AWS CloudFormation vs. Azure NetApp Files

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators a way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them in a predictable fashion. Use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run an application. Users don’t need to figure out the order for provisioning AWS services or the subtleties of making those dependencies work.…
$0
Azure NetApp Files
Score 9.6 out of 10
N/A
Azure NetApp Files is a Microsoft Azure file storage service built on NetApp technology, giving users the file capabilities in Azure that core business applications require, with pricing plans for different performance tiers.
$21,474,836.48
per month
Pricing
AWS CloudFormationAzure NetApp Files
Editions & Modules
Free Tier - 1,000 Handler Operations per Month per Account
$0.00
Handler Operation
$0.0009
per handler operation
Restore
$0.02/GiB
per month
Backup
$0.05/GiB
per month
Cross Region Replication Daily - Replication frequency is once a day
$0.11/GiB
per month
Cross Region Replication Hourly - Replication frequency is every 1 hour
$0.12/GiB
per month
Cross Region Replication Minutes - Replication frequency is every 10 mins
$0.14/GiB
per month
Standard Storage
$0.14746 per GiB
per month
Premium Storage
$0.29419 per GiB
per month
Ultra Storage
$0.39274 per GiB
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS CloudFormationAzure NetApp Files
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThere is no additional charge for using AWS CloudFormation with resource providers in the following namespaces: AWS::*, Alexa::*, and Custom::*. In this case you pay for AWS resources (such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers, etc.) created using AWS CloudFormation as if you created them manually. You only pay for what you use, as you use it; there are no minimum fees and no required upfront commitments. When you use resource providers with AWS CloudFormation outside the namespaces mentioned above, you incur charges per handler operation. Handler operations are create, update, delete, read, or list actions on a resource.Azure NetApp Files (ANF) cloud file storage service is charged per hour based on the provisioned ANF capacity. Customers can provision a minimum of 4TiB of ANF capacity and then add additional provision capacity in the increments of 1TiB. Cross Region Replication pricing varies by the desired replication frequency per unit of data, and the region of the destination volume.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AWS CloudFormationAzure NetApp Files
Considered Both Products
AWS CloudFormation
Chose AWS CloudFormation
Since the product I'm involved is primarily hosted on AWS we use CloudFormation but in some other products where we have hybrid cloud deployments we prefer terraform which is opensource.
Chose AWS CloudFormation
Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured …
Chose AWS CloudFormation
As we have our whole infrastructure on AWS, that is why we selected AWS CloudFormation. AWS CloudFormation is better integrated with AWS services than other available products and also provides visibility and tracking on AWS. AWS CloudFormation is free while Terraform …
Chose AWS CloudFormation
We didn't look into anything else as Cloudformation was "built-in" for AWS, it just kind of made sense to go with that. Terraform was something that we briefly looked into Terraform but decides to stick with Cloudformation because our task was relatively "simple". Apparently if …
Chose AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation has more features and robustness. It is suited for professional projects since it provides stability and a wide variety of options for configurations. These include not only dividing stacks by specific code changes, but also in regions. This allows more …
Chose AWS CloudFormation
The only real comparison would be to Terraform, which is another IaC technology at the infra level. Terraform is cloud-agnostic, which means most popular cloud providers are supported. While AWS CloudFormation is AWS-only. Although, if you consider CDK, CDK for Terraform …
Azure NetApp Files
Chose Azure NetApp Files
Attribution in Google Analytics (Adometry), Acoustic Content (formerly IBM Watson Content Hub) and Amazon Augmented AI (Amazon A2I)
Chose Azure NetApp Files
We tried the same with Azure File Share (Azure Storage Account), but it has a really small limit (5TB per share).
It didnt fulfilled our requirements, as we have some on-prem shares with 60+TB each, still to be migrated.
We have also evaluated a different approach, which is …
Chose Azure NetApp Files

The solution is amazing. It scales up and down, which is quite unique for a cloud solution and also it is billed to you on a per-hour basis, which provides a great opportunity to save the cost when you don't need it. Compared to others, we really liked that option for Azure …

Chose Azure NetApp Files
Azure NetApp Files is very well integrated with Microsoft Azure, we use the same request methods that everyone knows from Azure. NetApp and Microsoft has built a very efficient solution that allows you to transfer virtually any service to the Microsoft public cloud. Azure …
Chose Azure NetApp Files
We briefly looked at Amazon Elastic File System. From the small amount of research we did, Amazon EFS was comparable, but in the end we already had a NetApp infrastructure and were a Microsoft shop, so melding them together using Azure NetApp Files made sense.
Chose Azure NetApp Files
I was not part of the process for purchasing and implementation, as we are the IT professionals supporting the clients.
Chose Azure NetApp Files
I did not have a say in the selection process, but I am a satisfied user. I have used and tried other products or cloud storage applications; however, I was not impressed, as many of them have limited functionality and have some issues with security. My department was in need …
Features
AWS CloudFormationAzure NetApp Files
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
AWS CloudFormation
-
Ratings
Azure NetApp Files
7.7
Ratings
4% below category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
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AWS CloudFormationAzure NetApp Files
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User Ratings
AWS CloudFormationAzure NetApp Files
Likelihood to Recommend
7.6
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS CloudFormationAzure NetApp Files
Likelihood to Recommend
Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the Cloning Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource. Management guide. For information virtual hardware, installed software cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information.
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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. 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.
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Pros
  • IaC, transactional on top of that
  • Support for "mainstream" general programming languages
  • Sharable IaC "snippets" that can setup standardized environments for individuals quickly
  • OOP techniques are available thanks to OOP languages
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  • 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.
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Cons
  • Error Description upon Failure Needs to be Improved.
  • Slow to create, delete or update.
  • Need to delete resources manually. It can ask before starting deletion whether to skip those resources or delete them.
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  • 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
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Usability
It's easy enough to get a shared template & apply it. You don't even have to download-then-upload or copy-and-paste, a publicly-accessible url works.
Diving deeper, it has enough powerful capabilities to make the life of a platform / DevOps engineer bearable.
However, you need equally deep knowledge to troubleshoot issues, when they inevitably pop up. This is the same for all IaC technologies, as they are additional abstraction layers on top of the native API provided by the cloud providers.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Since the product I'm involved is primarily hosted on AWS we use CloudFormation but in some other products where we have hybrid cloud deployments we prefer Terraform which is opensource.
Read full review
We tried the same with Azure File Share (Azure Storage Account), but it has a really small limit (5TB per share). It didnt fulfilled our requirements, as we have some on-prem shares with 60+TB each, still to be migrated. We have also evaluated a different approach, which is Komprise archiving solution, to archive older files to Azure BLOBS and free up some space on the on-prem storages to accomodate new data.
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Return on Investment
  • + We can standup a VPC in minutes
  • - It took a lot of inital time to set up
  • + With logging/rollback, made testing much easier.
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  • The main hurdle in promoting this solution is the price. Its price definitely requires an improvement. It is more expensive than other options, so customers go for a cheaper option.
  • Its security and ease of use are most valuable.
  • It is stable and scalable.
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ScreenShots

AWS CloudFormation Screenshots

Screenshot of CloudFormation - How it works overviewScreenshot of CloudFormation - High level how it worksScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template exampleScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template inputs overview