Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs IBM Disaster Recovery Services 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

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 (7th), Cloud Storage (10th), Cloud Backup (12th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (12th)
IBM Disaster Recovery Services
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery as a Service (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Şefik Mert Polatay - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of use, performance, availability, and scalability
The initial setup is very easy, user-friendly, and not complex. It mostly comes with all installed, an operating system, database, and security, all included in Power Systems. So users can easily install, configure, and use it. It's integrated with other systems. You can run different systems from IBM Power Systems, AIX Linux, or IBM I operating system. It's also integrated into Windows systems and other databases and servers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best feature is the migration tool within CTERA."
"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 support is awesome. It is top-notch. I would rate their support a ten out of ten."
"It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution."
"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."
"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."
"CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow."
"CTERA stood out due to its ease of use and superior security features."
"Disaster Recovery Services is stable."
"The solution works well for very large organizations. It can scale quite well."
"The initial setup is very easy and user-friendly."
 

Cons

"One area for improvement is the migration tool, which at times does not work as designed, necessitating the use of alternative solutions like Robocopy."
"Stability-wise, we just went through one issue that they addressed. We were having cloud sync issues."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Stability could always be better."
"The infrastructure level of IBM's recovery systems could be improved."
"Disaster Recovery Services could provide better value for money."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards."
"So far, pricing seems to be fine."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Disaster Recovery Services is expensive."
"The pricing of the solution is based on the scale of the project or business. It's based on the server amount and the amount of data being stored. For our client, based on the amount of data they have, it may be around $20,000 USD. It could get much more expensive on the customer side."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Disaster Recovery (DR) Software solutions are best for your needs.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
70%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
4%
University
3%
No data available
 

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 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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Disaster Recovery Services?
The pricing is perfect. It's not expensive because it's all-inclusive. The operating system, database, security, different file systems. So, overall, it's cheaper than Oracle or UNIX systems with O...
What is your primary use case for IBM Disaster Recovery Services?
The use case is for high availability and disaster recovery.
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
i-Virtualize, QD, Continuum Managed Services LLC, Royal Arctic Line, Department of Science and Technology of the Republic of the Philippines, Idwala Industrial Holdings Limited, A-Plant c.a.r.u.s. Information Technology GmbH Hannover, eASPNet Taiwan Inc., Mobile Mini Inc., TriDatum Solutions Inc., M7 Managed Services Ltd., Hospital de la Concepci‹n
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. IBM Disaster Recovery Services and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.