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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
4.5
Azure Stack HCI delivers substantial ROI via cost savings, Azure Arc benefits, and reduced licensing costs compared to VMware.
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
3.8
Azure Stack HCI support is mixed; expertise and resolution times vary, with Premier support recommended for better assistance.
Sentiment score
8.3
CTERA's platform provides responsive support, rated highly for proactive assistance and efficient issue resolution by knowledgeable agents.
Not every support team member is very knowledgeable about Azure Stack HCI, creating delays in resolution.
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
6.0
Azure Stack HCI provides scalable, reliable cloud integration, handling numerous virtual machines, with performance comparable to VMware.
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
6.0
Azure Stack HCI is stable and scalable, praised for performance but needs more features and better integration.
Sentiment score
7.5
CTERA's platform faced initial bugs but improved over time, earning high stability ratings with reliable data access.
It does not feel like a well-oiled machine yet, with too many idiosyncrasies and insufficient documentation and integration, feeling more like software that is still in beta.
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 improvements in networking, deployment, and stability; it faces integration challenges and limited multi-cluster management.
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.
Microsoft has decided to discontinue stretched cluster technology completely, which is disappointing.
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

Azure Stack HCI's pricing includes OS and OEM licenses, is competitive, significant, and €10 per core monthly.
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 enhances VM management, networking, and cost-efficiency with Microsoft licensing, supporting infrastructure and seamless analytics.
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
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
7
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 (3rd), NAS (9th), Cloud Migration (7th), Cloud Storage (11th), Cloud Backup (11th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. Azure Stack HCI is designed for HCI and holds a mindshare of 3.5%, up 0.6% compared to last year.
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, on the other hand, focuses on File System Software, holds 9.9% mindshare, up 6.3% 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
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
67%
Educational Organization
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Retailer
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Stack HCI?
This solution costs €10 per core per month. The whole stack is free if you are renting Windows Server Datacenter.
What needs improvement with Azure Stack HCI?
An area that could be possibly improved with Azure Stack HCI is the stretched cluster functionality, which was included in version 23H2 for disaster recovery purposes. However, this functionality h...
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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