Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) comparison

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

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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

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services

6th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

All-Flash Storage (6th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), File and Object Storage (4th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure File Storage is 10.3%, down from 13.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 1.6%, up from 0.7% 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…

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Juan-Contreras

System Administrator at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees

Ensures streamlined management, simplified infrastructure, and efficient data handling

It has effectively managed our unstructured data, including audio and video files. We've experienced smooth operations without any complaints regarding uploading or downloading videos. While video usage isn't as frequent, we primarily utilize it for downloading videos related to specific incidents for administrators or our police department. We've encountered no issues uploading files of any kind. Transitioning from VMware to Nutanix has highlighted the overall flexibility of Nutanix's platform. Unlike VMware's three-tier system, Nutanix simplifies the learning curve by streamlining operations. The update process, in particular, has been favorable, with no critical issues encountered. The resiliency of Nutanix hasn't been thoroughly tested in our environment so far. However, I routinely check fault tolerance settings to ensure they meet our requirements. During the update process, I've observed critical errors occur as hosts restart, but Nutanix's self-healing mechanism handles these issues seamlessly. The benefit of using Nutanix is evident in several ways. Firstly, we've effectively compressed our storage while significantly expanding our overall storage pool. Previously, our service had a capacity of twenty-five terabytes, but with Nutanix, we've scaled up to a hundred and twenty terabytes physically and approximately fifty terabytes logically. This expansion has been accompanied by noticeable improvements in performance, particularly with reduced latency and IOPS well within the boundaries of our equipment. All our resources are centralized in a single location for managing and running storage: our data center. We operate three Nutanix nodes within this center, effectively managing everything from one central location. We don't have any other locations outside of our data center running a Nutanix cluster. Nutanix's capability to eliminate silos within our organization's storage infrastructure was discussed during our recent call with the engineer. Although we haven't explored this feature extensively yet, there's a forthcoming project where we anticipate leveraging it.One thing I'd appreciate is having a desktop application similar to what VMware offered. With VMware, I could download a separate client program onto my computer, allowing me to log in directly rather than accessing the host through a browser.

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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

"Its simplicity of use is most valuable. It's easy to start working with it and understand it. It's easier to transfer files between different users. I'm able to move files from my device to my manager's device without any issues or without facing any problems in between."

"Very user-friendly and intuitive."

"Integration with the entire Azure platform."

"It is a scalable product since it is a cloud solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"It was easy to set up."

"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."

"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."

"The immutable storage features are valuable."

More Microsoft Azure File Storage pros

"Nutanix Unified Storage does a very good job of unifying our organization's block, file, and object storage. It puts it all in one place. From one platform, we can deploy S3-type buckets. We can provide iSCSI-level block storage if we need to. It does a great job with home folders and departmental shares, which is what we mostly use Nutanix Unified Storage for."

"Redundancy and availability are valuable. We have several nodes, so it stays up, and there is redundancy. Then there is availability."

"I rate the overall solution ten out of ten."

"The aspect of the product that I like the most is its simplicity."

"The most valuable feature is the unified dashboard, as it allows us to easily observe everything from a single location."

"The life cycle managers of the PCMs are very impressive, and I like them. They make our lives easy when managing patches and security updates when they come in. A life cycle manager helps to consolidate different vendors."

"The scalability, data redundancy, and security are valuable."

"We have virtually zero downtime with Nutanix. It updates itself, and we can easily move machines from one cluster to another."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pros

Cons

"The pricing and technical support could be better."

"It would be good if they added some features that make the solution easier to access for everyone."

"The solution should support all the legacy storage systems."

"It would be helpful if we could remove data that we don't frequently access to reduce the cost of the storage."

"The integration of the site storage with SQL was not completely seamless."

"There is room for improvement in helping customers understand and integrate Azure File Storage into their operations."

"They should make the solution more user-friendly."

"It should allow better methods for handling large files."

More Microsoft Azure File Storage cons

"The current hardware is not as dense as it could be. In our deployment, we have 2 PB per site, and we have to have 24 nodes. That's a lot of cabling and network ports that we use up. More dense nodes would be better."

"For me, personally, it's a little bit slow because there's so much stuff in the underlying layers that even after talking with Nutanix support, I couldn't really grasp it."

"I have heard that there have been latency problems."

"Improving quota policies would be advantageous, particularly by offering the option to implement blocking instead of just issuing warnings."

"The interface could be improved."

"Unified Storage failed to fulfill our object storage requirements."

"Historically, it has been a hyper-converged infrastructure, so when you are looking to grow the solution, you need to scale the compute and storage. Having the ability to scale the storage independently would be a good improvement."

"From a management side, the one thing I would prefer is if it were a bit less expensive for smaller enterprises. It's a bit costly. If they provided flexible modules where you could pick and choose features, and only pay for what you use, that would be an improvement."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's pricing need improvement."

"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."

"The solution is a bit pricey compared to AWS and Google."

"The price of the solution is reasonable. The pricing model is based on usage."

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

"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."

"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."

More Microsoft Azure File Storage pricing and cost advice

"We are Nutanix partners, so it is pretty good. With the free terabyte that comes with the Nutanix clusters, we have started to build proposals for the clients. The price adjustment with the new policy of Nutanix Unified Storages seems attractive. Let us see if it has results."

"Nutanix's pricing is definitely much better when compared to other storage providers. That was one of the main reasons we switched to this platform."

"Compared to other solutions, NUS is cost-effective and efficient. It also has good performance."

"It is not too high for what we are using."

"The price can always be improved. As a customer, you always seek reasonable solutions within your budget, and they give us little to do a lot. My IT team always has to justify that we are choosing an optimal solution, so the price could be a little lower Maybe the prices could be a little bit lower."

"The solution's pricing is better compared to other products."

"My company is in Brazil, and making the payments in dollars is tough for our organization."

"The product has an annual licensing fee."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pricing and cost advice

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849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

33%

Educational Organization

19%

Manufacturing Company

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 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?

Nutanix Unified Storage isn't expensive.

What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?

The dashboard could be more customizable

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

Comparisons

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Azure NetApp Files vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 21% of the time

Wasabi vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Microsoft Azure File Storage

Compared 8% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 18% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 17% of the time

MinIO vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 5% of the time

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Azure File Storage

Download Microsoft Azure File Storage product report

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Download Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) product report

Also Known As

MS Azure File Storage

Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage

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

Nutanix Unified Storage provides high availability and seamless cloud platform integration, ensuring robust redundancy, scalability, and streamlined management. It supports hybrid cloud connectivity, enhancing storage security and performance.

Nutanix Unified Storage is designed for effective data protection across block, file, and object storage, offering features like ransomware detection and a centralized management interface through Prism Central. Users gain improved SLAs and IT cost savings through its efficient performance. Despite its user-friendly interface, there is a demand for enhanced security measures such as Multi-Factor Authentication and DLP. While its resilience is notable, users seek improvements in protocol compatibility, storage capabilities, pricing, and support processes.

What are the most important features of Nutanix Unified Storage?

User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies storage management and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures continuous operation and reliability.
Seamless Cloud Integration: Compatible with platforms like Azure and AWS.
Robust Redundancy: Protects data against hardware failures.
Scalable Architecture: Easily adapts to growing data storage needs.
Ransomware Detection: Enhances data protection measures.

What benefits and ROI might users find in reviews?

Improved SLAs: Increased service reliability and performance.
IT Cost Savings: Reduces expenses through efficient resource use.
Enhanced Security: Stronger data protection and reduced risk.
Centralized Management: Easier control and monitoring from one dashboard.

Industries implement Nutanix Unified Storage for tasks such as file storage, database performance improvement, and storage solution consolidation. Companies deploying virtual machines, securing against ransomware, connecting hybrid clouds, and backing up data find it useful. It supports workloads like Citrix VDI, Kubernetes, and research data, assisting many organizations migrating from legacy storage for better cost efficiency and reduced data center footprints.

Nutanix

Sample Customers

Talon, Camden

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco

Microsoft Azure File Storage vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)