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Azure NetApp Files vs Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] 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

Azure NetApp Files
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (7th), Cloud Storage (11th), Public Cloud Storage Services (13th)
Cisco CloudCenter [EOL]
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

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.
ZT
Director Of Technology at a non-profit with 11-50 employees
Useful features for configuring down to ports but extremely expensive
Our company uses the solution's GUI interface to configure and monitor ports. We look at usage and determine if there are any issues.  Cisco is a very qualified company and has been in business for many, many years.  The solution is useful because you can configure all the way down to ports.  You…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution is intuitive, easy to learn, and easy to use."
"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."
"One aspect of Azure NetApp Files that I truly appreciate is its remarkable performance capabilities."
"Azure NetApp Files has been stable."
"This solution definitely makes us more efficient in being able to provide storage quickly to our customers in the Azure Cloud."
"Using Azure NetApp Files got us out of a really difficult situation quickly, effectively, and at a reasonable cost."
"It's like the Porsche of storage solutions in the cloud."
"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."
"I can define all components and create a blueprint for consumption across all services."
"Cisco CloudCenter's scalability is good."
"You can scale it easily."
"However, for the rest of the solution, the product is doing a great job for what we require."
"Cisco has a lot of published information and documentation that helps users understand the product and its offering very well."
"The tool is really at the center of our whole digital transformation."
"Upgrades are very simple as well because they've allowed us to get updates directly in the CloudCenter Suite manager. If you need to do an upgrade to your setup afterward, you just push a button and it rolls out the parts and retires the old ones. It's seamless and very simple compared to what we've done before."
"The solution has a blueprint pattern where you can club multiple machines, define middleware components, define dependencies of components, and create an application pattern for a Java stack that can be consumed across all services using the same TOSCA patterns for CloudCenter, vRealize Automation, and ServiceNow."
 

Cons

"The deployment process is somewhat complex compared to other storage solutions."
"Reserved Instances for Azure NetApp Files would improve more use cases, making them more valuable in Azure as the cost would be reduced."
"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."
"It is expensive in small environments, which could be better. The reason is the four terabyte minimum."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"They should provide an entire cloud offering, from architecture to network security features."
"We're moving away from it due to the fact that they discontinued the product and introduced something new that does not fit our purpose."
"They can add some of those features to make the platform more usable for different backgrounds and developer skills."
"The improvement I would like to see is not one thing particular to CloudCenter. I'd say it's more of a message that the system is still using a lot of the different products and if they would all just fit better together, they all could be faster together."
"The tool should improve its security on the XDR part."
"For many clients, the main problem with the solution is the price. Cisco is very expensive. If they could somehow make the pricing more competitive, that would be a big draw."
"The product is very expensive."
"Improvements are needed in UI and multi-tenancy for this solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 price of Azure NetApp Files could be better."
"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."
"Its price is double the price of the premium disks, which is the main reason why customers don't go for this solution in the end."
"We are currently on a pay-as-you-go model with the storage that we use."
"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."
"The performance has improved by about 30 percent."
"Our pricing has not been determined because we are still waiting on additional features."
"The tool's pricing is balanced with the market."
"The solution is extremely expensive and has additional fees for things like monitoring."
"The tool's pricing is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise5
 

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 ...
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 ...
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Also Known As

NetApp ANF, ANF
CliQr, CliQr CloudCenter
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Restaurant Magic
NTT, Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), CollabNet, Pratt & Miller, PZFlex
Find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp, IBM and others in Cloud Migration. Updated: May 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.