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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Qumulo comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 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 NAS
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (1st), Cloud Migration (3rd), Cloud Storage (4th), Cloud Backup (8th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (7th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), Content Collaboration Platforms (6th), AI Legal & Compliance (3rd)
Qumulo
Ranking in NAS
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (21st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 3.9%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qumulo is 5.2%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform3.9%
Qumulo5.2%
Other90.9%
NAS
 

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.
VinceVitro - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Storage Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Useful data sharing, simple cluster scaling, and excellent support
One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The user interface of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is fantastic, providing a centralized console where we can manage all our Edge Filers and configure them through a very user-friendly interface."
"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."
"CTERA has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities."
"CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has improved our operations tremendously by eliminating our NAS branch and providing a single platform for our file storage where we can sync, share, and backup our runtime data."
"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."
"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 replication workflows have replicated content to our branch offices and cached that content, which makes that content accessible to our regional offices around the globe and makes accessing that data much easier and much faster."
"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."
"It is a very stable product. I never faced any issues."
"The ratio of total operational cost to complexity versus feature set is very good."
"The feature that I like most is the analytics part of the file system."
"The most valuable features of Qumulo are its rolling updates and all-day availability."
"The most valuable features of Qumulo are the ease of management and special permissions that are quick to enable. The overall performance of the solution is good."
"The most valuable feature is real-time analytics."
"The feature that I like most is the analytics part of the file system."
"The data protection algorithm to protect the data between the nodes has been the most valuable feature. The integration with backup platforms such as Veeam and Veritas has also been valuable."
 

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."
"One area for improvement is the migration tool, which at times does not work as designed, necessitating the use of alternative solutions like Robocopy."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"In my experience, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is not stable."
"Some anti-theft permissions do not transfer well to Qumulo."
"The price of the software is a bit expensive, so a reduction in cost would make it more competitive."
"One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential."
"There is plenty of room for improvement. In the future, I would like to see non-disruptive updates."
"Qumulo should continue to expand automation and orchestration capabilities."
"The solution could improve availability and improve data protection or data services such as compression of deduplication. In a future release, we'd like to have more cloud API integrations."
"The price of the software is a bit expensive, so a reduction in cost would make it more competitive."
"The support for iMac and protocols should be improved, not all features are available."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"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 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."
"The price of Qumulo is reasonable."
"The price of the solution is in the middle range compared to others. We look at the price per terabyte."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
53%
Outsourcing Company
17%
Educational Organization
5%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I do not know much about the pricing, setup cost, or licensing cost of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. I believe it comes with a license. From what I heard from my seniors, a 50 TB capacit...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I cannot think of any areas at this time that could be improved. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a well-rounded platform.
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I primarily use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to replicate our marketing content to our regional offices. Marketing uses the Adobe application suite for creating and managing file content...
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Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
County of Riverside Sheriff Department, Hyundai Mobis Automotive North America, University of Arizona, UCSD - San Diego Supercomputer Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, Sinclair Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Kaiser Permanente, Deluxe Creative, Vexcel Imaging, University of Florida, The Madison Square Garden Company, Arizona State University, Cinesite, San Diego Padres Baseball, Johns Hopkins University - School of Medicine, IHME, EllieMae, Washington State University.
Find out what your peers are saying about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Qumulo and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.