Azure Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

Microsoft and NetApp are both solutions in the Cloud Storage category. Microsoft is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.0, while NetApp is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.5. Additionally, 100% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Azure Files

Read 2 Azure Files reviews

592 Views
474 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Read 64 NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP reviews

9,473 Views
3,316 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Azure Files

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Azure Files and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Files vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Files vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

August 2026

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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 Files

Ranking in Cloud Storage

17th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

File and Object Storage (24th)

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Ranking in Cloud Storage

9th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (3rd), Cloud Backup (27th), Public Cloud Storage Services (11th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (2nd)

Featured Reviews

Yogesh Autade

Senior Security Engineer at Softcell Technologies Limited

Centralized file sharing has improved security and compliance but still needs better analytics

From our experience, Azure Files could be improved with more granular performance visibility, simpler troubleshooting tools, and enhanced reporting around file shares, uses, and access patterns. We would also prefer more streamlined management for large-scale development deployments, better monitoring of SMB and NFS performance issues, and deeper integration of storage analytics to help identify bottlenecks and optimize cost efficiency. Another area where Azure Files could improve is the administrative experience for hybrid environments. More intuitive troubleshooting for authentication, SMB connectivity, and synchronization-related issues would help reduce operational efforts. Enhanced reporting, proactive recommendations, and clearer root cause analysis and diagnostics would also be valuable for storage and infrastructure teams managing large deployments.

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reviewer5948293

Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Offers performance control and cloud integration while supporting data management with granular flexibility

The scalability of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is interesting. We have thought about it, but we haven't used it. I think the scalability is something you scale up rather than respond to peak demand. It wouldn't help with outages either; the scaling is manual, and there are no processes we've used to automate that for unexpected scenarios. We like the scalability; it's enough for what we're planning to use, but we haven't used any advanced features. The standard platform is NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, which is their cloud service. In fact, that's probably the most experience I have with NetApp. I've experienced it on-premise, but kind of secondhand.

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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

"If we need to migrate data, Azure Files allows a seamless data migration."

"We see a clear return on investment with Azure Files, primarily through reduced infrastructure management effort and improved operational efficiency."

"The good thing about NetApp is the features that are available on the cloud are also available on-premises."

"They have very good support team who is very helpful. They will help you with every aspect of getting the deployment done."

"The solution’s Snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are good. Snapshot copies are pretty much the write-in time data backups. Obviously, critical data is snapshotted a lot more frequently, and even clients and end users find it easier to restore whatever they need if it's file-based, statical, etc."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it makes our data readily available and we don't have to go through a lot of trouble to access it."

"By implementing Cloud Volumes ONTAP in the Azure portal, we eliminated the cost of additional hardware and everything you have to maintain on-prem in a physical environment and put it up to the cloud."

"The feature which I like the most is that it has the capabilities that the traditional storage system offers. It provides all the functionality. The deduplication and compression work exactly like ONTAP's traditional storage. So people who have experience with that find it very easy to manage."

"The fast recovery time objective with the ability to bring the environment back to production in case something happens."

"There is unified storage, which provides flexibility. It is set up perfectly for performance and provisioning. We are able to monitor everything using a separate application. It provides error and critical warnings that allow us to take immediate action through ONTAP. We are able to manage everything, log a case, and follow up with the support team, who can fix it. That is how it is unified."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"I think if Azure Files could integrate migration using Storage Mover, that would be an improvement."

"From our experience, Azure Files could be improved with more granular performance visibility, simpler troubleshooting tools, and enhanced reporting around file shares, uses, and access patterns."

"In the next release, I would like to see more options on the dashboard."

"We have customers that are still using IBM mainframes and that very old SNA architecture from IBM. There are questions about how you interconnect the data on the mainframe side... But I don't know if it's worth it for NetApp to invest in developing products to include mainframes for a few customers."

"They definitely need to stay more on top of security vulnerabilities. Our security team is constantly finding Java vulnerabilities and SQL vulnerabilities. Our security team always wants the latest security update, and it takes a while for NetApp to stay up to speed with that. That would be my biggest complaint."

"We would like to have support for high availability in multi-regions."

"How it handles erasure coding. I feel it the improvement should be there. Basically, it should be seamless. You don't want to have an underlying hardware issue or something, then suddenly there's no reads or writes. Luckily, it's at a replication site, so our main production site is still working and writing to it. But, the replication site has stopped right now while we try to bring that node back. Since we implemented in bare-metal, not in appliance, we had to go back to the original vendor. They didn't send it in time, and we had a hardware memory issue. Then, we had a hard disk issue, which brought the node down physically."

"Not a perfect ten because it's not very efficient with upgrades and management."

"I would like to see better integration with Active IQ."

"I would like to see something from NetApp about backups. I know that NetApp offers some backup for Office 365, but I would like to see something from NetApp for more backup solutions."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The pricing could be improved. It is a good product, but it is very expensive for me."

"The standard pricing is online. Pricing depends. If you're using the PayGo model, then it's just the normal costs on the Microsoft page. If you're using Bring Your Own License, which is what we're doing, then you get with your sales contact at NetApp and start figuring out what price is the best, in the end, for your company."

"For enterprise customers, it's a very cost effective. But in the SMB segment, yeah, pricing is a little bit challenge for your time."

"Compared to other storage vendors, NetApp, is not always able to compete with their pricing. Yet, we acknowledge the ease of use ONTAP brings with the AWS integration."

"I know the licensing is a bit on the high-end. That's when we had to downsize our MetroCluster disks and just migrate to disks that were half used. We migrated into those just to reduce maintenance costs."

"Cloud is cloud. It's still expensive. Any good solution comes with a price tag. That's where we are looking to see how well we can manage our data in the cloud by trying to optimize the costs."

"Some flexibility around the licensing model would help. The product is licensed based on capacity. Basically, the largest capacity license that you can buy is 368 terabytes. At this point, NetApp is addressing some people's concerns around this."

"They give us a good price for CVO licenses. It is one of the reasons that we went with the product."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Manufacturing Company

12%

Construction Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	53

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azure Files?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Azure Files?

Our primary use case for Azure Files is centralized file sharing, application data storage, and replacing traditional on-premises file servers with cloud-based SMB and NFS shares. From an infrastru...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Azure Files?

I would recommend this product without hesitation. I would also recommend starting with a pilot workload to validate SMB, NFS performance, and user access patterns. I recommend using Active Directo...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is actually quite reasonable in price compared to other native cloud storage options. For example, a customer using 100 TB of AWS storage would not benefit from deduplica...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

It would be nice to see technology supporting the Elastic Fabric Adapter on Amazon AWS, therefore getting RDMA technology for more low-latency connections.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

I use NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP mostly in customer companies.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 38% of the time

Everpure Evergreen One vs Azure Files

Compared 32% of the time

Box vs Azure Files

Compared 9% of the time

Dropbox Business - Enterprise vs Azure Files

Compared 8% of the time

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Azure Files

Compared 5% of the time

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Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 7% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 5% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon FSx vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 4% of the time

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 3% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Storage

August 2026

Download Azure Files product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

July 2026

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

No data available

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

Overview

Azure Files offers scalable, fully-managed cloud file shares accessible over SMB and NFS protocols. Ideal for sharing files and resources in the cloud, it simplifies data access across various applications and services, enhancing collaboration.

Azure Files provides a seamless solution for organizations requiring cloud-based file storage that integrates easily with on-premises environments. Its ability to support both SMB and NFS protocols makes it versatile for a wide range of applications. Integration with Azure services ensures enhanced security and efficient management, while its scalability supports growing data demands without complexity.

What are the key features of Azure Files?

SMB and NFS Protocol Support: Ensures compatibility with existing file-serving workloads.
On-Premises Integration: Facilitates hybrid cloud deployments with sync capabilities.
Secure Access Control: Uses Azure Active Directory for managing permissions.
Scalability and Redundancy: Supports rapid data growth with high availability through geo-redundant storage.
Backup and Recovery: Provides built-in integration with Azure Backup for data protection.

What benefits should users expect from Azure Files?

Cost Efficiency: Reduce costs with pay-as-you-go pricing and minimized on-premises infrastructure.
Enhanced Collaboration: Improved productivity with easy file sharing across teams.
Seamless Integration: Streamlined operations with integration into existing IT environments.
Data Security: Safeguard data with encryption and compliance features.

In industries like healthcare and finance, Azure Files is implemented for reliable data storage and compliance requirements. Retail sectors leverage it for seamless collaboration and data sharing, driving enhanced operational efficiencies. By supporting multiple protocols, it is versatile for companies managing a high volume of data across platforms.

Microsoft

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is an efficient storage management solution for managing and storing data in the cloud. It offers seamless integration with cloud providers, advanced data replication capabilities, and high data protection. With reliable performance, it is ideal for industries like healthcare and finance.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard

Buyer's Guide

Azure Files vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

August 2026

Free Report: Azure Files vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

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