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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

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...
Ranking in Cloud Migration
8th
Ranking in Cloud Storage
11th
Ranking in Cloud Backup
11th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), NAS (9th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (3rd), Content Collaboration Platforms (10th)
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Ranking in Cloud Migration
1st
Ranking in Cloud Storage
2nd
Ranking in Cloud Backup
14th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Public Cloud Storage Services (6th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Migration category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 5.4%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 15.3%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Migration
 

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.
Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution
The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CTERA's instantaneous and redundant file replication, available across multiple geographical locations, ensures easy and user-friendly recovery."
"The solution provides data eviction, where unused data is evicted from the local file, freeing up space. It also allows data to be rehydrated from the cloud when needed."
"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."
"CTERA has been particularly capable of keeping all of our workstations backed up. That became a critical feature for us during the pandemic when computers were rarely in the office. Everybody went off-site with their computers, and we were accustomed to working with a centralized storage infrastructure where people would come to the office and connect to the server to use, create, and modify files. Everything was done directly to that server."
"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."
"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
"CTERA stood out due to its ease of use and superior security features."
"The good thing about NetApp is the features that are available on the cloud are also available on-premises."
"The FlexClones make all the management easier for us."
"There is unified storage, which provides flexibility. It is set up perfectly for performance and provisioning. We are able to monitor everything using a separate application. It provides error and critical warnings that allow us to take immediate action through ONTAP. We are able to manage everything, log a case, and follow up with the support team, who can fix it. That is how it is unified."
"The solution’s Snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are the best thing since sliced bread. Rollback is super easy. It's just simple, and it works. It's very efficient."
"Snapshots are one valuable feature within ONTAP, but CVO's appeal is that it acts just like the on-prem solution. It's the same OS, but in the cloud. We can continue to use ONTAP as we did on-premise."
"We are definitely in the process of reducing our footprint on our secondary data center and all those snapshots technically reduce tape backup. That's from the protection perspective, but as far as files, it's much easier to use and manage and it's faster, too."
"ONTAP's snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are pretty useful in recovering your data from a time in a snapshot. That's pretty useful for when you have an event where a disaster struck and then you need to recover all your data. It's pretty helpful and pretty fast in those terms."
"So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage."
 

Cons

"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 has a learning curve."
"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."
"However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"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."
"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."
"They definitely need to stay more on top of security vulnerabilities. Our security team is constantly finding Java vulnerabilities and SQL vulnerabilities. Our security team always wants the latest security update, and it takes a while for NetApp to stay up to speed with that. That would be my biggest complaint."
"Not a perfect ten because it's not very efficient with upgrades and management."
"We would like to have support for high availability in multi-regions."
"NetApp CVO needs to have more exposure and mature further before it will have greater acceptance."
"The dashboard is a little bit clunky. I like to see it a little bit more on the simplistic side. I would like to be able to create my own widgets and customize what I want to see a little bit more versus what is currently there. That would be helpful so that when I log in, I go straight to my widget or my board without going to multiple places to get to what I need to find or build."
"Cloud Volumes ONTAP's interface could use an overhaul. Sometimes you have to dig around in Cloud Manager a little bit to find certain things. The layout could be more intuitive."
"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP should improve its support."
"The only issue we had lately was that outside our VPC we could not reach the virtual IP, the floating IP. I heard that they have fixed that..."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Once we deploy the pay as you go model, we cannot convert this product as a BYOL model. This is a concern that we have."
"Our licensing costs are folded into the hardware purchases and I have never differentiated between the two."
"We find the pricing to be favorable due to the educational sector we belong to."
"They give us a good price for CVO licenses. It is one of the reasons that we went with the product."
"It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees."
"Compared to other storage vendors, NetApp, is not always able to compete with their pricing. Yet, we acknowledge the ease of use ONTAP brings with the AWS integration."
"Our licensing is based on a yearly subscription. That is an additional cost, but because of the storage efficiencies that the NetApp gives, even with the additional cost of the NetApp license, you still end up saving money versus straight Azure native for storage. It's definitely worth it."
"In addition to the standard licensing fees, there are fees for Azure, the VMs themselves and for data transfer."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
70%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Educational Organization
4%
University
3%
Educational Organization
36%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.
 

Also Known As

No data available
ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.