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 #7 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 15.5% mindshare in CM, compared to NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP’s 15.3% 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

1,170 Views
70 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Read 62 NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP reviews

1,208 Views
637 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: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure NetApp Files vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

May 2025

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Helped 856,874 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

7th

Ranking in Cloud Storage

8th

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

9th

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

6th

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 June 2025, in the Cloud Migration category, the mindshare of Azure NetApp Files is 15.5%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 15.3%, down from 18.5% 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

"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."

"This solution definitely makes us more efficient in being able to provide storage quickly to our customers in the Azure Cloud."

"It is faster. It is quicker. It is reliable."

"I like the SnapMirror feature in Azure NetApp Files. It helps me create backups with snapshots and makes data recovery and compression."

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

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its flexibility."

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

"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."

More Azure NetApp Files pros

"We're using snapshots as well and it's a pretty useful feature. That is one of the main NetApp benefits. Knowing how to use snapshots in the on-prem environment, using snapshots on the cloud solution was natural for us."

"The ability to see things going back and forth has been quite useful."

"We use the mirroring to mirror our volumes to our DR location. We also create snapshots for backups. Snapshots will create a specified snapshot to be able to do a DR test without disrupting our standard mirrors. That means we can create a point-in-time snapshot, then use the ability of FlexClones to make a writeable volume to test with, and then blow it away after the DR test."

"The ability to do a straight SnapMirror from our on-prem to the cloud with no other data transitions is excellent."

"This solution has made everything easier to 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."

"ONTAP is great for helping you migrate on-premise workflows to cloud environments."

"Snapshots are one valuable feature within ONTAP, but CVO's appeal is that it acts just like the on-prem solution. It's the same OS, but in the cloud. We can continue to use ONTAP as we did on-premise."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

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

"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."

"The pricing definitely needs to be improved."

"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."

"Reserved Instances for Azure NetApp Files would improve more use cases, making them more valuable in Azure as the cost would be reduced."

"The solution needs to improve it's ABS environment."

"This solution would be improved with more innovation."

"I don’t like the solution’s configuration and support."

More Azure NetApp Files cons

"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP needs to have customizable pricing options such as 10 TB increments. They seem to have only two options: 10 TB or 250 TB."

"Their support and development teams can collaborate better to resolve an issue."

"I would like to see them improve the perspective of start and search in the panels. This would allow for better visualization of the contents that are captured in the tool."

"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."

"When it comes to a critical or a read-write-intensive application, it doesn't provide the performance that some applications require, especially for SAP. The SAP HANA database has a write-latency of less than 2 milliseconds and the CVO solution does not fit there. It could be used for other databases, where the requirements are not so demanding, especially when it comes to write-latency."

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

"I would like to see more aggressive management of the aggregate space. On the Cloud Volumes ONTAP that we use for offsite backup copies, most of the data sits in S3. There are also the EBS volumes on the Cloud Volumes ONTAP itself. Sometimes what happens is that the aggregate size just stays the same. If it allocates 8 terabytes initially, it just stays at 8 terabytes for a long time, even though we're only using 20 percent of that 8 terabytes. NetApp could undersize that more aggressively."

"The cost needs improvement."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The performance has improved by about 30 percent."

"We are currently on a pay-as-you-go model with the storage that we use."

"It is expensive, especially with NetApp Ultra Storage."

More Azure NetApp Files pricing and cost advice

"Once we deploy the pay as you go model, we cannot convert this product as a BYOL model. This is a concern that we have."

"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."

"They allow a special price if you are working closely with them. Since we have a lot of NetApp systems, we got some kind of discount. That's something they do for other customers, not just for us. The price was fair. In addition to the licensing fees, you're paying Amazon for your usage..."

"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 solution's pricing is reasonable."

"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."

"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good, but it was a test system, not a real purchase."

"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

Educational Organization

20%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Educational Organization

36%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

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 ...

See all answers

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 36% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon FSx vs Azure NetApp Files

Compared 7% of the time

Nasuni 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 13% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 11% 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 5% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure NetApp Files

June 2025

Download Azure NetApp Files product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

May 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

May 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: May 2025.

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