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Azure Stack HCI 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.9
Azure Stack HCI provides financial benefits, efficiency, and cost savings, with added advantages for Microsoft Software Assurance users and Azure Arc access.
Sentiment score
7.2
CTERA Enterprise File Services reduced costs and time, minimized manual storage, and eliminated SSD and alternative storage needs.
There has been some return on investment in terms of just time usability and reduction of footprint.
Adding SSD storage to Windows file servers is expensive, and we no longer need to back up those devices.
I am positive that CTERA has helped reduce the total cost of ownership by eliminating the need for manual storage management and reducing storage service processes.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Azure Stack HCI's customer service receives positive ratings, excelling in technical support while working on SDN training improvements.
Sentiment score
8.3
CTERA's platform provides responsive support, rated highly for proactive assistance and efficient issue resolution by knowledgeable agents.
They swiftly address concerns and take ownership of the call, providing a very satisfactory support experience.
High-priority issues are handled promptly.
I would rate their support a ten out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Azure Stack HCI provides scalable, reliable infrastructure with automated scaling and high availability, favored by organizations globally.
Sentiment score
8.3
CTERA's platform is scalable and easy to expand globally, though CPU and memory licensing constraints may pose challenges.
If we need to upgrade CPU and memory, we should be able to do that without a license upgrade.
CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow.
It offers good scalability options, including vertical and outward scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Azure Stack HCI, built on Hyper-V, offers scalable, stable clustering, but some find it lacks full maturity, rated 7/10.
Sentiment score
7.5
CTERA's platform faced initial bugs but improved over time, earning high stability ratings with reliable data access.
It has been pretty stable since then.
We had things deployed for years, and we were suddenly getting cloud sync issues that were crashing our sites.
It is very stable and reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Stack HCI needs improved networking management, simplified operations, faster deployment, better integration, stability, and user support.
The CTERA platform needs improvements in monitoring, updates, UI, logging, and performance, while users value current features and support.
Hyper V seems to lag behind compared to VMware.
AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring.
It would help to have a global single-pane-of-glass view of all my CTERA devices.
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.
 

Setup Cost

CTERA offers cost-effective enterprise file services with flexible licensing, providing significant savings over EMC and Nasuni, especially in Israel.
The licensing is quite expensive because it's per call.
Unlike other solutions that require hardware purchases, CTERA offers software licensing with flexibility across multiple infrastructure providers.
CTERA's pricing seems to be on par with some of the other players, such as Nasuni and Azure.
I find the pricing reasonable.
 

Valuable Features

Azure Stack HCI optimizes performance with advanced networking, NVMe, Kubernetes, and Azure integrations for efficient data center management.
CTERA excels in scalability, flexibility, data management, and protection, making it ideal for hybrid cloud and remote work environments.
The integration with Azure using Azure Arc is excellent.
As soon as something is written to the device, CTERA copies it to the cloud, where it's versioned with snapshots so we can recover it.
A vital advantage of this platform is its instantaneous recovery capability, allowing seamless access to a secondary gateway if the primary one fails.
It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution.
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Stack HCI
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
HCI (13th)
CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), NAS (9th), Cloud Migration (8th), Cloud Storage (11th), Cloud Backup (11th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (3rd), Content Collaboration Platforms (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. Azure Stack HCI is designed for HCI and holds a mindshare of 3.4%, up 0.3% compared to last year.
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, on the other hand, focuses on File System Software, holds 9.4% mindshare, up 5.0% since last year.
HCI
File System Software
 

Featured Reviews

Nicholas Diesel - PeerSpot reviewer
The storage for local usage is very efficient for an HCI product but virtualization needs improvement
Azure Site Recovery is brilliant. The integration with Azure using Azure Arc is excellent. Additionally, Azure storage for local usage is very efficient for an HCI product. There has been some return on investment in terms of time usability and reduction of footprint, and obviously, HCI two emissions and other factors.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
70%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
4%
University
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Stack HCI?
The pricing is very competitive unless you are talking about the actual licensing itself. The licensing is quite expensive because it's per call.
What needs improvement with Azure Stack HCI?
A little bit of the storage architecture could be improved. The integrated switching could use some enhancements. The virtualization platform always has room for improvement. Hyper V seems to lag b...
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
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