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Amazon FSx vs CTERA Intelligent Data Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon FSx
Ranking in File System Software
5th
Ranking in Cloud Storage
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (20th)
CTERA Intelligent Data Plat...
Ranking in File System Software
1st
Ranking in Cloud Storage
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
NAS (4th), Cloud Migration (4th), Cloud Backup (7th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (5th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (8th), AI Legal & Compliance (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the File System Software category, the mindshare of Amazon FSx is 6.1%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CTERA Intelligent Data Platform is 14.9%, up from 10.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File System Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CTERA Intelligent Data Platform14.9%
Amazon FSx6.1%
Other79.0%
File System Software
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
Shared storage capabilities provide enterprise value with good reliability
Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS. The auto-scaling feature should be improved, as it currently includes downtime. I need to manually increase the storage, which is not ideal. Integrating FSx with Windows Server is challenging; it's a long process involving Active Directory (AD) setup and synchronization.
Tim M. - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Supports global file recovery and rapid data versioning across 80 nodes
When we implemented CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform early on, and we've been on the platform for three years, we have three different cloud portals. We have an EU portal, we have an Americas portal, and we have an APAC portal. It would be nice if we could combine that into one portal just for that global single pane of glass look. We've talked with them about that and they say it's challenging just because of some of the structure, but that would be something nice if we could get that. I integrated with Varonis, and because CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform didn't have initially a working relationship with that vendor, it would have been nice had that pre-existed us saying we need this. But that wasn't totally CTERA's fault. There was a lot of challenge working with the vendor to build out that interface. A single pane of glass for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform would be beneficial. Everything else works fairly well. We've never had a point where we couldn't get to something that caused us to have a serious outage, and that to me is the mark of a good software package. It's never really caused us serious issues. We have our issues, that's true, and every software package does. However, we've always been able to meet the needs of the business, and we drive hard on security, stability, and scalability. From the scalability standpoint, that's one of the most important things to us. We're on their capacity-based licensing, so if I need to ramp up another CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform NAS, if we have an M&A, I can easily and quickly spin up another NAS and start doing that data transition fairly quickly. The biggest maintenance issue with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is firmware upgrades. We've done a lot of transition from hardware solution to virtualized infrastructure in order to minimize that hardware lifecycle portion of it. We have to upgrade the firmware and sometimes that can be challenging in the nature of business of our size with 80 CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform nodes around the globe. The issue we've had with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform happened recently in a firmware upgrade where there was a major database back-end upgrade and that took some time. For our smaller sites, it would be an hour or two, and I can build that into a fairly easy change window. But in our larger sites where we may have hundreds of terabytes of data, that database update process took maybe a day or a day and a half. That becomes more challenging, especially in a manufacturing environment where people are wanting to access configuration files. We had to pin the data locally because the data would be available on the local edge filer, but the cloud sync, while it was updating the database, the cloud files weren't available. That would be the other thing I'd like to see an improvement on: some way to do those database upgrades either in a more segmented fashion or in some type of offline environment. I understand the logistics behind that sounds easy, but I'm sure it's not.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We used it for disaster recovery perspective behind a number of resources, like batch services and RDS."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Amazon FSx a ten."
"FSx operates as an independent service, not tied to any server, which eliminates dependencies between applications for storage."
"I rate the stability of Amazon FSx ten out of ten."
"The shared storage capability is highly valuable."
"CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow."
"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
"The best feature is the migration tool within CTERA."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform helps us when they break something or lose things, and it makes people think I have my superhero cape on because they're thinking it's all lost, they're doomed, and we're able to quickly and effectively go back and say, 'Here you go,' and it's not hours, it's minutes."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted our organization as it has allowed us to shrink our on-premise file system footprint, moving out from data centers and adopting a cloud-first strategy, which brings cost savings."
"The features I find most valuable are in the gateways themselves. They have done a great job over the years of providing insight into what is happening with our products, with the batches that come through that are scanned. I enjoy that part of it, and it is fairly easy to use from our standpoint once we get to know the product."
"The user interface of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is fantastic, providing a centralized console where we can manage all our Edge Filers and configure them through a very user-friendly interface."
"Centralized file access has made the biggest difference for our team, making it easier for people working from different locations to access the files they need without consistently requesting copies from colleagues."
 

Cons

"From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for higher IOPS."
"A direct FTP feature would be beneficial instead of relying on transmission services."
"I've been facing a challenge when doing a failover from FSx side. AWS console does not refresh within a half hour."
"Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS."
"However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"There’s an issue with permissions, they aren’t always as transparent for customers as Microsoft’s, for example."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform can be improved in the area of monitoring. Monitoring is complicated because they are offering only a secondary tool and we cannot monitor all of the settings in a centralized way."
"One of the bigger things that I would like to see is additional logging. There are logs in there. They provide us with the initial logs on what is happening on our CTERA device. I appreciate that, but they do not give us any further information. I would like to have more information on the logs themselves."
"One area where CTERA Intelligent Data Platform could improve is the overall simplicity of administration and troubleshooting, and a more intuitive dashboard with clearer reporting on storage usage, access activity, and data protection status would make routine monitoring easier for IT teams."
"They fixed all the requirements that we had in the beginning. The beginning was a little bit rough, but we tuned it nicely. However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring. Predictive storage analytics will help with better capacity planning. There can be some sort of intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring."
"I would rate CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform a nine out of ten because I think there are some shortcomings in the performance of the gateway that could be improved, and I realize part of that is we are running an older version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The lowest price I have paid is $370 or $380 per month, while the highest can exceed $3,000 per month."
"I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards."
"So far, pricing seems to be fine."
"I find the pricing reasonable. They offered us deals that helped us. Especially with the upgrade to a bigger unit last year, they were helpful with the deal."
"CTERA's pricing seems to be on par with some of the other players, such as Nasuni and Azure. They all have benefits, but CTERA is competitive for its features."
"It is fairly priced. I am not too involved in the pricing of what we used to pay, but it would have reduced the cost of ownership. I cannot give a figure, but the EMC solution was very expensive compared to CTERA."
"It is hard to compare the costs if we want to retain the same model of a separate high-performance storage or certain things, but it is one of the cheapest solutions available in Israel."
"CTERA's pricing model is competitive compared to other companies that achieve the same thing. Their closest rival is Nasuni, and CTERA is significantly more affordable than Nasuni."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Retailer
7%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
38%
Computer Software Company
24%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise31
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon FSx?
From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for higher IOPS. Sometimes we go with Weka or other solutions due to this need, so it sho...
What is your primary use case for Amazon FSx?
Our customers mainly use Amazon FSx for high-performance computing. Our customers are mainly in the Life Science and Pharma industries. The majority of people are looking at S3 as their destination...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon FSx?
There is an ongoing project where my customers are exploring the FSx solution, but not yet for AI-driven projects; they plan to in the future. For those who want to use Amazon FSx, I recommend it a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, CTERA Intelligent Data Platform offers subscriptions and costs are associated with cloud storage integration and requests, compute, network connectivit...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
If CTERA Intelligent Data Platform focuses more on centralized monitoring and reporting, it would be very much helpful. Additionally, if they could slightly upgrade the troubleshooting platform for...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
One common use case for CTERA Intelligent Data Platform is replacing separate file servers across offices with a centrally managed global file system. For example, when employees are at different s...
 

Also Known As

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Neiman Marcus, T Mobile, Docxellent, Matrix, Lyell
McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon FSx vs. CTERA Intelligent Data Platform and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.