CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform Reviews

We have approximately 80 nodes around the world and we're using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform mostly for unstructured file storage.

I appreciate the recoverability of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, the fact that we have cloud sync working and we're able to use versioning as well as recovery of deleted files. It really makes life easy because people tend to change things and delete things when they don't mean to.

That's probably one of my favorite features of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, but I also appreciate the fact that it's very flexible. It seems to be fairly bandwidth compliant, so we're always looking at ensuring we don't overload our circuits, especially when we're doing our cloud syncs.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has helped free up our IT resources for other projects and tasks. It's been very easy. When we do see issues, their support is top-notch and very responsive when we need help. It has really made it easier for us to be able to globally assign storage. We're putting local nodes rather than trying to put them in data centers and really having problems with overall timing. We always want our data close to our applications and our people. In this case, it helps a lot to maintain that.

We use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform a lot because typically end users are not very good stewards of their own data, and CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform helps us when they break something or lose things. We had an incident in Illinois where we had to recover an entire directory because somebody deleted all the files, and we were able to do that. Someone also came to us saying they changed a huge spreadsheet they had been working on for months and needed to go back a version. That makes us look really good because we're able to quickly respond to those types of requests. 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 Enterprise File Services Platform is extremely scalable. For us it's probably about a 15-minute process when, especially in the cloud sync, somebody drops a large volume of data. I'm easily able to add on. They come in 50-terabyte chunks, so that's pretty scalable in my mind. It's not a huge oversell, so it's a pretty sweet spot for us when we're adding in new sites or new data, especially when it comes to doing desktop image backups and things of that nature. Someone might come to me saying, "Hey, I need a 10-terabyte node," and I'm easily able to spin that up within hours, not days.

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.

We've been using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for approximately seven years.

We haven't had stability issues from CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform side. I've seen some challenges where users tried to use a NAS device in what I'll call an inappropriate method. We just had a recent instance where some of our users were storing Access databases out on a NAS, which the documentation clearly states is a bad idea. They bent over backwards to try and help us make it work, and we were able to do some things there. More often than not, we've never had any other types of issues from the CTERA side.

The learning curve for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for our employees is not bad. When we have questions, support's been very responsive for us.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has helped free up our IT resources for other projects and tasks. It's been very easy. When we do see issues, their support is top-notch and very responsive when we need help. It has really made it easier for us to be able to globally assign storage by putting local nodes rather than trying to put them in data centers and having problems with overall timing. We always want our data close to our applications and our people, and in this case, it helps a lot to maintain that.

The quality and speed of support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is some of the best in the industry. I've worked with a lot of different companies through the years, and even from simple questions to complex ones, they've been very responsive. To the point where sometimes I wonder when our dedicated support engineer sleeps.

Several of our people have taken their admin training class for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, which obviously helps a lot because it gives an in-depth look at the operational factors involved.

Positive

I was not around when CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform was fully onboarded. However, I'm sure it was not a short process just because of our volume of data. We're storing currently right around 2.2 petabytes.

From an application standpoint concerning the Ransom Protect feature, it's not really that pertinent, but from a global support team perspective, we have a follow-the-support model. It helps that we're able to quickly respond globally to incidents, whether that be in APAC, EU, or the US. They're very good about making sure that we have the ability to do that.

I'd like to see a Varonis integration natively with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

Database upgrades in a segmented fashion or offline for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform would be beneficial. This review has been given a rating of 8 out of 10.

CTERA connected us with Bezeq, which is a communications company in Israel that also sells similar solutions, and we also set up a portal. We were then Bezeq's integrator, until Bezeq decided to stop the activity with this product, from the beginning of 2025. Bezeq customers who want to continue working on the product go to us, we have our own portal as well.

Over the years, CTERA has shifted its focus away from local and cloud backup, concentrating instead on the file server with smart storage, HFILER, and caching mode, which we are aligned with. We have continued to deploy backup, archiving, and other complementary solutions on top of CTERA’s platform.

Since we have a big cloud environment, we back it up to CTERA’S portal and we use its archive.

CTERA first took that direction 4-5 years ago. My relationship with CTERA is around 17 years old and every time a new version comes out or additional features are released, they update me. You could say we are their BETA SITE here in Israel. It’s been rewarding to expand our capabilities together throughout the years. I look at it that way because a lot of times they send me information and ask for my thoughts.

We are CTERA’s main exclusive partner integrator in Israel, in the world of SMB. There are other companies with which we are also in contact, but they are more interested in the enterprise market, like Binat, which works with CTERA but with Enterprise customers. We also have a channel with them for business, where we are the executive arm.

Over the years, we have acquired a great deal of knowledge with CTERA, whether it’s with the portal, if it’s on the side of end customers, or with migration.

In regards to our main use cases would be migration from legacy storage such as Dell EMC, NetApp, IBM CALLSTORAGE. It’s a traditional file storage that we use with CTERA’s tools and our tools. A migration to CTERA’s environment happens when a client has a small file server in his office and has a big portal behind him. So we connect him, if he has different branches, or work-from-home scenarios or international users.

CTERA is a company that continually evolves with the latest modernization and technology. Its solution is built to handle ransomware and is strongly security-oriented, which is what I appreciate most about it. The fact that the U.S. Department of Defense and major enterprises in the U.S. have adopted this product speaks volumes. The company’s roots trace back to Check Point, giving it a strong foundation in security-first thinking. In recent years, ransomware attacks have become increasingly common, and CTERA has integrated anti-ransomware capabilities directly into its product, well before you even need additional defenses like EDR or XDR. To me, this makes it a fantastic solution that ensures the files you’re working on remain safe and protected.

Even in cases where companies have suffered ransomware attacks and turned to us for help, CTERA has proven to make the recovery process significantly faster than any other solution I’ve seen. There’s no need for elaborate reconstructions, files are safeguarded in the portal, ensuring business continuity from day zero. Once the issue is identified, operations can resume immediately. Our experience shows that CTERA is constantly advancing its solutions, and now, with the growing trend of AI integration, they are adopting it in an optimal way.

Another important advantage is volume reduction. CTERA allows us to maintain consistent pricing for our customers by optimizing storage. In the past, when storage was full, we felt compelled to purchase more. Today, with the ability to archive workloads securely in the cloud, where they remain accessible at all times, there’s no need to worry about constantly expanding on-premises server capacity.

In the cloud-based world, CTERA provides a significant advantage. For example, at RealTime, we deliver cloud services to our customers, and when a customer requires a file server, we deploy a small one in the cloud. Since cloud storage disks are expensive, CTERA’s smart archiving allows us to keep only what’s necessary on the live server while moving the bulk of the data into efficient archive storage, cutting costs substantially.

Instead of storing an entire 10-terabyte dataset on costly SSD disks, we only need to store about 500 gigabytes. The full 10 terabytes remain accessible in CTERA’s portal, at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional cloud servers.

One of the biggest advantages of CTERA is the ability to reduce a customer’s storage costs while eliminating the need to worry about backups or infrastructure after migration. This directly lowers IT expenses, and because the cloud enables limitless scalability, customers can continue to grow without concern for infrastructure limitations.

Ransomware protection is another key benefit. With CTERA’s security tools, I can confidently assure customers that their data is safe from ransomware threats. And even in the rare event of an attack, recovery is far faster compared to other solutions. These capabilities set CTERA apart from competitors in the market.

CTERA also offers a unique on-site solution that is especially valuable for companies with multiple branches. It is far superior to platforms like Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive, because it simplifies user access management and provides localized support. Unlike large vendors such as Microsoft, where customers are often routed to remote support engineers who may not fully understand the issue. CTERA delivers VIP-level support in the customer’s own language. This combination of business continuity, simplicity, and personal support is every company’s dream.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform helped free up IT resources for other projects or tasks. In the past we deployed and maintained our own systems, and I did not realize how much time and resources that took until Oded advised me to migrate to Azure. That's when I realized how much time it freed me up to develop the business and introduce other solutions.

This was a great solution and part of RealTime’s philosophy, we looked for a “set-and-forget” solution instead of continuously chasing support. Today, things have become simpler. The solution works and executes much better, and it frees up time to deal with other things and introduce additional activities.

Overall, there has been a time saving of between 30% and 40%, which is a lot, since RealTime doesn’t only deal with CTERA but also with cloud services, interterminal customers, Microsoft 365, integrations, and upgrade

Ransom Protect has helped us reduce downtime by 90%. In trials, we saw that it was able to prevent data intrusion and encryption. Even before implementing this feature, recovery time was fast, users were back to work in less than two hours.

We hear from other companies not working with us that recovery can take one to two weeks. With CTERA, we have seen a 90% reduction in time for file storage recovery.

I have a really good impression of CTERA’s Enterprise File Services Platform for file replication and versioning. It works properly both locally and in the cloud portal. Any customer who requests their retention policy according to their requirements is able to receive the data, and we can deliver the results they want in just a matter of minutes.

We used CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for disaster recovery. This saved us about 90% of time because, as soon as a customer experiences a file server crash while using CTERA, we can bring them a new machine, synchronize it to the cloud, and within an hour or two, the metadata is delivered correctly. The customer can see their files and get back to work.

There was one case with a large accounting company that had close to four million small files, totaling 3–4 terabytes. I told my employees to pay special attention to it. Our technician brought a machine to their office, accessed the data, started the synchronization, and within three hours everything was back.

If this were an old traditional Windows file server, this would’ve taken us at least 24 hours until the systems would be back up and running.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform helped reduce our recovery point objectives.

There’s an issue with permissions, they aren’t always as transparent for customers as Microsoft’s, for example. Integrations with AI could also be improved, and error messages should be clearer, more detailed, and less general.

Another area for improvement is simultaneous file editing. I understand a fix is in progress, but it hasn’t been released yet. The main problem is that if two people are working on the same file, for example, one in the U.S. and one in Israel, they can overwrite each other’s work without any notification. I would like to see functionality similar to Microsoft OneDrive, where you can immediately see if someone else is editing the same file.

It’s a very stable platform.

It’s very easy to scale, there weren’t any complaints from our customers.

They have improved a lot. I would rate them an 8 out of ten.

Positive

Deploying CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform into your organization’s firewall was not complicated at all.

After my company does the implementation and trains the employees, it’s very smooth, we don’t get any complaints. There are always questions and casual glitches but not anything that’s out of the ordinary.

We ourselves are CTERA’s main integrator in Israel. We acquired the knowledge ourselves. We did it in-house.

The investment I made on CTERA through Azure was returned within two years.

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 often explain that the market here is different and requires more creativity. In some cases, prices need to be adjusted downward. I understand the business side, of course, CTERA needs to make a profit but this is still an area for improvement.

When you sell a solution with all the benefits we’ve discussed, but the cost is high, some customers compare it to free or bundled alternatives. For example, companies that purchase a Microsoft 365 license automatically receive OneDrive without paying anything extra. In my opinion, CTERA’s pricing should be more proportional and accessible so that cost is not the factor preventing customers from purchasing.

If there was an improvement in the price, at least in our region, it would be easier for us to sell it and it would be easier to develop it and increase revenue. It is worth the price. The benefits I receive, the defense I receive, the fact that my data is there make it worth it, but not everyone sees it that way, which is the difficulty.

At first, the learning curve was much more complicated. I was the one who learned the technology and pushed it forward. It was not easy. But over the years, the solution has evolved, and implementation has become simpler. Whenever we need to implement something or run into difficulties, we get all the support we need from CTERA, their team is always there to accompany us. Today, everything is much easier than it was a few years ago.

I would rate CTERA a nine out of ten.

Our digital services business handles physical documents by converting them into digital formats for delivery to our customers. This process involves receiving hard copies, scanning them, and utilizing the Kofax application to generate soft copies.
To support this workflow, we operate a vast network of scanning sites across more than 15 regions. In the US alone, we have over 30 sites, with major hubs in Dallas and Freehold serving as primary intake points.
To ensure all scanned documents are processed on our centralized server, we utilize CTERA Edge Filers to synchronize data from these remote locations to our central sites. We currently manage a fleet of over 250 Edge Filers across the entire Iron Mountain network to maintain this synchronization.

Zones, CloudDrive Folders & CloudDrive Folder Group feature enables data to sync between locations, avoiding unnecessary transfers of all data. Data sync happens based on the defined policies helps in increasing enterprise productivity and improving business continuity. Block-level deduplication reduces data transfer and storage requirements.​A highly platform-independent solution helps enterprises reduce infrastructure costs and maintain business continuity with greater ease.​ It helped us streamline operations and minimize the technical ​& operational challenges​.

The user interface is excellent. The centralized GUI allows us to efficiently manage and configure all our Edge Filers from a single, user-friendly console.
Regarding file replication and versioning, while the platform offers robust versioning capabilities, we currently limit our use of this feature due to storage constraints associated with our terabytes of data.
In terms of data protection, we utilize the platform's wide array of features, including various encryption methodologies and ransomware protection, to secure our environment.
We have also found the platform to be highly stable. Although we initially encountered Cloud Sync DB errors when CTERA was first introduced at Iron Mountain, the latest version has resolved these issues and is performing reliably.
Finally, scalability is one of the platform's strongest attributes. It is highly flexible and adapts easily to our requirements. The licensing model, such as the transition from various licensing models, allows us to scale our data capacity as needed without being locked into an initial purchase.

There are some micro-level loggings that would have been better in improvising, and all those details are in the pipeline. Recently, we heard about the Samba, which is currently using an older version that needs upgrading. Apart from that, everything is exceptional; the product is exceptional. To be honest, when it comes to performance and reliability, it performs well in our Iron Mountain network. The problem isn't CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform; it's with the infrastructure we have. If you have good infrastructure, it works fine; if there's an issue with your infrastructure, no application can help you with that. We faced challenges like AD connectivity issues, but solutions are available. We don't have proper infrastructure for managing that.

I have nearly four plus years of experience with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

When it comes to stability, I would say it is good and perhaps even better than before. Earlier, when it was introduced to Iron Mountain, we experienced issues with Cloud Sync DB error. However, with the latest version, we are not observing those issues and find it more stable now than previously.

The scalability of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is one of the best parts; it is highly scalable. It totally depends on the customer's requirements. The licensing supports various data sizes, such as EV16 supporting up to 16 terabytes, and if you exceed that, you move to EV32. You can change whenever you want without being locked into your initial purchase.

I have contacted the technical support or customer support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. The speed and quality are exceptional, as CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has some of the best technical support. It depends on the type of incident, as they have critical, high, and low severity levels. For critical issues, we receive a call within 10 to 15 minutes of creating a request. That's among the best things about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

Positive

Similar solutions include an application called Nasuni, Wasabi, which we tried. Before CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, we worked with multiple vendors, testing various applications including Panzura, but ultimately concluded that CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is performing better compared to other applications.

The initial deployment of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is very easy; even a non-technical person can easily deploy it.

We just need one person to deploy it; even a non-technical person can do that.

Ransom Protect is helping a lot. Moreover, the data we are using is only accessible to Iron Mountain employees, and the scanned data resides exclusively in the Iron Mountain network, making it inaccessible to outside customers. That's why we are not using that feature across everywhere; only recently for new customers where some users work from client locations, we enabled the VPN but have concerns about data security, which is the reason we enable the ransomware feature only in a few locations, not everywhere. But again, it's helping a lot.

I have seen effects on the Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objectives. Recovery Point Objective is based on the projects, and at Iron Mountain, we have that agreement. I'm not sure about the specifics, but it's very less, less than an hour for both. I haven't gone through the documentation regarding the agreements; only the management knows the details.

Concerning pricing, I have no idea as billing and POCs are handled by a different team, but from the information I have, it's a competitive price when compared to others. These solutions are specific to particular requirements and do come with a cost, but they definitely have a competitive pricing model.

When it comes to deploying it for the first time, if you are provisioning it on the cloud, we use a Terraform script for deploying the DB and application server. If you're doing it on-prem, like Nutanix or ESX, manual execution is required. It hardly takes 15 to 30 minutes to spin up the DB and app server, and for all the configuration, it takes a maximum of one hour, not more than that.

I would rate this product with a review rating of 10.

I use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for end-user sharing, for CIFS and for NFS sharing. We use it to store biomedical equipment output and for archiving users files for long retention.

My favourite feature about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is the cloud synchronisation and the way the filers work. For example, when we do an upgrade from the application and the database servers perspective, the filers, which are the nodes that share the information to the users, those can continue working without the synchronisation with the portal because they have their own reduced storage space. For a two hours upgrade, the users didn't notice the upgrades or we didn't need to open a maintenance window. We can continue providing services to the users, and that is my favourite solution for that tool.

The file replication in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is good, and the same thing with the filers and the portal is good because you can have on the filers the more used files, similar to hot pinning. In the portal, you have all the complete directories. For me, that is good. The replication works fast, and they do a good job with that.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has helped me to reduce my recovery point objectives, the RPOs, because with the solution we have a principal site and a disaster recovery site. In the disaster recovery site we have CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform components so in case of a problem in the principal site, we can migrate the sharing to the disaster recovery site. This is also implemented with a storage solution. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is our front-end platform for the users, but in the back end, we have Scality as the S3 bucket. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform connects to the Scality for storage, and we have Scality replicated too. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform uses the Scality bucket to store the data, and the RPOs work better with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

There are two things about CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform that I think they can improve. The first one is the reporting or maybe the monitoring solution because they lack reporting about the shares that we have, the used space, the total space, the permissions, or other relevant metrics. Because I have seen other tools that have it. The reporting and monitoring capabilities could be improved. The second one is that the filers are a good solution, but there is a problem because when you have multiple filers in three sites or in the same site with multiple filers, we have to replicate the configuration manually. It's not automatically syncing. For us, that is a problem because if I create a share in one filer, I have to go and create the share on the other filers. That means a lot of configuration time wasted in something that could potentially be done with a tool to replicate that automatically in the backend or in the background of the solution. Those two points would be the areas most needing improvement in the solution.

I have been working with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for two years, since 2024.

Yes, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a stable platform. There are not concerns from users perspective about latency, out of service or disruption of the service, but also in an upgrade maintenance window.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform can scale out and scale up with out problem. We can add more resources on the same servers and in case we need to create more servers it can be done without problem. 

We had to contact CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform technical support several times on the first months because we were still understanding the platform and we required some help. After the implementation was done, we had a knowledge transference for two days where they explained the solution to the whole team. When we opened cases  I a noticed a great technical support level. The people that work there are always trying to help us. As a recommendation, the access to the software downloads, firmware, and updates should be more opened and allowed without having to create a case. When we worked with others vendors, we can access the software downloads without a problem, but with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, we have to open a case. When you open the case, they send you the links for the download but also the support team help you to create a plan to upgrade the platform.

The support deserves a nine on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest.

Positive

In my career, I have used NetApp solutions, HP solutions, Windows file server, and Scality. Scality had a Samba implementation, but I migrated from Scality because all the configuration and all the administration tasks were over CLI. Then I migrated to CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to have a better administration platform for shares management, but I continued with Scality as the storage backend solution because of the replication and the ring platform. Those are the four solutions that I have worked with before CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

The initial deployment of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform was more or less difficult overall. As I mentioned, architecting the solution and seeing the components took a little more than we expected because it was difficult to understand the components and the way they work. After all the components were checked, all the networking was reviewed, and all the requirements were completed, the implementation took about two or three days, more or less. The architecting took about two weeks.

It was a team effort for the deployment of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform because in our company, we have the cyber security team, networking team, and infrastructure team. We had to work together to complete all the requirements for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to be implemented. There was a team of about six to eight people internally and about two or three people from CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

The pricing of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is not a concern because we have CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform with more components packaged with HP GreenLake. They sell us the whole solution: the servers, the networking, and everything else.

However, I have a point of view about the licensing. Currently, we have a license for 150 terabytes, but the consumption in the licensing is not just the user current data, but also the deleted data and the snapshots. That means that we have about 70 terabytes of current data for the user, but from CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's consumption point of view, we have consumed about 120 terabytes. For me, it's a little confusing because from the point of view of the user, we have one value, but from CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform we have another value. It would be better for us to consolidate or have the same information because I have to ask them about that, and they explain it to me. At first, it was a little confusing to figure that out.

Qumulo, IBM, Dell and Scality solutions.

When we started with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform and architecting the solution, there was something difficult to understand because of the different components they have: the database, the application or the portal, and the filers, and how they sync the information. After we finished the implementation, after about six months or so of using it, it's good because all the administration tasks are done via a graphical user interface. Before, we used another solution that was all done via CLI and was harder to use. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is all about the graphical user interface, and after several months, I can use it without a problem.

I use the Ransom Protect feature in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, and we have it in a monitoring state. They have found some behavioral analysis and reported it to us in cases where users deleted a lot of files or moved the files, and sent us an email about ransomware behavior. I have activated it right now, but that's in monitoring, not in active status, because in active status, they will disconnect the user.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform does not require any maintenance on my end. I would rate this solution an 8 on a scale from 1 to 10.

I use the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform administration portal for monitoring the servers, and if the files are not working and corrupted, I restore them. I also use it for the backup of the files.

I assessed my employees' learning curve for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, and it took me around one month to understand how it works and what it does exactly. I can monitor the different servers in it, and I can easily access the files over the cloud platform. However, it is a bit difficult to find the files because I need to go through each and every folder step-by-step, and the search engine optimization is not that good, so I face some difficulties in finding the files.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has helped my organization to reduce its total cost of ownership. I track CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for my project, and for my teammates, it is very helpful. If we encounter a problem, we directly log in to CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal to check whether any filer or machine is full, including RAM or storage. We can directly click on the machine, and a dashboard opens, allowing us to check if it is full, if it is synced or not, and if the backup is synced or not. This capability enables us to really manage our resources effectively.

I like the dashboard of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. It is very convenient and user-friendly. I can easily monitor the filers where I can find the root cause, which is very helpful to detect any problem.

I have seen multiple benefits from using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. There are multiple servers on Linux-based machines over CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. If any server machine goes offline, I directly get the alert over my email. It is very convenient for me to check my emails to see whether any filer or machine is offline, so I can log in to CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal and easily check what the problem is and what the root cause is, allowing me to work accordingly.

Overall, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has helped to free up IT resources for other projects or tasks. I find it a time-saving platform. I use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal in my VDI, so it is kind of difficult for me to log in into my VDI through the VPN and then open the VDI server and then CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal. There are some lags in VDI, which I guess is due to the network issue, but overall, it is very convenient for me to work on CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

Apart from time-saving, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform provides secure file access and centralized control, which are measurable benefits for me. I personally love the file access management from everywhere. I can access files from anywhere in the world, from any location or any device through the internet. It can also help with cost-saving infrastructure-wise, and the easy file sharing and collaboration features are superb, providing convenience in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is scalable. I can extend storage using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform easily, as it supports cloud object storage. Companies can increase storage for a few TBs or PBs without changing hardware, which is a plus point. It can support thousands of users in multiple offices at the same time, and if the company opens a new branch, they can simply deploy more Edge Filers and connect them to the same portal.

I feel the data protection offered by CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is solid. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform provides automatic backup of files and endpoints, and if data is lost and deleted or corrupted, it can be restored from backup, which is very valuable. It also has snapshot versioning features, allowing companies to restore files to previous versions. If the current file is attacked or corrupted, I can click on the three dots for version history and restore the latest version, ensuring that the data is still protected. The access control features for viewing, editing, or downloading files have a good interface.

Based on my experience, I would prefer to see improvements or enhancements in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. My friends who also work with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform say the portal interface is confusing for them. Improvements could include a simpler and easier-to-navigate UI, and the technical documentation can sometimes be complex for beginners. When I was a beginner, it was really difficult for me to locate what I was searching for. I use it in VDI, so I feel that it is a bit unresponsive.

I have been working with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for six months.

Regarding the stability aspect of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, I have been using it for six months, and I have not found any downtime with this portal. I have faced downtime with the VDI, the virtual machine, but not with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal.

Regarding the customer service team and technical support team from CTERA, I have escalated some questions to them. I have a ticket related to a user who is having issues on some filers. He created a ticket on the platform, ServiceNow, and I took that ticket. It has been one to two months since we contacted CTERA support team, and they are really listening to us. The ticket is ongoing, and they are supporting us with detecting the problem and identifying the exact root cause, which I can say is helpful.

On a scale of one to ten, I would really rate the tech support of CTERA at about an 8.5 because they are really good.

Positive

Before CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, I have not worked with any other solution of the same kind, as this is my first company. If I work with any other platform or software in the future, I can compare accordingly.

For the initial setup of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, senior people in my team took care of that part.

The deployment process of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform usually happens in a few steps such as planning and requirements, determining how much storage is needed, the number of users and offices, and deciding which cloud platforms will be used, such as AWS, Azure, and Google. After that, we install CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal management system, deploy it on a virtual machine or cloud server, configure network settings, and set up admin accounts and users. Then, we configure the storage backend including AWS S3 or Azure Blob, followed by deploying Edge Filers. After that, we create users, set up their permissions to access files, and enable backup and sync through CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal, including file backup and endpoint protection. Finally, we work with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal to detect any problems.

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 capacity license would be around 55 to 60 lakhs in Indian rupees.

Currently, I do not think there are any specific features or functionalities missing in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform that I would want to see included or enhanced in the future, as it has only been six months since I started using it.

I am not really familiar with file replication and versioning in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

Regarding Ransom Protect, I do not know about it right now.

For organizations considering CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, I recommend that they first need to understand how CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform works. They should learn how it connects different cloud platforms and how CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform portal operates. Understanding all the options in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, such as adding storage, finding files, restoring previous versions, and what to do if a file is corrupted will be really helpful for them.

I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.

My main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is using Cloud Gateways and file servers. As a specific example, we use one Cloud Gateway and one appliance for each of our sites, where we use them to keep all our files, keep backups of them, keep old versions, and protect them from attacks.

The best features that CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offers include speed, resilience, ease of use, and security. Regarding resilience, it has anti-ransomware features and anti-data loss features, and we use those extensively in our day-to-day work.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted my organization by making our data management better, giving us greater security in our use, and letting us work easier with all the file services we need. It improved our data security and made our work easier through the portal, which allows us to see every device we have in every location and also allows us to share files extensively across sites. The security features make it so we use the antivirus and the anti-ransomware, making our data more secure.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform could be improved by being a little faster in performance and having a timeline for new features and updates. Currently, we do not have one of those timelines, and sometimes we do not know what is in the pipeline for those on our services. I want to emphasize the need for a timeline on new features and bug fixes.

I have been using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for four years.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is stable.

Its scalability is really good, as we have two portals for our uses worldwide, and they manage a lot of hardware, being pretty stable and pretty quick.

Our customer support is excellent since we have our support representative, who we can talk to directly, and they fix all our issues.

I previously used Microsoft Windows file services, and we switched because we needed more security to prevent cyber attacks.

I have seen a return on investment, as we have a small team that works fine, and we do not need a large team to manage it. We have had cost savings of around 40% in all our hardware purchasing and our file data and costs associated with storage because of the deduplication, amounting to 40% savings compared to what we had before on-premises.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was great working with the CTERA team, as we get clear invoicing, clear services, and we are very happy with it.

Before choosing CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, I did evaluate other options, but I do not recall specifics.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a great product, and I recommend it greatly. My advice to others looking into using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is that the software suite is very extensive, so you get a great return on investment if you use all their features, and their support team will be really glad to help you leverage everything. I rate CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform an eight on a scale of one to ten. What would make it a ten for me will be better features and quicker bug fixes.

The main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is to ensure that employees working for the client I have been contracting with have access to all saved files. In my day-to-day work, I rely most on CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to access files through the private cloud my client has been using.

A specific example of how my team uses CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to access files is that instead of Microsoft, my client depends upon CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. We have a private cloud where we save all the files, so if a person has a new workstation and wants to ensure they are accessing the files they generally have access to, CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform comes into view. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is the platform we use to access the files in the cloud. To clarify, if a person is working for a certain agency, they will have a shared workgroup that everyone uses. Everybody saves files in the same workgroup, which we access using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform. Once the workstation is customized, if they experience issues with file synchronization or access problems, we step in and use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to resolve those issues for them.

There are many ways we use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for various functions, including fetching profiles, rebuilding profiles, restoring files, undeleting, or mass undeleting files. Essentially, everything revolves around file access, which is the main objective of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

I have been personally using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for a long time, and I feel that the best feature is the ease at which we can provide services to the employees of the company, especially in rebuilding profiles or restoring or deleting necessary or unnecessary files. All of this can be easily performed on the platform, which I feel is the best feature.

The profile rebuilding feature of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform stands out compared to other platforms I have used because with other platforms, I would have to go to multiple sites and ensure access, then return to build and sync the profile into the workstation. However, with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, it is straightforward. We just ensure all details are inputted correctly into the main platform when a person is onboarded, and once the requests are raised, we simply go to the directory services option in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform and click to fetch the user, which makes the whole process very easy.

When it comes to mass undeleting in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, it is a process where we restore files that are deleted by mistake. It is generally used when people delete some files unintentionally, but with a mass undeleting script, we restore all files deleted by a specific workgroup or folders in the cloud for the last six months. It is not easy to lose a file when we use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform because even if it is lost, it can be restored easily. This is especially helpful when people change their laptops or when files are accidentally lost. Sometimes people do not check if their workstations are synced properly, and they mistakenly mess up with the files. There have also been situations where a whole office has lost thousands of files, and with the help of the mass undeletions script, we can restore everything quickly, just a few clicks away, because CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is that automated. Restoration is also straightforward; if a person can provide the file name or location and a tentative date when they last accessed the file, I can restore it for them with just a few steps. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is so automated that I can handle these tasks easily on my own.

Regarding automation and ease of use in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, while we currently have all the automations we need, I believe there is room for more improvements. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offers a broad platform, so the scope for further automation is large. In terms of ease of use, it is user-friendly, but we need to ensure users are well-trained on how to save files properly within a workgroup when using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform and how to keep everything synced. The only issue I face is that we give many rules to employees, and not everyone remembers all of them. Aside from that, everything is good.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform does not have a noticeable positive impact or a specific outcome that I have observed. It is as useful as any other cloud service but perhaps with more limitations, especially when compared to public clouds in Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud, where there are fewer user education requirements. However, I do support CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform in scenarios where a private cloud is essential over a public or hybrid cloud.

The limitations I have observed while using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform mainly revolve around access. For instance, if there are numerous agencies in my client company, each workgroup is assigned a specific agent number, and users must follow specific orders to save files. Sometimes users mistakenly save, which messes up synchronization. We do not have a catch for this problem, so we must educate users on proper file saving practices. The second limitation is a loss of functionality regarding access confidentiality, where staff under agents used to have restricted file access, but that feature is no longer available. This makes maintaining file confidentiality challenging.

To improve CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, it is crucial to implement features that allow better access controls; this would greatly benefit not just my client but many corporates worldwide looking to keep files organized while limiting access.

I have been using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for two years.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is not as stable as a corporate would prefer. We have faced multiple issues in the past year, including a performance problem that took three to four months to resolve with the vendor. This incident led to a backlog of thousands of tickets for the team managing CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, and it took us more than four months to clear the queue and assist users in the organization.

I do not think CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform can handle growth or increased workloads easily because we faced such issues around nine months ago, where it took three to four months for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform to provide a resolution, followed by additional months to stabilize the system again within the organization.

I would rate customer support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform as neutral because we have not always had good support. There have been times when they lagged considerably, making the overall experience neutral; while we had swift resolutions at times, there were long waits on other occasions.

The client I work for has been using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform from the beginning and did not use any other platform before this.

Before choosing CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, the organization evaluated other options but found them unsuitable due to confidentiality concerns related to being a public cloud, leading them to select CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

I can definitely say that there is considerable time savings with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform compared to traditional approaches for file access and saving. Additionally, the staff required for file access issues is significantly reduced; we manage with a small team of just ten people, which eases the financial burden on the organization.

My main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is related to a database shrinking and rebuilding activity that we recently performed.

The best features of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform include significant scalability in Edge Filer, especially where we use cloud object storage. It provides massive scalability. Another key feature is robust data protection that CTERA offers, and it provides us a unified global file system.

For robust data protection, CTERA provides continuous data protection and cloud-native backup. Regarding metadata, it provides a very converged solution for metadata and an immutable archive along with a cross-region converged solution for robust data protection. In the disaster recovery component, it provides a unique feature for metadata disaster recovery, allowing for fast retrieval of our critical files. Regarding scalability, CTERA offers unlimited capacity scaling at low-cost cloud storage, which reduces our storage costs and enables seamless tiering of our cold data to object storage.

Another advantage is that CTERA provides us a reduction in our IT cost and consolidation of our legacy infrastructure. CTERA has replaced multiple legacy hardware stacks including NAS, backup, and file servers. This is a very unique feature that eliminates our NAS branch for our client and provides a single platform for file storage where we can sync, share, and backup.

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.

There needs to be improvements, particularly regarding real-time sync conflict resolution and cloud latency. Sometimes I face issues in real-time sync conflict as well as latency in the cloud.

If CTERA could automate its migration component and provide it in a utility way, that would be great. Additionally, there are a few other features that could improve my overall experience.

We were also facing performance issues in our CTERA environment, and after diagnosing various scenarios and use cases that users shared, we found that all of them were experiencing slowness in our Edge Filer. During diagnosis, we discovered that our database size had increased significantly. Although CTERA itself provides an automated service called CTERA vacuum, we found that a manual database vacuum activity needed to be performed on our Postgres database. We recently performed this manual CTERA database vacuum activity, and it helped tremendously. It resolved the intermittent slowness issue that we were experiencing for several customers and multiple CTERA Edge Filers.

We checked our audit logs and Edge Filer logs to identify the root cause. Initially, we observed that it appeared to be related to network issues, but after thoroughly checking our logs, we discovered that the issue was related to a delay in our services where our Edge Filers and application servers were reaching the database. We checked our database very thoroughly, reviewed all the logs, and identified the problem. During this process, we performed all CTERA vacuum activities, which helped significantly. I can provide more details if needed.

Regarding handling the issue on the Edge Filer side, the major issue recently has been the database component. On a day-to-day basis, we encounter performance issues in our Edge Filer where some of our Edge Filers experience network issues, resulting in higher response times. In one scenario, we moved our traffic from the physical Edge Filer to the local Edge Filer. We observed trouble with our local Edge Filer in that case, and we routed our traffic to the physical Edge Filer instead.

I have been using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for the past six years.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is stable.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's scalability is very good.

Regarding customer support, CTERA offers very good support. They assign a dedicated engineer for our account, and we can reach out to our account manager directly. In case of daily operational issues, we usually raise CTERA support tickets, and we receive exceptional support from them.

Positive

I previously used AWS file share services for another client, and now for my current client, I am using CTERA. When comparing it with my previous client, the best aspect of CTERA is that it supports a multi-cloud environment, unlike before where I was only concerned with one cloud.

I only evaluated AWS file share services.

CTERA has been a major improvement with a reduction in our storage and infrastructure cost, achieving up to eighty percent reduction in storage costs overall, which is significant.

For those considering using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, I advise comparing it with NetApp, Nasuni, and Panzura, as CTERA stands out in terms of providing services and support. There are many use cases across various sectors where CTERA can be utilized, including banking, healthcare, and all remote sites. CTERA combines cloud-scale storage, edge performance, and intelligent data management with a unified platform.

In CTERA, we usually deal with application patching, new changes that need to be implemented, and overall maintenance of our application structure. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted our organization's security posture by effectively offering user endpoint deduplication, continuous data protection, and multi-cloud replication.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform's main use case is SMB services. I use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for SMB services in my work to save and complete our work while storing files. For our main use case, I use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for saving as a NAS solution to store the files.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offers excellent features with simple architecture. The platform includes cloud platforms, gateways, and portals that are straightforward for my organization to use.

The user interface of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is very simple to use. CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has positively impacted my organization by being straightforward to use, and since its introduction five years ago, my team has experienced no downtimes.

The lack of downtime with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform has helped my organization by ensuring that each upgrade I perform does not affect the systems and the servers.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform can be improved, but I consider it to be good overall. The upgrades of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform could be somewhat more stable.

I have been using CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform for 1.5 years.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is stable, as I am not experiencing many issues.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is really scalable.

The customer support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is really good, and the engineers are highly qualified. They help me every time I face any issue.

Positive

I previously used SAN solutions, such as EMC, and I switched to CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform due to my use case for file services.

The learning curve for my employees with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform was really easy to implement, and it was very quick. The migration was also very smooth.

I have seen a return on investment with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, as the automation is very good, which reduces the headcount, saves money, and saves time.

My recovery time has improved by about 50% with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, as I can restore a deleted or modified file within a few seconds from the portal.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is that it is value for money and the setup is easy.

Before choosing CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, I checked many solutions, but CTERA was the best.

I recommend everyone to use CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform as it is really stable, versatile, and it does not have much downtime—it is perfect.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is really good, and I would suggest CTERA to every company that is looking for a similar solution. I gave this review a rating of 10.

We use CTERA as a global file share for several divisions within our organization.

We immediately realized the benefits of the CTERA platform. When we rolled this out, we had around five sites and noticed a significant drop in requests for restoration or storage space increases. On the backup side, we no longer had to back up Windows Servers. 

Using CTERA has freed up our IT resources from monitoring the old Windows file servers, adding space, cleaning up stuff, etc. 

Having backups has reduced the tasks administrators used to do, and now they can concentrate on other things.

We use CTERA for disaster recovery at sites in hurricane zones. Our DR nodes are located in the central US, and it has worked well for those disasters. We've also had appliances crash and recovered them faster than using a regular Windows file server. 

We've reduced our recovery point objectives to varying degrees. It depends on the site. We can typically have a system back up and serving users for small to medium sites in eight hours.

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 and versioning work great. Users can self-serve basic restorations of one or two gigabytes, but administrators need to handle bigger restores of several gigabytes. CTERA has out-of-the-box data protection capabilities. It sends the data to the cloud. 

As soon as something is written to the device, CTERA copies it to the cloud, where it's versioned with snapshots so we can recover it. We haven't used Ransom Protect, but we'll roll that out with the next firmware upgrade.

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. They could make it easier for administrators to troubleshoot problems. We get alerts, and sometimes, those are false positives. Compared to where we started, they've made significant improvements in the last five years.

I have been using CTERA for five years.

I rate CTERA nine out of 10 for stability. It has been reliable for our needs.

I rate CTERA eight out of 10 for scalability with a qualification. It's scalable, but their licensing model is different on their devices. If we're running the system on our on-premise kit, the licensing should be per terabyte and not a limitation on CPU and memory. 

If we need to upgrade CPU and memory, we should be able to do that without a license upgrade. I get that we need to upgrade our storage space if we run out, but we should be able to scale up processing and memory based on the system's needs. 

I rate CTERA support eight out of 10. High-priority issues are handled promptly, while lower-priority concerns take longer to address. 

Positive

When we implemented the solution, CTERA didn't have any training, so we had to work with their engineers to learn the solution and get the portal set up. It was a little challenging, but they were there to answer questions and show us best practices for deployment.

It took us around a month to set up the portal and work through the pieces to deploy the edge services. Once you deploy the edge device, you need to copy the old systems' data. That takes a little bit longer. It took about two months to get it to a place where we were comfortable. The deployment team consisted of one CTERA engineer, me, and another system administrator.

After deployment, CTERA requires some maintenance, primarily firmware upgrades. CTERA coordinates with us when new versions come out, and we work with their engineers to deploy them. A technical account manager manages those software versions to ensure we're not on the bleeding edge and causing more problems in our environment. 

They do ESS upgrades on the hardware they deploy from and other care and feeding underneath the hood that we can't access. They have access to their gateways, which are locked down only for their admin use. We open tickets and work with them hand in hand to get things upgraded, tweaked, or troubleshooted.

We did not use any third parties; the deployment was handled by one CTERA engineer, myself, and another administrator.

We reduced our total ownership cost using CTERA. Adding SSD storage to Windows file servers is expensive, and we no longer need to back up those devices. The ability to store things in a back-end S3 bucket significantly reduces the cost. It's much cheaper per gig. 

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.

I rate CTERA Enterprise File Services nine out of 10. 

Before implementing CTERA, you must analyze the workload you're trying to put on the platform and test it. We're a big manufacturer doing a lot of automated testing where we're writing thousands of files. At a point, it doesn't stop you from writing files, but the directory lookups become a little slower. It's critical to understand your workload before you put it there. The regular stuff works great, like Excel, Word, etc., but you want to check if it will be appropriate for your purposes if you are doing automated manufacturing or engineering.