NetApp StorageGRID vs Zadara comparison

NetApp and Zadara are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. NetApp is ranked #10 with an average rating of 7.7, while Zadara is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.5. NetApp holds a 5.7% mindshare in FaOS, compared to Zadara’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Zadara users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Zadara and NetApp StorageGRID compete in the cloud storage market, with each providing unique features for diverse storage needs. Zadara seems to have the upper hand due to its integration flexibility and continuous support model.

Features: Zadara enables seamless integration with major cloud vendors, ensuring low latency and offering a managed service with flexible storage tiering and hybrid deployments. It supports multiple protocols, suitable for dynamic workloads. NetApp StorageGRID excels with robust object storage capabilities, deduplication, and strong data security, prioritized for data durability and archival solutions.

Room for Improvement: Zadara needs to improve feature rollouts, proactive updates, and enrich reporting tools. NetApp StorageGRID could enhance pricing strategies, integrate better with monitoring platforms, and improve metadata management. NetApp's global marketing also needs attention.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zadara offers comprehensive hybrid cloud deployment options with proactive monitoring and 24/7 service, making it appealing for constant oversight. NetApp StorageGRID provides traditional deployment with strong support but lacks 24/7 management, making it less attractive for round-the-clock service needs.

Pricing and ROI: Zadara's pay-per-use model simplifies cost predictions and includes all features, providing significant ROI by reducing capital needs and offering flexibility. NetApp StorageGRID has a variable cost structure and is often deemed expensive despite competitive pricing for enterprise solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed NetApp StorageGRID vs. Zadara Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NetApp StorageGRID vs. Zadara

April 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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.8%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp StorageGRID is 5.7%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zadara is 0.5%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

Read full review

Mir Gulzar Ahmed

IT Manager at Synergy Computers

Object-based storage and offers intuitive management tools, making it easy to configure and maintain

The only thing missing is flexibility in configuration to cater to specific customer requirements. Another area of improvement is marketing. NetApp's marketing of StorageGRID isn't optimal. They should present it more effectively, especially in regions like Pakistan. Here, I haven't seen any marketing campaigns from NetApp for StorageGRID or the Solid State Platform (SSP). While StorageGRID is a globally recognized product, I haven't seen any marketing efforts from NetApp in Pakistan. Even competitors are promoting object storage solutions here, but NetApp seems less efficient in selling StorageGRID. There might be one or two customers, but even as a NetApp partner, I'm not aware of any major sales. I've been trained on StorageGRID, and it is a good product. I'm unsure why it hasn't gained traction in Pakistan compared to other countries. So, I just recommend improving the marketing campaigns in Pakistan. I'm pretty confident that if we have one example of successful StorageGRID implementation in Pakistan, other customers will follow suit.

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Kirubel Behailu

Cloud System Engineer at cloud251

Enhancing storage management efficiency with user-friendly experience

Our customers are using Zadara for their research and development environments. We provide infrastructure for government projects, but we are often not fully aware of their specific usage. I typically use it for our infrastructure and offer both Zadara and Microsoft Azure to our customers Zadara…

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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

"It performs well and it is also very fast."

"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."

"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The most valuable feature is tiering."

"Cost-effective and easy to deploy."

"The technical support team is reliable and responsive."

"It has improved our operational efficiency through time consumption and logistics by 40 to 50 percent. Everything that had to do with our legacy tape solution has been improved and is now more efficient."

"NetApp StorageGRID is a great alternative to AWS S3 buckets. Erasure coding is very valuable."

"It improves our operational efficiency."

"The management portals have most significantly improved our data retrieval times. They've made it much easier to restore data compared to our previous methods."

"The backup features are valuable. I've heard from our backup and data protection people that our clients are very satisfied with the performance in junction with the backup, which they archive on this type of object storage."

More NetApp StorageGRID pros

"Zadara Storage Cloud having 24/7 management saves me support and engineering costs because the storage and computing are managed by a third-party. We are able to focus more attention on the customer, which is truly our core business. Even at 1:00 AM or 2:00 AM at night, someone will answer, which is important."

"It's very easy to expand and compared to other storage systems that we've used, it's a lot more expandable and a lot more flexible in how it's deployed."

"The most valuable feature is the flexibility in terms of deployment options."

"Zadara is a fully-fledged platform, and our customers are happy with its use."

"It provides very satisfactory storage performance."

"Being able to scale on demand, and being able to get out of our security operation center, and not having to purchase hardware upfront, has drastically reduced the overhead that was required to maintain our information. We have also gained additional capabilities in terms of speed of replicating that information."

"Zadara saves both time and money."

"One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage compute instances in there. Being able to integrate with compute, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections."

More Zadara pros

Cons

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"One key improvement I'd like to see in StorageGRID is enhanced visibility for management purposes."

"The integration with more apps has room for improvement."

"The redundancy and reliability are great, but I also see room for improvement there. I would like to see more efficiency in the storage and dedupe/compression solutions."

"They can enhance the deduplication and compression features, which are crucial for saving more disk space. It's not at the same level as the NetApp filer or the real NetApp cluster that runs itself on its architecture, as StorageGRID is a software solution that emulates a RAID level."

"The price is something that NetApp could improve, as with most companies. NetApp is known for not being the cheapest storage option, which is also valid for StorageGRID. There are other storage options on the market which we are aware of and have done proofs of concept for, but you cannot really compare the list prices because, as a big user of NetApp storages, we have totally different prices than some list prices. Still, the price information we got for other options are almost always less expensive than StorageGRID."

"The only real issue that we have run into is, when we are cloning, we cannot do a thin provision clone, it has to be a full clone."

"They can enhance the deduplication and compression features, which are crucial for saving more disk space."

"There was a small amount of confusion when working with StorageGRID and Active Directory for access. We had to do things three to four times resulting in our engineer troubleshooting a couple of things. The location of the menu, along with what is inside the menu: configurations, settings, etc., is not straightforward to users. Most users are Windows-based. So, when make logical changes to the menu which are not similar to Windows, users and administrators get confused."

More NetApp StorageGRID cons

"There is room for improvement in pricing as it is currently quite expensive."

"There are still some storage features that they lack. For example, other vendors implemented the auto-tiering feature a long time ago, while Zadara Storage Cloud is just coming out with this feature today. So, they are a little bit late compared to the market."

"I would like to see them be a little bit more proactive in terms of the patches and updates that are available. I would like to see more disclosure and information around what fixes or what enhancements are available within a patch, and help in coordinating and scheduling that. Right now, it's driven more by the customer in reaching out via a support ticket."

"Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves."

"The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can also be complicated, especially when deeper troubleshooting requires navigating the CLI and searching for logs."

"The management interface is more geared towards end-users rather than a service partner like ourselves, and there are improvements that can be made around that."

"Some of the features are a little bit slow to come to market."

"The cost is not favorable as Zadara does not provide competitive rates for regions like South Africa and Ethiopia."

More Zadara cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

"The price is a little high."

"The price could be cheaper."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"The product is very expensive."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"The licensing that the S3 service provides them from a FabricPool standpoint is more attractive than the licensing from AWS or Azure."

"The pricing of StorageGRID falls within the typical range for enterprise-grade solutions and is comparable to other vendors such as Dell, NetApp, and Pure Storage."

"I rate the product pricing around five out of ten—it's negotiable, depending on the circumstances."

"The price is attractive."

"It is very cost-effective."

"We save money on storage costs from this solution since it allows us to have a source of revenue from customers consuming the service."

"Creating your own data stores, backups, or storage grids, helps eliminate all these costs of downloading all the data back after you downloaded to the cloud."

"The pricing is quite flexible and depends on the specific customer requirements. The initial cost is primarily based on the desired capacity, so it's not a fixed price."

More NetApp StorageGRID pricing and cost advice

"One of the factors that ruled out several providers was cost. They were way too expensive for the volume of data that we needed and the speed at which we needed to be able to manage it. There aren't a lot of providers that can do that."

"For our use, it's appropriately priced and overall, it's proved to be very cost-effective against other tier-one vendors."

"It is a nice licensing model and it makes it quite simple because we just pay for what we use, and the bill that comes shows us exactly what customers are using what resources."

"The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."

"The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using."

"If you just take the street price of Zadara Storage Cloud and look up the price or cost per hour, then you could think that Zadara Storage Cloud is extremely expensive or a solution only for enterprise use. That is not true. You need to compare the entire system. This means that you don't stop looking at just the street price, but you need to consider all the features, requirements, and costs of support as well as the extra cost that other vendors have. Other players just play with hidden, additional costs. Everything is included in Zadara Storage Cloud's licensing cost; what you get is what you pay for."

"The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

29%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

19%

Computer Software Company

17%

Government

Computer Software Company

23%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp StorageGRID?

The management portals have most significantly improved our data retrieval times. They've made it much easier to rest...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp StorageGRID?

I rate the product pricing around five out of ten—it's negotiable, depending on the circumstances.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp StorageGRID?

The product's continual innovation and enhancement in integration capabilities with other NetApp solutions could be b...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zadara?

The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Zadara?

I use this product as storage. Specifically, I use it as big storage. That's the main use case for Zadara ( /products...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Zadara?

As for the pros and cons, the main concerns are the complexity of the initial installation and the complicated mainte...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 2% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 25% of the time

MinIO vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 25% of the time

Dell ECS vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 23% of the time

Scality RING vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 7% of the time

VAST Data vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 2% of the time

More NetApp StorageGRID Competitors

MinIO vs Zadara

Compared 21% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Zadara

Compared 18% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Zadara

Compared 14% of the time

Wasabi vs Zadara

Compared 10% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Zadara

Compared 8% of the time

More Zadara Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

April 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp StorageGRID

April 2025

Download NetApp StorageGRID product report

Buyer's Guide

Zadara

April 2025

Download Zadara product report

Also Known As

No data available

Storage GRID

No data available

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Store and manage unstructured data at scale using NetApp StorageGRID for secure, durable object storage. Place content in the right location, at the right time, and on the right storage tier, optimizing workflows and reducing overall costs for globally distributed rich media.

NetApp

Zadara is a powerful enterprise-level storage solution whose design enables it to handle every aspect of a user’s data storage needs. It can be deployed in any location, using any protocol, and storing any data type that an organization requires. With Zadara, organizations can do everything that they were able to do with more traditional systems in a cheaper and more efficient way.

Zadara Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Zadara include:

Security. Zadara is built with data security in mind. All of a user’s data is heavily encrypted by Zadara’s software so that it is safe both while it is in storage and while it is being transferred somewhere else. It comes with role-based access controls that prevent a user’s data from being seen by those who lack the proper level of authorization. It also comes with dual-factor authentication and other similar methods of identity management.

Reduced costs. While Zadara offers enterprise-level storage capabilities, the costs associated with utilizing it are far less than those of similar solutions. Some of the resources that it offers are totally free of cost. The model that it utilizes is a pay-as-you-go model. Organizations only pay for the resources that they use and nothing more. Users are not required to sign up for any particular period of time. They are in complete and total control of what they spend on the solution.

Storage efficiency. Zadara ensures that users are able to store their data in the most efficient way possible. It takes a number of approaches that prevent insufficient data storage. These approaches are:

1. Thin-provision volumes. This method only allows actually written data to be counted toward the storage capacity that is consumed.

2. Pattern removal. Zadara searches a user’s stored data for repetitive binary sequences. Once it identifies the repetitive binary sequences, it deletes them.

3. Inline deduplication (all-flash only). This method ensures that Zadara only stores unique data blocks in its system.

4. Inline compression. Zadara takes data that is stored in its system and compresses it. This keeps larger blocks of data from taking up too much room.

Zadara Features

Centralized management. Zadara comes with a centralized dashboard that enables organizations to monitor and control their storage operations from a single location.

File analytics. Organizations can leverage a powerful analytics package that can provide them with critical insights. These tools can help users sort through their data and make more informed data management decisions.

Remote mirroring. This feature enables users to replicate data in two remote locations at the same time. This makes it easy for data to be recovered in the event of an unexpected loss. It also aids remote teams in their collaboration efforts by giving them access to the same data at the same time.

Reviews from Real Users

Zadara is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its extensive suite of cloud solution integrations and its object storage capability.

Steve H., the chief technology officer at Pratum, writes, “One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage computer instances there. Being able to integrate with computing, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections.”

Mauro R., the CEO of Momit SRL, says, “The object storage feature is wonderful. With traditional storage, you have a cost per gigabyte that is extremely high or related to the number of disks. With Zadara Storage Cloud, you have a cost per gigabyte that you can cut and tailor to your needs independent of the number or size of the disks.”

Zadara

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

ASE, DARZ GmbH

Time, Inc. A&E Network, The Washington Post, News UK, McGraw Hill, Gilt, Toshiba, Deloitte, VMware

Buyer's Guide

NetApp StorageGRID vs. Zadara

April 2025

Free Report: NetApp StorageGRID vs. Zadara

Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp StorageGRID vs. Zadara and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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