We compared Microsoft Azure File Storage and Azure NetApp Files based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Microsoft Azure File Storage offers strong security measures and efficient file sharing capabilities, with positive remarks on customer service. The pricing is considered competitive, and businesses have seen a significant ROI. However, users note a desire for faster file transfer speeds and an improved interface. Azure NetApp Files emphasizes high performance, scalability, and seamless workload migration, along with excellent customer support. Users find the cost and setup reasonable, experiencing cost savings and enhanced performance. Feedback suggests a need for improved performance during peak times, better documentation, a more intuitive interface, and enhanced security features.
Features: Microsoft Azure File Storage offers valuable features such as scalability, integration with Azure services, efficient file sharing, strong security, and seamless file management. On the other hand, Azure NetApp Files stands out for its ease of use, high performance, scalability, reliability, and seamless migration capabilities. Additionally, users appreciate its cost-effectiveness and excellent customer support.
Pricing and ROI: The setup costs for Microsoft Azure File Storage and Azure NetApp Files are both considered reasonable and affordable based on user feedback. Users appreciate the straightforward and easy management of setup for Microsoft Azure File Storage, while Azure NetApp Files offers a transparent pricing structure and flexible licensing options., In terms of return on investment (ROI), Microsoft Azure File Storage was praised for its cost savings, improved efficiency, scalability, reliability, and ease of integration. On the other hand, Azure NetApp Files focused on significant cost savings and enhanced performance.
Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure File Storage could benefit from enhancements in file transfer speed, a more intuitive interface, and expanded storage options. In contrast, Azure NetApp Files needs improvements in performance during peak times, documentation and support resources, user interface intuitiveness, security features, and data migration efficiency.
Deployment and customer support: Based on user feedback, it appears that the duration required to establish a new tech solution can vary for both Microsoft Azure File Storage and Azure NetApp Files. However, Azure NetApp Files seems to offer more flexibility in terms of varying timeframes for deployment, setup, and implementation phases. It is necessary to consider the context in which these terms are used to accurately evaluate the overall time required for the entire process., Microsoft Azure File Storage receives positive remarks regarding its customer service and support, with prompt and helpful assistance. Azure NetApp Files also provides highly recommended customer service, consistently exceeding expectations for a smooth experience.
The summary above is based on 35 interviews we conducted recently with Microsoft Azure File Storage and Azure NetApp Files users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"It's elastic, so it scales with our demands. We can start small, then with the addition of customer loads, we can expand on-the-fly without the need to reprovision something."
"One aspect of Azure NetApp Files that I truly appreciate is its remarkable performance capabilities."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its flexibility."
"The critical features of this solution are SnapMirror for replication, data protection, and SnapLock."
"Azure NetApp Files has been stable."
"Using NetApp Files got us out of a really difficult situation quickly, effectively, and at a reasonable cost."
"The most valuable features of the solution is replication to another region and the performance. The solution is stable. The solution is scalable. The initial setup is straightforward."
"Its security and ease of use are most valuable."
"What I like about Microsoft Azure File Storage is its convenience for customers, cost-effectiveness, and high availability."
"It was quick to synchronize back from Azure to the on-premise server."
"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."
"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."
"This solution supports all file formats."
"The biggest advantage of Azure File Storage vis-à-vis other public cloud storage providers, and why we recommend Azure first and foremost, is that many of our customers have partnerships with Microsoft and so they have access to better cloud economics. Compared to AWS, we have found that (from a customer perspective) Azure is much more competitive."
"The most valuable aspect of Azure File Storage is that all the features are available in one place."
"It's a stable product."
"The pricing definitely needs to be improved."
"Reserved Instances for Azure NetApp Files would improve more use cases, making them more valuable in Azure as the cost would be reduced."
"We were looking for a clustered solution that has over-complicated things because we had it in AWS, which is Amazon. There was a solution for clustered NetApp. That meant there would be two NetApps that were not clustered because there was no solution for a cluster. We would like there to be an HA cluster solution."
"I have a hunch that storage could be now the most expensive portion of our monthly bill. So I can imagine that, not this year, but next year we will be talking about looking deeper into ways how we can optimize the cost."
"We would like for the files which are coming in that we can version them. So, if a file is accidentally deleted, there should have a recycle bin option where we can go back, and at least once, clean it up."
"We would like to have backup functionality built-in so that we don't run into the issue where the replication process makes a copy of the corrupted data."
"I would like to see multi-zone redundancy so that I don't have to worry about it. I just back up my data to that one SMB share and I know that it's replicated to a different region."
"We would like to see more paired regions for the replication."
"The integration of the site storage with SQL was not completely seamless."
"They should make the solution more user-friendly."
"Importing and exporting data needs to have a bit more documentation."
"The storage account key could be a security issue."
"Sometimes it takes very long to refresh the information."
"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."
"They can improve the ability to assign permissions to different groups or users."
Azure NetApp Files is ranked 12th in Public Cloud Storage Services with 12 reviews while Microsoft Azure File Storage is ranked 1st in Public Cloud Storage Services with 41 reviews. Azure NetApp Files is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Azure File Storage is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Azure NetApp Files writes "We can expand our storage on-the-fly without the need to reprovision". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure File Storage writes "Various storage options available, high availability, and quick deployment". Azure NetApp Files is most compared with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, Nasuni, Amazon EFS (Elastic File System), Google Cloud Storage and NetApp ONTAP, whereas Microsoft Azure File Storage is most compared with Amazon EFS (Elastic File System), Wasabi, Amazon S3, Amazon S3 Glacier and Google Cloud Storage. See our Azure NetApp Files vs. Microsoft Azure File Storage report.
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