addressing this would enhance its appeal.
The system should move towards AI-driven optimization and enhance S3 object storage capabilities.
System downtime can disturb the entire ecosystem and impact all applications.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Azure File Storage pricing is moderate, flexible, and usage-based, but transparency and competitiveness could be improved.
Nutanix Unified Storage offers competitive pricing, valued for features and ROI, but may be costly for smaller users.
I would rate it three or three and a half out of ten on the pricing scale.
The pricing for Microsoft Azure File Storage is five out of ten, not so expensive and not so low.
Compared to buying three or four vendor solutions, it is much cheaper.
The cost has doubled for the same amount of data, which was a challenge when presenting use case justifications for the increased cost.
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has definitely helped reduce our total cost of ownership.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Azure File Storage provides scalable, secure cloud storage with seamless Azure integration, supporting multiple file formats and Active Directory.
Nutanix Unified Storage delivers easy management, high availability, and integration with robust security and flexible storage options.
It is satisfying our requirements with encryption and security features in place.
File storage is complemented by OCR with Azure Cognitive Service.
In Microsoft Azure File Storage, the S3 bucket is the most helpful feature for my use.
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is appreciated for its fault tolerance and redundancy at the cluster level, which ensures reliable storage of files, folders, and other information accessible on the client side.
The cybersecurity features of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) when dealing with unstructured data, such as ransomware threats, provide the ability to detect and back up block-based storage, allowing me to restore repositories or sets of block storage with one button click, which is automatic.
My experience with using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for data-intensive workloads is that we have many SQL Servers and they perform much better than they did when we used hybrid converged previously.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Azure File Storage
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (5th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), File and Object Storage (3rd), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure File Storage is 9.8%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 2.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

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…
Amarnath Charugundla - PeerSpot reviewer
Unified management and cost-effectiveness lead to positive experiences and future savings
Improvement is necessary wherein the memory or storage should not breach 90%, because if breached, it becomes unmanageable. We have to set alerts or CPU triggering for 95% for the first warning. Other activities on nodes or file systems should be properly maintained. We must monitor the dashboard for P1, P2 alerts in the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) file share system including SMB, NFS, objects, and blocks. Attention should be maintained for any alerts such as CPU, memory, and RAM alerts, as exceeding these creates issues within teams. If triggered to 95% and forgotten, it crosses the SLA breach, causing disturbances to application, web, and platform teams. Continuous monitoring on the Nutanix dashboard is essential. Even a highly experienced person in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cannot provide a 10 rating out of 10 because it is a vast system. I would rate it eight from my perspective.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
30%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 pricing for Microsoft Azure File Storage is five out of ten, not so expensive and not so low.
What do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?
Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?
I have no idea about the pricing of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) as I'm not the decision authority for pricing. Generally, compared to other products, this has better pricing, but I don't deal wit...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?
While there are good aspects, I would like to see improvements in networking configuration, particularly regarding overlay and underlay, plus enhancements in micro-segmentation, as that would provi...
 

Also Known As

MS Azure File Storage
Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Talon, Camden
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure File Storage vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.