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NetApp AltaVault vs NetApp SnapCenter comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 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

NetApp AltaVault
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
52nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (12th), Disk Based Backup Systems (5th), Cloud Backup (46th), Cloud Storage Gateways (6th)
NetApp SnapCenter
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
48th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of NetApp AltaVault is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp SnapCenter is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Naveen Radhwani - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable, fulfils compliance requirements, and enables to manage data backups easily
I use the solution for backup and recovery Our systems have become more stable and scalable after using NetApp AltaVault. The dashboard is useful for managing data backups. The deduplication technology helps me take offline backups efficiently. The workload on the end team has been reduced. It…
Mir Gulzar Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates well with various applications , provides a cloning feature for creating snapshots or clones of volume and a centralized command
It is basically centralized command control software. When the users visualize the workflow of the backup, the management and the customer storage administrator know the ins and outs of the backup and recovery. They can make the strategy for their backup and recovery and the certainty of their backups and restore. Strategic planning: Also, it is easy to make a strategy when you have visualized the inflow and outflow of the backup and recovery. With the CLI or native way, without any UI or management tool, you might not be able to create any strategy at all. This is especially important when you have multiple storage systems inside your data center or organization. You need a tool that connects and visualizes the workflow of the backup and recovery from all the storage systems and NetApp storage systems installed within the organization. It is very important when you have multiple storage systems, and you need to manage your backup and recovery workflow. Ease of Management: Unlike other storage vendors, NetApp has its own product called SnapCenter. Other vendors need to acquire third-party software or integrate with other software to manage storage systems. NetApp has its own solution, which is SnapCenter. NetApp's SnapCenter gels well with their storage systems and products. Ease of management is already there. It's a fine software with easy installation, management, and understanding. It's not a complicated software to understand.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Being able to move data seamlessly from one-premise to the cloud (Azure). It works great. The backup solution is perfect for us."
"The flexibility. Being able to virtualize it, port it wherever I like, test my backups, test my DR capabilities whenever I like without impacting anybody."
"It's pretty simple. Once you set it, it goes; and then the idea of being able to get it to the cloud very quickly. It's kind of a set-it-forget-it."
"You can store backups for a while."
"Its initial setup is easy."
"The solution can be used for all Office 365 applications."
"The deduplication engine. Right now, we're at about 10.5 to 11 times deduplication of our backup data."
"The solution is very easy to use and it offers great support."
"Technical support has been very helpful when we have issues."
"The main advantage is its fast backup and restore."
"It's all together managing both storage and backup, which makes it easier for troubleshooting issues and the automation part of it"
"We have been very satisfied with the technical support's help. Their knowledge level is great. For a noncritical question, they will get back to us within a day."
"The centralized GUI is the best feature, that there is only one webpage where we can see the states of all the backup jobs. We can see all the tasks that are running and we can quickly see if one fails; if they are running or have any issues. We have all that in one place."
"It's a centralized, easy-to-use solution empowering RBAC management, monitoring, notifications, extensive logging, and backup schedules for standalone as well as groups of the same types of environments. The cloning capabilities accelerate development."
"It has greatly improved our DR activity."
"Restoring and cloning are easy to do."
 

Cons

"It's a good product, but it's becoming outdated and moving to their other primary architecture."
"The initial installation is difficult for my clients who have it on both on-premises and on cloud."
"I would like to see more web support."
"The solution needs faster indexing."
"What could be helpful is different user base authentication so then maybe we could allow different customers to point to a single appliance and they only see the backups and things that they have."
"It would be nice if the solution was more complete. Many customers are looking for a single solution or silo that they can manage everything from. It would be nice, instead of having different products, if everything a client needed was in one solution."
"The product must provide multi-gate connectivity."
"More capacity with the basic model of the AltaVault would probably help out."
"When you have role-based access, for example, it's a bit of a problem that the person who creates the backup job is the owner of it. We are struggling a bit with this, that everyone has the same view and the same permissions in there."
"I want to see a few more features add that will help our team in managing solution better."
"The DBAs are comparing it to SMO but it doesn't have a lot of the functionalities that SMO has."
"I have an issue with SnapCenter because sometimes a VM cannot be backed up... The way SnapCenter works is that it makes a backup of all the VMs and then it removes all the old backups. If one VM cannot be backed up for some reason, it has already created a new backup for all the VMs but it cannot remove the old backups. It ends up creating so many backups in VMware and it will cause a performance problem if the condition is not fixed."
"The GUI is still so-so. I' don't use the GUI that often anymore because it's really slow, refreshing disks, refreshing hosts, and you have to click a lot."
"We have hundreds of servers and systems and hundreds of customers and they're separated in a multi-tenancy way in NetApp SVM. Right now, the problem is that it always scan all SVMs. If I backup Customer A, it scans all SVMs, or tries to scan all SVMs, if there is a backup relationship on the storage. But it doesn't have the permissions, so we run into timeouts or the backup just takes too long. They're fixing that in the upcoming release..."
"What I did witness lately are issues with some Microsoft KBs, the updates. But it happened only once, and not on a major platform, it was on a small one."
"The UI, the User Interface, needs to be improved. It's not as clean or modern as it could be."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution, which comes to around 3,000 USD."
"The price is a bit high."
"In one use case, and we have several, to run for a particular customer, the price is about $375,000 a year."
"It is a rather expensive program."
"It's quite cost-effective."
"You could compare it to a Dell EMC or ECS, and I think it's probably a little less costly than that. Within the marketplace, it's a medium cost."
"The pricing is not too bad, but could be a little better."
"It comes free with the amount of equipment we purchase from NetApp. In terms of pricing, zero is my favorite number."
"We have a site license, so it comes with the product."
"The licensing is well-designed because it's already included in some packages with NetApp storage. Therefore, for most customers, it's okay as the SnapCenter license is already included in some NetApp bundles."
"We see a financial value with SnapCenter because we don't have to license Commvault, which is pretty expensive."
"Pricing is very good because if you already have NepApp controllers, then it's included."
"The product is inexpensive."
"It's free. The license is included with other NetApp products."
"The license for SnapCenter was included with the storage array."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Insurance Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Is NetApp AltaVault compatible with AWS?
Hello. Yes, it is compatible with AWS but the great thing about it is that it's actually working with so many cloud providers, it may be just for everyone. Besides the Amazon cloud services, NetApp...
Can AltaVault be used for data reduction?
Hello, you can definitely use NetApp AltaVault for reducing your data and giving yourself some more storage. This product offers you deduplication and compression, helping you achieve that. I'm su...
What kind of security does NetApp AltaVault give you?
My organization is very happy with the security that NetApp AltaVault gives us for our data on the cloud. First, it gives us the option for data recovery, which is very good, especially if someone...
What do you like most about NetApp SnapCenter?
Most banks and financial institutions use the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp SnapCenter?
The product should be free because it is just software to administrate systems purchased from NetApp, which are already expensive.
What needs improvement with NetApp SnapCenter?
The interface usability needs improvement. It should be more user-friendly and easier for customers to use.
 

Also Known As

AltaVault
SnapCenter
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blach Construction, NASA, Riggs, Counselman, Michaels & Downes, Seminole County Public Schools and Spot Trading
All for One Steeb AG, Accenture
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp AltaVault vs. NetApp SnapCenter and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.