We performed a comparison between Box and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Cloud Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."I like that Box makes it easy to deploy virtual machines."
"File sharing, authorization on the back, its ease of use and reliable uptime performance are valuable features of this solution."
"The ability to collaborate around data anywhere, anytime is the most powerful features of Box."
"It is a very user-friendly product."
"The most valuable feature of Box is security."
"It is really easy to load files to and from this solution."
"You can upload your bin, upload your files quickly, and download your files quickly. It provides a lot of other alternatives."
"The solution is scalable."
"It gives a solution for storage one place to go across everything. So, the customer is very familiar with NetApp on-prem. It allows them to gain access to the file piece. It helps them with the training aspect of it, so they don't have to relearn something new. They already know this product. They just have to learn some widgets or what it's like in the cloud to operate and deploy it in different ways."
"For us, the value comes from the solution's flexibility, speed, and hopefully cost savings in the long term."
"The main benefit we get from this product is the ability to deploy it anywhere we want, whether that's on-prem, a remote physical location, or in the cloud. It doesn't matter from an operational perspective where it is. The command line and operating system are the same."
"We're able to use the SnapMirror function and SnapMirror data from our on-prem environment into Azure. That is super-helpful. SnapMirror allows you to take data that exists on one NetApp, on a physical NetApp storage platform, and copy it over to another NetApp storage platform. It's a solid, proven technology, so we don't worry about whether data is getting lost or corrupted during the SnapMirror."
"The ability to see things going back and forth has been quite useful."
"If anything happens, their technical support will come onsite and fix it."
"ONTAP has been very stable for us, specifically in the cloud environment. It allows us to have high availability as well as standalone systems if that's what we want within our specific workloads. Also, on-premise has been a very stable environment. We have very few outages and when we do, we work with support to get systems back online in a timely manner."
"Unified Manager, System Manager, and Cloud Manager are all GUI-based. It's easy for somebody who has not been exposed to this for years to pick it up and work with it."
"With OneDrive, you can continuously save your files over a Box folder. That is something I wish we could have."
"Improvements in speed - Box's high level of security impacts performance, especially when compared with other similar services."
"The solution's data security should be improved."
"I would love to see the ability to invite collaborators extended to a file level, not just the folder level."
"The search features and role permissions are not very user friendly. It only searches the first few pages of a document, which is quite a problem."
"The upload speed needs improvement."
"I don't like the low level of role-based security it provides – it's very cumbersome, and the support is ordinary at times."
"I haven't really come across a case where we're not able to use it for what it is, so I don't really have anything holding us up or any customers holding us up at this point that I know of. There are always some limitations, but as a technologist, I just live with them, and there is always room for improvement, but I don't have anything quantifiable."
"I would like to see more aggressive management of the aggregate space. On the Cloud Volumes ONTAP that we use for offsite backup copies, most of the data sits in S3. There are also the EBS volumes on the Cloud Volumes ONTAP itself. Sometimes what happens is that the aggregate size just stays the same. If it allocates 8 terabytes initially, it just stays at 8 terabytes for a long time, even though we're only using 20 percent of that 8 terabytes. NetApp could undersize that more aggressively."
"It definitely needs improvement with respect to clustering and with respect to more collaborative integrations with Azure. Right now, we have very limited functionalities with Azure, except for storage. If CVO could be integrated with Azure that would help. When there is any sort of maintenance happening in the cloud, it disrupts the service in Cloud Volumes ONTAP."
"We've just been dealing with general pre-requisite infrastructure configuration challenges. Once those are out of the way, it is easy."
"There is room for improvement with the capacity. There's a very hard limit to how many disks you can have and how much space you can have. That is something they should work to fix, because it's limiting. Right now, the limit is about 360 terabytes or 36 disks."
"The support is good in general but the initial, front-line support could be improved. Because I have already been using the product for so long, when I call support I would rather talk to somebody who is a little bit more advanced or senior, rather than talking to the first-level support. Usually, it takes some time to reach out to their senior support."
"I'm very happy with the solution, the only thing that needs improvement is the web services API. It could be a little bit more straightforward. That's my only issue with it. It can get pretty complex."
"I would like to see better integration with Active IQ."
"The product is more restricted with underlying cloud."
Box is ranked 8th in Cloud Storage with 37 reviews while NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is ranked 1st in Cloud Storage with 60 reviews. Box is rated 8.4, while NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Box writes "Used for data storage and data collaboration, but its data security could be improved". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP writes "Its data tiering helps keep storage costs under control". Box is most compared with SharePoint, Microsoft OneDrive, Citrix ShareFile, Office 365 and Alfresco, whereas NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is most compared with Azure NetApp Files, Amazon S3, Amazon EFS (Elastic File System), Google Cloud Storage and Portworx Enterprise. See our Box vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP report.
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