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Amazon FSx vs Azure NetApp Files comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Amazon FSx
Ranking in Cloud Storage
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (5th), File and Object Storage (18th)
Azure NetApp Files
Ranking in Cloud Storage
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (9th), Public Cloud Storage Services (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Amazon FSx is 2.7%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 3.0%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Azure NetApp Files3.0%
Amazon FSx2.7%
Other94.3%
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
Shared storage capabilities provide enterprise value with good reliability
Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS. The auto-scaling feature should be improved, as it currently includes downtime. I need to manually increase the storage, which is not ideal. Integrating FSx with Windows Server is challenging; it's a long process involving Active Directory (AD) setup and synchronization.
Rajat Wadhwa - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at IBM
Cross-region replication has delivered seamless disaster recovery for enterprise storage needs
In terms of improvement, I would say cost reservation; the cost is a bit high. If we compare Azure Files and Azure NetApp Files, I know that customers are using less of Azure NetApp due to the cost. If they bring the cost a little bit closer to what Azure Files offers, it can be a great product in the market and bring a lot of business to NetApp. Backup is quite critical. As of now, Azure NetApp Files requires you to use Azure NetApp Backup solution, which is in public preview at the moment. I would definitely expect NetApp to come up with that solution so that customers can start using it because they do not have confidence in backup as it is still in preview. They are still doing some testing and research on that product, which is not officially released for use by multiple customers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"FSx operates as an independent service, not tied to any server, which eliminates dependencies between applications for storage."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Amazon FSx a ten."
"We used it for disaster recovery perspective behind a number of resources, like batch services and RDS."
"I rate the stability of Amazon FSx ten out of ten."
"The shared storage capability is highly valuable."
"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."
"We use Azure NetApp Files mainly for backup."
"I like the SnapMirror feature in Azure NetApp Files. It helps me create backups with snapshots and makes data recovery and compression."
"It all depends on the requirement; if the customer is an enterprise customer wanting a disaster recovery solution without manual efforts to migrate or replicate data from one Azure region to another, then Azure NetApp Files is a seamless solution."
"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."
"The performance has improved by about 30 percent, and the solution’s combination of ease of use, simplicity, and reduction in IT management versus the cost has helped a lot."
"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."
"Using Azure NetApp Files got us out of a really difficult situation quickly, effectively, and at a reasonable cost."
 

Cons

"From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for higher IOPS."
"Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS."
"A direct FTP feature would be beneficial instead of relying on transmission services."
"I've been facing a challenge when doing a failover from FSx side. AWS console does not refresh within a half hour."
"We would like to have backup functionality built-in so that we don't run into the issue where the replication process makes a copy of the corrupted data."
"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."
"Features are being added to this product at a very slow pace, and they should be speeding that up and being a little more aggressive."
"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."
"In terms of improvement, I would say cost reservation; the cost is a bit high. If we compare Azure Files and Azure NetApp Files, I know that customers are using less of Azure NetApp due to the cost."
"I don’t like the solution’s configuration and support."
"The initial setup was not straightforward. We had help from the NetApp team."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The lowest price I have paid is $370 or $380 per month, while the highest can exceed $3,000 per month."
"It is expensive in small environments, which could be better. The reason is the four terabyte minimum. A one terabyte minimum would be better."
"The licensing fees for this solution vary, ranging from a single shelf to a full suite."
"NetApp is a premium offering, so it's not a cheap product, but it is well-priced. It combines a couple of properties which customers like us are willing to pay. Could it be cheaper? Yes, but if you combine fully supported, fully managed, easily provisioned, scalable, and quick all in one product, it's a good selling point. You can ask a lot of money for all these. If you have a use case like we do, it's a perfect match. It's like the Porsche of storage solutions in the cloud. It is totally worth the cost."
"This solution is very expensive compared to the alternatives."
"The performance has improved by about 30 percent."
"The price of Azure NetApp Files could be better."
"The solution’s combination of the ease of use, simplicity, and reduction in IT management versus the cost has helped a lot. It is very fast to deploy. It's very easy to maintain. You don't have to do a lot in the cloud to maintain this thing, so it gives good performance. It's fast to deploy, easy to maintain, and it gives a better performance. These are the most basic three criteria for any application. This saves cost because the manpower you need to deploy is going down. You're getting better performance and not buying new resources. You have resources available in the cloud. It's just a couple of clicks, then you're good to go."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
University
8%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon FSx?
From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for higher IOPS. Sometimes we go with Weka or other solutions due to this need, so it sho...
What is your primary use case for Amazon FSx?
Our customers mainly use Amazon FSx for high-performance computing. Our customers are mainly in the Life Science and Pharma industries. The majority of people are looking at S3 as their destination...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon FSx?
There is an ongoing project where my customers are exploring the FSx solution, but not yet for AI-driven projects; they plan to in the future. For those who want to use Amazon FSx, I recommend it a...
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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure NetApp Files?
On pricing, I would rate it around eight. It's highly priced, and there's no cost reservation option available compared to Azure Files. If NetApp could bring that kind of model for customers to sav...
What needs improvement with Azure NetApp Files?
In terms of improvement, I would say cost reservation; the cost is a bit high. If we compare Azure Files and Azure NetApp Files, I know that customers are using less of Azure NetApp due to the cost...
 

Also Known As

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre
NetApp ANF, ANF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Neiman Marcus, T Mobile, Docxellent, Matrix, Lyell
SAP, Restaurant Magic
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon FSx vs. Azure NetApp Files and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.