Azure NetApp Files Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 9 out of 10

Score

9 out of 10

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Azure NetApp Files are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

Azure NetApp Files has proven to be a valuable tool for IT and infrastructure departments looking to efficiently move and deploy workloads in Microsoft Azure while maintaining storage and data management. Users across various industries, including media clients, architects, and health clinics, have found this solution beneficial for meeting their high-volume cloud capabilities and strong security needs for file sharing and storage.

Organizations have implemented Azure NetApp Files to address storage space limitations and reduce the burden of server maintenance. One key use case of this product is storing and maintaining old files and unneeded data for at least seven years, providing a reliable and long-term storage solution. Additionally, the product enables the migration of workloads from on-premises to the cloud, offering a cost-effective approach for storing large amounts of analysis data for extended periods.

Furthermore, Azure NetApp Files has been successfully utilized for running virtualized SAP systems in Azure. It offers fast backup and restore processes without impacting the running of SAP systems. The seamless integration and speed boost provided by Azure NetApp Files have exceeded expectations for many organizations, solving the problem of accessing storage becoming a bottleneck. This solution allows businesses to target their critical file workloads with fast throughput.

Another use case is migrating data to the cloud when transitioning services to Azure. Azure NetApp Files provides high availability for services running on both Windows and Linux. The flexibility offered by this product allows users to change service levels on-the-fly, improving their ability to quickly respond to changing business needs.

Overall, Azure NetApp Files has proven to be a versatile solution that addresses various storage and data management challenges faced by organizations. From high-volume cloud capabilities to seamless integration and flexible service levels, this product offers valuable features that enhance productivity and efficiency in today's digital landscape.

Reviews

8 Reviews

My experience with Azure NetApp Files

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

February 17, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it for virtualized SAP systems in Azure, running our SAP systems in Azure. It does extremely fast backup and restore processes. For our customers, it has the benefit that we don't influence their running of SAP systems while taking backups, so we can do backups more often. They also benefit from very fast resources, if they need something. In the end, it is an end customer benefit, not directly for us, as we are a service provider.

Pros

Provisioning in the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) environment.
Agility in enterprise performance management (EPM).
Efficient API connections.

Cons

Reserved Instances for Azure NetApp Files would improve more use cases, making them more valuable in Azure as the cost would be reduced.
Azure NetApp Files could improve by being more diverse to integrate better with other solutions, such as Splunk and the on-premise version.
The main hurdle in promoting this solution is the price. Its price definitely requires an improvement.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well suited for heavy workloads. We are using it for some of the workloads related to SAP. We are also using it to store data related to videos coming from some of the cameras in the customer facilities. We have been using its latest version. 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 re-provision something.

Verified User

Consultant in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Reliable and robust solution, suitable to very specific use cases

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

January 6, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have been using on-prem Netapp storages for many years now, and from the latest years we have started a movement (as most companies) to migrate workloads to Cloud. We currently have the challenge to growth our filers workloads (CIFS/NFS) on the Cloud and avoid expanding storages on-prem.

We also, as an Engineering company, have some requirements to store huge amounts of analysis data for long periods (15+ years) and Cloud seems to be the most cost-effective solution.

Azure Netapp Files sounded like a reliable/robust solution to run our workloads and to store these huge amounts of data on Azure, reducing the costs (when compared to on-prem workloads) while keeping confident/comfortable with Netapp robustness for production data.

We're currently running a couple of CIFS shares on Azure Netapp Files and evaluating it, planning to expand its usage.

Pros

Highly scalable, as many 'Cloud ready' solutions
Easy to implement, with only a few clicks
Performance, we were positivelly surprised by its performance
Deep integration with Azure products, like scripting/CLI/Shell
High availability, reaching the 'four nines' if correctly implemented

Cons

Backup/files versioning still needs to be improved
Netapp/Storage administrators may need some time to adapt managing it through Azure Portal interface, it can be really confusing sometimes
Reporting/data intelligence solutions would be a great addition

Likelihood to Recommend

In my opinion, I would say it is more suitable to huge workloads, where you really needs the reliability and performance that a Netapp storage provides to you, larger share sizes, etc. Use cases where you really needs to store large amounts of non-structured data.

It is not a cheap solution, I mean, you can find other options to store your data on the Cloud at smaller prices. So, for small companies, or companies that depends mostly on web-applications, or don't have such a specific requirements, I would not go with Azure Netapp Files.

Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Faster deployment and better cost saving with Azure NetApp Files

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

December 17, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We wanted on-premises-like performance for our pharmaceutical drugs software data solutions and also wanted a simple but efficient solution for workloads to be moved and deployed in Microsoft Azure through storage and data management. As of now, Azure NetApp Files is being used by the IT and infrastructure departments, but we are planning to expand it to other areas within the organization.

Pros

It has <1ms latency, so very responsive. This is great for demanding environments or where application responsiveness is a high priority.
Global file caching--Azure NetApp Files comes with entitlement to Global File Caching--ideal for keeping a cached copy of frequently accessed files at remote offices whilst automatically managing conflicts and global file locking.
Cloud compliance is included with Azure NetApp Files--automatically report on the data you keep and be alerted to any GDPR or PCI (and more) information.
Instant restores via native Azure API too!
It’s 100% Microsoft (almost worth forgetting the name NetApp in it). That means it’s not a marketplace offering and the APIs and tools are all native to Microsoft Azure.

Cons

It does not support file locking although its available as an add-on
Design is far from native and has a learning curve
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.

Likelihood to Recommend

For us, with Azure NetApp Files, the ease of use has been big. We have an operations organization where ease of use is key--also it simplifies migration to the cloud. Azure NetApp Files eliminates a common cloud-first barrier by creating the right infrastructure environment for agencies' resources, budgets, and skillsets.

<p>We would like to be able to version the files that are coming in. 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. They could probably improve the versioning and other advanced features. The replication is not available in all the Azure Availability Zones.</p>

HARDIK CHUDASAMA

Software Developer in Engineering at Tata Consultancy Services (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

Netapp Azure Files Review

Rating: 8 out of 10

December 16, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Azure NetApp Files has allowed us to target any of our business-critical file workloads with very fast throughput. We use the ability to change the three service levels on-the-fly, to get the performance that’s best suited to the application in dev-test or in production. We find that the flexibility once deployed has greatly increased our ability to quickly react to business needs.

Pros

Extremely fast file storage
Simple to use
Great API

Cons

Price
Features
Time to Market

Likelihood to Recommend

This is a premium offering, so it's not a cheap product. It is fully supported, fully managed, easily provisioned, and scalable. If you have the right use case for this product and the money to afford it, it's a great solution. It is a premium storage solution in the cloud.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

Azure NetApp Files is very good.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

December 15, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

[Azure] NetApp helps us migrate from on premises file environments (non-netapp as well) to the Azure from both Windows and Linus (SMB/NFS). NetApp Files has recently been used by our organization. We are currently using it to move data to the cloud when migrating services to Azure. We use this service for migrated services running on Windows and Linux. NetApp Files very well address the problem of high availability for our services.

Pros

Global coverage.
99,99 SLA
Full integration with Azure also for CLI.
Database support.

Cons

At the beginning, the interface is not easy to use.
In my opinion, reporting could be improved.

Likelihood to Recommend

<div>Azure NetApp has tools to help migrate from on premises file environments (non-netapp as well as physical machines) to the Azure.</div><div>This solution is very good at dealing with databases and services that are very difficult to migrate to the public cloud. We also use this solution to build clusters for our services and improve the security of our data stored in the cloud. </div>

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

File access speed improvements have increased our customer aquisition and retention

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

December 15, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our organization implemented our NetApp infrastructure a few years ago. We just recently started to convert our computing to the Azure environment. We have been pleasantly surprised with the seemless integration and speed boost Azure NetApp Files has provided to our organization. Although storage is cheap nowadays, accessing that storage has become the bottleneck and Azure NetApp Files has mostly solved that problem.

Pros

We have found that it scales very well. In some cases we had a large existing storage infrastructure and were able to migrate it while other times we started from scratch with low storage demands and Azure NetApp Files fit the bill each time.
We have been impressed with the replication capabailities.
The read and write speed when interacting with files is a major asset.

Cons

We haven't done too much yet, but it seems auto-backup needs some improvement. It seems like it is backing up corrupted files, overwriting the previous uncorrupted file.
This is somewhat related to the previous con but versioning of files would be helpful If there is a corrupted file or a file that has been deleted by a user, quick retrieval of the individual file would be handy.

Likelihood to Recommend

Azure NetApp Files is extremely flexible and adapts to the file storage needs of the business. It is well suited to migrate existing file storage structure with hundreds of thousand of files as well as starting from scratch with no files. In either scenario it has performed well and met our business' needs as our sales and service teams need to access files quickly while they are on the phone with prospects and customers. Quickly providing answers to prospects is paramount for our sales team because for every second a prospect waits on the phone, the chance of them leaving the conversation grows exponentially.

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

High-Volume Cloud Capabilities

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 11, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Being an outsourced IT company, we have a handful of clients that use Azure NetApp Files. The primary ones are our media clients, architects, and health clinics that need the high-volume cloud capabilities, the overall strong security for file sharing purposes, cross-country file share and storage, and the overall easy setup and use for the end users.

Pros

Handles high volume very well
Cloud service enables for endless growth and scalability
Easy to use for both professionals and end users

Cons

The backup functions could be improved on, maybe integrated somehow

Likelihood to Recommend

Azure NetApp Files would be less appropriate for a single user, or single very small office setting. With the huge options in scalability to fit specific needs, it can be ideal for those that want full cloud services, no matter how large or small the organization. We particularly like the solid availability to the cloud storage, which supports multiple share types without having to reconfigure everything specially.

NAKIA EPLEY

Network Field Technician in Information Technology at Z Networks Computer Services Corporation (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

View profile

Azure NetApp Files is a great product

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

December 9, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Azure NetApp Files has been implemented across the whole organization and it addresses storage space and server maintenance for our company. It is very helpful for our department as we are required to store information for at least seven years. We have been pestered by our IT department many times over the years that I have been with the organization about clearing out our old files and and removing unneeded data; however, we must keep a good portion and Azure NetApp Files has been helpful in storing and maintaining this data.

Pros

User friendly in my opinion
Seemless transition
Lots of storage available
Helps us meet our audit controls

Cons

Connection issues at times
Recovering of files
Support
Initial or introductory training

Likelihood to Recommend

Azure NetApp Files is helpful for us as we need to keep at least seven years of data, which makes it easy for us to maintain and find the data as needed rather than scouring through paper files and emails. As cloud storage, i don't see many areas where it might not be useful, but document recovery can be difficult at times. One other area where it is not as helpful is organizing the data. Maybe Azure NetApp Files can implement an organization function or better tools in marking different folders.

Mohammed ALLY

Payroll Administrator in Corporate at LEE HECHT HARRISON LLC (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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Faster deployment and better cost saving with Azure NetApp Files

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

December 17, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

It has <1ms latency, so very responsive. This is great for demanding environments or where application responsiveness is a high priority.
Global file caching--Azure NetApp Files comes with entitlement to Global File Caching--ideal for keeping a cached copy of frequently accessed files at remote offices whilst automatically managing conflicts and global file locking.
Cloud compliance is included with Azure NetApp Files--automatically report on the data you keep and be alerted to any GDPR or PCI (and more) information.
Instant restores via native Azure API too!
It’s 100% Microsoft (almost worth forgetting the name NetApp in it). That means it’s not a marketplace offering and the APIs and tools are all native to Microsoft Azure.

Cons

It does not support file locking although its available as an add-on
Design is far from native and has a learning curve
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.

Likelihood to Recommend

HARDIK CHUDASAMA

Software Developer in Engineering at Tata Consultancy Services (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile