Microsoft Azure Block Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

Microsoft Azure Block Storage vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

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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

Microsoft Azure Block Storage

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

6th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Storage (2nd), Cloud Backup (14th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is 0.9%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 7.4%, up from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Public Cloud Storage Services

Featured Reviews

MatsHagberg Olsson2

Senior Solutions Architect at EQ2 Technology

Empowers secure data management with affordable tools and minimal hassle

The most valuable feature is that it's very affordable in comparison to competitors. The absolute best feature is the Azure Storage Explorer tool. The tool allows me to download to my device, control access, and manage data with ease. Additionally, the joint use of Azure portal further facilitates management depending on my location.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It can be deployed independently and supports every kind of deployment."

"The ease of setup is the primary reason we use Azure Block Storage. The setup takes one or two days, and we had help from Microsoft. We had five people on our team."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Block Storage are flexibility and the possibility to trigger actions."

"The most valuable part of Microsoft Azure is its scalability and availability, which make it easy to work with."

"The stability seems to be very reliable."

"Storing and then retrieving data are the most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Block Storage."

"The tier feature in V2 is the most valuable feature of this solution. It enables you to move your storage from hot tier to cold tier into archive tier."

"It has capabilities such as versioning and, from a security point of view, you can also back it up."

More Microsoft Azure Block Storage pros

"One of the most valuable features is its similarity to the physical app, which makes it familiar. It's almost identical to a real NetApp, which means you can run all of the associated NetApp processes and services with it. Otherwise, we would definitely have to deploy some hardware on a site somewhere, which could be a challenge in terms of CapEx."

"The most valuable feature is its exceptional performance and storage efficiency."

"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."

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

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

"The FlexClones make all the management easier for us."

"It offers ease of use and a comprehensive suite of applications, including features like SnapMirror, SnapVault, and unified snapshot management, all bundled into a single product."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"Microsoft Azure Block Storage can improve the configuration to be more user-friendly."

"Support is an area where improvements can be made, particularly in response time for enterprise support."

"Licensing costs are pretty high."

"Microsoft Azure Block Storage's stability needs improvement."

"I encountered a challenge where certain metadata was located on a secured network that could only be accessed through a VPN. As there was no direct connector available to reach the private networks that require VPN access, we had to rely on manual effort to access the data. This could potentially be addressed as an area of improvement, especially with regard to accessibility issues where data is only accessible through a VPN connection."

"The solution’s user interface could be improved."

"Microsoft Azure Block Storage needs to improve its migration and reporting processes."

"We have not had the best experience with customer service and support."

More Microsoft Azure Block Storage cons

"The encryption and deduplication features still have a lot of room for improvement."

"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."

"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."

"The navigation on some of the configuration parameters is a bit cumbersome, making the learning curve on functions somewhat steep."

"I would like to see more information about Cloud Volumes ONTAP using Google Cloud Platform on NetApp's website."

"We want to be able to add more than six disks in aggregate, but there is a limit of the number of disks in aggregate. In GCP, they provide less by limiting the sixth disk in aggregate. In Azure, the same solution provides 12 disks in an aggregate versus GCP where it is just half that amount. They should bump up the disk in aggregate requirement so we don't have to migrate the aggregate from one to another when the capacities are full."

"I think the challenge now is more in terms of keeping an air gap. The notion that it is in the cloud, easy to break, etc. The challenge now is mostly about the air gap and how we can protect that in the cloud."

"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."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of pricing, Azure is quite cheaper than AWS. However, I have recently read that Oracle Cloud Generation 2 storage is quite cheaper than Azure. I haven't used it yet. We need to look at a customer's requirements, and, based on that, we can suggest the storage. You can save at least 20% with Azure as compared to AWS, which is quite costly."

"Microsoft Azure Block Storage is an expensive solution and I pay monthly."

"The price could be more flexible, and it can be expensive."

"For the first 50DB, they cost around $50. It's an open solution for everybody. Anybody can go to the Microsoft website and they can get the pricing for it. But the first 50GB of data is a default rate and then it increases for the next 500GB or something like that. It is a pay as you go solution. The more you use, the more you pay. That's normally how you pay for any cloud solutions."

"The product's pricing is reasonable, but premium applications can be costly."

"I would rate Azure a three out of ten for pricing."

"The pricing for Microsoft Azure Block Storage is high because of MSA and SBA contracts, where Microsoft takes care of the security aspects, apart from the maintenance, and Microsoft has service level agreements with the customers."

"I use Microsoft Azure Block Storage's free version."

More Microsoft Azure Block Storage 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."

"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..."

"In addition to the standard licensing fees, there are fees for Azure, the VMs themselves and for data transfer."

"We purchased the product directly from NetApp."

"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."

"If a customer is only using, say, less than 10 terabytes, I don't think CVO would be a good option. A customer using at least 100 or 200 terabytes should get a reasonable price from NetApp."

"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."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

31%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Block Storage?

We use the solution to develop SaaS platforms on Azure. We utilize various Microsoft components like block storage and databases for this purpose.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Block Storage?

Our experience with pricing has been positive. The budget for Microsoft Azure services has been within expectations for the last couple of months. The cost for Azure Data Factory ( /products/azure-...

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Block Storage?

We encountered an issue where enabling SFTP on Microsoft Azure Block Storage didn’t allow us to get the IP address, as Azure ( /products/microsoft-azure-reviews ) doesn’t support it. We had to set ...

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.

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

The solution's pricing is reasonable.

What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

NetApp's support could improve.

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs Microsoft Azure Block Storage

Comparisons

Compared 70% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs Microsoft Azure Block Storage

Compared 30% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Block Storage Competitors

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 17% of the time

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 7% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Azure Block Storage

Download Microsoft Azure Block Storage product report

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

MS Azure Block Storage

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

Overview

Massively scalable cloud storage for your applications

Store and help protect your data. Get durable, highly available data storage across the globe and pay only for what you use.

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

Mazda, BlinkBox, Rakuten Showtime, Xbox One, Serko, ChronoDrive

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

Microsoft Azure Block Storage vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP