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

Microsoft and NetApp are both solutions in the Public Cloud Storage Services category. Microsoft is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.6, while NetApp is ranked #19. Microsoft holds a 9.6% mindshare in PCSS, compared to NetApp’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure File Storage

Read 52 Microsoft Azure File Storage reviews

4,712 Views
2,073 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Volumes Servic...

Read 3 NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud reviews

420 Views
202 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure File Storage

NetApp Cloud Volumes Servic...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

Microsoft Azure File Storage and NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud are two prominent cloud storage solutions. Users praise the scalability and integration features of NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud, yet Microsoft Azure File Storage is often highlighted for its robust security and cost-effectiveness.

Features: Microsoft Azure File Storage is valued for its seamless integration with other Microsoft services and strong security protocols. NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud is appreciated for its high performance, scalability, and ease of use in multi-cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: Users of Microsoft Azure File Storage suggest improving its speed and reducing downtime. NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud users recommend enhancing the backup options and lowering costs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure File Storage users find the deployment process straightforward with the advantage of extensive documentation and responsive customer service. NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud is highlighted for its quick setup and intuitive operation, but some users report delays in customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure File Storage is praised for its cost-effective pricing model and lower initial setup costs. NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud, though potentially more expensive, is perceived as offering higher ROI due to its advanced features and performance.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure File Storage vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

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

September 2025

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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 File Storage

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetApp Cloud Volumes Servic...

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

19th

Average Rating

9.4

Reviews Sentiment

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (22nd), Cloud Storage (17th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure File Storage is 9.6%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Public Cloud Storage Services Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Azure File Storage	9.6%
NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud	1.0%
Other	89.4%

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…

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Colin Constable

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.

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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

"Very user-friendly and intuitive."

"I like that we can copy and download data using Azure. It's not just for file storage; we can also use it for large data sets or to host static web applications."

"The solution is user-friendly and integrates easily with web apps."

"It was quick to synchronize back from Azure to the on-premise server."

"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."

"File storage is complemented by OCR with Azure Cognitive Service."

"The most significant aspect of Microsoft Azure File Storage is its life cycle functionality, which enables us to transfer files to various storage options, such as hot storage, full storage, and archive. This feature is crucial since we can apply a life cycle method to files that have not been in use for an extended period, and then move them to a cheaper cold storage option to save costs. Since the newest files are stored in the hot storage, it met our specific requirements. Consequently, older files can be transferred to archive and cold storage."

"What I like about Microsoft Azure File Storage is its convenience for customers, cost-effectiveness, and high availability."

More Microsoft Azure File Storage pros

"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."

"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."

"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."

Cons

"In our use cases, we see the weakness in mobile internet connectivity."

"They can improve the ability to assign permissions to different groups or users."

"Licensing costs are expensive."

"The pricing could be improved. They need to make the costs more transparent so users know what they will be charged and why ahead of time."

"The product’s pricing could be better."

"If the file is large, there may be a delay in download time."

"Some chunking logics need to be better to address issues with processing bigger files. It should allow better methods for handling large files."

"A lot of things could be better, especially when it comes to accessing File Storage for monitoring. Azure Copy is fine, but there could be additional integration and security features for those who want more privacy and control over access to Azure."

More Microsoft Azure File Storage cons

"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."

"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."

"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

"The price is comparable to other competitive solutions."

"The pricing is usually dependent on your storage requirements. Overall, I believe Microsoft Azure File Storage's price is reasonable."

"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."

"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."

"We pay for both yearly and monthly licenses. The yearly one is cheaper than the monthly one."

"The product's pricing need improvement."

"The product must improve its price."

"The pricing could be more flexible."

More Microsoft Azure File Storage pricing and cost advice

"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

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

22%

Manufacturing Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	24

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...

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What do you like most about Microsoft Azure File Storage?

The product is a reliable cloud solution.

See all answers

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.

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Comparisons

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 67% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 10% of the time

Wasabi vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon S3 Glacier vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Azure File Storage Competitors

Google Cloud Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud

Compared 33% of the time

Amazon FSx vs NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud

Compared 25% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud

Compared 22% of the time

Dropbox Business - Enterprise vs NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud

Compared 20% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure File Storage

September 2025

Download Microsoft Azure File Storage product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud

September 2025

NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud report

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud product report

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

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 for Google Cloud is a fully managed or self-managed file service that is integrated into Google Cloud with the multiprotocol support, performance, and availability required to run business-critical applications. It is designed to provide massively parallel shared access to thousands of Google Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine instances, enabling your applications to achieve high levels of aggregate throughput and IOPS with consistent low latencies.

Use cases. Customers can use the service to migrate existing enterprise applications to Google Cloud. Other use cases include hybrid deployments, multicloud mobility, big data analytics, web serving and content management, application development and testing, media and entertainment workflows, database backups, container storage, and more.

Features. Multiple performance tiers, standard file interfaces, advanced data management, metered service, fully managed service, native service experience, integrated support, and integrated billing.

For more information:

NetApp: https://cloud.netapp.com/cloud-volumes-service-for-gcp

Google: https://cloud.google.com/netapp

NetApp

Sample Customers

Talon, Camden

Atos, Bandwidth, Wuxi NextCode

Buyer's Guide

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

September 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Azure File Storage vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud

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