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Microsoft Azure File Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

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
6.6
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp Cloud Volumes Servic...
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
17th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (24th), Cloud Storage (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure File Storage is 6.5%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud is 3.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure File Storage6.5%
NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud3.5%
Other90.0%
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

Karthik-A - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has simplified customer data management and improved file transfer workflows
We are using AWS as well, and the main difference is that Microsoft Azure File Storage is more user-friendly for configuration-related and admin-related activities. We do not have to perform many complex activities, making it simpler compared to AWS. Security-wise, there are some concerns because it is in the cloud. The customers need to double-check, and they are not giving complete approval when it comes to security. I would rate Microsoft Azure File Storage's security compliance features seven or eight out of ten. It is secure, but since it is in the cloud, we have to convince customers when providing solutions. Many questions were raised while providing the architecture and solution for this file transfer management system. We convinced them because we have the feature and showed a demo, but it is still a prototype. We have to get approval before starting the work. The data redundancy options in Microsoft Azure File Storage are good. I am facing some challenges in convincing customers, and additional information would be helpful to address these challenges. Microsoft Azure File Storage saves time compared to AWS. We tried the prototype in AWS as well, but Azure is easier. Regarding cost, it is slightly less compared to AWS. The functionality of Microsoft Azure File Storage does not pose any issues, though basic users find it complex and require training. Regarding stability, I would rate Microsoft Azure File Storage 8.5 to 9. Scalability in Microsoft Azure File Storage is impressive. We recently handled a huge transaction during an iPhone launch without any problems.
CC
Co-Founder at Atsign
Enables us to fine-tune storage and capacity on the fly as our needs grow or shrink over time
NetApp delivers High Availability. It's critical to our work. That was the main driver for using NetApp. We have a highly resilient service and if you have a highly resilient service, you are only as resilient as the least resilient part of your infrastructure. That's what we were having trouble with our file system before. It was becoming troublesome, so we needed to find something that was much more highly resilient so that's why we moved to NetApp. The complexity of moving large numbers of files to the cloud depends on what you're trying to do. But for us, it was really simple. I imagine for large enterprise customers it is probably pretty tricky. They're probably on all different technologies inside a large corporation and they may or may not have very large pipes going to them. So if you're in a data center to the cloud then it's going to be easy, but if you have hundreds of branches like if you're a bank and have lots of branch banks, they might have very small pipes out to the internet. It might take forever. In our use case everything's brand new files, so it was pretty trivial. We didn't migrate to the cloud, we were already on the cloud, so it was a nonissue for us. NetApp enables us to share data across VMs. It actually reduced the amount of data storage we need. We were having to have storage attached to each VM. And now we can aggregate that storage across multiple VMs, so that actually gave us a net reduction, which was a good thing. We switched from using block storage to file storage to share data between our VMs. It made it easier, frankly but I worry about the scalability in the future. For the moment it made life easier. We were using block and then we moved back to file with NetApp.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In general, it is a good service for file storage and maintaining your files in order."
"We have not explored the desktop performance analysis of the file storage, but the user interface, API, and the response that we receive over the file storage are very good. We have a lot of customers that connect to the client-side, click the images, and upload them. The beauty of the solution is that we can mount the file storage into a critical server as well as an external drive. The speed that we receive with the images is pretty good."
"Implementing Microsoft Azure has meant that we are using the same solution as our customers who use Azure Public Cloud, which allows us to integrate our application as well as provide the solution to them while visually representing data and giving clear metrics using their data."
"The security features and the ease of integration are good."
"The profile management option is another valuable feature that allows us to manage the profiles and secure them."
"The beauty of the solution is that we can mount the file storage into a critical server as well as an external drive."
"Azure File Storage gives us easy access to cloud solutions at the storage level."
"Overall, I think Microsoft Azure File Storage is workable, but you really need to make a design to make it redundant."
"Storage was taking up maybe 10 to 20% of my life at the startup, and now it takes up zero."
"In terms of its storage snapshot efficiencies, the service is highly efficient. We are only doing things in small batches right now because we have not converted all of the data, but we have tested them in the Google Cloud and they work efficiently."
"Storage was taking up maybe 10 to 20% of my life at the startup, and now it takes up zero. I was personally running all the infrastructure for the company. Now that we've moved to NetApp, I don't have to worry about making sure it's up and running. It's made my life personally much better."
"Overall, they have very impressive technologies."
"It is a good service for high availability that is very easy to configure."
"High availability is very important to us because we have a production environment. High availability is the highest priority for us to continue keeping our systems running."
 

Cons

"The solution is not user-friendly."
"Microsoft Azure File Storage is not that easy to use."
"The storage account key could be a security issue."
"The initial setup is complex. Unless you have done it a few times it, it is going to be hard."
"The security could always be modernized."
"One thing that Azure File Storage could help us with is some kind of impact assessment. When we talk to some of our larger customers who have between 500 and 1,000 applications, we normally do an assessment of all these applications and then tell them which ones are ready to be lifted and shifted, and which ones need to re-architected. It would really help if Azure File Storage could come up with a better way to give estimations of the total investment required, including all costs incurred during the migration."
"Some chunking logics need to be better to address issues with processing bigger files. It should allow better methods for handling large files."
"There is room for improvement in helping customers understand and integrate Azure File Storage into their operations."
"It would help if they increased the area in which they employ artificial intelligence, by starting to do assessments on the environments, to project those. They're not using any AI tools, currently, on the administrative side."
"The user interface has room for improvement."
"The user interface has room for improvement. We would like this service to be more integrated with Azure, which is very easy to manage and use. It was easy to create volumes and add capacity pools in Azure, but in Google Cloud, we can only create separate volumes. We need more management or configuration options in the user interface."
"I would like for the sales team to get in contact more often and let me know what I should be doing next, what we should be doing about new features. So it would be nice if I heard a little bit more from him. From a technology perspective, I have no complaints."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Azure File Storage is expensive."
"I think the pricing of the product can be reduced."
"The price is comparable to other competitive solutions."
"We pay for both yearly and monthly licenses. The yearly one is cheaper than the monthly one."
"There are fewer hidden costs involved compared to other solutions, and when our customer is already a Microsoft partner, they typically have access to more affordable fees."
"The price of the solution is reasonable. The pricing model is based on usage."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being the most expensive. It's not cheap."
"The licensing cost for Microsoft Azure File Storage comes with an agreement from Microsoft."
"We don't need so much space, and there is no option to pay as we go or use just what we need. Also, the only way to increase performance is by increasing the level of the service."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Construction Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
No data available
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure File Storage?
The cost of Microsoft Azure File Storage depends on the storage account, whether it is premium or standard; there is a cost difference, with the cost being higher for premium and lower for standard...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure File Storage?
In my opinion, Microsoft can improve Microsoft Azure File Storage by closing the open questions that a lot of customers have raised. There were previously some issues that I cannot recall exactly. ...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

MS Azure File Storage
CVS for Google Cloud, NetApp CVS for Google Cloud, Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud, Cloud Volumes Service for GCP, NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for GCP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Talon, Camden
Atos, Bandwidth, Wuxi NextCode
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure File Storage vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.