We compared Microsoft Azure File Storage and Azure NetApp Files based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Microsoft Azure File Storage offers strong security measures and efficient file sharing capabilities, with positive remarks on customer service. The pricing is considered competitive, and businesses have seen a significant ROI. However, users note a desire for faster file transfer speeds and an improved interface. Azure NetApp Files emphasizes high performance, scalability, and seamless workload migration, along with excellent customer support. Users find the cost and setup reasonable, experiencing cost savings and enhanced performance. Feedback suggests a need for improved performance during peak times, better documentation, a more intuitive interface, and enhanced security features.
Features: Microsoft Azure File Storage offers valuable features such as scalability, integration with Azure services, efficient file sharing, strong security, and seamless file management. On the other hand, Azure NetApp Files stands out for its ease of use, high performance, scalability, reliability, and seamless migration capabilities. Additionally, users appreciate its cost-effectiveness and excellent customer support.
Pricing and ROI: The setup costs for Microsoft Azure File Storage and Azure NetApp Files are both considered reasonable and affordable based on user feedback. Users appreciate the straightforward and easy management of setup for Microsoft Azure File Storage, while Azure NetApp Files offers a transparent pricing structure and flexible licensing options., In terms of return on investment (ROI), Microsoft Azure File Storage was praised for its cost savings, improved efficiency, scalability, reliability, and ease of integration. On the other hand, Azure NetApp Files focused on significant cost savings and enhanced performance.
Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure File Storage could benefit from enhancements in file transfer speed, a more intuitive interface, and expanded storage options. In contrast, Azure NetApp Files needs improvements in performance during peak times, documentation and support resources, user interface intuitiveness, security features, and data migration efficiency.
Deployment and customer support: Based on user feedback, it appears that the duration required to establish a new tech solution can vary for both Microsoft Azure File Storage and Azure NetApp Files. However, Azure NetApp Files seems to offer more flexibility in terms of varying timeframes for deployment, setup, and implementation phases. It is necessary to consider the context in which these terms are used to accurately evaluate the overall time required for the entire process., Microsoft Azure File Storage receives positive remarks regarding its customer service and support, with prompt and helpful assistance. Azure NetApp Files also provides highly recommended customer service, consistently exceeding expectations for a smooth experience.
The summary above is based on 35 interviews we conducted recently with Microsoft Azure File Storage and Azure NetApp Files users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"One aspect of Azure NetApp Files that I truly appreciate is its remarkable performance capabilities."
"It is a very scalable solution. I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten."
"Implementing Microsoft Azure has meant that we are using the same solution as our customers who use Azure Public Cloud. This allows us to integrate our application, as well as provide the solution to them."
"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."
"It was easy to set up."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The best part is the accessibility to all the files."
"The product can integrate with all platforms. My team also does data visualization, and Power BI can directly connect with those nodes. We can very conveniently connect with multiple tools for our database. The benefit here is that by utilizing the same storage application, my application is linked with their application through the same server. This setup provides real analytics and data for a holistic purpose, which is advantageous."
"I like that we can copy and download data using Azure. It's not just for file storage; we can also use it for large data sets or to host static web applications."
"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."
"The pricing definitely needs to be improved."
"The main area for improvement is in the support ticket system. Since it's a SaaS platform, support tickets are managed by Microsoft or NetApp backend. This can sometimes lead to cross-functional challenges for organizations."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution needs to improve it's ABS environment."
"It would be helpful if we could remove data that we don't frequently access to reduce the cost of the storage."
"The product must provide better security functions."
"Considering the enterprise licensing required for the solution, the cost of the solution is an area where the product needs improvement."
"The tool needs to add more controls and enhance Power BI. For instance, I'm just suggesting the visualization layer. Power BI can increase visualization as much as possible, and the product can add more controls to the data flows."
"Microsoft Azure File Storage needs more integrations. In the future, I also want to see GRC added to the portal. If you enroll or sign up for Azure services, your country may not have GRC available in the portal, so you may have to choose a strange country, for example, Kenya, to activate credit."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"Importing and exporting data needs to have a bit more documentation."
"The support could improve."
Azure NetApp Files is ranked 10th in Public Cloud Storage Services with 15 reviews while Microsoft Azure File Storage is ranked 3rd in Public Cloud Storage Services with 44 reviews. Azure NetApp Files is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Azure File Storage is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Azure NetApp Files writes "We can expand our storage on-the-fly without the need to reprovision". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure File Storage writes "Various storage options available, high availability, and quick deployment". Azure NetApp Files is most compared with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, Amazon EFS (Elastic File System), Nasuni, Google Cloud Storage and NetApp ONTAP, whereas Microsoft Azure File Storage is most compared with Amazon EFS (Elastic File System), Wasabi, Amazon S3, Amazon S3 Glacier and Google Cloud Storage. See our Azure NetApp Files vs. Microsoft Azure File Storage report.
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