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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Nutanix Disaster Recovery as a Service 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
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (1st), NAS (4th), Cloud Migration (4th), Cloud Storage (2nd), Cloud Backup (7th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (5th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), Content Collaboration Platforms (7th), AI Legal & Compliance (2nd)
Nutanix Disaster Recovery a...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery as a Service (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

Tim M. - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Supports global file recovery and rapid data versioning across 80 nodes
When we implemented CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform early on, and we've been on the platform for three years, we have three different cloud portals. We have an EU portal, we have an Americas portal, and we have an APAC portal. It would be nice if we could combine that into one portal just for that global single pane of glass look. We've talked with them about that and they say it's challenging just because of some of the structure, but that would be something nice if we could get that. I integrated with Varonis, and because CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform didn't have initially a working relationship with that vendor, it would have been nice had that pre-existed us saying we need this. But that wasn't totally CTERA's fault. There was a lot of challenge working with the vendor to build out that interface. A single pane of glass for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform would be beneficial. Everything else works fairly well. We've never had a point where we couldn't get to something that caused us to have a serious outage, and that to me is the mark of a good software package. It's never really caused us serious issues. We have our issues, that's true, and every software package does. However, we've always been able to meet the needs of the business, and we drive hard on security, stability, and scalability. From the scalability standpoint, that's one of the most important things to us. We're on their capacity-based licensing, so if I need to ramp up another CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform NAS, if we have an M&A, I can easily and quickly spin up another NAS and start doing that data transition fairly quickly. The biggest maintenance issue with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is firmware upgrades. We've done a lot of transition from hardware solution to virtualized infrastructure in order to minimize that hardware lifecycle portion of it. We have to upgrade the firmware and sometimes that can be challenging in the nature of business of our size with 80 CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform nodes around the globe. The issue we've had with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform happened recently in a firmware upgrade where there was a major database back-end upgrade and that took some time. For our smaller sites, it would be an hour or two, and I can build that into a fairly easy change window. But in our larger sites where we may have hundreds of terabytes of data, that database update process took maybe a day or a day and a half. That becomes more challenging, especially in a manufacturing environment where people are wanting to access configuration files. We had to pin the data locally because the data would be available on the local edge filer, but the cloud sync, while it was updating the database, the cloud files weren't available. That would be the other thing I'd like to see an improvement on: some way to do those database upgrades either in a more segmented fashion or in some type of offline environment. I understand the logistics behind that sounds easy, but I'm sure it's not.
AG
Regional Manager at VAD
Has improved cost efficiency and streamlined disaster recovery operations through flexible deployment options
The best features of Nutanix Disaster Recovery as a Service are the high availability and failover capabilities. The majority of customers use the One-Click Disaster Recovery orchestration feature, and they are very satisfied with it. One-Click Disaster Recovery improves the overall business processes within an organization. I am very satisfied with its performance, and our customers are equally satisfied. Nutanix Disaster Recovery as a Service's effectiveness in seamless failover to secondary sites is exceptional. The Recovery Point Objective is very small and fast. The metro availability and synchronous replication between different sites work very well. Disaster Recovery Orchestration is also good. The cloud disaster recovery as a service functionality is more than sufficient. Nutanix Disaster Recovery as a Service's audit-proof reporting assists with compliance needs in Saudi Arabia, where we have different compliance certificates. It needs to work more to comply with all available certificates for compliance, including healthcare, financial sector, and Aramco-specific requirements. The positive impact includes cost efficiency, which is the most important point. The pay-as-you-grow model works effectively. The operation is good, and the flexibility for options such as on-premise synchronization, near synchronization, or cloud-based solutions is beneficial. Everything is available within the Nutanix platform, built-in, without extra complexity or fees.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform helps us when they break something or lose things, and it makes people think I have my superhero cape on because they're thinking it's all lost, they're doomed, and we're able to quickly and effectively go back and say, 'Here you go,' and it's not hours, it's minutes."
"Apart from time-saving, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform provides secure file access and centralized control, which are measurable benefits for me."
"CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow."
"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."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted our organization as it has allowed us to shrink our on-premise file system footprint, moving out from data centers and adopting a cloud-first strategy, which brings cost savings."
"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 stood out due to its ease of use and superior security features."
"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."
"It offers synchronous data replication, allowing us to sync our recovery data every hour and efficiently send applications to remote sites."
"We haven't needed anyone to maintain or deploy the solution. The traditional Nutanix administrator can administer the solution."
"Nutanix did a good job making that very simple."
"One-Click Disaster Recovery improves the overall business processes within an organization, I am very satisfied with its performance, and our customers are equally satisfied."
"It is a very secure and scalable solution, and their support is also outstanding."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature is its simplicity."
"The best features of Nutanix Disaster Recovery as a Service include real-time synchronization with the best RTO and RPO, inbuilt data protection with snapshot feature functionality, automatic DR site upgrades, ISO certified compliance reporting, and seamless integration with over 1800 certified software applications."
 

Cons

"In my experience, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is not stable."
"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."
"There are some micro-level loggings that would have been better in improvising, and all those details are in the pipeline."
"They fixed all the requirements that we had in the beginning. The beginning was a little bit rough, but we tuned it nicely. However, in some cases, they could improve performance."
"It has a learning curve."
"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 and onboarding could be simpler, and reporting and troubleshooting could be more intuitive."
"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."
"The solution needs improvement in cost."
"The pricing could be better."
"I think that Nutanix should support public clouds instead of the Nutanix data centers."
"Reporting would be a lot better. They need better reporting on the environment."
"It needs to work more to comply with all available certificates for compliance, including healthcare, financial sector, and Aramco-specific requirements."
"The product is more costly than other platforms. The price could be better."
"For moving the data for DR, we are using Megaport. We are using a Megaport link between the data centers, so we have a third party for the site-to-site connectivity between the data centers. If such connectivity is available from the Nutanix side, it would be helpful for us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"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 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."
"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 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."
"It is a little bit cheaper than the other products in the market. It is affordable."
"One-time costs may initially seem high, but they reflect the quality of the service received."
"I always want it to be cheaper."
"Besides the license, there are additional costs with the network connection. The customer may want a direct connection between the two data centers and that has an extra cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
41%
Outsourcing Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Construction Company
4%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
Pricing for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is subscription-based, and licensing appears flexible and environment-dependent. It can be licensed for hosted data services or private deploymen...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
A few improvements would be more granular reporting, a simpler initial setup, and a smoother admin experience for edge cases. It would also help if troubleshooting and policy management were a litt...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
My main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is replacing or modernizing legacy file storage and giving remote teams secure access to shared files across locations. I am using it to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Xi Leap?
Regarding the pricing of Nutanix compared to the competition, currently there is only one OEM competitor in VMware. There are other vendors, but the feature functionality is not available on their ...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Xi Leap?
I previously faced some issues with Nutanix Disaster Recovery as a Service, but currently, we are not experiencing any compatibility issues. For future updates, incorporating AI capabilities would ...
What is your primary use case for Nutanix Xi Leap?
The primary use cases for Nutanix Disaster Recovery as a Service involve selling to customers rather than for my organization. When we are building a disaster recovery site for our customers, along...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Nutanix Xi Leap
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, SAIC Volkswagen
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