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 #8 with an average rating of 7.3, while NetApp Cloud Insights is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.8. Azure NetApp Files holds a 14.6% mindshare in CM, compared to NetApp Cloud Insights’s 2.7% 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.

Azure NetApp Files

Read 17 Azure NetApp Files reviews

2,848 Views
1,025 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Insights

Read 13 NetApp Cloud Insights reviews

1,203 Views
265 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Azure NetApp Files

NetApp Cloud Insights

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Insights

July 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

Azure NetApp Files

Ranking in Cloud Migration

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Storage (8th), Public Cloud Storage Services (10th)

NetApp Cloud Insights

Ranking in Cloud Migration

11th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (34th), Cloud Monitoring Software (24th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Migration category, the mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 14.6%, down from 17.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Insights is 2.7%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Migration

Featured Reviews

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

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

"Since we have NetApp's internally, we use the SnapMirror predominantly for this process in the cloud which is beneficial."

"One aspect of Azure NetApp Files that I truly appreciate is its remarkable performance capabilities."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Azure NetApp Files pros

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

"It is good for giving an overview of the systems and for tracking long-term trends. It is handy for root cause analysis, e.g. it can eliminate whether storage is the cause of an issue."

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

"The solution is easy to deploy."

"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."

"NetApp Cloud Insights helps reduce the time spent on problem resolution by up to 50% for my customers, making their operations significantly more efficient and productive, which is a perfect outcome."

"Its ability to quickly inventory our resources, figure out interdependencies across them, and assemble a topology of your environment is brilliant. There is a price associated with it. Whenever you target a NetApp environment, it is included in the price but whenever you want to add different vendors, like VMware and Cisco, the price greatly spikes. Inventorization helps us a lot to visualize 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."

More NetApp Cloud Insights pros

Cons

"We would like to see more paired regions for the replication."

"Azure NetApp Files is expensive."

"We would like for the files which are coming in that we can version them. So, if a file is accidentally deleted, there should have a recycle bin option where we can go back, and at least once, clean it up."

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

"The pricing definitely needs to be improved."

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

"Its pricing can be better."

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

"The support is not very quick."

"The visualization needs some improvement because there are occasional delays while the system queries information."

"In my opinion, one area where NetApp Cloud Insights could be improved for the next release is the console, which I find a bit complex."

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

"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."

"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."

More NetApp Cloud Insights cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The performance has improved by about 30 percent."

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

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

"Our pricing has not been determined because we are still waiting on additional features."

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

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

"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 pricing depends on your scaling and consumption."

More Azure NetApp Files pricing and cost advice

"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 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."

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

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Educational Organization

11%

Manufacturing Company

34%

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Healthcare Company

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 ...

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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 ...

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 needed to interface with other groups and their products, a task that should req...

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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 terabyte of another product. Virtual machines don't equate so easily. It's all about t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Insights?

In my opinion, one area where NetApp Cloud Insights could be improved for the next release is the console, which I find a bit complex. Even though I work with NetApp, it still takes time for me to ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 35% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 30% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 8% of the time

Nasuni vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon FSx vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 7% of the time

More Azure NetApp Files Competitors

Dell CloudIQ vs NetApp Cloud Insights

Compared 71% of the time

Datadog vs NetApp Cloud Insights

Compared 29% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Insights Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure NetApp Files

July 2025

Download Azure NetApp Files product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Insights

June 2025

Download NetApp Cloud Insights product report

Also Known As

NetApp ANF, ANF

No data available

Overview

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

SAP, Restaurant Magic

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Insights

July 2025

Free Report: Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Insights

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