Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Qumulo comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Qumulo are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0, while Qumulo is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 0.7% mindshare in FaOS, compared to Qumulo’s 3.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Qumulo users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Qumulo and Amazon EFS are competing file systems, with Qumulo excelling in on-premises flexibility and Amazon EFS having a stronger capability in AWS integrations.

Features: Qumulo excels in providing real-time analytics, meaningful insights into data operations, multi-cloud integration options, and superior data protection algorithms. Amazon EFS offers seamless AWS integration, allows for automatic scaling, and is free from size limitations on storage, making it ideal for cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: Qumulo could enhance failover capabilities and disaster recovery features. It may improve integration with backup solutions and optimize deployment processes. For Amazon EFS, improvements could focus on offering more flexibility outside AWS ecosystems, reducing potential hidden costs, and simplifying the complexity of setup in diverse IT environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon EFS benefits from its tight AWS integrations, simplifying deployment but limiting flexibility. Its customer service is robust due to AWS's extensive network. Qumulo, offering diverse configuration options and strong multi-cloud support, facilitates ease of use and is noted for excellent customer service, which aids implementation across different environments.

Pricing and ROI: Qumulo's pricing model is transparent, providing clear costs that often lead to a favorable ROI in hybrid setups. Amazon EFS, with a scalable pay-as-you-go model, is cost-effective within AWS, but mismanagement could lead to increased expenses. Qumulo's consistent pricing contrasts with the variability of Amazon EFS in AWS-only deployments.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Qumulo Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Qumulo

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 850,028 peers since 2012

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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.8%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is 0.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qumulo is 3.9%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

Read full review

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Auto-scaling capabilities enhance file management while reducing downtime

The most valuable feature of Amazon EFS is its auto-scaling capability. It's really easy to configure EFS by just creating it and running a command to directly configure it with my servers. It supports unlimited use, and charges are applied based on the file usage at the end of the month. The solution offers reduced downtime and increased durability through its auto-scaling features.

Read full review

VinceVitro

Senior Storage Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Useful data sharing, simple cluster scaling, and excellent support

One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"Amazon EFS is extremely stable, as it is managed by AWS."

"We can run code and deploy it whenever we want."

"Amazon EFS offers the flexibility of scaling as needed without requiring pre-provisioned storage."

"We haven't seen any downtime or challenges when using the services."

"The solution is scalable."

"We are not that big of a cloud user. We just use it for the storage of our bytes. The most valuable aspect is the storage."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"The solution's technical support is good."

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) pros

"The most valuable features of Qumulo are the ease of management and special permissions that are quick to enable. The overall performance of the solution is good."

"The most valuable features of Qumulo are its rolling updates and all-day availability."

"It is a very stable product. I never faced any issues."

"The ratio of total operational cost to complexity versus feature set is very good."

"The most valuable feature is real-time analytics."

"The data protection algorithm to protect the data between the nodes has been the most valuable feature. The integration with backup platforms such as Veeam and Veritas has also been valuable."

"The most valuable feature of Qumulo is the ability to share files and reliability."

"The feature that I like most is the analytics part of the file system."

Cons

"I would like to see better integration."

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

"The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Amazon EFS is more costly compared to other storage options available from AWS."

"The product's stability has some shortcomings where improvements are required."

"I don't have notes on improvements."

"When we faced some issues, the support team took a lot of time to resolve them."

"There are challenges related to AWS, such as ensuring proper security measures with IMS code and encryption."

"The main challenge with EFS is its cost, which is slightly higher compared to EBS or S3."

"EFS could be improved by including a one-click setup."

"Specifically, when it comes to the file system for the learning system, we encountered performance issues with both Azure and AWS."

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) cons

"The price of the software is a bit expensive, so a reduction in cost would make it more competitive."

"Qumulo should continue to expand automation and orchestration capabilities."

"The support for iMac and protocols should be improved, not all features are available."

"Some anti-theft permissions do not transfer well to Qumulo."

"In the future, I would like to see non-disruptive updates."

"The solution could improve availability and improve data protection or data services such as compression of deduplication. In a future release, we'd like to have more cloud API integrations."

"In the next release, I would like to see the ability to have more control at a terminal level of the file system."

"One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is very expensive."

"The price could be cheaper."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"The product charges are based on the amount of data stored."

"I would rate the pricing 7 out of 10."

"The main challenge with EFS is its cost, which is slightly higher compared to EBS or S3. For one GB or ten GB of data, S3 is much cheaper. EFS could cost around $30 to $50 per month for similar usage."

"It has flexible pricing. You are charged based on your storage."

"The product's price depends on the services and the size and capacity at which it is used in a business environment."

"The solution's price is mid-ranged."

"Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) offers a pay-as-you-go model, so whenever you use its services, you need to pay."

"The price of the solution is in the middle range compared to others. We look at the price per terabyte."

"The price of Qumulo is reasonable."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which File and Object Storage solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

29%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

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 pe...

See all answers

What do you like most about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?

The product's initial setup phase is easy, as per the configurations.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?

Amazon EFS is more costly compared to other storage options available from AWS.

See all answers

What do you like most about Qumulo?

The most valuable features of Qumulo are its rolling updates and all-day availability.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Qumulo?

Initially, the failover was supposed to be implemented in Qumulo itself. This failed to happen mid-case, so we had to...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Qumulo?

We use Qumulo for end-user storage and some application storage as well.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure FlashArray X NVMe vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 3% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 53% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 12% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon S3 Glacier vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 8% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) Competitors

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Qumulo

Compared 25% of the time

VAST Data vs Qumulo

Compared 15% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs Qumulo

Compared 11% of the time

Scality RING vs Qumulo

Compared 9% of the time

Cloudian HyperStore vs Qumulo

Compared 3% of the time

More Qumulo Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

April 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

April 2025

Download Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) product report

Buyer's Guide

NAS

March 2025

Download Qumulo product report

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides simple, scalable file storage for use with Amazon EC2 instances in the AWS Cloud. Amazon EFS is easy to use and offers a simple interface that allows you to create and configure file systems quickly and easily. With Amazon EFS, storage capacity is elastic, growing and shrinking automatically as you add and remove files, so your applications have the storage they need, when they need it.

When mounted to Amazon EC2 instances, an Amazon EFS file system provides a standard file system interface and file system access semantics, allowing you to seamlessly integrate Amazon EFS with your existing applications and tools. Multiple Amazon EC2 instances can access an Amazon EFS file system at the same time, allowing Amazon EFS to provide a common data source for workloads and applications running on more than one Amazon EC2 instance.

It’s designed for high availability and durability, and provides performance for a broad spectrum of workloads and applications, including Big Data and analytics, media processing workflows, content management, web serving, and home directories.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Qumulo is a data storage and management platform that promotes object-based storage for users, backup archives, and surveillance. Its primary use case is to provide a cost-effective and feature-rich solution for managing large data.

Qumulo's data protection algorithm ensures the safety of node data, while its integration with backup platforms like Veeam and Veritas makes it easy to manage backups. The platform offers a good balance between operational cost and complexity versus feature set, making it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes.

Qumulo

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Arcesium, Atlassian, Seeking Alpha, Zend

County of Riverside Sheriff Department, Hyundai Mobis Automotive North America, University of Arizona, UCSD - San Diego Supercomputer Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, Sinclair Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Kaiser Permanente, Deluxe Creative, Vexcel Imaging, University of Florida, The Madison Square Garden Company, Arizona State University, Cinesite, San Diego Padres Baseball, Johns Hopkins University - School of Medicine, IHME, EllieMae, Washington State University.

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Qumulo

April 2025

Free Report: Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Qumulo

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Qumulo and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Qumulo report.

See our list of best File and Object Storage vendors.

We monitor all File and Object Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.