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Azure Data Lake Storage 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

Azure Data Lake Storage
Ranking in Cloud Storage
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in Cloud Storage
12th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (3rd), NAS (9th), Cloud Migration (7th), Cloud Backup (10th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Azure Data Lake Storage is 1.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 3.4%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Azure Data Lake Storage1.3%
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform3.4%
Other95.3%
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Chetan Jayatheertha - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides valuable features such as access keys, container strings, lifecycle management, audit logs, and the soft delete option
Data Lake Storage provides valuable features such as access keys, container strings, lifecycle management, audit logs, and the soft delete option. These features help in cost-saving and provide an excellent mechanism for backing up data. Furthermore, Data Lake Storage can interact with any other Azure resources, providing seamless integration and connectivity.
Igal Muginstein - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the scalability due to the blob, which allows us to scale our data effectively."
"The response time and quality offered by the support team are good."
"I'd rate the solution nine out of ten."
"The solution is worth the money because it allows you to gain insights into your business and implement forecasting solutions to predict future trends."
"I also like its speed. It's basically built on Azure Blob Storage, which was already fast. But Azure Data Lake Storage adds the hierarchical structure for even better performance."
"The tool's best feature is that it can store different types of data - structured, unstructured, and semi-structured—in one lake. We can use the required data for analytics and dashboard design."
"Storage within Azure Data Lake is cheaper, which is one of the reasons we moved to it."
"The tool offers a big storage layer. The security aspect is quite good. In Azure, there's an option for soft deletes and policy management. This allows us to store only the most up-to-date data while everything else can be policy-managed. This makes handling and management easier."
"CTERA's instantaneous and redundant file replication, available across multiple geographical locations, ensures easy and user-friendly recovery."
"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."
"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."
"It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution."
"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."
"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."
"Our main reason for going for this solution was the uncontrollable growth of file data. It was unsustainable on our previous platform or technology. We needed something scalable like CTERA, so it was the scalability that we required."
 

Cons

"The documentation could be more user-friendly with better tutorials."
"The speed of support response needs to improve, especially for critical, high-priority issues. Having a quick SLA response time is crucial."
"When you store your files manually, you can't ensure complete data integrity, which can impact data security."
"Improvement is needed in the migration process from Lakehouse to Enterprise Data Lake (EDL)."
"Simple migrations from one data lake to another take too much time and could be improved."
"If I had to nitpick, maybe the throughput could be faster - how quickly you can access data and how fast data can be written onto the Azure Data Lake Storage."
"Improvement is needed in the migration process from Lakehouse to Enterprise Data Lake (EDL). Currently, migration is only one-way possible, and it would be beneficial if this aspect could be improved."
"From an SAP perspective, direct connectivity to SAP systems is an area that could be enhanced."
"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."
"It has a learning curve."
"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."
"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."
"I am looking for a process where version upgrades do not impact the customers. There is no downtime."
"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."
"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."
"It would help to have a global single-pane-of-glass view of all my CTERA devices. We have different regions, and we must log in to each portal to see what's happening with those. It would be nice to have a single portal to see the health of the devices, versions, and firmware upgrades. Sometimes, we want to dive into something more complex, like investigating why CTERA storage usage grew from 2 terabytes to 4 terabytes in a week. That's a little challenging. It's something we would like to see on the road map."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other options we've explored, I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"The tool is cheap, depending on the services and requirements you need."
"The tool's licensing model is pay-as-you-go. Regarding pricing, there's always competition between Azure Data Lake Storage and AWS. They're quite similar, but to attract more customers, Azure Data Lake Storage could consider adjusting its pricing to be more competitive with AWS. This might make Azure Data Lake Storage a more appealing option for users."
"One of the most affordable products from the vendor"
"It's a pay-as-you-go model. Your charges are based on the amount of data you store."
"I rate the product price as two or three, where one is high, and ten is low. The product's price is really high."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"Pricing is tricky because it depends on the solution you're building and the type of Data Lake storage you use—hot or cold."
"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."
"So far, pricing seems to be fine."
"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."
"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."
"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
No data available
Computer Software Company
67%
Educational Organization
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Retailer
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Data Lake Storage?
The tool's most valuable feature is security access policies.
What needs improvement with Azure Data Lake Storage?
The speed of support response needs to improve, especially for critical, high-priority issues. Having a quick SLA response time is crucial.
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...
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Data Lake Storage vs. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.