AWS Snowball vs CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform comparison

AWS Snowball vs. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform

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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

AWS Snowball

Ranking in Cloud Migration

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Migration Appliances (1st)

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...

Ranking in Cloud Migration

8th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

File System Software (2nd), NAS (9th), Cloud Storage (11th), Cloud Backup (11th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (3rd), Content Collaboration Platforms (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Migration category, the mindshare of AWS Snowball is 0.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 5.4%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Migration

Featured Reviews

Kevin-Davis

Global CTO AWS Business Group at Eviden

Seamless data transfer and efficient migration with customizable storage sizes

I like that I can take data and send it straight to S3 when it loads in. The interface for getting my data onto the Snowball is so streamlined. I don't know if you've ever seen it before. It's really cool. I connect them to the backplane of our existing network. I'm able to address it quickly and move the data quickly inside my customers' data centers. There's a little screen on it, which changes the UPS codes and all that stuff. The label and everything AWS electronic, so I don't have to deal with shipping issues. It makes it super simple and easy to use from end to end.

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Igal Muginstein

Engineering & Network Division Storage, Backup & Os Team Manager at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees

Offers flexibility, fast performance, and ransomware protection

The platform is releasing new features at a fast pace, which sometimes leads to version updates every three to six months. Although updates are generally not complex, it is challenging to stop the production environment during these updates, even if the downtime is just a few minutes. This is a common challenge across all NAS providers. From my perspective, the most important area for improvement is developing a method to perform updates without affecting customer production environments. Additionally, there are some cache size limitations that might become problematic for future use cases, though they don’t impact current applications. Collaboration for NFS and SMB protocols could also be enhanced. Although this issue isn't specific to CTERA, it is something we are working on together to improve. The quality of the versions has improved, but occasional issues still arise. All solutions face this challenge, but we hope to see a continued reduction in the number of bugs. That said, we haven't had any major production problems in the last four years, and we appreciate how responsive CTERA is to our issues. We engage in brainstorming sessions together, and we value this relationship.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a nice way of shipping a lot of data without using a network."

"You are able to scale the solution vertically. It's very scalable."

"The solution is elastic."

"AWS offers managed services which save time and reduce administrative overhead."

"AWS helps save time and costs, being a managed cloud provider with evolving services."

"The features I like best are the tool's high capacity, scalability, end-to-end encryption for data security, ease of use, durability, and cost-effectiveness. It's particularly cost-effective for transferring large amounts of data compared to high-speed internet transfers."

"The way the data is moved is very clever. Also, the interface is very simple and user-friendly."

"The support team's awesome, and they've always been very responsive."

More AWS Snowball pros

"CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow."

"It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution."

"The support is awesome. It is top-notch. I would rate their support a ten out of ten."

"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 solution provides substantial flexibility, allowing the separation of workloads across various hardware platforms without vendor lock-in. This flexibility makes it adaptable to future infrastructure changes."

"CTERA has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities."

"The solution provides data eviction, where unused data is evicted from the local file, freeing up space. It also allows data to be rehydrated from the cloud when needed."

"CTERA's instantaneous and redundant file replication, available across multiple geographical locations, ensures easy and user-friendly recovery."

More CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform pros

Cons

"I think AWS Snowball could improve by expanding its availability to more countries."

"24/7 support is more expensive on AWS compared to Azure."

"It's not cheap."

"There's always room for improvement as you use the service more and gain expertise. Some challenges I've faced include the time factor (data transfer can be time-consuming), data validation after the transfer, risks associated with physical handling and shipping of the device, and ensuring data security during transit."

"It's not an easy product to start using for a beginner, but If you're a professional, it's easy to understand."

"If AWS Snowball is intercepted, there is a potential risk of unauthorized access to the data."

"It would be helpful if Snowball provided more kinds of connectivity. That will make it easier to add and move data."

"The costs of services the customer needs also matter, such as storage requirements and whether storage is rational."

More AWS Snowball cons

"One suggested improvement for the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is the ability to distribute data across multiple active backend storage nodes rather than the current limitation of a single active node."

"More monitoring from the platform would be good. There is some monitoring, but it is paid. It is a chargeable service. It would be good for that to be included in the base."

"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."

"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."

"However, in some cases, they could improve performance."

"Stability-wise, we just went through one issue that they addressed. We were having cloud sync issues."

"The web portal that our users access to view data and backups could be optimized. CTERA could apply some of the improvements made to their administrative interface on the user side. The administrators are a much smaller group of people than the users, so it would be helpful if they targeted user experience resources to them."

More CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing depends on the type of Snowball device you choose, the amount of data you need to transfer, and the service fees involved. There’s a standard price for larger data transfers and a flat job fee, which includes the first ten days of on-site usage. Typically, there are no additional data transfer fees."

"It's not a cheap solution, but the price is right for the product."

"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."

"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 am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards."

"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."

"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."

"So far, pricing seems to be fine."

"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

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

69%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Microsoft Azure Data Box or AWS Snowball?

Microsoft Azure Databox is a 45-pound, super rugged, tamper-resistant, human-managed hardware appliance that can transfer up to 100TB of data capacity to copy, store, then send to the Azure cloud. ...

What do you like most about AWS Snowball?

The most valuable features of AWS Snowball for me are its security measures and its flexibility.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Snowball?

Depending of what is your priority; UseAWS Snowball if you are heavily invested in AWS or need edge computing features Choose Azure Data Box for smooth integration with Azure and potentially lower ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?

I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards.

What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?

One area for improvement is the migration tool, which at times does not work as designed, necessitating the use of alternative solutions like Robocopy. AI and automation features could enhance the ...

What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?

We use it as a hosted cloud solution. We had initially tried Azure File Sync, but that did not work. Due to certain security concerns, I was tasked with researching alternatives. I evaluated severa...

Google Transfer Appliance vs AWS Snowball

Comparisons

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Microsoft Azure Data Box vs AWS Snowball

Compared 42% of the time

IBM Cloud Mass Data Migration vs AWS Snowball

Compared 5% of the time

Palantir Foundry vs AWS Snowball

Compared 3% of the time

AWS Snowball Edge vs AWS Snowball

Compared 1% of the time

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Nasuni vs CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform

Compared 50% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform

Compared 13% of the time

Panzura CloudFS vs CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform

Compared 13% of the time

Egnyte vs CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft OneDrive vs CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform

Compared 9% of the time

More CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform Competitors

Product Reports

AWS Snowball

Download AWS Snowball product report

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform

Download CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform product report

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform report

Also Known As

Amazon AWS Snowball, Amazon Snowball, Snowball

No data available

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

CTERA

Overview

Snowball is a petabyte-scale data transport solution that uses devices designed to be secure to transfer large amounts of data into and out of the AWS Cloud. Using Snowball addresses common challenges with large-scale data transfers including high network costs, long transfer times, and security concerns. Customers today use Snowball to migrate analytics data, genomics data, video libraries, image repositories, backups, and to archive part of data center shutdowns, tape replacement or application migration projects. Transferring data with Snowball is simple, fast, more secure, and can be as little as one-fifth the cost of transferring data via high-speed Internet.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform provides a cloud-native global file system over public and private object storage, revolutionizing the world of hybrid cloud data solutions. Enhanced by a rich data services ecosystem, CTERA enables enterprises to gain full control of their data for optimal edge performance, data insight, and governance. The platform focuses on security, providing features like data encryption, access controls, and ransomware protection. Centralized management tools enable efficient data control and monitoring. The platform is being used to replace legacy NAS and file servers, especially at remote locations, and simplify backup and disaster recovery of file data while providing the flexibility of multi-cloud deployments with infinite scalability. CTERA is at the core of hybrid cloud transformations of some of the world’s largest banks, healthcare organizations, global media groups, and government agencies, in deployments that scale to tens of petabytes.

CTERA

Sample Customers

Wazee Digital, Craftsy, Live Nation, Essess

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI

AWS Snowball vs. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform