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Amazon FSx vs CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 (17th)
CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in File System Software
1st
Ranking in Cloud Storage
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
NAS (4th), Cloud Migration (4th), Cloud Backup (8th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (6th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), Content Collaboration Platforms (6th), AI Legal & Compliance (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the File System Software category, the mindshare of Amazon FSx is 5.9%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 16.3%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File System Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform16.3%
Amazon FSx5.9%
Other77.8%
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

"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."
"We used it for disaster recovery perspective behind a number of resources, like batch services and RDS."
"The shared storage capability is highly valuable."
"CTERA has been particularly capable of keeping all of our workstations backed up. That became a critical feature for us during the pandemic when computers were rarely in the office. Everybody went off-site with their computers, and we were accustomed to working with a centralized storage infrastructure where people would come to the office and connect to the server to use, create, and modify files. Everything was done directly to that server."
"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
"The support is awesome. It is top-notch. I would rate their support a ten out of ten."
"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."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted my organization by making our data management better, giving us greater security in our use, and letting us work easier with all the file services we need."
"CTERA has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities."
"I like that the glass is always half full with CTERA file services. It keeps the data hot for users on location and then tiers off older data. If you need it, the stub is still there. You can click on it, and it's back on the device."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted my organization in that it works as a file server, and centralizing things makes managing them in one location simpler than managing them everywhere else."
 

Cons

"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."
"A direct FTP feature would be beneficial instead of relying on transmission services."
"From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for higher IOPS."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform can be improved, but I consider it to be good overall."
"One area for improvement is the migration tool, which at times does not work as designed, necessitating the use of alternative solutions like Robocopy."
"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."
"There are two things about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform that I think they can improve. The first one is the reporting or maybe the monitoring solution because they lack reporting about the shares that we have, the used space, the total space, the permissions, or other relevant metrics."
"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."
"Stability-wise, we just went through one issue that they addressed. We were having cloud sync issues."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is not as stable as a corporate would prefer."
"The new Edge filer that they have comes with a lot more features than what we purchased. It would be better if we are able to add those extra features without having to swap out the hardware. A clear upgrade path for legacy customers would be beneficial."
 

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."
"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."
"So far, pricing seems to be fine."
"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."
"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."
"I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
University
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
45%
Outsourcing Company
24%
Educational Organization
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise19
 

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?
Our experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform was good; it was very manageable for getting started with the product.
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
Regarding automation and ease of use in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, while we currently have all the automations we need, I believe there is room for more improvements. CTERA Enterprise...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
The main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is to ensure that employees working for the client I have been contracting with have access to all saved files. In my day-to-day work, ...
 

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 Enterprise File Services Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
899,324 professionals have used our research since 2012.