Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

Azure NetApp Files and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP are both solutions in the Cloud Migration category. Azure NetApp Files is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.3, while NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.0. Azure NetApp Files holds a 14.6% mindshare in CM, compared to NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP’s 14.9% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Azure NetApp Files users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP users who would recommend it.

Azure NetApp Files

Read 17 Azure NetApp Files reviews

1,025 Views
66 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Read 62 NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP reviews

1,095 Views
582 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Azure NetApp Files

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 2024

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and Azure NetApp Files compete in cloud storage solutions. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP appears to have an edge in pricing and customer support, while Azure NetApp Files stands out for its advanced features.

Features: NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is known for its data protection, flexibility, and integration with multiple cloud environments. Azure NetApp Files integrates seamlessly with Azure services, performs well, and scales effectively.

Room for Improvement: NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP needs better documentation, GUI enhancements, and expanded feature sets. Azure NetApp Files requires improved cost management features, better support for diverse workloads, and refining cost-related features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP users report an easy deployment process and high-quality customer support. Azure NetApp Files users find the deployment within Azure straightforward but seek more personalized support.

Pricing and ROI: NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is cost-effective with quick ROI, especially for hybrid cloud environments. Azure NetApp Files, although more expensive, offers substantial ROI for intensive use cases due to its performance and integration.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

July 2025

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Helped 860,711 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

Azure NetApp Files

Ranking in Cloud Migration

8th

Ranking in Cloud Storage

8th

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Ranking in Cloud Migration

1st

Ranking in Cloud Storage

2nd

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

7th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (14th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Migration category, the mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 14.6%, down from 17.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 14.9%, down from 18.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Migration

Featured Reviews

AjayKumar13

Cloud/Data/Database Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees

Fast, reliable, and helps meet our SLAs

The most valuable feature is that the sixty-terabyte database snapshot can be done in less than two to three minutes. It is faster. It is quicker. It is reliable. You don't need to take the snapshot. Snapshots are compressed. It doesn't take storage from the back end. It takes three minutes to do sixty terabytes of the database. You don't have to go to the tape and store it outside, which takes hours and hours. It also uses a lot less of the storage. It's very easy to restore or copy the snapshots to other locations for disaster recovery. There are a lot of benefits. In terms of the snapshot's rapid restore capability, we were testing the load of performance testing, and we needed to rebuild the DR site. If I need to rebuild the DR for a standby database, it takes sixty terabytes to copy onto the another site, which will take at least a day. Now, the snapshot is easy. We just copy the snapshots, and then we do the cross-region application. The snapshots came along with that, and that's where we were able to build the DR site within a few hours rather than days. All together, instead of a four-day process, instead of a day.

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Pramod-Talekar

Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution

The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.

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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

"The most valuable features of the solution is replication to another region and the performance. The solution is stable. The solution is scalable. The initial setup is straightforward."

"Using NetApp Files got us out of a really difficult situation quickly, effectively, and at a reasonable cost."

"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."

"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."

"One aspect of Azure NetApp Files that I truly appreciate is its remarkable performance capabilities."

"Its security and ease of use are most valuable."

"It has saved a lot of time. Because in the older, conventional hardware system, they need to raise a ticket to go to storage engineering, then storage engineering would increased the size. Now, it's dynamic. You don't have to do anything. This improved the time by more than 50 percent."

"Since we have NetApp's internally, we use the SnapMirror predominantly for this process in the cloud which is beneficial."

More Azure NetApp Files pros

"The ability for our users to restore data from the Snapshots is very valuable."

"Lastly, the API and web services are fairly good. That is an important feature too. We write some code to do different things. We have code that runs to make sure that everything is being backed up as we say it is and we try to also detect places where we may have missed a backup."

"With NetApp, you can integrate malware scanning or malware protection. This is something valuable that is not offered in SaaS solutions typically."

"The most valuable features are that it's reliable, simple, and performs well."

"I like how you can easily pair on-prem with the cloud and the cloud backup feature. I like the whole integration with on-prem and the cloud for SnapMirror relationships."

"It is much easier to control data since we can run queries across all our platforms with just one solution. Not only that, we can also monitor all the platforms with Active IQ, where we can see all the alerts, messages, and space consumption through a single application. This is regardless if the data is on-prem or AWS. It is much more efficient."

"The solution’s unified file and block-storage access across our infrastructure is invaluable. Without it, we can't do what we do."

"Another feature which gets a lot of attention in our environment is the File Services Solutions in the cloud, because it's a completely, fully-managed service. We don't have to take care of any updates, upgrades, or configurations."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"The deployment process is somewhat complex compared to other storage solutions."

"We were looking for a clustered solution that has over-complicated things because we had it in AWS, which is Amazon. There was a solution for clustered NetApp. That meant there would be two NetApps that were not clustered because there was no solution for a cluster. We would like there to be an HA cluster solution."

"This solution would be improved with more innovation."

"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."

"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."

"I would like to see multi-zone redundancy so that I don't have to worry about it. I just back up my data to that one SMB share and I know that it's replicated to a different region."

"The initial setup was not straightforward. We had help from the NetApp team."

"Its pricing can be better."

More Azure NetApp Files cons

"The solution could be better when we're connecting to our S3 side of the house. Right now, it doesn't see it, and I'm not sure why."

"I rate the scalability a five out of ten."

"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."

"NetApp CVO needs to have more exposure and mature further before it will have greater acceptance."

"The key feature, that we'd like to see in that is the ability to sync between regions within the AWS and Azure regions. We could use the cloud sync service, but we'd really like that native functionality within the cloud volume service."

"The cost needs improvement."

"The dashboard is a little bit clunky. I like to see it a little bit more on the simplistic side. I would like to be able to create my own widgets and customize what I want to see a little bit more versus what is currently there. That would be helpful so that when I log in, I go straight to my widget or my board without going to multiple places to get to what I need to find or build."

"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP should improve its support."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The performance has improved by about 30 percent."

"The licensing fees for this solution vary, ranging from a single shelf to a full suite."

"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."

"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."

"The pricing depends on your scaling and consumption."

"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."

"Our pricing has not been determined because we are still waiting on additional features."

More Azure NetApp Files pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The deal with the seller was acceptable; the pricing is reasonable."

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

"We find the pricing to be favorable due to the educational sector we belong to."

"The pricing of this solution is definitely higher than what the typical Azure Files and AWS solutions charge, but given the features and the stability NetApp has provided, we are okay with it. We are not complaining about the pricing."

"Make sure you investigate what your requirements are going to cost you using the native cloud solutions versus what NetApp is going to cost you, to make sure you have a business case to go with NetApp."

"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."

"It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Educational Organization

13%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Educational Organization

25%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 ...

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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 ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure NetApp Files?

It is expensive, especially with NetApp Ultra Storage.

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.

See all answers

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

The solution's pricing is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

NetApp's support could improve.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 35% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 8% of the time

Nasuni vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon FSx vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 7% of the time

NetApp ONTAP vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 3% of the time

More Azure NetApp Files Competitors

Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 10% of the time

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

Compared 9% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon FSx vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 6% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure NetApp Files

July 2025

Download Azure NetApp Files product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

June 2025

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

NetApp ANF, ANF

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

Overview

Azure NetApp Files is designed for unstructured data, virtualized SAP systems, SQL backups, NFS and CIFS protocols, Azure Virtual Desktop storage, and optimizing file share services. It supports high performance and networking integration in Microsoft Azure.

Azure NetApp Files offers features such as SnapMirror for data protection, rapid provisioning, elastic scaling, and ultra-fast SQL backup and restore. It provides a seamless experience with fast snapshotting, high availability, security, and ease of setup. Users benefit from significant performance improvements and the ability to manage substantial workload migrations effortlessly. This service is ideal for environments like Azure Kubernetes Service and cloud EPM platforms, where speed, flexibility, and performance are crucial.

What are the key features?

Flexibility: Adaptable to diverse storage needs.
Rapid response time: Ensures quick data access and operations.
SnapMirror: Provides replication and data protection.
SEC compliance: SnapLock ensures regulatory adherence.
Ultra-fast SQL backup: Quicker backup and restore operations.
Elastic scaling: Easily adjusts resources based on demand.
Fast snapshotting: Enables quick data snapshots.
High availability: Ensures consistent data access.
Security: Robust measures for data protection.

What are the expected benefits and ROI?

Performance: Notable improvement in processing speeds.
Simplicity of setup: Easy deployment and configuration.
Scalable management: Handles significant workload migrations with ease.
Cost efficiency: Allows comparing throughput versus cost effectively.

Azure NetApp Files is implemented in various industries requiring robust file storage solutions, from educational environments where performance boosts are critical to businesses leveraging Azure Kubernetes Service for containerized applications. It supports high-demand environments, optimizing data management and improving efficiency.

NetApp

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

SAP, Restaurant Magic

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 NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

July 2025

Free Report: Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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