Amazon FSx vs Cohesity SmartFiles comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Cohesity are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.3, while Cohesity is ranked #17 with an average rating of 9.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 1.0% mindshare in FaOS, compared to Cohesity’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Cohesity users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon FSx and Cohesity SmartFiles based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Nutanix, Dell Technologies and others in File and Object Storage.

To learn more, read our detailed File and Object Storage Report (Updated: October 2025).

Buyer's Guide

File and Object Storage

October 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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.7%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon FSx is 1.0%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cohesity SmartFiles is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File and Object Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade	5.7%
Amazon FSx	1.0%
Cohesity SmartFiles	0.5%
Other	92.8%

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

Parul-Patel

Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

High performance and throughput enhance IT backup management

The multi-dimensional scale-out design feature of Pure Storage FlashBlade is not in use in our environment. Regarding data reduction technologies, we don't get much deduplication because the data is already deduplicated from our FlashArray before we get to backup, so there is no benefit of deduplication. Regarding the integration with cloud-native ecosystem tools, we are not on cloud; we are strictly an on-premises solution. Pure Storage FlashBlade is not used by any end-user; it's used only for IT backup, with only about four people in our group managing it. I cannot recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other users depending upon their financial situation because it's an expensive solution, and the cost is very high, including licensing and renewal every year. I rate Pure Storage FlashBlade an eight out of ten.

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MuhammadAzhar Khan

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.

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Stefan-Motsch

Evangelist / CTO at fgnext

Enables effective data management with reliable backup and recovery

Cohesity SmartFiles aids in data management with features like full-text search through indexed documents. The architecture supports backup, ransomware awareness, and data management on a converged platform, offering triple-protocol access (NFS, CIFS, and S3) while facilitating gradual improvements in access rights management. It allows for redundant setups, with automated backup and recovery options in a cloud environment.

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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

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

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

"The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"I rate the stability of Amazon FSx ten out of ten."

"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Amazon FSx a ten."

"The shared storage capability is highly valuable."

"We used it for disaster recovery perspective behind a number of resources, like batch services and RDS."

"FSx operates as an independent service, not tied to any server, which eliminates dependencies between applications for storage."

"Cohesity SmartFiles aids in data management with features like full-text search through indexed documents."

Cons

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

"The speed could be improved."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."

"I have not seen ROI."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS."

"I've been facing a challenge when doing a failover from FSx side. AWS console does not refresh within a half hour."

"From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for higher IOPS."

"A direct FTP feature would be beneficial instead of relying on transmission services."

"Users must remember that running DataProtect and files on the same cluster could threaten access if there is a platform failure. It's not suitable for applications needing high I/O or low latency."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

"The price is a little high."

"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."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade 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."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

No data available

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...

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

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

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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 highe...

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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 ...

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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; th...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cohesity SmartFiles?

SmartFiles is an economical solution, priced per terabyte on the backend. Initial setup and licensing costs align wit...

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What needs improvement with Cohesity SmartFiles?

Users must remember that running DataProtect and files on the same cluster could threaten access if there is a platfo...

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What is your primary use case for Cohesity SmartFiles?

Our customers use Cohesity SmartFiles ( /products/cohesity-smartfiles-reviews ) in conjunction with Cohesity SpanFS (...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 19% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon FSx

Compared 22% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Amazon FSx

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs Amazon FSx

Compared 11% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs Amazon FSx

Compared 11% of the time

VAST Data vs Amazon FSx

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon FSx Competitors

MinIO vs Cohesity SmartFiles

Compared 34% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Cohesity SmartFiles

Compared 26% of the time

Qumulo vs Cohesity SmartFiles

Compared 20% of the time

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Cohesity SmartFiles

Compared 20% of the time

More Cohesity SmartFiles Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

September 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Storage

September 2025

Download Amazon FSx product report

Buyer's Guide

File and Object Storage

October 2025

Download Cohesity SmartFiles product report

Also Known As

No data available

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre

No data available

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 FSx makes it easy and cost effective to launch and run popular file systems. With Amazon FSx, you can leverage the rich feature sets and fast performance of widely-used open source and commercially-licensed file systems, while avoiding time-consuming administrative tasks like hardware provisioning, software configuration, patching, and backups. It provides cost-efficient capacity and high levels of reliability, and it integrates with other AWS services so that you can manage and use the file systems in cloud-native ways.

Amazon FSx provides you with two file systems to choose from: Amazon FSx for Windows File Server for enterprise workloads and Amazon FSx for Lustre for high-performance workloads.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Cohesity SmartFiles is a versatile platform for file sharing, collaboration, data protection, disaster recovery, analytics, archiving, and compliance.

The solution centralizes and simplifies data management tasks, integrating seamlessly with existing workflows and easily scaling to meet growing storage needs. Advanced search, streamlined management, integration, and robust security are key features valued by users.

Cohesity

Sample Customers

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

Neiman Marcus, T Mobile, Docxellent, Matrix, Lyell

1. Acer 2. Adobe 3. AIG 4. Airbus 5. Allstate 6. Amazon 7. American Express 8. Aon 9. Apple 10. ATT 11. Autodesk 12. Bank of America 13. Barclay's 14. Bayer 15. BlackRock 16. Boeing 17. BNP Paribas 18. Cisco 19. Coca-Cola 20. Comcast 21. Dell 22. Deutsche Bank 23. Equinix 24. ExxonMobil 25. Ford 26. GE 27. Google 28. HP 29. IBM 30. Intel 31. JPMorgan Chase 32. Kroger

Buyer's Guide

File and Object Storage

October 2025

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