Microsoft Azure File Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Download the complete report

Helped 859,129 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

Microsoft Azure File Storage

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

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 File Storage is 10.0%, down from 13.5% 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

PrashanthR

Lead Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Seamlessly streamlines document processing with advanced file storage and OCR integration

We need to store data over there. We process documents through Kofax Time is a major benefit, as well as ease of processing. With configuration, it happens quite easily, and we can finish tasks early. File storage is complemented by OCR with Azure Cognitive Service. This enhances the processing…

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 is very easy to use SSTP and some traditional code to move the data into a database because we can easily use the permissions and we don't have any integration or conversion issues."

"First of all, the solution is very secure. Secondly, the solution is very fast. It is reliable and available all the time."

"The product can integrate with all platforms. My team also does data visualization, and Power BI can directly connect with those nodes. We can very conveniently connect with multiple tools for our database. The benefit here is that by utilizing the same storage application, my application is linked with their application through the same server. This setup provides real analytics and data for a holistic purpose, which is advantageous."

"The best part is the accessibility to all the files."

"I like that Microsoft Azure File Storage works fine and is quick to deploy. It's also easy to connect to it, particularly when connecting it with my on-premise file servers."

"It's a scalable solution."

"Very user-friendly and intuitive."

"The storage in this solution is excellent."

More Microsoft Azure File Storage pros

"Multiprotocol is the most valuable because Amazon was not able to provide us with access to the same data from Linux and from Windows clients. That was our value proposition for CVO, Cloud Volumes ONTAP."

"One of the features our customers like is that it can be used from one cloud provider to another. They can use it from Azure to AWS or vice versa. That way, they don't need to use the same provider for backups. If something goes wrong on the primary site, having the same data in another cloud service provider is important."

"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."

"In terms of administration, the portal which provides the dashboard view is an excellent tool for operations. It gives you volume divisions, usage rates, which division is using how much data, and more. The operations portal is fantastic for the support team."

"If you have a larger amount of data than normal in cloud, it is easy to provision and maintain. Waiting for the delivery of the controller, the configuration of enclosures, etc., all this stuff is eliminated compared to using on-premise."

"NetApp's Cloud Manager automation capabilities are very good because it's REST-API-driven, so we can completely automate everything. It has a good overview if you want to just have a look into your environment as well."

"It makes sure we have control of the data and that we know what it's being used for. The main thing for us is that we need to know what applications are consuming it and responsible for it. The solution helps us do that."

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

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"It's not very intuitive."

"I would like to see more updates around File Storage."

"The way retention policies are applied could be more optimized."

"The product’s pricing could be better."

"Licensing costs are expensive."

"The product name keeps changing. It can be confusing when product names change frequently, especially with Microsoft. Sometimes, if you refer to a product by a certain name last year, it might have a different name six months later."

"It's a bit complex to set up. Other than that, there is nothing to improve."

"Firewall rules should be introduced to secure the access date from any virus attacks. Anti-virus should be introduced in the work filtering and document filtering."

More Microsoft Azure File Storage cons

"The cost needs improvement."

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

"The product is more restricted with underlying cloud."

"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."

"Something we would like to see is the ability to better manage the setup and tie it to our configuration management database. We manage our whole IT infrastructure out of that database."

"Cloud Volumes ONTAP's interface could use an overhaul. Sometimes you have to dig around in Cloud Manager a little bit to find certain things. The layout could be more intuitive."

"The data tiering needs improvement. E.g., moving hard data to faster disks."

"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."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"One needs to pay according to the storage they plan to use in the solution. The payments are to be made yearly. It is usually monthly, but we opted for yearly subscriptions in our company."

"Microsoft Azure File Storage is expensive."

"Microsoft Azure File Storage has a reasonable price."

"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being the most expensive. It's not cheap."

"I give the pricing of the solution a seven out of ten."

"One of the major benefits for AWS is that they have a very large customer representative base where clients can be picked from, they offer large discounts and credit. We were not able to receive the same kind of offers from Microsoft Azure File Storage. We tried to approach Azure while hiring for our disaster recovery discussion, but we didn't receive anything from Azure."

"I think the pricing of the product can be reduced."

"For one terabyte of data, we are spending about 150 Euro every month."

More Microsoft Azure File Storage 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."

"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."

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

"The solution's pricing is reasonable."

"Our licensing costs are folded into the hardware purchases and I have never differentiated between the two."

"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."

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

"Our licensing is based on a yearly subscription. That is an additional cost, but because of the storage efficiencies that the NetApp gives, even with the additional cost of the NetApp license, you still end up saving money versus straight Azure native for storage. It's definitely worth it."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Public Cloud Storage Services solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

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

Which file storage system is better - Amazon EFS (elastic file storage) or Azure File Storage?

Amazon EFS is easy to set up: you can use the AWS management console, API, or command-line. Amazon EFS can grow to petabytes and deliver consistent low latencies and high levels of throughput. This...

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure File Storage?

The product is a reliable cloud solution.

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

The pricing for Microsoft Azure File Storage is five out of ten, not so expensive and not so low.

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 EFS (Elastic File System) vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Comparisons

Compared 46% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 21% of the time

Wasabi vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 16% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon S3 Glacier vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 7% of the time

More Microsoft Azure File 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 File Storage

Download Microsoft Azure File Storage product report

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

MS Azure File Storage

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

Overview

Fully managed file shares that use the standard SMB 3.0 protocol

Key scenarios:

Share data across on-premises and cloud servers
Migrate file share-based applications to the cloud with no code changes
Integrate modern applications with File storage
Simplify hosting for high availability workload data

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

Talon, Camden

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 File Storage vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP