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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
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), NAS (4th), Cloud Migration (5th), Cloud Storage (5th), Cloud Backup (8th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), Content Collaboration Platforms (10th), AI Legal & Compliance (1st)
Nutanix Disaster Recovery a...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery as a Service (4th)
 

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 has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities."
"CTERA's instantaneous and redundant file replication, available across multiple geographical locations, ensures easy and user-friendly recovery."
"CTERA stood out due to its ease of use and superior security features."
"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."
"The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a hybrid solution that supports both on-premises and cloud environments."
"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."
"The best feature is the migration tool within CTERA."
"It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution."
"We haven't needed anyone to maintain or deploy the solution. The traditional Nutanix administrator can administer the solution."
"The most valuable feature is its simplicity."
"Hyper-convergence gives me the ability to patch my firmware, software, and hypervisors with a single click. That is extremely useful."
"The solution is stable."
"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."
"The tool's most valuable feature is ease of use."
"It offers synchronous data replication, allowing us to sync our recovery data every hour and efficiently send applications to remote sites."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"One of the bigger things that I would like to see is additional logging. There are logs in there. They provide us with the initial logs on what is happening on our CTERA device. I appreciate that, but they do not give us any further information. I would like to have more information on the logs themselves."
"It needs to work more to comply with all available certificates for compliance, including healthcare, financial sector, and Aramco-specific requirements."
"I think that Nutanix should support public clouds instead of the Nutanix data centers."
"It needs to work more to comply with all available certificates for compliance, including healthcare, financial sector, and Aramco-specific requirements."
"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."
"The pricing could be better."
"They need better reporting on the environment."
"The product is more costly than other platforms. The price could be better."
"The solution needs improvement in cost."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I always want it to be cheaper."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
65%
Outsourcing Company
5%
Educational Organization
4%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
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?
I believe CTERA could improve their pricing experience by customizing price lists per region. For example, there is a difference between what is sold to customers in Israel versus U.S. customers. I...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
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 America...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
We have approximately 80 nodes around the world and we're using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform mostly for unstructured file storage.
What do you like most about Nutanix Xi Leap?
The tool's most valuable feature is ease of use.
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 ...
 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Nutanix Disaster Recovery as a Service and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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