

Find out what your peers are saying about Nasuni, CTERA, Panzura and others in File System Software.
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.
We don't sell a lot of redundant servers, so it's not a massive ROI, but the ability to rely on their technical support and the software's ease of setup allows us to reduce labor costs and go to market competitively.
The cost benefits, as far as we consider, are much better with a StarWind VSAN solution, and the training requirements with the ease of administration simplify and reduce our administrator and professional services costs.
Regarding cost savings, for my client, it was about 20K USD for his specific use and as for extending capacity, StarWind made that process easy.
They swiftly address concerns and take ownership of the call, providing a very satisfactory support experience.
The quality and speed of support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is some of the best in the industry.
For critical issues, we receive a call within 10 to 15 minutes of creating a request.
Even in the instances where my technical team does not have the ability to manage or troubleshoot or resolve an issue, StarWind's technical team supports and resolves on our behalf very quickly.
They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly who will be able to connect, verify your setup, run its parameters, and see exactly what's working and what is not, and adjust it, and they really help you with that.
The customer support from StarWind Virtual SAN is great, as the people are knowledgeable and have great knowledge about the product and the functionality we require in the system.
If we need to upgrade CPU and memory, we should be able to do that without a license upgrade.
The licensing supports various data sizes, such as EV16 supporting up to 16 terabytes, and if you exceed that, you move to EV32.
CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow.
If we want to expand our storage or add disks, it is easy to add them, configure the RAID, and then deploy it.
I believe that scalability should be further improved, especially considering the possibility that environments may grow exponentially.
When you move from a two-node cluster to a three-node cluster, you have to completely redo the way that they are connected to each other with iSCSI.
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.
In my experience, StarWind Virtual SAN is very stable, and I have never had a single instability issue.
It has been working for five years and the customer is still happy with it.
I ran it on a two-node Hyper-V cluster setup, and I didn't experience any unexpected crashes or major issues.
AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring.
The main problem is that if two people are working on the same file, for example, one in the U.S. and one in Israel, they can overwrite each other’s work without any notification.
It would help to have a global single-pane-of-glass view of all my CTERA devices.
A more intuitive interface or an improved dashboard for monitoring the cluster would also be helpful, as it would facilitate performance tracking and help identify potential issues before they affect services.
There have been cases where not understanding exactly what's failing on the Virtual SAN has been an issue.
Limited feedback in the management GUI is the main area where I would like to see StarWind Virtual SAN get better.
Unlike other solutions that require hardware purchases, CTERA offers software licensing with flexibility across multiple infrastructure providers.
CTERA’s pricing should be more proportional and accessible so that cost is not the factor preventing customers from purchasing.
CTERA's pricing seems to be on par with some of the other players, such as Nasuni and Azure.
The costs are acceptable and very competitive compared to other hardware-only HCI solutions.
I talked to the sales team, they gave me a quote with a perpetual license with the support and everything went through smoothly.
This is a great product and good support even you are using free version!
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.
When it comes to data protection in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, we have encryption methodologies and we also have ransomware protection, which is a wide variety of features offered along with the CTERA appliance and application.
Thanks to its seamless integration with Proxmox, the implementation of high availability servers has drastically reduced downtime, which is crucial for our security-focused company.
StarWind Virtual SAN helps us keep customer satisfaction and provides the solutions we need without having to hire many IT specialists.
StarWind's storage virtualization and failover capabilities have made a difference for my clusters through uptime improvements, with zero downtime specific to server host maintenance or even maintenance of the StarWind software itself.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform | 14.4% |
| Nasuni | 18.6% |
| Panzura CloudFS | 14.5% |
| Other | 52.5% |
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| StarWind Virtual SAN | 5.6% |
| Red Hat Ceph Storage | 12.8% |
| DataCore SANsymphony | 5.9% |
| Other | 75.7% |

| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 2 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 2 |
| Large Enterprise | 9 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 165 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 54 |
| Large Enterprise | 34 |
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.
StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.
We monitor all File System Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.