When choosing a product for cloud data storage, it’s critical to understand the differences between an enterprise-class, full featured NAS virtual storage appliance like SoftNAS Cloud versus basic file services products. For enterprise-class workloads, data protection requirements like high-availability, replication, snapshots and RAID support are important. For security and data protection, consider products that provide at-rest encryption, in-transit encryption, snapshots and rollback. For optimization between cost and performance, consider choosing products that allow a mix of performance solutions and cost savings solutions.

1. Capabilities / Features
SoftNAS
Cloud
Basic File
Services1
ENTERPRISE FILE SERVICES
CIFS/SMB Support ✔ Varies2
NFS Support ✔ ✔
iSCSI Support ✔ ✘
AFP (Apple File Protocol) Support ✔ ✘
FTP Support ✔ Varies3
Compression ✔ ✘
Deduplication ✔ ✘
Replication ✔ ✘
Replicate Across Regions or Offsite/On-Premises ✔ Varies4
Cross-zone Redundancy ✔ Varies5
Non-stop Cross-Zone HA With Automatic Failover6
✔ ✘
Automatic Region-Wide Mount Point Recovery7
✔ ✘
No Storage Downtime Guarantee™
SLA ✔ ✘
DATA PROTECTION
Copy-on-Write File System ✔ Varies8
Instant Storage SnapShots - Manual ✔ ✘
Instant Storage SnapShots - Scheduled ✔ ✘
Rapid SnapShots Rollback Ability ✔ ✘
Windows Previous Versions Support ✔ Varies9
Automatic Storage Snapshot Space Management ✔ ✘
Instant Writable Snapshot Clones ✔ ✘
Checksum Validated Data Integrity ✔ ✘
Automatic Error Detection/Correction ✔ ✘
RAID Support ✔ ✘
SECURITY AND ACCESS CONTROL
Cloud Native IAM Role Integration ✔ Varies10
Data At Rest Encryption ✔ Varies11
Data In Transit Encryption ✔ Varies12
NFS LDAP Authentication ✔ ✘
Active Directory Integration ✔ ✘
Firewall Security ✔ Yes
Continued on back.
SoftNAS Cloud NAS vs. Basic File Services
When choosing a product for cloud data storage, it’s critical to understand the differences between an enterprise-class, full
featured NAS virtual storage appliance like SoftNAS Cloud versus basic file services products. For enterprise-class workloads,
data protection requirements like high-availability, replication, snapshots and RAID support are important. For security and data
protection, consider products that provide at-rest encryption, in-transit encryption, snapshots and rollback. For optimization
between cost and performance, consider choosing products that allow a mix of performance solutions and cost savings solutions.

2. Capabilities / Features
SoftNAS
Cloud
Basic File
Services1
ENTERPRISE READINESS
High Performance, up to GB/sec throughput ✔ ✘
Full Performance, No Burst Limits ✔ Varies13
Dedicated Storage Throughput Performance 100% Dedicated Varies14
Migration of Apps Without Rewriting or Re-Architecting
to the Cloud ✔ Varies15
Protects Against Split-Brain ✔ ✘
DNS Failover Across Datacenters ✔ ✘
Available in all AWS and Azure Regions ✔ Varies16
REST APIs Available ✔ ✘
Cloud Automation Integration (ARM, CFT) ✔ ✘
STORAGE FLEXIBILITY
Optimum Price/Performance: Choose Best Combination
of Compute and Object/Block Storage ✔ Varies17
Unified Storage SAN/NAS (Block and File) ✔ ✘
Supports Object Storage ✔ Varies18
Supports Block Storage ✔ Varies19
SSD Storage Supported ✔ Yes
SSD Read Caching ✔ ✘
Thin-Provisioned iSCSI LUNs ✔ ✘
Thin-Provisioning ✔ Varies20
Thick-Provisioning ✔ Varies²¹
CAPACITY
Storage Scaling Petabytes Varies22
Maximum Files and Directories Billions Varies23
1
AWS Elastic File System (EFS), GlusterFS, Windows Server 2016 file services
2
AWS EFS: No. GlusterFS: Yes. Windows Server: Yes
3
AWS EFS: No. GlusterFS: Yes. Windows Server: Yes
4
AWS EFS: No. GlusterFS: Yes. Windows Server: Yes. (However there are limitations
and concerns. See this Microsoft TechNet article for more information: https://technet.
microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/storage/storage-replica/server-to-server-
storage-replication).
5
EFS: Yes, replication with private IP mountpoint per zone. GlusterFS: Yes, replication
with private IP mountpoint per zone. Windows Server: No.
6
Keeps workloads in zone running using region-wide private IP, even when zone
storage service fails. (SoftNAS®
, Inc. patent # 9584363).
7
SoftNAS®
with SNAP HA®
configured will automatically reroute the IP address
associated with your mount points region-wide, ensuring no single point of failure,
allowing for seamless recovery and no application interruptions. No manual interaction
or additional infrastructure is required (part of patent # 9584363).
8
AWS EFS: Unknown. GlusterFS: No. Windows Server: No.
9
AWS EFS: Yes. GlusterFS: No. Windows Server: Yes.
10
AWS EFS: Yes. GlusterFS: No. Windows Server: No.
11
AWS EFS: No. GlusterFS: Yes; (However, the feature of transparent encryption
doesn’t work in NFS-mounts of GlusterFS volumes: NFS’ file handles introduce
security issues, which are hard to resolve. NFS mounts of encrypted GlusterFS
volumes will result in failed file operations.). Windows Server: Yes.
12
AWS EFS: No. GlusterFS: Yes. Windows Server: Yes.
13
AWS EFS: No. Burst credits are earned, and in a shared environment dedicated
performance is not possible. File systems burst to 100 MiB/s of throughput, and those
over 1 TiB large can burst to 100 MiB/s per TiB of data stored in the file system. EFS
burst credits earned at baseline rate of 50 MiB/s per TiB of storage. http://docs.aws.
amazon.com/efs/latest/ug/performance.html#bursting
14
AWS EFS: No. GlusterFS: Yes. Windows Server: Yes.
15
AWS EFS: Maybe. GlusterFS: No. Windows Server: Yes
16
AWS EFS: Production-ready in 3 regions: US East (Northern Virginia), US West
(Oregon), and EU (Ireland) – doesn’t run in Azure. GlusterFS: No. Windows Server: Yes
17
AWS EFS: No. GlusterFS: No. Windows Server: No
18
AWS EFS: No. GlusterFS: No. Windows Server: No
19
AWS EFS: No. GlusterFS: Yes. Windows Server: Yes
20
AWS EFS: Yes. GlusterFS: No. Windows Server: Yes
21
AWS EFS: No. GlusterFS: Yes. Windows Server: Yes
22
AWS EFS: Petabytes. GlusterFS: Performance severely degrades at a million
files. Windows Server: Subject to outages due to regular Windows patching.
23
AWS EFS: Billions. GlusterFS: 250,000. Windows Server: Billions.
SoftNAS®, SoftNAS Cloud®, SnapReplicate™, SNAP HA®, StorageCenter™, SnapClone™, 360-degree Encryption™, No App Left Behind™, dSphere™ and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered
trademarks of SoftNAS, Inc. All other registered trademarks or trademarks are property of their respective owners. © SoftNAS, Inc., 2017. All rights reserved. U.S. Pat. Nos. 9,378,262. 9,584,363.
SoftNAS, Inc. | 9211 West Road, Ste. 143-162, Houston, TX 77064 | www.softnas.com