Self-hosted / open sourceStorage & BackupHeadquarters: US

NetApp ONTAP: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

ONTAP is NetApp's storage operating system. It provides unified storage: block protocols such as Fibre Channel, iSCSI and NVMe over Fabrics, the file protocols NFS and SMB, and limited S3 object access. It is managed through a command line, web interfaces and a REST API. Organisations use it to store and protect file and block data, with features such as SnapMirror replication and volume encryption. Delivery varies: ONTAP runs on NetApp's own FAS and AFF systems, as ONTAP Select (a software-defined appliance on commodity servers under a hypervisor) and as Cloud Volumes ONTAP in public clouds.

NetApp, Inc. is headquartered in San Jose, California, and is a US company. ONTAP is proprietary software, not open source. Because ONTAP usually runs on hardware or virtual machines that the customer operates, data can stay in a European data centre under the organisation's own control. With Cloud Volumes ONTAP, the location depends on the chosen cloud provider and region. An Onboard Key Manager is available for encryption keys. As a US company, NetApp falls under US jurisdiction.

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Sovereignty score

57 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-3100
Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, US)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-380
Closed source, but self-hostable: encryption keys and runtime under your own control
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-655
Closed source, but self-hostable on your own infrastructure

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked September 20, 2026

Headquarters	US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Data hosting	Self-hosted, e.g. in EU, US (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	AKAMAI-ASN1 - Akamai International B.V., NL (US)Technically measured
Category	Storage & Backup
Type	Product
Website	netapp.com ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to NetApp ONTAP

The European alternatives to NetApp ONTAP come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

32 European Storage & Backup vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with NetApp ONTAP

NetApp ONTAP is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model.

NetApp ONTAP runs on infrastructure you choose and control yourself. You decide where the data lives, including fully within the EU if you want — this is not a fixed hosting choice made by the vendor.

NetApp ONTAP is closed source, but you run the software yourself on your own infrastructure. The encryption keys and the runtime therefore stay under your own control, though you cannot audit or modify the source code. Ask about export options and open standards to limit software-level lock-in.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs NetApp ONTAP together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to NetApp ONTAP?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to NetApp ONTAP include Open-E, StorPool and LINBIT. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to NetApp ONTAP?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to NetApp ONTAP include LINBIT. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is NetApp ONTAP GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

NetApp ONTAP is headquartered in US and hosts data in EU, US. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on September 20, 2026.

Sources

This record was checked via the vendor's website and legal notice when it was added on September 20, 2026. Source links have been recorded per record since 20 September 2026.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in Storage & Backup

Storage & Backup: Business storage, backup solutions, object storage and data recovery. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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