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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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.6
CTERA platform boosts ROI with automation, cutting infrastructure costs by 40%, reducing storage expenses, and improving file access efficiency.
Sentiment score
8.1
Organizations found significant ROI with Qumulo through cost savings, easy scalability, and strong competitiveness against Isilon and NetApp.
It reduced the amount of time IT spent maintaining multiple systems, which let the team focus on higher-value projects.
Member Technical at ADP
Adding SSD storage to Windows file servers is expensive, and we no longer need to back up those devices.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
I am positive that CTERA has helped reduce the total cost of ownership by eliminating the need for manual storage management and reducing storage service processes.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
Qumulo is a revenue competitor with Isilon, NetApp, Ampere Stewart, and PowerScale, so this is HP's purchase to compete with those particular companies.
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
The capabilities for handling high throughput unstructured workloads and executing petabyte-scale migrations are paramount for media and entertainment or healthcare, where they can reduce the burden of long nights spent on migrations.
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
We have seen a return on investment in the reduction of storage administration effort.
Infrastructure Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
CTERA's support is praised for prompt engineer assistance, though some find phone support less effective than the ticket system.
Sentiment score
8.6
Qumulo's 24/7 customer service is highly rated for reliability, expertise, and accessible direct engineer support, with minor delays for low priority issues.
They swiftly address concerns and take ownership of the call, providing a very satisfactory support experience.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
The quality and speed of support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is some of the best in the industry.
Senior Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
For critical issues, we receive a call within 10 to 15 minutes of creating a request.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
These professionals possess deep expertise in cloud deployments and NAS migrations, ensuring that I am speaking with knowledgeable individuals.
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
I would rate their technical support as a ten, as they are very quick to respond.
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Qumulo customer support is the best.
System Administrator at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.4
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform offers scalable growth, resource flexibility, and efficient capacity management for diverse organizational needs.
Sentiment score
8.4
Qumulo excels in scalability, providing seamless expansion and performance enhancement, making it ideal for media, entertainment, and healthcare sectors.
If we need to upgrade CPU and memory, we should be able to do that without a license upgrade.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The licensing supports various data sizes, such as EV16 supporting up to 16 terabytes, and if you exceed that, you move to EV32.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow.
Senior Manager of Global Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
This linear scale allows for multi-petabyte workloads, which is essential for both media and entertainment as well as healthcare's image management.
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
It is really scalable and easy to use for our end users.
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Scalability is one of the strongest features.
Infrastructure Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is stable and reliable with minimal disruptions, often related to user setup issues.
Sentiment score
8.8
Qumulo is praised for its exceptional stability and reliability, receiving high ratings and fostering confidence for future growth.
It has been pretty stable since then.
System Administrator at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
We had things deployed for years, and we were suddenly getting cloud sync issues that were crashing our sites.
Senior Manager of Global Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It is very stable and reliable.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
I can confidently say it is highly stable.
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
I would rate the stability of Qumulo as a nine.
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
 

Room For Improvement

Users call for interface simplification, better documentation, and enhancements in stability, performance, AI integration, and portal management efficiency.
Users want Qumulo to improve uptime, interface, UNIX commands, licensing, automation, cloud integrations, and offer better data protection.
AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
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.
CEO at rtt.co
Better visibility into what's happening behind the scenes, cleaner reporting, and simpler policy management would make it feel more effortless at scale.
Member Technical at ADP
It programs very easily. There are REST APIs, and there is a cloud connection.
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Overall, it is a solid tool that works very well on-premises and in cloud environments.
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Qumulo can be improved with more competitive licensing and pricing, enhanced historical analytics, and additional automation capabilities using APIs.
Infrastructure Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

CTERA offers cost-effective, flexible pricing and integration with HP GreenLake, making it more affordable than Nasuni.
Qumulo offers competitive pricing with straightforward licensing, considered good value and supported by helpful vendor assistance.
Unlike other solutions that require hardware purchases, CTERA offers software licensing with flexibility across multiple infrastructure providers.
Business Development Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
CTERA’s pricing should be more proportional and accessible so that cost is not the factor preventing customers from purchasing.
CEO at rtt.co
From what I heard from my seniors, a 50 TB capacity license would be around 55 to 60 lakhs in Indian rupees.
Graduate Engineering Trainee at HCLSoftware
The pricing setup cost and everything was the lowest compared to other competitors.
System Administrator at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
The pricing is on the premium side.
Infrastructure Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

CTERA's platform provides scalable, secure file services with centralized management, supporting both cloud and on-premises environments to enhance productivity.
Qumulo offers efficient file sharing, scaling, management, and analytics, enhancing data storage for healthcare and media with cloud integration.
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.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
A vital advantage of this platform is its instantaneous recovery capability, allowing seamless access to a secondary gateway if the primary one fails.
Business Development Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
When it comes to data protection in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, we have encryption methodologies and we also have ransomware protection, which is a wide variety of features offered along with the CTERA appliance and application.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
The most valuable feature in Qumulo is the scaling feature, as Qumulo file data platform is optimized for scale, so we could support petabytes of data, billions of files, millions of operations, and thousands of users.
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
They are easy to reach, and you can send them a Slack message with Level 3 engineers available to help you within seconds.
System Administrator at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Qumulo has positively impacted my organization by simplifying storage management while providing a single, scalable platform, reducing administrative efforts, making storage growth easier to manage, and allowing users to experience consistent performance.
Infrastructure Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in NAS
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (1st), Cloud Migration (4th), Cloud Storage (2nd), Cloud Backup (7th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (5th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st), Content Collaboration Platforms (7th), AI Legal & Compliance (2nd)
Qumulo
Ranking in NAS
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 5.2%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qumulo is 4.2%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform5.2%
Qumulo4.2%
Other90.6%
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.
Esther Sultaana - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Unified file platform has delivered secure multi‑protocol access for massive data growth
The creators of Qumulo were the ones who created Isilon, and I had a conversation with them, so any of the features within Isilon may need tweaking, but I think they resolved it here. In the year that I worked with it, I did not see anything that I had an issue with. The security is great, and it works with cloud technologies, being a hands-based tool, so you can use it with AWS or Microsoft Azure. It programs very easily. There are REST APIs, and there is a cloud connection. The management and program layer is made up of three capabilities: API, the command line, and a visual interface. In the year that I worked with it and brought it in, I think it has been effective. The only thing I would like to see added to Qumulo is for the interface to improve visually, more in line with vCenter, but that is just my thought. Overall, I appreciate it.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
41%
Outsourcing Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Construction Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
Pricing for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is subscription-based, and licensing appears flexible and environment-dependent. It can be licensed for hosted data services or private deploymen...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
A few improvements would be more granular reporting, a simpler initial setup, and a smoother admin experience for edge cases. It would also help if troubleshooting and policy management were a litt...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
My main use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is replacing or modernizing legacy file storage and giving remote teams secure access to shared files across locations. I am using it to...
What needs improvement with Qumulo?
Although Qumulo has been around for several years and I think they have a very good product, I cannot think of anything offhand that needs improvement. I appreciate that I can use it to check wheth...
What is your primary use case for Qumulo?
My main use case for Qumulo is primarily in healthcare imaging and media entertainment. It is the file-heavy workload for enterprises, and it is used extensively in healthcare. One of the companies...
What advice do you have for others considering Qumulo?
I believe Qumulo is great for a storage engineer because it allows me to validate migration throughput, which is part of the real-time analytics. That helps considerably during migrations. I freque...
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

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: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.