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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

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
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (5th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), File and Object Storage (2nd), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure File Storage is 10.0%, down from 13.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 1.9%, up from 0.9% 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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The immutable storage features are valuable."
"The security features and the ease of integration are good."
"It helps us with geo-redundancy."
"I like that Microsoft Azure File Storage works fine and is quick to deploy. It's also easy to connect to it, particularly when connecting it with my on-premise file servers."
"The solution is user-friendly and integrates easily with web apps."
"It is a very scalable solution. I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten."
"The best part is the accessibility to all the files."
"The profile management option is another valuable feature that allows us to manage the profiles and secure them."
"It is a highly scalable solution."
"I like its interface. It is very interactive and simple to use."
"The management interface is great and you have handy access to several details about your file shares."
"The product's initial setup phase was simple."
"Regarding downtime issues, we haven't had downtime in generations, and everything is going very well."
"I like Nutanix Prism Central. The primary benefit is that we can manage everything from the same page."
"Nutanix Unified Storage does a very good job of unifying our organization's block, file, and object storage. It puts it all in one place. From one platform, we can deploy S3-type buckets. We can provide iSCSI-level block storage if we need to. It does a great job with home folders and departmental shares, which is what we mostly use Nutanix Unified Storage for."
"The interface is quite simple. It is very good. It is easy to configure. It also has a powerful CLI."
 

Cons

"Firewall rules should be introduced to secure the access date from any virus attacks. Anti-virus should be introduced in the work filtering and document filtering."
"The product’s pricing could be better."
"They can improve the ability to assign permissions to different groups or users."
"One thing that Azure File Storage could help us with is some kind of impact assessment. When we talk to some of our larger customers who have between 500 and 1,000 applications, we normally do an assessment of all these applications and then tell them which ones are ready to be lifted and shifted, and which ones need to re-architected. It would really help if Azure File Storage could come up with a better way to give estimations of the total investment required, including all costs incurred during the migration."
"Microsoft Azure File Storage is not that easy to use."
"The upload speed has room for improvement."
"The pricing could be improved. They need to make the costs more transparent so users know what they will be charged and why ahead of time."
"It's not very intuitive."
"It could be more user-friendly."
"Its licensing can be better. They can make it easier for us to scale our infrastructure."
"If they can add an integrated DLP feature, it would be great."
"Since it's part of Prism, I might suggest integrating the management console into Prism instead of having a separate console; that's the only change I would recommend, and it's not a significant issue."
"The dashboard can have more details and be more useful."
"Nutanix should improve the one-click upgrade. There are a lot of dependencies on third-party licenses and HP hardware we use internally. The one-click upgrade fails sometimes."
"There should be more information. If it gets used more by more people, they will have a bigger community to share ideas. It is still kind of newer. It is not as big as Dell and other companies."
"It functions as intended. We don't have any real requests or improvements. We're primarily focused on protecting our data. However, we use Varonis, so it would be nice to have better integration with that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being the most expensive. It's not cheap."
"We pay for both yearly and monthly licenses. The yearly one is cheaper than the monthly one."
"There are fewer hidden costs involved compared to other solutions, and when our customer is already a Microsoft partner, they typically have access to more affordable fees."
"The solution is a bit pricey compared to AWS and Google."
"The pricing is usually dependent on your storage requirements. Overall, I believe Microsoft Azure File Storage's price is reasonable."
"The product must improve its price."
"We have Microsoft Azure File Storage's enterprise license."
"The pricing could be more flexible."
"The price of the license is expensive when comparing it to traditional storage."
"The product is pricey."
"It is not too high for what we are using."
"In the manufacturing industry, we operate under very lean principles where costs are heavily scrutinized. There was some initial hesitation, but the performance we've experienced since switching to the Nutanix platform, along with the peace of mind from having confidence in our platform to not give us issues that keep us up at night, has smoothed over much of that scrutiny."
"With all of the Nutanix equipment, the licensing is expensive. We operate in the enterprise space, but we're a midsized company. At times, the price tag is a little bit shocking for a company with only 35 employees. We're not a Fortune 500 company, but we deal with Fortune 500 drug and energy companies. We have to play in that enterprise space if we're going to have enterprise customers. I'm very price-conscious, but I understand that if I want the best, I've got to pay the price."
"Nutanix's pricing is definitely much better when compared to other storage providers. That was one of the main reasons we switched to this platform."
"From what I hear from the management, Nutanix Unified Storage has comparatively decent pricing."
"Nutanix is priced a bit higher than some of its competitors. A lot of Chinese companies like Huawei are entering the Saudi Arabian market trying to provide similar solutions for a lower price. It offers a good value, especially the support. Nutanix has a highly competent team. The after-sales support is excellent."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
31%
Educational Organization
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
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?
Nutanix solutions are often perceived as premium-priced, but they deliver substantial ROI in terms of performance, reliability, and ease of use. Organizations should evaluate the TCO holistically, ...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?
In terms of improvement areas for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), pricing is a significant issue, and another aspect is that the export of Nutanix backups does not support CD-ROMs, which is a disadv...
 

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: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.