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Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) 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
7.4
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (5th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), File and Object Storage (2nd), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure File Storage is 10.0%, down from 13.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 1.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

PrashanthR - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Amarnath Charugundla - PeerSpot reviewer
Unified management and cost-effectiveness lead to positive experiences and future savings
Improvement is necessary wherein the memory or storage should not breach 90%, because if breached, it becomes unmanageable. We have to set alerts or CPU triggering for 95% for the first warning. Other activities on nodes or file systems should be properly maintained. We must monitor the dashboard for P1, P2 alerts in the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) file share system including SMB, NFS, objects, and blocks. Attention should be maintained for any alerts such as CPU, memory, and RAM alerts, as exceeding these creates issues within teams. If triggered to 95% and forgotten, it crosses the SLA breach, causing disturbances to application, web, and platform teams. Continuous monitoring on the Nutanix dashboard is essential. Even a highly experienced person in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cannot provide a 10 rating out of 10 because it is a vast system. I would rate it eight from my perspective.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"First of all, the solution is very secure. Secondly, the solution is very fast. It is reliable and available all the time."
"File storage is complemented by OCR with Azure Cognitive Service."
"I recommend Microsoft Azure File Storage for medium and above-sized companies."
"It's a stable product."
"It was easy to set up."
"It's a scalable solution."
"My client had zero data loss while using the solution for backups and file security."
"It is a very scalable solution. I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten."
"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very scalable."
"We transitioned from a three-tier architecture to Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). With the Files offering out of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), we were able to migrate those shares with a smaller footprint."
"The most valuable feature is the unified dashboard, as it allows us to easily observe everything from a single location."
"The reliability and stability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are very good, and after almost four or five years of usage, we haven't encountered significant issues."
"It's a centralized place for management. With all our virtual machines and Kubernetes in there, it's a single place to manage all of our resources, instead of having to jump around to different places."
"The management interface is great and you have handy access to several details about your file shares."
"The most valuable features of the solution are high availability and synchronization to another location."
"They have well-documented best practices and the interface is good."
 

Cons

"I have had issues migrating my data to another subscription."
"There is room for improvement in helping customers understand and integrate Azure File Storage into their operations."
"The tool needs to add more controls and enhance Power BI. For instance, I'm just suggesting the visualization layer. Power BI can increase visualization as much as possible, and the product can add more controls to the data flows."
"The security could always be modernized."
"The product’s pricing could be better."
"Microsoft Azure File Storage needs more integrations. In the future, I also want to see GRC added to the portal. If you enroll or sign up for Azure services, your country may not have GRC available in the portal, so you may have to choose a strange country, for example, Kenya, to activate credit."
"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."
"Lacks integration with other platforms."
"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) needs improvement, particularly for firmware upgrades, as sometimes updates take a whole day and it can be unclear whether the issue is with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) or the hardware, requiring us to reconfigure everything, which is a main point we want consolidated into one solution."
"While Unified Storage has evolved a lot over time, its database handling needs to improve a little. There could be an improvement in terms of costs. It's a little expensive for Brazil but still delivers a lot of performance."
"Its features can be further enhanced from the DR and high availability points of view to match other vendors, such as NetApp."
"I believe that one of the most complicated parts of Nutanix Unified Storage is the configuration of the DNS issue in Active Directory. Sometimes it is a bit complicated to troubleshoot or detect an error when integrating it with Active Directory."
"Customer service is more difficult to call and they do not responding as much as, for example, DataCore. It's not the same level of satisfaction compared to DataCore. Responses could be faster."
"From the speed perspective of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), it could enhance some features to make it the best storage solution in the market."
"The implementation is a little bit complex and should be made easier."
"I think Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) can be improved with integration with vendors other than VMware or Dell, seeking more integrations with other storage vendors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I give the pricing of the solution a seven out of ten."
"We pay for both yearly and monthly licenses. The yearly one is cheaper than the monthly one."
"The licensing cost for Microsoft Azure File Storage comes with an agreement from Microsoft."
"Microsoft Azure File Storage is expensive."
"The product's pricing need improvement."
"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."
"The product must improve its price."
"The product has an annual licensing fee."
"Nutanix Unified Storage pricing is reasonable."
"It's not the cheapest solution. It's in line with other solutions, but it offers features that the competitors don't have at any price point, especially with regard to analytics and ransomware prevention. No one else has any sort of object-based storage available. Nutanix Unified Storage is a lot more feature-rich. This is a situation where you get what you pay for."
"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."
"With all of the Nutanix equipment, the licensing is expensive. We operate in the enterprise space, but we're a midsized company. At times, the price tag is a little bit shocking for a company with only 35 employees. We're not a Fortune 500 company, but we deal with Fortune 500 drug and energy companies. We have to play in that enterprise space if we're going to have enterprise customers. I'm very price-conscious, but I understand that if I want the best, I've got to pay the price."
"I am not the one who makes the calls, but it seems to me that it was very competitive. Other solutions would have required dedicated hardware, so an additional CapEx has to be put in place. In that sense, it was definitely a more competitive option to go with Nutanix Files."
"The product is pricey."
"Nutanix Unified Storage is competitively priced. There aren't any competitors that can do much better for the same price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
32%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

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 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 Nutanix Unified Storage?
Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?
From my experience with issues, I have participated in P1 and P2 incidents and learned from them. I can provide solutions or involve higher authorities when issues are beyond my scope. I rate mysel...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?
While there are good aspects, I would like to see improvements in networking configuration, particularly regarding overlay and underlay, plus enhancements in micro-segmentation, as that would provi...
 

Also Known As

MS Azure File Storage
Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Talon, Camden
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure File Storage vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
863,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.